Aristonicus, as Eumenes III, initially tries to…

Sicily’s slave revolt (the so-called First Servile War) has pinned down Roman armies for three years.

Enna, which from its central position and great natural strength has become the center of Eunus’s operations, and the receptacle, of the plunder of Sicily, is the last place that holds out against the proconsul Rupilius, and is at length betrayed into his hands, its impregnable strength having defied all his efforts.

Cleon falls in battle in 132.

After Eunus’s army is defeated by a Roman army under the leadership of Perperna, Eunus, with members of his "court," takes refuge in a cavern, where he is subsequently captured, but dies before he can be punished.

According to Strabo, Enna suffered severely upon this occasion (which, indeed, could scarcely be otherwise); he regards this period as the commencement of its subsequent decline.

The Wisdom of Sirach, a collection of ethical teachings, is thought to have been written by Jesus ben Sirach, a Jewish scribe who had been living in Jerusalem and may have authored the work in Alexandria, Egypt in about 180–175 BCE, where he is thought to have established a school.

The Greek translator of the work states in his preface that he is the grandson of the author, and that he had come to Egypt in the thirty-eighth year of the reign of "Euergetes".

This epithet was borne by only two of the Ptolemies.

Of these, Ptolemy III Euergetes reigned only twenty-five years (247-222 BCE) and thus Ptolemy VIII Euergetes must be intended; he ascended the throne in the year 170 BCE, together with his brother Philometor, but he soon became sole ruler of Cyrene, and from 146 to 117 held sway over all Egypt.

He dated his reign from the year in which he received the crown (i.e., from 170).

The translator must therefore have gone to Egypt in 132 BCE.

Ptolemy VIII Eugertes, called Physcon, had seduced and married Cleopatra III, who is his wife's daughter, without divorcing Cleopatra II, who is infuriated, and by 132 BCE or 131 BCE, the people of Alexandria riot and set fire to the royal palace.

Physcon, Cleopatra III, and their children escape to Cyprus, while Cleopatra II has their twelve-year-old son Ptolemy Memphitis acclaimed as king.

Physcon is however able to get hold of the boy and kills him, sending the dismembered pieces to Cleopatra.

The ensuing civil war pits Cleopatra's Alexandria against the countryside, which supports Physcon.

Cappadocia under Ariarathes IV had come into relations with Rome, first as a foe espousing the cause of Antiochus the Great, then as an ally against Perseus of Macedon.

The kings henceforward had throws in their lot with the Republic as against the Seleucids, to whom they had been from time to time tributary.

Ariarathes V marches with the Roman proconsul Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus against Aristonicus, a claimant to the throne of Pergamon, and their forces are annihilated in 130 BCE.

The imbroglio that follows his death will ultimately lead to interference by the rising power of Pontus and the intrigues and wars that end in the failure of the dynasty.

Antiochus, with Palestine secured, now devotes his attention to recovering the Seleucid domains in the east.

He assembles a powerful army, which once more includes men of Persis and Elymais.

The strength in numbers and the wealth of this army make an impression on contemporaries, who report that even the simple soldiers wear shoes cobbled with gold.

With enthusiastic support from the Hellenized cities, …

…Antiochus drives the Parthians from Mesopotamia and Babylonia and …

…invades Media, where, with the arrival of winter, he quarters his troops in several localities.

Parthian ruler Mithridates I had died in 138 BCE; his son and successor rules as Phraates II.

The Parthians, perhaps hopeful of stirring up civil war behind Antiochus, release his brother Demetrius, who has been their prisoner for a decade.

Roman consul Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus, who had become Pontifex Maximus in 132 BCE after the death of the exiled Pontifex Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, had in the following year been elected consul along with Lucius Valerius Flaccus, the flamen Martialis.

Mucianus, according to ancient historians, was a wealthy, cultivated man who spoke several varieties of Greek fluently.

He and his brother were supportive of political and economic reforms, and as such, staunch supporters of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (killed in 133 BCE), who was married to his wife's niece, another Claudia.

Crassus Mucianus later marries his younger daughter to Tiberius's younger brother Gaius.

Mucianus had forbidden his colleague to fight against Aristonicus and fined him for neglecting his sacred duties.

The people remitted the fine but wished Flaccus to submit to his religious superior.

Mucianus nevertheless has come east to fight Aristonicus; he is the first Pontifex Maximus to voluntarily leave Italy (whereas Scipio Nasica Serapio had been sent out of Italy by the Senate).

He meets with defeat in 130 and, while retreating, is overtaken by the enemy and stabbed to death; according to one source (Valerius Maximus), he deliberately refused to reveal his identity to avoid the humiliation of being captured alive.

Popular stories about the prophet Daniel—one concerning his exposure (to King Cyrus) of a huge idol falsely believed to consume huge quantities of food and drink; the other an account of Daniel’s poisoning of a dragon worshiped as a god and his subsequent scheduled punishment of death in the lions’ den (he miraculously survives, unmolested for six days)—are probably written about 130, and known as Bel and the Dragon, the name given to chapter 14 of the extended Book of Daniel, which exists only in Koine Greek in the Septuagint.

Excluded from the Hebrew/Aramaic text of Daniel, this chapter, along with chapter 13, is referred to as deuterocanonical, in that it is not universally accepted among Christians as belonging to the canonical works accepted as the Bible.

The text is viewed as canonical by Catholics but as apocryphal by Protestants and typically not found in modern Protestant Bibles, though it was in the original 1611 edition of the King James Version.

It is listed in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.

The traditional theory that Daniel was the original author of the Book of Daniel has been disputed by recent scholars.

Critics of Daniel view the Book of Daniel as a pseudepigraph dated around 165 BCE that concerns itself primarily with the Maccabean era and the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes.

Those who share this view typically adhere to the Maccabean thesis when analyzing the Book of Daniel.

The stories of chapters 1-6 are considered to be a literary genre of legends that are older than the visions of chapters 7-12.

The visions in the latter half of Daniel are theorized to be written by an anonymous author in the Maccabean era, who assembles the legends with the visions as one book, in the second century BCE.

According to this view, it is not considered to be read as a prophecy of western political history or of an eschatological future.

Rather, the critical focus is on the witness to the religiosity of the Maccabean time period.

Emperor Han Wudi’s reign sees great territorial expansion and a burst of economic and cultural activity.

His armies push north and west into central Asia, east to Korea, and south to the coast.

Commerce with the states of western Asia increases, silk becomes a major export, and inventors discover ways to make paper and porcelain.

Han historiographer Sima Qian writes Shiqi (Shih chi) ("The Records of the Historians"), which will serve as the prototype for the official histories of successive dynasties.

Han scholars direct their efforts to find or reconstruct the Zhou classics banned during the Qin dynasty.

Confucianism begins to replace Legalism as the Han dynasty’s orthodox philosophy.