Thus Rome found herself at last under the necessity of putting an end to this state of things, first in one quarter and then in another, and undertaking the administration herself. In so doing she proceeded on no definite plan, but acted as chance or the occasion determined, letting other portions of her dominions get on as best they could, until matters had come to a crisis fraught with the utmost peril to Rome, and the only solution lay in a great war. For Rome, as for the world in general, it would have been far better if she had embarked on a career of systematic conquest. Finally, let us briefly point out the effects of the policy of Rome on the development of civilisation. Rome and Italy assimilate more and more of the culture of Greece, and the latter, in its Latin garb, ultimately gains dominion over the entire West. Simultaneously, on the other hand, in the East a retrograde movement sets in. Rome strives by every means in her power to weaken the Seleucid empire, her perfidious policy foments every rebellion against it and places obstacles of all kinds in the way of its lawful sovereign. Thus, after a struggle of more than thirty years’ duration, all the East on the hither side of the Euphrates is lost to that empire. And although the Arsacid empire which succeeded it was neither nationalist nor hostile in principle to Hellenism, yet the mere fact that its centre was no longer on the Mediterranean but Babylonia, and that the connection of the Greek cities of the East with the mother-country was severed from that time forth, put an end to the spread of Hellenism and paved the way for the retrograde movement. It had already gained a firm footing in the Mediterranean; the support given by Antiochus IV, surnamed Epiphanes, to the Hellenising tendencies of certain Jews had driven the nationalist and religious party in Judea into revolt, and the disintegration of the empire by Roman intrigues gave them a fair field and enabled them to maintain their independent position. In the Lagid empire, about the same time, Ptolemy VII, surnamed Euergetes II, finally abandoned the old paths and the maxims of an earlier day, broke away from the Greeks, expelled the scholars of Alexandria, and sought to rely upon the Egyptian nationalist element among his subjects.