General Notes

[2280151.ged]
Birth: in 242 BC 1
Death: in 187 BC, Temple of Baal near Susa, Iran [murdered] 1
Event: Ancestor M
Event: Ruled 223 - 187 BC, King of Persia 1
Note:
Antiochus III, byname ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT, Greek ANTIOCHUS MEGAS (b. 242
BC--d. 187, near Susa, Iran), Seleucid king of the Hellenistic Syrian
Empire from 223 BC to 187, who rebuilt the empire in the East but failed
in his attempt to challenge Roman ascendancy in Europe and Asia Minor. He
reformed the empire administratively by reducing the provinces in size,
established a ruler cult (with himself and his consort Laodice as
divine), and improved relations with neighbouring countries by giving his
daughters in marriage to their princes.
The son of Seleucus II, Antiochus succeeded his brother Seleucus III as
king. He retained from the previous administration Hermias as chief
minister, Achaeus as governor of Asia Minor, and Molon and his brother
Alexander as governors of the eastern provinces, Media and Persis. In the
following year, when Molon rebelled and assumed the title of king,
Antiochus abandoned a campaign against Egypt for the conquest of southern
Syria, on the advice of Hermias, and marched against Molon, defeating him
in 220 BC on the far bank of the Tigris and also conquering Atropatene,
the northwestern part of Media. Shortly thereafter he had Hermias killed
and was thus rid of most of the influences from the previous
administration. In the same year, Achaeus set himself up as king in Asia
Minor, but a mutiny in his army kept him from attacking Antiochus.
Antiochus was now free to conduct what has been called the Fourth Syrian
War (219-216), during which he gained control of the important eastern
Mediterranean sea ports of Seleucia-in-Pieria, Tyre, and Ptolemais. In
218 he held Coele Syria (Lebanon), Palestine, and Phoenicia. In 217 he
engaged an army (numbering 75,000) of Ptolemy IV Philopator, a pharaoh of
the Hellenistic dynasty ruling Egypt, at Raphia, the southernmost city in
Syria. His own troops numbered 68,000. Though he succeeded in routing the
left wing of the Egyptian army, his phalanx (heavily armed infantry in
close ranks) in the centre was defeated by a newly formed Egyptian
phalanx. In the subsequent peace settlement, Antiochus gave up all his
conquests except the city of Seleucia-in-Pieria.
After the Syrian war, he proceeded against the rebel Achaeus. In alliance
with Attalus I of Pergamum, Antiochus captured Achaeus in 213 in his
capital, Sardis, and had him executed in a barbaric manner. After the
pacification of Asia Minor he entered upon his later to be famous
eastward campaign (212-205), pressing forward as far as India. In 212 he
gave his sister Antiochis in marriage to King Xerxes of Armenia, who
acknowledged his suzerainty and paid him tribute. He occupied
Hecatompylos (southeast of the Caspian Sea), the capital of the Parthian
king Arsaces III, and forced him to enter into an alliance in 209 and the
following year defeated Euthydemus of Bactria, though he allowed him to
continue to rule and retain his royal title. In 206 he marched across the
Hindu Kush into the Kabul Valley and renewed a friendship with the Indian
king Sophagasenos.
Returning westward via the Iranian provinces of Arachosia, Drangiana, and
Carmania, he arrived in Persis in 205 and received tribute of 500 talents
of silver from the citizens of Gerrha, a mercantile state on the east
coast of the Persian Gulf. Having established a magnificent system of
vassal states in the East, Antiochus now adopted the ancient Achaemenid
title of "great king," and the Greeks, comparing him to Alexander the
Great, surnamed him also "the Great."
After the death of Ptolemy IV, Antiochus concluded a secret treaty with
Philip V, ruler of the Hellenistic kingdom of Macedonia, in which the two
plotted the division of the Ptolemaic empire outside Egypt. Antiochus'
share was to be sou