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For a century, the sharing of Syria between Seleucids and Ptolemy’s dynasty, the Lagids, stayed the same, with only slight variations. Despite several attempts of the Seleucids to reunite it all under their power, it was instead the Lagids who almost succeeded. One can discount the First Syrian War (274–271 BCE), of which almost nothing is known, and even the second one (260–253 BCE), which took place almost entirely in Asia Minor, because they had no lasting result. On the other hand, the death of Antiochus II in 246 BCE widowed the sister of the Lagid Ptolemy III, and left a newborn heir. However, the grown son of his first wife Laodice, Seleucus (II) proclaimed himself king and succeeded in ending the Lagid attempt at total dominance of Syria and Seleucid Mesopotamia (Third Syrian War or Laodicean War, 246–241 BCE). However, he could not prevent the Lagid garrisons from setting up camp in Seleucia Pieria, port of Antioch, and close to Laodicea by the Sea (Ras Ibn Hani). A new attempt to conquer Lagid Syria by Antiochus III in 219 BCE (Fourth Syrian War) was at first victorious, then failed miserably after the defeat of this king at Raphia in 217 BCE; the only positive result was the expulsion of the Lagid garrisons from Northern Syria. It was not until a new Syrian War, the fifth, in 202–199 BCE, that the entire country was finally reunited under one single authority. Despite the disputes and attempts at reconquest, the Syro-Mesopotamian Near East was finally placed under a single and unified royal authority, that of the Seleucids. With Antiochus III, Alexander’s empire seemed to be almost established again and the Syro-Mesopotamian whole formed the heart of an immense kingdom, stretching from the Aegean Sea to the borders of India and Central Asia. Yet in a few years, because of the king’s failures in Europe and then in Asia Minor when faced with Rome (the defeat at Magnesia in 190 BCE, the peace treaty of Apamea in Phrygia in 188 BCE), the kingdom was seriously diminished and weakened. When Antiochus III died in 187 BCE, the kingdom only included Syria, Mesopotamia, and western Iran. The heart of the kingdom had become almost the entire kingdom!