Coele-Syria in the context of "Seleucus IV Philopator"

The Syrian Wars were a series of six wars between the Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, successor states to Alexander the Great's empire, during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC over the region then called Coele-Syria, one of the few avenues into Egypt. These conflicts drained the material and manpower of both parties and led to their eventual destruction and conquest by Rome and Parthia. They are briefly mentioned in the biblical Books of the Maccabees.

Syria (Arabic: ٱلشَّام, romanized: Ash-Shām or Shām), also known as Greater Syria or Syria-Palestine, is a historical region located east of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia, broadly synonymous with the Levant. Throughout history, the term Syria-Palestine referred to the area between the Taurus Mountains in the north and Arabia-Sinai in the south, however in modern times the term "Syria" is used to refer solely to the Syrian Arab Republic.

The term is originally derived from Assyria, an ancient Semitic-speaking civilization centered in northern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. During the Hellenistic period, the term Syria was applied to the entire Levant as Coele-Syria. Under Roman rule, the term was used to refer to the province of Syria, later divided into Syria Phoenicia and Coele Syria, and to the province of Syria Palaestina. Under the Byzantines, the provinces of Syria Prima and Syria Secunda emerged out of Coele Syria. After the Muslim conquest of the Levant, the term was superseded by the Arabic equivalent Shām, and under the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid caliphates, Bilad al-Sham was the name of the metropolitan province encompassing most of the region. In the 19th century, the name Syria was revived in its modern Arabic form to denote the whole of Bilad al-Sham, either as Suriyah or the modern form Suriyya, which eventually replaced the Arabic name of Bilad al-Sham.

The Beqaa Valley (Arabic: وادي البقاع, romanized: Wādī l-Biqā‘, Lebanese Arabic: [bʔaːʕ]; also romanized as Bekaa, Bekai, Biqâ, and Becaa) is a fertile valley in eastern Lebanon and its most important farming region. Industry, especially the country's agricultural industry, also flourishes in Beqaa. The region broadly corresponds to the Coele-Syria of classical antiquity.

The Beqaa is located about 30 km (19 mi) east of Beirut. The valley is situated between Mount Lebanon to the west and the Anti-Lebanon mountains to the east. It is the northern continuation of the Jordan Rift Valley, and thus part of the Great Rift Valley, which stretches from Syria to the Red Sea. Beqaa Valley is 120 kilometres (75 mi) long and 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) wide on average. It has a Mediterranean climate of wet, often snowy winters and dry, warm summers.

Lysias (/ˈlɪsiəs/; Greek: Λυσίας; Hebrew: ליזיאש; died 162 BC) was a 2nd-century BC general and governor of Syria under the Seleucid Empire.

Alexander I Theopator Euergetes, surnamed Balas (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος Βάλας, romanized: Alexandros Balas), was the ruler of the Seleucid Empire from 150 BC to August 145 BC. Picked from obscurity and supported by the neighboring Roman-allied Kingdom of Pergamon, Alexander landed in Phoenicia in 152 BC and started a civil war against Seleucid King Demetrius I Soter. Backed by mercenaries and factions of the Seleucid Empire unhappy with the existing government, he defeated Demetrius and took the crown in 150 BC. He married the princess Cleopatra Thea to seal an alliance with the neighboring Ptolemaic kingdom. His reign saw the steady retreat of the Seleucid Empire's eastern border, with important eastern satrapies such as Media being lost to the nascent Parthian Empire. In 147 BC, Demetrius II Nicator, the young son of Demetrius I, began a campaign to overthrow Balas, and civil war resumed. Alexander's ally, Ptolemaic king Ptolemy VI Philometor, moved troops into Coele-Syria to support Alexander, but then switched sides and threw his support behind Demetrius II. At the Battle of the Oenoparus River in Syria, he was defeated by Ptolemy VI and he died shortly afterward.