crown, was left to Attalus the uncle, who so faithfully discharged his trust, that he not only carefully bred up the pupil, but, on his death, which happened this year, left the crown to him, passing by the children which he had of his own. For he looked on the crown as left him by his brother, to be no more than a depositum intrusted with him for his nephew; and therefore he accordingly restored it to him in the next succession, which is a procedure very rarely practised, where a crown is the thing in possession. Another instance of such a restoration is scarce any where else to be found in history; princes being usually no less solicitous to preserve their crowns to their posterity, than to themselves. But this turned to the great plague and calamity of the whole kingdom; for this Attalus Philometor, being more than half a madman, managed his government accordingly in a very wild, irrational, and pernicious manner. For he had scarce been warm in his throne, ere he stained it all over with the blood of his nearest relations, and other the best friends of his family; putting to death most of those who, with the greatest fidelity, had served his father and his uncle; pretending against some of them, that they had by evil arts caused the death of Stratonice his mother, who deceased an old woman; and against others, that they caused, by the like evil arts, the death of Berenice, his wife, who died of an incurable disease which she happened to fall into. And others he put to death upon vain and groundless suspicions, cutting off with them their wives and children, and all their whole families. These executions,3 he did by the hands of his mercenaries, whom he had hired out of the most cruel and savage of the barbarous nations, they only being fit instruments for such bloody and abominable work. After he had thus, in a wild and mad fury, cut off the best men in his kingdom, he withdrew from the public view, appearing no more abroad among the people, nor was he any more seen at home, entertaining himself either in banquets, or public repasts, but putting on a sordid apparel, and letting his beard grow to a great length, without trimming it, behaved himself in the same manner as those used to do who were under arraignment for some great crime, acting hereby as if he had acknowledged himself guilty of all the villany he had done.

And, going on after this rate into other extravagances, he neglected all the affairs of the government, and betook himself to his garden, there digging the ground himself, and sowing it with all manner of poisonous and unwholesome herbs, as well as with those that were wholesome, he infected the wholesome with the juices of the poisonous, and then sent them as especial presents to his friends. And thus he wore out in wild and cruel extravagances the remainder of his reign; the best recommendation of which was, that it was very short; for it ended after five years' time in his death, which then happened in the manner as will be hereafter related in its proper place.

An. 137. Simon 7.]-Antiochus Sidetes, after having vanquished Tryphon, and wholly broken and brought under all that were of his party, did next betake himself to recover to the Syrian empire, all such cities and places as had taken the advantage of the late distractions that followed upon his father's death to revolt from it. And, having gained full success herein, he settled all things within the kingdom of Syria again, upon the same bottom on which they were before these distractions begun.

An. 136. Simon 8.]-But in Egypt all things went worse and worse. For, whether it were that Hierax was dead,' or else, that the madness of the prince overbore all the wisdom and prudence of the chief minister, we hear nothing of him from this time, but his barbarous cruelties, and monstrous mismanagements, in all his conduct. Most of those who were the most forward to call him

1 Plutarchus in libro mipa ikadig et in Apotheg.

2 Justin. ibid. Diodor. Sic. in Excerptis Valesii, p. 370.

4 Justin. lib. 36. c. 4.

3 Diodor. Sic. in Excerptis Valesii, p. 370.

5 Ibid. Plutarchus in Demetrio, where the English translator, taking him very unskilfully to mend the Greek original, hath put Ptolemy Phrometor instead of Attalus Philometor.

6 Justin. lib. 36. c. 1.

7 Athenæus tells us, that Physcon did put Hierax to death, lib. 6. p. 252, but the time of his death is not said. VOL. II.-25

to the crown on his brother's decease,' and after that to support him in it, he causelessly put to death. Most of those who had the favour of Philometor his brother, or had been employed in his service, he either slew or drove into banishment; and, by his foreign mercenaries, whom he let loose to commit all manner of murders and rapines as they pleased, he oppressed and terrified the Alexandrians to so great a degree, that most of them fled into other countries to avoid his cruelty, and left their city in a manner desolate. That therefore he might not reign over empty houses without inhabitants, he, by his proclamations dispersed over the neighbouring countries, invited all strangers to come thither to repeople the place. Whereon great multitudes flocking thither, he gave them the habitations of those that were fled; and, admitting them to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of the former citizens, he, by this means, again replenished the city.

