praise their fidelity to Ptolemy. The siege of Gaza was famous; but in the end the city was taken by storm, and Antiochus, secure at last of the province, which his ancestors had so long coveted, was at peace with Ptolemy, as the Roman embassy directed. From Palestine Antiochus turned to the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and by 196 B.C. he was in Thrace. There he was confronted by the ambassadors of Rome, who expressed their surprise at his actions. Antiochus replied that he was recovering the territory won by Seleucus his ancestor, and inquired by what right did the Romans dispute with him about the free cities in Antiochus and Rome. Asia (Polyb. xviii. 33 seq.). The conference was broken off by a false report of Ptolemy’s death, but war between Rome and Antiochus was clearly inevitable—and Antiochus was joined by Hannibal. After much diplomacy, Antiochus advanced into Greece and Rome declared war upon him in 191 B.C. (Livy xxxvi. i). He was defeated on the seas and driven first out of Greece and then out of Asia Minor. His army was practically destroyed at Magnesia, and he was forced to accept the terms of peace, which the Romans had offered and he had refused before the battle. By the peace of Apamea (188 B.C.) he abandoned all territory beyond the Taurus and agreed to pay the whole cost of the war. He had stood in the beauteous land—the land of Israel—with destruction in his hand. He had made agreement with Ptolemy. He had turned his face unto the isles and had taken many. But now a commander had put an end to his defiance and had even returned his reproach unto him (Dan. xi. 16–18). After Magnesia men said “King Antiochus the Great was” (Appian, Syr. 37); and the by-word was soon justified in fact, for he plundered a temple of Bel at Elymais to replenish his exhausted treasury and met the fitting punishment from the gods at the hands of the inhabitants (Diodorus xxix. 15). He stumbled and fell and was not found (Dan. xi. 19).
The need which drove Antiochus to this sacrilege rested heavily upon his successor Seleucus IV. (reigned 187–175 B.C.). The indemnity had still to be paid and Daniel designates Seleucus as “one that shall cause an exactor to pass through the glory of the kingdom” (xi. 20). A tradition preserved in 2 Macc. iii. describes the Seleucus IV. attempt of Heliodorus, the Seleucid prime minister, to plunder the temple at Jerusalem. The holy city lay in perfect peace and the laws were very well kept because of the piety of Onias the high priest. But one Simon, a Benjamite, who had become guardian of the temple, quarrelled with Onias about the city market, and reported to the governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia that the treasury was full of untold sums of money. The priests and people besought Heliodorus to leave this sacred treasure untouched, but he persisted and—in answer to their prayers—was overthrown by a horse with a terrible rider and scourged by two youths. Onias, fearful of the consequences, offered a sacrifice for his restoration, and the two youths appeared to him with the message that he was restored for the sake of Onias. The description of the previous tranquillity may be exaggerated, though it is clear that the Jews, like the other inhabitants of Palestine, must have been left very much to themselves; but the enmity between the adherents of Simon and the pious Jews, who supported and venerated Onias, seems to be a necessary precondition of the state of affairs soon to be revealed. There were already Jews who wished to make terms with their overlord at all costs.
When Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (175–164 B.C.) succeeded to the throne, Jason—whose name betrays a leaning towards Hellenism—the brother of Onias, offered the king a bribe for the high-priesthood and another for leave to convert Jerusalem into a Greek city (2 Macc. iv. 7 sqq.). Antiochus had spent his youth at Rome as a hostage, Antiochus IV. and Jason. and the death of Seleucus found him filling the office of war minister at Athens. The Hellenistic Jews were, therefore, his natural allies, and allies were very necessary to him if he was to establish himself in Syria. Onias had proceeded to Antioch to explain the disorder and bloodshed due to Jason’s followers, and so Jason, high priest of the Jews by grace of Antiochus, had his way. The existing privileges, which the Jews owed to their ambassador to Rome, were thrust aside. In defiance of the law a gymnasium was set up under the shadow of the citadel. The young men of the upper classes assumed the Greek hat, and were banded together into a gild of ephebi on the Greek model. In fact Jason established in Jerusalem the institutions which Strabo expressly describes as visible signs of the Greek way of life—“gymnasia and associations of ephebi and clans and Greek names borne by Romans” (v. p. 264, referring to Neapolis)—and that on his own initiative. The party who wished to make a covenant with the heathen (1 Macc. i. 11 sqq.) were in the majority; and so far and so long as they were in the ascendant Antiochus was rid of his chief danger in Palestine, the debatable land between Syria and Egypt. At first Egypt was well disposed to him, as Cleopatra his sister was regent. But she died in 173 B.C.
