The situation was in itself not unfavourable for such an undertaking. The Lagid empire, under the rule of Ptolemy II, surnamed Euergetes (247-221), had grown supine during that monarch’s latter years; the king felt his tenure of power secure and no longer thought it necessary to devote the same close attention to general politics or intervene with the same energy that his father had displayed. The fact that in the year 221 he left Cleomenes of Sparta to succumb in the struggle with Antigonus II of Macedonia and the Achæans, by withdrawing the subsidies which alone enabled him to keep his army together, is striking evidence of the ominous change which had taken place in the policy of the Lagidæ. Ptolemy IV, surnamed Philopator, the son of Euergetes, was a monarch of the type of Louis XV, not destitute of ability but wholly abandoned to voluptuous living, who let matters go as they would. Accordingly in Asia the youthful Antiochus III, surnamed “the great” (221-187) was able to restore the ancient glories of the Seleucid empire, and although when he attacked Phœnicia and Palestine, he suffered a decisive defeat at Raphia in the year 217, Ptolemy IV made no attempt to reap the advantage of his victory. In Europe Philip V maintained his supremacy over Greece and kept the Achæans fast in the trammels of Macedonia. Thus there was a very fair possibility that both kings might enter upon an alliance with Hannibal and a war with Rome. Philip V, a very able monarch, fully realised the importance of the crisis; we still have an edict dated 214, addressed by him to the city of Larissa, which shows that he rightly recognised the basis of Rome’s greatness, the liberality of her policy in the matter of civil rights and the continuous increase of national strength and territory which that policy rendered possible. But he could not extricate himself from the petty quarrels amidst which he had grown up; after a futile attempt to wrest their Illyrian possessions from the Romans he took no further part in the war, while Rome was able promptly to enter into an alliance with the Ætolians and Attalus of Pergamus and to take the offensive in Greece. Antiochus III, on the other hand, obviously failed altogether to grasp the political situation; to him the affairs of the west lay in the dim distance, and instead of taking action there he turned eastwards, to carry his arms once again to the Hindu Kush and the Indus.