augmented his troops to the number he thought necessary; after which he advanced directly towards the enemy, and took several places in his march. Lysimachus thought proper to be upon the defensive, till the arrival of the succours upon their march to join him from Seleucus and Ptolemy. The remaining part of the year, therefore, elapsed without any action, and each party retired into winter-quarters. G Seleucus, at the beginning of the next year, formed his army at Babylon, and marched into Cappadocia, to act against Antigonus. This latter sent immediately for Demetrius, who left Greece with great expedition, marched to Ephesus, and retook that city, with several others, that had declared for Lysimachus upon his arrival in Asia Ptolemy improved the opportunity in Syria, of the absence of Antigonus, and recovered all Phoenicia, Judæa, and Cœlosyria, except the cities of Tyre and Sidon, where Antigonus had left good garrisons. He, indeed, formed the siege of Sidon; but, whilst his troops were employed in battering the wails, he received intelligence that Antigonus had defeated Seleucus and Lysimachus, and was advancing to relieve the place, Upon this false report he made a truce for five months with the Sidonians, raised the siege, and returned to Egypt. Here ends what remains of the history of Diodorus Siculus, in a period of the greatest importance, and on the very point of a battle, by which the fate of Alexander's successors is to be decided. The confederate army, commanded by Seleucus and Lysimachus, and the troops of Antigonus and Demetrius, arrived at Phrygia almost at the same time, but did not long confront each other without coming to blows. Antigonus had above 60,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and 75 elephants. The enemies forces consisted of 64,000 foot, 10,500 horse, 400 elephants, with 120 chariots, armed with scythes. The battle was fought near Ipsus, a city of Phrygia. As soon as the signal was given, Demetrius, at the head of his best cavalry, fell upon Antiochus, the son of Seleucus, and behaved with so much bravery, that he broke the enemy's ranks, and put them to flight; but a rash and inconsiderate thirst of glory, against which generals can never be too much on their guard, and which has been fatal to many, prompted Demetrius to pursue the fugitives with too much ardour, and without any consideration for the rest of the army; by which means he lost the victory he might easily have secured, had he improved his first advantage aright; for when he returned from the pursuit, he found it impracticable for him to rejoin his infantry, the enemy's elephants 6 Plut. in Demet. p. 902. A. M. 3703. Ant. J. C. 301. naving filled up all the intermediate space. When Seleucus saw the infantry of Antigonus separated from their cavalry, he only made several feint attacks upon them, sometimes on one side, and sometimes on another, in order to intimidate and afford them sufficient time to quit the army of Antigonus, and come over to his own; and this was, at last, the expedient on which they resolved. The greatest part of the infantry detached themselves from the rest, and surrendered voluntarily to Seleucus, and the others were all put to flight. At the same instant, a large body of the army of Seleucus drew off, by his order, and made a furious attack upon Antigonus, who sustained their efforts for some time; but, being at last overwhelmed with darts, and having received many wounds, he fell dead on the earth, having defended himself valiantly to his last gasp. Demetrius seeing his father dead, rallied all the troops he was able to draw together, and retired to Ephesus with 5000 foot and 4000 horse, which were all that remained of more than 70,000 men, whom his father and himself commanded at the beginning of the engagement. a The great Pyrrhus, as young as he then was, was inseparable from Demetrius, overthrew all that opposed him, and gave an essay, in this first action, of what might be expected one day from his valour and bravery. CHAPTER II. SECT. I. The four victorious princes divide the empire of Alexander the Great into as many kingdoms. b AFTER the battle of Ipsus, the four confederate princes divided the dominions of Antigonus among themselves, and added them to those which they already possessed. The empire of Alexander was thus divided into four kingdoms, of which Ptolemy had Egypt, Libya, Arabia, Cœlosyria, and Palestine: Cassander had Macedonia and Greece: Lysimachus, Thrace, Bithynia, and some other provinces beyond the Hellespont, and the Bosphorus; and Seleucus all the rest of Asia, to the other side of the Euphrates, and as far as the river Indus. The dominions of this last prince are usually called the kingdom of Syria, because Seleucus, who afterwards built Antioch in that province, made it the chief seat of his residence, in which he was followed by his successors, who, from his name, were called Seleucida.-This a Plut. in Pyrrh p. 384. Plut. in Demetr. p. 902. Appian. in Syr. p. 122, 123. Polyb. 1. xv. p. 572. kingdom, however, not only included Syria, but those vast and fertile provinces of Upper Asia, which constituted the Persian empire. The reign of 20 years, which I have assigned to Seleucus Nicator, commences at this period, because he was not acknowleged as king till after the battle of Ipsus; and, if we add to these the twelve years, during which he had already exercised the regal authority without the title, they will make out the reign of 31 years, assigned him by Usher. These four kings are the four horns of the he-goat, in the prophecy of Daniel, which succeeded in the place of the first horn that was broken. The first horn was Alexander, king of Greece, who destroyed the empire of the Medes and Persians, designed by the ram with two horns; and the other four horns are those four kings who rose up after him, and divided his empire among them, but they were not of his posterity. They are likewise shadowed out by the four heads of the leopard, which are introduced in another part of the same prophecy b. These prophecies of Daniel were exactly accomplished by this last partition of Alexander's empire; other divisions had, indeed, been made before this, but they were only of provinces, which were consigned to governors, under the brother and son of Alexander, and none but the last was a partition into kingdoms. Those prophecies, therefore, are to be understood of this alone, for they evidently represent these four successors of Alexander, as four kings, four stood up for it. But not one of Alexander's successors obtained the regal dignity, till about three years before this last division of the empire: and even this dignity was at first precarious, as being assumed by each of the several parties, merely by his own authority, and not acknowledged by any of the rest; whereas, after the battle of Ipsus, the treaty a" And as I was considering, behold, a he-goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground; and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram that had two horns, which I had seen standing before the river and ran unto him in the fury of his power. And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns: and there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and stamped upon him: And there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand. Therefore the he-goat waxed very great, and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; And from it came up four notable horns, towards the four winds of heaven."