Having thus recovered the central part of Asia Minor—for the dynasties in Pergamum, Bithynia and Cappadocia the Seleucid government was obliged to tolerate—Antiochus turned to recover the outlying provinces of the north and east. Xerxes of Armenia was brought to acknowledge his supremacy in 212. In 209 An tiochus invaded Parthia, occupied the capital Hecatompylus and pushed forward into Hyrcania. The Parthian king was appar ently granted peace on his submission. In 209 Antiochus was in Bactria, where the original rebel had been supplanted by another Greek Euthydemus. (See further BACTRIA and articles on the separate rulers.) The issue was again favourable to Antiochus. After sustaining a famous siege in his capital Bactra (Balkh), Euthydemus obtained an honourable peace. Antiochus next, fol lowing in the steps of Alexander, crossed into the Kabul valley, received the homage of the Indian king Sophagasenus and re turned west by way of Seistan and Kerman (206/5). From Seleucia on the Tigris he led a short expedition down the Persian Gulf against the Gerrhaeans of the Arabian coast Antiochus seemed to have restored the Seleucid empire in the east, and the achievement brought him the title of "the Great King." In 205/4 the infant Ptolemy V. Epiphanes succeeded to the Egyptian throne, and Antiochus concluded a secret pact with Philip of Macedonia for the partition of the Ptolemaic posses sions. Once more Antiochus attacked Palestine, and by 199 he seems to have had possession of it. Scopas recovered Palestine for Ptolemy, but was defeated at the Panium, near the sources of the Jordan, in 198. In 197 Antiochus moved to Asia Minor to secure the coast towns which had acknowledged Ptolemy and the independent Greek cities. This enterprise brought him into antagonism with Rome, since Smyrna and Lampsacus appealed to the republic of the west, and the tension became greater after Antiochus had in 196 established a footing in Thrace. The evacu ation of Greece by the Romans gave Antiochus his opportunity, and he now had the fugitive Hannibal at his court to urge him on. In 192 Antiochus invaded Greece, but in 191 he was routed at Thermopylae by the Romans under M. Acilius Glabrio, and obliged to withdraw to Asia. The Romans followed up their suc cess by attacking Antiochus in Asia Minor, and the decisive victory of L. Cornelius Scipio at Magnesia and Sipylum (r90), following on the defeat of Hannibal at sea off Side, gave Asia Minor into their hands. By the peace of Apamea (188) the Seleucid king abandoned all the country north of the Taurus, which was dis tributed among the friends of Rome. As a consequence of this blow to the Seleucid power, the outlying provinces of the empire, recovered by Antiochus, reasserted their independence. Antiochus perished in a fresh expedition to the east in Luristan (187).
187-164 B.C.—The Seleucid kingdom as Antiochus left it to his son, SELEUCUS IV. PHILOPATOR (reigned 187-176), con sisted of Syria (now including Cilicia and Palestine), Mesopo tamia, Babylonia and Nearer Iran (Media and Persis). Seleucus IV. was compelled by financial necessities, created in part by the heavy war-indemnity exacted by Rome, to pursue an unambi tious policy, and was assassinated by his minister Heliodorus. The
true heir, Demetrius, son of Seleucus, being now retained in Rome as a hostage, the kingdom was seized by the younger brother of Seleucus, ANTIOCHUS IV. EPIPHANES, who reigned 176-164. In I 70, Egypt, governed by regents for the boy Ptolemy Philometor, attempted to reconquer Palestine; Antiochus not only defeated this attempt but invaded and occupied Egypt, and left Philo metor as his ally installed at Memphis. When Philometor joined Ptolemy Eurgetes, Antiochus again invaded Egypt (168), but was compelled to retire by the Roman envoy C. Popillius Laenas (consul 172), after the scene in which the Roman drew a circle in the sand about the king and demanded his answer before he stepped out of it. Antiochus had resided at Rome as a hostage, and afterwards for his pleasure at Athens, and had brought to his kingdom an admiration for republican institutions and an enthusiasm for Hellenic culture—or, at any rate, for its externals. There is evidence that the forms of Greek political life were more fully adopted under his sway by many of the Syrian cities. He spent lavishly on public buildings. It is his contact with the Jews which has chiefly interested later ages, and he is doubtless the monarch described in the pseudo-prophetic chapters of Daniel (q.v.). Jerusalem, near the Egyptian frontier, was an important point, and in one of its internal revolutions Antiochus saw, per haps not without reason, a defection to the Egyptian side. His chastisement of the city, including as it did the spoliation of the temple, served the additional purpose of relieving his financial necessities. It was a measure of a very different kind when, a year or two later (after 168), Antiochus tried to suppress the one orientation of the bowl and bridge with respect to the magnetic system, will hide both beams of light from the selenium cells. If however, the bowl be turned, the electric resistances of the two selenium cells become unequal, a condition which can be deter mined in the usual manner by means of a galvanometer fitted on the dashboard. The compass is operated in the following manner : An instrument fitted in the cockpit has a dial marked in degrees, like an ordinary compass card. By turning a handle, the pilot or navigator can move a pointer over the dial to any desired compass course, at the same time rotating through gearing the compass bowl and bridge in the tail of the aircraft. If, for example, the handle be turned until the pointer indicates a south-east direction, then the bowl will automatically be turned so that only on this course will the diaphragm on the magnetic system equally shield the selenium cells. The pilot has thus simply to turn the aircraft until the galvanometer reading is zero ; any departure from the course will be indicated by a deflection of the galvanometer. The selenium compass has been successfully operated in flight, but, since it employs a null method of reading, it cannot be used to indicate bearings.