Epiphanes, fully deserved that trust. While the young king looked up to
him as a father, the country was well governed, and his orders obeyed;
but, as he grew older, his good feelings were weakened by the pleasures
which usually beset youth and royalty. The companions of his vices
gained that power over his mind which Aristomenes lost, and it was not
long before this wise tutor and counsellor was got rid of. The king,
weary perhaps with last night's debauchery, had one day fallen
asleep when he should have been listening to the speech of a foreign
ambassador. Aristomenes gently shook him and awoke him. His flatterers,
when alone with him, urged him to take this as an affront. If, said
they, it was right to blame the king for falling asleep when worn
out with business and the cares of state, it should have been done in
private, and not in the face of the whole court. So Aristomenes was put
to death by being ordered to drink poison. Epiphanes then lost that love
of his people which the wisdom of the minister had gained for him; and
he governed the kingdom with the cruelty of a tyrant, rather than with
the legal power of a king.

[Illustration: 207.jpg OUTSIDE ROSETTA]

Even Aristonicus, his favourite eunuch, who was of the same age as
himself, and had been brought up as his playfellow, passed him in the
manly virtues of his age, and earned the praise of the country for
setting him a good example, and checking him in his career of vice.

In the thirteenth year of his reign (B.C. 192), when the young king
reached the age of eighteen, Antiochus the Great sent his daughter
Cleopatra into Egypt, and the marriage, which had been agreed upon
six years before, was then carried into effect; and the provinces of
Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Judaea, which had been promised as a dower,
were, in form at least, handed over to the generals of Epiphanes.
Cleopatra was a woman of strong mind and enlarged understanding; and
Antiochus hoped that, by means of the power which she would have over
the weaker mind of Epiphanes, he should gain more than he lost by giving
up Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. But she acted the part of a wife and
a queen, and, instead of betraying her husband into the hands of her
father, she was throughout the reign his wisest and best counsellor.

Antiochus seems never to have given up his hold upon the provinces which
had been promised as the dower; and the peace between the two countries,
which had been kept during