In another quarter, too, the Syrian power received a severe shake through the injudicious violence of Epiphanes. The Oriental temples had, in some instances, escaped the rapacity of Alexander’s generals and “Successors;” their treasuries remained unviolated, and contained large hoards of the precious metals. Epiphanes, having exhausted his own exchequer by his wars and his lavish gifts, saw in these un-plundered stores a means of replenishing it, and made a journey into his south-eastern provinces for the purpose. The natives of Elymais, however, resisted his attempt, and proved strong enough to defeat it; the baffled monarch retired to Tabae, where he shortly afterward fell sick and died. In the popular belief his death was a judgment upon him for his attempted sacrilege; and in the exultation caused by the event the bands which joined these provinces to the Empire must undoubtedly have been loosened. Nor did the removal of Epiphanes (B.C. 164) improve the condition of affairs in Syria. The throne fell to his son, Antiochus Eupator, a boy of nine, according to Appian, or, according to another authority, of twelve years of age. The regent, Lysias, exercised the chief power, and was soon engaged in a war with the Jews, whom the death of Epiphanes had encouraged to fresh efforts. The authority of Lysias was further disputed by a certain Philip, whom Epiphanes, shortly before his death, had made tutor to the young king. The claims of this tutor to the regent’s office being supported by a considerable portion of the army, a civil war arose between him and Lysias, which raged for the greater part of two years (B.C. 163-2), terminating in the defeat and death of Philip. But Syrian affairs did not even then settle down into tranquillity. A prince of the Seleucid house, Demetrius by name, the son of Seleucus IV., and consequently the first cousin of Eupator, was at this time detained in Rome as a hostage, having been sent there during his father’s lifetime as a security for his fidelity. Demetrius, with some reason, regarded his claim to the Syrian throne as better than that of his cousin, the son of the younger brother, and being in the full vigor of early youth, he determined to assert his pretensions in Syria, and to make a bold stroke for the crown. Having failed to obtain the Senate’s consent to his quitting Italy, he took his departure secretly, crossed the Mediterranean in a Carthaginian vessel, and, landing in Asia, succeeded within a few months in establishing himself as Syrian monarch.