Conclusion of Book 2
My reason for writing about this war at such length,
was the advisability, or rather necessity, in view of the general
purpose of my history, of making clear the relations existing
between Macedonia and Greece at a time which coincides
with the period of which I am about to treat.
Just about the same time, by the death of Euergetes, note
Ptolemy Philopator succeeded to the throne of Egypt. At the
same period died Seleucus, son of that Seleucus who had the
double surnames of Callinicus and Pogon: he was succeeded
on the throne of Syria by his brother Antiochus. The deaths of
these three sovereigns—Antigonus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus—fell
in the same Olympiad, as was the case with the
three immediate successors to Alexander the
Great,—Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus,—
for the latter all died in the 124th Olympiad, and the former
in the 139th.
I may now fitly close this book. I have completed the
introduction and laid the foundation on which my history
must rest. I have shown when, how, and why the Romans,
after becoming supreme in Italy, began to aim at dominion
outside of it, and to dispute with the Carthaginians the dominion
of the sea. I have at the same time explained the state of
Greece, Macedonia, and Carthage at this epoch. I have now
arrived at the period which I originally marked out,—that
namely in which the Greeks were on the point of beginning
the Social, the Romans the Hannibalic war, and the kings in
Asia the war for the possession of Coele-Syria. The termination therefore of the wars just described, and the death of the
princes engaged in them, forms a natural period to this book.
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