Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/301

Rh two years, having just before asserted his power over Athens and Greece. He lost the kingdom of Macedonia in B.C. 287, and died a prisoner in Asia in B.C. 283. The succession to the Macedonian throne was a matter of dispute until it was secured by Antigonus Gonatas, son of Demetrius, in B.C. 277.

By that time a sixth rearrangement had been made. For a short time Lysimachus of Thrace had held Macedonia (B.C. 289-281), part of the time in conjunction with Pyrrhus, but on his defeat and death (B.C. 281) the kingdom of Thrace disappeared.

His dominions in Asia Minor were taken over by the King of Syria, and the islands with the cities on the Thracian Chersonese by the King of Egypt.

In the sixty years which elapsed between these events and the first political contact between Greece and Rome (B.C. 280-220) the three kingdoms had developed under the dynasties thus established. The Macedonian kings had been engaged in maintaining and extending their power in Greece; the Ptolemies had made Alexandria a centre of intellectual life and the richest city in the world; the Seleucids had at any rate kept back the tribes of the interior