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Prayer to Isis 
 
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 History of Egypt 
 
 From 330 B. C. to the Present Time 
 
 By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel; 
 Member of the Ecole Langugs Orientales, Paris; 
 Russian, German, French Orientalist and Philologist 
 
 CONTAIKING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED 
 COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Volume I. 
 
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 THE GROLIER SOCIETY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
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Sonuoiggeur lEHition 
 
 Limited to Two Hundred Copies 
 for England and America 
 
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 Copyright, igo4 
 By The Grolier Society 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Professor Maspero closes Ms History of Egypt with 
 the conquest of Alexander the Great. There is a sense 
 of dramatic fitness in this selection, for, with the com- 
 ing of the Macedonians, the sceptre of authority passed 
 for ever out of the hand of the Egyptian. For sev- 
 eral centuries the power of the race had been declin- 
 ing, and foreign nations had contended for the vast 
 treasure-house of Egypt. Alexander found the Persians 
 virtually rulers of the land. The ancient people whose 
 fame has come down to us through centuries untarnished 
 had been forced to bow beneath the yoke of foreign 
 masters, and nations of alien blood were henceforth to 
 dominate its history. 
 
 The first Ptolemy founded a Macedonian or Greek 
 dynasty that maintained supremacy in Egypt until the 
 year 30 b. c. His successors were his lineal descendants, 
 and to the very last they prided themselves on their 
 Greek origin; but the government which they estab- 
 lished was essentially Oriental in character. The names 
 of Ptolemy and Cleopatra convey an Egyptian rather 
 than a Greek significance; and the later rulers of the 
 dynasty were true Egyptians, since their ancestors had 
 lived in Alexandria for three full centuries. 
 
 In the year 30 b. c. Augustus Caesar conquered the 
 last of the Ptolemies, the famous Cleopatra. Augustus 
 made Egypt virtually his private province, and drew 
 from it resources that were among the chief elements of 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 his power. After Augustus, the Eomans continued in 
 control until the coming of the Saracens imder Amr, 
 in the seventh century. Various d3aiasties of Moham- 
 medans, covering a period of several centuries, main- 
 tained control imtil the Mamluks, in 1250, overthrew the 
 legitimate rulers, to be themselves overthrown three 
 centuries later by the Tiu-ks under Selim I. Turkish 
 rule was maintained until near the close of the eight- 
 eenth century, when the French, under Napoleon Bona- 
 parte, invaded Egypt. In 1806, after the expulsion of 
 the French^ 'by the English, the famous Mehemet Ali 
 destroyed the last vestiges of Mamluk power, and set 
 up a quasi-independent sovereignty which was not dis- 
 turbed imtil toward the close of the nineteenth century. 
 The events of the last twenty-five years, comprising a 
 short period of joint control of Egypt by the French and 
 English, followed by the British occupation, are fresh 
 in the mind of the reader. 
 
 What may be termed the modern history of Egypt 
 covers a period of more than twenty-two centuries. 
 During this time the native Egyptian can scarcely be 
 said to have a national history, but the land of Egypt, 
 and the races who have become acclimated there, have 
 passed through many interesting phases. Professor 
 Maspero completes the history of antiquity in that dra- 
 matic scene in which the ancient Egyptian makes his 
 last futile struggle for independence. But the Mle Val- 
 ley has remained the scene of the most important events 
 where the strongest nations of the earth contended for 
 supremacy. It is most interesting to note that the 
 
PEEFACE vii 
 
 invaders of Egypt, while impressing their military, stamp 
 upon the natives, have been mastered in a very real sense 
 by the spell of Egypt's greatness; but the language, the 
 key to ancient learning and civilisation, still remained 
 a well-guarded secret. Here and there one of the Ptole- 
 mies or Greeks thought it worth his while to master the 
 hieroglyphic writing. Occasionally a Roman of the later 
 period may have done the same, but such an accomplish- 
 ment was no doubt very unusual from the first. The 
 subordinated Egyptians therefore had no resource but 
 to learn the language of their conquerors, and presently 
 it came to pass that not even the native Egyptian re- 
 membered the elusive secrets of his own written lan- 
 guage. Egyptian, as a spoken tongue, remained, in a 
 modified form, as Koptic, but at about the beginning of 
 our era the classical Egyptian had become a dead lan- 
 guage. No one any longer wrote in the hieroglyphic, 
 hieratic, or demotic scripts; in a word, the hieroglyphic 
 writing was forgotten. The reader of Professor Mas- 
 pero's pages has had opportunity to learn how this secret 
 was discovered in the nineteenth century. This informa- 
 tion is further amplified in the present volumes, and we 
 see how in oiu* own time the native Egyptian has regained 
 something of his former grandeur through the careful 
 and scientific study of monuments, inscriptions, and 
 works of art. Thus it will appear in the curious roimd- 
 ing out of the enigmatic story that the most ancient 
 history of civilisation becomes also the newest and most 
 modem human history. 
 
PUBLISHER'S NOTE 
 
 It should be explained that Doctor Rappoport, in pre- 
 paring these voliunes, has drawn very largely upon the 
 authorities who have previously laboured in the same 
 field, and in particular upon the works of Creasy, Duruy, 
 Ebers, Lavisse, Marcel, Michaud, Neibuhr, Paton, Ram- 
 baud, Sharp, and Weil. The results of investigations 
 by Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie and other prominent 
 Egyptologists have been fully set forth and profusely 
 illustrated. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 PAGE 
 HELLENISM AND HEBRJSISM IN EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIES 
 
 Alexandi-ia as the meeting-place of Western and Eastern Culture — The 
 
 blending of Jewish and Greek Ideals 3 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS 
 
 Alexander the Great — Cleomenes (332-323 B. c ) 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 Ptolemj' governs Egypt, overcomes Perdiccas, and establishes a Dynasty . 81 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHU8 (284-246 B. C.) 
 
 Treaty with Rome — Expansion of Trade — Alexandrian Culture — The 
 
 Septuagint 101 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PTOLEMY EUERGETE8, PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR, AND PTOLEMY EPIPHANES 
 
 The struggle for Syria — Decline of the Dynasty — Advent of Roman 
 
 Control 153 
 
CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAOJK 
 PTOLEMY PHILOMETOR AND PTOLEMY EUEKGETE8 II. 
 
 The Syrian Invasion — The Jews and the Bible — Relations with Rome — 
 
 Literature of the Age 213 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE GROWTH OP ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 The Weakness of the Ptolemies — Egypt bequeathed to Rome — Pompey, 
 
 Caesar, and Antony befriend Egypt 263 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 Pompey, Csesar, and Antony in Egypt — Cleopatra's Extravagance and 
 
 Intrigues — Octavianus annexes Egypt — Retrospect. . . .315 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prayer to Isis Frontispiece 
 
 Alexandria ............ 15 
 
 Alexander the Great 15 
 
 Transporting grain on the Nile ......... 19 
 
 Phtah, the God of Memphis 21 
 
 Lighthouse at Alexandria .......... 27 
 
 Ptolemy Soter (Lagus) 31 
 
 The D6m Palm 35 
 
 Street scene in Cairo ........... 39 
 
 A silhouette on the Nile .......... 40 
 
 Environs of Luxor 43 
 
 Crocodiles basking in the sun 44 
 
 A Theban Belle 49 
 
 Tombs of the Sacred Bulls 52 
 
 The God Serapis 55 
 
 Manuscript on papyrus in Hieroglyphics, Thebes 56 
 
 Alexander adoring Horus .......... 57 
 
 On the coast of the Red Sea ......... 63 
 
 Fagade of the Palace of Darius, Persepolis ...... 69 
 
 Palm and sycamore : an Egyptian contrast ...... 75 
 
 Alexandrian lady, attired in Bombyx silk ....... 81 
 
 Coin of Ptolemy Soter, b. c. 302 82 
 
 Coin of Soter, with Jupiter 83 
 
 The Chariot of Antiphilus 92 
 
 Berenice Soter ............ 95 
 
 Nit, Goddess of Sais 98 
 
 A Cat Mummy 99 
 
 vii 
 
"5^111 LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Grand Square at Alexandria 101 
 
 Ptolemy II. and his first wife 101 
 
 Pharos in Old Alexandria 10- 
 
 Bronze cosmetic holder 106 
 
 Osiris and Isis and the four children of Horus within a shrine . . • 108 
 
 View of Aswan Ill 
 
 Rosetta branch of the Nile 112 
 
 Temple of Philse 116 
 
 Anubis, god of the lower world 118 
 
 At the head of the Red Sea 120 
 
 Dahabieh descending the Nile 122 
 
 The first cataract on the Nile at Aswan (8y§ng) 123 
 
 An athlete disporting on a crocodile 128 
 
 Modern sphinx-like face 131 
 
 Method of Egyptian draftsmanship 137 
 
 Coin with heads of Sot«r and Berenice ; and Philadelphus and Arsinoe . 141 
 
 Coin with heads of Soter, Philadelphus, and Berenice .... 142 
 
 Coin of Arsinoe, sister of Ptolemy II. 143 
 
 A typical Nile pilot 149 
 
 Ptolemaic temple at Kom Ombo 153 
 
 Statue of Neith 153 
 
 An Abyssinian slave 157 
 
 Gate at Karnak 161 
 
 Ruins of Sais 163 
 
 Gateway of Ptolemy Euergetes at Karnak 169 
 
 Coin of Ptolemy III 175 
 
 Coin of BerenicS, wife of Ptolemy III 176 
 
 Temple of Hathor 187 
 
 Coin of Ptolemy Philopator .... .... 188 
 
 Coin of Arsinoe Philopator 189 
 
 Roman coin, issued under Ptolemy V 196 
 
 The Rosetta Stone (British Museum) 202 
 
 Outside Rosetta 207 
 
 A desert road between Egypt and Syria ....... 210 
 
 Coin of Ptolemy V. Epiphanes ......... 212 
 
 Temple of Antseopolis 213 
 
 Ship on the Nile •.•■....... 213 
 
 Temple of Hermonthis •••....... 219 
 
 Garden near Heliopolis _ _ 223 
 
 Temple of ApoUinopolis Magnus 228 
 
 The Apotheosis of Homer ■••....., 234 
 
 Hero's rotating steam-engine ••...., 235 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Coin of Ptolemy V 237 
 
 Temple of Hathor at Philae 241 
 
 Colored reliefs carved in the Great Temple at Philae 243 
 
 Obelisk at Heliopolis 250 
 
 Nilometer at Rhodha 254 
 
 SukelSelah 257 
 
 Temple of Kom Ombo 260 
 
 Temple Portico at Contra-Latopolis 268 
 
 Coin of Cleopatra and Alexander ........ 274 
 
 Coin of Cleopatra and Alexander with eagles 275 
 
 The Memnonium at Thebes 276 
 
 Coin of Ptolemy Lathyrus and Selene 280 
 
 Horus on the crocodiles, Bulak Museum 287 
 
 Religious procession on the Nile . 289 
 
 Egyptian funeral ceremonies 291 
 
 Mummy-cases and casket 293 
 
 Development of Egyptian caricature 295 
 
 The mines of Magharah 297 
 
 Vocal statue of Memnon 309 
 
 The Sphinx 312 
 
 Bearer of evil tidings 315 
 
 Cleopatra on the Cydnus 315 
 
 Pillar of Pompey at Alexandria 317 
 
 Ruins of Hermonthis 333 
 
 Cleopatra before Julius Caesar 335 
 
 Egyptian picture of Cleopatra 338 
 
 Coin of Cleopatra and Antony 346 
 
 Later coin of Cleopatra and Antony 347 
 
 Consular coin of Antony 348 
 
 Greek picture of Cleopatra 351 
 
 Grand column at Karnak 357 
 
 Cleopatra's Needle 362 
 
 Grseco-Egyptian column 364 
 
EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIES 
 
 ALEXANDER THE GBEAT AND THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT — THE REIGNS 
 OF THE PTOLEMIES — GRADUAL GROWTH OP ROMAN INFLUENCE 
 INTRIGUES OP CLEOPATRA WITH POMPEY, C^SAB, AND ANTONY 
 
 Alexander the Ghreat in Egypt — Alexandria founded — The 
 
 Crreeks favour the Jews -^ Ptolemy Soter establishes himself in 
 
 Egypt and overcomes Perdiocas — Struggles for Syria — Beginning of 
 
 Egyptian coinage — Art and Scholarship — Ptolemy resigns in favour 
 
 of his son Philadelphus — First treaty with Rome — Building of the 
 
 Pharos — Growth of Commerce — Encouragement of Learning — The 
 
 library of Alexandria — Euclid the geometer — Poets, astronomers, 
 
 historians, and critics — The Septuagint — Marriage of Philadelphus 
 
 to his sister Arsinoe — Ptolemy Euergetes plunders Asia — Egyptian 
 
 temples enlarged — Beligious tolerance — Annual tribute of the Jews — 
 
 Eratosthenes the astronomer — Philosophy and Science — Culmination 
 
 of Ptolemaic rule — The dynaxty declines under Philopator — Syrians 
 
 invade Egypt ; Philopator retaliates ; visits Jerusalem — The Jews 
 
 persecuted — The king's follies — Biots at Alexandria — Inglorious 
 
 end of Philopator — The young Ptolemy Epiphanes protected by 
 
 Borne — Military revolt suppressed — Coronation of Epiphanes — The 
 
 Bosetta Stone — Marriage of Epiphanes and Cleopatra, daughter of 
 
 Antioehus the Cheat — A second rebellion repressed — Accession of 
 
 Ptolemy Philometer under the guardianship of Cleopatra — Antioehus 
 
 Epiphanes defeats Philometer — Euergetes seizes the throne and appeals 
 
 to Borne — Antioehus supports Philometor against his brother Euergetes 
 
( ^ ) _ - 
 
 — The brothers combine against Antiochus — Fraternal rivalry — 
 Philometer appeals to the Romans who adjust the quarrel — Philo- 
 meter arbitrates in a dispute between the Jews and the Samaritans — 
 New temples built — Egyptian asceticism — Philometer' s death ; Euer- 
 getes reigns alone, and divorces his queen Cleopatra — Popular tumult 
 in Alexandria — Euergetes flees — ^ Cleopatra in power — Euergetes 
 regains the throne ; conquers Syria and makes peace with Cleopatra -^ 
 The reign of Cleopatra Gocce with Lathyrus {Ptolemy Soter II.) — 
 Cleopatra in the ascendent — She helps the Jews, while Lathyrus helps 
 the Samaritans — Lathyrus flees to Cyprus — Ptolemy Alexander I 
 rules with Cleopatra — Death of Alexander and restoration of Lathyrus 
 — Accession of Cleopatra BerenicS — Ptolemy Alexander II. bequeaths 
 Egypt to Pome, murders Berenice, and is slain by his guards — Auletes 
 succeeds — The Romans claim Egypt — Pompey assists Auletes who is 
 expelled by the Egyptians — Cleopatra Tryphcena and Berenici placed 
 on the throne — Q-abinius and Mark Antony march into Egypt and 
 restore Auletes — The reign of Cleopatra — Pompey made governor — 
 The Egyptian fleet aids Pompey — Pompey is slain — Caesar besieged by 
 the Alexandrians — He overcomes opposition, is captivated by Cleopatra, 
 and establishes her authority — The Queen's extravagance — Defeat of 
 Antony — Death of Cleopatra — Octavianus annexes Egypt. 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 HELLENISM AND HEBR/EISM IN EGYPT UNDER THE 
 
 PTOLEMIES 
 
 T17HEN Alexander the Great bridged the gulf divid- 
 ing Occident and Orient, the Greeks had attained to 
 a state of matiu-ity in the development of their national 
 art and literature, Greek culture and civilisation, pass- 
 ing beyond the boundaries of their national domain, 
 crossed this bridge and spread over the Asiatic world. 
 To perpetuate his name, the great Macedonian king 
 founded a city, and selected for this purpose, with ex- 
 traordinary prescience, a spot on the banks of the Nile, 
 which, on account of its geographical position, was des- 
 tined to become a centre, not only of international com- 
 merce and an entrepot between Asia and Europe, but 
 also a centre of intellectual culture. The policy of Al- 
 exander to remove the barriers between the Greeks and 
 the Asiatics, and to pave the way for the imion of the 
 races of his vast empire, was continued by the Lagidse 
 d3masty in Egypt. With her independence and native 
 djmasties, Egypt had also lost her political strength and 
 
4 HELLENISM AND HEBE^ISM IN EGYPT 
 
 unity; she retained, however, her ancient institutions, 
 her customs, and religious system. The sway of Per- 
 sian dominion had passed over her without overthrowing 
 this huge rock of sacerdotal power which, deeply rooted 
 with many ramifications, seemed to mock the wave of 
 time. Out of the ruins of political independence still 
 towered the monuments of civilisation of a mighty past 
 which gave to this coimtry moral independence, and 
 prevented the obliteration of nationality. It would have 
 mattered very little in the vast empire of Alexander 
 if one province had a special physiognomy. It was dif- 
 ferent, however, with the Lagidse : their power was con- 
 centrated in Egypt, and they were therefore compelled 
 to obliterate the separation existing between the con- 
 quering and the conquered races, and fuse them, if pos- 
 sible, into one. A great obstacle which confronted the 
 Macedonian rulers in Egypt was the religion of the coun- 
 try. The interest and the policy of the Lagidse de- 
 manded the removal of this obstacle, not by force but 
 by diplomacy. Greek gods were therefore identified with 
 Egyptian; Phtah became Hephsestos; Thot, Hermes; 
 Ea, Helios ; Amon, Zeus ; and, in consequence of a dream 
 which conunanded him to offer adoration to a foreign 
 god, Ptolemy Soter created a new Greek god who was 
 of Egyptian origin. Osiris at that period was the great 
 god of Egypt; Memphis was the religious centre of the 
 cult of Apis, the representative of Osiris, and who, when 
 living, was called Apis-Osiris, and when dead Osiris- 
 Apis. Cambyses had killed the god or his representative : 
 it was a bad move. Alexander made sacrifices to him: 
 
HELLENISM AND HEBRAISM IN EGYPT 5 
 
 Ptolemy Soter did more. He endeavoured to persuade 
 the Egyptians that Osirapi or Osiris- Apis was also sa- 
 cred to the Greeks, and to identify him with some Greek 
 divinity. There was a Greek deity known as Serapis, 
 identified with Pluton, the god of Hades. Serapis, by a 
 clever manoeuvre, a coup de religion, was identified with 
 Osiris-Apis. The lingual similarity and the fact that 
 Osirapi was the god of the Egyptian Hades made the 
 identification acceptable. 
 
 Like true Greek princes, the Ptolemies had broad 
 views and were very tolerant. Keeping the Greek re- 
 ligion themselves, they were favourably disposed towards 
 the creeds of other nationalities under their dominion. 
 Thanks to this broad-mindedness and tolerance which 
 had become traditional in the Lagidse family, and which 
 has only rarely been imitated — to the detriment of 
 civilisation — in the history of European dynasties. Ori- 
 ental and Hellenic culture could flourish side by side. 
 This benign government attracted many scholars, scien- 
 tists, poets, and philosophers. Alexandria became the 
 intellectual metropolis of the world; and it might truly 
 be said to have been the Paris of antiquity. At the 
 courts of the Ptolemies, the Medicis of Egypt, the great- 
 est men of the age lived and taught. Demetrius Phale- 
 rius, one of the most learned and cultured men of an age 
 of learning and knowledge, when driven from his lux- 
 urious palace at Athens, found hospitality at the court 
 of Ptolemy Soter. The foundation of the famous Mu- 
 seion and library of Alexandria was most probably due 
 to his influence. He advised the flrst Ptolemy to found 
 
6 HELLENISM A^D HEBE^ISM IN EGYPT 
 
 a bmlding where poets, scholars, and philosophers would 
 have facilities for study, research, and speculation. The 
 Museion was similar in some respects to the Academy 
 of Plato. It was an edifice where scholars lived and 
 worked together. Mental qualification was the only 
 requirement for admission. Nationality and creed were 
 no obstacles to those whose learning rendered them 
 worthy of becoming members of this ideal academy and 
 of being received among the immortals of antiquity. 
 The Museion was in no sense a university, but an acad- 
 emy for the cultivation of the higher branches of learn- 
 ing. It might be compared in some respects to the Col- 
 lege de France, or regarded as a development of the 
 system under which scholars had already lived and 
 worked together in the Ramesseum under Ramses 11. 
 The generosity of the Lagidse provided amply for this 
 new centre of learning and study. Free from worldly 
 cares, the scholars could leisurely gather information and 
 hand down to posterity the fruits of their researches. 
 From all parts of the world men flocked to this centre 
 of fashionable learning, the birthplace of modern science. 
 All that was brilliant and cultured, all the coryphees in 
 the domain of intellect, were attracted by that splendid 
 court. 
 
 In the shade of the Museion a brilliant assembly 
 —Ptolemy, Euclid, Hipparchus, ApoUonius, and Era- 
 tosthenes—made great discoveries and added materi- 
 ally to the sum of human knowledge. Here Euclid 
 wrote his immortal " Elements; " and Herophilos, the 
 father of sui'gery, added valuable information to the 
 
HELLENISM AND HEBRAISM IN EGYPT 7 
 
 knowledge of anatomy. The art and process of embalm- 
 ing, in such vogue among the Egyptians, naturally fos- 
 tered the advance of this science. Whilst Alexandria 
 in abstract speculation could not rival Grreece, yet it 
 became the home of the pioneers of positive science, 
 who left a great and priceless legacy to modem civilisa- 
 tion. The importance of this event (the foundation of 
 the Museion), says Draper, in his Intellectual Develop- 
 ment of Europe, though hitherto little understood, ad- 
 mits of no exaggeration so far as the intellectual progress 
 of Europe is concerned. The Museum made an im- 
 pression upon the intellectual career of Europe so 
 powerful and enduring that we still enjoy its results. 
 If the purely literary productions of that age have 
 sometimes been looked upon with contempt, European 
 intellectual culture is still greatly indebted to Alex- 
 andria, and especially for the patronage she accorded 
 to the works of Aristotle. Whilst the speculative mind 
 was in later centuries alliu-ed by the supernatural, and 
 the discussion of the criterion of truth and the principles 
 of morality ended in the mystic doctrines of Neo-Plato- 
 nism, the practical tendencies of the great Alexandrine 
 scholars were instrumental in laying the foundations 
 of science. To the Museion were attached the libraries: 
 one in the Museion itself, and another in the quarter 
 Rhacotis in the temple of Serapis, which contained about 
 700,000 volumes. New books were continually acquired. 
 The librarians had orders to pay any sum for the orig- 
 inal of the works of great masters. The Ptolemies were 
 not only patrons of learning but were themselves highly 
 
8 HELLENISM AND HEBRAISM IN EGYPT 
 
 educated. Ptolemy Soter was an historian of no mean 
 talent, and his son Philadelphus, as a pupil of the poet 
 Philetas and the philosopher Strabo, was a man of great 
 learning. Ptolemy III. was a mathematician, and Ptol- 
 emy Philopator, who had erected and dedicated a temple 
 to Homer, was the writer of a tragedy. The efforts of 
 the Ptolemies to bring the two nationalities, Hellenic 
 and Egyptian, nearer to each other, to mould and weld 
 them into one if possible, to mix and mingle the two 
 civilisations and thus strengthen their own power, was 
 greatly aided by the national character of the Greeks and 
 the political position of the Egyptians. 
 
 The Greeks found in Egypt a national culture and 
 especially a religious system. The pliant Hellenic genius 
 could not remain insensible to that ancient and marvel- 
 lous civilisation with its sphinxes and hieroglyphics, its 
 pyramids and temples, its learning and thought, so 
 strangely perplexing and interesting to the Greek mind. 
 Not only the magnificence of Egyptian art, the majesty 
 of her temples and palaces, but the wisdom of her social 
 and political institutions impressed the conquerors. 
 They made themselves acquainted with the institutions 
 of the country; they studied its history and took an in- 
 terest in its religion and mythology. Similarly, the con- 
 quered Egyptians, who had preferred the Macedonian 
 ruler to their Persian oppressors, exhibited a natural 
 desire to learn the languages and habits of their rulers, 
 to make themselves acquainted with their knowledge and 
 phases of thought, and art and science. The interest of 
 the Greeks was strengthened by this, and the Egyptians 
 
HELLENISM AND HEBRiEISM IN EGYPT 9 
 
 were made to see their history in its proper light. To 
 this endeavour we owe the history of Manetho. But, 
 in spite of the policy of the Ptolemies, the impressionable 
 nature of the Hellenic character and the interest of the 
 Egyptians,— in spite of all that tended to a fusion of 
 Hellenism and Orientalism, it never came to a proper 
 amalgamation. The contradiction between the free- 
 thought philosophy of Greece, which was fast outgrow- 
 ing its polytheism and Olympian worship, and the deeply 
 rooted sacerdotal system of the Pharaonian institutions, 
 was too great and too flagrant. Thus there never was an 
 Egypto-Hellenic phase of thought. But there was an- 
 other civilisation of great antiquity, possessing peculiar 
 features, not less interesting for the Greek mind than 
 that of Egypt itself, with which Hellenism found itself 
 face to face in the ancient land of the Pharaohs. It was 
 the civilisation of Judaea, between which and Greek 
 thought a greater fusion was effected. 
 
 II 
 
 From time immemorial the Hebrew race, with all its 
 conservative tendencies in religious matters, has been 
 amenable to the influence of foreign culture and civili- 
 sation. Egypt and Phoenicia, Babylonia and Assyria, 
 Hellas and Rome have exercised an immense influence 
 over it. It still is and always has been endeavouring to 
 bring into harmony the exclusiveness of its national 
 religion, with a desire to adopt the habits, culture, lan- 
 guage, and manners of its neighbours; an attempt in 
 
10 HELLENISM AND HEBRAISM IN EGYPT 
 
 which it may be apparently successful, for a certain 
 period at least, but which must always have a tragic end. 
 It is impossible to be conservative and progressive at 
 the same time, to be both national and cosmopolitan. 
 The attempts to reconcile rehgious formalism and free 
 reasoning have never succeeded in the history of human 
 thought. It soon led to the conviction that one factor 
 must be sacrificed, and, as soon as this was perceived, 
 the party of zealots was quickly at hand to preach reac- 
 tion. In the times of the successors of Alexander, the 
 Diadochse and Epigones, the Seleucidse and the Lagidse, 
 who had divided the vast dominion among them, Grreek 
 influence had spread all over Palestine. Grreek towns 
 were founded, theatres and gymnasia established; Greek 
 art was admired and her philosophy studied. The Hel- 
 lenic movement was paramount, and the aristocratic 
 families did their best to further it. Even the high 
 priests, like Jason and Menelaos, who were supposed to 
 be the guardians of the national exclusive movement, 
 favoured Grreek culture and institutions. 
 
 In the mother country, however, the germ of reaction • 
 was always very strong. A constant opposition was 
 directed against the influx of foreign modes of life and 
 thought, which effaced and obliterated the intellectual 
 movement. It was different, however, in the other 
 countries of Macedonian dominion, and especially in 
 Egypt. Alexander the Great, who seems to have been 
 favourably inclined towards the Jews, settled a number 
 of them in Alexandria. His policy was kept up by the 
 descendants of Lagos, that great general of Alexander, 
 
HELLENISM AND HEBE^ISM IN EGYPT 11 
 
 wlio made himself king of the province which was en- 
 trusted to the care of his administration. Egypt became 
 the resort of many refugees from Judaea, who gradually 
 came under the influence of the dazzling Greek thought 
 and culture, so new and therefore so attractive to the 
 Semitic mind. Hellenism and Hebraism had known each 
 other for some time, for Phoenician merchants and sea- 
 farers had carried the seed of Oriental wisdom to the 
 distant west. The acquaintance, however, was a slight 
 one. At the court of the Ptolemies, on the threshold of 
 Europe and Asia, they met at last. On the shores of the 
 Mediterranean, on the soil where lay the traces of the 
 ancient Egyptian civilisation, in the silent avenues of 
 mysterious sphinxes, amongst hieroglyphic-covered obe- 
 lisks, Greek and Hebrew thought stood face to face. The 
 two civilisations embodied the principles of the Beautiful 
 and the Sublime, of Morality and ^stheticism, of relig- 
 ious and philosophic speculation. The result of this 
 meeting marks a glorious page in the annals of human 
 thought. Among the monuments of a great historic past, 
 the speculative spirit of the East made love to the plastic 
 beauty of the West, until, at last, they were united in 
 happy union. Hellenic taste and sense of beauty and 
 Semitic speculation not only evolved side by side in 
 Eg3^t but mixed and commingled; their thoughts were 
 intertwined and interwoven, giving rise to a new intel- 
 lectual movement, a new philosophy of thought: the 
 Judseo-Hellenic. Alexandrian culture, during the reign 
 of the Ptolemies, is the offspring of a mixed marriage 
 between two parents belonging to two widely different 
 
12 HELLENISM AND HEBRAISM IN EGYPT 
 
 races, and, as a cross breed, is endowed with many quali- 
 ties. It had the seriousness of the one parent and the 
 delicacy of the other. 
 
 The Ptolemies encouraged the movement towards fu- 
 sion. The result was that the Jews in Egypt, not being 
 hampered by reactionary endeavours from the side of 
 conservative parties, and with an adaptability peculiar 
 to their race, soon acquired the language of the people 
 in whose midst they dwelt. They conversed and wrote in 
 Greek; they moulded and shaped their own thoughts 
 into Greek form; they clothed the Semitic mode of think- 
 ing in Hellenic garb. The immediate result was the trans- 
 lation of the Pentateuch into Greek. Vanity, of which 
 no individual or race is free, had embellished this literary 
 production, which has acquired a high degree of impor- 
 tance alike among Jews and Christians, with many 
 legends. This translation, known as the Septuaginta 
 (LXX), was followed by independent histories relating 
 to Biblical events. One of the best known authors is the 
 chronographer Demetrius, who lived in the second half 
 of the third century, and whose work Flavins Josephus 
 is supposed to have utilised. Not to speak of the Greek 
 authors in Judsea and Syria, we may mention Artapanos, 
 who, following the fashion of the day, wrote history in 
 the form of a romance, and showed traces of an apolo- 
 getic character. He endeavoured to attribute aU that 
 was great in Egyptian civilisation to Moses. This was 
 due to the fact that Manetho, the Egyptian historian, and 
 others following his example, had spread fables and ven- 
 omous tales about the ancient sojourn and exodus of the 
 
HELLENISM AND HEBE^ISM IN EGYPT 13 
 
 Hebrews and their leader. To counterbalance these ac- 
 cusations, fables had to be interwoven into history, and 
 history became romance. Moses was thus identified with 
 Hermes, and made out to be the father of Egyptian wis- 
 dom. But, if the close acquaintanceship of Hebraism 
 and Hellenism began with a mere flirtation, encouraged 
 by the rulers of the land and kept up by the Jews, who 
 wished to gain the favour of the conquering race and 
 to show themselves and their history in as favourable 
 a light as possible, it soon ended in a serious attachment. 
 The Hebrews made themselves acquainted with Hellenic 
 life and thought. They studied Homer and Hesiod, Em- 
 pedoeles and Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, and they 
 were startled by the discovery that in Greek thought 
 there were many elements, moral and religious, familiar 
 to them: this enhanced the attraction. The narrowness 
 and exclusiveness to which strict nationality always 
 gives rise, engendering contempt and hatred for every- 
 thing foreign— which made even the Greeks, with all 
 their intellectual culture, draw a line of 'demarcation 
 between Greek and barbarian— gave way to a spirit of 
 cosmopolitan breadth of view which has only very rarely 
 been equalled in history. Hellenic and Hebrew forms 
 of thought were brought into friendly union, and gave 
 birth to ideas and aspirations of which humanity may 
 always be proud. Greek aesthetic judgment and Semitic 
 mysticism, different phases of thought in themselves, 
 were welded into one. The religious conceptions of 
 Moses and the Prophets were expressed in the language 
 of the philosophical schools; an attempt was made to 
 
H HKL1.EN18M AND HEBRiEISM IN EGYPT 
 
 bring into harmony the dogmas of supernatural revela- 
 tion and the fruits of human speculative thought. Such 
 an attempt is a great undertaking, for, if sincerely and 
 relentlessly p\irsued, it must end in breaking down the 
 barriers of separation, in the establishment of a conmion 
 truth, and in the sacrifice of cherished ideals and con- 
 victions which prove to be wrong. If carried to its log- 
 ical conclusion, such a cosmopolitan broad-mindedness, 
 such a cross-fertilisation of intellectual products, must 
 give rise to the ennobling idea that there is only one 
 truth, and that the external forms are only fleeting waves 
 upon the vast ocean of human ideals. The attempt was 
 made in Alexandria by the Judseo-Hellenic philosophers. 
 Unfortunately, however, the Hebrews, with all their 
 adaptability, have not yet carried this attempt to its 
 logical conclusion. The spirit of reaction has ever and 
 anon been ready to crush in its infancy the endeavour of 
 truth and sincerity, of broad-mindedness and tolerance. 
 When placed before the question to be or not to be, to 
 be logical or iUogical, it has chosen the latter, and 
 striven after the impossible: the reconciliation of what 
 cannot be reconciled without alterations, rejections, and 
 selections. The happy marriage of Hellenism and He- 
 braism in Egypt had a tragic end. The union was dis- 
 solved, not, however, without having produced its issue: 
 the Alexandrian culture, which was carried to Eome 
 by Philo Judaeus, and thus influenced later European 
 thought and humanity at large. 
 
ALEXANDRIA. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS 
 
 Alexander the Great Cleomenes. — B. C. 332-323 
 
 THE way for the 
 Grecian con- 
 quest of Egypt had 
 been preparing for 
 many years. Ever 
 since the memora- 
 ble march of Xeno- 
 phon, who led, in 
 the face of un- 
 known difficulties, 
 ten t housand 
 Greeks across Asia 
 Minor, the Greek 
 statesman had sus- 
 pected that the Hellenic soldier was capable 
 of undreamed possibilities. 
 
 15 
 
16 EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS 
 
 When the young Alexander, succeeding his father 
 Philip on the throne of Macedonia, got himself appointed 
 general by the chief of the Greek states, and marched 
 against Darius Codomanus, King of Persia, at the head 
 of the allied armies, it was not difficult to foresee the 
 result. The Greeks had learned the weakness of the Per- 
 sians by having been so often hired to fight for them. 
 For a century past, every Persian army had had a body 
 of ten or twenty thousand Greeks in the van, and with- 
 out this guard the Persians were like a flock of sheep 
 without the shepherd's dog. Those countries which had 
 trusted to Greek mercenaries to defend them could 
 hardly help falling when the Greek states united for 
 their conquest. 
 
 Alexander defeated the Persians under Darius in a 
 great and memorable battle near the town of Issus at 
 the foot of the Taurus, at the pass which divides Syria 
 from Asia Minor, and then, instead of marching upon 
 Persia, he turned aside to the easier conquest of Egypt. 
 On his way there he spent seven months in the siege of 
 the wealthy city of Tyre, and he there punished with 
 death every man capable of carrying arms, and made 
 slaves of the rest. He was then stopped for some time 
 before the little town of Gaza, where Batis, the brave 
 governor, had the courage to close the gates against the 
 Greek army. His angry fretfulness at being checked 
 by so smaU a force was only equalled by his cruelty when 
 he had overcome it; he tied Batis by the heels to his 
 chariot, and dragged him round the walls of the city, as 
 Achilles had dragged the body of Hector. 
 
ALEXANDER IN EGYPT 17 
 
 On the seventh day after leaving Gaza he reached Pe- 
 lusirnn, the most easterly town in Egypt, after a march 
 of one hundred and seventy miles along the coast of the 
 Mediterranean, through a parched, glaring desert which 
 forms the natural boundary of the coimtry; while the 
 fleet kept close to the shore to carry the stores for the 
 army, as no fresh water is to be met with on the line of 
 march. The Egjrptians did not even try to hide their 
 joy at his approach; they were bending very im willingly 
 under the heavy and hated yoke of Persia. The Persians 
 had long been looked upon as their natural enemies, and 
 in the pride of their success had added insults t.o the other 
 evils of being governed by the satrap of a conqueror. 
 They had not even gained the respect of the conquered 
 by their warlike courage, for Egypt had in a great part 
 been conquered and held by Greek mercenaries. 
 
 The Persian forces had been mostly withdrawn from 
 the country by Sabaces, the satrap of Egypt, to be led 
 against Alexander in Asia Minor, and had formed part 
 of the army of Darius when he was beaten near the town 
 of Issus on the coast of Cilicia. The garrisons were not 
 strong enough to guard the towns left in their charge; 
 the Greek fleet easily overpowered the Egyptian fleet in 
 the harbour of Pelusium, and the town opened its gates 
 to Alexander. Here he left a garrison, and, ordering his 
 fleet to meet him at Memphis, he marched along the riv- 
 er's bank to Heliopolis. All the towns, on his approach, 
 opened their gates to him. Mazakes, who had been left 
 without an army, as satrap of Egypt, when Sabaces led 
 the troops into Asia Minor, and who had heard of the 
 
18 EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS 
 
 death of Sabaces, and that Alexander was master of Phoe- 
 nicia, Syria, and the north of Arabia, had no choice but 
 to yield. The Macedonian army crossed the Nile near 
 Heliopolis, and then entered Memphis. 
 
 Memphis had long been the chief city of all Egypt, 
 even when not the seat of government. In earlier ages, 
 when the warlike virtues of the Thebans had made Egypt 
 the greatest kingdom in the world, Memphis and the low- 
 land corn-fields of the Delta paid tribute to Thebes; but, 
 with the improvements in navigation, the cities on the 
 coast rose ia importance; the navigation of the Red Sea, 
 though always dangerous, became less dreaded, and 
 Thebes lost the toll on the carrying trade of the Nile. 
 Wealth alone, however, would not have given the sov- 
 ereignty to Lower Egypt, had not the Greek mercenaries 
 been at hand to fight for those who would pay them. The 
 kings of Sais had guarded their thrones with Greek 
 shields; and it was on the rash but praiseworthy attempt 
 of Amasis to lessen the power of these mercenaries that 
 they joined Cambyses, and Egypt became a Persian prov- 
 ince. In the struggles of the Egyptians to throw off the 
 Persian yoke, we see little more than the Athenians and 
 Spartans carrying on their old quarrels on the coasts and 
 plains of the Delta; and the Athenians, who counted 
 their losses by ships, not by men, said that in their vic- 
 tories and defeats together Egypt had cost them two 
 hundred triremes. Hence, when Alexander, by his suc- 
 cesses in Greece, had put a stop to the feuds at home, 
 the mercenaries of both parties flocked to his conquering 
 standard, and he found himself on the throne of Upper 
 
NEW GKEEK CITIES 
 
 21 
 
 and Lower Egypt without any struggle being made 
 against him by the Egyptians. The Greek part of the 
 population, who had been living in Egypt as foreigners, 
 now found themselves masters. Egypt became at once a 
 Greek kingdom, as though the blood and language of 
 the people were changed at the conqueror's bidding. 
 
 Alexander's character as a triumphant general gains 
 little from this easy conquest of an un warlike coimtry, 
 and the overthrow of a crumbling monarchy. But as the 
 founder of a new Macedonian state, and for reuniting 
 the scattered elements of society ia Lower Egypt after 
 the Persian conquest, in the only form in which a gov- 
 ernment could be made to stand, he deserves to be placed 
 
 among the least mischievous of 
 conquerors. We trace his march, 
 not by the ruin, misery, and anar- 
 chy which usually follow in the rear 
 of an army, but by the building 
 of new cities, the more certain ad- 
 ministration of justice, the revival 
 of trade, and the growth of leam- 
 iag. On reaching Memphis, his 
 first care was to prove to the Egyp- 
 tians that he was come to re-estab- 
 lish their ancient monarchy. He 
 went in state to the temple of Apis, 
 PHTAH, THE GOD OF MEMPHIS, ^ud sacrificcd to thc sacrcd bull, 
 as the native kings had done at their coronations; and 
 gained the good-wiU of the crowd by games and music, 
 performed by skilful Greeks for their amusement. 
 
22 EGYPT CONQUEEED BY THE GREEKS 
 
 But though the temple of Phtah at Memphis, in 
 which the state ceremonies were performed, had risen in 
 beauty and importance by the repeated additions of the 
 later kings, who had fixed the seat of government in 
 Ijower Egypt, yet the Sun, or Amon-Ra, or Kneph-Ra, 
 the god of Thebes, or Jupiter- Ammon, as he was called 
 by the Greeks, was the god imder whose spreading wings 
 Egypt had seen its proudest days. Every Egyptian king 
 had called himself " the son of the Sun; " those who had 
 reigned at Thebes had boasted that they were " beloved 
 by Amon-Ra; " and when Alexander ordered the ancient 
 titles to be used towards himself, he wished to lay his 
 offerings in the temple of this god, and to be acknowl- 
 edged by the priests as his son. As a reader of Homer, 
 and the pupil of Aristotle, he must have wished to see 
 the wonders of " Egyptian Thebes," the proper place 
 for this ceremony; and it could only have been because, 
 as a general, he had not time for a march of five hundred 
 miles, that he chose the nearer and less known temple of 
 Kneph-Ra, in the oasis of Ammon, one hundred and 
 eighty miles from the coast. 
 
 Accordingly, he floated down the river from Memphis 
 to the sea, taking with him the light-armed troops and 
 the royal band of knights-companions. When he reached 
 Canopus, he sailed westward along the coast, and landed 
 at Rhacotis, a small village on the spot where Alexandria 
 now stands. Here he made no stay; but, as he passed 
 through it, he must have seen at a glance, for he was 
 never there a second time, that the place was formed by 
 nature to be a great harbour, and that with a little help 
 
ALEXANDRIA FOUNDED 23 
 
 from art it would be the port of all Egypt. The mouths 
 of the Nile were too shallow for the ever increasing size 
 of the merchant vessels which were then being built ; and 
 the engineers found the deeper water which was wanted, 
 between the village of Rhacotis and the little island of 
 Pharos. It was all that he had seen and admired at Tyre, 
 but it was on a larger scale and with deeper water. It 
 was the very spot that he was in search of; in every way 
 suitable for the Greek colony which he proposed to found 
 as the best means of keeping Egypt in obedience. Even 
 before the time of Homer, the island of Pharos had 
 given shelter to the Greek traders on that coast. He 
 gave his orders to Dinocrates the architect to improve 
 the harbour, and to lay down the plan of his new city; 
 and the success of the undertaking proved the wisdom 
 both of the statesman and of the builder, for the city 
 of Alexandria subsequently became the most famous of 
 all the commercial and intellectual centres of antiquity. 
 
 From Rhacotis Alexander marched along the coast to 
 Paraetonimn, a distance of about two hundred miles 
 through the desert; and there, or on his way there, he 
 was met by the ambassadors from Cyrene, who were sent 
 with gifts to beg for peace, and to ask him to honour 
 their city with a visit. Alexander graciously received 
 the gifts of the Cyrenaeans, and promised them his friend- 
 ship, but could not spare time to visit their city; and, 
 without stopping, he turned southward to the oasis. 
 
 At Memphis Alexander received the ambassadors that 
 came from Greece to wish him joy of his success; he 
 reviewed his troops, and gave out his plans for the 
 
24 EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS 
 
 government of the kingdom. He threw bridges of boats 
 over the Nile at the ford below Memphis, and also over 
 the several branches of the river. He divided the country 
 into two nomarchies or judgeships, and to fill these two 
 offices of nomarchs or chief judges, the highest civil 
 offices in the kingdom, he chose Doloaspis and Petisis, 
 two Egyptians. Their duty was to watch over the due 
 administration of justice, one in Upper and the other in 
 Lower Egypt, and perhaps to hear appeals from the lower 
 judges. 
 
 He left the garrisons in the command of his own 
 Greek generals; Pantaleon commanded the counts, or 
 knights-companions, who garrisoned Memphis, and Pole- 
 mon was governor of Pelusium. These were the chief 
 fortresses in the kingdom: Memphis overlooked the 
 Delta, the navigation of the river, and the pass to Upper 
 Egypt; Pelusium was the harbour for the ships of war, 
 and the frontier town on the only side on which Egypt 
 could be attacked. The other cities were given to other 
 governors; Licidas commanded the mercenaries, Peu- 
 cestes and Balacrus the other troops, Eugnostus was 
 secretary, while ^schylus and Ephippus were left as 
 overlookers, or perhaps, in the language of modern gov- 
 ernments, as civil commissioners. Apollonius was made 
 prefect of Libya, of which district Parsetonium was the 
 capital, and Cleomenes prefect of Arabia at Heroopolis, 
 in guard of that frontier. Orders were given to aU these 
 generals that justice was to be administered by the Egyp- 
 tian nomarchs according to the common law or ancient 
 customs of the land. Petisis, however, either never 
 
THE JEWS EAVOURED 25 
 
 entered upon his office or soon quitted it, and Doloaspis 
 was left nomareli of all Egypt. 
 
 Alexander sent into the Thebaid a body of seven thou- 
 sand Samaritans, whose quarrels with the Jews made 
 them wish to leave their own country. He gave them 
 lands to cultivate on the banks of the Nile which had 
 gone out of cultivation with the gradual decline of Upper 
 Egypt; and he employed them to guard the province 
 against invasion or rebellion. He did not stay in Egypt 
 longer than was necessary to give these orders, but 
 hastened towards the Euphrates to meet Darius. In his 
 absence Egypt remained quiet and happy. Peucestes 
 soon followed him to Babylon with some of the troops 
 that had been left in Egypt; and Cleomenes, the gov- 
 ernor of Heroopolis, was then made collector of the taxes 
 and prefect of Egypt. Cleomenes was a bad man; he 
 disobeyed the orders sent from Alexander on the Indus, 
 and he seems to have forgotten the mild feelings which 
 guided his master; yet, upon the whole, after the galling 
 yoke of the Persians, the Egyptians must have felt grate- 
 ful for the blessings of justice and good government. 
 
 At one time, when passing through the Thebaid in 
 his barge on the Nile, Cleomenes was wrecked, and one 
 of his children bitten by a crocodile. On this plea, he 
 called together the priests, probably of Crocodilopolis, 
 where this animal was held sacred, and told them that 
 he intended to revenge himself upon the crocodiles by 
 having them all caught and killed; and he was only 
 bought off from carrying his threat into execution by the 
 priests giving him all the treasure that they could get 
 
26 EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS 
 
 together. Alexander had left orders that the great 
 market should be moved from Canopus to his new city 
 of Alexandria, as soon as it should be ready to receive 
 it. As the building went forward, the priests and rich 
 traders of Canopus, in alarm at losing the advantages 
 of their port, gave Cleomenes a large sum of money for 
 leave to keep their market open. This sum he took, and, 
 when the building at Alexandria was finished, he again 
 came to Canopus, and because the traders would not or 
 could not raise a second and larger sum, he carried Alex- 
 ander's orders into execution, and closed the market of 
 their city. 
 
 But instances such as these, of a public officer making 
 use of dishonest means to increase the amount of the 
 revenue which it was his duty to collect, might unfor- 
 tunately be found even in coimtries which were for the 
 most part enjoying the blessings of wise laws and good 
 govermnent ; and it is not probable that, while Alexander 
 was with the army in Persia, the acts of fraud and wrong 
 should have been fewer in his own kingdom of Mace- 
 donia. The dishonesty of Cleomenes was indeed equally 
 shown toward the Macedonians, by his wish to cheat 
 the troops out of part of their pay. The pay of the sol- 
 diers was due on the first day of each month, but on that 
 day he took care to be out of the way, and the soldiers 
 were paid a few days later; and by doing the same on 
 each following month, he at length changed the pay-day 
 to the last day of the month, and cheated the army out 
 of a whole month's pay. 
 
