For the king of the north shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after certain years with a great army and with much equipment.
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Jerome
AD 420
This indicates that Antiochus the Great, who despised the worthlessness of Ptolemy Philopator (for he had fallen desperately in love with a lute-player named Agathoclea and also her brother, retaining Agatho-cles himself as his concubine and afterwards appointing him as general of Egypt), assembled a huge army from the upper regions of Babylon. And since Ptolemy Philopator was now dead, Antiochus broke his treaty and set his army in motion against |125 Philopator's four-year-old son, who was called Epiphanes. For so great was the dissoluteness and arrogancy of Agathoclea, that those provinces which had previously been subjected to Egypt rose up in rebellion, and even Egypt itself was troubled with seditions. Moreover Philip, King of Macedon, and Antiochus the Great made peace with each other and engaged in a common struggle (708) against Agathocles and Ptolemy Eprphanes, on the understanding that each of them should annex to his own dominion those cities of Ptolemy which lay nearest to them. And so this is what is referred to in this passage, which says that many shall rise up against the king of the South, that is, Ptolemy Epiphanes, who was then a mere child.
