e viii, 20,) in which he saith, eight thousand of the Babylonish Jews, joined with four thousand Macedonians, vanquished the Galatians, and slew of their army one hundred and twenty thousand men. For Babylonia, or the province of Babylon, was a part of Mesopotamia. And Antiochus Hierax had the Galatians in confederacy with him; and at this time they are said to have come in such great swarms into the East, as to fill all Asia with their numbers; and that they did usually let themselves to hire in all wars, which in those times the eastern kings had one with another, these princes thinking themselves best strengthened for victory when they had the most of them in their armies; and that this Antiochus was assisted by them in this war, hath been already said. An. 240. But whether it were by this, or some other victory, Seleucus had at length the advantage in this war; so that Antiochus, being vanquished Ptol. Euerand broken, was forced to shift from place f getes 7. to place with the few remains of his baffled party, till at last being driven out of Mesopotamia, and finding no other place where he could be safe within the Syrian empire, he fled to Ariarathes king of Cappadocia, whose daughter he had married. But that king, notwithstanding the alliance and affinity he had contracted with him, soon growing weary of maintaining an exile, who could bring no advantage to him, ordered him to be cut off. But, while measures were taking for the executing hereof, Antiochus, getting notice of the design, escaped from thence into Egypt, choosing rather to put himself into the hands of Ptolemy, the professed enemy of his family, than trust himself upon any terms with his brother, whom he was conscious he had so much offended: and he fared not at all the better for it; for, as soon as he arrived in Egypt, Ptolemy caused him to be clapped up in safe custody, in which he kept him confined several years, till at length having broken out of prison, by e Justin speaking of the Gauls, or Galatians, hath these words: Gallorum ea tempestate tantæ fæcunditati juventus fuit, ut Asiam omnem velut examine aliquo implerent. Denique neque reges Orientis sine mercenario Gallorum exercitu ulla bella gesserunt, lib. 25, c. 2. f Justin. lib. 27, c. 3. Polyænus, ibid. the assistance of a courtesan, whom he was familiar with, as he was making his escape out of Egypt, he fell among thieves, and was slain by them. An. 239. getes 8. In the interim, king Ptolemy Euergetes enjoying full peace, applied himself to the cultivating Ptol. Euer of learning in his kingdom, and the enlarging of his father's library at Alexandria with all manner of books for the service of this design. The method which he took for the collecting of them g hath been already mentioned; and the care of an able library-keeper being very necessary, both for the making of a good choice of books in the collection, and also for the preserving of them for the use intended, on the death of Zenodotus, who, from the time of Ptolemy Soter, the grandfather of the present king, had the keeping of the royal library at Alexandria, Euergetes invited Eratosthenes from Athens (where he was in great reputation for his learning) to take this charge upon him. He was, by his birth, a Cyrenian, and had been scholar to Callimachus his countryman, and was a person of universal knowledge, and is often quoted as such by Pliny, Strabo, and others. And therefore they are mistaken, who, finding him called Beta, (i. e. the second) think he had that name to denote him a second rate man among the learned. By that appellation was meant no more, than that he wask the second library-keeper of the royal library at Alexandria after the first founding of it. As to his skill in all manner of learning, he was second to none of his time, as the many books he wrote did then sufficiently make appear, though now not extant. That which at present we are most beholden to him for is a catalogue which he hath given us of all the kings that reigned at Thebes in Egypt, with the years of their reigns from Menes, or Misraim, who first g Part 2, book 1, under the year 284. h Suidas in Zevedo Tos. i Suidas in 'Απολλώνιος & Ερατοσθένης. k Marcianus Hiracliotes, who tells us of this name given to Eratosthenes, saith, he was called the president of the museum at Alexandria, which is a manifest argument, that he was called so only in respect of the office which he bore in that museum, in being the second library-keeper of the library belonging to it in succession after Zenodotus, who was the first. 1 De Libris ab eo scriptis, vide Vossium de Historicis Græcis, lib. 1, c. 17. planted Egypt after the flood, down to the time of the Trojan war. It contains a series of thirty-eight kings reigning in a direct line of succession one after the other; and it is still extantm in Syncellus. Our learned countryman, sir John Marsham," hath made good use of it in settling the Egyptian chronology. It is one of the noblest and most venerable monuments of antiquity that is now extant; for it was extracted out of the ancientest records of that country at the command of Ptolemy Euergetes; and there is nothing in the profane history that begins higher. It is probable this extract was made to supply the defect of Manetho, whose catalogue of the Thebean kings in Egypt doth not begin but where this of Eratosthenes ends. An. 236. Ptol Euer getes 11. Seleucus, being delivered from the troubles created him by his brother, and having repaired the disorders at home which that war had occasioned, P marched eastward to reduce those that had revolted from him in those parts. But he had very lame success in this undertaking; for Arsaces, having now had a long time allowed him to settle himself in his usurpations, had made himself too strong in them to be again easily dispossessed; and therefore Seleucus, having in vain attempted it in this expedition, was forced to return with baffle and disappointment. Perchance a longer stay in those parts might have opened him a way to better success; but, some commotions arising at home during his absence, he was forced to return to suppress them. In the interim Arsaces made use of the further respite hereby given him so to strengthen and establish himself in his usurped dominions, that he became superiour to all attempts that were afterwards made to disturb him. However, Seleucus, as soon as he had leisure from his other affairs, made a second expedition against him; but with much worse success than he had in the former; for his usual ill An. 230. Ptol. Euer getes 17. |