 Another act for which Cleomenes was blamed was not 
 
DEATH OF HEPHiESTION 
 
 27 
 
 SO certainly wrong. One summer, when the harvest had 
 been less plentiful than usual, he forbade the export of 
 grain, which was a large part of the trade of Egypt, 
 thereby lowering the price to the poor so far as they 
 could afford to purchase such costly food, but injuring 
 the landowners. On this, the heads of the provinces sent 
 to him in alarm, to say that they should not be able to 
 get in the usual amount of tribute ; he therefore allowed 
 
 LIGHTHOnSE AT ALEXANDRIA. 
 
 the export as usual, but raised the duty; and he was 
 reproached for receiving a larger revenue while the land- 
 owners were suffering from a smaller crop. 
 
 At Ecbatana, the capital of Media, Alexander lost 
 his friend Hephaestion, and in grief for his death he sent 
 to Egypt to enquire of the oracle at the temple of Ejieph 
 in the oasis of Ammon, what honours he might pay to 
 the deceased. The messengers brought him an answer, 
 that he might declare Hephaestion a demigod, and order 
 that he should be worshipped. Accordingly, Alexander 
 
28 EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS 
 
 then sent an express command to Cleomenes that he 
 should build a temple to his lost favourite in his new 
 city of Alexandria, and that the lighthouse which was 
 to be built on the island of Pharos shovild be named after 
 him ; and as modern insurances against risks by sea usu- 
 ally begin with the words '* In the name of God; 
 Amen; " so all contracts between merchants in the port 
 of Alexandria were to be written solemnly " In the name 
 of Hephsestion. ' ' Feeling diffident of enforcing obedience 
 at the mouth of the NUe, while he was himself writing 
 from the sources of the Indus, he added that if, when he 
 came to Egypt he found his wish carried into effect, he 
 ^vould pardon Cleomenes for those acts of misgovemment 
 of which he had been accused, and for any others which 
 might then come to his ears. 
 
 A somatophylax in the Macedonian army was no 
 doubt at first, as the word means, one of the officers who 
 had to answer for the king's safety; perhaps in modern 
 language a colonel in the body-guards or household 
 troops; but as, in unmixed monarchies, the faithful 
 officer who was nearest the king's person, to whose 
 watchfulness he trusted in the hour of danger, often 
 found himself the adviser in matters of state, so, in the 
 time of Alexander, the title of somatophylax was given 
 to those generals on whose wisdom the king chiefly 
 leaned, and by whose advice he was usually guided. 
 Among these, and foremost in Alexander's love and es- 
 teem, was Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. Philip, the father 
 of Alexander, had given Arsinoe, one of his relations, 
 in marriage to Lagus; and her eldest son Ptolemy, bom 
 
PTOLEMY A2^I> ALEXAJSTDEE 29 
 
 soon after tlie marriage, was always thougM to be the 
 king's son, though never so acknowledged. As he grew 
 up, he was put into the highest offices by Philip, without 
 raising in the young Alexander's mind the distrust which 
 might have been felt if Ptolemy could have boasted that 
 he was the elder brother. He earned the good opinion of 
 Alexander by his military sucaesses in Asia, and gained 
 his gratitude by saving his life when he was in danger 
 among the Oxydracse, near the river Indus; and more- 
 over, Alexander looked up to him as the historian whose 
 literary powers and knowledge of military tactics were 
 to hand down to the wonder of future ages those con- 
 quests which he witnessed. 
 
 Alexander's victories over Darius, and march to the 
 river Indus, are no part of this history: it is enough to 
 say that he died at Babylon eight years after he had 
 entered Egypt; and his half-brother Philip Arridseus, 
 a weak-minded, unambitious young man, was declared 
 by the generals assembled at Babylon to be his successor. 
 His royal blood united more voices in the army in his 
 favour than the warlike and statesmanlike character of 
 any one of the rival generals. They were forced to be 
 content with sharing the provinces between them as his 
 lieutenants; some hoping to govern by their power over 
 the weak mind of Arridseus, and others secretly meaning 
 to make themselves independent. 
 
 In this weighty matter, Ptolemy showed the wisdom 
 and judgment which had already gained him his high 
 character. Though his military rank and skill were equal 
 to those of any one of Alexander's generals, and his claim 
 
30 EGYPT CONQUEEED BY THE GEEEKS 
 
 by birth perhaps equal to that of Arridseus, he was not 
 one of those who aimed at the throne; nor did he even 
 aim at the second place, but left to Perdiccas the regency, 
 with the care of the king's person, in whose name that 
 ambitious general vainly hoped to govern the whole of 
 Alexander's conquests. But Ptolemy, more wisely meas- 
 uring his strength with the several tasks, chose the prov- 
 ince of Egypt, the province which, cut off as it was from 
 the rest by sea and desert, was of all others the easiest 
 to be held as an independent kingdom against the power 
 of Perdiccas. When Egypt was given to Ptolemy by the 
 council of generals, Cleomenes was at the same time and 
 by the same power made second in conmiand, and he 
 governed Egypt for one year before Ptolemy's arrival, 
 that being in name the first year of the reign of Philip 
 Arridseus, or, according to the chronologer's mode of 
 dating, the first year after Alexander's death. 
 
PTOLEMY SOTBK (lAGUS). 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 Ptolemy governs Egypt, overcomes Perdiccas, and founds a dynasty. 
 
 pTOLEMY LAGUS was one of those who, at the death 
 of Alexander, had raised their voices against giving 
 the whole of the conquered countries to one king; he 
 wished that they should have been shared equally among 
 the generals as independent kingdoms. In this he was 
 overruled, and he accepted his government as the lieu- 
 tenant of the youthful Philip Arridseus, though no doubt 
 with the fixed purpose of making Egypt an independent 
 kingdom. On reaching Memphis, the seat of his gov- 
 ernment, his whole thoughts were turned towards 
 strengthening himself against Perdiccas, who hoped to 
 be obeyed, in the name of his young and weak-minded 
 king, by all his feUow generals. 
 
 31 
 
32 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 The Greek and foreign mercenaries of which the 
 army of Alexander was made up, and who were faithful 
 to his memory and to his family, had little to guide them 
 in the choice of which leader they should follow to his 
 distant province, beside the thought of where they should 
 be best treated; and Ptolemy's high character for wis- 
 dom, generosity, and warlike skill had gained many 
 friends for him among the officers; they saw that the 
 wealth of Egypt would put it in his power to reward 
 those whose services were valuable to him; and hence 
 crowds flocked to his standard. On reaching their prov- 
 inces, the Greek soldiers, whether Spartans or Athenians, 
 forgetting the glories of Thermopylae and Marathon, and 
 proud of their wider conquests under the late king, 
 always called themselves Macedonians. They pleased 
 themselves with the thought that the whole of the con- 
 quered countries were still governed by the brother of 
 Alexander; and no one of his generals, in his wildest 
 thoughts of ambition, whether aiming, like Ptolemy, at 
 founding a kingdom, or, like Perdiccas, at the govern- 
 ment of the world, was unwise enough to throw off the 
 title of lieutenant to Philip Arridseus, and to forfeit the 
 love of the Macedonian soldiers and his surest hold on 
 their loyalty. 
 
 The first act of Ptolemy was to put to death Cleom- 
 enes, who had been made sub-governor of Egypt by the 
 same council of generals which had made Ptolemy gov- 
 ernor. This act may have been called for by the dis- 
 honesty and crooked dealing which Cleomenes had been 
 guilty of in collecting taxes; but, though the whole tenor 
 
PTOLEMY PREPARES FOR WAR 33 
 
 of Ptolemy's life would seem to disprove the charge, we 
 camiot but fear that he was in part led to this deed be- 
 cause he looked upon Cleomenes as the friend of Per- 
 diccas, or because he could not trust Tiini in his plans for 
 making himself king of Egypt. 
 
 From the very commencement of Ms government, 
 Ptolemy prepared for the war which he knew must fol- 
 low a declaration of his designs. Perhaps better than 
 any other general of Alexander, he knew how to win the 
 favour of the people under his rule. The condition of 
 the country quickly improved under his mild adminis- 
 tration. The growing seaport of Alexandria was a good 
 market for a coxmtry rich in natural produce, and, above 
 all, Egypt's marvellously good geographical position 
 stood her in good stead in time of war. Surrounded 
 nearly on all sides by desert land, the few inhabitants, 
 roving Bedouins, offered no danger. The land of the 
 Mle was accessible to an enemy in one direction only, 
 along the coast of Syria. This even teemed with diffi- 
 culties. Transports there could only be managed with 
 the greatest ingenuity, and, in case of defeat, retreat 
 was almost impossible. On the other hand, the Egyptian 
 army, helped by aU the advantages of a land irrigated 
 on the canal system, and which could be flooded at will, 
 had only to act on the defensive to be certain of victory. 
 The coimitry is perhaps more open to an attack from the 
 sea, but, by a moderately well-conducted defensive move- 
 ment, the enemy could be kept to the coast. Even the 
 landing there is scarcely possible, on account of the nat- 
 ural difficulties at the mouth of the Nile. The one easy 
 
34 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 spot— Alexandria— was so well fortified that an invader 
 had but little chance of success. 
 
 About the time of Alexander's death (and to some 
 extent brought about by this event), civil war broke out 
 in Cyrenaica, in consequence of which the followers of 
 one party were forced out of the town of Cyrene. These 
 joined themselves with the exiles of the town of Barca, 
 and together sought help of foreigners. They placed 
 themselves under the leadership of the Spartan Thibron, 
 formerly Alexander's chancellor of the exchequer. 
 Begged by the exiled Cyrenians to help them, he now 
 directed his forces against Libya, fought a fierce battle, 
 and took possession of the harbour of ApoUonia, two 
 miles distant from the town. He then besieged the town 
 of Cyrene, and forced the Cyrenians at last to sue for 
 peace. They were obliged to make a payment of five 
 hundred talents and to take back the exiles. Messengers 
 were sent by Thibron to incite the other towns in Cy- 
 renaica to join him and to help him conquer their 
 neighbour, Libya. Thibron 's followers were allowed to 
 plimder, and this led to quarrels, desertions, treacherous 
 acts, and the recruiting of his army from the Peloponne- 
 sus. After varying fortunes of war, in the spring of 322 
 B. C, some of the Cyrenians fled to Egypt, and related 
 to Ptolemy what had occurred in Cyrenaica, begging 
 him to help them back to their homes. The suggestion 
 was welcome to him, for victory would be easy over these 
 struggling factions. He sent a strong military and naval 
 force, under Ophelas, the Macedonian, to Cyrenaica in 
 the summer. When these were seen approaching, those 
 
CYREISrE CAPTUEED 
 
 36 
 
 exiles who had found refuge with Thibron decided to 
 join them. Their plan, however, was discovered, and 
 they were put to death. The leader of the rabble in 
 Cyrene (fearful for his own safety, now that the exiles 
 who had fled to Egypt were returning) made overtures 
 of peace to Thibron, and joined with him to repulse 
 Ophelas. The latter worked with the utmost caution, 
 
 •^^^m^ 
 
 THE dOm FALU, 
 
 sent an army under Epieides of Olynth against Tan- 
 cheira, whilst he himself marched against Cyrene. He 
 met Thibron in a fierce fight. The latter was completely 
 defeated and fled towards Tancheira, where he hoped 
 to find help, but instead fell into Epieides' hands. 
 Thibron was given over to the people of Tancheira for 
 pumshment. He was crueUy scourged, and then dragged 
 to ApoUonia, where he was crucified. Ophelas, however, 
 was not able to conquer the Cyrenians until Ptolemy 
 
36 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 himself arrived with fresh troops, overpowered the town 
 and joined the province to his own satrapy. 
 
 The conquest of this Greek province was a gain 
 equally for himself and for the Greeks. He put an end 
 to the horrible anarchy that prevailed there, and proved 
 himself their saviour as well as their conqueror. His 
 name was now an honoured one among all the Greeks. 
 When it was rimaoured that war was likely to break out 
 between Ptolemy and the royal party, the Macedonians 
 flocked to Alexandria, *' every man ready to give all and 
 to sacrifice himself in order to help his friend." A pop- 
 ular belief of the day was that, although Ptolemy was 
 known as the son of Lagos, he was in reality the son of 
 Philip, and indeed much in his manner resembled the 
 great founder of the Macedonian power. Amongst the 
 successors of Alexander, not one understood as well as 
 he how to retain and increase the power which he had 
 won. He recognised, also, from the first, the tendency 
 of the age: the tendency to split up the kingdom into 
 different states; and he had made this the basis of his 
 policy. It was under him that the first state (in the new 
 sense of the word) was founded. He was the leader of 
 the new movement that soon generated disunity, and to 
 this end he made a secret contract with Antipatros 
 against the regent Perdiccas. About this time also mis- 
 understandings between the regent and the rulers in the 
 West bega,n to take a serious aspect. 
 
 At a great meeting in Babylon in the summer of the 
 year 323, it was decided that the body of Alexander was 
 to be taken with great solemnity to the Temple of 
 
FUNERAL OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 37 
 
 Amon, and that tlie equipping and guidance of the fu- 
 neral procession should be entrusted to Arridseus. At 
 the end of the year 323, the necessary preparations were 
 finished. The gigantic funeral car that was to carry the 
 kingly bier had been decorated with unparalleled mag- 
 nificence. Without waiting for orders from the regent, 
 Arridseus started with the funeral procession from 
 Babylon. Crowds from far and near filled the streets, 
 some curious to see the magnificent sight, others eager 
 to show this last token of respect to the dead king. It 
 was firmly believed amongst the Macedonians that the 
 coimtry in which Alexander's body had its last rest- 
 ing-place would become happy and powerful above all 
 coimtries. This prophecy was uttered by the old seer 
 Telmissus soon after the king's death. Did Ptolemy 
 have this belief, or did he wish to make use of it *? There 
 were probably other reasons which had caused him to 
 enter into an imderstanding with Arridseus, and to ar- 
 range with him that he was to start without orders from 
 the regent. He was afraid that Perdiccas, in order to 
 add to the solemnity of the procession, would himself 
 accompany the body with the imperial army to Egypt. 
 Ptolemy felt that his position in the lands entrusted to 
 his care would be greatly weakened if a higher authority 
 than himself could appear there with a military force. 
 Arridseus led the funeral train to Damascus, as had been 
 arranged before with Ptolemy. It was in vain that Pole- 
 mon (one of Perdiccas' generals), who was in the neigh- 
 bourhood, went to meet him. He was able to obtain no 
 respect for the express order of the regent. The 
 
38 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 funeral procession passed Damascus on its .way to Egypt. 
 Ptolemy accompanied the body with his army as far as 
 Syria. It was then taken on to Memphis to rest there 
 until it could be sheltered by that beautiful sepulchre 
 of the kings at Alexandria, 
 
 ArridaBUs' action, in starting without permission, 
 and the defiance of Polemon's order, were acts of open 
 revolt against the higher authority of the kingdom. 
 Perdiccas called all loyal followers to the council of 
 war. Ptolemy, he said, had defied the order of the kings 
 in his behaviour concerning the funeral procession; and 
 he had also given shelter to the exiled satraps of Phrygia. 
 He was prepared for war, which he hoped to bring about. 
 It was for them (the loyal ones) to uphold the dignity 
 of the kingdom. They must try to take him unawares, 
 and to overcome them individually. The question was, 
 if the Egyptians or the Macedonians ought to be first 
 attacked. In the end, plans were carefully concerted 
 for an attack on Egypt and the protection of Europe. 
 In the early spring of b. c. 321, Perdiccas and his col- 
 leagues set out for Egypt with the imperial army, or- 
 dering the fleet to follow, and leaving Eumenes with 
 skilled officers and troops in general command of Asia 
 Minor for the purpose of guarding the Hellespont. 
 
 At the Egyptian frontier, Perdiccas summoned the 
 army together, that the men themselves should give 
 judgment in the case of the satrap of Egypt, in the same 
 way as in the preceding autmnn they had given judg- 
 ment in the case of Antigones. He expected a decision 
 which would enable him to finish what he had already 
 
Street Scene in Cairo 
 
 From the painting by Gerome 
 
Street Scene in Cairo 
 
 From the painting by Gerome 
 
STRUGGLE WITH PERDICCAS 39 
 
 begun. The accusations were that he had refused obe- 
 dience to the kings, that he had fought against and over- 
 come the Greeks of Cyrenaica (who had received free- 
 dom from Alexander), and that he had taken possession 
 of the king's body, and carried it to Memphis. 
 
 According to the single account, which teUs us of 
 these proceedings, Ptolemy himself appeared to conduct 
 his own defence before the assembled warriors. He had 
 good reason for reckoning on the impression his confi- 
 dence in them would make upon them, and on the love 
 that he knew the Macedonians bore towards him. He 
 knew, too, of the increasing dislike of the imperial 
 regent. His defence was heard with growing approval, 
 and the army's judgment was " freedom." 
 
 In spite of this the regent kept to the war. The 
 decision of the troops alienated him still more from 
 them. The war with Egypt was contrary to their wishes, 
 and they murmured openly. Perdiccas sought to put 
 down the refractory spirit with a stem military hand, 
 but the remonstrances of his officers were in vain. He 
 treated the first in the land in an inconsiderate and 
 despotic manner, removed the most deserving from their 
 conunand, and trusted himself alone. This same man, 
 who had climbed the path to greatness with so much 
 foresight, self-command, energy, and statesmanship, 
 seemed now, the nearer he grew to the summit of his 
 ambition, to lose all clearness of sight and moderation, 
 which traits alone could help him to take this last and 
 dangerous step. He had the advantage of tried troops, 
 the elephants of Alexander, and the fleet under the 
 
40 
 
 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 conunand of his brother-in-law was near the mouth of 
 the Nile; but he had overstepped the mark. 
 
 Just at this time, the news reached him from Asia 
 Minor that Eumenes had conquered Neoptolemas, the 
 governor of Armenia, who had taken the side of Ptolemy. 
 
 With all the more hope, 
 Perdiccas went to meet the 
 enemy. He reached Pelu- 
 sium imdisturbed. It was 
 highly necessary that the 
 army should cross to the 
 Pelusaic side of the Nile, for 
 there were several secure 
 places there, which, if al- 
 lowed to remain in the hands 
 of the enemy, would endan- 
 
 A SILHOUETTE ON THE NILE. 
 
PERDICCAS AT THE NILE 41 
 
 ger the forward movement. There were also plentiful 
 supplies of provisions within the Delta, whilst the way 
 through the so-called Arabia was sparsely inhabited. 
 
 If he did not find the Egyptians there, Perdiccas 
 would install himself within one of the fortresses on that 
 side, and thence conduct operations against them, and, at 
 the same time, remain in connection with his fleet, on 
 which he could fall back in case of need. To enable the 
 crossing to be accomplished as easily as possible, Perdic- 
 cas ordered the cleaning out of an old and filled-in canal, 
 that led up from the Nile. The work was evidently begun 
 without much thought, for the fact had not been consid- 
 ered that, at the rising of the Nile, the canal would want 
 a much deeper bed than the present stream required. 
 The canal had only just been opened up, when the water 
 rose with unusual force and rapidity; the dam was com- 
 pletely destroyed, and many workers lost their lives. 
 During the disturbance, many officers and men left the 
 camp and hurried to Ptolemy. This was the beginning 
 of the Egjrptian war. The desertion of so many impor- 
 tant men made Perdiccas think seriously. He summoned 
 the officers of the army, spoke to them with much conde- 
 scension, gave presents to some, honoured others with 
 promotion, and begged them, for the sake of their honour 
 and for the cause of their kings, to fight their hardest 
 against this rebel, and with the order to hold their men 
 in readiness, he left them. The army was only told in 
 the evening, at the signal for starting, where they were 
 to march. Perdiccas feared, on account of the desertion 
 that was taking place in his army, that his march might 
 
42 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEE 
 
 be discovered by the enemy. They marched with great 
 speed through the night, and camped at last on the side 
 of the river. At daybreak, after the troops had rested, 
 Perdiccas gave the order to cross. First came the ele- 
 phants, then the light infantry, next the storming party 
 with ladders, and lastly, the pick of the cavalry, who, if 
 the enemy should burst out during the storming, could 
 easily drive them back. Perdiccas hoped, if he could 
 only get a firm footing on that side of the river, to anni- 
 hilate the Egyptian army easily with his superior force. 
 He was right in feeling that his Macedonian troops, when 
 face to face with the enemy, would forget their antipathy 
 to him, and think only of their military honour. When 
 about half the army had crossed, and just as the elephants 
 were moving towards the fortress, the enemy were seen 
 hurrying thither with great speed; their trumpet-calls 
 and war-cries even were heard. They reached the fort 
 before the Macedonians, and withdrew into the shelter 
 of its walls. Not discouraged by this, the infantry 
 stormed the fort. Ladders were placed against the waUs, 
 the elephants driven forward, and palisades taken from 
 their backs to attack the ramparts. 
 
 Ptolemy, in the dress of a Macedonian soldier, stood 
 on the waU surrounded by a few selected men. He was 
 first in the fight. From where he stood he pierced with 
 his lance the eyes of the leading elephant, and stabbed 
 the Indian on its back, and he wounded many and killed 
 numbers of the stoiming party. His officers and men 
 fought with the greatest spirit; the driver of the second 
 elephant was kiUed and the infantry were driven back. 
 
Pi 
 o 
 
 X 
 
 p 
 o 
 o 
 
 > 
 
 w 
 
PEEDICCAS RETREATS 43 
 
 Perdiccas led new troops to the attack, wishing to take 
 the fortress at all costs. By word and deed, Ptolemy 
 urged on his men, who fought with marvellous endur- 
 ance. The dreadful battle waged the whole day; many 
 were killed and wounded; evening came on and nothing 
 was decided. Perdiccas ordered a retreat and returned 
 to his camp. 
 
 In the middle of the night he again started with his 
 army, hoping that Ptolemy would stay in the fort with 
 his troops, and that, after a trying march of some miles 
 up-stream, he (Perdiccas) would be able to cross the 
 river more easily. At daybreak he found himself oppo- 
 site one of the many islands of the Nile; it was large 
 enough for the camp of a great army. In spite of the 
 difficulties of crossing, he decided to encamp his army 
 there. The water reached up to the soldiers' knees, and 
 it was with the greatest difficulty that they kept their 
 footing against the force of the current. In order to 
 break this current, Perdiccas ordered the elephants into 
 the river to stand up-stream to the left of the fording 
 party; he ordered the horsemen to stand at the other 
 end to help those across that were driven down by the 
 current. Some had, with great difficulty, managed to 
 get across; others were still in the stream when it was 
 noticed that the water was becoming deeper; the heav- 
 ily armed men sank, and the elephants and horses stood 
 deeper and deeper in the water. A fearful panic seized 
 the army. They called out that the enemy had closed in 
 the canals up-stream, and that the gods had destined 
 bad weather in the upper provinces, on account of which 
 
44 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEE 
 
 the river was swollen. Those who understood saw that 
 the bed of the river had become deepened by the cross- 
 ing of so great a cavalcade. It was impossible for the 
 remainder to cross or for those on the island to return. 
 They were completely cut off and were at the mercy of 
 the enemy, who were already seen approaching. There 
 was nothing left but to order them to get back as weU 
 as they could; lucky indeed were those who could swim, 
 and had sufficient strength to bring them across the 
 
 CROCODILES BASKING IN THE SUN. 
 
 broad expanse of water. Many saved themselves in this 
 way. They came without weapons, worn out and des- 
 perate, to the shore; others were drowned or eaten by 
 crocodiles. Some were carried down-stream, and reached 
 the shore where the enemy stood. Two thousand men 
 were missing, many officers among them. The camp of 
 the Egyptians was situated on the other side, and they 
 could be seen helping the men in the water and burning 
 logs of wood to show honour to the dead. On this side 
 of the river there was sad silence; each man sought his 
 comrade, or officer, and sought in vain. Food was scarce, 
 
DEATH OF PERDICCAS 46 
 
 and there was no means of overcoming this dreadful state 
 of affairs; night came on, and curses and complaints 
 were heard on all sides. The lives of so many brave men 
 had been sacrificed for nothing; it was bad enough to 
 lose the " honour of their arms," but now, through the 
 stupidity of their leader, their lives had been lost, and 
 to be swallowed by crocodiles was now the distinguished 
 death of Macedonian warriors. Many of the officers 
 went to the tent of the regent, and told him openly that 
 he was the cause of this calamity. Outside the tent the 
 Macedonians yelled, beside themselves with rage. About 
 a hundred of the officers, headed by the satrap Python, 
 refused to share further responsibility, resigned their 
 commissions, and left the tent. The excitement grew 
 intense. The troops, in ungovernable rage, entered the 
 regent's tent and threw themselves upon him. Antig- 
 onus struck the first blow, others followed, and, after 
 a desperate but short struggle, Perdiccas fell to the 
 ground covered with wounds. 
 
 Thus died Perdiccas, in the third year of his regency. 
 His great idea, the unity of the kingdom entrusted to 
 his care, should have made him worthy of more success 
 had he given himself up to this idea with more conscien- 
 tiousness. Unfortunately, with growing power, he be- 
 came despotic and unjust. He was not great enough to 
 become the successor of Alexander, to be another '' ruler 
 of the world." This last step, the one which was to lead 
 him to his long-coveted goal, led him instead to his death. 
 
 Ptolemy soon heard the news, and the next morning 
 he crossed the river and came to the camp. He asked 
 
46 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEE, 
 
 to be taken to the kings, presented tliem and some of 
 the nobles with gifts; was kind and considerate to all, 
 and was greeted with great joy. Then he called the 
 troops together and spoke to them. He told the Mace- 
 donians that it w^as only stern necessity that caused him 
 to take up arms against his old comrades. No man re- 
 gretted more than he the untimely death of so many 
 heroes. Perdiccas was the cause of this calamity; he 
 had but received his just punishment. Now all enmity 
 was to be ended. He had saved as many as he could from 
 death in the water, and the corpses which the river had 
 brought to the shore he had buried with all honour; and 
 finally he told them that he had given orders for the 
 immediate alleviation of the want which he knew was 
 being felt in the camp. His speech was received with 
 loud cheers. He stood there unhurt and admired before 
 the Macedonians, who but a few hours earlier had been 
 his bitterest foes. Now they looked upon him as their 
 saviour; they all acknowledged him as the conqueror, 
 and for the moment he stood in unequivocal possession 
 of that power for which Perdiccas had worked so hard, 
 and which he had so much abused. AVho was now to be 
 Perdiccas' successor, and to manage the kingdom in the 
 name of the kings? With one voice the people begged 
 Ptolemy to undertake this task. The foresight and 
 presence of mind of the son of Lagus were not clouded 
 by the allurement of such an offer gained by his sudden 
 change of fortune. At this supreme moment he acted 
 with consummate sagacity. He divined that a refusal 
 of the proffered honour would make him in reality more 
 
PTOLEMY'S DESIGNS ON SYRIA 47 
 
 powerful, although, at the moment, he would seem to be 
 acting in an unselfish manner. He recommended to the 
 army, as a favour which he had to bestow, those he 
 thought worthy of his thanks; they were Python, the 
 Median strategist, who had taken the first decisive step 
 against Perdiccas; and Arridgeus, who, in spite of Per- 
 diccas' orders, had taken the body of the king to Egypt. 
 These two were nominated regents with loud cheers. 
 
 The Macedonian army, accordingly, chose Python 
 and Arridaeus as guardians, and as rulers with unlimited 
 power over the whole of Alexander's conquests; but, 
 though none of the Greek generals who now held Asia 
 Minor, Syria, Babylonia, Thrace, or Egypt dared to 
 acknowledge it to the soldiers, yet in reality the power 
 of the guardians was limited to the little kingdom of 
 Macedonia. With the death of Perdiccas, and the with- 
 drawal of his army, Phoenicia and Coele-Syria were left 
 unguarded, and almost without a master. In order that 
 Egypt might take an important part in the universal 
 policy, Ptolemy felt he must possess Syria, which would 
 open up the way for him to the countries along the Eu- 
 phrates and the Tigris, and also the island of Cyprus, 
 where he would be near the coast of Asia Minor. He 
 could not yet think of conquering Cyprus, which had an 
 important fleet. He felt that, if he annexed Syria, either 
 by diplomacy or by force, the organisation of the king- 
 dom and the territorial division of power would be 
 changed in a tangible manner. The Egyptian satraps 
 already possessed some measure of authority, and he 
 could also depend upon the satrap of Syria joining him. 
 
48 EGYPT UNDEE PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 Perdiccas had bestowed this satrapy upon Laomedon, the 
 Amphysolite, who had taken no part in the great fight 
 between Perdiccas and Ptolemy. Ptolemy now informed 
 him that he wished to possess his satrapy, but was ready 
 to compensate him with a sum of money. Laomedon re- 
 fused this offer with scorn. Thereupon, an army under 
 Nicanor, one of the ' ' friends ' ' of Ptolemy, marched into 
 Palestine. Jerusalem was the only place that held out 
 against the Egyptian army; but Nicanor, says the his- 
 torian Agatharcides, seeing that on every seventh day 
 the garrison withdrew from the walls, chose that day for 
 the assault, and thus gained the city. Without further 
 opposition the Egyptians marched onwards. At last he 
 met Laomedon, took him prisoner, and brought him back 
 to Egypt. Egyptian sentries now guarded the strong- 
 holds of the country; Egyptian ships took the towns 
 along the coast. A great number of the Jews were 
 transported to Alexandria; they received the rights of 
 citizenship there. Without altering local conditions, 
 Syria gradually came under the sway of the Egyptian 
 satraps. Laomedon found means of escaping from 
 Egypt; he fled to Alcetas in Caria, who had just with- 
 drawn himself to the mountainous regions of Pisida, 
 thence to begin the decisive war against Antigonus. 
 
 In the earlier times of Egyptian history, when navi- 
 gation was less easy, and when seas separated kingdoms 
 instead of joining them, the Thebaid enjoyed, under the 
 Koptic kings, the trading wealth which followed the 
 stream of its great river, the longest piece of inland navi- 
 gation then known; but, with the improvement in 
 
A THEBAN BELLE. 
 
PTOLEMY AS KING OF EGYPT 51 
 
 navigation and ship-building, countries began to feel 
 their strength in the timber of their forests and the num- 
 ber of their harbours ; and, as timber and sea-coast were 
 equally imknown in the Thebaid, that country fell as 
 Lower Egypt rose; the wealth which before centred in 
 Thebes was then found in the ports of the Delta, where 
 the barges of the Nile met the ships of the Mediterra- 
 nean. What used to be Egypt was an inland kingdom, 
 bounded by the desert; but Egypt under Ptolemy was 
 a country on the sea-coast ; and, on the conquest of Phoe- 
 nicia and Ccele-Syria, he was master of the forests of 
 Lebanon and Antilibanus, and stretched his coast from 
 Cyrene to Antioch, a distance of twelve hundred miles. 
 The wise and mild plans which were laid down by 
 Alexander for the government of Egypt when a province 
 were easily followed by Ptolemy when it became his own 
 kingdom. The Greek soldiers lived in their garrisons 
 or in Alexandria under the Macedonian laws, whUe the 
 Egyptian laws were administered by their own priests, 
 who were upheld in aU the rights of their order and in 
 their freedom from land-tax. The temples of Phtah, of 
 Amon-Ra, and the other gods of the country were not 
 only kept open, but were repaired and even built at the 
 cost of the king; the religion of the people, and not that 
 of their rulers, was made the established religion of the 
 state. On the death of the god Apis, the sacred bull of 
 Memphis, the chief of the animals which were kept and 
 fed at the cost of the several cities, and who had died of 
 old age soon after Ptolemy came to Egypt, he spent the 
 sum of fifty talents, or $42,500, on its funeral; and the 
 
EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 priests, who had not forgotten that Cambyses, their 
 former conqueror, had wounded the Apis of his day with 
 his own sword, must have been highly pleased with this 
 mark of his care for them. The burial-place for the bulls 
 is an arched gallery tunnelled into the hill behind Mem- 
 phis for more than two thousand feet, with a row of cells 
 on each side of it. In every cell is a huge granite sarcoph- 
 agus, within which were placed the remains of a buU 
 that had once been the Apis of its day, which, after hav- 
 ing for perhaps twenty years received the honours of 
 a god, was there buried with more than kingly state. 
 The cell was then walled up, and ornamented on the out- 
 side with various tablets in honour of the deceased ani- 
 mal, which were placed in these dark passages by the 
 piety of his worshippers. The priests of Thebes were 
 now at liberty to cut out from their momunents the 
 names of usurping gods, and to restore those that had 
 been before cut out. They also rebuilt the inner room, 
 or the holy of holies, in the great temple of Karnak, 
 
 It had been overthrown by the 
 Persians in wantonness, or in ha- 
 tred of the Egyptian religion; 
 and the priests now put upon it 
 the name of Philip Arridaeus, for 
 whom Ptolemy was nominally 
 governing Egypt. 
 
 The Egyptians, who during 
 the last two centuries had sometimes seen their temples 
 plundered and their trade crushed by the grasping 
 tyranny of the Persian satraps, and had at other times 
 
 TOMBS OF THE SACRED BULLS. 
 
HIS METHOD OF GOVEENMENT 63 
 
 been almost as much hurt by their own vain struggles 
 for freedom, now found themselves in the quiet enjoy- 
 ment of good laws, with a prosperity which promised 
 soon to equal that of the reigns of Necho or Amasis. It 
 is true that they had not regained their independence 
 and political liberty; that, as compared with the Greeks, 
 they felt themselves an inferior race, and that they only 
 enjoyed their civil rights diuring the pleasure of a Greek 
 autocrat; but then it is to be remembered that the na- 
 tive rulers with whom Ptolemy was compared were the 
 kings of Lower Egypt, who, like himself, were sur- 
 rounded by Greek mercenaries, and who never rested 
 their power on the broad base of national pride and love 
 of country; and that nobody could have hoped to see a 
 Theban king arise to bring back the days of Thutmosis 
 and Ramses. Thebes was every day sinking in wealth 
 and strength; and its race of hereditary soldiers, proud 
 in the recollection of former glory, who had, after cen- 
 turies of struggles, been forced to receive laws from 
 Memphis, perhaps yielded obedience to a Greek con- 
 queror with less pain than they did formerly to their 
 own vassals of Lower Egypt. 
 
 Ptolemy's government was in form nearly the same 
 in Alexandria as in the rest of Egypt, but in reality it 
 was wholly different. His sway over the Egyptians was 
 supported by Greek force, but over the Greeks it rested 
 on the broad base of public opinion. Every Greek had 
 the privilege of bearing arms, and of meeting in the 
 gymnasium in public assembly, to explain a grievance, 
 and petition for its redress. The citizens and the soldiers 
 
54 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEE, 
 
 were the same body of men; they at the same time held 
 the force, and had the spirit to use it. But they had no 
 senate, no body of nobles, no political constitution which 
 might save their freedom in after generations from the 
 ambitious grasp of the sovereign, or from their own 
 degeneracy. While claiming to be equal among them- 
 selves they were making themselves slaves; and though 
 at present the government so entirely bore the stamp of 
 their own will that they might fancy they enjoyed a 
 democracy, yet history teaches us that the simple pater- 
 nal form of government never fails to become sooner or 
 later a cruel tyranny. The building of Alexandria must 
 be held the master-stroke of policy by which Egypt was 
 kept in obedience. Here, and afterwards in a few other 
 cities, such as Ptolemais in the Thebaid and Parembole 
 in Nubia, the Greeks lived without insulting or troubling 
 the Egyptians, and by their numbers held the country 
 like so many troops in garrison. It was a wise policy 
 to make no greater change than necessary in the king- 
 dom, and to leave the Egyptians under their own laws 
 and magistrates, and in the enjoyment of their own re- 
 ligion; and yet it was necessary to have the country 
 garrisoned with Greeks, whose presence in the old cities 
 could not but be extremely galling to the Egyptians. 
 This was done by means of these new Greek cities, where 
 the power by which Egypt was governed was stronger 
 by being united, and less hateful by being out of sight. 
 Seldom or never was so great a monarchy founded with 
 so little force and so little crime. 
 
 Ptolemy, however, did not attempt the difficult task 
 
EACIAL DIFFEEENCES 
 
 55 
 
 of uniting the two races, and of treating the conquered 
 and the conquerors as entitled to the same privileges. 
 From the time of Necho and Psammetichus, many of 
 the Greeks who settled in Egypt intermarried with the 
 natives, and very much laid aside their own habits; and 
 sometimes their offspring, after a generation or two, 
 became wholly Egyptian. By the Greek laws the chil- 
 dren of these mixed marriages were declared to be bar- 
 barians; not Greeks but Egjrptians, and were brought 
 up accordingly. They left the worship of Jupiter and 
 Juno for that of Isis and Osiris, and perhaps the more 
 readily for the greater earnestness with which the Egyp- 
 tian gods were worshipped. We now trace their de- 
 scendants by the form of their skuUs, even into the 
 priestly families; and of one hundred 
 mummies covered with hieroglyphics, 
 taken up from the catacombs near Thebes, 
 about twenty show a European origin, 
 while of those from the tombs near Mem- 
 phis, seventy out of every hundred have 
 lost their Koptic peculiarities. It is easy 
 to foresee that an important change would 
 have been wrought in the character of the 
 people and in their political institutions, 
 if the Greek laws had been humane and 
 wise enough to grant to the children of 
 mixed marriages the privileges, the education, and 
 thereby the moral feelings of the more favoured parent; 
 and it is not too much to suppose, if the Greek law of 
 marriage had been altered by Ptolemy, that within three 
 
 THE GOD SERAPIS. 
 
56 EGYPT UNDEE PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 centuries above half the nation would have spoken the 
 Greek language, and boasted of its Greek origin. 
 
 The stimulus given by Ptolemy Soter to the culture 
 of the age has been already mentioned. The founding 
 of the famous museum and library of Alexandria may 
 be, perhaps, regarded as the rounding-off of his political 
 plans for the consolidation of his kingdom. Alexandria 
 became, in fact, not only a centre of commerce and gov- 
 ernment, but also the intellectual capital of the Greeks. 
 But for this supreme importance of the city, it is doubt- 
 ful whether the descendants of Ptolemy Lagus could have 
 continued to rule the Valley of the Nile. 
 
 In return for the literature which Greece then gave 
 to Egypt, she gained the knowledge of papyrus, a tall 
 rush which grows wild near the sources of the Nile, and 
 v/as then cultivated in the Egyptian marshes. Before 
 that time books had been written on linen, wax, bark, 
 or the leaves of trees ; and public records on stone, brass, 
 or lead: but the knowledge of papyrus was felt by all 
 men of letters like the invention of printing in modern 
 Europe. Books were then known by many for the first 
 time, and very little else was afterwards used in Greece 
 or Rome ; for, when parchment was made about two cen- 
 turies later, it was too costly to be used as long as papy- 
 riis was within reach. Copies were multiplied on frail 
 strips of this plant, and it was found that mere thoughts, 
 when worth preserving, were less liable to be destroyed 
 by time than temples and palaces of the hardest stone. 
 
 While Egypt, under Ptolemy, was thus enjoying the 
 advantages of its insulated position, and cultivating the 
 
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PTOLEMY'S POLICY IN THE EMPIRE 
 
 57 
 
 arts of peace, the other provinces were being harassed 
 by the unceasing wars of Alexander's generals, who were 
 aiming, like Ptolemy, at raising their own power. Many 
 changes had taken place among them in the short space 
 of eight years which had passed since the death of Alex- 
 ander. Philip ArridiBus, in whose name the provinces 
 had been governed, had been put to death; Antigonus 
 was master of Asia Minor, with a kingdom more power- 
 ful though not so easily guarded as Egypt; Cassander 
 held Macedonia, and had the care of the young Alexander 
 ^gus, who was then called the heir to the whole of his 
 father's wide conquests, and 
 whose life, like that of Arridaeus, 
 was soon to end with his minor- 
 ity; Lysimachus was trying to 
 form a kingdom in Thrace; and 
 Seleucus had for a brief period 
 held Babylonia. 
 
 Ptolemy bore no part in the 
 wars which brought about these 
 changes, beyond being once or 
 twice called upon to send troops 
 to guard his province of Ccsle-Syria. But Antigonus, in 
 his ambitious efforts to stretch his power over all the 
 provinces, had by force or by treachery driven Seleu- 
 cus out of Babylon, and forced him to seek Egypt for 
 safety, where Ptolemy received him with the kindness 
 and good policy which had before gained so many friends. 
 No arguments of Seleucus were wanting to persuade 
 Ptolemy that Antigonus was dreaming of universal 
 
 ALEXANDER ADORING HORUS. 
 
58 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 conquest, and that his next attack would be upon Egypt. 
 He therefore sent ambassadors to make treaties of alli- 
 ance with Cassander and Lysimachus, who readily joined 
 him against the common enemy. 
 
 The large fleet and army which Antigonus got to- 
 gether for the invasion of Egypt proved his opinion of 
 the strength and skill of Ptolemy. AU Syria, except one 
 or two cities, laid down its arms before him on his ap- 
 proach. But he found that the whole of the fleet had 
 been already removed to the ports of Egypt, and he or- 
 dered Phoenicia to furnish him with eight thousand ship- 
 builders and carpenters, to build galleys from the for- 
 ests of Lebanon and Antilibanus, and ordered Syria to 
 send f oiu" hundred and fifty thousand medimni, or nearly 
 three millions of bushels of wheat, for the use of his army 
 within the year. By these means he raised his fleet to 
 two himdred and forty-three long galleys or ships of war. 
 
 Ptolemy was for a short time called off from the war 
 in Syria by a rising in Cyrene. The Cyrenians, who 
 clung to their Doric love of freedom, and were latterly 
 smarting at its loss, had taken arms and were besieging 
 the Egyptian, or, as they would have called themselves, 
 the Macedonian garrison, who had shut themselves up 
 in the citadel. He at first sent messengers to order the 
 Cyrenians to return to their duty; but his orders were 
 not listened to; the rebels no doubt thought themselves 
 safe, as his armies seemed more wanted on the eastern 
 frontier; his messengers were put to death, and the siege 
 of the citadel pushed forward with all possible speed. 
 On this he sent a large land force, followed by a fleet. 
 
FIRST ATTACK ON SYRIA 59 
 
 in order to crush the revolt at a single blow; and the 
 ringleaders were brought to Alexandria in chains. Ma- 
 gas, a son of Queen Berenice and stepson of Ptolemy, 
 was then made governor of Cyrene. 
 
 When this trouble at home was put an end to, Ptol- 
 emy crossed over to Cyprus to punish the kings of the 
 little states on that island for having joined Antigonus. 
 For now that the fate of empires was to be settled by 
 naval battles the friendship of Cyprus became very im- 
 portant to the neighbouring states. The large and safe 
 harbours gave to this island a great value in the naval 
 warfare between Egypt, Phoenicia, and Asia Minor. Al- 
 exander had given it as his opinion that the command of 
 the sea went with the island of Cyprus. When he held 
 Asia Minor he caUed Cyprus the key to Egypt; and with 
 stiU greater reason might Ptolemy, looking from Egypt, 
 think that island the key to Phoenicia. Accordingly he 
 landed there with so large a force that he met with no 
 resistance. He added Cyprus to the rest of his domin- 
 ions: he banished the kings, and made Nicocreon gov- 
 ernor of the whole island. 
 
 From Cyprus, Ptolemy landed with his army in Upper 
 Syria, as the northern part of that country was called, 
 while the part nearer to Palestine was called Coele-Syria. 
 Here he took the towns of Posideion and Potami-Caron, 
 and then marching hastily into Asia Minor he took Mal- 
 lus, a city of Cilicia. Having rewarded his soldiers with 
 the booty there seized, he again embarked and returned 
 to Alexandria. This inroad seems to have been meant 
 to draw off the enemy from Coele-Syria; and it had the 
 
60 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEfi 
 
 wished-for effect, for Demetrius, who commanded the 
 forces of his father Antigonus in that quarter, marched 
 northward to the relief of Cilicia, but he did not arrive 
 there till Ptolemy's fleet was already under sail for 
 its return journey to Egypt. 
 
 Ptolemy, on reaching Alexandria, set his army in 
 motion towards Pelusium, on its way to Palestine. His 
 forces were eighteen thousand foot and four thousand 
 horse, part Macedonians, as the Greeks living in Egypt 
 were always called, and part mercenaries, followed by a 
 crowd of Egyptians, of whom some were armed for battle, 
 and some were to take care of the baggage. He had 
 twenty-two thousand Greeks, and was met at Gaza by the 
 young Demetrius with an army of eleven thousand foot 
 and twenty-three hundred horse, followed by forty-three 
 elephants and a body of light-armed barbarians, who, 
 like the Egyptians in the army of Ptolemy, were not 
 counted. But the youthful courage of Demetrius was 
 no match for the cool skill and larger army of Ptolemy; 
 the elephants were easily stopped by iron hurdles, and 
 the Egyptian army, after gaining a complete victory, 
 entered Gaza, while Demetrius fled to Azotus. Ptolemy, 
 in his victory, showed a generosity unknown in modem 
 warfare; he not only gave leave to the conquered army 
 to bury their dead, but sent back the whole of the royal 
 baggage which had fallen into his hands, and also those 
 personal friends of Demetrius who were found among 
 the prisoners; that is to say, all those who wished to 
 depart, as the larger part of these Greek armies were 
 equally ready to fight on either side. 
 
PTOLEMY'S SAGACITY 61 
 
 By this victory the whole of Phoemcia was again 
 joined to Egypt, and Seleucus regained Babylonia. 
 There, by following the example of Ptolemy in his good 
 treatment of the people, and in leaving them their own 
 laws and religion, he fomided a monarchy, and gave his 
 name to a race of kings which rivalled even the Lagidae. 
 He raised up again for a short time the throne of N'ebu- 
 chadnezzar. But it was only for a short time. The Chal- 
 dees and Assyrians now yielded the first rank to the 
 Greeks who had settled among them; and the Greeks 
 were more mmierous in the Syrian portion of his empire. 
 Accordingly Seleucus built a new capital on the river 
 Orontes, and named it Antioch after his father. Baby- 
 lon then yielded the same obedience to this new Greek 
 city that Memphis paid to Alexandria. Assyria and 
 Babylonia became subject provinces; and the succes- 
 sors of Seleucus, who came to be known as Selucids, 
 styled themselves not kings of Babylon but of Syria. 
 
 When Antigonus, who was in Phrygia on the other 
 side of his kingdom, heard that his son Demetrius had 
 been beaten at Gaza, he marched with all his forces to 
 give battle to Ptolemy. He soon crossed Mount Taurus, 
 the lofty range which divides Asia Minor from Syria and 
 Mesopotamia, and joined his camp to that of his son in 
 Upper Syria. But Ptolemy had gone through life with- 
 out ever making a hazardous move; not indeed without 
 ever suffering a loss, but without ever fighting a battle 
 when its loss would have ruined him, and he did not 
 choose to risk his kingdom against the far larger forces 
 of Antigonus. Therefore, with the advice of his council 
 
62 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEE 
 
 of generals, he levelled the fortifications of Acre, Joppa, 
 Samaria, and Gaza, and withdrew his forces and treasure 
 into Egypt, leaving the desert between himself and the 
 army of Antigonus. 
 
 Antigonus could not safely attempt to march through 
 the desert in the face of Ptolemy 's army. He had, there- 
 fore, first, either to conquer or gain the friendship of 
 the Nabatseans, a warlike race of Arabs, who held the 
 north of Arabia; and then he might march by Petra, 
 Mount Sinai, and the coast of the Red Sea, without being 
 in want of water for his army. The Nabatseans were the 
 tribe at an earlier time called Edomites. But they lost 
 that name when they carried it to the southern portion 
 of Judaea, then called Idumsea; for when the Jews re- 
 gained Idumaea, they called these Edomites of the desert 
 Nebaoth or Nabatseans. The Nabatseans professed neu- 
 trality between Antigonus and Ptolemy, the two contend- 
 ing powers; but the mild temper of Ptolemy had so far 
 gained their friendship that the haughty Antigonus, 
 though he did not refuse their pledges of peace, secretly 
 made up his mind to conquer them. 
 
