Scopas of Aetolia

Scopas (

Seleucids, with mixed success. He was executed in 196 BC at Alexandria

for conspiring to seize the power of the realm for himself.

Service in the Social War

At the period of the outbreak of the Social War (220–217 BC), he held a leading position among his countrymen. He was a kinsman of Ariston, who at this time held the office of strategos in the Aetolian League, and the latter confided to him the chief conduct of affairs. On this account it was to Scopas that Dorimachus applied for assistance after the ill success of his predatory expedition against Messenia, and although no pretext had been given for involving the Aetolians in war, these two generals were bold enough to undertake the enterprise on their own account.

Accordingly, in the spring of 220 BC they led an expedition against the Messenians, and not only ravaged the territories of the latter, but when

Anticyra in Phocis

. After its capture, the city was given up to the Aetolians (Livy, XXVI.24—26).

Service in Egypt

After the end of the war with Philip, we are told that the Aetolians were distracted with civil dissensions, and in order to appease these disorders and so as to provide some remedy against the burden of debts with which the chief persons in the country were oppressed, Scopas and Dorimachus were appointed to reform the constitution, in 204 BC. They were certainly not well qualified for legislators, and Scopas had only undertaken the charge from motives of personal ambition; on finding himself disappointed, he withdrew to

Antiochus the Great. At first he was completely successful, and reduced the whole province of Judaea into subjection to Ptolemy, but was afterwards defeated by Antiochus at the battle of Panium. Shutting himself up within the walls of Sidon

, after an ineffectual attempt by Ptolemy to relieve him he was ultimately compelled by famine to surrender (Polybius XIII.1-2, XVI.18-19, 39; Josephus, Antiguities XII.3.3; St. Jerome, ad Daniel, XI.15-16).

Notwithstanding this ill success he appears to have continued in high favour at the Ptolemaic court, and in 200 BC he was sent to Greece with a large sum of money to raise a mercenary force for the service of Ptolemy, a task which he performed so successfully as to carry back with him to Alexandria a body of above 6000 of the flower of the Aetolian youth (Livy XXXI.43). His confidence in the support of so large a force, united to his own abilities, and the vast wealth which he had accumulated in the service of the Egyptian king, appears to have inflamed his ambition, and led him to conceive the design of seizing by force the chief administration of the kingdom. But his projects were discovered before they were ripe for execution, and a force was sent by

Aristomenes

, the chief minister of Ptolemy, to arrest him. Scopas was taken by surprise, and unable to offer any resistance. He was at once led before the council of the young king, condemned to death, and executed in prison the next night, in 196 BC. According to Polybius he had well deserved his fate by the reckless and insatiable rapacity which he had displayed during the whole period of his residence in Egypt.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)