Daniel; The kings of the north and south

reply to post by St Udio

Thank you for that contribution.
We can't actually build too much on "end of years", because more modern translations give it simply as "after some years".
I intend to move on to the second half of the chapter next time.

[Footnote]

CLEOPATRA

How was Cleopatra “daughter of women” in a sense that other women were not?
Perhaps it means “outstanding among women”. She could have been famously beautiful like her more notorious descendant;
Caesar’s Cleopatra is labelled the seventh, and her rival was the thirteenth Ptolemy. My edition of the CAH says the twelfth, but there seems to have been a re-numbering since.
At one point Antiochus must have thought his hopes of controlling Egypt through the marriage were going to be fulfilled. There was a brief rumour that Ptolemy V had died, which got him moving quickly, but it proved to be untrue.

[Footnote]
Relating to the assassination of Seleucus IV; One son was a hostage in Rome, and another was a baby. The minister was probably hoping to rule in the child’s name. That is why the brother who took over was one to whom "authority had not been given"- he was not even the nearest heir.

[Footnote]

The Scipio brothers;
The official commander at the battle of Magnesis, where Antiochus the Great was defeated, was the Consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio.
His more famous brother Publius, who defeated Hannibal, was present as one of his aides.
Publius could not be elected Consul that year, because of a rule imposing an interval between consulships.
However, the CAH believes that Lucius was known to be incompetent, and that Publius had been sent with him to act as the real commander on the field.

In the closing paragraphs of the OP, I suggested some basic principles which ought to apply if someone is trying to match these verses against later history.
There was not space to add that this would be a much sounder method of interpretation than the fixing on isolated details of the text, such a noticing that one country is in the "north" of the world, or that another has got a queen.
I must admit I'm rather surprised that nobofy on ATS has thought to bring this chapter into discussion of "North v South Korea".

There will be a sequel to this thread covering the second half of the chapter.