 Petra, the city of the Nabatseans, is in a narrow val- 
 ley between steep overhanging rocks, so difficult of ap- 
 proach that a handful of men could guard it against the 
 largest army. Not more than two horsemen can ride 
 abreast through the chasm in the rock by which it is 
 entered from the east, while the other entrance from the 
 west is down a hillside too steep for a loaded camel. The 
 Eastern proverb reminds us that " Water is the chief 
 thing; " and a large stream within the valley, in addition 
 
m 
 
 DQ 
 
 m 
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 H 
 
SYEIAN SUBTLETY 65 
 
 to the strength of the fortress, made it a favourite rest- 
 ing-place for caravans, which, whether they were com- 
 ing from Tyre or Jerusalem, were forced to pass by this 
 city in their way to the Incense Country of Arabia Felix, 
 or to the Elanitic Gulf of the Red Sea, and for other car- 
 avans from Egypt to Dedam on the Persian Gulf. These 
 warlike Arabs seem to have received a toU from the 
 caravans, and they held their rocky fastness uncon- 
 quered by the great nations which surrounded them. 
 Their temples and tombs were cut out of the live rock, 
 and hence the city was by the Jews named Selah, (the 
 rock), and by the Greeks named Petra, from which last 
 the coimtry was sometimes called Arabia Petrsea. 
 
 Antigonus heard that the Nabataeans had left Petra 
 less guarded than usual, and had gone to a neighbour- 
 ing fair, probably to meet a caravan from the south, and 
 to receive spices in exchange for the woollen goods from 
 Tyre. He therefore sent forward four thousand light- 
 armed foot and six hundred horse, who overpowered the 
 guard and seized the city. The Arabs, when they heard 
 of what had happened, returned in the night, surrounded 
 the place, came upon the Greeks from above, by paths 
 known only to themselves, and overcame them with such 
 slaughter that, out of the four thousand six hundred 
 men, only fifty returned to Antigonus to tell the tale. 
 
 The Nabataeans then sent to Antigonus to complain 
 of this crafty attack being made upon Petra after they 
 had received from him a promise of friendship. He 
 endeavoured to put them off their guard by disowning 
 the acts of his general; he sent them home with 
 
66 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 promises of peace, but at the same time sent forward his 
 son Demetrius, with four thousand horse and four thou- 
 sand foot, to take revenge upon them, and again seize 
 their city. But the Arabs were this time upon their 
 guard; the nature of the place was as unfavourable to 
 the Greek arms and warfare as it was favourable to the 
 Arabs; and these eight thousand men, the flower of the 
 army, under brave Demetrius, were imable to force their 
 way through the narrow pass into this remarkable city. 
 
 Had Antigonus been master of the sea, he might per- 
 haps have marched through the desert along the coast 
 of the Mediterranean to Pelusium, with his fleet to wait 
 upon his army, as Perdiccas had done. But without this, 
 the only way that he could enter Egypt was through the 
 neighbourhood of Petra, and then along the same path 
 which the Jews are supposed to have followed; and the 
 stop thus put upon the invasion of Egypt by this little 
 city shows us the strength of Ptolemy's eastern frontier. 
 Antigonus then led his army northward, leaving the 
 kingdom of Egypt unattacked. 
 
 This retreat was followed by a treaty of peace be- 
 tween these generals, by which it was agreed that each 
 should keep the country that he then held; that Cassan- 
 der should govern Macedonia until Alexander ^gus, the 
 son of Alexander the Great, should be of age; that 
 Lysimachus should keep Thrace, Ptolemy Egypt, and 
 Antigonus Asia Minor and Palestine; and each wishing 
 to be looked upon as the friend of the soldiers by whom 
 his power was upheld, and the whole of these wide con- 
 quests kept in awe, added the very unnecessary article, 
 
THE GREEKS DOMINATE EGYPT 67 
 
 that the Greeks living in each of these countries should 
 be governed according to their own laws. 
 
 All the provinces held by these generals became more 
 or less Greek kingdoms, yet in no one did so many Greeks 
 settle as in Lower Egypt. Though the rest of Egypt was 
 governed by Egyptian laws and judges, the city of Alex- 
 andria was under Macedonian law. It did not form part 
 of the nome of Hermopolites in which it was built. It 
 scarcely formed a part of Egypt, but was a Greek state 
 in its neighbourhood, holding the Egyptians in a state 
 of slavery. In that city no Egyptian could live with- 
 out feeling himself of a conquered race. He was not 
 admitted to the privileges of Macedonian citizenship, 
 while they were at once granted to every Greek, and soon 
 to every Jew, who would settle there. 
 
 By the treaty just spoken of, Ptolemy, in the thir- 
 teenth year after the death of Alexander, was left un- 
 disputed master of Egypt. During these years he had 
 not only gained the love of the Egyptians and Alexan- 
 drians by his wise and just government, but had won 
 their respect as a general by the skill with which he had 
 kept the war at a distance. He had lost and won battles 
 in Syria, in Asia Minor, in the island of Cyprus, and at 
 sea; but since Perdiccas marched against him, before 
 he had a force to defend himself with, no foreign army 
 had drunk the sacred waters of the Nile. 
 
 It was under the government of Ptolemy that the 
 wonders of Upper Egypt were first seen by any Greeks 
 who had leisure, a love of knowledge, and enough of lit- 
 erature, to examine carefully and to describe what they 
 
68 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEE 
 
 saw. Loose and highly coloured accounts of the wealth 
 of Thebes had reached Greece even before the time of 
 Homer, and again through Herodotus and other travellers 
 in the Delta; but nothing was certainly known of it till 
 it was visited by Hecatseus of Abdera, who, among other 
 works, wrote a history of the Hyperborean or northern 
 nations, and also a history, or rather a description of 
 Egypt, part of which we now read in the pages of Dio- 
 dorus Siculus. When he travelled in Upper Egypt, 
 Thebes, though still a populous city, was more thought 
 of by the antiquary than by the statesman. Its wealth, 
 however, was stUl great; and when, under the just gov- 
 ernment of Ptolemy, it was no longer necessary for the 
 priests to hide their treasures, it was found that the tem- 
 ples still held the very large siun of three hundred talents 
 of gold, and two thousand three hundred talents of silver, 
 or above five million dollars, which had escaped the 
 plundering hands of the Persian satraps. Many of the 
 Theban tombs, which are sets of rooms tunnelled into 
 the hUls on the Libyan side of the Nile, had even then 
 been opened to gratify the curiosity of the learned or 
 the greediness of the conqueror. Forty-seven royal 
 tombs were mentioned in the records of the priests, of 
 which the entrances had been covered up with earth, and 
 hidden in the sloping sides of the hills, in the hope that 
 they might remain undisturbed and unplundered, and 
 might keep safe the embalmed bodies of the kings till 
 they should rise again at the end of the world; and 
 seventeen of these had already been found out and 
 broken open. Hecataus was told that the other tombs 
 
A GREEK ACCOUNT OF THEBES 69 
 
 had been before destroyed; and we owe it, perhaps, to 
 this mistake that they remained unopened for more than 
 two thousand years longer, to reward the searches of 
 modern travellers, and to unfold to us the history of their 
 builders. 
 
 The Memnonium, the great palace of Ramses II., was 
 then standing; and though it had been plundered by the 
 Persians, the building itself was unhurt. Its massive 
 walls had scarcely felt the wear of the centuries which 
 had rolled over them. Hecatseus measured its rooms, 
 its courtyards, and its avenue of sphinxes; and by his 
 measurements we can now distinguish its ruins from 
 those of the other palaces of Thebes. One of its rooms, 
 perhaps after the days of its builder, had been fitted up 
 as a library, and held the histories and records of the 
 priests; but the golden zodiac, or circle, on which were 
 engraved the days of the year, with the celestial bodies 
 seen to rise at sunrise and set at sunset, by which each 
 day was known, had been taken away by Cambyses. 
 Hecatseus also saw the three other palace-temples of 
 Thebes, which we now caU by the names of the villages 
 in which they stand, namely, of Luxor, of Karnak, and 
 of Medinet-Habu. But the Greeks, in their accounts of 
 Egypt, have sadly puzzled us by their careless alteration 
 of names from similarity of sound. To Miamun Ramses, 
 they gave the common Greek name Memnon; and the 
 city of Hahiroth they called Heroopolis, as if it meant 
 the city of heroes. The capital of Upper Egypt, which 
 was called The City, as a capital is often called, or in 
 Koptic, Tape or TJiabou, they named Thebes, and in their 
 
70 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 mj^hology they confounded it with Thebes in Boeotia. 
 The city of the god Kneph they called Canopus, and said 
 it was so named after the pilot of Menelaus. The hill 
 of Toorah opposite Memphis they called the Trojan moun- 
 tain. One of the oldest cities in Egypt, This, or with the 
 prefix for city, Abouthis, they called Abydos, and then 
 said that it was colonised by Milesians from Abydos in 
 Asia. In the same careless way have the Greeks given 
 us an account of the Egyptian gods. They thought them 
 the same as their own, though with new faces; and, 
 instead of describing their qualities, they have in the 
 main contented themselves with translating their names. 
 
 If Ptolemy did not make his government as much 
 feared by the half-armed Ethiopians as it was by the 
 well-disciplined Europeans, it must have been because 
 the Thebans wished to guard their own frontier rather 
 than because his troops were always wanted against a 
 more powerful enemy; but the inroads of the Ethiopians 
 were so far from being checked that the country to the 
 south of Thebes was unsafe for travellers, and no Greek 
 was able to reach Syene and the lower cataracts during 
 his reign. The trade through Ethiopia was wholly 
 stopped, and the caravans went from Thebes to Cosseir 
 to meet the ships which brought the goods of Arabia and 
 India from the opposite coast of the Red Sea. 
 
 In the wars between Egypt and Asia Minor, in which 
 Palestine had the misfortune to be the prize struggled 
 for and the debatable land on which the battles were 
 fought, the Jews were often made to smart under the 
 stern pride of Antigonus, and to rejoice at the milder 
 
THE JEWS IN ALEXAJSTDEIA 71 
 
 temper of Ptolemy. The Egyptians of the Delta and the 
 Jews had always been friends; and hence, when Ptolemy 
 promised to treat the Jews with the same kindness as 
 the Greeks, and more than the Egyptians, and held out 
 all the rights of Macedonian citizenship to those who 
 would settle in his rising city of Alexandria, he was fol- 
 lowed by crowds of industrious traders, manufacturers, 
 and men of letters. They chose to live in Egypt in peace 
 and wealth, rather than to stay in Palestine in the daily 
 fear of having their houses sacked and burnt at every 
 fresh quarrel between Ptolemy and Antigonus. In Al- 
 exandria, a suburb by the sea, on the east side of the 
 city, was allotted for their use, which was afterwards 
 included within the fortifications, and thus made a fifth 
 ward of the Lagid metropolis. 
 
 No sooner was the peace agreed upon between the 
 four generals, who were the most powerful kings in the 
 known world, than Cassander, who held Macedonia, put 
 to death both the Queen Roxana and her son, the young 
 Alexander ^gus, then thirteen years old, in whose name 
 these generals had each governed his kingdom with un- 
 limited sway, and who was then of an age that the sol- 
 diers, the givers of all power, were already planning to 
 make him the real King of Macedonia and of his father's 
 wide conquests. 
 
 The Macedonian phalanx, which formed the pride and 
 sinews of every army, were equally held by their deep- 
 rooted loyalty to the memory of Alexander, whether they 
 were fighting for Ptolemy or for Antigonus, and equally 
 thought that they were guarding a province for his heir; 
 
72 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 and it was through fear of loosening their hold upon the 
 faithfulness of these their best troops that Ptolemy and 
 his rivals alike chose to govern their kingdoms under the 
 impretending title of lieutenants of the Eang of Mace- 
 donia. Hence, upon the death of Alexander ^gus, there 
 was a throne, or at least a state prison, left empty for 
 a new claimant. Polysperchon, an old general of Alex- 
 ander's army, then thought that he saw a way to turn 
 Cassander out of Macedonia, by the help of Hercules, 
 the natural son of Alexander by Barce ; and, having pro- 
 claimed him king, he led him with a strong army against 
 Cassander. But Polysperchon wanted either courage or 
 means for what he had undertaken, and he soon yielded 
 to the bribes of Cassander and put Hercules to death. 
 
 The cities on the southern coast of Asia Minor yielded 
 to Antigonus obedience as slight as the ties which held 
 them to one another. The cities of Pamphylia and Cilicia, 
 in their habits as in their situation, were nearer the Syr- 
 ians, and famous for their shipping. They all enjoyed 
 a full share of the trade and piracy of those seas, and were 
 a tempting prize to Ptolemy. The treaty of peace be- 
 tween the generals never lessened their jealousy nor 
 wholly stopped the warfare, and the next year Ptolemy, 
 finding that his troops coidd hardly keep their posses- 
 sions in Cilicia, carried over an army in person to attack 
 the forces of Antigonus in Lycia. He landed at Phaselis, 
 the frontier town of Pamphylia, and, having carried that 
 by storm, he moved westward along the coast of Lycia. 
 He made himself master of Xanthus, the capital, which 
 was garrisoned by the troops of Antigonus; and then 
 
ALEXAIfDEE'S LAST DESCENDANTS 73 
 
 of Caunus, a strong place on the coast of Caria, with two 
 citadels, one of which he gained by force and the other 
 by surrender. He then sailed to the island of Cos, which 
 he gained by the treachery of Ptolemy, the nephew of 
 Antigonus, who held it for his uncle, but who went over 
 to the Egyptian king with all his forces. By this success 
 he gained the whole southern coast of Asia Minor. 
 
 The brother and two children of Alexander having 
 been in their turns, as we have seen, murdered by their 
 guardians, Cleopatra, his sister, and Thessalonica, his 
 niece, were alone left alive of the royal family of Mace- 
 donia. Almost every one of the generals had already 
 courted a marriage with Cleopatra, which had either been 
 refused by herself or hindered by his rivals; and lastly 
 Ptolemy, now that by the death of her nephews she 
 brought kingdoms, or the love of the Macedonian mer- 
 cenaries, which was worth more than kingdoms, as her 
 dower, sent to ask her hand in marriage. This offer was 
 accepted by Cleopatra; but, on her journey from Sardis, 
 the capital of Lydia, to Egypt, on her way to join her 
 future husband, she was put to death by Antigonus. The 
 niece was put to death a few years later. Thus every one 
 who was of the family of Alexander paid the forfeit of 
 life for that honour, and these two deaths ended the 
 Macedonian dynasty with a double tragedy. 
 
 While Ptolemy was busy in helping the Greek cities 
 of Asia to gain their liberty, Menelaus, his brother and 
 admiral, was almost driven out of Cyprus by Demetrius. 
 On this Ptolemy got together his fleet, to the number 
 of one hundred and forty long galleys and two hundred 
 
74 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEE 
 
 transports, manned with not less than ten thousand men, 
 and sailed with them to the help of his brother. This 
 fleet, mider the command of Menelaus, was met by De- 
 metrius with the fleet of Antigonus, consisting of one 
 hundred and twelve long galleys and a number of trans- 
 ports; and the Egyptian fleet, which had hitherto been 
 master of the sea, was beaten near the city of Salamis 
 in Cyprus by the smaller fleet of Demetrius. This was 
 the heaviest loss that had ever befallen Ptolemy. Eighty 
 long galleys were sunk, and forty long galleys, with one 
 hundred transports and eight thousand men, were taken 
 prisoners. He could no longer hope to keep Cyprus, and 
 he sailed hastily back to Egypt, leaving to Demetrius the 
 garrisons of the island as his prisoners, all of whom were 
 enrolled in the army of Antigonus, to the number of six- 
 teen thousand foot and six hundred horse. 
 
 This naval victory gave Demetrius the means of im- 
 burdening his proud mind of a debt of gratitude to his 
 enemy; and accordingly, remembering what Ptolemy had 
 done after the battle of Gaza, he sent back to Egypt, 
 unasked for and unransomed, those prisoners who were 
 of high rank, that is to say, all those who had any choice 
 about which side they fought for; and among them were 
 Leontiscus, the son, and Menelaus, the brother, of Ptol- 
 emy. 
 
 Antigonus was overjoyed with the news of his son's 
 victory. By lessening the power of Ptolemy, it had done 
 much to smooth his own path to the sovereignty of Alex- 
 ander's empire, which was then left without an heir; and 
 he immediately took the title of king, and gave the same 
 
la 
 
SECOND WAR WITH SYRIA 77 
 
 title to his son Demetrius. In this he was followed by 
 Ptolemy and the other generals, but with this difference, 
 that while Antigonus called himself king of all the prov- 
 inces, Ptolemy called himself King of Egypt; and while 
 Antigonus gained Syria and Cyprus, Ptolemy gained the 
 friendship of every other kingdom and of every free city 
 in Greece; they all looked upon him as their best ally 
 against Antigonus, the common enemy. 
 
 The next year Antigonus mustered his forces in Coele- 
 Syria, and got ready for a second attack upon Egypt. 
 He had more than eighty thousand foot, accompanied 
 with what was then the usual proportion of cavalry, 
 namely, eight thousand horse and eighty-three elephants. 
 Demetrius brought with him from Cyprus the fleet of 
 one hundred and fifty long galleys, and one hundred 
 transports laden with stores and engines of war. With 
 this fleet, to which Ptolemy, after his late loss, had no 
 ships that he could oppose, Antigonus had no need to 
 ask leave of the Arabs of the little city of Petra to march 
 through their passes; but he led his army straight 
 through the desert to Pelusium, while the ships of burden 
 kept close to the shore with the stores. The pride of 
 Antigonus would not let him follow the advice of the 
 sailors, and wait eight days till the north winds of the 
 spring equinox had passed; and by this haste many of 
 his ships were wrecked on the coast, while others were 
 driven into the Nile and fell into the hands of Ptolemy. 
 Antigonus himself, marching with the land forces, found 
 all the strong places well guarded by the Egyptian army; 
 and, being driven back at every point, discouraged by 
 
78 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 the loss of his ships and by seeing whole bodies of his 
 troops go over to Ptolemy, he at last took the advice of 
 his officers and led back his army to Syria, while Ptolemy 
 returned to Alexandria, to employ those powers of mind 
 in the works of peace which he had so successfxilly used 
 in his various wars. 
 
 Antigonus then turned the weight of his mighty 
 kingdom against the little island of Rhodes, which, 
 though in sight of the coast of Asia Minor, held itself 
 independent of him, and in close friendship with Ptol- 
 emy. The Dorian island of Rhodes had from the earliest 
 dawn of history held a high place among the states of 
 Greece; and in all the arts of civilised life, in painting, 
 sculpture, letters, and commerce, it had been lately ris- 
 ing in rank while the other free states had been falling. 
 Its maritime laws were so highly thought of that they 
 were copied by most other states, and, being afterwards 
 adopted into the Pandects of Justinian, they have in part 
 become the law of modem Europe. It was the only state 
 in which Greek liberty then kept its ground against the 
 great empires of Alexander's successors. 
 
 Against this little state Demetrius led two hundred 
 long galleys and one hundred and seventy transports, 
 with more than forty thousand men. The Greek world 
 looked on with deep interest while the veterans of An- 
 tigonus were again and again driven back from the walls 
 of the blockaded city by its brave and virtuous citizens; 
 who, while their houses were burning and their walls 
 crumbling under the battering-ram, left the statues of 
 Antigonus and Demetrius standing unhurt in the market- 
 
THE SIEGE OE EHODES 79 
 
 place, saved by their love of art and the remembrance 
 of former kindness, which, with a true greatness of mind, 
 they would not let the cruelties of the siege outweigh. 
 The galleys of Ptolemy, though unable to keep at sea 
 against the larger fleet of Demetrius, often forced their 
 way into the harbour with the welcome supplies of grain. 
 Month after month every stratagem and machine which 
 the ingenuity of Demetrius could invent were tried and 
 failed; and, after the siege had lasted more than a year, 
 he was glad to find an excuse for withdrawing his troops ; 
 and the Rhodians in their joy hailed Ptolemy with the 
 title of Soter or saviour. This name he ever afterwards 
 kept, though by the Greek writers he is more often called 
 Ptolemy the son of Lagus. If we search the history 
 of the world for a second instance of so small a state 
 daring to withstand the armies of so mighty an empire, 
 we shall perhaps not find any one more remarkable than 
 that of the same island, when, seventeen hundred years 
 afterwards, it again drew upon itself the eyes of the 
 world, while it beat off the forces of the Ottoman empire 
 under Mahomet II.; and, standing like a rock in front 
 of Christendom, it rolled back for years the tide of war, 
 till its walls were at last crumbled to a heap of ruins 
 by Suleiman the Great, after a siege of many months. 
 
 The next of Ptolemy's conquests was Coele-Syria; and 
 soon after this the wars between these successors of 
 Alexander were put an end to by the death of Antigonus, 
 whose overtowering ambition was among the chief causes 
 of quarrel. This happened at the great battle of Ipsus 
 in Phrygia, where they all met, with more than eighty 
 
80 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEE 
 
 thousand men in each army. Antigonus, King of Asia 
 Minor, was accompanied by his son Demetrius, and by 
 Pyrrhus, King of Epirus; and he was defeated by Ptol- 
 emy, King of Egypt, Seleucus, King of Babylon, Lysim- 
 achus, King of Thrace, and Cassander, King of Mace- 
 donia; and the old man lost his life fighting bravely. 
 After the battle Demetrius fled to Cyprus, and yielded 
 to the terms of peace which were imposed on him by 
 the four allied sovereigns. He sent his friend Pyrrhus 
 as a hostage to Alexandria; and there this young King 
 of Epirus soon gained the friendship of Ptolemy and 
 afterwards his stepdaughter in marriage. Ptolemy was 
 thus left master of the whole of the southern coast of 
 Asia Minor and Syria, indeed of the whole coast of the 
 eastern end of the Mediterranean, from the island of 
 Cos on the north to Cyrene on the south. 
 
 During these formidable wars with Antigonus, Ptol- 
 emy had never been troubled with any serious rising of 
 the conquered Egyptians; and perhaps the wars may 
 not have been without their use in strengthening his 
 throne. The first danger to a successful conqueror is 
 from the avarice and disappointment of his followers, 
 who usually claim the kingdom as their booty, and who 
 think themselves wronged and their past services for- 
 gotten if any limit is placed to their tyranny over the 
 conquered. But these foreign wars may have taught 
 the Alexandrians that Ptolemy was not strong enough 
 to ill-treat the Egyptians, and may thus have saved him 
 from the indiscretion of his friends and from their re- 
 proaches for ingratitude. 
 
IMPORTED EOBES 
 
 81 
 
 In the late war, the little Dorian island of Cos on the 
 coast of Asia Minor fell, as we have seen, under the 
 power of Ptolemy. This island was remarkable as being 
 the first spot in Europe into which the manufacture of 
 
 silk was introduced, which it prob- 
 ably gained when under the power 
 of Persia before the overthrow of 
 Darius. The luxury of the Egyp- 
 tian ladies, who affected to be over- 
 heated by any clothing that could 
 conceal their limbs, had long ago 
 introduced a tight, thin dress 
 which neither our climate nor no- 
 tions of modesty would allow, and 
 for this dress, silk, when it could 
 be obtained, was much valued; and 
 Pamphila of Cos had the glory of 
 having woven webs so transparent 
 that the Egyptian women were en- 
 abled to display their fair forms 
 yet more openly by means of this 
 clothing. Cos continued always in 
 the power of the Ptolemies, who 
 used it as a royal fortress, occa- 
 sionally sending their treasures and their children there 
 as to a place of safety from Alexandrian rebellion; and 
 there the silk manufacture flourished in secret for two 
 or three centuries. When it ceased is unknown, as it 
 was part of the merchants' craft to endeavour to keep 
 each branch of trade to themselves, by concealing the 
 
 ALEXAITDBIAN LADY, ATTIEBD 
 IN BOMBTX SILK. 
 
82 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 channel through which they obtained their supply of 
 goods, and many of the dresses which were sold in Rome 
 under the emperors by the name of Coan robes may have 
 been brought from the East through Alexandria. 
 
 One of the most valuable gifts which Egypt owed to 
 Ptolemy was its coinage. Even Thebes, " where treas- 
 ures were largest in the houses," never was able to pass 
 gold and silver from hand to hand without the trouble 
 of weighing, and the doubt as to the fineness of the metal. 
 The Greek merchants who crowded the markets of Cano- 
 pus and Alexandria must have filled Lower Egypt with 
 the coins of the cities from whence they came, all unlike 
 one another in stamp and weight; but, while every little 
 city or even colony of Greece had its own coinage, Egypt 
 
 had as yet very few coins 
 of its own. We are even 
 doubtful whether we 
 
 know by sight those 
 coined by the Persians 
 
 com or PTOLEKT SOTER, B. C. 302. Jj3 ^J^g g^rJy ygg^j.g Qf P^qI. 
 
 emy's government Ptolemy had issued a very few coins 
 bearing the names of the young kings in whose name 
 he held the country, but he seems not to have coined any 
 quantity of money till after he had himself taken the 
 title of king. His coins are of gold, silver, and bronze, 
 and are in a fine style of Greek workmanship. Those 
 of gold and silver bear on one side the portrait of the 
 king, without a beard, having the head bound with the 
 royal diadem, which, unlike the high priestly crown of 
 the native Egyptian kings, or the modem crown of gold 
 
EGYPTIAN COINAGE 
 
 83 
 
 and precious stones, is a plain riband tied in a bow be- 
 hind. On the other side they have the name of Ptolemy 
 Soter, or King Ptolemy, with an eagle standing upon a 
 thunderbolt, which was only another way of drawing 
 the eagle and sun, the hieroglyphical characters for the 
 title Pharaoh. The gold coins of Egypt were probably 
 made in Alexandria. The coins are not of the same 
 weight as those of Greece; but Ptolemy followed the 
 Egyptian standard of weight, which was that to which 
 the Jewish shekel was adjusted, and which was in use 
 
 COIN OP SOTEK, WITH JUPITER. 
 
 in the wealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon and Beryttus. 
 The drachma weighs fifty-five grains, making the talent 
 of silver worth about seven hundred and fifty dollars. 
 Ptolemy's bronze coins have the head of Serapis or Jupi- 
 ter in the place of that of the king, as is also the case 
 with those of his successors; but few of these bronze 
 pieces bear any marks from which we can learn the reign 
 in which they were coined. They are of better metal 
 than those of other countries, as the bronze is free from 
 lead and has more tin in it. The historian, in his very 
 agreeable labours, should never lose sight of the coins. 
 They teach us by their workmanship the state of the 
 
84 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 arts, and by their weight, number, and purity of metal, 
 the wealth of the country. They also teach dates, titles, 
 and the places where they were struck; and even in 
 those cases where they seem to add little to what we 
 learn from other sources, they are still the living wit- 
 nesses to which we appeal, to prove the truth of the 
 authors who have told us more. 
 
 The art of engraving coins did not flourish alone in 
 Alexandria; painters and sculptors flocked to Egypt 
 to enjoy the favours of Ptolemy. Apelles, indeed, whose 
 paintings were thought by those who had seen them to 
 surpass any that had been before painted, or were likely 
 to be painted, had quarrelled with Ptolemy, who had 
 known him well when he was the friend and painter of 
 Alexander. Once when he was at Alexandria, some- 
 body wickedly told him that he was invited to dine at 
 the royal table, and when Ptolemy asked who it was 
 that had sent his unwelcome guest, Apelles drew the 
 face of the mischief-maker on the wall, and he was 
 known to aU the court by the likeness. It was, perhaps, 
 at one of these dinners, at which Ptolemy enjoyed the 
 society of the men of letters, or perhaps when visiting 
 the philosophers in their schools, that he asked Euclid 
 if he could not show him a shorter and easier way to 
 the higher truths of mathematics than that by which 
 he led the pupils in the Museum; and Euclid, as if to 
 remind him of the royal roads of Persia, which ran by 
 the side of the highroads, but were kept clear and free 
 for the king's own use, made him the well-known answer, 
 that there was no royal road to geometry. 
 
ALEXANDEINE SCHOLAKSHIP 85 
 
 Ptolemy lived in easy familiarity with the learned 
 men of Alexandria; and at another of these literary 
 dinners, when Diodorus, the rhetorician, who was 
 thought to have been the inventor of the Dilemma, was 
 puzzled by a question put to him by Stilpo, the king in 
 joke said that his name should be Cronus, a god who had 
 been laughed at in the comedies. Indeed, he was so 
 teased by Ptolemy for not being able to answer it, that 
 he got up and left the room. He afterwards wrote a 
 book upon the subject; but the ridicule was said to have 
 embittered the rest of his life. This was the person 
 against whom Callimachus, some years later, wrote a 
 bitter epigram, beginning " Cronus is a wise man." Dio- 
 dorus was of the sceptical school of philosophy, which, 
 though not far removed from the Cyrenaic school, was 
 never popular in Alexandria. Among other paradoxes 
 he used to deny the existence of motion. He argued 
 that the motion was not in the place where the body 
 moved from, nor in the place that the body moved to, 
 and that accordingly it did not exist at all. Once he met 
 with a violent fall which put his shoulder out of joint, 
 and he applied to Herophilus, the surgeon, to set it. 
 Herophilus began by asking him where the fall took 
 place, whether in the place where the shoulder was, or 
 in the place where it fell to; but the smarting philoso- 
 pher begged him to begin by setting his limb, and 
 they would talk about the existence of motion after 
 the operation. 
 
 Stilpo was at this time only on a visit to Ptolemy, 
 for he had refused his offer of money and a professorship 
 
86 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTEE 
 
 in the Museum, and had chosen to remain at Megara 
 where he was the ornament of his birthplace. He had 
 been banished from Athens for speaking against their 
 gods, and for saying that the colossal Minerva was 
 not the daughter of Jupiter, but of Phidias, the sculp- 
 tor. His name as a philosopher stood so high that when 
 Demetrius, in his late wars with Ptolemy, took the city 
 of Megara by storm, the conqueror '' bid spare the house 
 of Stilpo, when temple and tower went to the ground; " 
 and when Demetrius gave orders that Stilpo should be 
 repaid for what he had lost in the siege, the philosopher 
 proudly answered that he had lost nothing, and that he 
 had no wealth but his learning. 
 
 The historian Theopompus of Chios then came to 
 Alexandria, and wrote an accoimt of the wars between 
 the Egyptians and the Persians. It is now lost, but it 
 contained at least the events from the successful inva- 
 sion by Artaxerxes Longimanus till the unsuccessful 
 invasion by Artaxerxes Mnemon. 
 
 No men of learning in Alexandria were more famous 
 than the physicians. Erasistratus of Cos had the credit 
 of having once cured Antiochus, afterwards King of 
 Syria. He was the grandson of Aristotle, and may be 
 called the father of the science of anatomy: his writings 
 are often quoted by Dioscorides. Antiochus in his 
 youth had fallen deeply in love with his young step- 
 mother, and was pining away in silence and despair. 
 Erasistratus found out the cause of his illness, which 
 was straightway cured by Seleucus giving up his wife 
 to his own son. This act strongly points out the changed 
 
THE STUDY OF MEDICINE 87 
 
 opinions of the world as to the matrimonial relation; 
 for it was then thought the father's best title to the name 
 of Mcator; he had before conquered his enemies, but 
 he then conquered himself. 
 
 Erasistratus was the first who thought that a knowl- 
 edge of anatomy should be made a part of the healing 
 art. Before his time surgery and medicine had been 
 deemed one and the same; they had both been studied 
 by the slow and uncertain steps of experience, unguided 
 by theory. Many a man who had been ill, whether 
 through disease or wound, and had regained his health, 
 thought it his duty to Esculapius and to his neighbours 
 to write up in the temple of the god the nature of his 
 ailings, and the simples to which he fancied that he owed 
 his cure. By copying these loose but well-meant in- 
 scriptions of medical cases, Hippocrates had, a century 
 earlier, laid the foundations of the science; but nothing 
 further was added to it till Erasistratus, setting at 
 nought the prejudices in which he was bom, began dis- 
 secting the human body in the schools of Alexandria. 
 There the mixing together of Greeks and Egyptians had 
 weakened those religious feelings of respect for the dead 
 which are usually shocked by anatomy; and this study 
 flourished from the low tone of the morality as much 
 as from the encouragement which good sense should 
 grant to every search for knowledge. 
 
 Herophilus lived about the same time with Erasis- 
 tratus, and was, like him, famous for his knowledge of 
 the anatomy of man. But so hateful was this study in 
 the eyes of many, that these anatomists were charged, 
 
88 EGYPT UNDEE PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 by writers who ought to have known better, with the 
 cruelty of cutting men open when alive. They had few 
 followers in the hated use of the dissecting-knife. It 
 was from their writings that Galen borrowed the ana- 
 tomical parts of his work; and thus it was to the dis- 
 sections of these two great men, helped indeed by open- 
 ing the bodies of animals, that the world owed almost 
 the whole of its knowledge of the anatomy of man, till 
 the fifteenth century, when surgeons were again bold 
 enough to face the outcry of the mob, and to study the 
 human body with the knife, 
 
 Hegesias of Cyrene was an early lecturer on philos- 
 ophy at Alexandria. His short and broken sentences are 
 laughed at by Cicero, yet he was so much listened to, 
 when lecturing against the fear of death, and showing 
 that in quitting life we leave behind us more pains than 
 pleasures, that he was stopped by Ptolemy Soter through 
 fear of his causing self-murder among his hearers. He 
 then wrote a book upon the same subject, for though the 
 state watched over the public teaching, it took no notice 
 of books; writing had not yet become the mightiest 
 power on earth. The miseries, however, of this world, 
 which he so eloquently and feelingly described in his 
 lectures and writings, did not drive him to put an end 
 to his own life. 
 
 Philostephanus of Cyrene, the friend of Callimachus, 
 was a naturalist who wrote upon fishes, and is the first 
 investigator that we hear of who thought it desirable 
 to limit his studies to one branch of the science of 
 natural history. 
 
EPICUEEAN PHILOSOPHY 89 
 
 But Cyrene did not send all its great men to Alex- 
 andria. Plato had studied mathematics there under 
 Theodorus, and it had a school of its own which gave 
 its name to the Cyrenaic sect. The founder of this sect 
 was Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates who had missed 
 the high honour of being present at his death. He was 
 the first philosopher who took money from his pupils, 
 and used to say that they valued their lessons more for 
 having to pay for them; but he was blamed by his breth- 
 ren for thus lowering the dignity of the teacher. He 
 died several years before Ptolemy Soter came into Egypt. 
 The Cyrenaic sect thought happiness, not goodness, was 
 the end to be aimed at through life, and selfishness, 
 rather than kindness to others, the right spring of men's 
 actions. It would hardly be fair to take their opinions 
 from the mouths of their enemies; and the dialogues 
 of Socrates, with their founder, as told to us by Xeno- 
 phon, would prove a lower tone of morality than he is 
 likely to have held. The wish for happiness and the 
 philosophical love of self, which should lead to goodness, 
 though a far worse rule of life than the love of goodness 
 for its own sake, which is the groundwork of religion, 
 was certainly far better than tmguided passion and the 
 love of to-day's pleasure. But often as this misafe rule 
 has been set up for our guidance, there have always been 
 found many to make use of it in a way not meant by the 
 teacher. The Cyrenaic sect soon fell into the disrepute 
 to which these principles were likely to lead it, and 
 wholly ceased when Epicurus taught the same opinions 
 more philosophically. 
 
90 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 Anniceris of Cyrene, though a follower of Aristippus, 
 somewhat improved, upon the low-toned philosophy of 
 his master. He granted that there were many things 
 worth our aim, which could not be brought within the 
 narrow bounds of what is useful. He did not overlook 
 friendship, kindness, honouring our parents, and serv- 
 ing our country ; and he thought that a wise man would 
 undertake matiy labours which would bring him no re- 
 turn in the things which were alone thought happiness. 
 
 The chair of philosophy at Cyrene was afterwards 
 filled by Arete, the daughter of Aristippus; for such 
 were the hindrances in the way of gaining knowledge, 
 that few could be so well qualified to teach as the philos- 
 opher's daughter. Books were costly, and reading by 
 no means a cheap amusement. She was followed, after 
 her death, by her son Aristippus, who, having been 
 brought up in his mother's lecture-room, was called, in 
 order to distinguish him from his grandfather of the 
 same name, Metrodidactus, or mother-taught. History 
 has not told us whether he took the name himself in 
 gratitude for the debt which he owed to this learned 
 lady, or whether it was given him by his pupils; but in 
 either case it was a sure way of giving to the mother 
 the fame which was due to her for the education of her 
 son; for no one could fail to ask who was the mother 
 of Metrodidactus. 
 
 Theodorus, one of the pupils of Metrodidactus, 
 though at one time banished from Cyrene, rose to honour 
 under Soter, and was sent by him as ambassador to 
 Lysimachus. He was called the Atheist by his enemies. 
 
ALEXANDRINE AETISTS 91 
 
 and the Divine by his friends, but we cannot now deter- 
 mine which title he best deserved. It was then usual 
 to call those atheists who questioned the existence of 
 the pagan gods; and we must not suppose that all who 
 suffered under that reproach denied that the world was 
 governed by a ruling providence. The disbeliever in 
 the false religion of the many is often the only real 
 believer in a God. Theodoras was of the cold school of 
 philosophy, which was chiefly followed in Alexandria. 
 It was earthly, lifeless, and unpoetical, arising from 
 the successful cultivation of the physical sciences, not 
 enough counteracted by the more ennobling pursuits of 
 poetry and the fine arts. Hence, while commerce and 
 the arts of production were carried to higher perfection 
 than at any former time, and science was made greatly 
 to assist in the supply of our bodily wants, the arts of 
 civilisation, though by no means neglected, were cul- 
 tivated without any lofty aim, or any true knowledge 
 of their dignity. 
 
 Antiphilus, who was born in Egypt and had studied 
 painting under Ctesidemus, rose to high rank as a painter 
 in Alexandria. Among his best-known pictures were 
 the bearded Bacchus, the young Alexander, and Hip- 
 polytus, or rather his chariot-horses, frightened by the 
 buU. His boy, blowing up a fire with his mouth, was 
 much praised for the mouth of the boy, and for the light 
 and shade of the room. His Ptolemy hunting was also 
 highly thought of. Antiphilus showed a mean jealousy 
 of Apelles, and accused him of joining in a plot against 
 the king, for which the painter narrowly escaped 
 
92 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 punishment; but Ptolemy, finding that the charge was 
 not true, sent Apelles a gift of one hundred talents 
 to make amends. The angry feelings of Apelles were 
 by no means cooled by this gift, but they boiled over 
 in his great picture of Calumny. On the right of the 
 picture sat Ptolemy, holding out his hand to Calumny, 
 who was coming up to him. On each side of the king 
 stood a woman who seemed meant for Ignorance and 
 
 THB CHARIOT OP ANTIPHILtTS. 
 
 Suspicion. Calumny was a beautiful maiden, but with 
 angry and deep-rooted malice in her face: in her left 
 hand was a lighted torch, and with her right she was 
 dragging along by the hair a young man, who was 
 stretching forth his hands to heaven, and calling upon 
 the gods to bear witness that he was guiltless. Before 
 her walked Envy, a pale, hollow-eyed, diseased man, 
 perhaps a portrait of the accuser; and behind were two 
 women, Craft and Deceit, who were encouraging and 
 supporting her. At a distance stood Repentance, in the 
 
PTOLEMY'S SIMPLICITY 93 
 
 ragged, black garb of mourning, who was turning away 
 her face for shame as Truth came up to her. 
 
 Ptolemy Soter was plain in his manners, and scarcely 
 surpassed his own generals in the costliness of his way 
 of life. He often dined and slept at the houses of his 
 friends; and his own house had so little of the palace, 
 that he borrowed dishes and tables of his friends when 
 he asked any number of them to dine with him in return, 
 saying that it was the part of a king to enrich others 
 rather than to be rich himself. Before he took the title 
 of king, he styled himself, and was styled by friendly 
 states, by the simple name of Ptolemy the Macedonian; 
 and during the whole of his reign he was as far from 
 being overbearing in his behaviour as from being king- 
 like in his dress and household. Once when he wished 
 to laugh at a boasting antiquary, he asked him, what 
 he knew could not be answered, who was the father of 
 Peleus; and the other let his wit so far get the better 
 of his prudence as in return to ask the king, who had 
 perhaps never heard the name of his own grandfather, 
 if he knew who was the father of Lagus. But Ptolemy 
 took no further notice of this than to remark that if a 
 king cannot bear rude answers he ought not to ask rude 
 questions. 
 
 An answer which Ptolemy once made to a soothsayer 
 might ahnost be taken as the proverb which had guided 
 him through life. When his soldiers met with an anchor 
 in one of their marches, and were disheartened on being 
 told by the soothsayer that it was a proof that they ought 
 to stop where they then were, the king restored their 
 
94 EGYPT UNDEE PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 courage by remarking, that an anchor was an omen of 
 safety, not of delay. 
 
 Ptolemy's first children were by Thais, the noted 
 courtesan, but they were not thought legitimate. Leon- 
 tiscus, the eldest, we afterwards hear of fighting bravely 
 against Demetrius; of the second, named Lagus after 
 his grandfather, we hear nothing. 
 
 He then married Eurydice, the daughter of Antipater, 
 by whom he had several children. The eldest son, Ptol- 
 emy, was named Ceraunus, the Thunderer, and was ban- 
 ished by his father from Alexandria. In his distress 
 he fled to Seleucus, by whom he was kindly received; 
 but after the death of Ptolemy Soter he basely plotted 
 against Seleucus and put him to death. He then defeated 
 in battle Antigonus, the son of Demetrius, and got pos- 
 session of Macedonia for a short time. He married his 
 half-sister Arsinoe, and put her children to death; and 
 was soon afterwards put to death himself by the Gauls, 
 who were either fighting against him or were mercenaries 
 in his own army. Another son of Ptolemy and Eurydice 
 was put to death by Ptolemy Philadelphus, for plotting 
 against his throne, to which, as the elder brother, he 
 might have thought himself the best entitled. Their 
 daughter Lysander married Agathocles, the son of Ly- 
 simachus; but when Agathocles was put to death by his 
 father, she fled to Egypt with her children, and put her- 
 self under Ptolemy's care. 
 
 Ptolemy then, as we have seen, asked in marriage 
 the hand of Cleopatra, the sister of Alexander; but on 
 her death he married Berenice, a lady who had come into 
 
QUEEN BERENICll 95 
 
 Egypt with Eurydice, and had formed part of her house- 
 hold. She was the widow of a man named Philip; and 
 she had by her first husband a son named Magas, whom 
 Ptolemy made governor of Cyrene, and a daughter, An- 
 tigone, whom Ptolemy gave in marriage to Pyrrhus when 
 that young king was hving in Alexandria as hostage 
 for Demetrius. 
 
 Berenice's mildness and goodness of heart were use- 
 ful in softening her husband's severity. Once, when 
 Ptolemy was unbending his mind at a game of dice with 
 her, one of his officers came up to his side, and began 
 to read over to him a list of 
 criminals who had been con- 
 demned to death, with their 
 crimes, and to ask his pleasure 
 on each. Ptolemy continued 
 playing, and gave very little 
 attention to the tmhappy tale; 
 but Berenice's feelings over- 
 came the softness of her char- 
 acter, and she took the paper 
 out of the officer's hand, and 
 
 IT ,111. n • ■, -. BERENICE SOTBB 
 
 would not let him fimsh read- 
 ing it; saying it was very unbecoming in the king to 
 treat the matter so lightly, as if he thought no more 
 of the loss of a life than the loss of a throw. 
 
 With Berenice Ptolemy spent the rest of his years 
 without anything to trouble the happiness of his family. 
 He saw their elder son, Ptolemy, whom we must call 
 by the name which he took late in life, Philadelphus, 
 
96 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 grow up everything that he could wish him to be; and, 
 moved alike by his love for the mother and by the good 
 qualities of the son, he chose him as his successor on 
 the throne, instead of his eldest son, Ptolemy Ceraunus, 
 who had shown, by every act in his life, his unfitness for 
 the royal position. 
 
 His daughter Arsinoe married Lysimachus in his old 
 age, and urged him against his son, Agathocles, the hus- 
 band of her own sister. She afterwards married her 
 half-brother, Ptolemy Ceraunus; and lastly became the 
 wife of her brother Philadelphus. Argaeus, the youngest 
 son of Ptolemy, was put to death by Philadelphus on 
 a charge of treason. Of his youngest daughter PhUotera 
 we know nothing, except that her brother Philadelphus 
 afterwards named a city on the coast of the Red Sea 
 after her. 
 
 After the last battle with Demetrius, Ptolemy had 
 regained the island of Cyprus and Coele-Syria, including 
 Judsea; and his throne became stronger as his life drew 
 to an end. With a wisdom rare in kings and conquerors, 
 he had never let his ambition pass his means; he never 
 aimed at Tuiiversal power; and he was led, both by his 
 kind feelings and wise policy, to befriend all those states 
 which, like his own, were threatened by that mad ambi- 
 tion in others. 
 
 His history of Alexander's wars is lost, and we there- 
 fore cannot judge of his merits as an author; but we 
 may still point out with pleasure how much his people 
 gained from his love of letters; though indeed we do 
 not need the example of Ptolemy to show that learning 
 
PTOLEMY'S EESIGNATION 97 
 
 and pMlosophy are as much in place, and find as wide a 
 field of usefulness, in governing a kingdom as in the 
 employments of the teacher, the lawyer, or the physician, 
 who so often claim them as their own. 
 
 His last public act, in the thirty-eighth year of his 
 reign, was ordered by the same forbearance which had 
 governed every part of his life. Feeling the weight of 
 years press heavily upon him, that he was less able than 
 formerly to bear the duties of his office, and wishing to 
 see his son firmly seated on the throne, he laid aside his 
 diadem and his title, and, without consulting either the 
 army or the capital, proclaimed Ptolemy, his son by 
 Berenice, king, and contented himself with the modest 
 rank of somatophylax, or satrap, to his successor. He 
 had used his power so justly that he was not afraid to 
 lay it down; and he has taught us how little of true great- 
 ness there is in rank by showing how much more there 
 is in resigning it. This is perhaps the most successful 
 instance known of a king, who had been used to be 
 obeyed by armies and by nations, willingly giving up his 
 power when he found his bodily strength no longer equal 
 to it. Ptolemy Soter had the happiness of having a son 
 willing to follow in the track which he had laid down 
 for him, and of living to see the wisdom of his own laws 
 proved by the well-beiag of the kingdom under his son 
 and successor. 
 
 But while we are watching the success of Ptolemy's 
 plans, and the rise of this Greek monarchy at Alexandria, 
 we cannot help being pained with the thought that the 
 Kopts of Upper Egypt are forgotten, and asking whether 
 
98 
 
 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 it would not have been still better to have raised Thebes 
 to the place which it once held, and to have recalled the 
 days of Ramses, instead of trying what might seem the 
 hopeless task of planting Greek arts in Africa. But a re- 
 view of this history will show that, as far as hiunan fore- 
 thought can judge, this could not have been done. A 
 people whose religious opinions were fixed against all 
 change, like the pillars upon which they were carved, 
 and whose philosophy had not noticed that men's minds 
 were made to move forward, had no choice but to be left 
 behind and trampled on, as their more 
 active neighbours marched onwards in 
 the path of improvement. If Thebes had 
 fallen only on the conquest by Cambyses, 
 if the rebellions against the Persians had 
 been those of Kopts throwing off their 
 chains and struggling for freedom, we 
 might have hoped to have seen Egypt, 
 on the fall of Darius, again rise under 
 a\ // kings of the blood and language of the 
 
 * ' ' people ; and we should have thought the 
 
 gilded and half-hid chains of the Ptol- 
 emies were little better than the heavy 
 yoke of the Persians. This, however, is 
 very far from having been the case. We 
 first see the kings of Lower Egypt guarding their thrones 
 at Sais by Greek soldiers; and then, that every struggle 
 of Inarus, of iSTectanebo, and of Tachos, against the Per- 
 sians, was only made by the courage and arms of Greeks 
 hired in the Delta by Egyptian gold. During the three 
 
 NIT, GODDESS 
 
 OP SAIS. 
 
