eigns, each of which was now disposed to come forward with
its candidates and its claims. All these Ptolemy Ceraunus boldly set
aside. He endeavored to secure all those who were friendly to the
ancient house of Antipater by saying that he was Antipater's grandson
and heir; and, on the other hand, to conciliate the partisans of
Lysimachus, by saying that he was Lysimachus's avenger. This was in
one sense true, for he had murdered Seleucus, the man by whom
Lysimachus had been destroyed. He relied, however, after all, for the
means of sustaining himself in his new position, not on his reasons,
but on his troops; and he accordingly advanced into the country more
as a conqueror coming to subjugate a nation by force, than as a
prince succeeding peacefully to an hereditary crown.

He soon had many rivals and enemies in the field against him. The
three principal ones were Antiochus, Antigonus, and Pyrrhus. Antiochus
was the son of Seleucus. He maintained that his father had fairly
conquered the kingdom of Macedon, and had acquired the right to reign
over it; that Ptolemy Ceraunus, by assassinating Seleucus, had not
divested him of any of his rights, but that they all descended
unimpaired to his son, and that he himself, therefore, was the true
king of Macedon. Antigonus was the son of Demetrius, who had reigned
in Macedon at a former period, before Lysimachus had invaded and
conquered the kingdom. Antigonus therefore maintained that his right
was superior to that of Ptolemy, for his father had been the
acknowledged sovereign of the country at a period subsequent to that
of the reign of Antipater. Pyrrhus was the third claimant. He had held
Macedon by conquest immediately before the reign of Lysimachus, and
now, since Lysimachus had been deposed, his rights, as he alleged,
revived. In a word, there were four competitors for the throne, each
urging claims compounded of rights of conquest and of inheritance, so
complicated and so involved, one with the other, as to render all
attempts at a peaceable adjudication of them absolutely hopeless.
There could be no possible way of determining who was best entitled to
the throne in such a case. The only question, therefore, that remained
was, who was best able to take and keep it.

This question Ptolemy Ceraunus had first to try with Antigonus, who
came to invade the country with a fleet and an army from Greece. After
a very short but violent contest, Antigonus was defeated, both by sea