There being, among those that fled out of Egypt on this occasion, many grammarians, philosophers, geometricians, physicians, musicians, and other masters and professors of ingenious arts and sciences; this banishment of theirs became the means of reviving learning again in Greece, Lesser Asia, and the isles, and in all other places where they went. The wars which followed after the death of Alexander, among those that succeeded him, had in a manner extinguished learning in all those parts; and it would have gone nigh to have been utterly lost amidst the calamities of those times, but that it found a support under the patronage of the Ptolemics at Alexandria. For the first Ptolemy having there erected a museum or college, for the maintenance and encouragement of learned men, and also a great library for their use) of both which I have already spoken,) this drew most of the learned men of Greece thither. And, the second and third Ptolemy having followed herein the same steps of their predecessor. Alexandria became the place where the liberal arts and sciences, and all other parts of learning, were preserved, and flourished in those ages, when they were almost dropped every where else; and most of its inhabitants were bred up in the knowledge of some or other of them. And hereby it came to pass, that, when they were driven into foreign parts, by the cruelty and oppression of the wicked tyrant I have mentioned, being qualified to gain themselves a maintenance by teaching, each in the places where they came, the particular professions they were skilled in, they accordingly betook themselves hereto, and erected schools for this purpose, in all the countries above mentioned, through which they were dispersed; and they being, by reason of their poverty, content to teach for a small hire, this drew great numbers of scholars to them, and by this means, all the several branches of learning became again revived in those eastern parts, in the same manner as they were in these latter ages in the western, after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. For, till then, most of the learning of the west was in school-divinity, and the canon law: and, although the former of these was built more upon Aristotle than the holy scriptures, yet they had nothing of Aristotle in those days, but in a translation at the third hand. The Saracens had translated the works of that philosopher into Arabic, and from thence those Christians of the Latin church, who learned philosophy from the Saracens in Spain, translated them into Latin. And this was the only text of that author, on which, during the reign of the schoolmen, all their comments on him were made. And yet upon no better a foundation are some of those decisions in divinity built, which the Romanists hold as infallible, than what they have thus borrowed from a heathen philosopher, handed to them in a translation made by the disciples of Mahomet. But when Constantinople was taken by Mahomet, the king of the Turks, in the year of our Lord 1453, and the learned men who dwelt there, and in other parts of Greece, fearing the cruelty and the barbarity of the Turks, fled into Italy, they brought thither with them their books and their learning; and there, first under the patronage of the princes of that country (especially of Lorenzo de Medicis, the first founder of the great2 Athenæus, lib. 4. p. 184.

1 Justin. lib. 32. c. 8. Athenæus, lib. 4. p. 184.

ness of his family,) propagated both. And this gave the rise to all that learning in these western parts, which hath ever since grown and flourished in them.

At the same time that foreigners were flocking to Alexandria for the repeopling of that city, there came thither Publius Scipio Africanus, junior, Spurius Mummius, and L. Metellus, in an embassy from the Romans.' It was the usage of that people, often to send out embassies to inspect the affairs of their allies, and to make up and compose what differences they should find among them; and for this purpose, this famous embassy, consisting of three of the most eminent men of Rome, was at this time sent from thence. Their commission was to pass through Egypt, Syria, Asia, and Greece, to see and observe how the affairs of each kingdom and state in those countries stood, and to take an account how the leagues they had made with the Romans were kept and observed; and to set all things at rights, that they should find any where amiss among them. And this trust they every where discharged so honourably and justly, and so much to the benefit and advantage of those they were sent to, in regulating their disorders, and adjusting all differences which they found among them, that they were no sooner returned to Rome, but ambassadors followed them from all places where they had been, to thank the senate for sending such honourable persons to them, and for the great benefits they had received from them. The first place which they came to in the discharge of their commission being Alexandria in Egypt, they were there received by the king in great state. But they made their entrance thither with so little, that Scipio,3 who was then the greatest man in Rome, had no more than one friend, Panætius the philosopher, and five servants in his retinue. And, although they were, during their stay there, entertained with all the varieties of the most sumptuous fare, yet they would touch nothing more of it than what was useful, in the most temperate manner, for the necessary support of nature, despising all the rest, as that which corrupted the mind as well as the body, and bred vicious humours in both. Such was the moderation and temperance of the Romans at this time, and hereby it was that they at length advanced their state to so great a height: and in this height would they have still continued, could they still have retained the same virtues. But, when their prosperity, and the great wealth obtained thereby, became the occasion that they degenerated into luxury and corruption of manners, they drew decay and ruin as fast upon them as they had before victory and prosperity, till at length they were undone by it. So that the poet said justly of them.

