Home › CHAPTER V › CHAPTER V: Antigonus

CHAPTER V: Antigonus

On the death of Alexander the Great, four new empires immediately, as it were, sprung up. He had left behind him a large and victorious army, commanded by generals who, bred in the same school, were not less ambitious of sovereign rule than their master. Cassander, the son of Antipater, seized Macedonia and Greece; Antigonus, Asia Minor; Seleucus marked out for his share Babylon and the eastern provinces; and Ptolemy, Egypt and the western ones. Furious wars soon succeeded this division of Alexander's wide-spread empire; and several provinces, taking advantage of the general confusion, shook off the Macedonian yoke altogether. Thus were formed the kingdoms of Pontus, Bithynia, Pergamus, Armenia, and Cappadocia. Antigonus was defeated and killed by Seleucus at the battle of Ipsus, 301 B. C., and the greater part of his dominions fell to the lot of the conquerer. The two most powerful and permanent empires were, in fact, Syria, founded by Seleucus, and Egypt by Ptolemy Soter. But there was also another empire at that time existing which demands our notice. The Parthians, originally a tribe of Scythians who had wandered from their own country, at length settled in the neighborhood of Hyrcania, and were successively tributary to the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, and Persians. The country in which they settled obtained from them the name of Parthia; and when Alexander invaded Asia, they submitted, with the other dependencies of the Persian empire. After the death of the Macedonian conquerer, Parthia was subject, first to Eumenes, then to Antigonus, and finally to the kings of Syria and Babylon. In the reign of Antiochus Theos, the rapacity and crimes of Agathocles, the Syrian governor, roused the spirit of the Parthians; and, under Arsaces, a man of great military talents, they expelled their oppressors, and laid the foundation of an empire which ultimately extended over Asia, B. C. 250. The Syrians attempted in vain to recover this province. A race of able and vigilant princes, who assumed the surname of Arsacida, from the founder of their kingdom, not only baffled their efforts, but so increased in power, that while they held eighteen tributary kingdoms, between the Caspian and Arabian seas, they even for a time disputed with the Romans the empire of the world.