Poured concrete has become the Romans’ basic…

Zabinas at a battle in Damascus in 126 BCE manages to defeat Demetrius II, who flees to Ptolemais but his wife Cleopatra Thea closes the gates against him.

He is killed on a ship near Tyre, after his wife deserts him.

His miserable death, after being captured and possibly tortured, is a fitting epitaph to the many shortcomings of his reign.

Demetrius II was certainly incapable of handling the developing threats to the Seleucid empire, but his reputation for cruelty was probably undeserved.

He was only around fourteen at his coronation, and the real power was in the hands of others.

He is succeeded by his queen Cleopatra Thea and then by two of their sons, Seleucus V Philometor and Antiochus VIII Grypus.

The Yuezhi are visited by a Chinese mission, led by Zhang Qian in 126 BCE, that is seeking an offensive alliance with the Yuezhi to counter the Xiongnu threat to the north.

Although the request for an alliance is denied by the son of the slain Yuezhi king, who prefers to maintain peace in Transoxiana rather than to seek revenge, Zhang Qian makes a detailed account, reported in the Shiji, that gives considerable insight into the situation in Central Asia at this time.

Zhang Qian, who spends a year with the Yuezhi and in Bactria, relates that "the Great Yuezhi live two thousand or three thousand li (832-1,247 kilometers) west of Dayuan (Ferghana), north of the Gui (Oxus) river.

They are bordered on the south by Daxia (Bactria), on the west by Anxi (Parthia), and on the north by Kangju (beyond the middle Jaxartes).

They are a nation of nomads, moving from place to place with their herds, and their customs are like those of the Xiongnu.

They have some 100,000 or 200,000 archer warriors."

Although the Yuezhi had remained north of the Oxus for a while, they have apparently obtained the submission of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom to the south of the Oxus.

The Yuezhi are organized into five major tribes, each led by a yabgu, or tribal chief, and known to the Chinese as Xiūmì in Western Wakhān and Zibak, Guishuang in Badakhshan and the adjoining territories north of the Oxus, Shuangmi in the region of Shughnan, Xidun in the region of Balkh, and Dūmì in the region of Termez.

Cleoptara Thea herself now takes power and soon also kills her oldest surviving son, Seleucus V.

Two different motives are given as reason for this deed: according to one version, he had attempted to claim the throne without her agreement (Livy, periochae 60; Justin 39.1.9); according to the other version, she was afraid that he might avenge the assassination of his father (Appian, Syriaca 69).

Massalia, one of the first Greek ports in Western Europe, soon growing to a population of over a thousand, is the first settlement given city status in the region of present France.

Facing an opposing alliance of the Etruscans, Carthage and the Celts, the Greek colony had allied itself with the expanding Roman Republic for protection.

This protectionist association had brought aid in the event of future attacks, and perhaps equally important, it had also brought the people of Massalia into the complex Roman market.

The city has thrived by acting as a link between inland Gaul, hungry for Roman goods and wine (which Massalia was steadily exporting by 500 BCE), and Rome's insatiable need for new products and slaves.

In 125 BCE, Rome comes to the defense of Massalia against invading Celts.

Ptolemy VIII no longer supports his pretender for the Seleucid throne, Alexander II Zabinas, by 124 BCE, instead backing Antiochus VIII Grypus, the son of Demetrius II Nicator and Cleopatra Thea.

Ptolemy marries his daughter Tryphaena, borne by his second wife Cleopatra III, to Antiochus VIII and sends him reinforcements.

The Yuezhi are apparently involved in a war against the Parthians in 124 BCE, during which the Parthian king Artabanus I of Parthia is wounded in the arm and dies immediately; his successor is Mithridates II.

Details from Chinese sources seem to indicate that the nomad invasion did not end civilization in Bactria entirely.

Hellenized cities continue to exist for some time, and the well-organized agricultural systems are not demolished.

Some time after 124 BCE, possibly disturbed by further incursions of rivals from the north and apparently vanquished by the Parthian king Mithridates II, successor to Artabanus, the Yuezhi move south to Bactria.

Bactria had been conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great in 330 BCE and since settled by the Hellenistic civilization of the Seleucids and the Greco-Bactrians for two centuries.

This event is recorded in Classical Greek sources, when Strabo presented them as a Scythian tribe and explained that the Tocharians—together with the Assianis, Passianis and Sakaraulis—took part in the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in the second half of the second century BCE: "Most of the Scythians, beginning from the Caspian Sea, are called Dahae Scythae, and those situated more towards the east Massagetae and Sacae; the rest have the common appellation of Scythians, but each separate tribe has its peculiar name.

All, or the greatest part of them, are nomads.

The best known tribes are those who deprived the Greeks of Bactriana, the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacarauli, who came from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes, opposite the Sacae and Sogdiani."

(Strabo, 11-8-1) A description of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom is made by Zhang Qian after the conquest by Yuezhi: "Daxia (Greco-Bactria) is located over 2,000 li southwest of Dayuan, south of the Gui (Oxus) river.

Its people cultivate the land and have cities and houses.

Their customs are like those of Ta-Yuan.

It has no great ruler but only a number of petty chiefs ruling the various cities.

The people are poor in the use of arms and afraid of battle, but they are clever at commerce.

After the Great Yuezhi moved west and attacked the lands, the entire country came under their sway.

The population of the country is large, numbering some 1,000,000 or more persons.

The capital is called the city of Lanshi (Bactra) (modern Balkh) and has a market where all sorts of goods are bought and sold."

In a sweeping analysis of the physical types and cultures of Central Asia that he visited in 126 BCE, Zhang Qian reports that "although the states from Dayuan west to Anxi (Parthia), speak rather different languages, their customs are generally similar and their languages mutually intelligible.

The men have deep-set eyes and profuse beards and whiskers.

They are skillful at commerce and will haggle over a fraction of a cent.

Women are held in great respect, and the men make decisions on the advice of their women."

Aix (Aquae Sextiae; later known as Aix-en-Provence) is founded in 123 BCE on the principal routes to Italy and the Alps by the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus, who gives his name to its nearby mineral springs, following the destruction of the nearby Gallic oppidum at Entremon, which had been the capital of the Celtic-Ligurian confederation.

The Allobroges people are the Celtic inhabitants of the Savoy, a strategic region of southeastern France that extends from Lake Geneva to the Isere River and borders on the Italian frontier.

The name Savoy stems from the Late Latin Sapaudia, referring to a fir forest.

The Greek historian Polybius made the first recorded reference to the Allobroges people in 150-130 BCE, telling of their unsuccessful resistance to Hannibal when he crossed the Alps in 218 BCE.

In 123 BCE, the Allobroges give shelter to king Tutomotulus (or Teutomalius), of the Salluvii tribe that Rome had conquered and refuses to hand him over, Rome declares war and moves against them.

The Balearic Islands seem to have been virtually independent after the fall of Carthage.

The islanders, their celebrity in war notwithstanding, were generally very quiet and inoffensive.

The Romans, however, easily find a pretext for charging them with complicity with the Mediterranean pirates, and they are conquered by Q. Caecilius Metellus, thence surnamed Balearicus, in 123 BCE.

Metellus settles three thousand Roman and Spanish colonists on the larger island, and founds the cities of Palma and Pollentia, loosely incorporating the islands into the province of Tarraconensis.

Palma is founded as a Roman camp upon the remains of a Talaiotic settlement on the south of the island; Pollentia, on the site of a Phoenician settlement in the northeast.

While Pollentia is to serve as port to Roman cities on the northwestern Mediterranean Sea, …