The Rebirth of Jewish Nationalism & the Seleucids' Last Stand

A History of Mankind (188)

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Disturbances along the Chinese steppe borders may have been a factor motivating the Parthians to push ever deeper from their own steppe heartland into the Iranian plateau, even after they were forced to pay homage and tribute to Antiochus III in 209 BC. A desire to restore Iranian independence and power, after well over a century of submission to Alexander’s Greeks, may have been an equally powerful motivating factor.

Antiochus III’s 190 BC defeat by the Romans at Magnesia had been a sobering moment for the Seleucids, and a wake-up call to restive peoples across their empire, like the Parthians. The old king passed three years later, right after he looted a Persian temple looking for funds to continue his campaigns, and new king Seleucus IV struggled to maintain peripheral territories under control, to the extent that the Parthians were openly in revolt against him when he was murdered in a palace intrigue in 175 BC.  

Antiochus IV, a younger son of Antiochus III, then became the last truly ambitious Seleucid king, but even he couldn’t do much to contain Parthian expansion, mostly due to his multiple commitments in other fronts. As Egypt tried to recover the southern Levant, he led a preemptive strike that completely defeated the Ptolemies while Rome was distracted with the Third Macedonian War; alas, a second attack on Egypt, in 168 BC, did catch Rome’s attention.