-Dan chap. viii. ver. 5, 6, 7, 8. God afterwards explains to his pro phet what he had seen.-" The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia, and the rough goat is the king of Grecia, and the great hon that is between his eyes is the first king. Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power" Ibid. ver. 20, 21. 2. 6 After this I beheld, and lo, another like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl, the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given toit, Dan. vii. 6, made between the four confederates, when they had defeated their adversary and divested him of his dominions, assigned each of them their dominions, under the appellation of so many kingdoms, and authorised and acknowledged them as kings and sovereigns, independent of any superior power.~ These four kings are Ptolemy, Seleucus, Cassander, and Lysimachus. We can never sufficiently admire, in this and the other places, wherein the completion of the prophecies of Daniel will be pointed out, the strong light with which the prophet penetrates the thick gloom of futurity, at a time when there was not the least appearance of all he foretels. With how much certainty and exactness, even amidst the variety of these revolutions and this chaos of singular events, does he determine each particular circumstance, and fix the number of the several successors! How expressly has he pointed out the nation that was to be the Grecian; described the countries they were to possess; measured the duration of their empires, and the extent of their power, inferior to that of Alexander; in a word, with what lively colours has he drawn the characters of those princes, and specified their alliances, treaties, treachery, marriages, and success! Can any one possibly ascribe to chance or human foresight so many circumstantial predictions, which, at the time of their being denounced, were so remote from probability? and may we not evidently discover in them the character and traces of the Divinity, to whom all ages are present in one view, and who alone determines at his will the fate of all the kingdoms and empires of the world!-But it is now time for us to resume the thread of our history. a Onias, the first of that name, and high priest of the Jews, died about this time, and was succeeded by his son Simon, who, for the sanctity of his life and the equity of all his actions, was surnamed the Just. He enjoyed the pontificate for the space of nine years. Seleucus, after the defeat of Antigonus, made himself master of Upper Syria, where he built Antioch, on the Orontes, and gave it that name, either from his father or his son, for they were both called Antiochus. This city, where the Syrian kings afterwards resided, was, for a long time, the capital of the east, and still preserved that privilege under the Roman emperors. Antigonus had lately built a city, at a small distance from this, and called it Antigona; but Seleucus caused it to be entirely demolished, and employed the materials in the construction of his own city, to which he afterwards transplanted the inhabitants of the former. a Joseph. Antiq. 1. xii. c. 2. b A. M. 3704. Ant. J. C. 300, Straḥ, 1. xvi. p. 749, 750, Appian. in Syr. p 24. Justin. 1. xv. c. 4, Among several other cities, built by Seleucus in this country, there were three more remarkable than the rest. The first was called Seleucia, from his own name; the second, Apamea, from the name of his consort, who was the daughter of Artabazus, the Persian; the third was Laodicea, so denominated from his mother. Apamea and Seleucia were situated on the same river on which Antioch was built, and Laodicea was on the same side towards the south. He allowed the Jews the same privileges and immunities in each of these new cities as were enjoyed by the Greeks and Macedonians, and especially at Antioch, in Syria, where that people settled in such numbers, that they possessed as considerable a part of that city as their other countrymen enjoyed at Alexandria. Demetrius had withdrawn himself to Ephesus, after the battle of Ipsus, and from thence embarked for Greece, his only resource being the affection of the Athenians, with whom he had left his fleet, money, and wife Deidamia; but he was strangely surprised and offended, when he was met on his way by ambassadors from the Athenians, who came to acquaint him that he could not be admitted into their city, because the people had, by a decree, prohibited the reception of any of the kings: they also informed him, that his consort, Deidamia, had been conducted to Megara, with all the honours and attendance due to her rank. Demetrius was then sensible of the value of honours and homage extorted by fear, and which did not proceed from the heart. The posture of his affairs not permitting him to punish the perfidy of that people, he contented himself with intimating his complaints to them in a moderate manner, and demanded his galleys, among which was the prodigious galley of 16 benches of oars. As soon as he had received them, he sailed towards the Chersonesus; and, having committed some devastations in the territories of Lysimachus, he enriched his army with the spoils, and, by that expedient, prevented the desertion of his troops, who now began to recover their vigour, and rendered themselves formidable anew. Lysimachus, king of Thrace, in order to strengthen himself in his dominions, entered into a particular treaty with Ptolemy, and strengthened the alliance between them, by espousing one of his daughers, named Arsinoe; shortly after which, his son Agathocles married another. This double alliance between Lysimachus and Ptolemy gave umbrage to Seleucus, who thereupon entered into a treaty with Demetrius, and espoused Stratonice, the daughter of that prince, by Phila, the sister of Cassander. The beauty a Strab. 1. xvi. p. 750. A. M. 3705. Ant. J. C. 299. Plut. in Demetr. p. 903. |