=67.= The wars of the generals and the intrigues of the Macedonian princesses belong to Period II. (See §§ 19-25.) Three years after the battle of Ipsus, Cassander died, B. C. 298, leaving the crown to his son, Philip IV. The young king reigned less than a year, and his mother, Thessalonica, then divided Macedonia between her two remaining sons, Antipater and Alexander. The former, being dissatisfied with his portion, murdered his mother and called in his father-in-law, Lysimachus, to aid him in gaining the whole. His brother, at the same time, asked aid of Demetrius, who reigned in Greece, and of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. With their help he drove Antipater out of Macedonia; but he gained nothing by the victory, for Demetrius had undertaken the war solely with the view of placing himself upon the throne, which he accomplished by the murder of Alexander. Antipater II. was put to death the same year by Lysimachus, B. C. 294. =68.= The kingdom now included Thessaly, Attica, and the greater part of the Peloponnesus, Pyrrhus having received several countries on the western coast of Greece. Demetrius, however, sacrificed all his dominions to his unbounded ambition and conceit. He failed in an attack on Pyrrhus, and being invaded both from the east and west, was compelled to abandon Macedonia, B. C. 287. In a later expedition into Asia, he became the prisoner of Seleucus, and died in the third year of his captivity. (See § 29.) =69.= Pyrrhus remained king of the greater part of Macedonia nearly a year, but was then driven back to his hereditary kingdom by Lysimachus, who thus extended his own dominions from the Halys to Mount Pindus, B. C. 286. The capital of this consolidated kingdom was Lysimachia, in the Chersonese, and Macedonia for five years was merely a province. The nobles, becoming discontented, called in Seleucus, who defeated and killed Lysimachus, B. C. 281. =70.= For a few weeks the aged Seleucus governed nearly all the dominions of Alexander, except Egypt. He was then assassinated by Ptolemy Ceraunus,[60] who became king in his stead. The Egyptian prince was soon overwhelmed by a new peril in the invasion of the Gauls. This restless people had been pouring for nearly a century into northern Italy, where they had driven out the Etruscans from the plain of the Po, and given their own name to Gallia Cisalpina. Now turning eastward, they occupied the plain of the Danube, and pressed southward as far as Illyricum, whence they proceeded in three divisions, one falling upon the Thracians, another upon the Pæonians, and a third upon the Macedonians. The last army encountered Ptolemy Ceraunus, who was defeated and slain in battle. For two years they ravaged Macedonia, while Melea´ger, a brother of Ceraunus, and Antipater, a nephew of Cassander, successively occupied the throne, B. C. 279-277.