Antiochus Epiphanes

Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Antíochos ho Epiphanḗs or "God Manifest", and lived between 215 BC – 164 BC was a Greek Hellenistic king. He ruled the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death.

He was a son of King Antiochus III the Great. Originally named Mithradates or Mithridates. He assumed the name Antiochus after he ascended the throne. 

Antiochus almost conquered of Ptolemaic Egypt, and did persecute the Jews of Judea and Samaria, and was active during the rebellion of the Jewish Maccabees during the decline of the Roman republic and the rise of what would become the Roman empire..

Judea found itself between these two ruling powers in a weamened condition.

The Seleucid Kingdom of Syria in the north and Ptolemaic Egypt in the south were hold overs of Alexander the Great’s fractured empire.

They warred with each other for over a century while the Jewish nation sat at the center of these conflict including the time of Daniel 11.

Antiochus IV was extravagant but spread among the masses bounties, donations, and benefits which degenerates the people.<Ref name="desliberty">Destroyers of liberty

"That the man who first ruined the Roman people twas he who first gave them treats and gratuities. But this mischief crept secretly and gradually in, and did not openly make it's appearance in Rome for a considerable time." Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus (c. 100 AD.) This would include Julius Caesar and eventually Augustus Caesar which is why Plutarch also reported, “The real destroyers of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits.” This was a major theme of the Bible:

There were tables of welfare which were both snares and a traps as David and Paul stated and Peter warned would make us merchandise and curse children. Proverbs 23 told us not to not eat the "dainties" offered at those tables of Rulers and Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 we cannot eat of those tables and the table of the Lord. We are not to consent to their covetous systems of One purse or Corban which makes the word of God to none effect.

We know when the masses become accustomed to those benefits of legal charity which are the rewards of unrighteousness provided by benefactors who exercise authority and the Fathers of the earth through the covetous practices that makes men merchandise and curse children as a surety for debt. People did not know what this leads to within society.

His contributions were to be a snare for the people.

He also supplemented the Seleucid army with mercenaries. All of this cost the Seleucid treasury, but the Empire was apparently able to raise enough taxes to pay for it. His eccentric behavior and unexpected interactions with common people such as appearing in the public bath houses and applying for municipal offices led his detractors to call him Epimanes (Ἐπιμανής, Epimanḗs, "The Mad"), a word play on his title Epiphanes ("God Manifest").