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99-505: Antiochus III the Great ( / æ n ˈ t aɪ ə k ə s / ; Greek : Ἀντίοχος ὁ Μέγας, Antíochos ho Mégas ; c.  241  – 3 July 187 BC) was a Greek Hellenistic king and the 6th ruler of the Seleucid Empire , reigning from 223 to 187 BC. He ruled over the region of Syria and large parts of the rest of western Asia towards the end of the 3rd century BC. Rising to

198-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

297-407: A tympanon . He renamed several areas of Alexandria in honour of Dionysus and his attributes. Sometime before 217 BC, Ptolemy IV ordered all priests of Dionysus to come to Alexandria to be registered and to submit their holy books and mystery rites to government inspection. This demonstrates a desire to assert his total control of Dionysus worship within his realm. Ptolemy IV himself was referred to as

396-725: A common practice among Egyptian royal families, including the Ptolemies. In 222 BC Antiochus III had assumed the Seleucid throne and he instantly proved a dynamic leader, determined to restore Seleucid power and to reverse the losses that the Seleucids had suffered in the Third Syrian War. In 221 BC, one year after his accession, Antiochus III invaded the Ptolemaic territories in Coele-Syria . He

495-399: A fire in the palace. Arsinoe III also died at this time. According to Justin , she had been divorced and murdered by Ptolemy IV under the influence of his mistress Agathoclea, shortly before his own death. According to Polybius , she was murdered by Sosibius. After a few days during which Ptolemy IV's death was kept secret, his six-year-old son Ptolemy V , who had been co-regent since 210 BC,

594-550: A force of 3,000 mercenaries, to the Spartan throne, but his death had put an end to these plans. Initially, Ptolemy IV and Sosibius had indulged Cleomenes III, seeing him as a counter to Ptolemy IV's brother Magas. But after Magas's death, Ptolemy IV's interest waned and Sosibius had had the Spartan placed under house arrest. In 219 BC, while Ptolemy IV was at Canopus , Cleomenes III broke free and attempted to lead an armed uprising against Sosibius. He and his followers launched an attack on

693-510: A friendly embassy from the Romans in 210 BC, requesting a gift of grain to help feed the starving populace. It is unknown how Ptolemy responded to this request. Like his predecessors, Ptolemy IV maintained particularly close relations with the kingdom of Syracuse under King Hiero II , but the accession of Hiero II's grandson Hieronymus in 215 BC threatened to upset the careful balance that Ptolemy IV had maintained. Hieronymus repeatedly tried to bring

792-597: A girl from Chalcis, whom he named "Euboea". They had no children. Laodice III may have fallen in disgrace; however, she clearly survived Antiochus III, and appears in Susa in 183 BC. Antiochus III resettled 2000 Jewish families from Babylonia into the Hellenistic Anatolian regions of Lydia and Phrygia . Josephus portrays him as friendly towards the Jews of Jerusalem and cognizant of their loyalty to him (see Antiquities of

891-522: A huge galley and possibly the largest human-powered vessel ever built. This showpiece galley was described by Callixenus of Rhodes , writing in the 3rd century BC, and quoted by Athenaeus in the 2nd century AD. Plutarch also mentions that Ptolemy Philopator owned this immense vessel in his Life of Demetrios . According to these sources, the ship was 128 m long and required 4,000 oarsmen. The appearance and structure of this ship have been much discussed in modern scholarship. Lionel Casson proposes that it

990-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

1089-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

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1188-521: A natural result of Ptolemy IV's decision to arm the Egyptians during the Fourth Syrian War. Günther Hölbl argues that the fact that the rebels attacked Egyptian temples suggests that it was "a rebellion of the lower classes inspired by social injustice," that had been exacerbated by the heavy taxation necessary to fund that war. In October or November 205 BC, the leader of the southern revolt captured

1287-607: A number of Greek cities in order to gain their favour. He was responsible for the city walls at Gortyn in Crete Ptolemy was honoured for his benefactions with monuments and cults in his honour at various cities, including Rhodes and Oropus In the west, Ptolemy maintained friendly neutrality with the Roman Republic and Carthage , which were fighting against one another in the Second Punic War (218-201 BC). He received

1386-543: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

1485-671: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek , and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in a wider sense. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

