Daniel 11:37

And the gods of his fathers he will not regard] The honours paid by him to foreign deities implied a depreciation of the gods of his own country. He was particularly devoted to the cult of Jupiter Capitolinus, or Zeus Olympios. Even before he became king, while halting at Athens on his way home from Rome, he contributed largely to the restoration of the Olympieion in that city; afterwards, he built in Daphne, the suburb of Antioch, a temple to Zeus Olympios, with a colossal statue of the god, modelled on the famous one of Pheidias at Olympia, and began, though he did not live to complete it, a yet more magnificent temple to him in Antioch itself (Livy xli. 20). His coins also exhibit constantly (on the obverse) the head of either Zeus Olympios or Apollo; and, as was just remarked, in those belonging to the latter part of his reign the king himself bears the title Νικηφόρος, an epithet belonging properly to Zeus.

and neither the desire of women, nor any god, will he regard] The -desire of women" must, from the context, be the designation of some divinity most probably (Ewald, Bevan) Tammuz, a celebrated Syrian and Phœnician deity, known to the Greeks as Adonis, whose rites were popular among women.

Adonis in the legend was a beautiful youth, the dearly loved spouse of Aphroditè, snatched from her by a cruel fate, and bitterly bewailed by her. The festival of Adonis consisted largely in an imitation of the mourning of Aphroditè, and hence was specially observed by women; cf. Ezekiel 8:14 (where the prophet sees in vision, in the precincts of the Temple, -the womenweeping for Tammuz"); Jerome on Ez. l. c.-plangitur a mulieribus quasi mortuus, et postea reviviscens canitur atque laudatur [388] "; Aristoph. Lysistr. 389 ff.; and Theocritus" Idyll (xv.) entitled Ἀδωνιάζουσαι, or -Women keeping festival to Adonis." According to Hippolytus, Refut. Hær. Daniel 11:9, the -Assyrians" (? Syrians) called him the -thrice-desired (τριπόθητος) Adonis": cf. Bion, in his Ἐπιτάφιος Ἀδώνιδος, ll. 24, 58.

[388] Cf. Milton, P. L. 1. 456 ff.:

Tammuz came next behind,

Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured

The Syrian damsels to lament his fate

In amorous ditties all a summer's day;

While smooth Adonis from his native rock

Ran purple to the sea supposed with blood

Of Tammuz yearly wounded. The love-tale

Infected Zion's daughters with like heat.

nor any god While there were some gods whom Antiochus honoured by erecting to them costly temples, he was ready enough, if in need of funds, to rob other temples of their treasures. Polybius (xxxi. 4. 10) expressly says that he plundered very many temples (ἱεροσυλήκει δὲ καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἱερῶν) in order to obtain money for his extravagances. He made an unsuccessful attempt to pillage a wealthy temple in Persia shortly before his death (ib.xxxi. 11; 1Ma 6:1-4 : see below).