Seleucus seems to have had no suspicion of this design, for he advanced into Thrace, on his way to Macedon, without fear, and without taking any precautions to guard himself from the danger of Ceraunus's meditated treachery. At length he arrived at a certain town which they told him was called Argos. He seemed alarmed on hearing this name, and, when they inquired the reason, he said that he had been warned by an oracle, at some former period of his life, to beware of Argos, as a place that was destined to be for him the scene of some mysterious and dreadful danger. He had supposed that another Argos was alluded to in this warning, namely, an Argos in Greece. He had not known before of the existence of any Argos in Thrace. If he had been aware of it, he would have ordered his march so as to have avoided it altogether; and now, in consequence of the anxious forebodings that were excited by the name, he determined to withdraw from the place without delay. He was, however, overtaken by his fate before he could effect his resolution. Ptolemy Ceraunus, watching a favorable opportunity which occurred while he was at Argos, came stealthily up behind the aged king, and stabbed him in the back with a dagger. Seleucus immediately fell down and died. Ptolemy Ceraunus forthwith organized a body of adherents and proceeded to Macedon, where he assumed the diadem, and caused himself to be proclaimed king. He found the country distracted by dissensions, many parties having been formed, from time to time, in the course of the preceding reigns, each of which was now disposed to come forward with its candidates and its claims. All these Ptolemy Ceraunus boldly set aside. He endeavored to secure all those who were friendly to the ancient house of Antipater by saying that he was Antipater's grandson and heir; and, on the other hand, to conciliate the partisans of Lysimachus, by saying that he was Lysimachus's avenger. This was in one sense true, for he had murdered Seleucus, the man by whom Lysimachus had been destroyed. He relied, however, after all, for the means of sustaining himself in his new position, not on his reasons, but on his troops; and he accordingly advanced into the country more as a conqueror coming to subjugate a nation by force, than as a prince succeeding peacefully to an hereditary crown.