become a source of wealth and object of contention on account of its bitumen.

We need not enter into the treaties and wars between the satraps, during the succeeding years. Antigonus remained in possession of Syria. In 306 B. C., Demetrius, who had been highly successful in Greece, invaded the island of Cyprus, and made the conquest of it after repelling Ptolemy, who came with a fleet to the assistance of his allies. This conquest was so pleasing to Antigonus that he thereupon assumed the title of king, and had such confidence in the duty and affection of his excellent son, that he saluted him (by letter) with the same title, thus making him the associate of his government. When this was heard in Egypt, the people, out of their attachment to Ptole- | ance and delay. In those times, however, my, saluted him also as king, whereupon the kingly title was very common, and much Lysimachus in Thrace, Seleucus in Baby- less of special significance was connected lon, and even Cassander in Macedonia, were with it than it has since acquired. hailed by the regal title, by the nations under their rule. This none of them strenuously forbade or opposed; and although they did not immediately call themselves kings on their coins and in their edicts, they all did so ere long, with more or less show of decent reluct

Elated by this and his other great successes, Antigonus cast his eyes upon Egypt. In 305 B. C. he collected in Syria an army of eighty thousand foot, eight thousand horse, and eighty-three elephants, and marched along the coast of Palestine to Gaza; to

which point Demetrius also repaired by sea, | field of battle pierced by many arrows, while with a fleet of one hundred and fifty ships of Demetrius managed with a poor remnant of war, and one hundred store-ships. This for- the army to escape to Ephesus. He survived midable expedition failed through mismanage- seventeen years, and took an active part in ment on their side, met by excellent manage- the affairs of that time, but not so as to bring ment and preparation on the part of Ptolemy. him under our future notice. Antigonus retired from the Egyptian frontier in disgrace, not a little heightened by the avidity with which his own soldiers embraced the opportunity of escaping from his austere rule to the mild and paternal sway of the Egyptian king.

Meanwhile Seleucus had been consolidating in the East that power which ultimately made him the greatest of the successors of Alexander. By 303 B. C. he had established his dominion over all the eastern provinces to the borders of India, and in that year was preparing for the invasion of that country, when affairs called his attention to the West, and he concluded a treaty with the Indian king, from whom he received five hundred elephants, a fact which we particularly notice as explaining the frequent presence of that noble beast in the subsequent warfares in Syria and Palestine. Subsequent supplies were afterward obtained from the same source, in order to keep up this favorite force in the armies of the Syrian kings.*

At last the several kings, wearied out with troubles and conflicts which the insatiable and turbulent ambition of Antigonus occasioned, made common cause against him, Seleucus taking the lead, and bringing the largest force into the field. The belligerents met and fought a battle, intended by all to be decisive, at Ipsus in Phrygia, in the year B. C: 301. Antigonus brought into the field between seventy and eighty thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and seventy elephants; and Seleucus and his confederates had sixty-four thousand infantry, ten thousand five hundred cavalry, above one hundred chariots armed with scythes, and four hundred elephants. The courageous old man, Antigonus, now fourscore and upward, behaved with his usual valor and conduct, but not with his usual spirit. Seleucus, by an adroit interposition of his elephants, managed to prevent Demetrius from properly supporting his father with the cavalry, which he commanded; and the final result was, that Antigonus fell on the

*The ancient Egyptians do not appear to have known the elephant, although quantities of the teeth were brought to the country and to Palestine. We do not remember to have met

This great victory was followed by a treaty between the four potentates who had weathered the storm which had raged since the death of Alexander, being Seleucus, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassander. Each was formally to assume the royal dignity, and to govern his provinces with imperial power. The distribution was made on the principle of each retaining what he already had, and taking his due share of the empire which Antigonus had lost with life. To Cassander was allotted Macedonia and Greece; to Lysimachus Thrace, Bithynia, and some of the adjacent provinces; to Ptolemy, Libya, Egypt, Arabia Petræa, Palestine, and Cole-Syria; to Seleucus, all the rest, being in fact the lion's share — including many provinces in Syria, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and the East as far as the frontiers of India.

This settlement must have been highly satisfactory to the Jews, whom it restored to the dominion of Ptolemy, with whose generally beneficent government, and particular favor to themselves, they had every reason to be satisfied. The prospects of durable peace, under the shadow of so great a king, must also have been contemplated with peculiar satisfaction by a people who suffered so much of the horrors and penalties, without sharing in the contingent honors and benefits of war.

