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Philip II Philoromaeus or Barypos (heavy-foot) was son of the Seleucid king Philip I Philadelphus and the last king of the Seleucid dynasty. From a very humble start, he managed to supercede his famous name- and numbersake, Philip II of Macedonia. In the year 66 BC Pompey the Great made him a vassal-king of Syria. Philip did not, however, settle for this humble position. He first married queen Berenice IV of Egypt and thus united Syria and Egypt under a common rule. The Jewish kings of the Hasmonean dynasty were subjugated in a swift campaign, as were the Arab rulers of Petra.
Following the return of Pompey to Rome and his subsequent defeats, Philip broke free from Roman supervision and attacked the Parthians, who were in the middle of a dynastic feud. After a great victory outside [Babylon] Philip managed to negotiate a marriage with the daughter of the Parthian king Phraates III, and in the year 56 BC he became king of Parthia following the death of his step-father. Having thus become the ruler of almost the entire empire of Alexander the Great, Philip moved his capital to Susa in Persia, where he resided in style for a few years as the last of the Greek kings, planning campaigns against the rebellious provinces of eastern Persia as well as against the Romans. In 51 BC, however, Philip was assassinated by a chamberlain, and thus the brief reconquest of all the territories of Alexander the Great was terminated. A native Parthian king Orodes II brought his dynasty back to power, and Syria was made a Roman province.
