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Rh citizen as an integral part of the community. In all this the new settlements differed from the old Semitic ones, which were usually built around a fortress, a spring or a shrine as a nucleus, grew without plan and had no channels for a democratic way of life to find expression. The colonists were primarily Greek and Macedonian soldiers settled by royal decree. Wives were obtained partly from the native stock. Indigenous and alien civilians, attracted by opportunities to prosper, thronged to these settlements. In time half-breeds and natives who had put on the externals of Hellenism were added to the colonial population, which then came to comprise traders, artists, scholars and slaves. Syria now had more cities than ever before.

The empire built by Seleucus I was all but lost under his successors. Egyptian invasion, Parthian rebellion, Anatolian secession and other disasters sapped the strength of the Seleucid state, so that it had lost much of its territory and brilliance by 223, when Antiochus III became king and undertook to restore them. Antiochus first reconquered the Iranian territory as far as Bactria and India, and then in 198 defeated the Egyptian forces and recovered the amputated southern part of Syria. In this victory he used elephants, of which he had brought a fresh supply from India. By twenty years of incessant fighting Antiochus III had won back almost all that his predecessors had lost, and had earned the epithet the Great.

At this time an embassy from Rome appeared in his court to warn him to keep hands off Egypt. This is the first communication we hear of between Rome and Antioch; it marks a new era in ancient international affairs. It was then that Hannibal sought asylum in Syria and urged Antiochus to invade Italy. Antiochus was not fully conscious of the might of the new giant looming in the west. He ventured to strike a blow for Greece, where the Romans were penetrating, and there he met defeat at their hands at Thermopylae (191 ). In the following year he suffered Rh