prophetic outline dealing with events of our own day. The narrative
continues:

_Prophecy._--"The king of the south shall be strong, and one of his
princes ... shall be strong above him;... his dominion shall be a great
dominion." Verse 5.

_History._--The history testifies that the king of the south (Egypt,
under Ptolemy) was strong; but one of the four princes was "strong above
him." Seleucus, of Syria and the east, pushed his dominion northward,
subduing most of Asia Minor, and extending his boundary into Thrace, on
the European side, beyond the Dardanelles. Henceforward, as Mahaffy
says,

"there were three great kingdoms--Macedonia, Egypt,
Syria--which lasted, each under its own dynasty, till Rome
swallowed them up."--_"Alexander's Empire," p. 89._

Thus Seleucus took the territory of the north, and the Syrian power
became king of the north, its empire extending from Thrace, in Europe,
through Asia Minor to Syria and the Euphrates. The seat of empire was
removed from the east, and Antioch, in northern Syria, "once the third
city of the world," became the famous capital.

The prophecy next foretold in remarkable detail the contests between
these two strong powers, the king of the north (Syria and Asia Minor)
and the king of the south (Egypt). The conflict raged back and forth
till the coming of the Romans. The Holy Land was the frequent meeting
place of the contending armies. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes
it: