Hi there, you're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast.

Episode 73, the Seleucid Empire, the Anabasis of Antiochus the Great.

Antiochus's loss to Ptolemy the Fourth at the Battle of Raffia was certainly humiliating,

and not exactly what the young king envisioned as the promising start to his brilliant career.

If there was a silver lining to it all, he did manage to recapture the city of Seleu Kia by

the sea, and the treaty provided assurance that the Syrian border was safe from an Egyptian

invasion. Issues regarding the security of his empire as a whole remained, however,

as Antiochus feared the defeat at Raffia

could cause his soldiers to lose faith in him and switch their loyalty to a rival claimant to his crown.

Akaios, the self-proclaimed king of Aisha Minor. A member of the important family of Akaius, the elder,

the younger Akaius possessed a reasonable claim to the Syrian throne,

and already attempted to invade in 219, before being forced back by a mutiny among his soldiers.

Since the failed insurrection against Antiochus, he had busied himself by becoming involved in the political squabbles of Anatolia,

as both an arbitrator and outright conqueror, ruling from

this former Salucid capital at Sardis. He assisted the city of Pednelissus in the Antalya

province in southern Turkey against attacks by the city and peoples of Selgi, who were placed

under the yoke and forced to pay an indemnity, thus expanding Akaius' political reach along the Ionian

coast. The city-state of Rhodes looked to court in alliance with the king against Byzantium

by arranging for his reunion with his father and Dramachus, who was captured during the

third Syrian war and held as a prisoner in Alexandria. In spite of the circumstances with his father, Akaios

and the Egyptian government had likely been in cahoots since just before he revolted against

Antiochus. He was married to a daughter of Mithridates of Pontus, the sister of Laudicay

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