Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/617

 EMPIRE.] PERSIA 589 penetrated into Apolloniatis and cut off Melon s retreat. Molon was forced to accept battle near Apollonia ; his left wing passed over to the enemy, and, after a crushing defeat, he and all his kinsmen and chief followers died by their own hands (220). Antiochus now marched to Seleucia to regulate the affairs of the East. He used his victory with moderation, mitigating the severities of his minister Hermias ; but he had effectually prevented the rise of a new kingdom in the most important province of Iran. In the same year, before he returned to Syria, he marched across Mount Zagrus against the aged Artabazanes, the most powerful of the native princes, who ruled not only Atropatene but the neighbouring lands, especially east Armenia (Polyb., v. 55, 7), and by the terror of his approach extorted an advantageous treaty. A period followed in which the king was fully occupied in the west, but after this he began a campaign of several years in the upper satrapies, to which his contemporary renown was mainly due. First he regulated the affairs of the Armenian kingdom of Arsamosata, whose king, Xerxes, had fallen by the intrigues of his own wife, a sister of Antiochus. 1 Then, descending the Euphrates by ship to Seleucia, he appeared in Media in 209, hardly as an enemy, though he seized the gold and silver decorations of the temple of the goddess ^Ene in Ecbatana. Thence with 100,000 foot and 20,000 horse he marched against the new .rsijs Parthian king, Arsaces II., 2 son and successor of Tiridates. - Crossing the desert obliquely to Hecatompylus, he forced his way into Hyrcania over Mount Labus (the eastern part of the Elburz mountains), defeating the Parthians on the summit, and besieged the fugitives in Sirynca. The Parthians planned an escape by night, and massacred the Greek residents to prevent its betrayal ; but the plan failed. The city yielded, and the war ended in a treaty which left Arsaces his kingdom, but beyond question reduced him to a vassal. In 208 began the much more serious war with Bactria. Here the successors of Diodotus had been dethroned by a usurper, Euthydemus of Magnesia, whose coins indicate a long reign. Euthydemus tried to defend the line of the Arius (Herirud), but Antiochus effected a passage a little west of the city Guriana, :i inflicted a decisive defeat on the hostile cavalry, and forced Euthy demus to retreat to Zariaspa. But the siege of Bactra, the capital, proved tedious, and the war made little progress. Antiochus himself opened negotiations and was impressed by the declaration of the Bactrian king, that if he were reduced to extremities he must call in the help of the nomads, which would be fatal to the Greek civilization of the land. At length, in 206, a peace was arranged, and Antiochus was visited in his camp by Demetrius, the youthful son of Euthydemus, who pleased the king so well that he betrothed to him his daughter ; Euthydemus was left on his throne, and the two powers swore an alliance offensive and defensive, which cost Bactria no more than certain payments of money, the victualling of the Mace donian troops, and the surrender of the war-elephants. The Bactrian Greeks were grateful for this moderation ; their memorial coins place Antiochus Nicator with Euthydemus Theos, Diodotus Soter, and Alexander Philippi among the founders of their political existence. 4 Antiochus next 1 John of Antioch, in Mu ller, iv. 557. 2 This king seems to have had Arsaces as his proper name, for Justin always uses the proper name of Parthian kings. Vaillant s conjecture, which gives him the name of Artabanus I., has no basis. 3 For Tayovpiav, Polyb., x. 49, where all editors adopt the geograph ically impossible Tcurovpiav of Eeiske, read TO. Tovpiava, comparing Ptol., vi. 10, 4. 4 That Antiochus Nicator is Antiochus III. Magnus follows from Malalas, i. 261 ; if the style of his Bactrian coins, resembling as they do those of Diodotus, really demands an earlier date, they must belong to the last of the Diodotides not mentioned by the authors, not, as the numismatists suppose, to Antiochus II. crossed the Paropanisus into the valley of Cabul, renewing 220-1C4 the friendly relations of his dynasty with the Indian king Subhagasena, and receiving from him 150 war-elephants. The return march was through Arachosia and Drangiana, the winter being spent in Carmania. Thus it appears that south of the Paropanisus political relations had remained unchanged for a hundred years, and the successes of Antiochus in Upper Asia, together with the prudent limita tion of his schemes to what was practicable, did much to give permanence to the empire in the East, notwithstand ing its many points of weakness. The series of victorious campaigns was concluded by a maritime excursion in 205 against the rich merchant -community of Gerrha on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf, in which Antiochus again showed his moderation, receiving from the Gerrhaeans a gift, 500 talents of silver, 1000 talents of incense, and 200 talents of oil of myrrh, but leaving them the freedom they had enjoyed from time immemorial. Under very different circumstances did Antiochus revisit the eastern lands eighteen years later, his prestige broken by the war with Rome, and his position as a great power shattered in a way that could not fail ultimately to react on his Asiatic subjects. His most urgent difficulty, how ever, lay in an exhausted treasury, and the demands of Rome for a heavy war-tribute. Antiochus came to Su^a in search of money and seized a pretext to plunder the rich and famous temple of Bel in Elymais ; but the attempt was fatal to its author, who was destroyed, together with his followers, by a rising of the Elymseans (187). This, no doubt, was the moment when Elymais became independent and formed a small separate kingdom in the upland part of Susiana. Antiochus was followed in the kingdom by his sons, first the weak Seleucus IV. Philopator (187-175), and then the gifted Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (175-164), Avho Anti- had a clear insight into the evils that were sapping the ochuslV empire, but attempted to cure them and bind the loose complex of provinces more closely to the centre with such impatience and violence that he only hastened the fall of his dynasty. He too, like all the later Seleucids, was in chronic want of money, and it was chiefly to raise tribute that he marched into the East in 166. He first made for Greater Armenia and the neighbouring Sophene, which had never paid much more than nominal allegiance to Macedon, and after the defeat of Antiochus the Great by Rome (189) had formed themselves into kingdoms under Artaxias and Zadriades, the former strategi. Antiochus penetrated into Armenia and took Artaxias prisoner, but restored him to his kingdom. He was next called by urgent affairs to the shores of the Persian Gulf. Over the Persians we read that his lieutenant in Mesene gained a double victory in one day, by sea and by land, at the pro montory of Naumachaea 5 over against the Carmanian coast. This victory, however, implies that Persis had already cast off the Macedonian yoke, 6 and that the new kingdom had already extended its sway over the opposite coast of Oman, as we know to have been the case about 70 A.D. 7 At the mouth of the Tigris Antiochus restored an old city of Alexander s and called it Antioch ; 8 it had been destroyed by an inundation, a sign that the negligent government of the later Seleucids had let the canal system, 5 Pliny, vi. 152 ; but one is tempted to suspect a corruption of the text and read Drymatina, Macs ; liorum, &c. 6 Strabo, xv. p. 736, gives a general confirmation of the existence of a kingdom here in the time of the Macedonians. 7 Peripl. M. Er. (Geog. Gr. Min., i. 283). The connexion of the opposite coasts is natural ; in the 10th century the Buwaihids ruled over Oman. 8 Pliny, JV. H.,. 139, says &quot;Antiochus quintus regum,&quot; reckon ing Antiochus Hierax. We call Eupator Antiochus V., but he cannot be meant, and there is no way of counting which would make Sidetes the 5th Autiochus.