It produced wheat, barley, millet, sesame, vetches, dates, and fruits of all kinds.

The return of the wheat crop was from fifty to a hundred-and-fifty-fold; while that of the barley crop was three hundred-fold.

The dates were of unusual size and superior flavor; and the palm, which abounded throughout the region, furnished an inexhaustible supply both of fruit and timber.
The great increase of power which Mithridates had obtained by his conquests could not be a matter of indifference to the Syrian monarchs.
Their domestic troubles--the contentions between Philip and Lysias, between Lysias and Demetrius Soter, Soter and Alexander Balas, Balas and Demetrius II., Demetrius II.

and Tryphon, had so engrossed them for the space of twenty years (from B.C.162 to B.C.

142) that they had felt it impossible, or hopeless, to attempt any expedition towards the East, for the protection or recovery of their provinces.