THE WEAKNESS OF THE KOPTS 
 
 99 
 
 hundred years before Alexander was hailed by Egypt 
 as its deliverer, scarcely once had the Kopts, trusting 
 to their own courage, stood up in arms against either 
 Persians or Greeks; and the country was only then con- 
 quered without a battle because the 
 power and arms were already in the 
 hands of the Greeks; because in the 
 mixed races of the Delta the Greeks 
 were so far the strongest, though not 
 the most numerous, that a Greek king- 
 dom rose there with the same ease, 
 and for the same reasons, that an Arab 
 kingdom rose in the same place nine 
 centuries later. 
 
 Moral worth, national pride, love 
 of country, and the better feelings of 
 clanship are the chief grounds upon 
 which a great people can be raised. 
 These feelings are closely allied to 
 self-denial, or a willingness on the 
 part of each man to give up much for 
 the good of the whole. By this, chiefly, 
 public monuments are built, and citi- 
 zens stand by one another in battle; 
 and these feelings were certainly 
 strong in Upper Egypt in the days 
 of its greatness. But, when the throne was moved to 
 Lower Egypt, when the kingdom was governed by the 
 kings of Sais, and even afterwards, when it was strug- 
 gling against the Persians, these virtues were wanting. 
 
 A CAT MUMMY. 
 
100 
 
 EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER 
 
 and they trusted to foreign hirelings in their struggle 
 for freedom. The Delta was peopled by three races of 
 men, Kopts, Greeks, and Phoenicians, or Arabs; and 
 even before the sceptre was given to the G-reeks by 
 Alexander's conquests, we have seen that the Kopts had 
 lost the virtues needed to hold it. 
 
Grand Square, Alexandria 
 
PTOLEMY II. AND HIS FIRST WIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER m 
 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS. B. C. 284-246 
 
 WE know of few princes who ever mounted a throne 
 with such fair prospects before them as the second 
 Ptolemy. He was born in Cos, an island on the coast 
 of Caria, which the Ptolemies kept as a family fortress, 
 safe from Egyptian rebellion and Alexandrian rudeness, 
 and, while their fleets were masters of the sea, safe from 
 foreign armies. He had been brought up with great care, 
 and, being a younger son, was not spoilt by that flattery 
 which in all courts is so freely offered to the heir. He 
 first studied letters and philosophy under Philetas of Cos, 
 an author of some elegies and epigrams now lost; and 
 as he grew up, he found himself surrounded by all the 
 philosophers and writers with whom his father mixed on 
 
 101 
 
102 
 
 PTOLEMY PHILADEPHUS 
 
 the easiest terms of friendship. Diiring the long reign 
 of Ptolemy Soter the people had been made happy b}- 
 wise regulations and good laws, trade 
 had been flourishing, the cities had 
 greatly prospered, and the fortresses 
 had been everywhere strengthened. 
 The Grecian troops were well trained, 
 their loyalty undoubted, and the 
 Egyptians were enrolled in a pha- 
 lanx, armed and disciplined like the 
 Macedonians. The population of the 
 country was counted at seven mil- 
 lions. Alexandria, the capital of 
 the kingdom, was not only the larg- 
 est trading city in the world, but 
 was one of the most favoured seats 
 of learning. It surely must have been 
 easy to foresee that the prince, then 
 mounting the throne, even if but slightly gifted with 
 virtues, would give his name to a reign which could not 
 be otherwise than remarkable in the history of Egypt. 
 But Philadelphus, though like his father he was not free 
 from the vices of his times and of his rank, had more of 
 wisdom than is usually the lot of kings ; and, though we 
 cannot but see that he was only watering the plants and 
 gathering the fruit where his father had planted, yet 
 we must at the same time acknowledge that Philadelphus 
 was a successor worthy of Ptolemy Soter. He may have 
 been in the twenty-third year of his age when his father 
 gave up to him the cares and honours of royalty. 
 
 PHAKOS nr OLD 
 ALEXANDRIA. 
 
ANCIENT CEREMONIES EEVIVED 103 
 
 The first act of Ms reign, or rather the last of his 
 father's reign, was the proclamation, or the ceremony, 
 of showing the new king to the troops and people. All 
 that was dazzling, all that was costly or curious, all that 
 the wealth of Egypt could buy or the gratitude of the 
 provinces could give, was brought forth to grace this 
 religious show, which, as we learn from the sculptures in 
 the old tombs, was copied rather from the triumphs of 
 Ramses and Thutmosis than from anything that had 
 been seen in Greece. 
 
 The procession began with the pomp of Osiris, at the 
 head of which were the Sileni in scarlet and purple 
 cloaks, who opened the way through the crowd. Twenty 
 satyrs followed on each side of the road, bearing torches; 
 and then Victories with golden wings, clothed in skias, 
 each with a golden staff six cubits long, twined round 
 with ivy. An altar was carried next, covered with golden 
 ivy-leaves, with a garland of golden vine-leaves tied with 
 white ribands; and this was followed by a hundred and 
 twenty boys in scarlet frocks, carrying bowls of crocus, 
 mjrrrh, and frankincense, which made the air fragrant 
 with the scent. Then came forty dancing satyrs crowned 
 with golden ivy-leaves, with their naked bodies stained 
 with gay colours, each carrying a crown of vine leaves 
 and gold; then two Sileni in scarlet cloaks and white 
 boots, one having the hat and wand of Mercury and the 
 other a trumpet; and between them walked a man, six 
 feet high, in tragic dress and mask, meant for the Year, 
 carrying a golden cornucopia. He was followed by a 
 tall and beautiful woman, meant for the Lustrum of five 
 
104 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 years, carrjdng in one hand a crown and in the other 
 a pahn-branch. Then came an altar, and a troop of satyrs 
 in gold and scarlet, carrying golden drinking-cups. 
 
 Then came Philiscus the poet, the priest of Osiris, 
 with all the servants of the god; then the Delphic tri- 
 pods, the prizes which were to be given in the wrestling 
 matches; that for the boys was nine cubits high, and that 
 for the men twelve cubits high. Next came a four- 
 wheeled car, fourteen cubits long and eight wide, drawn 
 along by one hundred and eighty men, on which was the 
 statue of Osiris, fifteen feet high, pouring wine out of a 
 golden vase, and having a scarlet frock down to his feet, 
 with a yellow transparent robe over it, and over all a 
 scarlet cloak. Before the statue was a large golden bowl, 
 and a tripod with bowls of incense on it. Over the whole 
 was an awning of ivy and vine leaves; and in the same 
 chariot were the priests and priestesses of the god. 
 
 This was followed by a smaller chariot drawn by 
 sixty men, in which was the statue of Isis in a robe of 
 yellow and gold. Then came a chariot full of grapes, 
 and another with a large cask of wine, which was poured 
 out on the road, as the procession moved on, and at which 
 the eager crowd filled their jugs and drinking-cups. 
 Then came another band of satyrs and Sileni, and more 
 chariots of wine; then eighty Delphic vases of silver, 
 and Panathenaie and other vases; and sixteen hundred 
 dancing boys in white frocks and golden crowns: then 
 a number of beautiful pictures; and a chariot carrying 
 a grove of trees, out of which flew pigeons and doves, so 
 tied that they might be easily caught by the crowd. 
 
THE KINGLY PAGEANT 105 
 
 On another chariot, drawn by an elephant, came 
 Osiris, as he returned from his Indian conquests. He 
 was followed by twenty-four chariots drawn by ele- 
 phants, sixty drawn by goats, twelve by some kind of 
 stags, seven by gazelles, four by wild asses, fifteen by 
 buffaloes, eight by ostriches, and seven by stags of some 
 other kind. Then came chariots loaded with the tributes 
 of the conquered nations; men of Ethiopia carrying six 
 hundred elephants' teeth; sixty himtsmen leading two 
 thousand four hundred dogs ; and one hundred and fifty 
 men carrying trees, in the branches of which were tied 
 parrots and other beautiful birds. Next walked the 
 foreign animals, Ethiopian and Arabian sheep, Brahmin 
 bulls, a white bear, leopards, panthers, bears, a camelo- 
 pard, and a rhinoceros ; proving to the wondering crowd 
 the variety and strangeness of the countries that owned 
 their monarch's sway. 
 
 In another chariot was seen Bacchus nmning away 
 from Jimo, and flying to the altar of Rhea. After that 
 came the statues of Alexander and Ptolemy Soter 
 crowned with gold and ivy: by the side of Ptolemy 
 stood the statues of Virtue, of the god Chem, and of 
 the city of Corinth; and he was followed by female 
 statues of the conquered cities of Ionia, Greece, Asia 
 Minor, and Persia; and the statues of other gods. Then 
 came crowds of singers and cymbal-players, and two 
 thousand bulls with gilt horns, crowns, and breast-plates. 
 
 Then came Amon-Ea and other gods; and the statue 
 of Alexander between Victory and the goddess Neith, 
 in a chariot drawn by elephants: then a number of 
 
106 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 thrones of ivory and gold; on one was a golden crown, 
 on another a golden cornucopia, and on the throne of 
 Ptolemy Soter was a crown worth ten thousand aurei, 
 or nearly thirty thousand dollars; then three thousand 
 two hundred golden crowns, twenty golden shields, 
 sixty-four suits of golden armour; and the whole was 
 closed with forty waggons Of silver vessels, twenty of 
 golden vessels, eighty of costly Eastern scents, and fifty- 
 seven thousand six hundred foot soldiers, and twenty- 
 three thousand two hundred horse. The procession 
 
 BRONZE COSMETIC HOLDER. 
 
 began moving by torchlight before day broke in the 
 morning, and the sun set in the evening before it had all 
 passed on its way. 
 
 It went through the streets of Alexandria to the royal 
 tents on the outside of the city, where, as in the proces- 
 sion, everything that was costly in art, or scarce in 
 nature, was brought together in honour of the day. At 
 the public games, as a kind of tax or coronation money, 
 twenty golden crowns were given to Ptolemy Soter, 
 twenty-three to Berenice, and twenty to their son, the 
 new king, beside other costly gifts; and two thousand 
 two hundred and thirty-nine talents, or one million seven 
 hundred and fifty thousand dollars, were spent on the 
 
riEST EOMAN TEEATY 107 
 
 amusements of the day. For the account of this curious 
 procession we are indebted to Callixenes of Rhodes, who 
 was then travelling in Egypt, and who wrote a history 
 of Alexandria. 
 
 Ptolemy Soter lived two years after he had with- 
 drawn himself from the cares of government; and the 
 weight of his name was not without its use in adding 
 steadiness to the throne of his successor. Instead of 
 parcelling out his wide provinces among his sons as so 
 many kingdoms, he had given them all to one son, and 
 that not the eldest; and on his death the jealousy of 
 those who had been disinherited and disappointed broke 
 out in rebellion. 
 
 It is with peculiar interest that we hear in this reign 
 for the first time that the bravery and rising power of 
 the Romans had forced themselves into the notice of 
 Philadelphus. Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus, had been 
 beaten by the Romans, and driven out of Italy; and the 
 King of Egypt thought it not beneath him to send an 
 ambassador to the senate, to wish them joy of their suc- 
 cess, and to make a treaty of peace with the republic. 
 The embassy, as we might suppose, was received in 
 Rome with great joy; and three ambassadors, two of 
 the proud name of Fabius, with Quintus Ogulnius, were 
 sent back to seal the treaty. Philadelphus gave them 
 some costly gifts, probably those usually given to am- 
 bassadors; but Rome was then young, her citizens had 
 not yet made gold the end for which they lived, and the 
 ambassadors returned the gifts, for they could receive 
 nothing beyond the thanks of the senate for having done 
 
108 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 their duty. TMs treaty was never broken; and in tlie 
 war which broke out in the middle of this reign between 
 Rome and Carthage, usually called the first Punic war, 
 when the Carthaginians sent to Alexandria to beg for 
 a loan of two thousand talents, Philadelphus refused it, 
 saying that he would help them against his enemies, 
 but not against his friends. 
 
 From that time forward we find Egypt in alliance 
 with Rome. But we also find that they were day by 
 day changing place with one another: Egypt soon began 
 to sink, while Rome was rising in power; Egypt soon 
 received help from her stronger ally, and at last became 
 a province of the Roman empire. 
 
 At the time of this embassy, when Greek arts were 
 nearly unknown to the Romans, the ambassadors must 
 have seen much that was new to them, and much that 
 was worth copying; and three years afterwards, when 
 one of them, Quintus Ogulnius, together with Caius 
 Fabius Pictor, were chosen consuls, they coined silver 
 for the first time in Rome. With them begins the series 
 of consular denarii, which throws such light on Roman 
 life and history. 
 
 About the middle of this reign, Berenice, the mother 
 of the king, died, and it was most likely then that PhUa- 
 delphus began to date from the beginning of his own 
 reign: he had before gone on like his father, dating from 
 the beginning of his father's reign. In the year after 
 her death, the great feast of Osiris, in the month of 
 Mesore, was celebrated at Alexandria with more than 
 usual pomp by the Queen Arsinoe. Venus, or Isis, had 
 
_tt- 
 
 Tn " II ijitrrrnt-rrnri i i II I 11 1 II I u f 
 
 OSIRIS AND ISIS AND THE FOUR CHILDREN OF H0RU8 
 WITHIN A SHRINE. 
 
REVOLT OF GYRENE 109 
 
 just raised Berenice to heaven; and Arsinoe, in return, 
 showed her gratitude by the sums of money spent on 
 the feast of Osiris, or Adonis as he was sometimes called 
 by the Greeks. Theocritus, who was there, wrote a poem 
 on the day, and tells us of the crowds in the streets, of 
 the queen's gifts to the temple, and of the beautiful 
 tapestries, on which were woven the figures of the god 
 and goddess breathing as if alive; and he has given a 
 free translation of the Maneros, the national poem in 
 which the priests each year consoled the goddess Isis 
 for the death of Osiris, which was sung through the 
 streets of Alexandria by a Greek girl in the procession. 
 One of the chief troubles in the reign of Philadelphus 
 was the revolt of Gyrene. The government of that part 
 of Africa had been entrusted to Magas, the half-brother 
 of the king, a son of Berenice by her former husband. 
 Berenice, who had been successful in setting aside 
 Ceraunus to make room for her son Philadelphus on 
 the throne of Egypt, has even been said to have favoured 
 the rebellious and ungrateful efforts of her elder son 
 Magas to make himself King of Cyrene. Magas, with- 
 out waiting till the large armies of Egypt were drawn 
 together to crush his little state, marched hastily towards 
 Alexandria, in the hopes of being joined by some of the 
 restless thousands of that crowded city. But he was 
 quickly recalled to Cyrene by the news of the rising of 
 the Marmarid89, the race of Libyan herdsmen that had 
 been driven back from the coast by the Greek settlers 
 who founded Cyrene. Philadelphus then led his army 
 along the coast against the rebels; but he was, in the 
 
110 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 same way, stopped by the fear of treachery among his 
 own Gallic mercenaries. With a measured cruelty which 
 the use of foreign mercenaries could alone have taught 
 him, he led back his army to the marshes of the Delta, 
 and, entrapping the four thousand distrusted Gauls^ on 
 one of the small islands, he hemmed them iu between 
 the water and the spears of the phalanx, and they all 
 died miserably, by famine, by drowning, or by the sword. 
 
 Magas had married Apime, the daughter of Antiochus 
 Soter, King of Syria; and he sent to his father-in-law 
 to beg him to march upon Coele-Syria and Palestine, to 
 call off the army of Philadelphus from Cyrene. But 
 Philadelphus did not wait for this attack: his armies 
 moved before Antiochus was ready, and, by a successful 
 inroad upon Syria, he prevented any relief being sent 
 to Magas. 
 
 After the war between the brothers had lasted some 
 years, Magas made an offer of peace, which was to be 
 sealed by betrothing his only child, Berenice, to the son 
 of Philadelphus. To this offer Philadelphus yielded; as 
 by the death of Magas, who was already worn out by 
 luxury and disease, Cyrene would then fall to his own 
 son. Magas, indeed, died before the marriage took place; 
 but, notwithstanding the efforts made by his widow to 
 break the agreement, the treaty was kept, and on this 
 marriage Cyrene again formed part of the Ptolemaic 
 kingdom of Egypt. 
 
 ' It is not tuown for certain from what part of the world these Gauls were re- 
 cruited. The race known as Gallic was at one time spread over a wide district 
 from Gallicia in the East to Gallia in the West. 
 
DOMESTIC GOVEENMENT 111 
 
 The black spot upon the character of Philadelphus, 
 which all the blaze of science and letters by which he was 
 surrounded can not make us overlook, is the death of 
 two of his brothers : a son of Eurydice, who might, per- 
 haps, have thought that he was robbed of the throne 
 of Egypt by his younger brother, and who was unsuc- 
 cessful in raising the island of Cyprus in rebellion; and 
 a younger brother, Argaeus, who was also charged with 
 joining in a plot; both lost their lives by his orders. 
 
 It was only in the beginning of this reign, after Egypt 
 had been for more than fifty years imder the rule of the 
 Macedonians, that the evils which often follow conquest 
 were brought to an end. Before this reign no Greek was 
 ever known to have reached Elephantine and Syene or 
 Aswan since Herodotus made his hasty tour in the 
 Thebaid; and during much of the last reign no part of 
 Upper Egypt was safe for a Greek traveller, if he were 
 alone, or if he quitted the highroad. The peasants, 
 whose feelings of hatred we can hardly wonder at, way- 
 laid the stragglers, and Egyptian-like as the Greeks said, 
 or slave-like as it would be wiser to say, often put them 
 to death in cold blood. But a long course of good gov- 
 ernment had at last quieted the whole country, and left 
 room for further improvements by Philadelphus. 
 
 Among other buildings, Philadelphus raised a temple 
 in Alexandria to the honour of his father and mother, 
 and placed in it their statues, made of ivory and gold, 
 and ordered that they should be worshipped like the 
 gods and other kings of the country. He also built a 
 temple to Ceres and Proserpine, and then the Eleusinian 
 
112 
 
 PTOLEMY FHILADELPHUS 
 
 mysteries were taught in Alexandria to the few who 
 were willing and worthy to be admitted. The south- 
 east quarter of the city in which this temple stood was 
 called the Eleusinis ; and here the troop of maidens were 
 to be seen carrying the sacred basket through the streets, 
 
 and singing hymns in 
 honour of the goddess; 
 while they charged all 
 profane persons, who 
 met the procession, to 
 keep their eyes upon the 
 ground, lest they should 
 see the basket and the 
 priestesses, who were 
 too pure for them to 
 look upon. 
 
 In this reign was 
 finished the lighthouse 
 on the island of Pharos, 
 as a guide to ships when 
 entering the harbour of 
 Alexandria by night. 
 The navigation of the 
 waters of the Red Sea, 
 along which the wind blows hard from the north for nine 
 months in the year, was found so dangerous by the little 
 vessels from the south of Arabia, that they always chose 
 the most southerly port in which they could meet the 
 Egyptian buyers. The merchants with their bales of 
 goods found a journey on camels through the desert, 
 
 ROSETTA BRANCH OF THE NILE. 
 
COMMEECIAL FACILITIES 113 
 
 where the path is marked only by the skeletons of the 
 animals that have died upon the route, less costly than 
 a coasting voyage. Hence, when Philadelphus had ipade 
 the whole of Upper Egypt to the cataracts at Aswan 
 (Syene) as quiet and safe as the Delta, he made a new 
 port on the rocky coast of the Red Sea, nearly two hun- 
 dred miles to the south of Cosseir, and named it Berenice 
 after his mother. He also built four public inns, or water- 
 ing-houses, where the caravans might find water for the 
 camels, and shelter from the noonday sun, on their twelve 
 days' journey through the desert from Koptos on the Nile 
 to this new port. He rebuilt, and at the same time re- 
 named, the old port of Cosseir, or ^nnum as it was before 
 called, and named it Philotera after his younger sister. 
 The trade which thus passed down the Nile from Syene, 
 from Berenice, and from Philotera, paid a toll or duty 
 at the custom-house station of Phylake a little below 
 Lycopolis on the west bank of the river, where a guard 
 of soldiers was encamped; and this station gradually 
 grew into a town. 
 
 Philadelphus also built a city on the sands at the head 
 of the Red Sea, near where Suez now stands, and named 
 it Arsinoe, after his sister; and he again opened the canal 
 which Necho II. and Darius had begun, by which ships 
 were to pass from the Nile to this city on the Red Sea. 
 This canal began in the Pelusiac branch of the river, a 
 little above Bubastis, and was carried to the Lower Bit- 
 ter Lakes in the reign of Darius. Prom thence Phila- 
 delphus wished to carry it forward to the Red Sea, near 
 the town of Arsinoe, and moreover cleared it from the 
 
114 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 sands wMch soon overwhelmed it and choked it up when- 
 ever it was neglected by the government. But his under- 
 taking was stopped by the engineers finding the waters 
 of the canal several feet lower than the level of the Eed 
 Sea; and that, if finished, it would become a salt-water 
 canal, which could neither water the fields nor give drink 
 to the cities in the valley. He also built a second city of 
 the name of Berenice, called the Berenice Epidires, at 
 the very mouth of the Red Sea on a point of land where 
 Abyssinia is hardly more than fifteen miles from the 
 opposite coast of Arabia. This naming of cities after his 
 mother and sisters was no idle compliment; they prob- 
 ably received the crown revenues of those cities for their 
 personal maintenance. 
 
 With a view further to increase the trade with the 
 East, Philadelphus sent Dionysius on an expedition over- 
 land to India, to gain a knowledge of the country and 
 of its means and wants. He went by the way of the 
 Caspian Sea through Bactria, in the line of Alexander's 
 march. He dwelt there, at the court of the sovereign, 
 soon after the time that Megasthenes was there; and he 
 wrote a report of what he saw and learned. But it is 
 sad to find, in our search for what is valuable in the his- 
 tory of past times, that the information gained on this 
 interesting journey of discovery is wholly lost. 
 
 In the number of ports which were then growing into 
 the rank of cities, we see full proof of the great trade of 
 Egypt at that time; and we may form some opinion of 
 the profit which was gained from the trade of the Red 
 Sea from the report of Clitarchus to Alexander, that the 
 
ANCIENT GOLD MINES 115 
 
 people of one of the islands would give a talent of gold 
 for a horse, so plentiful with them was gold, and so scarce 
 the useful animals of Europe ; and one of the three towns 
 named after the late queen, on that coast, was known by 
 the name of the Nubian or Grolden Berenice, from the 
 large supply of gold which was dug from the miaes in 
 the neighbourhood. In latitude 17°, separated from the 
 Golden Berenice by one of the forests of Ethiopia, was 
 the new city of Ptolemais, which, however, was little more 
 than a post from which the hunting parties went out to 
 catch elephants for the armies of Egypt. Philadelphus 
 tried to command, to persuade, and to bribe the neigh- 
 bouring tribes not to kill these elephants for food, but 
 they refused all treaty with him; these zealous huntsmen 
 answered that, if he offered them the kingdom of Egypt 
 with all its wealth, they would not give up the pleasure 
 of catching and eating elephants. The Ethiopian forests, 
 however, were able to supply the Egyptian armies with 
 about one elephant for every thousand men, which was 
 the niunber then thought best in the Greek military tac- 
 tics. Asia had been the only country from which the 
 armies had been supplied with elephants before Phila- 
 delphus brought them from Ethiopia. 
 
 The temple of Isis among the palm groves in Philae, 
 a rocky island in the Mle near the cataracts of Syene, 
 was begun in this reign, though not finished tUl some 
 reigns later. It is stiU the wonder of travellers, and by 
 its size and style proves the wealth and good taste of 
 the priests. But its ornaments are not so simple as those 
 of the older temples; and the capitals of its columns are 
 
116 
 
 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 varied by the full-blown papyrus flower of several sizes, 
 its half-opened buds, its closed buds, and its leaves, and 
 by pahn-branches. It seems to have been built on the site 
 of an older temple which may have been overthrown by 
 the Persians. This island of Philae is the most beautiful 
 spot in Egypt; where the bend of the river just above 
 the cataracts forms a quiet lake surrounded on aU sides 
 by fantastic cliffs of red granite. Its name is a corruption 
 from Abu-lakh, the city of the frontier. This temple 
 was one of the places in which Osiris was said to be 
 buried. None but priests ever set foot on this sacred 
 
 island, and no oath was so binding as that sworn in the 
 name of Him that lies buried in Philae. The statues of 
 the goddess in the temple were aU meant for portraits 
 of the queen Arsinoe. The priests who dwelt in the cells 
 within the courtyards of the temples of which we see 
 the remains in this temple at Philse, were there confined 
 for life to the service of the altar by the double force 
 of religion and the stone walls. They showed their zeal 
 for their gods by the amount of want which they were 
 able to endure, and they thought that sitting upon the 
 ground in idleness, with the knees up to the chin, was 
 one of the first of religious duties. 
 
ALEXANDEIAN CULTURE 117 
 
 The Museum of Alexandria held at this time the high- 
 est rank among the Greek schools, whether for poetry, 
 mathematics, astronomy, or medicine, the four branches 
 into which it was divided. Its library soon held two 
 himdred thousand rolls of papyrus; which, however, 
 could hardly have been equal to ten thousand printed 
 volumes. Many of these were bought by Philadelphus 
 in Athens and Rhodes; and his copy of Aristotle's works 
 was bought of the philosopher Nileus, who had been a 
 hearer of that great man, and afterwards inherited his 
 books through Theophrastus, to whom they had been 
 left by Aristotle. The books in the museum were of 
 coixrse aU Greek; the Greeks did not study foreign lan- 
 guages, and thought the Egyptian writings barbarous. 
 
 At the head of this library had been Demetrius Pha- 
 lereus, who, after ruling Athens with great praise, was 
 banished from his country, and fled to Ptolemy Soter, 
 under whom he consoled himself for the loss of power 
 in the enjo5rment of literary leisure. He was at the same 
 time the most learned and the most polished of orators. 
 He brought learning from the closet into the forum; and, 
 by the soft turn which he gave to public speaking, made 
 that sweet and lovely which had before been grave and 
 severe. Cicero thought him the great master in the art 
 of speaking, and seems to have taken him as the model 
 upon which he wished to form his own style. He wrote 
 upon philosophy, history, government, and poetry; but 
 the only one of his works which has reached our time 
 is his treatise on elocution; and the careful thought which 
 he there gives to the choice of words and to the form of 
 
118 
 
 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 fWffM g 
 
 1^ 
 
 a sentence, and even the parts of a sentence, shows the 
 value then set upon style. Indeed he seems rather to have 
 charmed his hearers by the softness of his words than 
 to have roused them to noble deeds by the strength of 
 his thoughts. He not only advised Ptolemy Soter what 
 books he should buy, but which he should read, and he 
 
 chiefly recommended those on gov- 
 ernment and policy; and it is alike 
 to the credit of the king and of the 
 librarian, that he put before Mm 
 books which, from their praise of 
 freedom and hatred of tyrants, few 
 persons would even speak of in the 
 presence of a king. But Demetrius 
 had also been consulted by Soter 
 about the choice of a successor, and 
 had given his opinion that the crown 
 ought to be left to his eldest son, and 
 that wars would arise between his 
 children if it were not so left; hence 
 we can hardly wonder that, on the 
 death of Soter, Demetrius should 
 have lost his place at the head of the 
 museum, and been ordered to leave 
 Alexandria. He died, as courtiers say, in disgrace; and 
 he was buried near Diospolis in the Busirite nome of the 
 Delta. According to one account he was put to death 
 by the bite of an asp, in obedience to the new king's 
 orders, but this story is not generally credited; although 
 this was not an uncommon way of inflicting death. 
 
 ASUBIS, GOD OF THE 
 LOWER WORLD. 
 
EUCLID THE GEOMETER 119 
 
 Soon after this we find Zenodotus of Ephesus filling 
 the office of librarian to the museum. He was a poet, 
 who, with others, had been employed by Soter in the 
 education of his children. He is also known as the first 
 of those Alexandrian critics who turned their thoughts 
 towards mending the text of Homer, and to whom we 
 are indebted for the tolerably correct state of the great 
 poet's works, which had become faulty through the care- 
 lessness of the copiers. Zenodotus was soon followed 
 by other critics in this task of editing Homer. But their 
 labours were not approved of by all; and when Aratus 
 asked Timon which he thought the best edition of the 
 poet, the philosopher shrewdly answered, " That which 
 has been least corrected." 
 
 At the head of the mathematical school was Euclid; 
 who is, however, less known to us by what his pupils 
 have said of him than by his own invaluable work on 
 geometry. This is one of the few of the scientific writ- 
 ings of the ancients that are still in use. The discoveries 
 of the man of science are made use of by his successor, 
 and the discoverer perhaps loses part of his reward when 
 his writings are passed by, after they have served us 
 as a stepping-stone to mount by. If he wishes his works 
 to live with those of the poet and orator, he must, like 
 them, cultivate those beauties of style which are fitted 
 to his matter. Euclid did so; and his Elements have 
 been for more than two thousand years the model for all 
 writers on geometry. He begins at the beginning, and 
 leads the learner, step by step, from the simplest prop- 
 ositions, called axioms, which rest upon metaphysical 
 
120 
 
 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 rather than mathematical proof, to high geometrical 
 truths. The mind is indeed sometimes wearied by being 
 made to stop at every single step in the path, and wishes, 
 with Ptolemy Soter, for a shorter road; but, upon the 
 whole, Euclid's clearness has never been equalled. 
 
 Ctesibus wrote on the theory of hydrostatics, and was 
 the inventor of several water-engines; an appUcation of 
 mathematics which was much called for by the artificial 
 
 AT THE HEAD OP THE RED SEA. 
 
 irrigation of Egypt. He also invented that useful instru- 
 ment, the water-clock, to teU the time after sunset. 
 
 Among the best known of the men of letters who came 
 to Alexandria to enjoy the patronage of Philadelphus 
 was Theocritus. Many of his poems are lost; but his 
 pastoral poems, though too rough for the polished taste 
 of Quintilian, and perhaps more like nature than we wish 
 any works of imitative art to be, have always been looked 
 upon as the model of that kind of poetry. If his shep- 
 herds do not speak the language of courtiers, they have 
 
THE POETS 121 
 
 at least a rustic propriety which makes us admire the 
 manners and thoughts of the peasant. He repaid the 
 bounty of the king in the way most agreeable to him; he 
 speaks of him as one 
 
 to freemen kind, 
 Wise, fond of books and love, of generous mind ; 
 Knows well his friend, but better knows his foe ; 
 Scatters his wealth ; when asked he ne'er says No, 
 But gives as kings should give. 
 
 Idyll, xiv. 60. 
 
 Theocritus boasted that he would in an undying poem 
 place him in the rank of the demigods ; and, writing with 
 the pjrramids and the Memnonium before his eyes, as- 
 sured him that generosity towards the poets would do 
 more to make his name live for ever than any building 
 that he cordd raise. 
 
 In a back street of Alexandria, in the part of the city 
 named Eleusinis, near the temple of Ceres and Proser- 
 pine, lived the poet Callimachus, earning his livelihood 
 by teaching. But the writer of the Hymns could not 
 long dwell so near the court of Philadelphus unknown 
 and imhonoured. He was made professor of poetry in 
 the museum, and even now repays the king and patron 
 for what he then received. He was a man of great in- 
 dustry, and wrote in prose and in all kinds of verse; 
 but of these only a few hymns and epigrams have come 
 down to our time. Egypt seems to have been the birth- 
 place of the mournful elegy, and Callimachus was the 
 chief of the elegiac poets. He was bom at Cyrene; and 
 though, from the language in which he wrote, his thoughts 
 
122 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 are mostly G-reek, yet he did not forget the place of his 
 birth. He calls upon Apollo by the name of Carneus, 
 because, after Sparta and Thera, Cyrene was his chosen 
 seat. He paints Latona, weary and in pain in the island 
 of Delos, as leaning against a palm-tree, by the side of 
 the river Inopus, which, sinking into the ground, was 
 to rise again in Egypt, near the cataracts of Syene; and, 
 prettily pointing to Philadelphus, he makes Apollo, yet 
 unborn, ask his mother not to give birth to him in the 
 island of Cos, because that island was already chosen 
 as the birthplace of another god, the child of the gods 
 Soteres, who would be the copy of his father, and under 
 whose diadem both Egypt and the islands would be proud 
 to be governed by a Macedonian. 
 
 The poet PMlsetas, who had been the first tutor of 
 Philadelphus, was in elegy second only to Callimaehus; 
 but Quintilian (while advising us about books, to read 
 much but not many) does not rank him among the few 
 first-rate poets by whom the student should form his 
 taste; and his works are now lost. He was small and 
 thin in person, and it was jokingly said of him that he 
 wore leaden soles to his shoes lest he should be blown 
 away by the wind. But in losing his poetry, we have 
 perhaps lost the point of the joke. While these three, 
 Theocritus, Callimaehus, and Phil^etas, were writing in 
 Alexandria, the museum was certainly the chief seat of 
 the muses. Athens itself could boast of no such poet 
 but Menander, with whom Attic literature ended; and 
 him Philadelphus earnestly invited to his court. He 
 sent a ship to Greece on purpose to fetch him; but neither 
 
la 
 
ASTEONOMY 125 
 
 tMs honour nor the promised salary could make him 
 quit his mother country and the schools of Athens; and, 
 in the time of Pausanias, his tomb was stiU visited by 
 the scholar on the road to the Piraeus, and his statue was 
 still seen in the theatre. 
 
 Strato, the pupil of Theophrastus, though chiefly 
 known for his writings on physics, was also a writer on 
 many branches of knowledge. He was one of the men 
 of learning who had taken part in the education of Phil- 
 adelphus; and the king showed his gratitude to his 
 teacher by making him a present of eighty talents, or 
 sixty thousand dollars. He was for eighteen years at the 
 head of one of the Alexandrian schools. 
 
 Timocharis, the astronomer, made some of his obser- 
 vations at Alexandria in the last reign, and continued 
 them through half of this reign. He began a catalogue 
 of the fixed stars, with their latitudes and their longi- 
 tudes measured from the equinoctial point; by the help 
 of which Hipparchus, one hundred and fifty years after- 
 wards, made the great discovery that the equinoctial 
 point had moved. He has left an observation of the place 
 of Venus, on the seventeenth day of the month of Mesore, 
 in the thirteenth year of this reign, which by the modern 
 tables of the planets is known to have been on the eighth 
 day of October, b. c. 272; from which we learn that the 
 first year of Philadelphus ended in October, b. c. 284, and 
 the first year of Ptolemy Soter ended in October, b. c. 
 322; thus fixing the chronology of these reigns with a 
 certainty which leaves nothing to be wished for. Aris- 
 tillus also made some observations of the same kind at 
 
126 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 Alexandria. Few of them have been handed down to us, 
 but they were made use of by Hipparchus. 
 
 Aristarchus, the astronomer of Samos, most likely 
 came to Alexandria in the last reign, as some of his ob- 
 servations were made in the very beginning of the reign 
 of Philadelphus. He is the first astronomer who is 
 known to have taken the true view of the solar system. 
 He said that the sun was the centre round which the 
 earth moved in a circle; and, as if he had foreseen that 
 even in after ages we should hardly be able to measure 
 the distance of the fixed stars, he said that the earth's 
 yearly path bore no greater proportion to the hollow 
 globe of the heavens in which the stars were set, than 
 the point without size in the centre of a circle does to 
 its circumference. But the work in which he proved 
 these great truths, or perhaps threw out these happy 
 guesses, is lost; and the astronomers who followed him 
 clung to the old belief that the earth was the centre 
 roimd which the sun moved. The only writings of Aris- 
 tarchus which now remain are his short work on the 
 distances and magnitude of the sun and moon, in which 
 the error in his results arises from the want of good 
 observations, rather than from any mistake in his mathe- 
 matical principles. 
 
 Aratus, who was born in Cilicia, is sometimes counted 
 among the pleiades, or seven stars of Alexandria. His 
 Phenomena is a short astronomical poem, without life 
 or feeling, which scarcely aims at any of the grace or 
 flow of poetry. It describes the planets and the constel- 
 lations one by one, and tells us what stars are seen in 
 
THE KING'S WIT 127 
 
 the head, feet, and other parts of each figure; and then 
 the seasons, and the stars seen at night at each time 
 of the year. When maps were little known, it must have 
 been of great use, to learners; and its being in verse 
 made it the more easy to remember. The value which 
 the ancients set upon this poem is curiously shown by 
 the number of Latin translations which were made from 
 it. Cicero in his early youth, before he was known as 
 an orator or philosopher, perhaps before he himself knew 
 in which path of letters he was soon to take the lead, 
 translated this poem. The next translation is by Ger- 
 manicus Caesar, whose early death and many good qual- 
 ities have thrown such a bright light upon his name. 
 He shone as a general, as an orator, and as an author; 
 but his Grreek comedies, his Latin orations, and his poem 
 on Augustus are lost, while his translation of Aratus 
 is all that is left to prove that this high name in litera- 
 ture was not given to him for his political virtues alone. 
 Lastly Avienus, a writer in the reign of Diocletian, or 
 perhaps of Theodosius, has left a rugged, unpoKshed 
 translation of this much- valued poem. Aratus, the poet 
 of the heavens, will be read, said Ovid, as long as the 
 sun and moon shall shine. 
 
 Sosibius was one of the rhetoricians of the museum 
 who lived upon the boimty of Philadelphus. The king, 
 wishing to laugh at his habit of verbal criticism, once 
 told his treasurer to refuse his salary, and say that it 
 had been already paid. Sosibius complained to the king, 
 and the book of receipts was sent for, in which Philadel- 
 phus foimd the names of Soter, Sosigines, Bion, and 
 
128 PTOLEMY PHILADELFHUS 
 
 Apollonius, and showing to the critic one syllable of his 
 name in each of those words, said that putting them 
 together, they must be taken as the receipt for his salary. 
 Other authors wrote on lighter matters. ApoUodorus 
 Gelous, the physician, addressed to Philadelphus a 
 volume of advice as to which Greek wines were best 
 fitted for his royal palate. The Italian and Sicilian were 
 then unknown in Egypt, and those of the Thebaid were 
 wholly beneath his notice, while the vine had as yet 
 hardly been planted in the neighbourhood of Alexandria. 
 He particularly praised the Naspercenite wine from the 
 southern banks of the Black Sea, the Oretic from the 
 island of Buboea; the CEneatic from Locris; the Leuca- 
 dian from the island of Leucas; and the Ambraciote 
 from the kingdom of Epirus. But above all these he 
 placed the Peparethian wine from the 
 island of Peparethus, a wine which of 
 course did not please the many, as this 
 experienced taster acknowledges that 
 nobody is likely to have a true relish 
 for it till after six years' acquaintance. 
 Such were the Greek authors who 
 --/^^ basked in the sunshine of royal favour 
 ^;:^^;x^ at Alexandria; who could have told us, 
 AN ATHLETE DisposT- if thcy had thought it worth their while, 
 
 trade, religion, language, and early history of Egypt. 
 But they thought that the barbarbians were not worth 
 the notice of men who called themselves Macedonians. 
 Philadelphus, however, thought otherwise; and by his 
 
EARLY HISTORIANS 129 
 
 command Manetho, an Egyptian, wrote in Grreek a his- 
 tory of Egypt, copied from the hieroglyphical writing 
 on the temples, and he dedicated it to the king. We 
 know it only in the quotations of Josephus and Julius 
 Africanus, and what we have is little more than a 
 list of kings' names. He was a priest of Heliopolis, 
 the great seat of Egyptian learning. The general cor- 
 rectness of Manetho 's history, which runs back for 
 nearly two thousand years, is shown by our finding 
 the kings' names agree with many Egyptian inscrip- 
 tions. Manetho owes his reputation to the merit of 
 being the first who distinguished himself as a writer 
 and critic upon religion and philosophy, as well as 
 chronology and history, using the Greek language, but 
 drawing his materials from native sources, especially 
 the Sacred Books. That he was " skilled in Greek 
 letters " we learn from Josephus, who also declares 
 that he contradicted many of Herodotus' erroneous state- 
 ments. Manetho was better suited for the task of 
 writing a history of Egypt than any of his contem- 
 poraries. As an Egyptian he could search out and make 
 use of all the native Egyptian sources, and, thanks 
 to his knowledge of Greek, he could present them 
 in a form intelligible to the Hellenes. It must be con- 
 fessed that he has occasionally fallen into the error of 
 allowing Greek thoughts and traditions to slip into his 
 work. The great worth in Manetho 's work lies in the 
 fact that he relates the history of Egjrpt based on monu- 
 mental sources and charters preserved in the temples. 
 Moreover, he treats quite impartially the times of the 
 
130 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 foreign rulers, which the form of the Egyptian history 
 employed by Diodorus does not mention; but above all, 
 Manetho gives us a list of Egyptian rulers arranged 
 according to a regular system. But however important 
 in this respect Manetho 's work may be, it must not be 
 forgotten what difficulties he had to contend with in the 
 writing of it, and what unreliable sources lay in these 
 difficulties. He could not use the sources in the form 
 in which he found them. He was obliged to re-write 
 them, and he added to them sjmchronisms and relations 
 to other peoples which necessarily exposed him to the 
 dangers of colouring his report correspondingly. 
 
 But a much greater difficulty consisted in the fact 
 that the chronological reports of the earlier history were 
 all arranged according to the reigning years of the rulers, 
 so that Manetho was obliged to construct an era for his 
 work. Boeckh was the first to discover with certainty 
 the existence and form of this era. According to his 
 researches, the whole work of Manetho is based upon 
 Sothicycles of 1460 Julianic years. The Egyptian year 
 was movable, and did not need the extra day every 
 few years, but the consequence was that every year re- 
 mained a quarter of a day behind the real year. IWhen 
 1460—1 years had elapsed this chronological error had 
 mounted to a whole year, and so the movable year and 
 the fixed year fell together again. It is this Sothie period 
 which Manetho has employed in his account of Egyptian 
 history. Besides his history, Manetho has left us a work 
 on astrology, called Apotelesmatica, or Events, a work 
 of which there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness. 
 
miV,Fir,!-„i..,i 
 
 '''m • 
 
 MODERN SPHINX-LIKE FACE. 
 
ASTROLOGY 133 
 
 It is a poem in hexameter verse, in good G-reek, addressed 
 to King Ptolemy, in which he calls, not only upon Apollo 
 and the Muse, but, like a true Egyptian, upon Hermes, 
 from whose darkly worded writings he had gained his 
 knowledge. He says that the king's greatness might 
 have been foretold from the places of Mars and the Sun 
 at the time of his birth, and that his marriage with his 
 sister Arsinoe arose from the places of Venus and Saturn 
 at the same time. But while we smile at this being said 
 as the result of astronomical calculations, we must re- 
 member that for eentviries afterwards, almost in our own 
 time, the science of judicial astrology was made a branch 
 of astronomy, and that the fault lay rather in the age 
 than in the man; and we have the pain of thinking that, 
 while many of the valuable writings by Manetho are lost, 
 the copiers and readers of manuscripts have carefully 
 saved for us this nearly worthless poem on astrology. 
 
 Petosiris was another writer on astrology and as- 
 tronomy who was highly praised by his friend Manetho ; 
 and his calciQations on the distances of the sun and 
 planets are quoted by Pliny. His works are lost; but 
 his name calls for our notice, as he must have been a 
 native Egyptian, and a priest. Like Manetho, he also 
 wrote on the calculation of nativities ; and the later Greek 
 astrologers, when what they had foretold did not come 
 to pass, were wont to lay the blame on Petosiris. The 
 priests were believed to possess these and other super- 
 natural powers; and to help their claims to be believed 
 many of them practised ventriloquism. 
 
 Timosthenes, the admiral under Philadelphus, must 
 
134 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 not be forgotten in tMs list of authors; for though his 
 verses to Apollo were little worth notice, his voyages 
 of discovery, and his work in ten books on harbours, 
 placed him in the first rank among geographers. Colotes, 
 a pupil and follower of Epicurus, dedicated to PMladel- 
 phus a work of which the very title proves the nature 
 of his philosophy, and how soon the rules of his master 
 had fitted themselves to the habits of the sensualist. Its 
 title was " That it is impossible even to support life ac- 
 cording to the philosophical rules of any but the Epi- 
 cureans." It was a good deal read and talked about; 
 and three hundred years afterwards Plutarch thought 
 it not a waste of time to write against it at some length. 
 
 At a time when books were few, and far too dear to 
 be within reach of the many, and indeed when the number 
 of those who could read must have been small, other 
 means were of course taken to meet the thirst after 
 knowledge; and the chief of these were the public read- 
 ings in the theatre. This was not overlooked by Phila- 
 delphus, who employed Hegesias to read Herodotus, and 
 Hermophantus to read Homer, the earliest historian and 
 the earliest poet, the two authors who had taken deepest 
 root in the minds of the G-reeks. These public readings, 
 which were common throughout Greece and its colonies, 
 had not a little effect on the authors. They then wrote 
 for the ear rather than the eye, to be listened to rather 
 than to be read, which was one among the causes of Greek 
 elegance and simplicity of style. 
 
 Among others who were brought to Alexandria by the 
 fame of Philadelphus' bounty was Zoilus, the gram- 
 
CEITICS AND PEOFESSORS 135 
 
 marian, whose ill-natured criticism on Homer's poems 
 had earned for him the name of Homeromastix, or the 
 scourge of Homer. He read his criticisms to Philadel- 
 phus, who was so much displeased with his carping and 
 mifair manner of finding fault, that he even refused to 
 relieve him when in distress. The king told him, that 
 while hundreds had earned a livelihood by pointing out 
 the beauties of the Iliad and Odyssey in their pubhc 
 readings, surely one person who was so much wiser 
 might be able to live by pointing out the faults. 
 
 Timon, a tragic poet, was also one of the visitors to 
 this court ; but, as he was more fond of eating and drink- 
 ing than of philosophy, we need not wonder at our know- 
 ing nothing of his tragedies, or at his not being made a 
 professor by Philadelphus. But he took his revenge on 
 the better-fed philosophers of the court, in a poem in 
 which he calls them literary fighting-cocks, who were 
 being fattened by the king, and were always quarrelling 
 in the coops of the museum. 
 
 The Alexandrian men of science and letters main- 
 tained themselves, some few by fees received from their 
 pupils, others as professors holding salaries in the mu- 
 seum, and others by civil employments under the gov- 
 ernment. There was little to encourage in them the 
 feelings of noble pride or independence. The first rank 
 in Alexandria was held by the civil and military servants 
 of the crown, who enjoyed the lucrative employments 
 of receiving the taxes, hearing the lawsuits by appeal, 
 and repressing rebellions. With these men the philoso- 
 phers mixed, not as equals, but partaking of their wealth 
 
136 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 and luxuries, and paying their score with wit and 
 conversation. There were no landholders in the city, as 
 the soil of the country was owned by Egyptians; and the 
 wealthy trading classes, of all nations and languages, 
 could bestow little patronage on Greek learning, and 
 therefore little independence on its professors. 
 
