The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal ... - IndianCoins.org

194 C. OMAN.that his wife was, if not the instigator, at least a consentingparty to the murder. The story would seemimprobable but for the subsequent conduct of thisabominable woman. On the death of Demetrius hiseldest son Seleucus, aged eighteen or nineteen at thetime, assumed the diadem and the leadership of hisfather's broken party. He gave his mother none ofthat share in the royal power which she claimed, andafter a quarrel all our authorities, Appian, Eusebius,Justin, and the epitome of Livy, agree that she hadhim assassinated. She then reigned for some monthsin her own right, as is attested by the rare tetradrachmswhich bear her head alone, and the inscription BAZI-AIZZHZ KAEOHATPAZ 0EAZ EYETHPIAZ, all ofthe date 187 A.S. or 125 B.C. Finding, however, thatthe public opinion of the army was not favourable tothe open domination of a woman, a thing never beforeseen in Syria, she within a few months sent to Athensfor her younger son, and proclaimed him on his arrivalas her co-regent, under the title of Antiochus Epiphanes.This surname was not drawn from his own branch of theSeleucid house, since he descended not from the wellknownmonarch of that name, the enemy of theMaccabees, but from his elder brother Seleucus IV.Being only sixteen years of age at his accession, G-rypuswas too young to stand in his mother's way for sometime, and the queen was able to do as she pleased.It was for her benefit that the armies based on thePhoenician cities of which she was in possessiongradually warred down the usurper Alexander Zabina,and after three years of hard fighting finally overthrewhim and occupied Antioch in 123 B.C.For two years after the death of Zabina Cleopatra