Rome to procure his restoration.
Both affairs were arranged by the senate entirely through diplomatic
agency, and substantially in accordance with Roman advantage.
In Syria Demetrius, who had the better title, was set aside, and
Antiochus Eupator was recognized as king; while the guardianship of
the royal boy was entrusted by the senate to the Roman senator Gnaeus
Octavius, who, as was to be expected, governed thoroughly in the
interest of Rome, reduced the war-marine and the army of elephants
agreeably to the treaty of 565, and was in the fair way of completing
the military ruin of the country. In Egypt not only was the
restoration of Philometor accomplished, but--partly in order to put
an end to the quarrel between the brothers, partly in order to weaken
the still considerable power of Egypt--Cyrene was separated from that
kingdom and assigned as a provision for Euergetes. "The Romans make
kings of those whom they wish," a Jew wrote not long after this, "and
those whom they do not wish they chase away from land and people."
But this was the last occasion--for a long time--on which the Roman
senate came forward in the affairs of the east with that ability and
energy, which it had uniformly displayed in the complications with
Philip, Antiochus, and Perseus. Though the internal decline of the
government was late in affecting the treatment of foreign affairs,
yet it did affect them at length. The government became unsteady and
vacillating; they allowed the reins which they had just grasped to
slacken and almost to slip from their hands. The guardian-regent
of Syria was murdered at Laodicea; the rejected pretender Demetrius
escaped from Rome and, setting aside the youthful prince, seized the
government of his ancestral kingdom under the bold pretext that the
Roman senate had fully empowered him to do so (592). Soon afterwards
war broke out between the kings of Egypt and Cyrene respecting the
possession of the island of Cyprus, which the senate had assigned first
to the elder, then to the younger; and in opposition to the most
recent Roman decision it finally remained with Egypt. Thus the
Roman government, in the plenitude of its power and during the most
profound inward and outward peace at home, had its decrees derided
by the impotent kings of the east; its name was misused, its ward
and its commissioner were murdered. Seventy years before, when
the Illyrians had in a similar way laid hands on Roman envoys,
the se