system, which these monarchs lazily adopted from their predecessors,
the Achaemenians, is one always open to great abuses, and needs the
strictest superintendence and supervision. There is no reason to believe
that any sufficient watch was kept over their satraps by the
Seleucid kings, or even any system of checks established, such as
the Achaemenidae had, at least in theory, set up and maintained. The
Greco-Macedonian governors of provinces seem to have been left to
themselves almost entirely, and to have been only controlled in the
exercise of their authority by their own notions of what was right or
expedient. Under these circumstances, abuses were sure to creep in; and
it is not improbable that gross outrages were sometimes perpetrated by
those in power--outrages calculated to make the blood of a nation boil,
and to produce a keen longing for vengeance. We have no direct evidence
that the Persians of the time did actually suffer from such a misuse of
satrapial authority; but it is unlikely that they entirely escaped the
miseries which are incidental to the system in question. Public opinion
ascribed the grossest acts of tyranny and oppression to some of the
Seleucid satraps; probably the Persians were not exempt from the common
lot of the subject races.

Moreover, the Seleucid monarchs themselves were occasionally guilty of
acts of tyranny, which must have intensified the dislike wherewith
they were regarded by their Asiatic subjects. The reckless conduct
of Antiochus Epiphanes towards the Jews is well 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