1584-569: A specific benefaction. Notable examples are found in Jaffa and other cities of the Levant after the victory at Raphia, where Ptolemy even bears the title Great king . Like his predecessors, Ptolemy IV presented himself as a typical Egyptian pharaoh and actively supported the Egyptian priestly elite through donations and temple construction. Ptolemy III had introduced an important innovation in 238 BC by holding

1683-609: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

1782-524: A statuary groups set up at Thermos and Delphi by the Aetolian League . Under Ptolemy III, the Ptolemaic kingdom had reached its height, decisively defeating the rival Seleucid kingdom in the Third Syrian War (246–241 BC), financing mainland Greek opposition to Antigonid Macedonia , and maintaining control of nearly the entire eastern Mediterranean seaboard. However the reign was also marked by

1881-480: A synod of all the priests of Egypt at Canopus . Ptolemy IV continued this tradition by holding his own synod at Memphis in 217 BC, after the victory celebrations of the Fourth Syrian War. The result of this synod was the Raphia Decree , issued on 15 November 217 BC and preserved in three copies. Like other Ptolemaic decrees , the decree was inscribed in hieroglyphs , Demotic , and Koine Greek . The decree records

1980-441: A very large army. He was crushed by them; they took him alive and decreed that he and those who would reign after him should pay a heavy tribute and give hostages and surrender some of their best provinces, the countries of India , Media , and Lydia . These they took from him and gave to King Eumenes ." ( 1 Maccabees 8:6-8 ) Ancient Greek Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes

2079-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

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2178-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

2277-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

2376-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

2475-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

2574-557: Is first mentioned in 1 Maccabees 1:10 , when Antiochus IV is introduced as "son of King Antiochus [Antiochus III]". Antiochus III is mentioned later in 1 Maccabees 8 , which describes Judas Maccabeus' knowledge of the deeds of the Roman Republic, including an allusion to the defeat of Antiochus III by the Romans . The NRSV says "They [the Romans] also had defeated Antiochus the Great, king of Asia , who went to fight against them with one hundred twenty elephants and with cavalry and chariots and

2673-566: The Battle of Magnesia . He died three years later on campaign in the east. Antiochus III was a member of the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty . He was the son of king Seleucus II Callinicus and Laodice II , aunt of Seleucus, and was born around 242 BC near Susa in Persia . He may have initially borne a non-dynastic name (starting with Ly-), according to a Babylonian chronicle. He succeeded, under

2772-680: The Battle of Mount Labus . The Parthian king Arsaces II apparently successfully sued for peace. The year 209 BC saw Antiochus in Bactria , where the Greco-Bactrian king Euthydemus I had supplanted the original rebel. Antiochus again met with success. Euthydemus was defeated by Antiochus at the Battle of the Arius , but after resisting the Seleucid king in the Siege of Bactra , he obtained an honourable peace by which Antiochus promised Euthydemus's son Demetrius

2871-558: The Battle of Panium , near the sources of the Jordan , a battle which marks the end of Ptolemaic rule in Judea . Antiochus then moved to Asia Minor, by land and by sea, to secure the coast towns which belonged to the remnants of Ptolemaic overseas dominions and the independent Greek cities. This enterprise earned him the antagonism of the Roman Republic , since Smyrna and Lampsacus appealed to

2970-549: The Dodecaschoenus . A number of the temple building projects that had been undertaken in this region were completed by Arqameni or his successor Adikhalamani . In many cases, the work of Ptolemy IV was simply appropriated by erasing his name from inscriptions and replacing it with that of Arqameni. In the midst of this conflict, in July or August 204 BC, Ptolemy IV died in unclear circumstances. A late source, John of Antioch mentions

3069-745: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

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3168-647: The Neos Dionysos (New Dionysus) and depicted with attributes of the god in images. Equations with other deities were also made in royal imagery: one notable set of gold octo drachms depicts the king with the rayed crown of Apollo or Helios , the trident of Poseidon , and the aegis of Athena , Zeus , and Alexander. Many Greek cities that were under Ptolemy IV's control or aligned with him also established official cults in his honour during his reign. Greek cities in this period regularly granted such cults to monarchs and other powerful individuals, usually in thanks for

3267-570: The Ptolemaic royal family , which left control of the realm's government largely in the hands of his courtiers Sosibius and Agathocles . His reign was marked by the Fourth Syrian War (219–217 BC) with the Seleucid empire , which culminated in a decisive Ptolemaic victory at the Battle of Raphia , one of the largest battles of the whole Hellenistic Age . In the final years of his rule, control over

