The Greeks in Bactria and India c19.6

c19.6

The story in I Maccabees is that Antiochus heard of a wealthy city called Elymais in Persia in which was a wealthy temple; he attacked the city but was beaten off and fled to Babylon where he died. This, as we shall see, is fiction, but the point is that the writer knew nothing of any attack upon, or intention to attack, a *temple*; the king attacks a *city*. This story is repeated by Josephus, who has added the name of the temple as that of Artemis.