Seleucid king 175–164 BC — never named in Daniel (the text calls him 'a contemptible man,' 11:21), but wearing his biography: the throne seized by intrigue, the high priest Onias III murdered, two Egyptian wars, the Roman circle in the sand at Eleusis (168 BC), and the desecration of Jerusalem's temple — the daily offering halted and 'the abomination that desolates' erected, 15 Kislev 167 BC (1 Maccabees 1:54 quotes Daniel's own phrase for it). He styled himself Epiphanes, 'God Manifest'; contemporaries punned Epimanes, 'the madman.' He died at Tabae in Persia, 164 BC — a death whose mismatch with Daniel 11:40-45 is the oldest crux in the book's interpretation (Porphyry vs Jerome; see the chapter's notes).