Commentaria in I Machabaeorum
Moreover this Antiochus Josephus surnames Soter, that is, saviour; but Eusebius and others Sidetes, or Sedetes, from the city Sida, either of Cilicia, as Eusebius will have it, or of the neighbouring Pamphylia, as Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny and others have it, because Antiochus was born or brought up in Sida. Appian surnames him Pius. Cleopatra therefore made Antiochus her brother-in-law her husband and king, and so had at once two brothers living as husbands, namely Demetrius captive among the Parthians, and Antiochus Sidetes reigning in Asia and Syria: whereas before she had been betrothed by her father Philometor to Alexander Balas, king of Syria, who was a cousin of Demetrius; but see the just vengeance of the Deity on the incestuous. For Antiochus was slain in Persia, II Mach. i, 16; but Cleopatra, offended at last with her son Antiochus Grypus, whom she had borne to Demetrius and raised to the kingdom, offered him poison; but the son, noticing it, compelled his mother to drink it under show of dutifulness. She therefore killed herself with her own poison which she had prepared for her son. So Eusebius and others. Moreover Antiochus Grypus, her son by Demetrius, was slain by Antiochus Cyzicenus, son of the same Cleopatra by Antiochus Sidetes. Again Seleucus, son of Antiochus Grypus, avenging his father’s death, killed Antiochus Cyzicenus his uncle; but divine vengeance pursued Seleucus in turn; for he was conquered by Antiochus Eusebes, son of Cyzicenus, and burnt in the royal house by the Mopsuestians in Cilicia, where he resided. So Josephus, Justin, Appian and others. See here that the cause of the parricides was the incest of Cleopatra and Antiochus Sidetes. For she was wife of three kings of Syria, namely first of Alexander Balas, who was a son of Antiochus Epiphanes; then of the two brothers, sons of Demetrius the elder and grandsons of Seleucus, who had been the elder brother of Epiphanes, namely Demetrius the younger and Antiochus Sidetes, as I said.
2. KING ANTIOCHUS TO SIMON, etc., GREETING.—This Antiochus was a most bitter enemy of the Jews, as is clear ver. 27 ff., but here through necessity and the tyranny of Tryphon his enemy he seeks a treaty with Simon, and implores his help, granting him and the Jews ample privileges.
5. NOW THEREFORE I CONFIRM TO THEE ALL THE OBLATIONS.—In Greek aphaireimata, that is, removals, namely of burdens, namely the immunities granted to the Jews by former kings; whence he says: WHICH THE KINGS BEFORE ME REMITTED TO THEE.
6. AND I GIVE THEE LEAVE TO COIN THY OWN MONEY,—this was a sign of supreme dominion which Antiochus here restores to the Jews, whereas Nabuchodonosor had taken it from them, capturing Jerusalem and subjugating Judea, and the other kings of the Persians and Greeks, who successively transferred the kingdoms of Nabuchodonosor to themselves. Wherefore the Jews then used money struck now by the Chaldeans, now by the Persians, now by the Greeks. For to coin money belongs to supreme power, such as is royal, imperial and absolute ducal.
7. AND LET JERUSALEM BE HOLY AND FREE.—In Greek, and the holy things be free, that is, I command the holy temple, and its holy worship, and its holy victims, vessels and rites to be free, that they may be freely exercised by Simon and the Jews, and not be hindered by any of the Gentiles, or defiled by the victims and superstitions of idols.
…“royal,” for the Greek is basilika, which are commonly called regalia, namely rights. These Antiochus remits to the Jews. What Simon replied to Antiochus Scripture does not say, but Josephus asserts that Simon willingly accepted the indulgences and demands of Antiochus.
11. AND HE CAME (Tryphon) FLYING ALONG BY THE SEA COAST TO DORA,—namely the region. In Greek, fleeing by sea; Vatablus, fleeing to maritime Dora. The manner of the flight Frontinus relates, book II, Strat. xiii: “Tryphon, he says, king of Syria, conquered, scattered money all along his flight, and by delaying the horsemen of Antiochus who pursued it, escaped.”
15. AND NUMENIUS CAME, whom Simon had sent to the Romans, to renew the treaty with them.
He brought the letters of the Romans, both treaty-letters to Simon, and prohibitory letters to Ptolemy and the neighbouring kings, not to harass the Jews.
16. LUCIUS THE CONSUL OF THE ROMANS.—Serarius thinks that for “Lucius” we should read “Lepidus,” who was consul in the following year. But all Codices have “Lucius.” Wherefore many here understand L. Furius Philus, who with Attilius Serranus was consul in the year of the building of Rome 617. But these hardly equate the years of the city with the years of the Greeks. Others understand L. Caecilius Metellus, who was consul in the year of the Greeks 170; but these do not observe that Numenius was sent by Simon to Rome in the year 172 of the Greeks, and therefore two years after the consulship of Metellus. Wherefore Salianus thinks this Lucius is Calpurnius Piso, who in the preceding year had been consul at Rome with his colleague Popilius, at the end of which he had dismissed the legates of Simon from Rome, who therefore reached Jerusalem to Simon at the beginning of the following year. For this Calpurnius Valerius Maximus, book I, chap. ix, calls by the forename Lucius.
TO KING PTOLEMEE, GREETING.—This is Ptolemy surnamed Physcon or Evergetes, who succeeded in the kingdom to his brother Ptolemy Philometor, now dead, as was said chap. xi, 18, and was cruel and incestuous. For as Justin says of him, book XXXVIII: “After which he was no milder to the people who had called him to the kingdom. For, licence of slaughter being given to the foreign soldiery, all things ran daily with blood, and he repudiated his own sister, her daughter, a virgin, having been violated by force and taken to himself in marriage.” And soon he thus describes his form and figure: “For he was both deformed in face, and short in stature, and with the fatness of his belly like not a man but a beast, which ugliness his excessive thinness and transparent garment increased; as though by cunning there were put on view what a modest man should have hidden with all care.” The same Ptolemy Physcon, on the very day of the nuptials with Cleopatra, killed her little son whom she had borne to Ptolemy Philometor his brother, and who was therefore heir of the kingdom, in the very embrace of his mother, as Justin testifies, book XXXVIII. This Ptolemy Physcon therefore, younger brother of Philometor, was called brother and husband and son-in-law of Cleopatra; for he did violence to Cleopatra’s daughter, then repudiating the mother took the daughter to wife; soon the people, on account of his excessive cruelty, drove him out, and gave the kingdom to Cleopatra his former wife, mother and sister, and pulled down and cast down his statues and images; which he, thinking done by the zeal of his sister, killed the son whom he had begotten of her in Cyprus, and having the body divided into limbs and put in a chest, had it brought to the mother on her birthday amid the feast. So Justin, books XXXVIII and XXXIX. Rightly then do the Romans write to this monster of cruelty and incest, not to exert it against the Jews, his neighbours.