 Philadelphus was not less fond of paintings and 
 statues than of books; and he seems to have joined the 
 Achaian league as much for the sake of the pictures which 
 Aratus, its general, was in the habit of sending to him, 
 as for political reasons. Aratus, the chief of Sicyon, was 
 an acknowledged judge of paintings, and Sicyon was 
 then the first school of Greece. The pieces which he sent 
 to Philadelphus were mostly those of Pamphilus, the 
 master, and of Melanthius, the feUow-pupU, of Apelles. 
 Pamphilus was famed for his perspective; and he is said 
 to have received from every pupU the large sum of ten 
 talents, or seven thousand five hundred dollars, a year. 
 His best known pieces were, Ulysses in his ship, and the 
 victory of the Athenians near the town of Phlius. It was 
 through Pamphilus that, at first in Sicyon, and after- 
 wards throughout all Greece, drawing was taught to boys 
 as part of a liberal education. Neacles also painted for 
 Aratus; and we might almost suppose that it was as a 
 gift to the King of Egypt that he painted his Sea-fight 
 between the Egyptians and the Persians, in which the 
 painter shows us that it was fought within the mouth 
 of the Mle by making a crocodile bite at an ass drinking 
 on the shore. 
 
 Helena, the daughter of Timon, was a painter of some 
 
PAINTING 
 
 137 
 
 note at this time, at Alexandria; but the only piece of 
 hers known to us by name is the Battle of Issus, which 
 three himdred years afterwards was hung up by Ves- 
 pasian in the Temple of Peace at Rome. We must wonder 
 at a woman choosing to paint the horrors and pains of 
 a battle-piece; but, as we are not told what point of time 
 was chosen, we may hope that it was after the battle, 
 
 METHOD OF EGYPTIAN DKAFTgMANSHIF. 
 
 when Alexander, in his tent, raised up from their knees 
 the wife and lovely daughter of Darius, who had been 
 found among the prisoners. As for the Egyptians, they 
 showed no taste in painting. Their method of drawing 
 the human figure mathematically by means of squares, 
 which was not unsuitable in working a statue sixty feet 
 high, checked all flights of genius; and it afterwards de- 
 stroyed Grreek art, when the Greek painters were idle 
 enough to use it. We hear but little of the statues and 
 sculptures made for Philadelphus; but we cannot help 
 
138 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 remarking that, while the public places of Athens were 
 filled with the statues of the great and good men who^ 
 had deserved well of their country, the statues which 
 were most common in Alexandria were those of Cline, 
 a favourite damsel, who filled the office of cup-bearer to 
 the king of Egypt. 
 
 The favour shown to the Jews by Ptolemy Soter was 
 not withdrawn by his son. He even bought from his own 
 soldiers and freed from slavery one hundred and twenty 
 thousand men of that nation, who were scattered over 
 Egypt. He paid for each, out of the royal treasury, one 
 hundred and twenty drachmas, or about fifteen dollars, 
 to those of his subjects who held them either by 'right 
 of war or by purchase. In fixing the amount of thq ran- 
 som, the king would seem to have been guided by his 
 Jewish advisers, as this is exactly equal to thirty shekels, 
 the sum fixed by the Jewish law as the price of a slave. 
 The- Jews who lived in Lower Egypt, in the enjoyment 
 of civil and religious liberty, looked upon that country 
 as their home. They had already a Greek translation 
 of either the whole or some part of their sacred writings, 
 which had been made for those whose families had been 
 for so many generations in Egypt that they could not 
 read the language of their forefathers. But they now 
 hoped, by means of the king's friendship and the weight 
 which his wishes must carry with them, to have a Greek 
 translation of the Bible which should bear the stamp of 
 official authority. 
 
 Accordingly, to please them, Philadelphus sent Aris- 
 tseus, a man whose wisdom had gained his friendship, 
 
THE SEPTUAGINT 139 
 
 and Andraeus, a captain of the guard, both of them Greek 
 Jews, with costly gifts to Eleazer, the high priest of 
 Jerusalem; and asked himi to employ learned and fit men 
 to make a Greek translation of the Bible for the library 
 at Alexandria. Eleazer, so runs the tradition, named 
 seventy elders to undertake the task, who held their first 
 sitting on the business at the king's dinner-table; when 
 Menedemus, the Socratic philosopher, the pupil of Plato, 
 was also present, who had been sent to Philadelphus as 
 ambassador from Euboea. The translators then divided 
 the work among themselves; and when each had finished 
 his task it was laid before a meeting of the seventy, and 
 then published by authority. Thus was said to have been 
 made the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which, 
 from the number of the translators, we now caU the Sep- 
 tuagint; but a doubt is thrown upon the whole story 
 by the fables which have been mingled with it to give 
 authority to the translation. By this translation the Bible 
 became known for the first time to the Greek philoso- 
 phers. "We do not indeed hear that they immediately 
 read it or noticed it, we do not find it quoted till after 
 the spread of Christianity; but it had a silent effect on 
 their opinions, which we trace in the new school of Pla- 
 tonists soon afterwards rising in Alexandria. 
 
 When Aratus of Sicyon first laid a plot to free his 
 country from its tyrant, who reigned by the help of the 
 King of Macedonia, he sent to Philadelphus to beg for 
 money. He naturally looked to the King of Egypt for 
 help when entering upon a struggle against their common 
 rival; but the king seems to have thought the plans of 
 
1*0 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 this young man too wild to be countenanced. Aratus, 
 however, soon raised Sicyon to a level with the first states 
 of Greece, and made himself leader of the Achaian league, 
 under which band and name the Greeks were then strug- 
 gling for freedom against Macedonia; and when, by his 
 courage and success, he had shown himself worthy of the 
 proud name which was afterwards given him, of the 
 *' Last of the Greeks," PMladelphus, like other patrons, 
 gave him the help which he less needed. Aratus, as we 
 have seen, bought his friendship with pictures, the gifts of 
 all others the most welcome; and, when he went to Egypt, 
 PMladelphus gave him one himdred and fifty talents, 
 or forty-five thousand dollars, and joined the Achaian 
 league, on the agreement that in carrying on the war by 
 sea and land they should obey the orders from Alex- 
 andria. 
 
 The friendship of Philadelphus, indeed, was courted 
 by aU the neighbouring states ; the little island of Delos 
 set up its statue to him; and the cities of Greece vied 
 with one another in doing him honour. The Athenians 
 named one of the tribes of their city and also one of their 
 public lecture-rooms by his name ; and two hundred years 
 afterwards, when Cicero and his friend Atticus were 
 learning wisdom and eloquence from the lips of Antiochus 
 in Athens, it was in the gymnasium of Ptolemy. 
 
 Philadelphus, when yoimg, had married Arsiaoe, the 
 daughter of Lysimachus of Thrace, by whom he had three 
 children, Ptolemy, who succeeded him, Lysimachus, and 
 Berenice; but, having found that his wife was intrigu- 
 ing with Amyntas, and with his physician Chrysippus 
 
QUEKN AESINOfi 141 
 
 of Rhodes, he put these two to death and banished the 
 Queen Arsinoe to Koptos in the Thebaid. 
 
 He then took Arsinoe, his own sister, as the partner 
 of his throne. She had married first the old Lysimachus, 
 King of Thrace, and then Ceraunus, her half-brother, 
 when he was King of Macedonia. As they were not chil- 
 dren of the same mother, this second marriage was 
 neither illegal nor improper in Macedonia; but her third 
 marriage with Philadelphus could only be justified by the 
 laws of Egypt, their adopted country. They were both 
 past the middle age, and whether Philadelphus looked 
 upon her as his wife or not, at any rate they had no chil- 
 dren. Her own children by Lysimachus had been put to 
 death by Ceraunus, and she readily adopted those of her 
 brother with all the kindness of a mother. She was a 
 woman of an enlarged mind; her husband and her step- 
 children alike valued her; and Eratosthenes showed his 
 
 opinion of her learning 
 and strong sense by giv- 
 ing the name of Arsinoe 
 to one of his works, which 
 perhaps a modem writer 
 
 COIK WITH HEADS OF SOTER AND BEKENICE ; WOUld haVC namCd Tabk- 
 
 AND PHILADELPHUS AND AKsiNOE. talk. TMs seemlug xnaT- 
 riage, however, between brother and sister did not escape 
 blame with the Greeks of Alexandria. The poet Sotades, 
 whose verses were as licentious as his life, wrote some 
 coarse lines against the queen, for which he was forced 
 to fly from Egypt, and, being overtaken at sea, he was 
 wrapped up in lead and thrown overboard. 
 
14:2 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 In the Egyptian inscriptions Ptolemy and Arsinoe 
 are always called the brother-gods; on the coins they are 
 called Adelphi, the brothers; and afterwards the king 
 took the name of Philadelphus, or sister-loving, by which 
 he is now usually known. In the first half of his reign 
 Philadelphus dated his coins from the year that his 
 father came to the throne; and it was not till the nine- 
 teenth year of his reign, soon after the death of his 
 mother, that he made an era of his own, and dated his 
 coins by the year of his own reign. The wealth of the 
 country is weU shown by the great size of those most in 
 use, which were, in gold the tetra-stater or piece of eight 
 drachms, and in silver the tetra-drachma, or piece of four 
 
 drachms, while Greece had 
 hardly seen a piece of gold 
 larger than the single stater. 
 In Alexandrian accounts also 
 COIN WITH HEADS OF 80TER, PHiLA- thc uult of moucy was thc silver 
 r.E.rH.s, AND BERENICE. ^idrachm, aud thus double that 
 
 in use among the merchants of G-reece. Among the coins 
 is one with the heads of Soter and Philadelphus on the 
 one side, and the head of Berenice, the wife of the one 
 and mother of the other, on the other side. This we may 
 suppose to have been struck during the first two years 
 of his reign, in the lifetime of his father. Another bears 
 on one side the heads of Ptolemy Soter and Berenice, 
 with the title of " the gods," and on the other side the 
 heads of Philadelphus and his wife Arsinoe, with the 
 title of " the brothers." This was struck after the death 
 of his parents. A third was struck by the king in 
 
THE QUEEN'S OBELISK 143 
 
 honour of Ms queen and sister. On the one side is the 
 head of the queen, and on the other is the name of " Arsi- 
 noe, the brother-loving," with the cornucopia, or horn of 
 Amalthea, an emblem borrowed by the queens of Egypt 
 from the goddess Amalthea, the wife of the Libyan 
 Amon. This was struck after his second marriage. 
 
 On the death of Arsinoe, Philadelphus built a tomb 
 for her in Alexandria, called the Arsinoeum, and set up 
 in it an obelisk eighty 
 cubits high, which had 
 been made by King Nec- 
 tanebo, but had been left 
 plain, without carving. 
 
 „ J ,, n •! I COIN OP AKSDJOE, SISTER OP PTOIEMT II. 
 
 oatyrus, the architect, 
 had the charge of mov- 
 ing it. He dug a canal to it as it lay upon the ground, 
 and moved two heavily laden barges imder it. The bur- 
 dens were then taken out of the barges, and as they 
 floated higher they raised the obelisk off the ground. 
 He then found it a task as great or greater to set it up 
 in its place; and this Greek engineer must surely have 
 looked back with wonder on the labour and knowledge 
 of mechanics which must have been used in setting up 
 the obelisks, colossal statues, and pyramids, which he saw 
 scattered over the country. This obelisk now ornaments 
 the cathedral of the Popes on the Vatican hill at Rome. 
 Satyrus wrote a treatise on precious stones, and he 
 also carved on them with great skiU; but his works are 
 known only in the following lines, which were written 
 by Diodonis on his portrait of Arsinoe cut in crystal: 
 
144 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 E'en Zeuxis had been proud to trace 
 The lines within this pebble seen ; 
 
 Satyrus here hath carved the face 
 Of fair ArsinoeJ, Egypt's queen ; 
 
 But such her beauty, sweetness, grace, 
 The copy falls far short, I ween. 
 
 Two beautiful cameos cut on sardonyx are extant, one 
 with the heads of Philadelphus and his first wife, Arsi- 
 noe, and the other with the heads of the same king and 
 his second wife, Arsinoe. It is not impossible that one 
 or both of them may be the work of Satyrus, 
 
 Philadelphus is also said to have listened to the 
 whimsical proposal of Dinochares, the architect, to build 
 a room of loadstone in Arsinoe 's tomb, so that an iron 
 statue of the queen should hang in the air between the 
 floor and the roof. But the death of the kiag and of 
 the architect took place before this was tried. He set 
 up there, however, her statue six feet high, carved out 
 of a most remarkable block of topaz, which had been 
 presented to his mother by Philemon, the prefect of 
 the Troglodytic coast in the last reign. 
 
 Philadelphus lived in peace with Ergamenes, King of 
 Meroe or Upper Ethiopia, who, while seeking for a 
 knowledge of philosophy and the arts of life from his 
 Greek neighbours, seems also to have gained a love of 
 despotism, and a dislike of that control with which the 
 priests of Ethiopia and Egypt had always limited the 
 power of their kings. The King of Meroe had hitherto 
 reigned like Amenothes or Thutmosis of old, as the head 
 of the priesthood, supported and controlled by the 
 
WAR AND PEACE WITH SYEIA 145 
 
 priestly aristocracy by which he was surrounded. But 
 he longed for the absolute power of Philadelphus, Ac- 
 cordingly he surrounded the golden temple with a chosen 
 body of troops, and put the whole of the priests to death; 
 and from that time he governed Ethiopia as an autocrat. 
 But, with the loss of their liberties, the Ethiopians lost 
 the wish to guard the throne ; by grasping at more power, 
 their sovereign lost what he already possessed; and in 
 the next reign their country was conquered by Egypt. 
 
 The wars between Philadelphus and his great neigh- 
 bour, Antiochus Theos, seem not to have been carried on 
 very actively, though they did not wholly cease till Phil- 
 adelphus offered as a bribe his daughter Berenice, with 
 a large sum of money under the name of a dower. 
 Antiochus was already married to Laodice, whom he 
 loved dearly, and by whom he had two children, Seleucus 
 and Antiochus ; but political ambition had deadened the 
 feelings of his heart, and he agreed to declare this first 
 marriage void and his two sons illegitimate, and that his 
 children, if any should be bom to him by Berenice, should 
 inherit the throne of Babylon and the East. Philadel- 
 phus, with an equal want of feeling, and disregarding 
 the consequences of such a marriage, led his daughter 
 to Pelusimn on her journey to her betrothed husband, 
 and sent with her so large a sum of gold and silver that 
 he was nicknamed the " dower-giver." 
 
 The peace between the two countries lasted as long as 
 Philadelphus lived, and was strengthened by kindnesses 
 which each did to the other. Ptolemy, when in Syria, 
 was much struck by the beauty of a statue of Diana, and 
 
146 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 begged it of Antiochus as an ornament for Alexandria. 
 But as soon as the statue reached Egypt, Arsinoe f eE 
 dangerously ill, and she dreamed that the goddess came 
 by night, and told her that the illness was sent to her 
 for the wrong done to the statue by her husband; and 
 accordingly it was sent back with many gifts to the 
 temple from which it had been brought. 
 
 While Berenice and her husband lived at Antioch, 
 Philadelphus kindly sent there from time to time water 
 from the sacred Nile for her use, as the Egyptians be- 
 lieved that none other was so wholesome. Antiochus, 
 when ill, sent to Alexandria for a physician; and Cleom- 
 brotus of Cos accordingly went, by command of Ptolemy, 
 to Syria. He was successful in curing the king, and on 
 his return he received from Philadelphus a present of 
 one hundred talents, or seventy-five thousand dollars, 
 as a fee for his journey. 
 
 Philadelphus was a weak frame of body, and had 
 delicate health; and, though a lover of learning beyond 
 other kings of his time, he also surpassed them in his 
 unmeasured luxury and love of pleasure. He had many 
 mistresses, Egyptian as well as Greek, and the names 
 of some of them have been handed down to us. He often 
 boasted, that he had found out the way to live for ever; 
 but, like other free-livers, he was sometimes, by the gout 
 in his feet, made to acknowledge that he was only a man, 
 and indeed to wish that he coiild change places with the 
 l?eggar whom he saw from his palace windows, eating 
 the garbage on the banks of the Nile with an appetite 
 which he had long wanted. It Avas during illness that 
 
THE EMPIRE OF, PHILADELPHUS 
 
 fars 
 
 '■?1'^- Aisinoe fell ^® found most time for reading, and his mind most oj 
 
 *'^?'>l(iesscarn *^ ^^^ truths of philosophy; and he chiefly wooed i 
 
 ** ^ sent to li Muses when ill health left him at leisure from his otl 
 
 ''y^lfflsW ' courtships. He had a fleet of eight hundred state barj 
 
 I BaiiT jifts t a with gilt prows and poops and scarlet awnings uj 
 
 H; ^ the decks, which were used in the royal processions a 
 
 ^: ^^ , religious shows, and which usually lay in dock at Schec 
 
 . > .^ . ^ on the Canopie River, five and twenty miles from AL 
 
 , - . ^ andria. He was no doubt in part withheld from v 
 
 ^^ by this luxurious love of ease; but his reign taught 1 
 
 noeliiis, world the new lesson, that an ambitious monarch n 
 
 'J». .andUwm- gratify his wish for praise and gain the admiration 
 
 fojmnaiid of Ptolemy, surrounding nations, as much by cultivating the blesj 
 
 - uf i:^^. and on arts of peace as by plunging his people into the miser 
 
 .--j-iins a present of of war. 
 
 ■in tkmd dollars, He reigned over Egypt, with the neighbouring pa 
 
 of Arabia; also over Libya, Phoenicia, Ccele-Syria, part 
 
 iit of body, and had Ethiopia, Pamphylia, Cihcia, Lycia, Caria, Cyprus, s 
 
 vff of Icaniins beyond the isles of the Cyclades. The island of Rhodes and ms 
 
 smosd tbem in Ms of the cities of Greece were bound to him by the clos 
 
 {asare He had many ties of friendship, for past help and for the hope 
 
 -,, ^ ^g jjjjes future. The wealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon did homj 
 
 ,r, li He often to him, as before to his father, by putting his crowi 
 
 r for ever- head upon their coins. The forces of Egypt reached 
 
 ' -1) fbfjout ^^^ large number of two hundred thousand foot s 
 
 ^*®^ " ', „„ twenty thousand horse, two thousand chariots, four hi 
 K tltpirasoDlTSD'^' 
 
 % the 9 *^®^ Ethiopian elephants, fifteen hundred ships of v 
 
 ^hange p a,nd one thousand transports. Of this large force, it 
 
 ijjee ffffluo t j^Q^ likely that even one-fourth should have been Gree 
 
 yj]^ with an app^^^^ the rest must have been Egyptians and Syrians, w 
 
 ajduriiig 
 
1^*^ PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 some Gauls. The body of chariots, though still forming 
 part of the force furnished for military service by the 
 Theban tenants of the crown, was of no use against 
 modern science; and the other Egyptian troops, though 
 now chiefly armed and disciplined like Greeks, were very 
 much below the Macedonian phalanx in real strength. 
 The galleys also, though no doubt under the guidance 
 and skill of Greeks and Phoenicians, were in part manned 
 by Egyptians, whose inland habits whoUy unfitted them 
 for the sea, and whose religious prejudices made them 
 feel the conscription for the navy as a heavy grievance. 
 
 These large forces were maintained by a yearly in- 
 come equally large, of fourteen thousand eight hundred 
 talents, or twelve million two hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand dollars, beside the tax on grain, which was taken in 
 kind, of a million and a half of artabas, or about five 
 millions of bushels. To this we may add a mass of gold, 
 silver, and other valuable stores in the treasury, which 
 were boastfully reckoned at the unheard-of sum of seven 
 hundred and forty thousand talents, or above five hun- 
 dred million dollars. 
 
 The trade down the Nile was larger than it had ever 
 been before; the coasting trade on the Mediterranean was 
 new; the people were rich and happy; justice was ad- 
 ministered to the Egyptians according to their own laws, 
 and to the Greeks of Alexandria according to the Mace- 
 donian laws : the navy commanded the whole of the east- 
 ern half of the Mediterranean; the schools and library 
 had risen to a great height upon the wise plans of Ptol- 
 emy Soter; in every point of view Alexandria was the 
 
A TTPICAL NILE PILOT. 
 
ALEXANDEIA FLOUEISHES 151 
 
 chief city m the world. Athens had no poets or other 
 writers during this century equal in merit to those who 
 ennobled the museum. Philadelphus, by joining to the 
 greatness and good government of his father the costly 
 splendour and pomp of an eastern monarch, so drew the 
 eyes of after ages upon his reign that his name passed 
 into a proverb: if any work of art was remarkable for 
 its good taste or costliness, it was called Philadelphian; 
 even history and chronology were set at nought, and we 
 sometimes find poets of a century later counted among 
 the Pleiades of Alexandria in the reign of Philadelphus. 
 It is true that many of these advantages were forced 
 in the hotbed of royal patronage ; that the navy was built 
 in the harbours of Phoenicia and Asia Miaor; and that 
 the men of letters who then drew upon themselves the 
 eyes of the world were only Greek settlers, whose writ- 
 ings could have done little to raise the character of the 
 native Kopts. But the Ptolemies, in raising this build- 
 ing of their own, were not at the same time crushing 
 another. Their splendid monarchy had not been bmlt 
 on the ruins of freedom; and even if the Greek settlers 
 in the Delta had formed themselves into a free state, we 
 can hardly believe that the Egyptians would have been 
 so well treated as they were by this military despotism. 
 From the temples which were built or enlarged in Upper 
 Egypt, and from the beauty of the hierogljqphical inscrip- 
 tions, we find that even the native arts were more flour- 
 ishing than they had ever been since the fall of the kings 
 of Thebes; and we may almost look upon the Greek 
 conquest as a blessing to Upper Egypt. 
 
152 PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS 
 
 PMladelphus, though weak in body, was well suited 
 by his keen-sightedness and intelligence for the tasks 
 which the state of affairs at that time demanded from an 
 Egyptian king. He was a diplomat rather than a warrior, 
 and that was exactly what Egypt needed. 
 
 A curious anecdote about Ptolemy Philadelphus is 
 related by Mebuhr. He had reached the zenith of his 
 glory, when suddenly he was attacked by a species of 
 insanity, consisting of an indescribable fear of death. 
 Chemical artifices were practised in Egypt from the 
 earliest times; and hence Ptolemy took every imagina- 
 ble pains to find the elixir of life; but it was all in vain, 
 for his strength was rapidly decreasing. Once, like Louis 
 XI., he was looking from a window of his palace upon 
 the seacoast, and seriously meditated upon the subject 
 of his longing; it must have been in winter- time, when 
 the sand, exposed to the rays of the sun, becomes very 
 warm. He saw some poor boys burying themselves in 
 the warm sand and screaming with delight, and the aged 
 king began bitterly to cry, seeing the ragged urchins 
 enjoying their life without any apprehension of losing 
 it; for he felt that with all his riches he could not pur- 
 chase that happiness, and that his end was very near 
 at hand. He died in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, 
 and perhaps the sixty-first of his age. He left the king- 
 dom as powerful and more wealthy than when it came 
 to him from his father; and he had the happiness of hav- 
 ing a son who would carry on, even for the third genera- 
 tion, the wise plans of the first Ptolemy. 
 
PTOLEMAIC TEMPLE AT KOM OMEO. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PTOLEMY EUERGETES, PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR, 
 AND PTOLEMY EPIPHANES. 
 
 The struggle for Syria — Decline of the dynasty — Advent of Roman control. 
 
 pTOLEMY, the eldest son of Philadelphus, 
 succeeded Ms father on the throne of 
 Egypt, and after a short time was accorded 
 the name of Euergetes. The new reign was 
 clouded by dark occurrences, which again 
 involved Egypt and Syria in war. It has 
 been already related that when peace was 
 concluded between Antiochus and Phila- 
 delphus, the latter gave to the former 
 STATUE OP NEiTH. j^jg (jaughter Berenice in marriage, stip- 
 ulating that the offspring of that union should succeed 
 
 153 
 
154 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 to the Syrian throne, though Antiochus had, by his 
 wife Laodice, a son, already arrived at the age of man- 
 hood. The repudiated queen murdered her husband, and 
 placed Seleucus on the vacant throne; who, in order to 
 remove all competition on the part of Berenice and her 
 chUd, made no scruple to deprive them both of life. Euer- 
 getes could not behold such proceedings unmoved. Ad- 
 vancing into Syria at the head of a powerful army, he 
 took possession of the greater part of the country, which 
 seems not to have been defended, the majority of the 
 cities opening their gates at his approach. The impor- 
 tant town of Seleucia Pieria, the seaport of the capital, 
 fell into his hands, in the neighbourhood of which he was 
 stiU further gratified with the apprehension of the cruel 
 Laodice, at whose instigation his sister and nephew lost 
 their lives. The punishment of this unprincipled woman 
 seems, however, to have completely satiated his resent- 
 ment; for, instead of securing his conquests in Syria, 
 and achieving the entire humiliation of Seleucus, he led 
 his army on a plundering expedition into the remote prov- 
 inces of Asia, whence, on the news of domestic troubles, 
 he returned to the shores of Africa in trimnph, laden with 
 an immense booty, comprising among other objects all 
 the statues of the Egyptian deities which had been car- 
 ried off by Cambyses to Persia or Babylon. These he 
 restored to their respective temples, an act by which he 
 earned the greatest popularity among his native Egyp- 
 tian subjects, who bestowed upon him, in consequence, 
 the title of Buergetes (Benefactor), by which he is gen- 
 erally known. He brought back also from this expedition 
 
EDERGETES PLUNDERS ASIA 155 
 
 a vast number of other works of art, for the museums 
 were a passion with the Ptolemies. The Asiatics might, 
 indeed, have got over these things, but he levied, in addi- 
 tion, immense contributions from the Asiatics, and is said 
 to have raised over forty thousand talents. On his march 
 homeward, he laid his gifts upon the altar in the Temple 
 of Jerusalem, and there returned thanks to Heaven for 
 his victories. He had been taught to bow the knee to 
 the crowds of Greek and Egyptian gods; and, as Pales- 
 tine was part of his kingdom, it seemed quite natural 
 to add the Grod of the Jews to the list. 
 
 Of the insm'rection in Egypt, which obliged him to 
 return, we know no particulars, but Euergetes seems to 
 have become convinced that Egypt was too small a basis 
 for such an empire. " If he -had wished to retain aU his 
 conquests," relates the chronicler, '^ he would have been 
 obliged to make Antioch his residence, and this would 
 weaken the ground of his strength. He, moreover, ap- 
 pears to have been well aware that the conquests had been 
 made too quickly. ' ' He accordingly divided them, retain- 
 ing for himself Syria as far as Euphrates, and the coast 
 districts of Asia Minor and Thrace, so that he had a com- 
 plete maritime empire. The remaining territories he 
 divided into two states: the country beyond the Eu- 
 phrates was given, according to St. Jerome, to one Xan- 
 tippus, who is otherwise imknown, and Western Asia was 
 left to Antiochus Hierax. It would seem that after this 
 he never visited those countries again. 
 
 One of the notable incidents of the war against Syria 
 was an offer of help to Egypt from the Romans. From 
 
156 ETJEEGETES TO EPIPHAJSTES 
 
 the middle of the reign of Philadelphus till the fifth year 
 of this reign, for twenty-two years, the Romans had been 
 struggling with the Carthaginians for their very being, 
 in the first Punic war, which they had just brought to a 
 close, and on hearing of Ptolemy's war in Syria, they sent 
 to Egypt with friendly offers of help. But their ambas- 
 sadors did not reach Alexandria before peace was made, 
 and they were sent home with many thanks. The event 
 serves to show the trend of the aspirations of this now 
 important nation, which was afterwards destined to en- 
 gulf the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria alike. 
 
 After Euergetes had, as he thought, established his 
 authority in Asia, a party hostile to him came forward 
 to oppose him. The Rhodians, with their wise policy, 
 who had hitherto given no decided support to either em- 
 pire, now stepped forward, setting to other maritime 
 cities the example of joining that hostile party. The 
 confederates formed a fleet, with the assistance of which, 
 and supported by a general insurrection of the Asiatics, 
 who were exasperated against the Egyptians on account 
 of their rapacity, Seleucus Callinicus rallied again. He 
 recovered the whole of upper Asia, and for a time he was 
 united with his brother, Antiochus Hierax. The insur- 
 rection in Egypt must have been of a very serious nature, 
 and Ptolemy, being pressed on all sides, concluded a truce 
 of ten years with Seleucus on basis of uti possidetis. 
 Both parties seem to have retained the places which they 
 possessed at the time, so that all the disadvantage was 
 on the side of the Seleucidse, for the fortified town of 
 Seleucia, for example, remained in the hands of the 
 
AN ABYSSINIAN SLAVE. 
 
EOMANTIC EXPEDITIONS 169 
 
 Egyptians, whereby the capital was placed in a danger- 
 ous position. A part of Cilicia, the whole of Caria, the 
 Ionian cities, the Thracian Chersonesus, and several 
 Macedonian towns likewise continued to belong to Egypt. 
 Soon after his re-appearance in Egypt, Euergetes was 
 solicited by Cleomenes, the King of Sparta, to grant the 
 assistance of his arms in the struggle which that repub- 
 lic was then supporting with Antigonus, the ruler of 
 Macedon, and with the members of the Achaian league. 
 But the battle of Sellasia proved that the aid offered was 
 inadequate. Cleomenes fled to the banks of the Nile, 
 where he found his august aUy reposing under the suc- 
 cessful banners of a numerous army, which he had just 
 led home from the savage mountains of Ethiopia, whither 
 his love of romantic conquest had conducted them. He 
 appears to have penetrated into the interior provinces 
 of Abyssinia, and to have subdued the rude tribes which 
 dwelt on the shores of the Red Sea, levying on the unfor- 
 tunate natives the most oppressive contributions in cattle, 
 gold, perfumes, and other articles belonging to that val- 
 uable merchandise which the Ethiopians and Arabs had 
 long carried on with their Egyptian neighbours. At 
 Adule, the principal seaport of Abyssinia, he collected 
 his victorious troops, and made them a speech on the 
 wonderful exploits which they had achieved under his 
 auspices, and on the numerous benefits which they had 
 thereby secured to their native country. The throne on 
 which he sat, composed of white marble and supported 
 by a slab of porphyry, was consecrated to the god of war, 
 whom he chose to claim for his father and patron, and 
 
160 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 that the descendants of the vanquished Ethiopians might 
 not be ignorant of their obligations to Ptolemy Euergetes, 
 King of Egypt, he gave orders that his name and prin- 
 cipal trimnphs should be inscribed on the votive chair. 
 But not content with his real conquests, which reached 
 from the Hellespont to the Euphrates, he added, like 
 Ramses, that he had conquered Thrace, Persia, Media, 
 and Bactria. He thus teaches us that monumental in- 
 scriptions, though read with difficulty, do not always tell 
 the truth. This was the most southerly spot to which 
 the kings of Egypt ever sent an army. But they kept 
 no hold on the country. Distance had placed it not only 
 beyond their power, but almost beyond their knowledge ; 
 and two hundred years afterwards, when the geographer 
 Strabo was making inquiries about that part of Arabia, 
 as it was called, he was told of this monument as set up 
 by the hero Sesostris, to whom it was usual to give the 
 credit of so many wonderful works. These inscriptions, 
 it is worthy of remark, are still preserved, and constitute 
 the only historical account that has reached these times 
 of the Ethiopian warfare of this Egyptian monarch. 
 About seven hundred years after the reign of Euergetes, 
 they were first published in the Topography of Cosmas 
 Indicopleustes, a Grecian monk, by whom they were cop- 
 ied on the spot. The traveller Bruce, moreover, informs 
 us that the stone containing the name of Ptolemy Euer- 
 getes serves as a footstool to the throne on which the 
 kings of Abyssinia are crowned to this day. Amid the 
 Tuins of Ascum, also, the ancient capital of that country, 
 various fragments of marble have been found bearing 
 
THE EGYPTIANS CONCILIATED 
 
 161 
 
 the name and title of the same Egyptian sovereign. This 
 empty fame, however, is the only return that ever re- 
 compensed the toils of Euergetes among the fierce bar- 
 barians of the south. 
 
 Euergetes, as part of his general policy of conciliating 
 the Egyptians, enlarged the great temple at Thebes, 
 which is now called the temple of Karnak, on the walls 
 of which we see him handing an offering to his father 
 and mother, the brother-gods. In one place he is in a 
 Greek dress, which is not common on the Ptolemaic build- 
 ings, as most of the Greek kings are carved upon the walls 
 in the dress of the country. The 
 early kings had often shown their 
 piety to a temple by enlarging the 
 sacred area and adding a new wall 
 and gateway in front of the former; 
 and this custom Euergetes followed 
 at Karnak. As these grand stone 
 sculptured gateways belonged to a 
 wall of unbaked bricks which has 
 long since crumbled to pieces, they 
 now stand apart like so many triumphal arches. He also 
 added to the temple at Hibe in the Great Oasis, and began 
 a small temple at Esne, or LatopoHs, where he is drawn 
 upon the walls in the act of striking down the chiefs 
 of the conquered nations, and is followed by a tame lion. 
 He built a temple to Osiris at Canopus, on the mouth of 
 the Nile; for, notwithstanding the large number of 
 Greeks and strangers who had settled there, the ancient 
 religion was not yet driven out of the Delta; and he 
 
 GATE AT KARNAK. 
 
162 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 dedicated it to the god in a Greek inscription on a plate 
 of gold, in the names of himself and Berenice, whom he 
 called his wife and sister. She is also called the king's 
 sister in many of the hieroglyphical inscriptions, as are 
 many of the other queens of the Ptolemies who were not 
 so related to their husbands. This custom, though it 
 took its rise in the Egyptian mythology, must have been 
 strengthened by the marriages of Philadelphus and some 
 of his successors with their sisters. In the hieroglyphical 
 inscriptions he is usually called ** beloved by Phtah," 
 the god of Memphis, an addition to his name which was 
 used by most of his successors. 
 
 During this century the Greek artists in Egypt, as 
 indeed elsewhere, adopted in their style an affectation 
 of antiquity, which, unless seen through, would make us 
 think their statues older than they really are. They 
 sometimes set a stiff beard upon a face without expres- 
 sion, or arranged the hair of the head in an old-fashioned 
 manner, and, while making the drapery fly out in a 
 direction opposed to that of the figure, gave to it formal 
 zigzag lines, which could only be proper if it were hang- 
 ing down in quiet. At other times, while they gave to 
 the human figure all the truth to which their art had 
 then reached, they yet gave to the drapery these stiff 
 zigzag forms. No habit of mind would have been more 
 improving to the Alexandrian character than a respect 
 for antiquity; but this respect ought to be shown in a 
 noble rivalry, in trying to surpass those who have gone 
 before them, and not as in this manner by copying their 
 faults. Hieroglyphics seem to have flourished in their 
 
i 
 
 ''III* 
 
 I its " S 
 
 'if > 1* J M 
 
THE JEWS 165 
 
 more ancient style and forms mider the generous pat- 
 ronage of the Ptolemies. In the time of the Egyptian 
 kings of Lower Egypt, we find new grammatical endings 
 to the nouns, and more letters used to spell each word 
 than under the kings of Thebes; but, on comparing the 
 hieroglyphics of the Ptolemies with the others, we find 
 that in these and some other points they are more like 
 the older writings, imder the kings of Thebes, than the 
 newer, under the kings of Sais. 
 
 But, while the Egyptians were flattered, and no doubt 
 raised in moral worth, by their monarch's taking up the 
 religious feelings of the coimtry, and throwing aside 
 some of the Greek habits of his father and grandfather, 
 Euergetes was sowing the seeds of a greater change than 
 he could himself have been aware of. It was by Greek 
 arms and arts of war that Egypt then held its place 
 among nations, and we shall see in the coming reigns 
 that, while the court became more Asiatic and less Euro- 
 pean, the army and government did not retain their 
 former characteristics. 
 
 Since Coele-Syria and Judsea were by the first Ptol- 
 emy made a province of Egypt, the Jews had lived in 
 unbroken tranquillity, and with very little loss of free- 
 dom. The kings of Egypt had allowed them to govern 
 themselves, to live under their own laws, and choose 
 their own high priest; but they required of them the 
 payment to Alexandria of a yearly tribute. Part of this 
 was the sacred poU-tax of half a shekel, or about sixteen 
 cents for every male above the age of twenty, which by 
 the Mosaic law they had previously paid for the service 
 
166 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 of the Temple. This is called in the Gospels the Di- 
 drachms; though the Alexandrian translators of the Bi- 
 ble, altering the sum, either through mistake or on pur- 
 pose, have made it in the Greek Pentateuch only half a 
 didrachm, or about eight cents. This yearly tribute from 
 the Temple the high priest of Jerusalem had been usually 
 allowed to collect and farm; but in the latter end of this 
 reign, the high priest Onias, a weak and covetous old 
 man, refused to send to Alexandria the twenty talents, 
 or fifteen thousand dollars, at which it was then valued. 
 When Euergetes sent Athenion as ambassador to claim 
 it, and even threatened to send a body of troops to fetch 
 it, still the tribute was not paid; notwithstanding the 
 fright of the Jews, the priest would not part with his 
 money. 
 
 On this, Joseph, the nephew of Onias, set out for 
 Egypt, to try and turn away the king's anger. He went 
 to Memphis, and met Euergetes riding in his chariot with 
 the queen and Athenion, the ambassador. The king, 
 when he knew him, begged him to get into the chariot 
 and sit with him; and Joseph made himself so agreeable 
 that he was lodged in the palace at Memphis, and dined 
 every day at the royal table. While he was at Memphis, 
 the revenues of the provinces for the coming year were 
 put up to auction; and the farmers bid eight thousand 
 talents, or six million dollars, for the taxes of Coele-Syria, 
 Phoenicia, and Samaria. Joseph then bid double that 
 sum, and, when he was asked what security he could give, 
 he playfully said that he was sure that Euergetes and the 
 queen would willingly become bound for his honesty; 
 
A LITERARY FRAUD DETECTED 167 
 
 and the king was so much pleased with him that the office 
 was at once given to him, and he held it for twenty-two 
 years. 
 
 Among the men of letters who at this time taught 
 in the Alexandrian schools was Aristophanes, the gram- 
 marian, who afterwards held the office of head of the 
 museum. At one of the public sittings at which the king 
 was to hear the poems and other writings of the pupils 
 read, and, by the help of seven men of letters who sat 
 with him as judges, was to give away honours and re- 
 wards to the best authors, one of the chairs was empty, 
 one of the judges happened not to be there. The king 
 asked who should be called up to fill his place ; and, after 
 thinking over the matter, the six judges fixed upon Aris- 
 tophanes, who had made himself known to them by being 
 seen daily studying in the public library. When the 
 reading was over, the king, the public, and the six other 
 judges were agreed upon which was the best piece of 
 writing; but Aristophanes was bold enough to think 
 otherwise, and he was able, by means of his great read- 
 ing, to find the book in the library from which the pupil 
 had copied the greater part of his work. The king was 
 much struck with this proof of his learning, and soon 
 afterwards made him keeper of the library which he had 
 already so well used. Aristophanes followed Zenodotus 
 in his critical efforts to mend the text of Homer's poems. 
 He also invented the several marks by which grammari- 
 ans now distinguish the length and tone of a syllable 
 and the breathing of a vowel, that is, the marks for long 
 and short, and the accents and aspirate. The last two. 
 
168 EUERGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 after his time, were always placed over Greek words, and 
 are still used in printed books. 
 
 Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the inventor of astronomical 
 geography, was at this time the head of the mathemat- 
 ical school. He has the credit for being the first to cal- 
 culate the circumference of the earth by means of his 
 Theory of Shadows. As a poet he wrote a description 
 of the constellations. He also wrote a history of Egypt, 
 to correct the errors of Manetho. What most strikes us 
 with wonder and regret is, that of these two writers, 
 Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote in Greek, Era- 
 tosthenes, a Greek who imderstood something of Egyp- 
 tian, neither of them took the trouble to lay open to their 
 readers the peculiarities of the hieroglyphics. Through 
 all these reigns, the titles and praises of the Ptolemies 
 were carved upon the temples in the sacred characters. 
 These two histories were translated from the same in- 
 scriptions. We even now read the names of the kings 
 which they mention carved on the statues and temples; 
 and yet the language of the hieroglyphics still remained 
 unknown beyond the class of priests ; such was the want 
 of curiosity on the part of the Greek grammarians of 
 Alexandria. Such, we may add, was their want of re- 
 spect for the philosophy of the Egyptians; and we need 
 no stronger proof that the philosophers of the museum 
 had hitherto borrowed none of the doctrines of the 
 priests. 
 
 Lycon of Troas was another settler in Alexandria. 
 He followed Strato at the head of one of the schools in 
 the museum. He was very successful in bringing up 
 
GATEWAY OF PTOLEMY EUEKGETES AT KARNAK. 
 
PHILOSOPHERS AMD POETS 171 
 
 the young men, who needed, he used to say, modesty 
 and the love of praise, as a horse needs bridle and spur. 
 His eloquence was so pleasing that he was wittily called 
 Glycon, or the sweet. Cameades of Cyrene at the same 
 time held a high place among philosophers; but as he 
 had removed to Athens, where he was at the head of a 
 school, and was even sent to Rome as the ambassador 
 of the Athenians, we must not claim the whole honour 
 of him for the Ptolemies under whom he was born. It 
 is therefore enough to say of him that, though a follower 
 of Plato, he made such changes in the opinions of the 
 Academy, by not wholly throwing off the evidence of 
 the senses, that his school was called the New Academy. 
 
 Apollonius, who was born at Alexandria, but is com- 
 monly called Apollonius Rhodius because he passed 
 many years of his life at Rhodes, had been, like Era- 
 tosthenes, a hearer of Callimachus. His only work which 
 we now know is his Argonautics, a poem on the voyage 
 of Jason to Colchis in search of the golden fleece. It is 
 a regular epic poem, in imitation of Homer; and, like 
 other imitations, it wants the interest which hangs upon 
 reality of manners and story in the Iliad. 
 
 CaUimachus showed his dislike of his young rival by 
 hurling against him a reproachful poem, in which he 
 speaks of him under the name of an Ibis. This is now 
 lost, but it was copied by Ovid in his poem of the same 
 name; and from the Roman we can gather something 
 of the dark and learned style in which Callimachus threw 
 out his biting reproaches. We do not know from what 
 this quarrel arose, but it seems to have been the cause 
 
172 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 of Apollonivis leaving Alexandria. He removed to 
 Rhodes, where he taught in the schools during all the 
 reign of Philopator, till he was recalled by Epiphanes, 
 and made librarian of the museum in his old age, on 
 the death of Eratosthenes. 
 
 Lycophron, the tragic writer, lived about this time 
 at Alexandria, and was one of the seven men of letters 
 sometimes called the Alexandrian Pleiades, though writ- 
 ers are not agreed upon the names which fill up the list. 
 His tragedies are all lost, and the only work of his which 
 we now have is the dark and muddy poem of Alcandra, 
 or Cassandra, of which the lines most striking to the 
 historian are those in which the prophetess foretells 
 the coming greatness of Rome; that the children of 
 ^neas will raise the crown upon their spears, and seize 
 the sceptres of sea and land. Lycophron was the friend 
 of Menedemus and Aratus; and it is not easy to believe 
 that these lines were written before the overthrow of 
 Hannibal in Italy, and of the Greek phalanx at Cyno- 
 cephalse, or that one who was a man in the reign of Phil- 
 adelphus should have foreseen the triumph of the Roman 
 arms. These words must have been a later addition to 
 the poem, to improve the prophecy. 
 
 Conon, one of the greatest of the Alexandrian as- 
 tronomers, has left no writings for us to judge of his 
 merits, though they were thought highly of, and made 
 great use of, by his successors. He worked both as an 
 observer and an inquirer, mapping out the heavens by 
 his observations, and collecting the accounts of the 
 eclipses which had been before observed in Egypt. He 
 
SCIENCE AJS^D INVENTION 173 
 
 was the friend of Archimedes of Syracuse, to whom he 
 sent his problems, and from whom he received that great 
 geometrician's writings in return. 
 
 Apollonius of Perga came to Alexandria in this reign, 
 to study mathematics under the pupils of Euclid. He 
 is well known for his work on conic sections, and he may 
 be called the founder of this study. The Greek mathe- 
 maticians sought after knowledge for its own sake, and 
 followed up those branches of their studies which led 
 to no end that could in the narrow sense be called useful, 
 with the same zeal that they did other branches out of 
 which sprung the great practical truths of mechanics, 
 astronomy, and geography. They found reward enough 
 in the enlargement of their minds and in the beauty of 
 the truth learnt. Alexandrian science gained in loftiness 
 of tone what its poetry and philosophy wanted. Thus 
 the properties of the ellipse, the hjrperbola, and the par- 
 abola, continued to be studied by after mathematicians; 
 but no use was made of this knowledge till nearly two 
 thousand years later, when Kepler crowned the labours 
 of Apollonius with the great discovery that the paths 
 of the planets round the sun were conic sections. The 
 Egyptians, however, made great use of mathematical 
 knowledge, particularly in the irrigation of their fields; 
 and Archimedes of Syracuse, who came to Alexandria 
 about this time to study under Conon, did the country 
 a real service by his invention of the cochlea, or screw- 
 pump. The more distant fields of the valley of the Mle, 
 rising above the level of the inundation, have to be 
 watered artificially by pumping out of the canals iuto 
 
174 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 ditclies at a higher level. For this work Archimedes 
 proposed a spiral tube, twisting round an axis, which 
 was to be put in motion either by the hand or by the force 
 of the stream out of which it was to pump ; and this was 
 found so convenient that it soon became the machine 
 most in use throughout Egypt for irrigation. 
 
 But while we are dazzled by the brilliancy of these 
 clusters of men of letters and science who graced the 
 court of Alexandria, we must not shut our eyes to those 
 faults which are always found in works called forth 
 rather by the fostering warmth of royal pensions than 
 by a love of knowledge in the people. The well-fed and 
 well-paid philosophers of the museum were not likely 
 to overtake the mighty men of Athens in its best days, 
 who had studied and taught without any pension from 
 the government, without taking any fee from their 
 pupils; who were urged forward towards excellence by 
 the love of knowledge and of honour; who had no other 
 aim than that of being useful to their hearers, and looked 
 for no reward beyond their love and esteem. 
 
 In oratory Alexandria made no attempts whatever; 
 it is a branch of literature not likely to flourish under 
 a despotic monarchy. In Athens it fell with the loss of 
 liberty, and Demetrius Phalereus was the last of the real 
 Athenian orators. After his time the orations were 
 declamations written carefuUy in the study, and coldly 
 spoken in the school for the instruction of the pupils, 
 and wholly wanting in fire and genius; and the Alexan- 
 drian men of letters forbore to copy Grreece in its lifeless 
 harangues. For the same reasons the Alexandrians were 
 
ACME OP PTOLEMAIC RULE 175 
 
 not successful in history, A species of writing, which 
 a despot requires to be false and flattering, is little likely 
 to flourish; and hence the only historians of the museum 
 were chronologists, antiquaries, and writers of travels. 
 The coins of Euergetes bear the name of " Ptolemy 
 the king," round the head on the one side, with no title 
 by which they can be known from the other kings of the 
 same name. But his portrait is known from his Phoeni- 
 cian coins. In the same 
 ^^^^^SjN. v^^^V way the coins of his 
 
 f^^^^\\.If'c^^^^ queen have only the 
 r^^^ y •i\'^Mrrvr^*T ^^^^ of " Berenice the 
 ^l^^^l^T/^ ^^_^^^Jy queen," but they are 
 ^'i: ! --i:; ^ ^^Sfe^^ known from those of the 
 
 com O. PTOLEMr „I. J^^g^ q^gg^g ^y ^J^g 
 
 beauty of the workmanship, which soon fell far below 
 that of the first Ptolemies. 
 
