known; but it is not
perhaps generally recognized that intolerance and impious cupidity
formed a portion of the system on which he governed. There seems,
however, to be good reason to believe that, having exhausted his
treasury by his wars and his extravagances, Epiphanes formed a general
design of recruiting it by means of the plunder of his subjects. The
temples of the Asiatics had hitherto been for the most part respected by
their European conquerors, and large stores of the precious metals
were accumulated in them. Epiphanes saw in these hoards the means of
relieving his own necessities, and determined to seize and confiscate
them. Besides plundering the Temple of Jehovah at Jerusalem, he made a
journey into the southeastern portion of his empire, about B.C. 165, for
the express purpose of conducting in person the collection of the sacred
treasures. It was while he was engaged in this unpopular work that a
spirit of disaffection showed itself; the East took arms no less than
the West; and in Persia, or upon its borders, the avaricious monarch was
forced to retire before the opposition which his ill-judged measures had
provoked, and to allow one of the doomed temples to escape him. When he
soon afterwards sickened and died, the natives of this part of Asia saw
in his death a judgment upon him for his attempted sacrilege.

It was within twenty years of this unfortunate attempt that the dominion
of the Seleucidae over Persia and the adjacent countries came to an end.
The Parthian Empire had for nearly a century been gradually growing in
power and extending itself at the expense of the Syro-Macedonian; and,
about B.C. 163, an energetic prince, Mithridates I., commenced a series
of conquests towards the West, which terminated (about B.C. 150) in
the transference from the Syro-Macedonian to the Parthian rule of Media
Magna, Susiana, Persia, Babylonia, and Assyria Proper. It would seem
that the Persians offered no resistance to the progress of the new
conqueror. The Seleucidae had not tried to conciliate their attachment,
and it was impossible that they should dislike the rupture of ties which
had only galled hitherto. Perhaps their feeling, in prospect of the
change, was one of simple indifference. Perhaps it was not without some
stir of satisfaction and complacency that they saw the pride of the
hated Europeans abased, and a race, which, however much it might differ
from their own, was at least Asiatic, installed in powe