<head>Wedding of Antiochus</head>Antiochus, surnamed the Great, he whom the Romans overthrew, upon reaching <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Chalcis&groupId=457&placeId=853">Chalcis</a>, as Polybius tells us in his 20th Book, celebrated his wedding. He was then fifty years old, and had undertaken two very serious tasks, one being the liberation of Greece, as he himself gave out, the other a war with <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a>.
He fell in love, then, with a maiden of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Chalcis&groupId=457&placeId=853">Chalcis</a> at the time of the war, and was most eager to make her his wife, being himself a wine-bibber and fond of getting drunk.
She was the daughter of Cleoptolemus, a noble Chalcidian, and of surpassing beauty.
So celebrating his wedding at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Chalcis&groupId=457&placeId=853">Chalcis</a>, he spent the whole winter there not giving a moment\'s thought to the situation of affairs.
He gave the girl the name <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Euboea&groupId=584&placeId=1091">Euboea</a>, and when defeated in the war fled to Ephesus with his bride.
Not a soul escaped from the whole army except the five hundred who were round the king, and a very small number of the ten thousand soldiers whom Polybius tells us he had brought over with him to Greece.
Walbank Commentary