His younger brother Attalus II, who succeeded Eumenes, was similarly philhel-
lenic. In gratitude for the education he had received in Athens he built for the
Athenians the grand Stoa of Attalus (fig. 43), reconstructed by the American School
of Classical Studies; an inscription from the architrave survives recording this
endowment by Attalus and giving the dates of his reign 159–138. He had married the
widow of Eumenes, Stratonice, and adopted her son Attalus who became the last
king, reigning for five years till his death in 133, whereupon the kingdom was
bequeathed in his will to Rome.
Elsewhere philhellenism could be a cause of strife and tension leading to civil
war. The most notable example occurred in Jersualem, then under the control of the
Seleucids in the reign of Antiochus IV (175–164), a king whose patron deity was Zeus
and whose patronage of great building projects included at the beginning of his reign
funds for the completion of the colossal temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens on which
the grandly ornate Corinthian capitals were used for the first time on external
columns.
But when Seleucus departed this life and the kingdom was taken by Antiochus
called Epiphanes, Jason the brother of Onias usurped the priesthood by
illegitimate means, promising the king in a petition 360 talents of silver and 80
talents of other revenue. He undertook beyond this to pay a further 150 talents if
he were granted permission to establish by his own authority a gymnasium and a
corps of ephebes and enroll those in Jerusalem as ‘Antiochenes’.
When the king agreed and he gained the office, he immediately set about
converting his fellow-countrymen to the Greek way of life. Abolishing the existing
royal privileges. .. and the legitimate institutions, he brought in illegal customs.
For he saw fit to establish a gymnasium below the acropolis and lead there the
most athletic of the ephebes wearing sunhats. There was such a flowering of
Hellenism and advance of gentile customs through the overwhelming wickedness
of the impious Jason – no true high priest – that the priests were no longer
conscientious over the duties concerned with the sacrifice, but, despising the
Temple and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to take part in the unlawful
exercises in the palaestra as soon as the sound of the discus summoned them.
(II Maccabees, 4, 7–10 in the Septuagint Bible)Modern scholars tend to see the king taking sides in conflict between modern
Hellenising Jews, who combined the Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek
culture, and orthodox traditionalists, two groups that had existed without notable
strife in Alexandria and Antioch from the third century. Antiochus went so far as
to outlaw Jewish religious practices, a prohibition not usual in the Macedonian
kingdoms, where the usual policy was to let native populations retain traditional
90 THE GREEKS