previous next

[69] As soon as Seleucus assumed the diadem after his brother's death his mother shot him dead with an arrow, either fearing lest he should avenge his father or moved by an insane hatred for everybody. After Seleucus, Grypus became king, and he compelled his mother to drink poison that she had mixed for himself. So justice overtook her at last. Grypus was worthy of such a mother. He laid a plot against Cyzicenus, his half-brother, but the latter found it out, made war on him, drove him out of the kingdom, and became king of Syria in his stead. Then Seleucus, the son of Grypus, made war on his uncle and took the government away from him. The new sovereign was violent and tyrannical and was burned to death in the gymnasium at the city of Mopsus in Cilicia. Antiochus, the son of Cyzicenus, succeeded him. The Syrians thought that he escaped a plot of his cousin Seleucus on account of his piety, for which reason they gave him the name of Antiochus Pius. He was really saved by a handsome prostitute with whom he was in love. I think that the Syrians must have given him this title by way of joke, for this Pius married Selene, who had been the wife of his father, Cyzicenus, and of his uncle, Grypus. For this reason the divine vengeance pursued him and he was expelled the kingdom by Tigranes.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (L. Mendelssohn, 1879)
hide References (2 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: