Secondly, he was a Greek. Hellenism was to him a real and profound enthusiasm. His early life as a Roman hostage must have immensely stimulated this side of his character. At Rome his associates were the Scipionic circle, to whom Greek culture had come as a revelation. The distinguished Roman families with whom the young prince lived read Greek, spoke Greek, discussed Greek, and were eager to act as the interpreters of Hellenism to their slower-witted countrymen. In these surroundings anyone boasting not only Greek but regal blood must have found his racial self-esteem flattered to an extraordinary degree. Antiochus’ first act on his release was to betake himself to the intellectual capital of Greece, to Athens, in whose citizenry he eagerly enrolled himself. In fact, he was an Athenian magistrate—στρατηγὸς ἐπὶ τὰ ὅπλα[131]—when news came to him of the assassination of his brother Seleucus and of the opportunities waiting one who could act quickly. When he was king, so much of his policy as did not look to the aggrandizement of his empire was directed to the rehabilitation of Greek cities and temples. Megalopolis, Tegea in Arcadia, Delos, Rhodes, were the beneficiaries of his Philhellenic enthusiasm. The truckling Samaritans—at least the Hellenizing party among them—knew that nothing would make a quicker appeal to him than to rename the sanctuary on Gerizim in honor of Zeus Hellenius.[132] He would probably have found it difficult to understand that anyone could seriously maintain the claims of any other culture against that of the Greeks, and no doubt received as a matter of course the representations of the Jewish Hellenizers that a little impetus would greatly expedite the Hellenizing process in Palestine. When we find Antiochus, king of kings, Manifest God, soliciting the suffrages of the Antiochene burghers for the office of “market-commissioner,” or of “district mayor,”[133] we are not to regard it as an eccentricity of the same sort that set him wrangling in the public squares with Hob and Dick, or pouring priceless ointments on his fellow-bathers in the public baths.[134] The maintenance of the structure of the Greek polis was an expression of Hellenic pride in a characteristically Hellenic institution. No one, to be sure, was deceived by it into thinking that Citizen Antiochus could not incontinently change into an irresponsible master at will, but, comedy as it was, it had a real significance, which did not escape even the scoffers and, least of all, the king.