Chapter V - ANTIOCHUS IV AND EUCRATIDES

Summary

The invasion of India had been the work of three men, whose far-reaching plan had come within a very little of complete success; that success was prevented, at the last moment, by two other men, who were also working on a far-reaching plan of their own. Dimly as we discern the outlines of their several schemes and actions, the magnitude of them gives us the feeling that the age of giants had come again and that we are back among the men who fought for the heritage of Alexander. For though Greeks could change their sky they could not change their souls. The gods had given them every gift save one, the gift of combination; and they tore each other to pieces beneath the shadow of the Hindu Kush with the same enthusiasm which Greek city-states and Macedonian generals had always put into the business round the Aegean home-sea. This chapter is concerned with the story of how and why Demetrius failed to secure the Mauryan empire, the story of the Seleucid Antiochus IV, called Epiphanes, and his cousin Eucratides.

Antiochus IV has often had hard measure from his historians. Some have repeated the Hellenistic gossip which made of him half a fool—vain, silly, theatrical; it is worth precisely what any Hellenistic gossip is worth, and the less that serious history has to do with it the better. To others, he is little but the king who persecuted the Jews; that story can be read in many books, and I need only say here that, whatever he did to the Jews, they have had an ample revenge.