Balas, now master of the Seleucid empire, had pacified Palestine by naming Jonathan Maccabeus as Jewish governor, but had alienated the Syrian population by his revelry while feigning interest in politics and Stoic philosophy.
Whatever the truth behind this, the young king has been forced to depend heavily on his Ptolemaic support and has even struck portraits with the characteristic features of king Ptolemy I.
The middle son of King Demetrius, who had fled to Crete after the death of his father, his mother, and his older brother when Balas usurped the Seleucid throne, returns to Syria in the winter of 148-147 with an army of Cretan mercenaries led by the ruthless condottiere Lasthenes.
Ptolemy VI Philometor finds himself in Syria at this time, and when Balas fails in his attempt to have Philometor assassinated, the Egyptian ruler divorces his daughter Cleopatra Thea from Balas, who flees to Cilicia, and remarries her to the new pretender.
Although Ptolemy supports him, the people of Antioch and the Syrian army ask the Egyptian monarch himself to become their ruler.
Having already conquered most of southern Syria for his own interest, he declines, insisted that Demetrius will become king, knowing that Rome would never tolerate a unified Hellenistic state.
