The meeting soon afterwards took place, and the new king was united in marriage to the Princess Cleopatra, receiving with his bride a right royal dower. Jonathan, the Jew, assisted at the wedding _fêtes_, and was very cordially and magnificently treated by the two monarchs. A short time, however, and the impostor began to show the cloven hoof. He commenced his almost unaccountable perfidies by an attempt to overthrow Jonathan, but his forces being defeated by that skilful warrior, he repudiated the affair as carried out without his sanction, and pretended to be pleased with the want of success of his own troops. Aroused from the voluptuousness and profligacy into which he had plunged by the intelligence of an invasion of his dominions by Demetrius, a son of the late king of that name, he prepared for war. About this time he treacherously endeavoured to destroy his father-in-law, Ptolemy, by means of Ammonius, a friend of his; the plot being discovered, Ptolemy wrote to Alexander, and demanded that condign punishment should be administered to Ammonius, but when he found that his demands were disregarded, he soon perceived whence the conspiracy had originated, and repented of having given his daughter in marriage to the pseudo Alexander. Having succeeded in getting the princess back into his own hands, he broke off his alliance with her husband, and at once entered into a league of mutual assistance and friendship with the young Demetrius, to whom he subsequently offered his daughter in marriage.
This prince was only too delighted with the terms of the embassage, and, without troubling himself as to the existence of Balas's prior claim, gladly accepted the hand of Cleopatra, coupled as it was with the armed assistance of her father. After some difficulty the Egyptian king persuaded the people of Antioch to receive Demetrius as their king, and then took the field with a force capable of supporting his new son-in-law's claims.
In the meanwhile Balas was not idle; but, hastening into Syria from Cecilia, where he was when the war broke out, he collected a large army, and, in right royal fashion, burnt and pillaged the country belonging to Antioch. Forced to give battle to the combined strength of Ptolemy and his son-in-law (for Demetrius had already espoused his antagonist's wife), the pretender was, however, beaten and put to flight. Seeking refuge in Arabia, his head was cut off by Zabdiel, an Arabian prince, and sent to Ptolemy. The Egyptian monarch, however, did not long enjoy his triumph, for shortly after the arrival of the head of his first son-in-law, he died from the effect of the wounds received in defeating him. For five years the pseudo Alexander reigned over a large portion of Asia, during which period he thoroughly disgusted his subjects by his absurd vanity and profligate conduct.