LYSIAS (Auzzia4. A Syrian nobleman of the blood royal ' whom Antiochus Epiphanes, when setting out for Persia, appointed guardian of his son, and regent of that part of his kingdom which extended from the Euphrates to the borders of Egypt (i Maccab. iii. 32 ; 2 Maccab. x. H ; Joseph. Antiq. xii. 7. 2 ; Appian, De reb. Syr., 46). Acting under the special orders of the king, Lysias collected a large force for the purpose of carrying on a war of extermination against the Jews. This army, under the coinmand of the generals Ptolemy, Nicanor, and Gorgias, was sur prised and put to flight by Judas Maccabmus near to Emmaus (I Maccab. 3S—iv. IS ; Joseph. Antiq. xii. 7. 3, 4). In the following year, B. C. 165, Lysias himself invaded Judma with a still larger army, and joined battle with Judas in the neighbourhood of Bethsura. The Syrians were again defeated, and so decisively that Judas was able to accomplish his great purpose, the purifica tion of the Temple, and the re-establishment of divine worship at Jerusalem (1 Maccab. iv. 2S-61 ; Joseph. Antia. xii. 7. 5-7). Lysias retires to Antioch, and while preparing for a fresh campaign, the death of Epiphanes leaves him in virtual pos session of the supreme power. Shortly afterwards (in the year probably B.C. 163), with an army equal in number to the former two combined, with three hundred war chariots and two-and-thirty elephants, and accompanied by the young king Antiochus Eupator, he again enters Judzea from the side of Idumma. Having taken the fortified city of Bethsura, he advances to Jerusalem and lays siege to the temple. Meeting here with a stouter resistance than he had anticipated, and healing that Philip, a rival claimant to the guar dianship of the king, was returning from Persia, he hastily concludes a peace with the Jews, and sets out for Antioch. On reaching this city he
finds it in the possession of kis rival. In the en gagement which followed, Philip was defeated and slain. Another and more formidable opponent, however, soon appeared, in the person of Demet rius Soter, first cousin of the king, who, escaping from Rome, lands at Tripolis, and lays claim to the throne. The people rise in his favour, and Antiochus and Lysias are seized and put to death (1 Maccab. vi.–vii. 2; 2 Maccab. xiii.–xiv. 2 ; Joseph. Antiq. xii. 9. to ; Appian, De reb. Syr., .17). In the second book of Maccabees an account is given at some length of an invasion of Judxa by Lysias, made before the final invasion but-after the death of Epiphanes (2 Maccab. xi.) It is scarcely possible to reconcile this with the more trustworthy narratives of the first book, and it is clear from 2 Maccab. ix. 28–x. to, that the writer is not following a strictly chronolog,ical order in this part of his history. Internal evidence seems to us to favour the opinion that this narra tive has been compiled from separate and partial accounts of the two invasions referred to in Maccab. iv. -vi., the writer too hastily inferring that they described the same event.
2. Claudius Lysias, the military tribune who commanded the Roman troops in Jerusalem during the latter part of the procuratorship of Felix (Acts xxi. 31-38 ; xxii. 24-30 ; xxiii. 17-30 ; xxiv. 7, 22). Nothing more is known of him than what is stated in these passages. Front his name, and from Acts xxii. 28, it may be inferred that he was pro bably a Greek.—S. N.