The more he was beloved and esteemed by all, the more was his death a subject of suspicion, namely, that his father, thinking that his heir trod too closely on the heels of his own old age, had him taken off by poison, by some eunuchs, who recommend themselves to kings by the perpetration of such foul deeds.

People mentioned also, as another motive for that clandestine act of villany, that, as he had given Lysimachia to his son Seleucus, he had no establishment of the like kind, which he could give to Antiochus, for the purpose of banishing him also to a distance, under pretext of doing him honour.

Nevertheless, an appearance of deep mourning was maintained in the court for several days; and the Roman ambassador, lest his presence at that inauspicious time might be troublesome, retired to Pergamus.

The king, dropping the prosecution of the war which he had begun, went back to Ephesus; and there, keeping himself shut up in the palace, under colour of grief, held secret consultations with a person called Minio, who was his principal favourite.

Minio was utterly ignorant of the state of all foreign nations; and, accordingly, estimating the strength of the king from his successes in Syria or Asia, he was confident that Antiochus had not only superiority from the merits of his cause, and that the demands of the Romans were highly unreasonable; but also, that he would prove the more powerful in war.