 Euergetes had married his cousin Berenice, who like 
 the other queens of Egypt is sometimes called Cleopatra; 
 by her he left two sons, Ptolemy and Magas, to the eldest 
 of whom he left his kingdom, after a reign of twenty-five 
 years of unclouded prosperity. Egypt was during this 
 reign at the very height of its power and wealth. It had 
 seen three kings, who, though not equally great men, 
 not equally fit to found a monarchy or to raise the liter- 
 ature of a people, were equally successful in the parts 
 which they had undertaken. Euergetes left to his son 
 a kingdom perhaps as large as the world had ever seen 
 under one sceptre; and though many of his boasted vic- 
 tories were hke letters written in the sand, of which the 
 
176 
 
 EUERGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 traces were soon lost, yet he was by far the greatest, 
 and possibly the wisest, monarch of his day. 
 
 We may be sure that in these prosperous reigns life 
 and property were safe, and justice was administered 
 fairly by judges who were independent of the crown; 
 as even centuries afterwards we find that it was part of 
 a judge's oath on taking office, that, if he were ordered 
 by the king to do what was wrong, he would not obey 
 him. But here the bright pages in the history of the 
 Ptolemies end. Though trade and agriculture still en- 
 riched the coimtry, though arts and letters did not quit 
 Alexandria, we have from this time forward to mark the 
 
 growth only of vice and 
 luxury, and to measure 
 the wisdom of Ptolemy 
 Soter by the length of 
 time that his laws and 
 institutions were able 
 to bear up against the 
 misrule and folly of his descendants. 
 
 Ptolemy, the eldest son of Euergetes, inherited the 
 crown of his forefathers, but none of the great qualities 
 by which they had won and guarded it. He was then 
 about thirty-four years old. His first act was to call to- 
 gether his council, and to ask their advice about putting 
 to death his mother Berenice and his brother Magas. 
 Their crime was the being too much liked by the army; 
 and the council was called upon to say whether it would 
 be safe to have them killed. Cleomenes, the banished 
 King of Sparta, who was one of the council, alone raised 
 
 COIN OF BERENICE, WIFE OF PTOLEMY III. 
 
ACCESSION OF PHILOPATOE 177 
 
 Ms voice against their murder, and wisely said that the 
 throne would be still safer if there were more brothers 
 to stand between the king and the daring hopes of a 
 traitor. The minister Sosibius, on the other hand, said 
 that the mercenaries could not be trusted while Magas 
 was alive; but Cleomenes remarked to him, that more 
 than three thousand of them were Peloponnesians, and 
 that they would follow him sooner than they would 
 follow Magas. 
 
 Berenice and Magas were, however, put to death, but 
 the speech of Cleomenes was not forgotten. If his popu- 
 larity with the mercenaries could secure their allegiance, 
 he could, when he chose, make them rebel; from that 
 time he was treated rather as a prisoner than as a friend, 
 and by his well-meaning but incautious observation he 
 lost all chance of being helped to regain his kingdom. 
 
 Nothing is known of the death of Euergetes, the late 
 king, and there is no proof that it was by imfair means. 
 But when his son began a cruel and wicked reign by put- 
 ting to death his mother and brother, and by taking the 
 name of Philopator, or father-loving, the world seems 
 to have thought that he was the murderer of his father, 
 and had taken this name to throw a cloak over the deed. 
 
 By this murder of his brother, and by the minority 
 both of Antiochus, King of Syria, and of Philip, King of 
 Macedonia, Philopator found himself safe from enemies 
 either at home or abroad, and he gave himself up to a life 
 of thoughtlessness and pleasure. The army and fleet 
 were left to go to ruin, and the foreign provinces, which 
 had hitherto been looked upon as the bulwarks of Egypt, 
 
178 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 were only half -guarded; but the throne rested on the 
 virtues of his forefathers, and it was not till his death 
 that it was found to have been undermined by his own 
 follies and vice. 
 
 Egypt had been governed by kings of more than 
 usual wisdom for above one hundred years, and was at 
 the very height of its power when Philopator came to 
 the throne. He found himself master of Ethiopia, Gy- 
 rene, Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, part of Upper Syria, Cyprus, 
 Rhodes, the cities along the coast of Asia Minor from 
 Paniphilia to Lysimachia, and the cities of ^nos and 
 Maronea in Thrace. The unwilling obedience of distant 
 provinces usually costs more than it is worth; but many 
 of these possessions across the Mediterranean had put 
 themselves willingly into the power of his predecessors 
 for the sake of their protection, and they cost little more 
 than a message to warn off invaders. Egypt was the 
 greatest naval power in the world, having the command 
 of the sea and the whole of the coast at the eastern end 
 of the Mediterranean. 
 
 On the death of Euergetes, the happiness of the peo- 
 ple came to an end. The first trouble arose from the 
 loose and vicious habits of the new king, and was an 
 attempt made upon his life by Cleomenes, who found 
 the palace in Alexandria had now become a prison. The 
 Spartan took advantage of the king's being at Canopus 
 to escape from his guards, and to raise a riot in Alex- 
 andria; but not being able to gain the citadel, and see- 
 ing that disgrace and death must follow upon his failure, 
 he stabbed himself with his own dagger. 
 
EGYPT INVADED 179 
 
 The kingdom of Syria, after being humbled by Ptol- 
 emy Euergetes, had risen lately under the able rule of 
 Antioehus, son of Seleueus Callinicus. He was a man 
 possessed of abilities of a high order. His energy and 
 courage soon recovered from Egypt the provinces that 
 Syria had before lost, and afterwards gained for him the 
 name of Antioehus the Great. He made himself master 
 of the city of Damascus by a stratagem. Soon after this, 
 Seleucia, the capital, which had been taken by Euergetes, 
 was retaken by Antioehus, or rather given up to him by 
 treachery. Theodotus also, the Alexandrian governor of 
 Coele-Syria, delivered up to him that province; and Anti- 
 oehus marched southward, and had taken Tyre and Ptol- 
 emais before the Egyptian army could be brought into 
 the field. There he gained forty ships of war, of which 
 twenty were decked vessels with four banks of oars, and 
 the others smaller. He then marched towards Egypt, 
 and on his way learned that Ptolemy was at Memphis. 
 On his arrival at Pelusium he found that the place was 
 strongly guarded, and that the garrison had opened the 
 flood-gates from the neighbouring lake, and thereby 
 spoiled the fresh water of all the neighbourhood; he 
 therefore did not lay siege to that city, but seized many 
 of the open towns on the east side of the Nile. 
 
 On this, Philopator roused himself from his idleness, 
 and got together his forces against the coming danger. 
 His troops consisted of Greeks, Egyptians, and mer- 
 cenaries to the total of seventy-three thousand men and 
 seventy-three elephants, or one elephant to every thou- 
 sand men, which was the number usually allowed to the 
 
180 EUERGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 armies about tMs time. But before this army reached 
 Pelusium, Antiochus had led back his forces to winter in 
 Seleucia. The next spring Antiochus again marched 
 towards Egypt with an army of seventy-two thousand 
 foot, six thousand horse, and one hundred and two ele- 
 phants. Philopator led his whole forces to the frontier 
 to oppose his march, and met the Syrian army near the 
 village of Raphia, the border town between Egypt and 
 Palestine. Arsinoe, his queen and sister, rode with him 
 on horseback through the ranks, and called upon the 
 soldiers to fight for their wives and children. At first 
 the Egyptians seemed in danger of being beaten. As the 
 armies approached one another, the Ethiopian elephants 
 trembled at the very smell of the Indian elephants, and 
 shrunk from engaging with beasts so much larger than 
 themselves. On the charge, the left wing of each army 
 was routed, as was often the case among the Greeks, 
 when, from too great a trust in the shield, every soldier 
 kept moving to the right, and thus left the left wing 
 uncovered. But before the end of the day the invading 
 army was defeated; and, though some of the Egyptian 
 officers treacherously left their posts, and carried their 
 troops over to Antiochus, yet the Syrian army was 
 wholly routed, and Arsinoe enjoyed the knowledge and 
 the praise of having been the chief cause of her husband's 
 success. The king in gratitude sacrificed to the gods 
 the unusual offering of four elephants. 
 
 By this victory Philopator regained Coele-Syria, and 
 there he spent three months ; he then made a hasty, and, 
 if we judge his reasons rightly, we must add, a disgrace- 
 
PHILOPATOR AT JERUSALEM 181 
 
 f ul treaty with the enemy, that he might the sooner get 
 back to his life of ease. Before going home he passed 
 through Jerusalem, where he gave thanks and sacrificed 
 to the Hebrew god to. the temple of the Jews; and, being 
 struck with the beauty of the building, asked to be shown 
 into the inner room, ia which were kept the ark of the 
 covenant, Aaron's rod that budded, and the golden pot 
 of manna, with the tables of the covenant. The priests 
 told him of their law, by which every stranger, every 
 Jew, and every priest but the high priest, was forbidden 
 to pass beyond the second veil; but Philopator roughly 
 answered that he was not bound by the Jewish laws, 
 and ordered them to lead him into the holy of holies. 
 
 The city was thrown into alarm by this unheard-of 
 wickedness; the streets were filled with men and women 
 in despair; the air was rent with shrieks and cries, and 
 the priests prayed to Javeh to guard his own temple 
 from the stain. The king's mind, however, was not to 
 be changed; the refusal of the priests only strengthened 
 Ms wish, and all struggle was useless while the court of 
 the temple was filled vsdth Greek soldiers. But, says the 
 Jewish historian, the prayer of the priests was heard; 
 the king fell to the ground in a fit, like a reed broken 
 by the wind, and was carried out speechless by his friends 
 and generals. 
 
 On his return to Egypt, he showed his hatred of the 
 nation by his treatment of the Jews in Alexandria. He 
 made a law that they should lose the rank of Macedoni- 
 ans, and be enrolled among the class of Egyptians. He 
 ordered them to have their bodies marked with pricks, 
 
182 EUERGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 in the form of an ivy leaf, in honour of Bacchus; and 
 those who refused to have this done were outlawed, or 
 forbidden to enter the courts of justice. The king him- 
 self had an ivy leaf marked with pricks upon his fore- 
 head, from which he received the nickname of Grallus. 
 This custom of marking the body had been forbidden 
 in the Levitical law: it was not known among the Kopts, 
 but must always have been in use among the Lower 
 Egyptians. It was used by the Arab prisoners of Ram- 
 ses, and is still practiced among the Egyptian Arabs 
 of the present day. 
 
 He also ordered the Jews to sacrifice on the pagan 
 altars, and many of them were sent up to Alexandria 
 to be punished for rebelling against his decree. Their 
 resolution, however, or, as their historian asserts, a mira- 
 cle from heaven changed the king's mind. They ex- 
 pected to be trampled to death in the hippodrome by 
 furious elephants; but after some delay they were re- 
 leased unhurt. The history of their escape, however, is 
 more melancholy than the history of their danger. No 
 sooner did the persecution cease than they turned with 
 Pharisaical cruelty against their weaker brethren who 
 had yielded to the storm; and they put to death three 
 hundred of their countrymen, who in the hour of danger 
 had yielded to the threats of punishment, and complied 
 with the ceremonies required of them. 
 
 The Egyptians, who, when the Persians were con- 
 quered by Alexander, could neither help nor hinder the 
 Greek army, and who, when they formed part of the 
 troops under the first Ptolemy, were uncounted and un- 
 
ENOEMOUS AJSTD COSTLY SHIPS 183 
 
 valued, had by tMs time been armed and disciplined like 
 Greeks; and in the battle of Eaphia the Egyptian pha- 
 lanx had shown itself not an unworthy rival of the Mace- 
 donians. By this success in war, and by their hatred of 
 their vicious and cruel king, the Egyptians were now 
 for the first time encouraged to take arms against the 
 Greek government. The Egyptian phalanx murmured 
 against their Greek officers, and claimed their right to 
 be under an Egyptian general. But history has told us 
 nothing more of the rebellion than that it was success- 
 fully put down. The Greeks were still the better soldiers. 
 The ships built by Philopator were more remarkable 
 for their imwieldy size, their luxurious and costly furni- 
 ture, than for their fitness for war. One was four hun- 
 dred and twenty feet long and fifty-seven feet wide, with 
 forty banks of oars. The longest oars were fifty-seven 
 feet long, and weighted with lead at the handles that 
 they might be the more easily moved. This huge ship 
 was to be rowed by four thousand rowers, its sails were 
 to be shifted by four hundred sailors, and three thousand 
 soldiers were to stand in ranks upon deck. There were 
 seven beaks in front, by which it was to strike and sink 
 the ships of the enemy. The royal barge, in which the 
 king and court moved on the quiet waters of the Nile, 
 was nearly as large as this ship of war. It was three 
 hundred and thirty feet long, and forty-five feet wide; 
 it was fitted up with staterooms and private rooms, and 
 was nearly sixty feet high to the top of the royal awning. 
 A third ship, which even surpassed these in its fittings 
 and ornaments, was given to Philopator by Hiero, King 
 
184 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 of Syracuse. It was built under the care of Archimedes, 
 and its timbers would have made sixty triremes. Beside 
 baths, and rooms for pleasures of all kinds, it had a li- 
 brary, and astronomical instrmnents, not only for navi- 
 gation, as in modem ships, but for study, as in an observ- 
 atory. It was a ship of war, and had eight towers, from 
 each of which stones were to be thrown at the enemy 
 by six men. Its machines, like modern cannons, could 
 throw stones of three hundred pounds weight, and ar- 
 rows of eighteen feet in length. It had four anchors of 
 wood, and eight of iron. It was called the ship of Syra- 
 cuse, but after it had been given to Philopator it was 
 known by the name of the ship of Alexandria. 
 
 In the second year of Philopator 's reign the Romans 
 began that long and doubtful war with Hannibal, called 
 the second Punic war, and in the twelfth year of this 
 reign they sent ambassadors to renew their treaty of 
 peace with Egypt. They sent as their gifts robes of 
 purple for Philopator and Arsinoe, and for Philopator 
 a chair of ivory and gold, which was the usual gift of the 
 republic to friendly kings. The Alexandrians kept upon 
 good terms both with the Romans and the Carthaginians 
 during the whole of the Punic wars. 
 
 When the city of Rhodes, which had long been joined 
 in close friendship with Egypt, was shaken by an earth- 
 quake, that threw down the colossal statue of Apollo, 
 together with a large part of the city waUs and docks, 
 Philopator was not behind the other friendly kings and 
 states in his gifts and help. He sent to his brave allies 
 a large sum of money, with grain, timber, and hemp. 
 
PHILOPATOR'S FOLLIES 185 
 
 On the birth of his son and heir, in B. c. 209, ambas- 
 sadors crowded to Alexandria with gifts and messages 
 of joy. But they were all thrown into the shade by 
 Hyrcanus, the son of Joseph, who was sent from Jeru- 
 salem by his father, and who brought to the king one 
 hundred boys and one hundred girls, each carrying a 
 talent of sUver. 
 
 Philopator, soon after the birth of this his only child, 
 employed Philammon, at the bidding of his mistress, to 
 put to death his queen and sister Arsinoe, or Eurydice, 
 as she is sometimes called. He had already forgotten 
 his rank, and his name ennobled by the virtues of three 
 generations, and had given up Ms days and nights to 
 vice and riot. He kept in his pay several fools, or laugh- 
 ing-stocks as they were then called, who were the chosen 
 companions of his meals; and he was the first who 
 brought eimuchs into the court of Alexandria. His mis- 
 tress Agathoclea, her brother Agathocles, and their 
 mother CEnanthe, held him bound by those chains which 
 clever, worthless, and selfish favourites throw around 
 the mind of a weak and debauched king. Agathocles, 
 who never left his side, was his adviser in matters of 
 business or pleasure, and governed alike the army, the 
 courts of justice, and the women. Thus was spent a 
 reign of seventeen years, during which the king had 
 never but once, when he met Antiochus in battle, roused 
 himself from his life of sloth. 
 
 The misconduct and vices of Agathocles raised such 
 an outcry against him, that Philopator, without giving 
 up the pleasure of his favourite's company, was forced 
 
186 EUERGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 to take away from him the charge of receiving the taxes. 
 That high post was then given to Tlepolemus, a young 
 man, whose strength of body and warlike courage had 
 made him the darling of the soldiers. Another charge 
 given to Tlepolemus was that of watching over the 
 supply and price of corn in Alexandria. The wisest 
 statesmen of old thought it part of a king's duty to take 
 care that the people were fed, and seem never to have 
 found out that it would be better done if the people were 
 left to take care of themselves. They thought it more- 
 over a piece of wise policy, or at any rate of clever king- 
 craft, to keep down the price of food in the capital at 
 the cost of the rest of the kingdom, and even sometimes 
 to give a monthly fixed measure of corn to each citizen. 
 By such means as these the crowd of poor and restless 
 citizens, who swell the mob of every capital, was larger 
 in Alexandria than it otherwise would have been; and 
 the danger of riot, which it was meant to lessen, was 
 every year increased. 
 
 Sosibius had made himself more hated than Agatho- 
 cles; he had been the king's ready tool in all his mur- 
 ders. He had been stained, or at least reproached, with 
 the murder of Lysimachus, the son of Philadelphus; 
 then of Magas, the son of Euergetes, and Berenice, the 
 widow of Euergetes; of Cleomenes, the Spartan; and 
 lastly, of Arsinoe, the wife of Philopator. For these 
 crimes Sosibius was forced by the soldiers to give up 
 to Tlepolemus the king's ring, or what in modem lan- 
 guage would be called the great seal of the kingdom, 
 the badge of office by which Egypt was governed; but 
 
PHILOPATOR'S TEICK 
 
 187 
 
 the world soon saw that a body of luxurious mercenaries 
 were as little able to choose a wise statesman as the king 
 had been. 
 
 With all his vices, Philopator had yet inherited the 
 love of letters which has thrown so bright a light around 
 the whole of the family; and to his other luxuries he 
 sometimes added that of the society of the learned men 
 
 TEMPLE OF HATBOB. 
 
 of the museum. "When one 
 of the professorships was 
 empty he wrote to Athens, 
 and invited to Alexandria, 
 Sphserus, who had been the 
 pupil of Zeno. One day when Sphjerus was dining with 
 the king, he said that a wise man should never guess, 
 but only say what he knows. Philopator, wishing to 
 tease him, ordered some waxen pomegranates to be 
 
188 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 handed to hini, and when Sphaerus bit one of them he 
 laughed at him for guessing that it was real fruit. But 
 the stoic answered that there are many cases in which 
 our actions must be guided by what seems probable. 
 None of the works of Sphaerus have come down to us. 
 Eratosthenes, of whom we have before spoken, was 
 librarian of the museum during this reign; and Ptolemy, 
 the son of Agesarchus, then wrote his history of Alex- 
 andria, a work now lost. The want of moral feeling in 
 
 Alexandria was poorly 
 supplied by the respect 
 for talent. Philopator 
 built there a shrine or 
 temple to Homer, in 
 COIN OP PTOLEMY PHiLOPATOK. wMch hc placcd 0, sittiug 
 figure of the poet, and round it seven worshippers, meant 
 for the seven cities which claimed the honour of giving 
 him birth. Had Homer himself worshipped in such 
 temples, and had his thoughts been raised by no more 
 lofty views, he would not have left us an Hiad or an 
 Odyssey. In Upper Egypt there was no such want of 
 religious earnestness ; there the priests placed the name 
 of Philopator upon a small temple near Medinet-Habu, 
 dedicated to Amon-Ra and the goddess Hathor; his 
 name is also seen upon the temple at Kamak, and on 
 the additions to the sculptures on the temple of Thot 
 at Pselcis in Ethiopia. 
 
 Some of this king's coins bear the name of " Ptolemy 
 Philopator," while those of the queen have her name, 
 " Arsinoe Philopator," around the head. They are of 
 
PHILOPATOR'S DEATH 
 
 189 
 
 a good style of art. He was also sometimes named Eu- 
 pator; and it was under that name that the people of 
 Paphos set up a mommaent to him in the temple of 
 Venus, 
 
 The first three Ptolemies had been loved by their 
 subjects and feared by their enemies; but Philopator, 
 though his power was still acknowledged abroad, had 
 by his vices and cruelty made himself hated at home, 
 and had undermined the foundations of the government. 
 He began his reign like an Eastern despot; instead of 
 looking to his brother as a friend for help and strength, 
 he distrusted him as a rival, and had him put to death. 
 He employed the ministers of his vicious pleasures in 
 the high offices of government; and instead of philoso- 
 phers and men of learning, he brought eunuchs into the 
 palace as the companions of his son. In B. C. 204 he 
 died, worn out with disease, in the seventeenth year of 
 his reign and about the fifty-first of his age; and very 
 few lamented his decease. 
 
 On the death of Philopator his son was only five 
 years old. The minister Agathoeles, who had ruled over 
 the country with unbounded power, endeavoured, by 
 the help of his sister Agathoclea and the other mistresses 
 of the late king, to keep 
 his death secret; so that 
 while the women seized 
 the money and jewels of 
 the palace, he might 
 have time to take such 
 steps as would secure his own power over the kingdom. 
 
 COIN OP AESINOE PHILOPATOR. 
 
190 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 But the secret could not be long kept, and Agathocles 
 called together the citizens of Alexandria to tell them 
 of the death of Philopator, and to show them their yoimg 
 king. 
 
 He went to the meeting, followed by his sister 
 Agathoclea and the yoimg Ptolemy, afterwards called 
 Epiphanes. He began his speech, '' Ye men of Mace- 
 donia," as this mixed body of Greeks and Jews was 
 always called. He wiped his eyes in well-feigned grief, 
 and showed them the new king, who had been trusted, 
 he said, by his father, to the motherly care of Agatho- 
 clea and to their loyalty. He then accused Tlepolemus 
 of aiming at the throne, and brought forward a creature 
 of his own to prove the truth of the charge. But his 
 voice was soon drowned in the loud murmurs of the 
 citizens; they had smarted too long under his tyranny, 
 and were too well acquainted with his falsehoods, to 
 listen to anything that he could say against his rival. 
 Besides, Tlepolemus had the charge of supplying Alex- 
 andria with corn, a duty which was more likely to gain 
 friends than the ijandering to the vices of their hated 
 tyrant. Agathocles soon saw that his life was in danger, 
 and he left the meeting and returned to the palace, in 
 doubt whether he should seek for safety in flight, or 
 boldly seize the power which he was craftily aiming at, 
 and rid himself of his enemies by their murder. 
 
 While he was wasting these precious minutes in 
 doubt, the streets were filled with groups of men, and 
 of boys, who always formed a part of the mobs of Alex- 
 andria. They sullenly but loudly gave vent to their 
 
TALL OF AGATHOCLES 191 
 
 hatred of tlie minister; and if they had but found a 
 leader they would have been in rebellion. In a little 
 while the crowd moved off to the tents of the Mace- 
 donians, to learn their feelings on the matter, and then 
 to the quarters of the mercenaries, both of which were 
 close to the palace, and the mixed mob of armed and 
 unarmed men soon told the fatal news, that the soldiers 
 were as angry as the citizens. But they were still with- 
 out a leader; they sent messengers to Tlepolemus, who 
 was not in Alexandria, and he promised that he wovild 
 soon be there; but perhaps he no more knew what to 
 do than his guilty rival. 
 
 Agathocles, in his doubt, did nothing; he sat down 
 to supper with his friends, perhaps hoping that the storm 
 might blow over of itself, perhaps trusting to chance and 
 to the strong walls of the palace. His mother, CEnanthe, 
 ran to the temple of Ceres and Proserpine, and sat down 
 before the altar in tears, believing that the sanctuary 
 of the temple would be her best safeguard; as if the 
 laws of heaven, which had never bound her, would bind 
 her enemies. It was a festal day, and the women in the 
 temple, who knew nothing of the storm which had risen 
 in the forum within these few hours, came forward to 
 comfort her; but she answered them with curses; she 
 knew that she was hated and would soon be despised, 
 and she added the savage prayer, that they might have 
 to eat their own children. The riot did not lessen at 
 simset. Men, women, and boys were moving through 
 the streets all night with torches. The crowds were 
 greatest in the stadium and in the theatre of Bacchus, 
 
192 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHAJSTES 
 
 but most noisy in front of the palace. Agathocles was 
 awakened by the noise, and in his fright ran to the bed- 
 room of the young Ptolemy; and, distrusting the palace 
 walls, hid himself, with his own family, the king, and 
 two or three guards, in the underground passage which 
 led from the palace to the theatre. 
 
 The night, however, passed off without any violence; 
 but at daybreak the murmurs became louder, and the 
 thousands in the palace yard called for the young king. 
 By that time the Greek soldiers joined the mob, and then 
 the guards within were no longer to be feared. The gates 
 were soon burst open, and the palace searched. The 
 mob rushed through the halls and lobbies, and, learning 
 where the king had fled, hastened to the underground 
 passage. It was guarded by three doors of iron grating; 
 but, when the first was beaten in, Aristomenes was sent 
 out to offer terms of surrender. Agathocles was willing 
 to give up the young king, his misused power, his ill- 
 . gotten wealth and estates ; he asked only for his life. But 
 this was sternly refused, and a shout was raised to kill 
 the messenger; and Aristomenes, the best of the minis- 
 tiers, whose only fault was the being a friend of Agatho- 
 cles, and the having named his little daughter Agatho- 
 clea, would certainly have been killed upon the spot if 
 somebody had not reminded them that they wanted to 
 send back an answer. 
 
 Agathocles, seeing that he could hold out no longer, 
 then gave up the little king, who was set upon a horse, 
 and led away to the stadium amid the shouts of the 
 crowd. There they seated him on the throne, and, while 
 
RIOT AND EEVENGE 193 
 
 he was crying at being surrounded by strange faces, the 
 mob loudly called for revenge on the guilty ministers. 
 Sosibius, the somatophylax, the son of the former gen- 
 eral of that name, seeing no other way of stopping the 
 fury of the mob and the child's sobs, asked him if the 
 enemies of his mother and of his throne should be given 
 up to the people. The child of course answered " yes," 
 without understanding what was meant; and on that 
 they let Sosibius take him to his own house to be out 
 of the uproar. Agathocles was soon led out bound, and 
 was stabbed by those who two days before would have 
 felt honoured by a look from him. Agathoclea and her 
 sister were then brought out, and lastly (Enanthe, their 
 mother was dragged away from the altar of Ceres and 
 Proserpine. Some bit them, some struck them with 
 sticks, some tore their eyes out; her body was torn to 
 pieces, and her Mmbs scattered among the crowd; to such 
 lengths of madness and angry cruelty was the Alexan- 
 drian mob sometimes driven. 
 
 In the meanwhile some of the women called to mind 
 that Philammon, who had been employed in the murder 
 of Arsinoe, had within those three days come to Alex- 
 andria, and they made a rush at his house. The doors 
 quickly gave way before their blows, and he was kUled 
 upon the spot by clubs and stones; his little son was 
 strangled by these raging mothers, and his wife dragged 
 naked into the street, and there torn to pieces. Thus died 
 Agathocles and all his family; and the care of the young 
 king then fell to Sosibius, and to Aristomenes, who had 
 already gained a high character for wisdom and firmness. 
 
194 EUERGETES TO EPIPHAiJES 
 
 While Egypt was thus without a government, Philip 
 of Macedonia and Antiochus of Syria agreed to divide 
 the foreign provinces between them; and Antiochus 
 marched against Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. The guard- 
 ians of the young Ptolemy sent against him an army 
 under Scopas, the ^tolian, who was at first successful, 
 but was afterwards beaten by Antiochus at Paneas in 
 the valley of the Jordan, three and twenty miles above 
 the Lake of Tiberias, and driven back into Egypt. In 
 these battles the Jews, who had not forgotten the ill 
 treatment that they had received from Philopator, joined 
 Antiochus, after having been under the government of 
 Egypt for exactly one hundred years; and in return 
 Antiochus released Jerusalem from all taxes for three 
 years, and afterwards from one-third of the taxes. He 
 also sent a large sum of money for the service of the 
 temple, and released the elders, priests, scribes, and 
 singing men from all taxes for the future. 
 
 The Alexandrian statesmen had latterly shown them- 
 selves in their foreign policy very unworthy pupils of 
 Ptolemy Soter and Philadelphus, who had both ably 
 trimmed the balance of power between the several suc- 
 cessors of Alexander. But even had they been wiser, 
 they could hardly, before the end of the second Punic 
 war, have foreseen that the Romans would soon be their 
 most dangerous enemies. The overthrow of Hannibal, 
 however, might perhaps have opened their eyes; but it 
 was then too late; Egypt was too weak to form an alli- 
 ance with Macedonia or Syria against the Romans. 
 About this time, also, the Romans sent to Alexandria, 
 
THE ROMANS GUARD EPIPHANES 195 
 
 to inform the king that they had conquered Hanni- 
 bal, and brought to a close the second Punic war, and 
 to thank Tiitti for the friendship of the Egyptians during 
 that long and doubtful struggle of eighteen years, when 
 so many of their nearer neighbours had joined the enemy. 
 They begged that if the senate felt called upon to imder- 
 take a war against Philip, who, though no friend to the 
 Egyptians, had not yet taken arms against them, it might 
 cause no breach in the friendship between the King of 
 Egypt and the Romans. In answer to this embassy, the 
 Alexandrians, rushing to their own destruction, sent to 
 Rome a message, which was meant to place the kingdom 
 wholly in the hands of the senate. It was to beg them 
 to undertake the guardianship of the young Ptolemy, and 
 the defence of the kingdom against Philip and Antiochus 
 during his childhood. 
 
 The Romans, in return, gave the wished-for answer; 
 they sent ambassadors to Antiochus and Phihp, to order 
 them to make no attack upon Egypt, on pain of falling 
 under the displeasure of the senate; and they sent 
 Marcus Lepidus to Alexandria, to accept the offered 
 prize, and to govern the foreign affairs of the kingdom, 
 under the modest name of tutor to the young king. This 
 high honour was afterwards mentioned by Lepidus, with 
 pride, upon the coins struck when he was consul, in the 
 eighteenth year of this reign. They have the city of 
 Alexandria on the one side, and on the other the title of 
 " Tutor to the king," with the figure of the Roman in 
 his toga, putting the diadem on the head of the yoimg 
 Ptolemy. 
 
196 EUERGETES TO EFIFHANES 
 
 The haughty orders of the senate at first had very- 
 little weight with the two kings. Antiochus conquered 
 Phoenicia and Ccsle-Syria; and he was then met by a 
 second message from the senate, who no longer spoke in 
 the name of their ward, the yoimg King of Egypt, but 
 ordered him to give up to the Roman people the states 
 which he had seized, and which belonged, they said, to 
 the Romans by the right of war. On this, Antiochus 
 made peace with Egypt by a treaty, in which he betrothed 
 his daughter Cleopatra to the young Ptolemy, and added 
 the disputed provinces of Phoenicia and Coele-Syria as a 
 
 dower, which were to be given 
 up to Egypt when the king was 
 old enough to be married. 
 
 Philip marched against Ath- 
 komIn coin, issued under ens and the other states of Greece 
 
 PTOLEMY V. 
 
 which had heretofore held them- 
 selves independent and in alliance with Egypt; and, 
 when the Athenian embassy came to Alexandria to beg 
 for the usual help, Ptolemy's ministers felt themselves 
 so much in the power of the senate that they sent to 
 Rome to ask whether they should help their old friends, 
 the Athenians, against Philip, the common enemy, or 
 whether they should leave it to the Romans to help them. 
 And these haughty republicans, who wished all their 
 allies to forget the use of arms, who valued their friends 
 not for their strength but for their obedience, sent them 
 word that the senate did not wish them to help the Athe- 
 nians, and that the Roman people would take care of 
 their own allies. The Alexandrians looked upon the 
 
THE MACEDONIAlf PHALANX DEFEATED 197 
 
 proud but unlettered Romans only as friends, as allies, 
 who asked for no pay, who took no reward, who fought 
 only for ambition and for the glory of their country. 
 
 Soon after this, the battle of Cynocephalse iti Thes- 
 saly was fought between Philip and the Romans, in 
 which the Romans lost only seven himdred men, while 
 as many as eight thousand Macedonians were left dead 
 upon the field. This battle, though only between Rome 
 and Macedonia, must not be passed unnoticed in the 
 history of Egypt, where the troops were armed and dis- 
 ciplined like Macedonians; as it was the first time that 
 the world had seen the Macedonian phalanx routed and 
 in flight before any troops not so armed. 
 
 The phalanx was a body of spearsmen, in such close 
 array that each man filled a space of only one square 
 yard. The spear was seven yards long, and, when held 
 in both hands, its point was five yards in front of the 
 soldier's breast. There were sixteen ranks of these men, 
 and, when the first five ranks lowered their spears, the 
 point of the fifth spear was one yard in front of the fore- 
 most rank. The Romans, on the other hand, fought in 
 open ranks, with one yard between each, or each man 
 filled a space of four square yards, and in a charge would 
 have to meet ten Macedonian spears. But then the 
 Roman soldiers went into battle with much higher feel- 
 ings than those of the Greeks. In Rome, arms were 
 trusted only to the citizens, to those who had a country 
 to love, a home to guard, and who had some share in 
 making the laws which they were called upon to obey. 
 But the Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria 
 
198 EUERGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 were made up either of natives who bowed their necks 
 in slavery, or of mercenaries who made war their trade 
 and rioted in its lawlessness; both of whom felt that 
 they had little to gain from victory, and nothing to lose 
 by a change of masters. Moreover, the warlike skill of 
 the Romans was far greater than any that had yet been 
 brought against the Greeks. It had lately been improved 
 in their wars with Hannibal, the great master of that 
 science. They saw that the phalanx could use its whole 
 strength only on a plain; that a wood, a bog, a hill, or 
 a river were difficulties which this close body of men 
 could not always overcome. A charge or a retreat 
 equally lessened its force; the phalanx was meant to 
 stand the charge of others. The Romans, therefore, chose 
 their own time and their own ground; they loosened 
 their ranks and widened their front, avoided the charge, 
 and attacked the Greeks at the side and in the rear; and 
 the fatal discovery was at last made that the Macedonian 
 phalanx was not unconquerable, and that closed ranks 
 were only strong against barbarians. This news must 
 have been heard by every statesman of Egypt and the 
 East with alarm; the Romans were now their equals, 
 and were soon to be their masters. 
 
 But to return to Egypt. It was, as we have seen, a 
 country governed by men of a foreign race. Neither 
 the poor who tilled the land, nor the rich who owned 
 the estates, had any share in the government. They had 
 no public duty except to pay taxes to their Greek mas- 
 ters, who walked among them as superior beings, marked 
 out for fitness to rule by greater skill in the arts both 
 
REVOLT OP THE EGYPTIAN AEMY 199 
 
 of war and peace. The Greeks by their arms, or rather 
 by their military discipline, had enforced obedience for 
 one hundred and fifty years ; and as they had at the same 
 time checked lawless violence, made life and property 
 safe, and left industry to enjoy a large share of its own 
 earnings, this obedience had been for the most part 
 granted to them willingly. They had even trusted the 
 Egyptians with arms. But none are able to command 
 miless they are at the same time able to obey. The Alex- 
 andrians were now almost in rebellion against their 
 yoimg king and his ministers; and the" Greek govern- 
 ment no longer gave the usual advantages in return for 
 the obedience which it tyrannically enforced. Confusion 
 increased each year during the childhood of the fifth 
 Ptolemy, to whom Alexandrian flattery gave the title 
 of Epiphanes, or The Illustrious. The Egyptian phalanx 
 had in the last reign shown signs of disobedience, and 
 at length it broke out in open rebellion. The discon- 
 tented party strengthened themselves in the Busirite 
 nome, in the middle of the Delta, and fortified the city 
 of Lycopolis against the government; and a large supply 
 of arms and warlike stores which they there got together 
 proved the length of time that they had been preparing 
 for resistance. The royal troops laid siege to the city 
 in due form; they sm-rounded it with mounds and 
 ditches; they dammed up the bed of the river on each 
 side of it, and, being helped by a rise in the Nile, which 
 was that year greater than usual, they forced the rebels 
 to surrender, on the king's promise that they should 
 be spared. But Ptolemy was not bound by promises; 
 
200 EUERGETES TO EPIFHANES 
 
 he was as false and cruel as he was weak; the rebels 
 were punished; and many of the troubles in his reign 
 arose from his discontented subjects not being able to 
 rely upon his word. 
 
 The rich island of Cyprus also, which had been left 
 by Philopator imder the command of Polycrates, showed 
 some signs of wishing to throw off the Egyptian yoke. 
 But Polycrates was true to his trust; and, though the 
 king's ministers were almost too weak either to help 
 the faithful or punish the treacherous, he not only saved 
 the island for the minor, but, when he gave up his gov- 
 ernment to Ptolemy of Megalopolis, he brought to the 
 royal treasury at Alexandria a large sum from the rev- 
 enues of his province. By this faithful conduct he gained 
 great weight in the Alexandrian coimcils, till, corrupted 
 by the poisonous habits of the place, he gave way to 
 luxury and vice. 
 
 About the same time Scopas, who had lately led back 
 to Alexandria his ^tolian mercenaries, so far showed 
 signs of discontent and disobedience that the minister, 
 Aristomenes, began to suspect him of planning resistance 
 to the government. Scopas was greedy of money; noth- 
 ing would satisfy his avarice. The other Greek generals 
 of his rank received while in the Egyptian service a 
 mina, or ten dollars a day, imder the name of mess- 
 money, beyond the usual military pay; and Scopas 
 claimed and received for his services the large sum of 
 ten minse, or one hundred and twenty-five dollars, a day 
 for mess-money. But even this did not content him. 
 Aristomenes observed that he was collecting his friends 
 

 |"T Ht'-. 
 
 1i '>r 
 
 
 THE EOSETTA STONE (BRITISH MUSEUM), 
 
COEONATION OF EPIPHANES 203 
 
 for some secret purpose, and in frequent consultation 
 with them. He therefore summoned Tiitti to the king's 
 presence, and, being prepared for his refusal, he sent 
 a large force to fetch him. Fearing that the mercenaries 
 might support their general, Aristomenes had even or- 
 dered out the elephants and prepared for battle. But, 
 as the blow came upon Scopas unexpectedly, no resist- 
 ance was made, and he was brought prisoner to the 
 palace. Aristomenes, however, did not immediately ven- 
 ture to punish him, but wisely summoned the ^tolian 
 ambassadors and the chiefs of the mercenaries to his 
 trial, and, as they made no objection, he then had him 
 poisoned in prison. 
 
 No sooner was this rebellion crushed than the council 
 took into consideration the propriety of declaring the 
 king's minority at an end, as the best means of re-estab- 
 lishing the royal authority; and they thereupon deter- 
 mined shortly to celebrate his Anacleteria, or the grand 
 ceremony of exhibiting him to the people as their mon- 
 arch, though he wanted some years of the legal age; and 
 accordingly, in the ninth year of his reign, the young 
 king was crowned with great pomp at Memphis, the 
 ancient capital of the kingdom. 
 
 On this occasion he came to Memphis by barge, in 
 grand state, where he was met by the priests of Upper 
 and Lower Egypt, and crowned in the temple of Phtah 
 with the double crown, called Pschent, the crown of the 
 two provinces. After the ceremony, the priests made 
 the Decree in honour of the king, which is carved on the 
 stone known by the name of the Rosetta Stone, in the 
 
204 EUERGETES TO EPIPHAJSTES 
 
 British Museum. Ptolemy is there styled King of Upper 
 and Lower Egypt, son of the gods Philopatores, ap- 
 proved by Phtah, to whom Ra has given victory, a living 
 image of Amon, son of Ra, Ptolemy immortal, beloved 
 by Phtah, god Epiphanes most gracious. In the date 
 of the decree we are told the names of the priests of 
 Alexander, of the gods Soteres, of the gods Adelphi, of 
 the gods Euergetae, of the gods Philopatores, of the god 
 Epiphanes himself, of Berenice Euergetis, of Arsinoe 
 Philadelphus, and of Arsinoe Philopator. The preamble 
 mentions with gratitude the services of the king, or 
 rather of his wise minister, Aristomenes; and the en- 
 actment orders that the statue of the king shall be 
 worshipped in every temple of Egypt, and be carried out 
 in the processions with those of the gods of the country; 
 and lastly, that the decree is to be carved at the foot of 
 every statue of the king, in sacred, in conmion, and in 
 Greek writing. It is to this stone, with its three kinds 
 of letters, and to the skill and industry of Dr. Thomas 
 Young, and of the French scholar, Champollion, that we 
 now owe our knowledge of hieroglyphics. The Greeks of 
 Alexandria, and after them the Romans, who might have 
 learned how to read this kind of writing if they had 
 wished, seem never to have taken the trouble: it fell 
 into disuse on the rise of Christianity in Egjrpt; and 
 it was left for an Englishman to unravel the hidden 
 meaning after it had been forgotten for nearly thirteen 
 centuries. 
 
 The preamble of this decree tells us also that during 
 the minority of the king the taxes were lessened; the 
 
THE KOSETTA STONE 205 
 
 crown debtors were forgiven; those who were found in 
 prison charged with crimes against the state were re- 
 leased; the allowance from government for upholding 
 the splendour of the temples was continued, as was the 
 rent from land belonging to the priests; the first-fruits, 
 or rather the coronation money, a tax paid by the priests 
 to the king on the'year of his coming to the throne, which 
 was by custom allowed to be less than what the law 
 ordered, was not increased; the priests were relieved 
 from the heavy burden of making a yearly voyage to do 
 homage at Alexandria; there was a stop put to the im- 
 pressing men for the navy, which had been felt as a great 
 cruelty by an inland people, whose habits and religion 
 alike made them hate the sea, and this was a boon which 
 was the more easily granted, as the navy of Alexandria, 
 which was built in foreign dockyards and steered by 
 foreign pilots, had very much fallen off in the reign of 
 Philopator. The duties on linen cloth, which was the 
 chief manufacture of the kingdom, and, after grain, the 
 chief article exported, were lessened; the priests, who 
 manufactured linen for the king's own use, probably 
 for the clothing of the army, and the sails for the navy, 
 were not called upon for so large a part of what they 
 made as before; and the royalties on the other linen 
 manufactories and the duties on the samples or patterns, 
 both of which seem to have been unpaid for the whole of 
 the eight years of the minority, were wisely forgiven. 
 All the temples of Egypt, and that of Apis at Mem- 
 phis in particular, were enriched by his gifts; in which 
 pious actions, in grateful remembrance of their former 
 
206 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHAJifES 
 
 benefactor, and with a marked slight to Philopator, they 
 said that he was following the wishes of his grand- 
 father, the god Euergetes. From this decree we gain 
 some little insight into the means by which the taxes 
 were raised under the Ptolemies ; and we also learn that 
 they were so new and foreign that they had no Egyptian 
 word by which they could speak of them, and therefore 
 borrowed the Greek word syntaxes. 
 
 History gives us many examples of kings who, like 
 Epiphanes, gained great praise for the mildness and 
 weakness of the government during their minorities. 
 Aristomenes, the minister, who had governed Egypt for 
 Epiphanes, fully deserved that trust. iWhile the young 
 king looked up to him as a father, the country was well 
 governed, and his orders obeyed; but, as he grew older, 
 his good feelings were weakened by the pleasures which 
 usually beset youth and royalty. The companions of his 
 vices gained that power over his mind which Aristom- 
 enes lost, and it was not long before this wise tutor 
 and counsellor was got rid of. The king, weary perhaps 
 with last night's debauchery, had one day fallen asleep 
 when he should have been listening to the speech of a 
 foreign ambassador. Aristomenes gently shook him and 
 awoke him. His flatterers, when alone with him, urged 
 him to take this as an affront. If, said they, it was right 
 to blame the king for falling asleep when worn out with 
 business and the cares of state, it should have been done 
 in private, and not in the face of the whole court. So 
 Aristomenes was put to death by being ordered to drink 
 poison. Epiphanes then lost that love of his people 
 
EPIPHANES MARRIES CLEOPATRA 
 
 207 
 
 which the wisdom of the minister had gained for him; 
 and he governed the kingdom with the cruelty of a tyrant, 
 rather than with the legal power of a king. Even Aris- 
 tonicus, his favourite eimuch, who was of the same age 
 as himself, and had been brought up as his playfellow, 
 passed him in the manly virtues of his age, and earned 
 
 ^-=- k- 
 
 - -^ 
 
 OUTSIDE KOSETTA. 
 
 the praise of the country for setting him a good example, 
 and checking him in his career of vice. 
 
 In the thirteenth year of his reign (B.C. 192), when 
 the young king reached the age of eighteen, Antiochus 
 the Grreat sent his daughter Cleopatra into Egypt, 
 and the marriage, which had been agreed upon six years 
 before, was then carried into effect; and the provinces of 
 Ccele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Judaea, which had been prom- 
 ised as a dower, were, in form at least, handed over to 
 
208 EUERGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 the generals of Epiphanes. Cleopatra was a woman of 
 strong mind and enlarged understanding; and Antiochus 
 hoped that, by means of the power which she would have 
 over the weaker mind of Epiphanes, he should gain more 
 than he lost by giving up Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, But 
 she acted the part of a wife and a queen, and, instead of 
 betrajdng her husband into the hands of her father, she 
 was throughout the reign his wisest and best counsellor. 
 
 Antiochus seems never to have given up his hold 
 upon the provinces which had been promised as the 
 dower; and the peace between the two countries, which 
 had been kept during the six years after Cleopatra had 
 been betrothed, was broken as soon as she was married. 
 The war was still going on between Antiochus and the 
 Romans; and Epiphanes soon sent to Rome a thousand 
 pounds weight of gold and twenty thousand poimds of 
 silver, to help the republic against their common enemy. 
 But the Romans neither hired mercenaries nor fought 
 as such, the thirst for gold had not yet become the strong- 
 est feeling in the senate, and they sent back the money 
 to Alexandria with many thanks. 
 
 In the twentieth year of his reign Epiphanes was 
 troubled by a second serious rebellion of the Egyptians. 
 Polycrates marched against them at the head of the 
 Greek troops; and, as he brought with him a superior 
 force, and the king's promise of a free pardon to all who 
 should return to their obedience, the rebels yielded to 
 necessity and laid down their arms. The leaders of the 
 rebellion, Athinis, Pausiras, Chesuphus, and Irobashtus, 
 whose Koptic names prove that this was a struggle on 
 
EEBELS VICIOUSLY PUNISHED 209 
 
 the part of the Egyptians to throw off the Greek yoke, 
 were brought before the king at Sais. Epiphanes, in 
 whose youthful heart were joined the cruelty and cow- 
 ardice of a tyrant, who had not even shown himself to 
 the army during the danger, was now eager to act the 
 conqueror; and in spite of the promises of safety on 
 which these brave Kopts had laid down their arms, he 
 had them tied to his chariot wheels, and copying the vices 
 of men whose virtues he could not even understand, like 
 Achilles and Alexander, he dragged them living round 
 the city walls, and then ordered them to be put to death. 
 He then led the army to Naucratis, which was the port 
 of Sais, and there he embarked on the Mle for Alexan- 
 dria, and taking with him a further body of mercenaries, 
 which Aristonicus had just brought from G-reece, he en- 
 tered the city in triumph. 
 
 Ptolemy of Megalopolis, the new governor of Cyprus, 
 copied his predecessor, Polycrates, in his wise and care- 
 ful management. His chief aim was to keep the province 
 quiet, and his next to collect the taxes. He was at first 
 distrusted by the Alexandrian council for the large sum 
 of money which he had got together and kept within his 
 own power; but when he sent it all home to the empty 
 treasury, they were as much pleased as they were sur- 
 prised. 
 
 ApoUonius, whom we have spoken of in the reign of 
 Buergetes, and who had been teaching at Rhodes during 
 the reign of Philopator, was recalled to Alexandria in 
 the beginning of this reign, and made librarian of the 
 museum on the death of Eratosthenes. But he did not 
 
210 
 
 EUEEGETES TO EFIPHANES 
 
 long enjoy that honour. He was already old, and shortly 
 afterwards died at the age of ninety. 
 
