Daniel's Rise and Fall of Empires

Daniel's Rise and Fall of Empires

Kings of the South and the North

Daniel 11:18 "After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease; without his own reproach he shall cause [it] to turn upon him."

After this shall... After making peace with Egypt, Antiochus the Great prepared a great fleet of ships, subdued most of the maritime places on the coast of the Mediterranean and took many islands, including Rhodes, Samos, Colophon, and others.

But a prince... This refers to the Roman consul who defeated Antiochus, causing him to withdraw from Greece to Asia. The Romans then defeated him in Asia Minor, compelling him to abandon all the country north of the Taurus. Thus the reproach Antiochus planned to cause Rome to suffer was turned upon himself.

As we see above Antiochus tried to take advantage of the defeat of Phillip of Macedon by the Romans, and he took the islands of the archipelago. He had set his sights to conquer Greece, along the Mediterranean coastlands. But this brought him into conflict with Rome, so that a Roman, Lucius Scipio Asiaticus, repaid the Syrian aggression against Roman rights in the area with a resounding defeat.