3366-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

3465-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

3564-452: The Arabian coast (205 BC/204 BC). Antiochus seemed to have restored the Seleucid empire in the east, which earned him the title of "the Great" (Antiochos Megas). In 205/204 BC the infant Ptolemy V Epiphanes succeeded to the Egyptian throne, and Antiochus is said (notably by Polybius ) to have concluded a secret pact with Philip V of Macedon for the partition of the Ptolemaic possessions. Under

3663-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

3762-482: The Battle of Raphia, the king is presented as an oppressive tyrant who transgresses divine law by trying to enter the temple at Jerusalem and then launches an attempt to wipe out the Jews by gathering them all in the hippodrome at Alexandria and having them trampled by drunken elephants. These plans are repeatedly thwarted by the divine intervention of Yahweh . In the end, Ptolemy IV recants and grants extensive privileges to

3861-565: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Ptolemy IV Philopator Ptolemy IV was the son of Ptolemy III and Berenice II . His succession to the throne was accompanied by a wide-ranging purge of

3960-615: The Great and Dionysus . In 216–215 BC, after the victory celebrations for the Fourth Syrian War, Ptolemy IV and his wife as the Theoi Philopatores (Father-loving gods) were formally incorporated into the dynastic cult. This meant that they were added to the title of the Priest of Alexander the Great in Alexandria , who led the Ptolemaia festival and whose name and titulary was used to name

4059-623: The Indians, and received more elephants, raising their number to a total of one hundred and fifty, and provisioned his army once more on the spot. He himself broke camp with his troops, leaving behind Androsthenes of Cyzicus to bring back the treasure which this king (Sophagasenus) had agreed to give him. From Seleucia on the Tigris he led a short expedition down the Persian Gulf against the Gerrhaeans of

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4158-597: The Jews , Book XII, Chapter 3), in stark contrast to the attitude of his son. In fact, Antiochus III lowered taxes, granted subventions to the Temple, and let the Jews live, as Josephus puts it, "according to the law of their forefathers." Antiochus III is mentioned in the deuterocanonical Books of the Maccabees . The subject of Maccabees is the Maccabean Revolt against Antiochus' son, Antiochus IV Epiphanes . Antiochus III

4257-504: The Jews. It is not clear that this work indicates the existence of a negative Jewish tradition about Ptolemy. It may simply be using him to make a general moral point about the relative strength of secular and divine authorities. Some scholars argue that Ptolemy's character in this work was actually based on the Roman emperor Caligula and his violations of Jewish sensibilities. Ptolemy IV married his sister Arsinoe III. Their only son, Ptolemy V,

4356-544: The Persian kings . A militarily active ruler, Antiochus restored much of the territory of the Seleucid Empire, before suffering a serious setback, towards the end of his reign, in his war against Rome. Declaring himself the "champion of Greek freedom against Roman domination", Antiochus III waged a four-year war against the Roman Republic beginning in mainland Greece in the autumn of 192 BC before being decisively defeated at

4455-572: The Ptolemaic court, switched to the Seleucid side, bringing Coele Syria and a large portion of the Ptolemaic fleet with him. Antiochus III received the surrender of Tyre and Ptolemais Ake , but he became bogged down in protracted sieges of Sidon and Dora . In the midst of this, there was a revolt in Alexandria, led by Cleomenes III of Sparta, which Polybius presents as having been a serious threat to Ptolemy IV's regime. Ptolemy III had promised to restore Cleomenes III, now living in Alexandria with

4554-416: The Ptolemaic dynasty is usually traced to his reign. Ptolemy IV was the second child and eldest son of Ptolemy III and his wife Berenice II . He was born about two years after his father's accession to the throne of Egypt. Ptolemy IV had an older sister, Arsinoe III , and three younger brothers, Lysimachus (name uncertain), Alexander and Magas , all born in the 240s BC. The whole family is commemorated by

4653-757: The Ptolemaic influence that had suffered a serious setback under Ptolemy III as a result of the Cleomenean War . In 217 BC, Ptolemy's diplomats helped to broker the Peace of Naupactus which brought an end to the Social War between Antigonid Macedonia and the Aetolian League . He had much less success in his attempts to negotiate a peace between the Macedonia and the Roman Republic in the First Macedonian War (215–205 BC). Ptolemy IV made large financial contributions to