 The coins of this king are known by the glory or rays 
 of sun which surround his head, and which agrees with 
 his name, Epiphanes, illustrious, or as it is written in 
 the hieroglyphics, " light bearing." On the other side 
 is the cornucopia between two stars, with the name of 
 
 A DESERT KOAD BETWEEN EGYPT AND STRIA. 
 
 "King Ptolemy." No temples, and few additions to 
 temples, seem to have been built in Upper Egypt during 
 this reign, which began and ended in rebellion. We find, 
 however, a Greek inscription at Philse, of " King Ptol- 
 emy and Queen Cleopatra, gods Epiphanes, and Ptolemy 
 their son, to Asclepius," a god whom the Egyptians 
 called Imothph the son of Pthah. 
 
 Cyprus and Cyrene were nearly all that were left 
 to Egypt of its foreign provinces. The cities of Greece, 
 
THE KING POISONED 211 
 
 which had of their own wish put themselves under Egypt 
 for help against their nearer neighbours, now looked to 
 Eome for that help; part of Asia Minor was under Seleu- 
 eus, the son of Antiochus the Great; Coele-Syria and 
 Phoenicia, which had been given up to Epiphanes, had 
 been again soon lost; and the Jews, who in all former 
 wars had sided with the Kings of Egypt, as being not 
 only the stronger but the milder rulers, now joined 
 Seleucus. The ease with which the wide-spreading prov- 
 inces of this once mighty empire fell off from their alle- 
 giance, showed how the whole had been upheld by the 
 warlike skill of its kings, rather than by a deep-rooted 
 hold in the habits of the people. Instead of wondering 
 that the handful of Greeks in Alexandria, on whom the 
 power rested, lost those wide provinces, we should rather 
 wonder that they were ever able to hold them. 
 
 After the death of Antiochus the Great, Ptolemy 
 again proposed to enforce his rights over Ccele-Syria, 
 which he had given up only in the weakness of his minor- 
 ity; and he is said to have been asked by one of his 
 generals, how he should be able to pay for the large forces 
 which he- was getting together for that purpose; and he 
 playfully answered, that his treasure was in the number 
 of his friends. But his joke was taken in earnest; they 
 were afraid of new taxes and fresh levies on their es- 
 tates; and means were easily taken to poison him. He 
 died in the twenty-ninth year of his age, after a reign of 
 twenty-four years; leaving the navy unmanned, the 
 army in disobedience, the treasury empty, and the whole 
 framework of government out of order. 
 
212 
 
 EUEEGETES TO EPIPHANES 
 
 Just before his death he had sent to the Achaians 
 to offer to send ten galleys to join their fleet; and Poly- 
 bius, the historian, to whom we owe so much of our 
 knowledge of these reigns, although he had not yet 
 reached the age called for by the Greek law, was sent 
 by the Achaians as one of the ambassadors, with his 
 father, to return thanks; but before they had quitted 
 their own coimtry they were stopped by the news of 
 the death of Epiphanes. 
 
 Those who took away the life of the king seem to 
 have had no thoughts of mending the form of govern- 
 ment, nor any plan by which they might lessen the power 
 of his successor. It was only one of those outbreaks of 
 private vengeance which have often happened in un- 
 mixed monarchies, where men are taught that the only 
 way to check the king's tyranny is by his murder; and 
 the little notice that was taken of it by the people proves 
 their want of public virtue as weU as of political wisdom. 
 
 COIN OF PTOLEMY V. EPIPHANES. 
 
TEMPLE OP ANT^OPOLIS. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PTOLEMY PHILOMETOR AND PTOLEMY EUERGETES II. 
 
 The Syrian Invasion: The Jews and the Bible: Kelations with Rome: 
 Literature of the Age. 
 
 SHIP ON THE NILE. 
 
 A T the beginning of the last 
 reign the Alexandrians 
 had sadly felt the want of 
 a natural guardian to the 
 young king, and they were 
 now glad to copy the customs 
 of the conquered Egyptians. 
 Epiphanes had left behind him two sons, each named 
 Ptolemy, and a daughter named Cleopatra; and the 
 elder son, though still a child, mounted the throne under 
 the able guardianship of his mother, Cleopatra, and took 
 the very suitable name of Philometor, or mother-loving. 
 The mother governed the kingdom for seven years as 
 regent during the minority of her son. When Philo- 
 metor reached his fourteenth year, the age at which his 
 minority ceased, his coronation was celebrated with great 
 pomp. Ambassadors from several foreign states were 
 
 213 
 
214 PHILOMETOE, AND EUERGETES 11. 
 
 sent to Egypt to wish the king joy, to do honour to the 
 day, and to renew the treaties of peace with him: Caius 
 Valerius and four others were sent from Rome; Apollo- 
 nius, the son of Mnestheus, was sent from Judaea; and 
 we may regret with Polybius that he himself was not 
 able to form part of the embassy then sent from the 
 Achaians, that he might have seen the costly and curious 
 ceremony, and given us an account of it. 
 
 While Cleopatra lived, she had been able to keep 
 her son at peace with her brother, Antiochus Epiphanes, 
 but upon her death, Leneus and the eunuch Eulaius, 
 who then had the care of the young king, sought to re- 
 conquer Coele-Syria; and they embroiled the country 
 in a war, at a time when weakness and decay might have 
 been seen in every part of the army and navy, and when 
 there was the greatest need of peace. Coele-Syria and 
 Phoenicia had been given to Ptolemy Epiphanes as his 
 wife's dower; but, when Philometor seemed too weak 
 to grasp them, Antiochus denied that his father had 
 ever made such a treaty, and got ready to march against 
 Egypt, as the easiest way to guard Coele-Syria. 
 
 By this time the statesmen of Egypt ought to have 
 learned the mistake in their foreign policy. By widen- 
 ing their frontier they always weakened it. They should 
 have fortified the passes between the Red Sea and the 
 Mediterranean, not cities in Asia. When Antiochus 
 entered Egypt he was met at Pelusium by the army of 
 Philometor, which he at once routed in a pitched battle. 
 The whole of Egypt was then in his power; he marched 
 upon Memphis with a small force, and seized it without 
 
EMBASSIES AT ALEXANDRIA 215 
 
 having to strike a blow, helped perhaps by the plea that 
 he was acting on behalf of his nephew, Ptolemy Philo- 
 metor, who then fell into his hands. 
 
 On this, the younger Ptolemy, the brother of Philo- 
 metor, who was with his sister Cleopatra in Alexandria, 
 and was about fifteen years old, declared himself king, 
 and sent ambassadors to Rome to ask for help against 
 Antiochus; and taking the name of the most popular 
 of his forefathers, he called himself Euergetes. He is, 
 however, better known in history as Ptolemy Physcon, 
 or bloated, a nickname which was afterwards given to 
 him when he had grown fat and unwieldy from the dis- 
 eases of luxury. 
 
 Comanus and Cineas were the chief advisers of the 
 young Euergetes; and in their alarm they proposed to 
 send the foreign ambassadors to meet the invader on 
 his march from Memphis, and to plead for peace. This 
 task the ambassadors kindly undertook. There were 
 then in Alexandria two embassies from the Achaians, 
 one to renew the treaty of peace, and one to settle the 
 terms of the coming wrestling match. There were there 
 three embassies from Athens, one with gifts from the 
 city, one about the Panathenaic games, and one about 
 the celebration of the mysteries. There was also an 
 embassy from Miletus, and one from Clazomense. On 
 the day of their arrival at Memphis, Antiochus feasted 
 these numerous ambassadors in grand state, and on the 
 next day gave them an audience. But their arguments 
 for peace carried no weight with him; and he denied that 
 his father, Antiochus the Great, had ever given Coele- 
 
216 PHILOMETOE AND EUEEGETES II. 
 
 Syria as a dower with his daughter Cleopatra to Epi- 
 phanes. To gain time he promised the ambassadors that 
 he would give them an answer as soon as his own am- 
 bassadors returned from Alexandria; and in the mean- 
 while he carried his army down the Nile to Naucratis, 
 and thence marched to the capital to begin the siege. 
 
 Antiochus, however, was defeated in his first assault 
 upon Alexandria, and finding that he should not soon 
 be able to bring the siege to an end, he sent off an em- 
 bassy to Rome with a hundred and fifty talents of gold, 
 fifty as a present to the senate, and the rest to be divided 
 among the states of Greece, whose help he might need. 
 At the same time, also, an embassy from the Rhodians 
 arrived in the port of Alexandria, to attempt to restore 
 peace to the country of their old allies. Antiochus re- 
 ceived the Rhodian ambassadors in his tent, but would 
 not listen to the long speech with which they threatened 
 him, and shortly told them that he came as the friend 
 of his elder nephew, the young Philometor, and if the 
 Alexandrians wished for peace they should open the 
 gates to their rightful king. Antiochus was, however, 
 defeated in all his assaults on the city, and he at last 
 withdrew his army and returned to Syria. He left 
 Euergetes, King of the Greeks, at Alexandria, and Philo- 
 metor at Memphis, King of the rest of Egypt. But he 
 kept Pelusiiun, where he placed a strong garrison that 
 he might be able easily to re-enter Egypt whenever he 
 chose. 
 
 Ptolemy Macron, the Alexandrian governor of Cy- 
 prus, added to the troubles of the country by giving 
 
PEACE BETWEEN THE KINGS 217 
 
 up his island to Antiochus, But he met with the usual 
 fate of traitors, he was badly rewarded; and when he 
 complained of his treatment, he was called a traitor by 
 the very men who had gained by his treachery, and he 
 poisoned himself in the bitterness of his grief. An- 
 tiochus, like most invaders, carried off whatever treas- 
 ure fell into his hands. Egypt was a sponge which had 
 not lately been squeezed, and his court and even his own 
 dinner-table then shone with a blaze of silver and gold 
 unknown in Syria before this inroad into Egjrpt. 
 
 By these acts, and by the garrison left in Pelusium, 
 the eyes of Philometor were opened, and he saw that his 
 uncle had not entered Egypt for his sake, but to make 
 it a province of Syria, after it had been weakened by 
 civil war. He therefore wisely forgave his rebellious 
 brother and sister in Alexandria, and sent offers of peace 
 to them; and it was agreed that the two Ptolemies should 
 reign together, and turn their forces against the common 
 enemy. It was most likely at this time, and as a part 
 of this treaty, that Philometor married his sister Cleo- 
 patra. It was mainly by her advice and persuasion that 
 the quarrel between the two brothers was for the time 
 healed. On this treaty between the brothers the year 
 was called the twelfth of Ptolemy Philometor and the 
 first of Ptolemy Euergetes, and the public deeds of the 
 kingdom were so dated. 
 
 The next year Antiochus Epiphanes again entered 
 Egypt, claiming the island of Cyprus and the country 
 round Pelusium as the price of his forbearance; and, on 
 his marching forward, Memphis a second time opened its 
 
218 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 gates to him without a battle. He came down by slow 
 marches towards Alexandria, and crossed the canal at 
 Leucine, four miles from the city-. There he was met 
 by the Roman ambassadors, who ordered him to quit the 
 country. On his hesitating, Popilius, who was one of 
 them, drew a circle round him on the sand with his stick, 
 and told him that, if he crossed that line without prom- 
 ising to leave Egypt at once, it should be taken as a 
 declaration of war against Rome. On this threat Anti- 
 ochus again quitted Egypt, and the brothers sent ambas- 
 sadors to Rome to thank the senate for their help, and 
 to acknowledge that they owed more to the Roman peo- 
 ple than they did to the gods or to their forefathers. 
 
 The treaty made on this occasion between Philometor 
 and Antiochus was written by Heraclides Lembus, the 
 son of Serapion, a native of Oxyrynchus, who wrote on 
 the succession of the philosophers in the several Oreek 
 schools, and other works on philosophy, but whose chief 
 work was a history named the Lembeutic History. 
 
 Eour years afterwards, in B. c, 164, Antiochus Epi- 
 phanes died; and the Jews of Judaea, who had been for 
 some time struggling for liberty, then gained a short rest 
 for their unhappy country. Judas Maccabgeus had raised 
 his countrymen in rebellion against the foreigners; he 
 had defeated the Syrian forces in several battles; and 
 was at last able to purify the temple and re-establish 
 the service there as of old. He therefore sent to the 
 Jews of Egypt to ask them to join their Hebrew brethren 
 in celebrating the feast of tabernacles on that great 
 occasion. 
 
PHILOMETOE FLEES TO EOME 
 
 219 
 
 The imliappy quarrels between the Egyptian kings 
 soon broke out again; and, as the party of Euergetes 
 was the stronger, Philometor was driven from his king- 
 dom, and he fled to Rome for safety and for help. He 
 entered the city privately, and took up his lodgings in 
 "the house of one of his own subjects, a painter of Alex- 
 
 TEMPLE OF HERMONTHI8. 
 
 andria. His pride led him to refuse the offers of better 
 entertainment which were made to him by Demetrius, 
 the nephew of Antiochus, who, like himself, was hoping 
 to regain his kingdom by the help of the Romans. The 
 Kings of Egypt and Syria, the two greatest kingdoms in 
 the world, were at the same time asking to be heard at 
 the bar of the Roman senate, and were claiming the 
 
220 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 thrones of their fathers at the hands of men who could 
 make and mmiake kings at their pleasure. 
 
 As soon as the senate heard that Philometor was in 
 Rome, they lodged him at the cost of the state in a man- 
 ner becoming his high rank, and soon sent him back to 
 Egypt, with orders that Euergetes should reign in Cy- 
 rene, and that the rest of the kingdom should belong to 
 Philometor. This happened in the seventeenth year of 
 Philometor and the sixth of Euergetes, which was the 
 last year that was named after the two kings. Cassiua 
 Longinus, who was next year consul at Rome, was most 
 likely among the ambassadors who replaced Philometor 
 on the throne ; for he put the Ptolemaic eagle and thim- 
 derbolt on his coins, as though to claim the sovereignty 
 of Egypt for the senate. 
 
 To these orders Euergetes was forced to yield; but. 
 the next year he went himself to Rome to complain 
 to the senate that they had made a very unfair division of 
 the kingdom, and to beg that they would add the island 
 of Cyprus to his share. After hearing the ambassadors 
 from Philometor, who were sent to plead on the other 
 side, the senate granted the prayer of Euergetes, and sent 
 ambassadors to Cyprus, with orders to hand that island 
 over to Euergetes, and to make use of the fleets and 
 armies of the republic if these orders were disobeyed. 
 
 Euergetes, during his stay in Rome, if we may believe 
 Plutarch, made an offer of marriage to Cornelia, the 
 mother of the Gracchi; but this offer of a throne could 
 not make the high-minded matron quit her children and 
 her country. He left Italy with the Roman ambassadors, 
 
EOMAN INTEEVENTION 221 
 
 and, in passing through G-reece, he raised a large body 
 of mercenaries to help him to wrest Cyprus from his 
 brother, as it would seem that the governor, faithful to 
 his charge, would not listen to the commands of Rome. 
 But the ambassadors had been told to conquer Cyprus, 
 if necessary, with the arms of the republic only, and they 
 therefore made Euergetes disband his levies. They 
 sailed for Alexandria to enforce their orders upon Phil- 
 ometor, and sent Euergetes home to Cyrene. Philo- 
 metor received the Roman ambassadors with all due 
 honours; he sometimes gave them fair promises, and 
 sometimes put them off till another day; and tried to 
 spin out the time without saying either yes or no to the 
 message from the senate. Euergetes sent to Alexandria 
 to ask if they had gained their point; but though they 
 threatened to return to Rome if they were not at once 
 obeyed, Philometor, by his kind treatment and still 
 kinder words, kept them more than forty days longer 
 at Alexandria.' 
 
 At last the Roman ambassadors left Egypt, and on 
 their way home they went to Cyrene, to let Euergetes 
 know that his brother had disobeyed the orders of the 
 senate, and would not give up Cyprus; and Euergetes 
 then sent two ambassadors to Rome to beg them to re- 
 venge their affronted dignity and to enforce their orders 
 by arms. The senate of course declared the peace with 
 Egypt at an end, and ordered the ambassadors from 
 Philometor to quit Rome within five days, and sent their 
 own ambassadors to Cyrene to tell Euergetes of their 
 decree. 
 
222 PHILOMETOE AJSfD EUEEGETES II. 
 
 But while this was going on, the state of Cyrene had 
 risen in arms against Euergetes; his vices and cruelty 
 had made him hated, they had gained for him the nick- 
 names of Kakergetes, or mischief-maker, and Physcon, 
 or bloated; and while wishing to gain Cyprus he was 
 in danger of losing his own kingdom. When he marched 
 against the rebels, he was beaten and wounded, either in 
 the battle or by an attack upon his life afterwards, and 
 his success was for some time doubtful. When he had at 
 last put down this rising, he sailed for Rome, to urge 
 his complaints against Philometor, upon whom he laid 
 the blame of the late rebellion, and to ask for help. The 
 senate, after hearing both sides, sent a small fleet with 
 Euergetes, not large enough to put him on the throne 
 of Cyprus, but gave him, what they had before refused, 
 leave to levy an army of his own, and to enlist their 
 allies in Greece and Asia as mercenaries under his 
 standard. 
 
 The Roman troops seem not to have helped Euer- 
 getes ; but he landed in Cyprus with his own mercenaries, 
 and was there met by Philometor, who had brought over 
 the Egyptian army in person. Euergetes, however, was 
 beaten in several battles, he was soon forced to shut 
 himself up in the city of Lapitho, and at last to lay down 
 his arms before his elder brother. 
 
 If Philometor had upon this put his brother to death, 
 the deed would have seemed almost blameless after the 
 family murders already related in this history. But, with 
 a goodness of heart, he a second time forgave his brother 
 all that had passed, replaced him on the throne of Cyrene, 
 
PHILOMETOR TOEGIVES EUERGETES 
 
 223 
 
 and promised to give Mm his daughter in marriage. We 
 are not told whether the firmness and forgiving mildness 
 of PhUometor had turned the Roman senate in his fa- 
 
 GARDBN NEAR HELIOPOLI8. 
 
 vour, but their troops seemed wanted in other quarters; 
 at any rate they left off trying to enforce their decree; 
 Philometor kept Cyprus, and sent Euergetes a yearly 
 gift of grain from Alexandria. 
 
224 PHILOMETOE AJSTD EUEEGETES 11. 
 
 During the wars in Syria between Philometor and 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, at the beginning of this reign, 
 the Jews were divided into two parties, one favouring 
 the Egyptians and one the Syrians. At last the Syrian 
 party drove their enemies out of Jerusalem; and Onias, 
 the high priest, with a large body of Jews, fled to Egypt. 
 There they were weU received by Philometor, who al- 
 lowed them to dwell in the neighbourhood of HeUopolis ; 
 and he gave them leave to build a temple and ordain 
 priests for themselves. Onias built his temple at On 
 or Onion, a city about twenty-three miles from Memphis, 
 once the capital of the district of Heliopolis. It was on 
 the site of an old Egyptian temple of the goddess Pasht, 
 which had fallen into disuse and decay, and was built 
 after the model of the temple of Jerusalem. Though by 
 the Jewish law there was to be no second temple, yet 
 Onias defended himself by quoting, as if meant for his 
 own times, the words of Isaiah, who says that in that day 
 there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the 
 land of Egypt. The building of this temple, and the 
 celebrating the Jewish feasts there, as in rivalry to the 
 temple of Jerusalem, were a never-failing cause of quar- 
 rel between the Hebrew and the G-reek Jews. They each 
 altered the words of the Bible to make it speak their 
 own opinions. The Hebrew Bible now says that the new 
 temple was in the City of Destruction, and the Greek 
 Bible says that it was in the City of Righteousness; 
 whereas, from the Arabic version and some early com- 
 mentaries, it seems that Isaiah was speaking of the city 
 of Heliopolis, where there had been of old an altar to 
 
THE BIBLE ALTERED 225 
 
 the Lord. The leaders of the Greek party wished the 
 Jews to throw aside the character of strangers and for- 
 eign traders; to be at home and to become owners of 
 the soil. " Hate not laborious work," says the son of 
 Sirach; " neither husbandry, which the Most High hath 
 ordained." 
 
 About the same time the Jews brought before Ptol- 
 emy, as a judge, their quarrel with the Samaritans, as 
 to whether, according to the law of Moses, the temple 
 ought to have been built at Jerusalem, or on the green 
 and fertile Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans built 
 their temple, or on the barren white crags of Mount Ebal, 
 where the Hebrew Bible says that it should be built; and 
 as to which nation had altered their copies of the Bible 
 in the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy and 
 eighth chapter of Joshua. This dispute had lately been 
 the cause of riots and rebellion. Ptolemy seems to have 
 decided the question for political reasons, and to please 
 his own subjects, the Alexandrian Jews; and without lis- 
 tening to the arguments as to what the law ordered, he 
 was content with the proof that the temple had stood 
 at Jerusalem for about eight hundred years, and he put 
 to death the two Samaritan pleaders, who had probably 
 been guilty of some outrage against the Jews in zeal 
 for Mount Gerizim, and for which they might then have 
 been on their trial. 
 
 Onias, the high priest, was much esteemed by Phil- 
 ometor, and bore high offices in the government; as also 
 did Dositheus, another Jew, who had been very useful 
 in helping the king to crush a rebellion. Dositheus called 
 
226 PHILOMETOE AND EUEEGETES II. 
 
 himself a priest and a Levite, though his title to that 
 honour seems to have been doubted by his countrymen. 
 He had brought with him into Egypt the book of Esther, 
 written in Greek, which he said had been translated out 
 of the Hebrew in Jerusalem by Lysimachus. It con- 
 tained some additions for which the Hebrew has never 
 been brought forward, and which are now placed among 
 the uncanonical books in the Apocrypha. 
 
 Since the Ptolemies had found themselves too weak 
 to hold Ethiopia, they had placed a body of soldiers on 
 the border of the two countries, to guard Egypt from 
 the inroads of the enemy. This station, twelve miles 
 to the south of Syene, had by degrees grown into a city, 
 and was called Parembole, or The Camp; and, as most 
 of the soldiers were Greek mercenaries, it was natural 
 that the temple which Philometor built there should be 
 dedicated in the Greek language. Of the temples hitherto 
 built by the Ptolemies, in the Egyptian cities, every one 
 seems to have had the king's name and titles, and its 
 dedication to the gods, carved on its massive portico in 
 hieroglyphics; but this was in a Greek city, and it was 
 dedicated to Isis and Serapis, on behalf of Philometor 
 and his queen, in a Greek inscription. 
 
 Philometor also built a temple at Antaeopolis to An- 
 taeus, a god of whom we know little, but that he gave 
 his name to the city; and another to Aroeris at Ombos; 
 and in the same way he carved the dedications on the 
 porticoes in the Greek language. This custom became 
 common after that time, and proves both the lessened 
 weight which the native Egyptians bore in the state. 
 
A FORTIFIED TEMPLE 229 
 
 and that the kings had forgotten the wise rules of Ptol- 
 emy Soter, in regard to the religious feelings of the 
 people. They must have been greatly shocked by this 
 use of foreign writing ia the place of the old characters 
 of the country, which, from having been used in the tem- 
 ples, even for ages beyond the reach of history, had at 
 last been called sacred. In the temple at Antaeopolis we 
 note a marked change in the style of building. The 
 screen in front of the great portico is almost removed 
 by having a doorway made in it between every pair of 
 columns. 
 
 It is to this reign, also, that we seem to owe the great 
 temple at Apollinopolis Magna, although it was not fin- 
 ished till one or two reigns later. It is one of the largest 
 and least ruined of the Egyptian temples. Its front is 
 formed of two huge square towers, with sloping sides, 
 between which is the narrow doorway, the only opening 
 in its massive walls. Through this the worshipper en- 
 tered a spacious courtyard or cloister, where he found 
 shade from the sun imder a covered walk on either side. 
 In front is the lofty portico with six large columns, the 
 entrance to the body of the building. This last is flat- 
 roofed, and far lower than the grand portico which hid 
 it from the eyes of the crowd in the courtyard. The 
 staircases in the towers are narrow. The sacred rooms 
 within were small and dark, with only a glimmering 
 flame here and there before an altar, except when lighted 
 up with a blaze of lamps on a feast-day. As a castle 
 it must have had great strength; from the top and loop- 
 holes of the two towers, stones and darts might be hurled 
 
230 PHILOMETOE AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 at the enemy; and as it was in the hands of the Egyp- 
 tians, it is the strongest proof that they were either not 
 distrusted or not feared by their Greek rulers. The city 
 of ApoUinopolis stands on a grand and lofty situation, 
 overlooking the river and the valley; and this proud 
 temple, rising over all, can only have been planned by 
 military skill as a fortress to command the whole. 
 
 At this time the Greeks in Egypt were beginning to 
 follow the custom of their Egyptian brethren, to take 
 upon themselves monastic vows, and to shut themselves 
 up in the temples in religious idleness. But these for- 
 eigners were looked upon with jealousy by the Egyptian 
 monks as intruders on their endowments, and we meet 
 with a petition addressed to Philometor by Ptolemy, the 
 son of Glaucias, a monk in the temple of Serapis at 
 Memphis, who styles himself a Macedonian, complaining 
 that his cell had been violently entered and himself ill- 
 treated because he was a Greek ; and reminding the king 
 that last year, when the king visited the Serapium, he 
 had addressed the same petition to him through the bars 
 of his window. The priests in temples of Egypt were 
 maintained, partly by their ovm estates, and partly by 
 the offerings of the pious; and we still possess a deed 
 of sale made in this reign by the Theban priests, of one- 
 half of a third of their collections for the dead who 
 had been buried in Thynabunum, the Libyan suburb of 
 Thebes. This sixth share of the collections consisted of 
 seven or eight families of slaves; the price of it was 
 four hundred pieces of brass; the bargain was made in 
 the presence of sixteen witnesses, whose names are 
 
THE PRICE OF SLAVES 231 
 
 given; and the deed was registered and signed by a 
 public notary in the city of Thebes. The custom of 
 giviag offerings to the priests for the good of the dead 
 would seem to have been a cause of some wealth to the 
 temples. It was one among the many Egyptian customs 
 forbidden by the law of Moses. 
 
 From this deed of sale we also gain some knowledge 
 of the state of slavery in Egypt. The names of the slaves 
 and of their fathers are Koptic, and in some cases bor- 
 rowed from the names of the gods; hence the slaves were 
 probably of the same religion, and spoke nearly the same 
 language as their masters. They sunk into that low 
 state rather by their own want of mind than by their 
 masters' power. In each case the slave was joined in 
 the same lot with his children; and the low price of four 
 hundred pieces of brass, perhaps about thirty-eight dol- 
 lars for eight families, or even if it be meant for the half 
 of eight families, proves that they were of the nature of 
 serfs, and that the master, either by law or custom, could 
 have had no power of cruelly overworking them. On 
 the other hand, in the reign of PMladelphus, the pris- 
 oners taken in battle, who might be treated with greater 
 severity, were ransomed at fifteen dollars each. We see 
 by the monuments that there were also a few negroes 
 in the same unhappy state of slavery. They were prob- 
 ably not treated much worse than the lowest class of 
 those bom on the soil, but they were much more valuable. 
 Other slaves of the Berber race were brought in coasting 
 vessels from Opone on the incense coast, near to the 
 island of Dioscorides. 
 
232 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 Aristarchus, who had been the tutor of Euergetes 11., 
 and of a son of Philometor, was one of the ornaments 
 of this reign. He had been a pupil of Aristophanes, the 
 granunarian, and had then studied under Crates at Per- 
 gamus, the rival school to Alexandria, He died at Cy- 
 prus, whither he probably withdrew on the death of 
 Philometor. He was chiefly known for his critical writ- 
 ings, in which his opinions of poetry were thought so 
 just that few dared to disagree with them; and his name 
 soon became proverbial for a critic. Aristarchus had 
 also the good fortune to be listened to in his lecture-room 
 by one whose name is far more known than those of his 
 two royal pupils, Moschus of Syracuse, the pastoral 
 poet, was one of his hearers; but his fame must not be 
 claimed for Alexandria; he can hardly have learned from 
 the critic that just taste by which he joined softness 
 and sweetness to the rude plainness of the Doric muse. 
 Indeed in this he only followed his young friend Bion, 
 whose death he so beautifully bewails, and from whose 
 poems he generously owns that he learned so much. It 
 may be as well to add that the lines in which he says 
 that Theocritus, who had been dead above one hundred 
 years, joined with him in his sorrow for the death of Bion 
 are later additions not found in the early manuscripts 
 of his poems. 
 
 From our slight acquaintance with Bion's life, we 
 are left in doubt whether he accompanied his friend 
 Moschus to the court of Alexandria; but it is probable 
 that he did. In his beautiful lamentation for the death 
 of Adonis, we have an imitation of the melancholy chant 
 
EDITING HOMER 233 
 
 of the Egyptians, named maneros, which they sang 
 through the streets in the procession on the feast of Isis, 
 when the crowd joined in the chorus, " Ah, hapless Isis, 
 Osiris is no more." The tale has been a good deal 
 changed by the Sicilian muse of Bion, but in the boar 
 which killed Adonis, we have the wicked Typhon as 
 carved on the monuments; we have also the wound in 
 the thigh, and the consolations of the priests, who every 
 year ended their mournful song with advising the god- 
 dess to reserve her sorrow for another year, when on the 
 return of the festival the same lament would be again 
 celebrated. The whole poem has a depth and earnestness 
 of feeling which is truly Egyptian, but which was very 
 little known in Alexandria. 
 
 To the Alexandrian grammarians, and more partic- 
 ularly to Aristophanes, Aristarchus, and their pupil, 
 Ammonius, we are indebted for our present copies of 
 Homer. These critics acted like modem editors, each 
 publishing an edition, or rather writing out a copy, which 
 was then re-copied in the museum as often as called for 
 by the demands of the purchasers of books. Aristopha- 
 nes left perhaps only one such copy or edition, while 
 Aristarchus, in his efforts to correct the text of the great 
 epic poet, made several such copies. These were in the 
 hands of the later scholiasts, who appealed to them as 
 their authority, and ventured to make no further alter- 
 ations; we therefore now read the Hiad and Odyssey 
 nearly as left by these Alexandrian critics. They no 
 doubt took some liberties in altering the spelling and 
 smoothing the lines; and, though we should value most 
 
234 
 
 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 highly a copy in the rougher form in which it came into 
 their hands, yet, on the whole, we must be great gainers 
 by their labours. They divided the Iliad and Odyssey 
 into twentj^-four books each, and corrected the faulty 
 metres; but one of their chief tasks was to set aside, or 
 
 put a mark against, 
 those more modern 
 lines which had crept 
 into the ancient poems. 
 It had been usual to call 
 every old verse Ho- 
 mer's or Homeric, and 
 these it was the busi- 
 ness of the critic to 
 mark as not genuine. 
 Aristarchus was jo- 
 cosely said to have 
 called every line spuri- 
 ous which he did not 
 like; but everything 
 
 THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMEE. 
 
 that we can learn of 
 him leads us to believe that he executed his task with 
 judgment. From these men sprang the school of Alex- 
 andrian grammarians, who for several centuries con- 
 tinued their minute and often unprofitable studies in 
 verbal criticism. 
 
 These were the palmy days of criticism. Never before 
 or since have critics held so high a place in literature. 
 The world was caUed upon to worship and do honour 
 to the poet, but chiefly that it might admire the skiU of 
 
HERO'S STEAM-ENGINE 235 
 
 the critic who could name the several sources of his 
 beauties. The critic now ranked higher than a priest 
 at the foot of Mount Parnassus. Homer was lifted to 
 the skies that the critic might stand on a raised pedestal 
 among the Muses. Such seems to be the meaning of the 
 figures on the upper part of the well-known sculpture 
 called the Apotheosis of Homer. It was made in this 
 reign; and at the foot Ptolemy and his mother, in the 
 characters of Time and the World, are crowning the 
 statue of the poet, in the presence of ten worshippers 
 who represent the literary excellences which shine 
 forth in his poems. The figures of the Iliad and Odyssey 
 kneel beside his seat, and the Frogs and Mice creep 
 under his footstool, showing that the latter mock-heroic 
 poem was already written and called the work of 
 Homer. 
 
 Other celebrities who flourished under the fifth Ptol- 
 emy were Pamphilius, an Alexandrian physician who 
 wrote on medical plants; Nicander, a poet and physi- 
 cian who studied poisons, and the great Hipparchus, the 
 founder of mathematical astronomy. Hero, 
 also, in this reign, invented a kind of prim- 
 itive steam-engine. These men and their 
 contemporaries were in the habit of writing 
 their scientific observations in the form of 
 poetry, but it was verse without earnest- hero's kotI^g 
 
 J „ ,. , ^ P -l. STEAM-ENGINE. 
 
 ness and feeling, and such ot it as sur- 
 vives is valued not for its literary qualities or charms 
 of diction, but for the side-lights it throws upon the 
 manners and education of the age. 
 
236 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 The portrait of the king is known from those coins 
 which bear the name of '' King Ptolemy the mother- 
 loving god." The eagle on the other side of the coins 
 has a phoenix or pahn-branch on its wing or by its side, 
 which may be supposed to mean that they were struck 
 in Phoenicia. We have not before met with the title of 
 '' god," on the coins of the Ptolemies; but, as every one 
 of them had been so named in the hieroglyphical inscrip- 
 tions, it can scarcely be called new. 
 
 When Philometor quitted the island of Cyprus after 
 beating his brother in battle, he left Archias as governor, 
 who entered into a plot to give it up to Demetrius, King 
 of Syria, for the sum of five hundred talents. But the 
 plot was found out, and the traitor then put an end to 
 his own life, to escape from punishment and self- 
 reproach. By this treachery of Demetrius, Philometor 
 was made his enemy, and he joined Attains, King of 
 Pergamus, and Ariarathes, King of Cappadocia, in set- 
 ting up Alexander Balas as a pretender to the throne 
 of Syria, who beat Demetrius in battle, and put him to 
 death. Philometor two years afterwards gave his elder 
 daughter, Cleopatra, in marriage to Alexander, and led 
 her himself to Ptolemai's, or Acre, where the marriage 
 was celebrated with great pomp. 
 
 But even in Ptolemais, the city in which Alexander 
 had been so covered with favours, Philometor was near 
 falling under the treachery of his new son-in-law. He 
 learned that a plot had been formed against his life by 
 Ammonius, and he wrote to Alexander to beg that the 
 traitor might be given up to justice. But Alexander 
 
PHILOMETOE IN ASIA 
 
 237 
 
 acknowledged the plot as his own, and refused to give 
 up his servant. On this, Philometor recalled his daugh- 
 ter, and turned against Alexander the forces which he 
 had led into Sjrria to uphold him. He then sent to the 
 young Demetrius, afterwards called Mcator, the son of 
 his late enemy, to offer him the throne and wife which 
 he had lately given to Alexander Balas. Demetrius was 
 equally pleased with the two offers. Philometor then 
 entered Antioch at the head of his army, and there he 
 was proclaimed by the citizens King of Asia and Egypt; 
 but with a forbearance then very uncommon, he called 
 together the council of the people, and refused the crown, 
 and persuaded them to receive Demetrius as their king. 
 
 It is interesting to note 
 that Alexander Balas and 
 Demetrius Mcator each 
 in his turn acknowledged 
 his debt to the King of 
 Egypt by putting the 
 Ptolemaic eagle on his 
 coins, and adjusting them to the Egyptian standard of 
 weight: and in this they were afterwards followed by 
 Antiochus, the son of Demetrius. The Eomans, on the 
 other hand, sometimes used the same eagle in boast of 
 their power over Egypt; but we cannot be mistaken 
 in what was meant by these Sjrrian kings, who none of 
 them, when their coins were struck, were seated safely 
 on the throne. With them, as with some of the Greek 
 cities of Asia Minor, the use of the Egyptian eagle on 
 the coins was an act of homage. 
 
 COIN OF PTOLEMY V. 
 
238 PHILOMETOE AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 PMlometor and Demetrius, as soon as the latter was 
 acknowledged king at Antioch, then marched against 
 Alexander, routed his army, and drove him into Arabia. 
 But in this battle Philometor's horse was frightened by 
 the braying of an elephant, and threw the king into the 
 ranks of the enemy, and he was taken up covered with 
 wounds. He lay speechless for five days, and the sur- 
 geons then endeavoured to cut out a piece of the broken 
 bone from his skull. He died under the operation: but 
 not before the head of Alexander had been brought to 
 him as the proof of his victory. 
 
 Thus fell Ptolemy Philometor in the forty-second 
 year of his age. His reign began in trouble; before he 
 reached the years of manhood the country had been over- 
 run by foreigners, and torn to pieces by civil war; but 
 he left the kingdom stronger than he found it, a praise 
 which he alone can share with Ptolemy Soter. He was 
 alike brave and mild; he was the only one of the race 
 who fell in battle, and the only one whose hands were 
 imstained with civil blood. At an age and in a country 
 when poison and the dagger were too often the means 
 by which the king's authority was upheld, when good- 
 ness was little valued, and when conquests were thought 
 the only measure of greatness, he spared the life of a 
 brother taken in battle, he refused the crown of Syria 
 when offered to him; and not only no one of his friends 
 or kinsmen, but no citizen of Alexandria, was put to 
 death during the whole of his reign. We find grateful 
 inscriptions to his honour at the city of Citium in Cyprus, 
 in the island of Therse, and at Methone in Argolis. 
 
EUERGETES SEIZES THE THRONE 239 
 
 Philometor had reigned thirty-five years in all; 
 eleven years alone, partly while under age, then six years 
 jointly with his brother, Euergetes 11., and eighteen 
 more alone while his brother reigned in Cyrene. He 
 married his sister Cleopatra, and left her a widow, with 
 two daughters, each named Cleopatra. The elder daugh- 
 ter we have seen offered to Euergetes, then married to 
 Alexander Balas, and lastly to Demetrius. The younger 
 daughter, afterwards known by the name of Cleopatra 
 Cocce, was stUl in the care of her mother. He had most 
 likely had three sons. One perhaps had been the pupil 
 of Aristarchus, and died before his father; as the little 
 elegy by Antipator of Sidon, which is addressed to the 
 dead child, on the grief of his father and mother, would 
 seem to be meant for a son of Philometor. A second 
 son was murdered, and a third lived in Syria. 
 
 On the death of Philometor, his widow, Cleopatra, 
 and some of the chief men of Alexandria proclaimed his 
 young son king, most likely under the name of Ptolemy 
 Eupator; but Euergetes, whose claim was favoured by 
 the mob, marched from Cyrene to Alexandria to seize 
 the crown of Egypt. Onias the Jew defended the city 
 for Cleopatra; but a peace was soon made by the help 
 of Thermus, the Roman ambassador, and on this the 
 gates of Alexandria were opened. It was agreed that 
 Euergetes should be king, and marry Cleopatra, his sis- 
 ter and his brother's widow. We may take it for granted 
 that one article of the treaty was that her son should 
 reign on the death of his uncle; but Euergetes, forget- 
 ting that he owed his own life to Philometor, and also 
 
240 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES U. 
 
 disregarding the Romans who were a party to the treaty, 
 had the boy put to death on the day of the marriage. 
 
 The Alexandrians, after the vices and murders of 
 former kings, could not have been much struck by the 
 behaviour of Euergetes towards his family; but he was 
 not less cruel towards his people. Alexandria, which he 
 had entered peaceably, was handed over to the unbridled 
 cruelty of the mercenaries, and blood flowed in every 
 street. The anger of Euergetes fell more particularly 
 on the Jews for the help which they had given to Cleo- 
 patra, and he threatened them with utter destruction. 
 The threat was not carried into execution; but such was 
 the Jews' alarm, that they celebrated a yearly festival 
 in Alexandria for several hundred years, in thankfulness 
 for their escape from it. The population of the city, 
 who looked upon it less as a home than as a place of 
 trade in which they could follow their callings with the 
 greatest gain, seemed to quit Alexandria as easily as 
 they had come there under Ptolemy Soter; and Euer- 
 getes, who was afraid that he should soon be left to 
 reign over a wilderness, made new laws in favour of 
 trade and of strangers who would settle there. 
 
 In the lifetime of Philometor he had never laid aside 
 his claim to the throne of Egypt, but had only yielded 
 to the commands of Rome and to his brother's forces, 
 and he now numbered the years of his reign from his 
 former seizing of Alexandria. He had reigned six years 
 with his brother, and then eighteen years in Cyrene, 
 and he therefore called the first year of his real reign 
 the twenty-fifth. 
 
CLEOPATRA DIVORCED 
 
 241 
 
 In the next year he went to Memphis to be crowned; 
 and, while the pomps and rites were there being per- 
 formed, his queen and sister bore him a son, whom, from 
 the place and to please the people, he named Memphites. 
 But his queen was already in disgrace; and some of 
 those very friends who on his brother's death had 
 marched with him against Alexandria were publicly put 
 to death for speaking ill 
 of his mistress Irene. 
 He soon afterwards put 
 away his wife and mar- 
 ried her younger daugh- 
 ter, his niece, Cleopatra 
 Cocce, The divorced 
 Cleopatra was allowed 
 to keep her title; and, 
 as she was the widow of 
 the late king, she held 
 a rank in the state be- 
 fore the wife of the 
 reigning king. Thus, 
 the small temple of 
 Hathor in the island of Philae was dedicated to the god- 
 dess in the name of King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra 
 his sister, and Queen Cleopatra his wife, designated as 
 the gods Euergetse. 
 
 The Roman senate, however, felt its authority slighted 
 by this murder of the young Eupator, and divorce of 
 Cleopatra, both of whom were living under its protec- 
 tion. The late ambassador, Thermus, by whose treachery 
 
 
 
 1 1 [7 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 ^^Effl^H 
 
 ^^^^^^ 
 
 ^^^M^^^ 
 
 
 ^H^M 
 
 ^- 
 
 ^^^^p 
 
 
 --==nm^ 
 
 IH 1 t 1 
 
 TEMPLE OP HATHOR AT PHILSi. 
 
242 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 or folly Euergetes had been enabled to crush his rivals 
 and gain the sovereign power, was on his return to Rome 
 called to account for his conduct. Cato the Censor, in 
 one of his great speeches, accused him of having been 
 seduced from his duty by the love of Egyptian gold, and 
 of having betrayed the queen to the bribes of Euergetes. 
 In the meanwhile Scipio Africanus the younger and two 
 other Roman ambassadors were sent by the senate to see 
 that the kingdom of their ally was peaceably settled. 
 Euergetes went to meet him with great pomp, and re- 
 ceived him with all the honours due to his rank; and the 
 whole city followed him in crowds through the streets 
 eager to catch a sight of the conqueror of Carthage, of the 
 greatest man who had been seen in Alexandria, of one 
 who by his virtues and his triumphs had added a new 
 glory even to the name of Scipio. He brought with him, 
 as his friend and companion (in the case of a modem 
 ambassador we should say, as his chaplain), the philoso- 
 pher, Pansetius, the chief of the Stoics, who had gained 
 a great name for his three books on the " Duty of Man," 
 which were afterwards copied by Cicero. 
 
 Euergetes showed them over the palace and the treas- 
 ury; but, though the Romans had already begun to run 
 the down-hill race of luxury, in which the Egyptians were 
 so far ahead of them, yet Scipio, who held to the old 
 fashions and plain manners of the republic, was not 
 dazzled by mere gold and purple. But the trade of Alex- 
 andria, the natural harbour, the forest of masts, and the 
 lighthouse, the only one in the world, surpassed anything 
 that his well-stored mind had looked for. He went lay 
 
!; 
 
 LU 
 
 I- 
 
 z 
 
JEWISH STEUGGLE FOR LIBEETY 243 
 
 boat to Memphis, and saw the rich crops on either bank, 
 and the easy navigation of the Nile, in which the boats 
 were sailing up the river by the force of the wind and 
 floating down by the force of the stream. The villages 
 on the river side were large and thickly set, each in the 
 bosom of its own grove of palm-trees; and the crowded 
 population was well fed and well clothed. The Roman 
 statesman saw that nothing was wanting but a good gov- 
 ernment to make Egypt what it used to be, the greatest 
 kingdom in the world. 
 
 Scipio went no higher than Memphis; the buildings 
 of Upper Egypt, the oldest and the largest in the world, 
 could not draw him to Thebes, a city whose trade had 
 fallen off, where the deposits of bullion in the temples 
 had lessened, and whose linen manufacture had moved 
 towards the Delta. Had this great statesman been a 
 Greek he would perhaps have gone on to this city, fa- 
 mous alike in history and in poetry; but, as it was, Scipio 
 and his friends then sailed for Cyprus, Syria, and the 
 other provinces or kingdoms under the power of Rome, 
 to finish this tour of inspection. 
 
 For some time past, the Jews, taking advantage of 
 the weakness of Egypt and Syria, had been struggling 
 to make themselves free; and, at the beginning of this 
 reign Simon Maccabaeus, the high priest, sent an embassy 
 to Rome, with a shield of gold weighing one thousand 
 minae, as a present, to get their independence acknowl- 
 edged by the Romans. On this the senate made a treaty 
 of alliance with the family of the Maccabees, and, using 
 the high tone of command to which they had for some 
 
244 PHILOMETOE AND EUEEGETES II. 
 
 time past been accustomed, they wrote to Euergetes and 
 the King of Syria, ordering them not to make war upon 
 their friends, the Jews. But in an after decree the Ro- 
 mans recognise the close friendship and the trading inter- 
 course between Egypt and Jud^a; and when they de- 
 clared that they would protect the Jews in their right 
 to levy custom-house duties, they made an exception in 
 favour of the Egyptian trade. The people of Judaea in 
 these struggles were glad to forget the jealousy which 
 had separated them from their brethren in Egypt, and 
 the old quarrel between the Hebrews and the Hellenists; 
 the Sanhedrim of Jerusalem wrote to the Sanhedrim of 
 Alexandria, telling them that they were going to keep the 
 Feast of the Tabernacles in solemn thanksgiving to the 
 Almighty for their dehverance, and begging for the ben- 
 efit of their prayers. 
 
 The Jews, however, of Judaea, on their gaining their 
 former place as a nation, did not, as before, carry for- 
 ward the chain of history in their sacred books. While 
 they had been under the yoke of the Babylonians, the 
 Persians, and the Syrians, their language had undergone 
 some changes; and when the Hebrew of the Old Testa- 
 ment was no longer the spoken language, they perhaps 
 thought it unworthy of them to write in any other. At 
 any rate, it is to their Greek brethren in Egypt that we 
 are indebted for the history of the bravery of the Macca- 
 bees. Jason of Cyrene wrote the history of the Macca- 
 bees, and of the Jewish wars against Antiochus Epipha- 
 nes and his son, Antiochus Eupator. This work, which 
 was in five books, is lost, and we now read only the short 
 
THE HEBREW THEOLOGY MODIFIED 245 
 
 history which was drawn from it by some imknown 
 Greek writer, which, with the letter from the Jews of 
 Judsea to their brethren of Egypt, forms the second book 
 of Maccabees. 
 
 In the list of Alexandrian authors, we must not for- 
 get to mention Jesus, the son of Sirach, who came into 
 Egypt in this reign, and translated into Greek the He- 
 brew work of his grandfather Jesus, which is named the 
 Book of Wisdom, or Ecclesiasticus. It is written in 
 imitation of the Proverbs of Solomon; and though its 
 pithy sayings fall far short of the deep wisdom and lofty 
 thoughts which crowd every line of that wonderful work, 
 yet it will always be read with profit and pleasure. In 
 this book we see the earliest example that we now possess 
 of a Jewish writer borrowing from the Greek philoso- 
 phers; though how far the Greek thoughts were part 
 of the original Hebrew may be doubted, because the work 
 was left imfinished by Jesus the grandfather, and 
 completed by the Alexandrian translator, his grandson. 
 Hereafter we shall see the Alexandrian Jews engrafting 
 on the Jewish theology more and more of the Platonic 
 philosophy, which very well suited the serious earnest- 
 ness of their character, and which had a most remarkable 
 effect in making their writings and opinions more fitted 
 to spread into the ancient schools. 
 
