Demetrius also dethrones Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia.…
157 BCE
Demetrius also dethrones Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia.
The Seleucid empire is temporarily united again.
Demetrius may had married his sister Laodice V, by whom he had three sons Demetrius II Nicator, Antiochus VII Sidetes and Antigonus.
Ariarathes V, king of Capadocia, is distinguished by the excellence of his character and his cultivation of philosophy and the liberal arts.
According to Livy, he had been educated at Rome; but this account may perhaps refer to another Ariarathes, while Ariarathes Eusebes had probably studied in his youth in Athens, where he seems to have become a friend of the future
Pergamene king Attalus II Philadelphus.
In consequence of rejecting, at the wish of the Romans, a marriage with Laodice V the sister of Demetrius I Soter, the latter makes war upon him, and brings forward Orophernes of Cappadocia, his brother and one of the supposititious sons of the late king, as a claimant of the throne.
Ariarathes is deprived of his kingdom, and flees to Rome about 157 BCE.
He is restored by the Romans, who, however, allow Orophernes to reign jointly with him (as is expressly stated by Appian, and implied by Polybius).