4752-779: The Ptolemies into the Second Punic War on the Carthaginian side. The situation was resolved with his assassination in 214 BC. Sometime after the end of the Fourth Syrian War, revolts broke out in Egypt itself. Fighting took place in the north of the country in the Delta and separately in Upper Egypt , where fighting led to the interruption of building work on the Temple of Horus at Edfu in 207–206 BC. The reasons for these revolts are unclear. The Hellenistic historian Polybius argued that they were

4851-447: The Ptolemies, while Ptolemy IV demanded that Antiochus III recognise Achaeus , the de facto ruler of Asia Minor, who was considered a rebel by the Seleucid court, as a party to the piece. Sosibius and Agathocles used the cease fire to whip the Ptolemaic army into shape, while Antiochus III used it to prepare for a new offensive. In early 218 BC, the Seleucid king obliterated the Ptolemaic forces at Berytus on land and at sea, opening

4950-537: The Raphia decree refers rather unclearly to "the treachery which the commanders of the troops perpetrated" which may be relevant to Ptolemy's decision to make peace. After the Fourth Syrian War, Antiochus III quickly recovered his strength and led successful expeditions against other enemies. Probably as a result, Ptolemy IV's interactions with other states all focused on maintaining peaceful relations and preventing warfare. In mainland Greece, Ptolemy IV attempted to rebuild

5049-530: The Republic, which at the time acted as a defender of Greek freedom. The tension grew when Antiochus in 196 BC established a footing in Thrace . The evacuation of Greece by the Romans gave Antiochus his opportunity, and he now had the fugitive Hannibal at his court to urge him on. In 192 BC Antiochus invaded Greece with a 10,000-man army, and was elected the commander in chief of the Aetolian League . In 191 BC, however,

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5148-452: The Romans under Manius Acilius Glabrio routed him at Thermopylae , forcing him to withdraw to Asia Minor. The Romans followed up their success by invading Anatolia , and the decisive victory of Scipio Asiaticus at Magnesia ad Sipylum (190 BC), following the defeat of Hannibal at sea off Side , delivered Asia Minor into their hands. By the Treaty of Apamea (188 BC) Antiochus abandoned all

5247-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

5346-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

5445-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

5544-493: The central part of Asia Minor (for the Seleucid government had perforce to tolerate the dynasties in Pergamon , Bithynia and Cappadocia ), Antiochus turned to recovering the outlying provinces of the north and east. He besieged Xerxes of Armenia in 212 BC, who had refused to pay tribute, and forced his capitulation. In 209 BC Antiochus invaded Parthia , occupied the capital Hecatompylos and pushed forward into Hyrcania , winning

5643-509: The city of Thebes and had himself crowned Pharaoh , taking the name Horwennefer, rendered in Greek sources as Hugronaphor . Despite Ptolemaic efforts to suppress his regime, Horwennefer would retain his independence for nearly twenty years, until finally captured in August 186 BC. The revolt meant that Ptolemaic forces were unable to defend southern Egypt from Nubian incursions. Probably in 207–06 BC, King Arqamani of Meroe seized control of

5742-671: The confines of the Ptolemaic Kingdom , but in 217 BC Ptolemy IV defeated Antiochus at the Battle of Raphia . This defeat nullified all Antiochus's successes and compelled him to withdraw north of Lebanon . In 216 BC his army marched into western Anatolia to suppress the local rebellion led by Antiochus's own cousin Achaeus , and had by 214 BC driven him from the field into Sardis . Capturing Achaeus, Antiochus had him executed. The citadel managed to hold out until 213 BC under Achaeus's widow Laodice who surrendered later. Having thus recovered

5841-566: The country north and west of the Taurus Mountains , most of which the Roman Republic gave either to Rhodes or to the Attalid ruler Eumenes II , its allies (many Greek cities were left free). As a consequence of this blow to the Seleucid power, the outlying provinces of the empire, recovered by Antiochus, reasserted their independence. Antiochus mounted a fresh eastern expedition in Luristan , where he

