According to Polybius, Philip V of Macedonia and Antiochus III of Syria, after the death of Ptolemy IV Philopator of Egypt, ‘each encouraging the other,’ agreed together to do away with Philopator's heir, the later Ptolemy Epiphanes, then a young child, and to divide his kingdom between themselves. This story appears twice in the historian's narrative. It is told in a brief form in the author's résumé of the contents of his history as given in his third book, where we are informed that, as the result of an agreement to divide the Egyptian Empire, Philip laid his hands on Samos, Caria and the region of the Aegean, while Antiochus seized the region of Syria Coele, and Phoenicia. It appears at greater length in the historian's fifteenth book, where he moralises on the subject, likening the two monarchs to the fish who devour the smaller members of their own kind and delivering a homily in which he shows that Nemesis, by arousing the Romans, brought on the two evil-doers the fate they had designed for their neighbour, and so visited on them the penalty they deserved, thereby teaching a lesson to posterity also.