One

They were not disappointed. Ptolemy, now relieved from his long conflict, and settled firmly upon his throne, applied himself with great and laudable diligence to the improvement of his dominions. great point of his policy was really to attach to his rule the several nations which had become subject to it. From this policy sprang the favors which he showered upon the Jews, and the indulgence with which, notwithstanding their peculiarities, they were on all occasions treated. The most perfect religious toleration was established by this eminent monarch, whose interest

with a single instance in which this animal is described as being figured on the old monuments of that country.

it was to harmonize the differences of reli- ures as ere long rendered it the first comgious practice and opinion which existed mercial city in the world. This, among between his Greek and Egyptian subjects: others, was a circumstance calculated to the religion of the Jews was comprehended attract the Jews to that city; as, first their in this indulgence; and their synagogue long absence from their native land - durwas as much tolerated and respected as the ing the captivity, and then the troubles of temples of Isis and of Jupiter. Ptolemy war in that land troubles peculiarly unmade Alexandria the metropolis of his favorable to the peaceful pursuits and hopes empire, and gave full effect to the intention of agriculture had already turned their of its great founder by taking such meas- attention toward commerce.

Seleucus, between whose territories and name; six on which he bestowed that of those of Ptolemy, Palestine was now situated, his mother Laodicea; six which he called saw the wisdom of the policy followed by Apamea after his first wife, and one after the king of Egypt, and applied himself with his last wife Stratonice. Of all these towns great vigor to work it out in his own the most celebrated was the city of Antioch, dominions. In those dominions many fine on the Orontes in Syria, which became the cities had been entirely destroyed, and metropolitan residence of all the succeeding others greatly injured by the ravages of war. kings, and in a later day, of the Roman To repair these losses, Seleucus built many governors; and which has ever since surnew cities, among which are reckoned sixteen vived, and which still exists, and retains which he, from his father, called Antiochia some relative consequence by virtue of the or Antioch; nine to which he gave his own corresponding decline of all prosperity and

In his newly-founded towns, it was the policy of Seleucus to induce as many as possible of the Jews to settle by important privileges and immunities, such as those which Ptolemy had extended to them. The consequence was that the Jews were attracted to these spots in such numbers, and especially to Antioch, that in them they formed nearly as large a proportion of the inhabitants as at Alexandria itself.

population in the country in which it is | have," says a late traveller, "walked over found.* Its name will occur very often in the ground it occupied, and found the site the remainder of our narrative. Next to of the royal city only marked by the parallel Antioch in importance was Seleucus on embankments of ancient aqueducts, and by the Tigris, which may in fact be considered the consolidated grit and débris which the capital of the eastern portion of the devote to utter barrenness, in this primeval empire. It was situated about fifty miles country, the spots which towns once occunorth by east of Babylon, twenty-three miles pied, as if man had branded the ground by below the site of the present city of Bagdad, the treading of his feet.” and just opposite to the ancient city of Ctesiphon. This city (founded in B. C. 293) tended much to the final ruin and desolation of Babylon. Great privileges were granted to the citizens; and on this account many of the inhabitants of Babylon removed thither; and after the transfer of the trade to Seleucia, these removals became still more frequent. It was in this manner that Babylon was gradually depopulated; but the precise period when it became entirely deserted cannot now be ascertained. It may be interesting to note this, as many of the Eastern Jews were involved in whatever transactions took place in this quarter, which, from the time of the captivity to this day, has never been destitute of a large and often influential Jewish population. But now Babylon itself is not more desolate is even less desolate has more to mark it as the site of a great city of old times, than the superseding Seleucia, which only received existence in the last days of Babylon. "I

* Antioch, the capital of the Greek kings of Syria, and afterwards the residence of the Roman governors of the province which bore the same name. This metropolis was situated where the chain of Lebanon, running northwards, and the cháin of Taurus, running eastwards, are brought to an abrupt meeting. Here the Orontes breaks through the mountains; and Antioch was placed at a bend of the river, partly on an island, partly on the level which forms the left bank, and partly on the steep and craggy ascent of Mount Silpius, which rose abruptly on the south. No city, after Jerusalem, is so intimately connected with the history of the apostolic church. Certain points of close association between these two cities, as regards the progress of Christianity, may be noticed in the first place. One of the seven deacons, or almoners appointed at Jerusalem, was Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch (Acts vi. 5). The Christians, who were dispersed from Jerusalem at the death of Stephen, preached the Gospel at Antioch (ibid. xi. 19). It was from Jerusalem that Agabus and the other prophets, who foretold the famine, came to Antioch (ibid. xi. 27, 28); and Barnabas and Saul were consequently sent on a mission of charity from the latter city to the former (ibid. xi. 30, xii. 25). It was from Jerusalem again that the Judaizers came, who dis

In all this, we think it is not difficult to perceive a further development of the divine plan, which now, as the times advanced, dictated the dispersion of numerous bodies of Jews among the Gentile nations, - while the nation still maintained in its own land the standards of ceremonial worship and of doctrine - with the view of making the nations acquainted with certain truths and great principles, which should work in their minds as leaven until the times of quickening arrived.

