The Greeks in Bactria and India c19.17

c19.17

It follows from this that the story in I Maccabees, that Antiochus attacked his own city of Susa, cannot be true, and also that the two late versions which grew up—that of Appian (second century A.D.), that he did sack his own temple, and that of Porphyry fr. 53, that he tried to sack it and was beaten off—cannot be true either, apart from the fact that these late stories cannot be set up against Polybius. They belong to a time when the facts about Nanaia’s temple and its connection with Susa were no longer known in the West (Porphyry fr. 56 apparently puts the temple on the summit of a holy mountain called Saba); and probably they all grew either out of Polybius’ unhappy phrase προέθετο στρατεύειν or out of the fact which itself gave rise to Polybius’ phrase and to the story in I Maccabees, the fact that Antiochus did march his army to Susa as a stage on the road to Parthia; I have given his route elsewhere (pp. 213 sq.). Whether Polybius understood what Antiochus was doing is very doubtful; but we cannot go behind him, and whatever the dealing between Antiochus and the temple authorities which is concealed beneath the obscure phrase μὴ συγχωρεῖν τῇ παρανομίᾳ, the words can only indicate some peaceful dealing and not an attack. Whether the late story of the attack may be a doublet of the story about Antiochus III is quite immaterial.