5940-563: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

6039-492: The dynasty. The most notable example of this is the Temple of Horus at Edfu , where construction had begun in 237 BC under Ptolemy III, but carried on through most of Ptolemy IV's reign until Hugronaphor's revolt forced the end of works in 207–206 BC. By that time most of the structure had been built and most of the interior decoration had been carved. These inscriptions present Ptolemy IV as an ideal pharaoh, emphasising his military victories in Syria and his pious attitude towards

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6138-416: The first native Egyptian revolt against Ptolemaic rule, in 245 BC. In the final years of Ptolemy III's reign, the Cleomenean War (229–222 BC) broke out in Greece and, despite receiving substantial Ptolemaic support, Cleomenes III of Sparta had been completely defeated by an Antigonid-led coalition and forced to flee to Egypt. Sometime between October and December 222 BC, Ptolemy III died and Ptolemy IV

6237-417: The following reigns. Ptolemy IV also strongly emphasised the cult of Dionysus and linked the god closely to the dynastic cult. Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and was closely associated with the royal ideal of opulence and luxury, known in Greek as tryphe , which Ptolemy IV wished to cultivate. Several new festivals of Dionysus were inaugurated, in which Ptolemy IV himself led the processions, beating on

6336-563: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

6435-527: The gods. Annual coronation rituals took place in the sanctuary, in which the god Horus symbolically received kingship from Ra and Osiris and the reigning Pharaoh received his kingship from Ra and Horus. Ptolemy IV never participated in this ritual personally; his role was played by a priest. Support for the sanctuary thus represented the Ptolemaic commitment to a traditional Egyptian theology of kingship. Other construction work carried out under Ptolemy IV's auspices included (from north to south): Ptolemy IV

6534-420: The hand of Laodice, his daughter, and allowed Euthydemus himself to keep his royal title. Antiochus next, following in the steps of Alexander, crossed into the Kabul valley, reaching the realm of Indian king Sophagasenus and returned west by way of Seistan and Kerman (206/5). According to Polybius : He crossed the Caucasus and descended into India, renewed his friendship with Sophagasenus , king of

6633-506: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

6732-424: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

6831-432: The individual Ptolemaic kings in Alexandria demolished. A new, pyramidal structure was built within the palace district of Alexandria to house the bodies of Alexander and the Ptolemies together. This structure seems to have been consecrated at the Ptolemaia festival of 215–214 BC. At the same time, Ptolemy IV incorporated the cult of the dynastic founders Ptolemy I and Berenice I as the Theoi Soteres (Saviour gods) into

6930-608: The king's cousin, Achaeus , represented the Seleucid cause, did its prestige recover, driving the Pergamene power back to its earlier limits. In 221 BC Antiochus at last went far east, and the rebellion of Molon and Alexander collapsed which Polybius attributes in part to his following the advice of Zeuxis rather than Hermeias. The submission of Lesser Media, which had asserted its independence under Artabazanes , followed. Antiochus conspired with his physician and allies to have Hermeias assassinated, and then returned to Syria (220 BC). Meanwhile, Achaeus himself had revolted and assumed

7029-606: The main citadel in Alexandria, hoping to liberate the men imprisoned within, but this attack was unsuccessful and the people of Alexandria did not respond to their call to rise up. Cleomenes III and his followers then committed suicide. Antiochus III's efforts to consolidate his control over Coele Syria lasted for the rest of 219 BC. At the beginning of winter, he had to negotiate a ceasefire with Ptolemy IV. Formal peace negotiations followed at Seleucia Pieria, but they do not seem to have been undertaken in good faith on either side. Antiochus refused to consider returning Seleucia Pieria to

7128-452: The main dynastic cult overseen by the priest of Alexandria. Probably also in 215–214 BC, he instituted a new cult in the Greek city of Ptolemais in southern Egypt, dedicated to Ptolemy I and the reigning monarch. In 211 BC, Ptolemy IV seems to have begun propagating another cult for his deceased mother Berenice II, on the model of the earlier cult for Ptolemy IV's grandmother, Arsinoe II . A temple for Berenice sozousa (Berenice who saves)

7227-444: The melee. At the start of the battle, the Ptolemaic elephant forces were routed and Antiochus followed that up by charging in on horseback and breaking the Ptolemaic left wing. Polybius (generally hostile to Ptolemy IV) represents Ptolemy IV's sudden appearance on the front lines as the decisive turning point in the battle, inspiring his troops to fight on and defeat the rest of the Seleucid army which turned and fled while Antiochus III

7326-451: The military success of Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III and their benefactions to the Egyptian priestly elite. Throughout, Ptolemy IV is presented as taking on the role of Horus who avenges his father by defeating the forces of disorder led by the god Set . In return, the priests undertook to erect a statue group in each of their temples, depicting the god of the temple presenting a sword of victory to Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III. A five-day festival

7425-577: The name Antiochus, his brother Seleucus III Ceraunus , upon the latter's murder in Anatolia; he was in Babylon at the time. Antiochus III inherited a disorganized state. Not only had Asia Minor become detached, but the easternmost provinces had broken away, Bactria under the Seleucid Diodotus of Bactria , and Parthia under the rebel satrap Andragoras in 247–245 BC, who was himself later vanquished by

7524-567: The nomad chieftain Arsaces . In 222 BC, soon after Antiochus's accession, Media and Persis revolted under their governors, the brothers Molon and Alexander . The young king, under the influence of the minister Hermeias , headed an attack on Ptolemaic Syria instead of going in person to face the rebels. The attack against the Ptolemaic empire proved a fiasco, and the generals sent against Molon and Alexander met with disaster. Only in Asia Minor, where

7623-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

7722-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

7821-405: The southern portion of the country was lost to the rebel pharaoh Hugronaphor . Ptolemy IV died in mysterious circumstances in 204 BC and was succeeded by his young son Ptolemy V Epiphanes under the regency of Sosibius and Agathocles. In ancient sources, Ptolemy IV was criticised for being more interested in luxury and court ceremony than government, politics, and foreign relations. The decline of

7920-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

8019-535: The terms of this pact, Macedon was to receive the Ptolemaic possessions around the Aegean Sea and Cyrene , while Antiochus would annex Cyprus and Egypt. Once more Antiochus attacked the Ptolemaic province of Coele Syria and Phoenicia, and by 199 BC he seems to have had possession of it before the Aetolian leader Scopas recovered it for Ptolemy. But that recovery proved brief, for in 198 BC Antiochus defeated Scopas at

8118-499: The territories that he had held at the start of the war except, apparently, Seleucia Pieria, and he received an enormous sum of gold. By 12 October, Ptolemy IV had returned to Egypt, where the victory was celebrated by a priestly synod at Memphis which issued the Raphia decree . The relatively mild terms of the peace and Ptolemy IV's failure to capitalise on his victory by going on the offensive have caused some surprise among modern scholars;

8217-472: The throne at the age of eighteen in April/June 223 BC, his early campaigns against the Ptolemaic Kingdom were unsuccessful, but in the following years Antiochus gained several military victories and substantially expanded the empire's territory. His traditional designation, the Great , reflects an epithet he assumed. He also assumed the title Basileus Megas (Greek for " Great King "), the traditional title of

8316-413: The title of king in Asia Minor. Though, due to the brewing mutiny of his troops arising from their dissatisfaction over his rebellion against their king, Achaeus desisted from his attempted coup and retreated. While sending additional threats to Achaeus, Antiochus left him for the time being and renewed his attempts on Ptolemaic Syria. The campaigns of 219 BC and 218 BC carried the Seleucid armies almost to

8415-469: The way for the invasion of Coele Syria. There he captured Philadelphia , but was unable to gain the southern Beqa'a valley , Damascus , or Sidon . In 217 BC, Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III led the Egyptian army into the Levant, where it met Antiochus III's army in battle at Raphia on 22 June 217 BC. This was one of the largest battles of the Hellenistic Age with over 150,000 soldiers participating in

8514-408: The year in all official and private documents. This followed the pattern that had been laid down by Ptolemy IV's predecessors, particularly Ptolemy III, whose incorporation into the dynastic cult seems to have formed part of the victory celebrations for the Third Syrian War . In order to assert the unity of this dynastic cult, Ptolemy IV had the existing tomb of Alexander the Great and the tombs of

8613-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

8712-469: Was a catamaran. It is generally agreed that the tessarakonteres served as a pleasure boat, not a military vessel. The main surviving account of Ptolemy IV's life and character is provided by the historian Polybius . He presents Ptolemy IV as the archetypal bad king, entirely focused on luxury and court ceremony and completely neglecting of politics, foreign affairs, and military pursuits, which he left entirely to Sosibius. According to Polybius, this neglect

8811-399: Was believed to support his younger brother Magas, who had held substantial military commands and was popular with the army, so Magas was scalded to death in his bath. Berenice II died shortly afterwards; she is said to have been poisoned. By contrast, Ptolemy IV's older sister, Arsinoe III , was brought into close association with the king. They had married by 220 BC; sibling marriage was

8910-444: Was crowned king. The new king was about twenty years old and was under the strong influence of two prominent aristocrats: Sosibius and Agathocles , the brother of Ptolemy IV's mistress Agathoclea . On Ptolemy IV's accession, Sosibius engineered a large-scale purge of the royal family in order to eliminate anyone who might be able to oppose him. Ptolemy IV's uncle Lysimachus was probably murdered at this time. His mother Berenice II

9009-616: Was devoted to orgiastic forms of religion and literary dilettantism. He built a temple to Homer in Alexandria and financed festivals for the Muses , both in Alexandria and in the valley of the Muses in Thespiae in Boeotia . He also composed a tragedy on Adonis , on which his courtier Agathocles wrote a commentary. Ptolemy IV is said to have built a giant ship known as the tessarakonteres ("forty-rowed"),

9108-431: Was established in Alexandria, by the shore, and seems to have been associated with protection of sailors, closely paralleling the cult of Arsinoe II. Berenice also received a special priestess, the athlophorus (prize-bearer), who marched in the Ptolemaia procession and appeared in official records of the date ahead of the canephorus (basket-bearer) of Arsinoe II. Similar priestesses would be established for later queens in

9207-477: Was formally proclaimed king with Sosibius and Agathoclea's brother Agathocles as his regents. Like early Ptolemaic monarchs, Ptolemy IV was proclaimed to be a deity on his accession to the throne, as the Theos Philopator (Father-loving God). Particularly after the Fourth Syrian War , he systematised the dynastic cult, reinforcing the links between the worship of the reigning king and the cults of Alexander

9306-521: Was inaugurated in honour of the Theoi Philopatores and their victory. The decree thus seems to represent a successful marriage of Egyptian pharaonic ideology and religion with the Hellenistic Greek ideology of the victorious king and his ruler cult. Ptolemy IV also maintained a close and friendly relationship with the priestly elite by supporting and funding construction work at sanctuaries throughout Egypt, mostly continuing projects begun earlier in

9405-430: Was killed while pillaging a temple of Bel at Elymaïs , Persia, in 187 BC. In 222 BC, Antiochus III married Princess Laodice of Pontus , a daughter of King Mithridates II of Pontus and Princess Laodice of the Seleucid Empire . The couple were first cousins through their mutual grandfather, Antiochus II Theos . Antiochus and Laodice had eight children (three sons and five daughters): In 191 BC, Antiochus III married

9504-408: Was often presented as a virtue, which demonstrated a king's ability and willingness to make benefactions. It is possible that the surviving source tradition has taken efforts to advertise this virtue and twisted them into a negative account. Ptolemy IV is a major character in the deuterocanonical biblical book 3 Maccabees , which was probably written in the first century AD. In this work, set after

9603-414: Was rebuffed by the Ptolemaic governor of the region, Theodotus , and forced to turn east as a result of the revolt of his satrap of Media , Molon . In spring 219 BC, Antiochus III tried again, attacking and capturing the key port city and 'hearth of the Seleucid dynasty' Seleucia Pieria , which had been under Ptolemaic control since 246 BC. Immediately after this, Theodotus, who had become unpopular at

9702-468: Was still chasing the fleeing Ptolemaic soldiers on the left wing. When he discovered what had happened, Antiochus III had no choice but to retreat to Antioch. After the battle, Ptolemy IV set to work reorganising the situation in Coele Syria and sent Sosibius to negotiate with Antiochus III. At the end of summer, he invaded Seleucid Syria, forcing Antiochus III to accept a peace treaty. Ptolemy IV retained

9801-456: Was the cause of the disasters of his reign, including his death. Polybius was not a contemporary of Ptolemy IV; he probably drew his account from two earlier works which are now lost: the Histories of Phylarchus and The Stories about Philopator by Ptolemy of Megalopolis . Both of these also seem to have criticised Ptolemy IV for his luxuriousness. However, for contemporaries, luxury ( tryphe )

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