6

-Sævior armis

Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem."

Luxury came on more cruel than our arms,

Juv. Sat. 6. ver. 29.

And did revenge the vanquished world with its charms.

When the ambassadors had taken a full view of Alexandria, and the state of affairs in that city, they sailed up the Nile to see Memphis and other parts of Egypt; whereby having thoroughly informed themselves of the great number of cities, and the vast multitude of inhabitants that were in that country, and also of the strength of its situation, the fertility of its soil, and the many other excellencies and advantages of it, they observed it to be a country that wanted nothing for its being made a very potent and formidable kingdom, but a prince of capacity and application sufficient to form it thereto. And therefore, no doubt, it was to their great satisfaction that they found the present king thoroughly destitute of every qualification that was necessary for such an undertaking. For nothing could appear more despicable,' than he did to them in every inter

1 Justin. lib. 38. c. 8. Cicero, in Somnio Scipionis, c. 2. rius Maximus. lib. 4. c. 3. s. 13. Diodor. Sic. Legat. 32. 2 Diodor. Sic. Legat. 32. 3 Athenæus, lib. 6. p. 273.

Athenæus, lib. 6. p. 273. et lib. 12. p. 549. Vale.

4 Diod. Sic. Legat. 32.

5 Ibid.

6 Egypt, in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, had in it thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-nine

cities. Theocrit. Idyl. 17.

7 Justin. lib. 38. c. 8.

view they had with him. . Of his cruelty, barbarity, luxury, and other vile and vicious dispositions which he was addicted to, I have in part already spoken, and there will be occasions hereafter to give more instances of them. And the deformities of his body were no less than those of his soul. For he was of a most deformed countenance,' of a short stature, and such a monstrous and prominent belly therewith, as no man was able to encompass with both his arms; so that, by reason of this load of flesh, acquired by his luxury, he was so unwieldly, that he never stepped abroad without a staff to lean on. And over this vile carcass he wore a garment so thin and transparent, that there were seen through it, not only all the deformities of his body, but also those parts which it is one of the main ends of garments modestly to cover and conceal. From this deformed monster the ambassadors passed over to Cyprus, and from thence proceeded to execute their commission in all the other countries to which they were sent.

2

An. 135. John Hyrcanus 1.]-In the month of Shebat (which was in the latter end of the Jewish year, and in the beginning of the Julian,3) Simon, making a progress through the cities of Judah, to take care for the well ordering of all things in them, came to Jericho, having then two of his sons, Judas and Mattathias, there in company with him, Ptolemy, the son of Abubus, who had married one of his daughters, being governor of the place under him, invited him to the castle which he had built in the neighbourhood, to partake of an entertainment he had there provided for him. Simon and his sons, suspecting_no evil from so near a relation, accepted of the invitation, and went thither. But the perfidious wretch, having laid a design for the usurping of the government of Judea to himself, and concerted the matter with Antiochus Sidetes, king of Syria, for the accomplishing of it, wickedly plotted the destruction of Simon and his sons: and therefore, having hid men in the castle, where the entertainment was made, when his guests had well drunk he brought forth these murderers upon them, and assassinated them all three while they were sitting at his banquet, and all those that attended upon them; and, thinking immediately hereupon to make himself master of the whole land, sent a party to Gazara, where John resided, to slay him also; and wrote letters to the commanders of the army that had their station in those parts, to come over to him, proffering them gold and silver, and other rewards, to draw them into his designs. But John, having received notice of what had been done at Jericho, before this party could reach Gazara, he was there provided for them; and therefore fell on them, and cut them all off, as soon as they approached the place; and then, hastening to Jerusalem, secured that city, and the mountain of the temple, against those whom the traitor had sent to seize both. And, being thereupon declared high-priest and prince of the Jews, in the place of his father Simon, he took care every where to provide for the security of the country, and the peace of all those that dwelt in it. Whereon Ptolemy, being defeated of all those plots which he had laid for the compassing of his designs, had nothing now left to do, but to send to Antiochus to come with an army for the accomplishing of them by open force; without which being no longer able to support himself against John in Judea he fled to Zeno, surnamed Cotyla, who was then tyrant of Philadelphia, and there waited till Antiochus should arrive. What became of him afterward is uncertain. For, although Antiochus came at his call into Judea, and a bitter war thereon ensued, yet, after his flight to Zeno, no more mention is made of him. Although the treason might be acceptable enough to that king, because of the fair prospect that was given him, by the advantage of it, again to recover Judea to his crown, yet he could not but abhor such an execrable traitor, and perchance dealt with him according to what his wickedness deserved. But here ending the history of the Maccabees, as contained in the apocryphal books of scripture known by that name, I shall here also end this fourth book of my present work.