The struggle for the possession of Palestine began in 170 B.C., when Rome was preoccupied with the war against Perseus of Macedonia. Antiochus sent an ambassador to Rome to protest that Ptolemy, contrary to all law and equity, was attacking him (Polyb. xxvii. 17). In self defence, therefore, Antiochus advanced through Palestine and defeated the Egyptian army near Pelusium on the frontier. At the news the young king, Ptolemy Philometor, fled by sea, only to fall into his uncle’s hands; but his younger brother, Ptolemy Euergetes II., was proclaimed king by the people of Alexandria (Polyb. xxix. 8). Thus Antiochus entered Egypt as the champion of the rightful king and laid siege to Alexandria, which was held by the usurper. When he abandoned the siege and returned to Syria, Philometor, whom he had established at Memphis, was reconciled with his brother, being convinced of his protector’s duplicity by the fact that he left a Syrian garrison in Pelusium. In 168 B.C. Antiochus returned and found that the pretext for his presence there was gone. Moreover the defeat of Perseus at Pydna set Rome free to take a strong line in Egypt. As he approached Alexandria Antiochus met the Roman ambassador, and, after a brief attempt at evasion, accepted his ultimatum on the spot. He evacuated Egypt and returned home cowed (Dan. xi. 30; cf. Polyb. xxix. 11). Later he could attend the celebration of the Roman triumph over Macedonia, and surpass it by a festival at Antioch in honour of his conquest of Egypt (Polyb. xxxi. 3–5); but the loss of Pelusium made it imperative that he should be sure of Palestine. His friends the Hellenizing Jews had split up into factions. Menelaus, the brother of Simon the Benjamite, had bought the high-priesthood over the head of Jason, who fled into the country of the Ammonites, in 172 B.C. (2 Macc. iv. 23 sqq.). To secure his position (for he was not even of the priestly tribe) Menelaus persuaded the deputy of Antiochus, who was dealing with a revolt at Tarsus, to put Onias to death. Antiochus, on his return, had his deputy executed and wept for the dead Onias. But Menelaus managed to retain his position, and his accusers were put to death. Antiochus could pity Onias, who had been tempted from the sanctuary at Daphne, but he needed an ally in Jerusalem—and money. Then, during the first or second invasion of Egypt, Jason, hearing that Antiochus was dead, returned suddenly and massacred all the followers of Menelaus who did not take refuge in the citadel. He had some claim to the loyalty of such pious Jews as remained, because he was of the tribe of Levi—in spite of the means he, like Menelaus, had employed to get the high-priesthood. His temporary success reveals the strength of the party who wished to adopt the Greek way of life without consenting to the complete substitution of the authority of Antiochus for the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law. It was also a warning to Antiochus, who returned to exact a bloody vengeance and to loot the Temple (169 or 168 B.C.). After the evacuation of Egypt, Antiochus followed out the policy which Jason had suggested to him at the first. Jerusalem was suddenly occupied by one of his captains, Hellenism. and a garrison was planted in a new fortress on Mount Zion. Then to coerce the Jews into conformity, the Law was outraged in the Holy Place. The worship of Zeus Olympius replaced the worship of Yahweh, and swine