During the time of Ptolemy Soter, the prosperity of the Jews was much strengthened by

turbed the church at Antioch (ibid. xv. 1); and it was at Antioch that St. Paul rebuked St. Peter for conduct into which he had been betrayed through the influence of emissaries from Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 11, 12). The chief interest of Antioch, however, is connected with the progress of Christianity among the heathen. Here the first Gentile church was founded (Acts xi. 20, 21); here the disciples of Jesus Christ were first called Christians (xi. 26); here St. Paul exercised (so far as is distinctly recorded) his first systematic ministerial work (xi. 22-26; see xiv. 26-28: also xv. 35 and xviii. 22); hence he started at the beginning of his first missionary journey (xiii. 1-3), and hither he returned (xiv 26). So again after the apostolic council (the decrees of which were specially addressed to the Gentile converts at Antioch, xv. 23), he began and ended his second missionary journey at this place (xv. 36, xviii. 22). This too was the starting-point of the third missionary journey (xviii. 23), which was brought to a termination by the imprison ment at Jerusalem and Cæsarea. Though St. Paul was never again, so far as we know, at Antioch, that city did not cease to be an important centre for Christian progress. Bib. Dictionary.

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As for Ptolemy Keraunus, he ultimately sought refuge at the court of Seleucus, by whom he was most kindly received and entertained; but he justified the ill opinion of him on which his own father had acted by destroying his benefactor. This was in B. C. 280, only seven months after Seleucus had consummated the greatness of his empire by the overthrow of Lysimachus, who had himself previously added the kingdom of Macedonia to his own of Thrace. Thus Seleucus became became the possessor of three out of the four kingdoms into which the empire of Alexander had, in the defeat of Antigonus, been divided. After his death, Ptolemy Keraunus managed to seat himself on the Macedonian throne; but the very next year he was taken prisoner and cut in pieces by the Gauls, who had invaded Macedonia.

the internal administration of the excellent | him that he had no time to lose; he therehigh-priest Simon the just. In 300 he suc- fore resigned the diadem to Philadelphus ceeded Onias I., who had in 321 succeeded ("the brother-loving "), and enrolled himJaddua, the high-priest in the time of Alexan-self among the royal life-guards. He died der the Great. Simon repaired and forti- two years after (B. C. 283) at the age of fied the city and temple of Jerusalem, with eighty-four, forty years after the death of strong and lofty walls; and made a spacious Alexander. cistern, or reservoir of water, "in compass as a sea. He is reported to have completed the canon of the Old Testament by the addition of the books of Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, Nehemiah, Esther, and Malachi. This is not unlikely, as also that the book of Chronicles was completed in its present state; for the genealogy of David in the first book comes down to about the year B. C. 300; and it may also be remarked that in the catalogue of high-priests as given in Nehemiah, Jaddua is mentioned in such a manner as to intimate that he had been for some time dead. The Jews also affirm that Simon was "the last of the great synagogue:" which some ingeniously paraphrase into "the last president of the great council, or Sanhedrim, among the high-priests" (Hales, ii. 538); whereas it seems clear that no Sanhedrim at or before this time existed. And from the fact that this " great synagogue" is not (like the Sanhedrim) described as being composed of seventy members, but of one hundred and twenty, among whom were Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, Nehemiah, and Malachi-it would appear that it rather denoted the succession of devout and patriotic men who distinguished themselves after the captivity, by their labors toward the collection and revision of the sacred books, and the settlement and improvement of the civil and religious institutions of their country; and of whom Simon, by completing the sacred canon, became the last. Simon died in B. C. 291, and was succeeded by his son Eleazar.

Not long after this (B. C. 285), the king of Egypt, having conceived just cause of displeasure against his eldest son Ptolemy Keraunus, took measures to secure the succession to his youngest son Ptolemy Philadelphus. His advanced age warned

* Ecclus. 1. 1–3. The whole chapter, entitled "The praise of Simon the Son of Onias," is devoted to a splendid eulogium on his deeds and character.

† It is worthy of notice that the Greek monarchs at this time not only imitated the Persian kings by marriage with their own sisters,

Seleucus was succeeded in what may be called the throne of Asia by his son Antiochus Soter. This prince, after he had secured the eastern provinces of the empire, endeavored to reduce the western, but his general Patrocles was defeated in Bithynia, and the loss of his army disabled him from immediately prosecuting the claims upon Macedonia and Thrace. Meanwhile the sceptre of Macedonia was seized by the vigorous hands of Alexander Gonatus, a son of Demetrius Poliorcetes, and consequently a grandson of Antigonus, and to him Antiochus at length felt himself constrained to cede that country; and the family of Antigonus reigned there until the time of Perseus, the last king, who was conquered by the Romans. Antiochus Soter died in B. C. 261 after nominating as his successor his second son Antiochus Theos ("the God"). This prince was his son by his mother-in-law Stratonice, whom his too indulgent father had divorced to please him.†

but carried this vice to still greater excess. Seleucus, to favor the wishes of his son Antiochus Soter, divorced his wife Stratonice, and gave her, to that son as his wife, she being his mother-in-law. From this incestuous marriage were all the succeeding kings of Syria descended. - Plutarch.

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