1 Athenæus, lib. 12. p. 549.

2 Justin. lib. 38. c. 8. 3 1 Maccab. xvi. 14-22. Joseph. lib. 13. c. 14.

BOOK V.

An. 135. John Hyrcanus 1.]-ANTIOCHUS SIDETES, king of Syria,' having received from Ptolemy, the son of Abubus, the account which he had sent him of the death of Simon and his sons, made haste to take the advantage of it, for the reducing of Judea again under the Syrian empire; and therefore forth with marched thitherward with a great army, and having overrun the country, and driven Hyrcanus out of the field, shut him up and all his forces with him in Jerusalem, and there besieged him with his whole army, divided into seven camps, whereby he enclosed him all round; and, to do this the more effectually, he caused two large and deep ditches to be drawn round the city, one of circumvallation, and the other of contravallation: so that, by reason hereof, none could come out from the besieged to make their escape, or any get into them to bring them relief. And therefore, when Hyrcanus, to rid himself of unprofitable mouths, which consumed the stores of the besieged, without helping them in the defence of the place, put all such as were useless for the wars out of the city; they could not pass the ditch that enclosed them, but were pent up between that and the walls of the city, and were there forced to abide; till at length Hyrcanus found it necessary, for the saving of them from perishing by famine, to receive them in again. This siege continued till about the time of the beginning of autumn; the besiegers all this while daily making their assaults, and the besieged as valiantly defending themselves against them, always repulsing the enemy, and often making sallies upon them, and, in these sallies, sometimes burning their engines, and destroying their works; and thus it went on till the time of the Jews' feast of tabernacles, which was always held in the middle of the first autumnal moon. On the approach of that holy time, Hyrcanus sent to Antiochus to pray a truce during the festival; which he not only readily granted, but also sent beasts, and other things necessary for the sacrifices then to be offered; which giving Hyrcanus an instance of the equity and benignity, as well as of the piety of that prince, this encouraged him to send to him again for terms of peace; which message being complied with, a treaty thereon commenced, in which Hyrcanus having yielded, that the besieged should deliver up their arms, that Jerusalem should be dismantled, and that tribute should be paid the king for Joppa, and the other towns held by the Jews out of Judea, peace was made upon these terms. It was demanded also by Antiochus, that the fortress at Jerusalem should be rebuilt, and a garrison again received into it; but this Hyrcanus would not consent to, remembering the damage and mischief which the Jews had received from the former garrison in that place; but rather chose to pay the king five hundred talents to buy it off. Whereon such of those terms as were capable of an immediate execution being accordingly executed, and hostages given for the performance of the rest (one of which was a brother of Hyrcanus,) the siege was raised, and peace again restored to the whole land. This was done in the ninth month after the death of Simon.

When Hyrcanus sent to Antiochus for peace, he was brought almost to the last extremity, through want of provisions, all the stores of the city being in a manner spent and exhausted; which being well known in the camp of the besiegers, those that were about Antiochus pressed him hard to make use of this opportunity for the destroying and utterly extirpating the whole nation of the Jews. They urged against them, that they had been driven out of Egypt as an impious people, hated by God and man; that they treated all mankind besides themselves as enemies, refusing communication with all excepting those of their own sect, neither eating nor drinking, nor freely conversing with any

1 1 Maccab. xvi. 18. Joseph Antiq. lib. 13. c. 16.

2 Joseph. Antiq. lib. 13. c. 16. Diodor. Sic. lib. 34. eclog. 1. p. 901. et apud Photium in Biblioth. cod. 244 p. 1150.