Seleucus IV, surnamed Philopator, the son and successor of Antiochus the Great, was a man of humane and pacific temper, and yet during his reign a cloud, the presage of the storm that was so soon to burst, gathered over Judea. The Syrian court was constantly involved in great financial straits because of the contribution which had yet to be paid to the Romans. Under these circumstances Simon, the overseer of the temple, who had had a quarrel with the high priest, drew the attention of Apollonius, commander of the Syrian forces in Cœle-Syria, to the riches of the temple treasury. The hint was eagerly taken, and Seleucus despatched his servant Heliodorus with orders to inspect the temple treasury. In vain did the pious and conscientious Onias expostulate with him, in vain did he protest that a great part of the treasure consisted of deposits made by widows and orphans, and that the sum total amounted to no more than four hundred talents of silver and two hundred talents of gold. Heliodorus was obstinate; but was prevented by a supernatural appearance, when he was actually within the treasury, from carrying his sacrilegious purpose into effect. It seemed to him that a gorgeously clad horseman trampled him under foot, while at the same time two youths appeared, glorious to behold, and scourged him unremittingly, so that he was carried thence in a swoon. The intercessions and expiatory sacrifices of the high priest restored him to life, and nothing would induce him to repeat the attempt. Onias himself repaired to the court of Seleucus to defend himself against the charges brought by his violent adversary Simon, with what result is uncertain. Seleucus was soon afterwards poisoned by this same Heliodorus, but the latter’s purpose of placing himself on the throne was frustrated. ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES [Sidenote: [175 B.C.]] On hearing the news of the death of Seleucus, his brother Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes, who was in Rome at the time as a hostage, hastened home and assumed the reins of government. He is the Antiochus who won a melancholy celebrity in the annals of the Jews, and gave occasion for a glorious episode in their history, which ended with the attainment of political independence. Nevertheless, the imputations cast upon his character are to some extent baseless or exaggerated. In spite of the luxurious and licentious life he led, he was not worse than the majority of Syrian and Egyptian monarchs of the period. He was good-natured and liberal, though accessible to the arts of flatterers and evil counsellors, and irritable under the restraints imposed upon him by the Romans. Ancient Greece was incapable of comprehending the existence of religious conviction or the capacity for making such sacrifices on its behalf as were made by the Jews; to Antiochus the question was merely that of reducing rebellious subjects to submission, the rather because certain of them compelled him to have recourse to measures of ever-increasing severity.