Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE RULE OF THE PTOLEMIES The great empire of Alexander fell with the hand that had created it, and the four parts into which it was broken became the possession not of the best, as he had wished, but of the strongest who survived him. Syria was seized by Seleucus, and Egypt by Ptolemy Lagus, a general in Alexander's army; Palestine occupying an important and exposed position between the two great powers, not unlike that of Belgium in the recent European war, was the coveted possession of both. For twenty years it was the bone of contention over which the greedy Ptolemies and Seleucids wrangled, but the year B. c. 301, when it became the undisputed property of Egypt, marked the beginning of one of the most peaceful and prosperous eras of its existence. The new Greco-Macedonian rulers granted the Jews especial favors, partly on account of their important political position and partly because they were superior, both in culture and stability of character, to the other small nations of Syria and Egypt. Jews settling in Alexandriawere granted "isopolity" or rights of citizenship equal to those enjoyed by the Greeks and Macedonians; and Hebrews colonists in Antioch, the new capital of Syria, were accorded the same privilege. In Antioch, a payment of oil went with this right of citizenship, but as the Jews refused to accept it on account of the heathen rites used in its preparation, its value was made up to them in money. Attracted by commercial advantages, and the friendly disposition of the new sovereigns, Jewish pioneers were soon living side by side with Greeks in the cities founded by Alexander, and the fusion of which he had dreamed was gradually taking place. Among these cities, the one which bore the name of its founder and followed in its outline the sha...