This is the same Antiochus who twice led his victorious army to the walls of Alexandria, once to retreat after dictating terms to the Ptolemies, once to meet a Roman embassy headed by his old friend Gaius Popillius. Before answering the king's pleasant greeting, the Roman handed to him the message of his Senate and curtly bade him read it. He found it to be an order to evacuate Egypt immediately. On asking for time to consider the proposal, he got a further surprise; for, drawing a circle round the king in the sand with his cane, Popillius demanded an answer "Yes" or "No" before he stepped outside of it. A few months earlier, by crushing Perseus of Macedon on the battle-field of Pydna (168 B.C.), Rome had rid itself of its last serious rival. Since for Antiochus to resist meant now to stand alone against the master of the world, the only answer he could give was "Yes"; yet it meant the ruin of the Seleucid empire. Thereafter, there was but one free will in the vast territory of Africa, Asia, and Europe which lay between the Euphrates River and the Atlantic Ocean--the will of the government of Rome. Instruments to give it continuous effect in Italy that sagacious and persistent corporation, the Roman Senate, had made and used already; and in its march to universal empire it had broken and hurled to the ground the instruments of authority raised against it by its Greek adversaries. To pick them up, mend them, and improve them for further use was the imperial task of the immediate future. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Schürer, E. _Geschichte des jüdischen Volks im Zeitalter Jesu Christi_, I^3 (1901), II^4 (1907). 2. Bevan, E. _The House of Seleucus_ (1902). 3. Niese, B. _Geschichte der griechischen und makedonischen Staaten._ Especially Vol. III (1903). 4. Beloch, J. _Griechische Geschichte_, III (1904). 5. Rostowzew, M. _Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Kolonates_ (1910), pp. 240 _ff._ 6. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. _Staat und Gesellschaft der Griechen: D. Die makedonischen Königreiche_ (1910). 7. Bouché-Leclercq, A. _Histoire des Séleucides_ (1913). FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 101: Kromayer, _Historische Zeitschrift_, C, p. 50.] [Footnote 102: Dittenberger, _Orientis Græcæ Inscriptiones Selectæ_, 224; if the king is Antiochus II, and not, as is now claimed (Pozzi, _Memorie della Reale Accademia di Torino_, serie II, tom. LXIII, p. 345, n. 4), Antiochus III. See, however, Kärst, _Geschichte des hellenistischen Zeitalters_, II, I, p. 422 and Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. des Séleucides_, pp. 90 _f._, 470 _ff._] [Footnote 103: See now Kromayer, _Hannibal und Antiochus der Grosse_ (_Neue Jahrbücher für d. klass, Altert._ XIX (1907), pp. 681 _ff._).] [Footnote 104: Cordier, H., _Journal des Savants_ (1907), pp. 247 _ff._; Cunningham, _Numismatic Chronicle_ (1888), pp. 222 _ff._] [Footnote 105: _Ruins of Desert Cathay_ (1912), I, pp. 274, 284.]