ays attach to
being governed by foreigners. Even the superintendence over the satraps
seems to have been insufficient. According to some writers, it was a
gross outrage offered by a satrap to an Asiatic subject that stirred
up the Parthians to their revolt. The story may not be true; but its
currency shows of what conduct towards those under their government the
satraps of the Seleucidae were thought, by such as lived near the time,
to have been capable.

It would, perhaps, have been difficult for the Seleucid princes, even
had they desired it, to pursue a policy of absolute abstention in
the wars of their western neighbors. So long as they were resolute to
maintain their footing on the right bank of the Euphrates, in Phrygia,
Cappadocia, and upper Syria, they were of necessity mixed up with the
quarrels of the west. Could they have been content to withdraw within
the Euphrates, they might have remained for the most part clear of such
entanglements; but even then there would have been occasions when they
must have taken the field in self-defence. As it was, however, the idea
of abstention seems never to have occurred to them. It was the fond
dream of each "Successor" of Alexander that in his person might,
perhaps, be one day united all the territories of the great Conqueror.
Seleucus would have felt that he sacrificed his most cherished hopes
if he had allowed the west to go its own way, and had contented himself
with consolidating a great power in the regions east of the Euphrates.

And the policy of the founder of the house was followed by his
successors. The three Seleucid sovereigns who reigned prior to
the Parthian revolt were, one and all, engaged in frequent, if not
continual, wars with the monarchs of Egypt and Asia Minor. The first
Seleucus, by his claim to the sovereignty of Lower Syria, established a
ground of constant contention with the Ptolemies; and though he did not
prosecute the claim to the extent of actual hostility, yet in the reign
of his son, Antiochus I., called Soter, the smothered quarrel broke out.
Soter fomented the discontent of Cyrene with its subjection to Egypt,
and made at least one expedition against Ptolemy Philadelphus in person
(B.C. 264). His efforts did not meet with much success; but they were
renewed by his son, Antiochus II., surnamed "the God", who warred with
Philadelphus from B.C. 260 to B.C. 250, contending with him chiefly in
Asia Minor. These wars were complicated with oth