 This and other writings of the Alexandrian Jews were 
 by them added to the list of sacred books which together 
 made their Greek Bible; but they were never acknowl- 
 edged at Jerusalem. The Hebrew books of the law and 
 the prophets were first gathered together by Nehemiah 
 
246 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 after the return of the Hebrews from Babylon; but 
 his library had been broken up during the Syrian wars. 
 These Hebrew books, with some few which had since 
 been written, were again got together by Judas Macca- 
 bseus; and after his time nothing more seems to have 
 been added to them, though the Alexandrian Jews con- 
 tinued to add new books to their Greek Bible, while cul- 
 tivating the Platonic philosophy with a success which 
 made a change in their religious opinions. It was in 
 Alexandria, and very much by the help of the Jews, that 
 Eastern and Western opinions now met. Each made 
 some change in the other, and, on the union of the two, 
 Alexandria gave to the world a new form of philosophy. 
 The vices and cruelty of Euergetes called for more 
 than usual skill in the minister to keep down the angry 
 feelings of the people. This skill was found in the gen- 
 eral Hierax, who was one of those men whose popular 
 manners, habits of business, and knowledge of war, make 
 them rise over every difficulty in times of trouble. On 
 him rested the whole weight of the government; his wise 
 measures in part made up for the vices of his master; 
 and, when the treasure of the state had been turned to 
 the king's pleasures, and the soldiers were murmuring 
 for want of pay, Hierax brought forward his own money 
 to quiet the rebellion. But at last the people could bear 
 their grievances no longer; the soldiers without pay, 
 instead of guarding the throne, were its greatest enemies, 
 and the mob rose in Alexandria, set fire to the palace, 
 and Euergetes was forced to leave the city and withdraw 
 to Cyprus. 
 
EUERGETES ATTACKS HIS SISTER 247 
 
 The Alexandrians, when free from their tyrant, sent 
 for Cleopatra, his sister and divorced queen, and set her 
 upon the throne. Her son by Philometor, in whose name 
 she had before claimed the throne, had been put to death 
 by Euergetes; Memphites, one of her sons by Euergetes, 
 was with his father in the island of Cyprus; and Euer- 
 getes, fearing that his first wife Cleopatra and her ad- 
 visers might make use of his son's name to strengthen 
 her throne, had the child at once put to death. The birth- 
 day of Cleopatra was at hand, and it was to be celebrated 
 in Alexandria with the usual pomp; and Euergetes, put- 
 ting the head, hands, and feet of his son Memphites into 
 a box, sent it to Alexandria by a messenger, who had 
 orders to deliver it to Cleopatra in the midst of the feast, 
 when the nobles and ambassadors were making their 
 accustomed gifts. The grief of Cleopatra was only 
 equalled by the anger of the Alexandrians, who the more 
 readily armed themselves under Marsyas to defend the 
 queen against the invasion for which Euergetes was then 
 making preparations. 
 
 The queen's forces shortly marched against the army 
 of Euergetes that was entering Egypt under the com- 
 mand of Hegelochus; but the Egyptian army was beaten 
 on the Syrian frontier. Marsyas was sent prisoner to 
 Euergetes; and the king then showed the only act of 
 mercy which can be mentioned to his praise, and spared 
 the life of a prisoner whom he thought he could make 
 use of. Cleopatra then sent to Syria, to her son-in-law 
 Demetrius, to ask for help, which was at first readily 
 granted, but Demetrius was soon called home again by 
 
248 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 a rising in Antioch. But great indeed must be the cruelty 
 which a people will not bear from their own king rather 
 than call in a foreign master to relieve them. The return 
 of the hated and revengeful Euergetes was not dreaded 
 so much by the Alexandrians as the being made a prov- 
 ince of Syria. Cleopatra received no help from Deme- 
 trius, but she lost the love of her people by asking for 
 it, and she was soon forced to fly from Alexandria. She 
 put her treasures on board a ship, and joined her son 
 Ptolemy and her son-in-law Demetrius in Syria, while 
 Euergetes regained his throne. As soon as Euergetes 
 was again master of Egypt, it was his turn to be revenged 
 upon Demetrius; and he brought forward Zabbineus, a 
 young Egyptian, the son of Protarchus, a merchant, and 
 sent him into Syria with an army to claim the throne 
 under the name of Alexander, the adopted son of Anti- 
 ochus. Alexander easily conquered and then put to 
 death Demetrius, but, when he found that he really was 
 King of Syria, he would no longer receive orders from 
 Egypt; and Euergetes found that the same plots and 
 forces were then wanted to put down this puppet, which 
 he had before used to set him up. He began by making 
 peace with his sister Cleopatra, who was again allowed 
 to return to Egypt; and we find her name joined with 
 those of Euergetes and his second queen in one of the 
 public acts of the priests. He then sent an army and 
 his daughter Tryphsena in marriage to Antiochus Grypus, 
 one of the sons of Demetrius, who gladly received his 
 help, and conquered Alexander and gained the throne 
 of his father. 
 
OBELISK AT HELIOPOLIS. 
 
THE NUBIAN GOLD MINES 251 
 
 We possess a curious inscription upon an obelisk that 
 once stood in the island of Philae, recording, as one of 
 the grievances that the villagers smarted under, the 
 necessity of finding supplies for the troops on their 
 marches, and also for all the government messengers and 
 public servants, or those who claimed to travel as such. 
 The cost of this grievance was probably greater at Philae 
 than in other places, because the traveller was there 
 stopped in his voyage by the cataracts on the Mle, and 
 he had to be supplied with labourers to carry his luggage 
 where the navigation was interrupted. Accordingly the 
 priests at Philae petitioned the king that their temple 
 might be relieved from this heavy and vexatious charge, 
 which they said lessened their power of rightly perform- 
 ing their appointed sacrifices; and they further begged 
 to be allowed to set up a monument to record the grant 
 which they hoped for. Euergetes granted the priests' 
 prayer, and accordingly they set up a small obelisk; and 
 the petition and the king's answer were carved on the 
 base of this monument. 
 
 The gold mines near the Nubian or Golden Berenice, 
 though not so rich as they used to be, were worked with 
 full activity by the unhappy prisoners, criminals, and 
 slaves, who were there condemned to labour in gangs 
 under the lash of their taskmasters. Men and women 
 alike, even old men and children, each at such work as 
 his overstretched strength was equal to, were imprisoned 
 in these caverns tunnelled under the sea or into the side 
 of the mountain; and there by torchlight they suffered 
 the cruel tortures of their overseers without having power 
 
262 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 to make their groans heard above ground. No lot upon 
 earth could be more wretched than that of these unhappy- 
 men; to all of them death would have been thought a 
 boon. 
 
 The survey of the coast of the Red Sea, which was; 
 undertaken in this or the last reign, did not reach beyond 
 the northern half of that sea. It was made by Agathar- 
 cides, who, when the philosopher Heracleides Lembus 
 filled the office of secretary to the government under 
 Philometor, had been his scribe and reader. Agathar- 
 cides gives a curious account of the half -savage people 
 on these coasts, and of the more remarkable animals and 
 products of the country. He was a most judicious his- 
 torian, and gave a better guess than many at the true 
 cause of why there was most water in the Nile in the 
 dry est season of the year; which was a subject of never- 
 ceasing inquiry with the travellers and writers on physics. 
 Thales said that its waters were held back at its mouths 
 by the Etesian winds, which blow from the north during 
 the summer months; and Democritus of Abdera said 
 that these winds carried heavy rain-clouds to Ethiopia; 
 whereas the north winds do not begin to blow till the 
 Nile has risen, and the river has returned to its usual 
 size before the winds cease. Anaxagoras, who was fol- 
 lowed by Euripides, the poet, thought that the large sup- 
 ply of water came from the melting of snow in Ethiopia. 
 Ephorus thought that there were deep springs in the 
 river's bed, which gushed forth with greater force in 
 summer than in winter. Herodotus and CEnopides both 
 thought that the river was in its natural state when the 
 
THE KILOMETER 253 
 
 country was overflowed; and the former said tiiat its 
 waters were lessened ia winter by the attraction of the 
 sun, then over Southern Ethiopia; and the latter said 
 that, as the earth grew cool, the waters were sucked into 
 its pores. The sources of the Nile were hidden by the 
 barbarism of the tribes on its banks; but by this time 
 travellers had reached the region of tropical rains; and 
 Agatharcides said that the overflow in Egypt arose from 
 the rains in Upper Ethiopia. But the Abyssinian rains 
 begin to fall at midsummer, too late to cause the inun- 
 dation in Egypt; and therefore the truth seemed after 
 all to lie with the priests of Memphis, who said the Nile 
 rises on the other side of the equator, and the rain falling 
 in what was winter on that side of the globe made the 
 Nile overflow in the Egyptian siunmer. 
 
 From the very earliest times, says Ebers, the Pha- 
 raohs had understood the necessity of measuring exactly 
 the amount or deficiency of the inundations of the Nile, 
 and Nilometers are preserved which were erected high 
 up the river in Nubia by kings of the Old Empire, by 
 princes, that is to say, who reigned before the invasion 
 of the Hyksos. Herodotus tells us that the river must 
 rise sixteen ells for the immdation to be considered a 
 favourable one. If it remained below this mark, the 
 higher fields failed in obtaining a due supply of water, 
 and a dearth was the result. If it greatly exceeded it, 
 it broke down the dykes, damaged the villages, and had 
 not retired into its bed by the time for sowing the seed. 
 Thus the peasant, who could expect no rain, and was 
 threatened neither by frosts nor storms, could have his 
 
254 
 
 PHILOMETOR AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 prospects of a good or bad harvest read off by the priests 
 with perfect certainty by the scale of the Mlometer, and 
 not by the servants of the divinities only, but by the 
 officers of the realm, who calculated the amount of taxes 
 to be paid to them in proportion to the rising of the river. 
 The standard was protected by the magic power of 
 unapproachable sanctity, and the husbandman has been 
 
 strictly interdicted from 
 the earliest time to this 
 very day from casting a 
 glance at it during the time 
 when the river is rising; for 
 what sovereign could bear 
 to disclose without reserve 
 the decrees of Providence 
 as to the most important 
 of his rights, that of esti- 
 mating the amount of taxes 
 to be imposed'? In the time 
 of the Pharaohs it was the 
 priesthood that declared to 
 the king and to the people 
 their estimate of the inun- 
 dations, and at the present 
 day, the sheik, who is 
 sworn to secrecy, is under 
 the control of the police of Cairo, and has his own Ni- 
 lometer, the zero point of which is said to be somewhat 
 below that of the ancient standard. The engineers of 
 the French expedition first detected the fraud, by means 
 
 NILOMETEB AT BHODHA. 
 
NILE WORSHIP 255 
 
 of which the government endeavoured every year to 
 secure the full amount of taxes. 
 
 When the Nile has reached a height of a little over 
 fifteen old Arabic ells, it exceeds its lowest level by 
 more than eight ells, and has reached the height requi- 
 site to enable it to irrigate the highest fields. This 
 happy event is announced to the people, who await it 
 with breathless anxiety, and the opening of the dykes 
 may be proceeded with. A festival to celebrate this 
 occasion has been held from the remotest times. At the 
 present time customs prevail which can, it is alleged, be 
 traced by direct descent to the times of the Pharaohs, 
 and yet during the dominion of Christianity in Egypt, 
 and later again under sovereigns governing a nation 
 wholly converted to Islam, the old worship of the Nile, 
 with all its splendour, its display, and its strange cere- 
 monies, was extirpated with the utmost rigour. But some 
 portion of every discarded religion becomes merged in 
 the new one that has supplanted it as a fresh form of 
 superstition, and thus we discover from a Christian docu- 
 ment dating from the sixth century, that the rising of 
 the Nile " in its time " was no longer attributed to 
 Osiris, but to a certain Saint Orion, and, as the priest 
 of antiquity taught that a tear of Isis led to the over- 
 flowing of the Nile, so we hear the Egyptians of the pres- 
 ent day say that " a divine tear " has fallen into the 
 stream and caused the flood. 
 
 The trade of the Egyptians had given them very 
 little knowledge of geography. Indeed the whole trade 
 of the ancients was carried on by buying goods from 
 
256 PHILOMETOR AND EUEEGETES II. 
 
 their nearest neighbours on one side, and selling them to 
 those on the other side of them. Long voyages were 
 miknown; and, though the trading wealth of Egypt had 
 mainly arisen from carrying the merchandise of India 
 and Arabia Felix from the ports on the Red Sea to 
 the ports on the Mediterranean, the Egyptians seem to 
 have gained no knowledge of the countries from which 
 these goods came. They bought them of the Arab tra- 
 ders, who came to Cosseir and the Troglodytic Berenice 
 from the opposite coast; the Arabs had probably bought 
 them from the caravans that had carried them across the 
 desert from the Persian Gulf; and that these land jour- 
 neys across the desert were both easier and cheaper than 
 a coasting voyage, we have before learned, from Phila- 
 delphus thinking it worth while to build watering and 
 resting-houses in the desert between Koptos and Bere- 
 nice, to save the voyage between Berenice and Cosseir. 
 India seems to have been only known to the Greeks 
 as a country that by sea was to be reached by the way 
 of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; and though 
 ■Scylax had, by the orders of Darius, dropped down the 
 river Indus, coasted Arabia, and thence reached the 
 Red Sea, this voyage was either forgotten or disbelieved, 
 and in the time of the Ptolemies it seems probable that 
 nobody thought that India could be reached by sea from 
 E]gypt. Arrian indeed thought that the difficulty of 
 carrying water in their small ships, with large crews 
 ■of rowers, was alone great enough to stop a voyage of 
 such a length along a desert coast that could not supply 
 them with fresh water. 
 
Suk el Selah, Cairo 
 
SEA VOYAGES 257 
 
 The long voyages of Solomon and Necho had been 
 limited to coasting Africa; the voyage of Alexander 
 the Great had been from the Indus to the Persian Gulf; 
 hence it was that the court of Euergetes was startled 
 by the strange news that the Arabian guards on the 
 coast of the Red Sea had found a man in a boat by him- 
 self, who could not speak Koptic, but who they after- 
 wards found was an Indian, who had sailed straight 
 from India, and had lost his shipmates. He was willing 
 to show any one the route by which he had sailed; and 
 Eudoxus of Cyzicus in Asia Minor came to Alexandria 
 to persuade Euergetes to give him the command of a 
 vessel for this voyage of discovery. A vessel was given 
 him; and, though he was but badly fitted out, he reached 
 a country, which he called India, by sea, and brought 
 back a cargo of spices and precious stones. He wrote 
 an account of the coasts which he visited, and it was 
 made use of by Pliny. But it is more than probable 
 the unknown country called India, which Eudoxus vis- 
 ited, was on the west coast of Africa. Abyssinia was 
 often caUed India by the ancients. 
 
 In these attempts at maritime discovery, and efforts 
 after a cheaper means of obtaining the Indian products, 
 the Greek sailors of Euergetes made a settlement in 
 the island of Dioscorides, now called Socotara, in the 
 Indian Ocean, forty leagues eastward of the coast of 
 Africa; and there they met the trading vessels from 
 India and Ceylon. This little island continued a Greek 
 colony for upwards of seven centuries, and Greek was 
 the only language spoken there tiU it fell under the 
 
268 PHILOMETOR AND EUEEGETES II. 
 
 Arabs in the twilight of history, when all the European 
 possessions in Africa were overthrown. But the art of 
 navigation was so far unknown that but little use was 
 made of this voyage; the goods of India, which were 
 all costly and of small weight, were still for the most 
 part carried across the desert on camels' backs, and we 
 may remark that at a later period hardly more than 
 twenty small vessels ever went to India in one year 
 during the reigns of the Ptolemies, and that it was not 
 till Egypt was a province of Rome that the trade-winds 
 across the Arabian Sea were found out by Hippalus, 
 a pilot in the Indian trade. The voyage was little known 
 in the time of Pliny; even the learned Propertius seems 
 to have thought that silk was a product of Arabia; and 
 Palmyra and Petra, the two chief cities in the desert, 
 whose whole wealth rested and whose very being hung 
 upon their being watering-places for these caravans, 
 were still wealthy cities in the second century of our 
 era, when the voyage by the Arabian Sea became for 
 the first time easier and cheaper than the journeys across 
 the desert. 
 
 Euergetes had been a pupil of Aristobolus, a learned 
 Jew, a writer of the peripatetic sect of philosophers, 
 one who had made his learning respected by the pagans 
 from his success in cultivating their philosophy; and 
 also of Aristarchus, the grammarian, the editor of 
 Homer; and, though the king had given himself up to 
 the lowest pleasures, yet he held with his crown that 
 love of letters and of learning which had ennobled his 
 forefathers. He was himself an author, and wrote, like 
 
LEARNING UNDER EUERGETES 11. 269 
 
 Ptolemy Soter, his Memorabilia, or an account of what 
 he had seen most remarkable in his lifetime. We may 
 suppose that his writings were not of a very high order; 
 they were quoted by AthensBus, who wrote in the reign 
 of Marcus AureUus; but we learn little else from them 
 than the names of the mistresses of Ptolemy Philadel- 
 phus, and that a flock of pheasants was kept in the palace 
 of Alexandria. He also wrote a commentary on Homer, 
 of which we know nothing. When busy upon literature, 
 he would allow his companions to argue with him till 
 midnight on a point of history or a verse of poetry; 
 but not one of them ever uttered a word against his 
 tyranny, or argued in favour of a less cruel treatment 
 of his enemies. 
 
 In this reign the schools of Alexandria, though not 
 holding the rank which they had gained under Philadel- 
 phus, were still highly thought of. The king still gave 
 public salaries to the professors; and Panaretus, who 
 had been a pupil of the philosopher Arcesilaus, received 
 the very large sum of twelve talents, or ten thousand 
 dollars a year. Sositheus and his rival, the younger 
 Homer, the tragic poets of this reign, have even been 
 called two of the Pleiades of Alexandria; but that was 
 a title given to many authors of very different times, and 
 to some of very little merit. Such indeed was the want 
 of merit among the poets of Alexandria that many of 
 their names would have been unknown to posterity had 
 they not been saved in the pages of the critics and 
 grammarians, and pieced together by the skill of nine- 
 teenth century investigators. 
 
260 
 
 PHILOMETOE AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 But, unfortunately, the larger number of the men 
 of letters had in the late wars taken part with PhUome- 
 tor against the cruel and luxurious Euergetes. Hence, 
 when the streets of Alexandria were flowing with the 
 blood of those whom he called his enemies, crowds of 
 
 TEMPLE OF KOM OMBO. 
 
 learned men left Egypt, and were driven to earn a live- 
 lihood by teaching in the cities to which they then fled. 
 They were all Greeks, and few of them had been born 
 in Alexandria. They had been brought there by the 
 wealth of the country and the favour of the sovereign; 
 and they now withdrew when these advantages were 
 taken away from them. The isles and coasts of the 
 
PAKCHMENT AND PAPYRUS 261 
 
 Mediterranean were so filled with grammarians, phi- 
 losophers, geometers, musicians, schoolmasters, paint- 
 ers, and physicians from Alexandria that the cruelty 
 of Euergetes n., like the taking of Constantinople by 
 the Turks, may be said to have spread learning by the 
 ill-treatment of its professors. 
 
 The city which was then rising highest in arts and 
 letters was Pergamus in Asia Minor, which, under Eu- 
 menes and Attains, was almost taking the place which 
 Alexandria had before held. Its library already held 
 two hundred thousand volumes, and raised a jealousy 
 in the mind of Euergetes. Not content with buying 
 books and adding to the size of his own library, he 
 wished to lessen the libraries of his rivals; and, nettled 
 at the number of volumes which Eumenes had got to- 
 gether at Pergamus, he made a law, forbidding the 
 export of the Egyptian papyrus on which they were 
 written. On this the copiers employed by Eumenes 
 wrote their books upon sheepskins, which were called 
 charta pergamena, or parchment, from the name of the 
 city in which they were written. Thus our own two 
 words, parchment from Pergamus, and paper from pa- 
 pyrus, remain as monuments of the rivalry in book- 
 collecting between the two kings. 
 
 Euergetes was so bloated with disease that his body 
 was nearly six feet round, and he was made weak and 
 slothful by this weight of flesh. He walked with a 
 crutch, and wore a loose robe like a woman's, which 
 reached to his feet and hands. He gave himself up very 
 much to eating and drinking, and on the year that he 
 
262 PHILOMETOE AND EUERGETES II. 
 
 was chosen priest of Apollo by the Cyrenians, he 
 showed his pleasure at the honour by a memorable feast 
 which he gave in a costly manner to all those who had 
 before filled that office. He had reigned six years with 
 his brother, then eighteen years in Cyrene, and lastly 
 twenty-nine years after the death of his brother, and 
 he died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign, and per- 
 haps the sixty-ninth of his age. He left a widow, Cleo- 
 patra Cocce; two sons, Ptolemy and Ptolemy Alexander; 
 and three daughters, Cleopatra, married to her elder 
 brother; Tryphsena, married to Antiochus Grypus; and 
 Selene unmarried; and also a natural son, Ptolemy 
 Apion, to whom by will he left the kingdom of Cyrene; 
 while he left the kingdom of Egypt to his widow and 
 one of his sons, giving her the power of choosing which 
 should be her colleague. The first Euergetes earned 
 and deserved the name, which was sadly disgraced by 
 the second; but such was the fame of Egypt's greatness 
 that the titles of its kings were copied in nearly every 
 Greek kingdom. We meet with the flattering names of 
 Soter, Philadelphus, Euergetes, and the rest, on the 
 coins of Syria, Parthia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Pon- 
 tus, Bactria, and Bithynia; while that of Euergetes, 
 the benefactor, was at last used as another name for a 
 tyrant. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 The weakness of the Ptolemies : Egypt bequeathed to Rome : Pompey, Caesar, 
 and Antony befriend Egypt. 
 
 CARTOUCHE OP 
 SOTER II. 
 
 riN the death of Ptolemy Euergetes 11., 
 his widow, Cleopatra Cocce, would 
 have chosen her yoimger son, Ptolemy 
 Alexander, then a child, for her partner 
 on the throne, most likely because it 
 would have been longer in the course 
 of years before he would have claimed 
 his share of power; but she was forced, by a threat- 
 ened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her elder son 
 king. Before, however, she would do this she made a 
 treaty with him, which would strongly prove, if any- 
 thing were still wanting, the vice and meanness of the 
 Egyptian court. It was, that, although married to his 
 sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should 
 put her away, and marry his younger sister Selene; 
 because the mother hoped that Selene would be false to 
 her husband's cause, and weaken his party in the state 
 by her treachery. 
 
 263 
 
264 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 Ptolemy took the name of Soter n., though he is 
 more often called Lathyrus, from a stain upon his face 
 in the form of an ivy-leaf, pricked into his skin in honour 
 of Osiris. He was also called Philometor; and we learn 
 from an inscription on a temple at Apollinopolis Parva, 
 that both these names formed part of the style in which 
 the public acts ran in this reign; it is dedicated by " the 
 Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy, gods Philometores, 
 Soteres, and his children," without mentioning his wife. 
 Here, as in Persia and Judaea, the king's mother often 
 held rank above his wife. The name of Philometor was 
 given to him by his mother, because, though he had 
 reached the years of manhood, she wished to act as his 
 guardian; but her unkindness to him was so remarkable 
 that historians have thought that it was a nickname. 
 The mother and the son were jointly styled sovereigns 
 of Egypt; but they lived apart, and in distrust of one 
 another, each surrounded by personal friends; while 
 Cleopatra's stronger mind and greater skill in king- 
 craft gained for her the larger share of power, and the 
 effective control of Egypt, 
 
 Cleopatra, the daughter, put away by her husband at 
 the command of her mother, soon made a treaty of mar- 
 riage with Antiochus Cyzicenus, the friend of her 
 late husband, who was struggling for the throne of 
 Syria with his brother, Antiochus Grypus, the husband 
 of her sister Tryphsena; and on her way to Syria she 
 stopped at Cyprus, where she raised a large army and 
 took it with her as her dower, to help her new husband 
 against his brother and her sister- 
 
TRYPH^NA'S CRUELTY 265 
 
 With this addition to his army Cyzicenus thought 
 his forces equal to those of his brother; he marched 
 against him and gave him battle. But he was beaten, 
 and he fled with his wife Cleopatra; and they shut them- 
 selves up in the city of Antioch. Grypus and Tryphsena 
 then laid siege to the city, and the astute Tryphsena 
 soon took her revenge on her sister for coming into Syria 
 to marry the brother and rival of her husband. The city 
 was taken; and Tryphsena ordered her sister to be torn 
 from the temple into which she had fled, and to be put 
 to death. In vain Grypus urged that he did not wish 
 his victory to be stained by the death of a sister; that 
 Cleopatra was by marriage his sister as weU as hers; 
 that she was the aunt of their children; and that the 
 gods would punish them if they dragged her from the 
 altar. But Tryphsena was merciless and unmoved; she 
 gave her own orders to the soldiers, and Cleopatra was 
 killed as she clung with her arms to the statue of the 
 goddess. This cruelty, however, was soon overtaken 
 by punishment: in the next battle Cyzicenus was the 
 conqueror, and he put Tryphsena to death, to quiet, as 
 was said, the ghost of her murdered sister. 
 
 In the third year of her reign Cleopatra Cocce gave 
 the island of Cyprus to her yoimger son, Alexander, as 
 an independent kingdom, thinking that he would be of 
 more use to her there, in upholding her power against 
 his brother Lathyrus, than he could be at Alexandria. 
 
 In the last reign Eudoxus had been entrusted by 
 Euergetes with a vessel and a cargo for a trading voyage 
 of discovery towards India; and in this reign he was 
 
266 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 again sent by Cleopatra down the Red Sea to trade with 
 the unknown countries in the east. How far he went 
 may be doubted, but he brought back with him from the 
 coast of Africa the prow of a ship ornamented with a 
 horse's head, the usual figurehead of the Carthaginian 
 ships. This he showed to the Alexandrian pilots, who 
 knew it as belonging to one of the Phoenician ships of 
 Cadiz or Gibraltar. Eudoxus justly argued that this 
 prow proved that it was possible to sail round Africa 
 and to reach India by sea from Alexandria. The gov- 
 ernment, however, would not fit him out for a third 
 voyage; but his reasons were strong enough to lead 
 many to join him, and others to help him with money, 
 and he thereby fitted out three vessels on this attempt 
 to sail round Africa by the westward voyage. He passed 
 the Pillars of Hercules, or Straits of Gibraltar, and then 
 turned southward. He even reached that part of Africa 
 where the coast turns eastward. Here he was stopped 
 by his ships wanting repair. The only knowledge that 
 he brought back for us is, that the natives of that west- 
 ern coast were of nearly the same race as the Ethiopians 
 on the eastern coast. He was able to sail only part of 
 the way back, and he reached Mauritania with difficulty 
 by land. He thence returned home, where he met with 
 the fate not unusual to early travellers. His whole story 
 was doubted; and the geographers at home did not 
 believe that he had ever visited the countries that he 
 attempted to describe. 
 
 The people of Lower Egypt were, ^s we have seen, 
 of several races ; and, as each of the surrounding nations 
 
CLEOPATRA'S CRAFT 267 
 
 was in its turn powerful, that race of men was upper- 
 most in Lower Egypt. Before the fall of Thebes the 
 Kopts ruled in the Delta; when the free states of Greece 
 held the first rank in the world, even before the time 
 of Alexander's conquests, the Greeks of Lower Egypt 
 were masters of their fellow-countrymen; and now that 
 Judaea, under the bravery of the Maccabees, had gained 
 among nations a rank far higher than what its size 
 entitled it to, the Egyptian Jews found that they had 
 in the same way gained weight in Alexandria. Cleo- 
 patra had given the command of her army to two Jews, 
 Chelcias and Ananias, the sons of Onias, the priest of 
 Heliopolis; and hence, when the civil war broke out 
 between the Jews and Samaritans, Cleopatra helped the 
 Jews, and perhaps for that reason Lathyrus helped the 
 Samaritans. He sent six thousand men to his friend, 
 Antiochus Cyzicenus, to be led against the Jews, but 
 this force was beaten by the two sons of Hyrcanus, the 
 high priest. 
 
 By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will 
 of the Jews of Lower Egypt, and hence Cleopatra again 
 ventured to choose her own partner on the throne. She 
 raised a riot in Alexandria against him, in the tenth 
 year of their reign, on his putting to death some of her 
 friends, or more likely, as Pausanias says, by showing 
 to the people some of her eunuchs covered with blood, 
 who she said were wounded by him; and she forced 
 him to fly from Egypt. She took from him his wife, 
 Selene, whom she had before thrust upon him, and who 
 had borne him two children; and she allowed him to 
 
268 
 
 ROMA^ nSTFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 withdraw to the kingdom of Cyprus, from which place 
 she recalled her favourite son, Alexander, to reign with 
 her in Egypt. 
 
 During these years the building was going forward 
 of the beautiful temple at the city, afterwards named 
 by the Romans Contra-Latopolis, on the other side of 
 the Nile from Latopolis or Esne. Little now remains 
 of it but its massive portico, upheld by two rows of four 
 columns each, having the globe with outstretched wings 
 carved on the overhanging eaves. The earliest names 
 
 TEMPLE PORTICO AT CONTRA - LATOPOLIS. 
 
 found among the hieroglyphics with which its walls are 
 covered are those of Cleopatra Cocce and her son, Ptol- 
 emy Soter, while the latest name is that of the Emperor 
 Commodus. Even under Cleopatra Cocce, who was 
 nearly the worst of the family, the building of these 
 great temples did not cease. 
 
 The two sons were so far puppets in the hands of 
 their clever mother, that on the recall of Alexander no 
 change was seen in the government beyond that of the 
 names which were placed at the head of the public acts. 
 The former year was called the tenth of Cleopatra and 
 
EVENTS IN JUD^A 269 
 
 Ptolemy Soter, and this year was called the eleventh 
 of Cleopatra and eighth of Ptolemy Alexander; as Alex- 
 ander counted his years from the time when he was 
 sent with the title of king to Cyprus. As he was, like 
 his brother, under the guidance of his mother, he was 
 like him in the hieroglyphical inscriptions called mother- 
 loving. 
 
 While the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria were alike 
 weakened by civil wars and by the vices of their kings, 
 Judasa, as we have seen, had risen under the wise gov- 
 ernment of the Maccabees to the rank of an independent 
 state; and latterly Aristobulus, the eldest son of Hyr- 
 canus, and afterwards Alexander Jannseus, his second 
 son, had made themselves kings. But Gaza, Ptolemais, 
 and some other cities, bravely refused to part with their 
 liberty, and sent to Lathyrus, then King of Cyprus, for 
 help. This was not, however, done without many mis- 
 givings; for some were wise enough to see that, if Lathy- 
 rus helped them, Cleopatra would, on the other hand, 
 help their king, Jannaeus; and when Lathyrus landed 
 at Sicaminos with thirty thousand men, the citizens of 
 Ptolemais refused even to listen to a message from him. 
 
 The city of Gaza then eagerly sent for the help which 
 the city of Ptolemais refused. Lathyrus drove back 
 Jannaeus, and marched upon Asochis, a city of Galilee, 
 where he scaled the walls on the Sabbath Day, and took 
 ten thousand prisoners and a large booty. He then sat 
 down before the city of Saphoris, but left it on hearing 
 that Jannaeus was marching against him on the other 
 side of the Jordan, at the head of a force larger than 
 
270 EOMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 his own. He crossed the river in face of the Jewish 
 army, and routed it with great slaughter. The Jewish 
 historian adds, that between thirty and fifty thousand 
 men were slain upon the field of battle, and that the 
 women and children of the neighbouring villages were 
 cruelly put to death. 
 
 Cleopatra now began to fear that her son Lathyrus 
 would soon make himself too powerful, if not checked 
 in his career of success, and that he might be able to 
 march upon Egypt. She therefore mustered her forces, 
 and put them under the command of Chelcias and 
 Ananias, her Jewish generals. She sent her treasure, 
 her will, and the children of Alexander, to the island 
 of Cos, as a place of safety, and then marched with the 
 army into Palestine, having sent forward her son Alex- 
 ander with the fleet. By this movement Lathyrus was 
 unable to keep his ground in Coele-Syria, and he took 
 the bold step of marching towards Egypt. But he was 
 quickly followed by Chelcias, and his army was routed, 
 though Chelcias lost his life in the battle. Cleopatra, 
 after taking Ptolemais, sent part of her army to help 
 that which had been led by Chelcias; and Lathyrus was 
 forced to shut himself up in Gaza. Soon after this the 
 campaign ended, by Lathyrus returning to Cyprus, and 
 Cleopatra to Egypt. 
 
 On this success, Cleopatra was advised to seize upon 
 the throne of Jannseus, and again to add to Egypt the 
 provinces of Palestine and Coele-Syria, which had so 
 long made part of the kingdom of her forefathers. She 
 yielded, however, to the reasons of her general Ananias, 
 
GYRENE BEQUEATHED TO ROME 271 
 
 for the Jews of Lower Egypt were too strong to be 
 treated with slight. It was by the help of the Jews that 
 Cleopatra had driven her son Lathyrus out of Egypt; 
 they formed a large part of the Egyptian armies, which 
 were no longer even commanded by Greeks; and it must 
 have been by these clear and unanswerable reasons that 
 Ananias was able to turn the queen from the thoughts 
 of this conquest, and to renew the league between Egypt 
 and Judaea. 
 
 Cleopatra, however, was still afraid that Lathyrus 
 would be helped by his friend Antiochus Cyzicenus to 
 conquer Egypt, and she therefore kept up the quarrel 
 between the brothers by again sending troops to help 
 Antiochus Grypus; and lastly, she gave him in marriage 
 her daughter Selene, whom she had before forced upon 
 Lathyrus. She then sent an army against Cyprus; and 
 Lathyrus was beaten and forced to fly from the island. 
 
 In the middle of this reign died Ptolemy Apion, King 
 of Cyrene. He was the half-brother of Lathyrus and 
 Alexander, and, having been made King of Cyrene by 
 his father Euergetes II., he had there reigned quietly 
 for twenty years. Being between Egjrpt and Carthage, 
 then called the Roman province of Africa, and having no 
 army which he could lead against the Roman legions, 
 he had placed himself under the guardianship of Rome; 
 he had bought a truce during his lifetime, by making 
 the Roman people his heirs in his wUl, so that on his 
 death they were to have his kingdom. Cyrene had been 
 part of Egypt for above two hundred years, and was 
 usually governed by a younger son or brother of the 
 
272 EOMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 king. But on the death of Ptolemy Apion, the Roman 
 senate, who had latterly been grasping at everything 
 within their reach, claimed his kingdom as their inheri- 
 tance, and in the flattering language of their decree by 
 which the country was enslaved, they declared Cyrene 
 free. Prom that time forward it was practically a 
 province of Rome. 
 
 Ptolemy Alexander, who had been a mere tool in the 
 hands of his mother, was at last tired of his gilded chains ; 
 but he saw no means of throwing them off, or of gaining 
 that power in the state which his birth and title, and 
 the age which he had then reached, ought to have given 
 him. The army was in favour of his mother, and an 
 unsuccessful effort would certainly have been punished 
 with death; so he took perhaps the only path open to 
 him: he left Egypt by stealth, and chose rather to quit 
 his throne and palace than to live surrounded by the 
 creatures of his mother and in daily fear for his life. 
 
 Cleopatra might well doubt whether she could keep 
 her throne against both her sons, and she therefore sent 
 messengers with fair promises to Alexander, to ask him 
 to return to Egypt. But he knew his mother too well 
 ever again to trust himself in her hands; and while 
 she was taking steps to have him put to death on his 
 return, he formed a plot against her life by letters. In 
 this double game Alexander had the advantage of his 
 mother; her character was so well known that he needed 
 not to be told of what was going on; while she perhaps 
 thought that the son whom she had so long ruled as a 
 child would not dare to act as a man. Alexander's plot 
 
PLOT AND DEATH OF ALEXANDER 273 
 
 was of the two the best laid, and on his reaching Egypt 
 his mother was put to death. 
 
 But Alexander did not long enjoy the fruits of his 
 murder. The next year the Alexandrians rose against 
 him in a fury. He was hated not so much perhaps for 
 the murder of his mother as for the cruelties which he 
 had been guilty of, or at least had to bear the blame of, 
 while he reigned with her. His own soldiers turned 
 against him, and he was forced to seek his safety by 
 flying on board a vessel in the harbour, and he left Egypt 
 with his wife and daughter. He was followed by a fleet 
 under the command of Tyrrhus, but he reached Myrae, 
 a city of Lycia, in safety; and afterwards, in crossing 
 over to Cyprus, he was met by an Egyptian fleet under 
 Ohsereas, and killed in battle. 
 
 Though others may have been guilty of more crimes, 
 Alexander had perhaps the fewest good qualities of any 
 of the family of the Lagidae. During his idle reign of 
 twenty years, in which the crimes ought in fairness to 
 be laid chiefly to his mother, he was wholly given up to 
 the lowest and worst of pleasures, by which his mind 
 and body were alike ruined. He was so bloated with 
 vice and disease that he seldom walked without crutches ; 
 but at his feasts he could leap from his raised couch and 
 dance with naked feet upon the floor with the compan- 
 ions of his vices. He was blinded by flattery, ruined 
 by debauchery, and hated by the people. 
 
 His coins are not easily known from those of the other 
 kings, which also bore the name of " Ptolemy the king " 
 round the eagle. Some of the coins of his mother have 
 
274 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 the same words round the eagle on the one side, while 
 on the other is her head, with a helmet formed like the 
 head of an elephant, or her head with the name of 
 " Queen Cleopatra." There are other coins with the 
 usual head of Jupiter, and with two eagles to point out 
 the joint sovereignty of herself and son. 
 
 Few buildings or parts of buildings mark the reign 
 of Ptolemy Alexander; but his name is not wholly un- 
 known among the sculptures of 
 Upper Egypt. On the walls of 
 the temple of ApoUinopolis 
 Magna he is represented as 
 
 com OF CLEOPATRA AND Makiug au ofEerlug to the god 
 ALEXANDER. Rorus. There the Egyptian 
 
 artist has carved a portrait of this Greek king, whom 
 he perhaps had never seen, clothed in a dress which he 
 never wore, and worshipping a god whom he may have 
 hardly known by name. 
 
 History has not told us who was the first wife of 
 Alexander, but he left a son by her named after him- 
 self Ptolemy Alexander, whom we have seen sent by his 
 grandmother for safety to the island of Cos, the fortress 
 of the family, and a daughter whom he carried with 
 him in his flight to Lycia. His second wife was Cleo- 
 patra Berenice, the daughter of his brother Lathyrus, 
 by whom he had no children, and who is called in the 
 hieroglyphics his queen and sister. 
 
 On the flight of Alexander, the Alexandrians sent 
 an embassy to Cyprus to bring back Soter H., or Lathy- 
 rus, as he is called; and he entered Egypt without any 
 
LATHYEUS EESTORED 275 
 
 opposition. He had reigned ten years with his mother, 
 and then eighteen years by himself in Cyprus; and 
 during those years of banishment had shown a wisdom 
 and good behaviour which must have won the esteem 
 of the Alexandrians, when compared with his younger 
 brother Alexander. He had held his ground against 
 the fleets and armies of his mother, but either through 
 weakness or good feeling had never invaded Egypt. 
 
 His reign is remarkable for the rebellion and ruin 
 of the once powerful city of Thebes. It had long been 
 falling in trade and in wealth, and had lost its superi- 
 ority in arms; but its temples, like so many citadels, 
 its obelisks, its colossal statues, and the tombs of its 
 great kings still remained, and with them the memory 
 of its glory then gone by. The hieroglyphics on the walls 
 stni recounted to its fallen priests and nobles the prov- 
 inces in Europe, Asia, and Africa which they once gov- 
 erned, and the weight of gold, silver, and corn which 
 these provinces sent as 
 a yearly tribute. The 
 paintings and sculptures 
 showed the men of all 
 nations and of all col- 
 ours, irom the -Latar Ot coin op cleopatra and Alexander, 
 
 ■ 1 J 1 1 n -x-r WITH EAGLES. 
 
 the north to the Negro 
 
 of the south, who had graced the triumphs of their kings : 
 and with these proud trophies before their eyes they had 
 been bending under the yoke of Euergetes 11. and Cleo- 
 patra Cocce for about fifty years. So small a measure 
 of justice has usually been given to a conquered people 
 
276 
 
 EOMAIf INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 by their rulers, that their highest hopes have risen to 
 nothing more than an escape from excess of tyranny. 
 If life, property, female honour, national and religious 
 feelings have not been constantly and wantonly out- 
 raged, lesser evils have been patiently endured. Polit- 
 ical servitude, heavy taxes, daily ill-treatment, and occa- 
 sional cruelty the Thebans had borne for two centuries 
 and a half under their Greek masters, as no less the 
 
 THE MEMNONIDM AT THEBES. 
 
 lot of humanity than poverty, disease, and death. But 
 under the government of Cleopatra Cocce the measure 
 of their injuries overflowed, and taking advantage of 
 the revolutions in Alexandria, a large part of Upper 
 Egypt rose in rebelUon. 
 
 We can therefore hardly wonder that when Lathyrus 
 landed in Egypt, and tried to recall the troubled cities to 
 quiet government and good order, Thebes should have 
 refused to obey. The spirit of the warriors who followed 
 Eamses to the shores of the Black Sea was not quite 
 
THE FALL OF THEBES 277 
 
 dead. For three years the brave Kopts, entrenched 
 within their temples, every one of which was a castle, 
 withstood his armies; but the bows, the hatchets, and the 
 chariots could do little against Greek arms; while the 
 overthrow of the massive temple walls, and the utter ruin 
 of the city, prove how slowly they yielded to greater skill 
 and numbers, and mark the conqueror's distrust lest the 
 temples should be again so made use of. Perhaps the 
 only tune before when Thebes had been stormed after 
 a long siege was when it first fell under the Persians; and 
 the ruin which marked the footsteps of Cambyses had 
 never been wholly repaired. But the wanton cruelty of 
 the foreigners did little mischief, when compared with 
 the unpitying and unforgiving distrust of the native con- 
 querors. The temples of Tentyra, ApoUinopoUs, Latop- 
 olis, and Philae show that the massive Egyptian build- 
 ings, when let alone, can withstand the wear of time for 
 thousands of years; but the harder hand of man works 
 much faster, and the wide acres of Theban ruins prove 
 alike the greatness of the city and the force with which 
 it was overthrown; and this is the last time that Egyp- 
 tian Thebes is met with in the pages of history. 
 
 The traveller, whose means and leisure have allowed 
 him to reach the spot, now counts the Arab villages which 
 have been bmlt within the city's bounds, and perhaps 
 pitches his tent in the open space in the middle of them. 
 But the ruined temples still stand to call forth his won- 
 der. They have seen the whole portion of time of which 
 history keeps the reckoning roll before them; they have 
 seen kingdoms and nations rise and fall: Babylonians, 
 
278 ROMAJ^ INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 Assyrians, Hebrews, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. 
 They have seen the childhood of all that we call ancient; 
 and they still seem likely to stand, to tell their tale to 
 those who will hereafter call us ancients. After this 
 rebellion, Lathyrus reigned in quiet, and was even able 
 to be of use to his Greek allies; and the Athenians, in 
 gratitude, set up statues of bronze to him and Berenice, 
 his daughter. 
 
 During this reign, the Romans were carrying on a 
 war with Mithridates, King of Pontus, in Asia Minor; 
 and Sulla, who was then at the head of the republic, 
 sent Lucullus, the soldier, the scholar, and the philoso- 
 pher, as ambassador to Alexandria, to ask for help 
 against the enemy. The Egyptian fleet moved out of 
 harbour to meet him, a pomp which the kings of Egypt 
 had before kept for themselves alone. Lathyrus received 
 him on shore with the greatest respect, lodged him in 
 the palace, and invited him to his own table, an honour 
 which no foreigner had enjoyed since the kings of Egypt 
 had thrown aside the plain manners of the first Ptole- 
 mies. Lucullus had brought with him the philosopher 
 Antiochus of Athens, who had been the pupil of Philo, 
 and they found time to enjoy the society of Dion, the 
 academic philosopher, who was then teaching at Alex- 
 andria; and there they might have been seen with Her- 
 aclitus of Tyre, talking together about the changes 
 which were creeping into the Platonic philosophy, and 
 about the two newest works of Philo, which had just 
 come to Alexandria. Antiochus could not read them 
 without showing his anger: such sceptical opinions had 
 
EELATIONS WITH KOME 279 
 
 never before been heard of in the Academy; but they 
 knew the handwriting of Philo, they were certainly his. 
 Selius and Tetrilius, who were there, had heard him 
 teach the same opinions at Rome, whither he had fled, 
 and where he was then teaching Cicero. The next day, 
 the matter was again talked over with Lucullus, Heracli- 
 tus, Aristus of Athens, Ariston, and Dion; and it ended 
 in Antiochus writing a book, which he named Sosus, 
 against those new opinions of his old master, against the 
 new Academy, and in behalf of the old Academy. 
 
 Lathyrus understood the principles of the balance of 
 power and his own interest too weU to help the Romans 
 to crush Mithridates, and he wisely wished not to quarrel 
 with either. He therefore at once made up his mind not 
 to grant the fleet which Lucullus had been sent to ask 
 for. It had been usual for the kings of Egypt to pay 
 the expenses of the Roman ambassadors while living in 
 Alexandria; and Lathyrus offered four times the usual 
 allowance to Lucullus, beside eighty talents of silver. 
 Lucullus, however, would take nothing beyond his ex- 
 penses, and returned the gifts, which were meant as a 
 civil refusal of the fleet; and, having failed in his em- 
 bassy, he sailed hastily for Cyprus, leaving the wonders 
 of Egypt unvisited. Lathyrus sent a fleet of honour to 
 accompany him on his voyage, and gave him his portrait 
 cut in an emerald. Mithridates was soon afterwards 
 conquered by the Romans; and it was only by skilful 
 embassies and well-timed bribes that Lathyrus was able 
 to keep off the punishment which seemed to await him 
 for having thus disobeyed the orders of Sulla. Egypt 
 
280 EOMAJST INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 was then the only kingdom, to the west of Persia, that 
 had not yet bowed its neck under the Roman yoke. 
 
 The coins of Lathyrus are not easily or certainly 
 known from those of the other Ptolemies; but those 
 of his second wife bear her head on the one side, with 
 the name of '* Queen Selene,^' and on the other side the 
 eagle, with the name of '' King Ptolemy." He had 
 before reigned ten years with his mother, and after his 
 brother's death he reigned six years and a half more; 
 
 but, as he counted the years 
 that he had reigned in Cyprus, 
 he died in the thirty-seventh 
 year of his reign. He left a 
 com OF PTOLEMY LATHYKU8 daugMcr uamcd Berenice, and 
 AND SELENE. ^^^ natural sons, each named 
 
 Ptolemy, one of whom reigned in Cyprus, and the other, 
 nicknamed Auletes, the piper, afterwards gained the 
 throne of Egypt. 
 
 On the death of Lathyrus, or Ptolemy Soter 11., 
 his daughter Cleopatra Berenice, the widow of Ptolemy 
 Alexander, mounted the throne of Egypt in b. c. 80; but 
 it was also clauned by her stepson, the young Alexander, 
 who was then living in Rome. Alexander had been sent 
 to the island of Cos, as a place of safety, when his grand- 
 mother Cleopatra Cocce followed her army into Coele- 
 Syria. But, as the Egyptians had lost the command of 
 the sea, the royal treasure in Cos was no longer out of 
 danger, and the island was soon afterwards taken by 
 Mithridates, King of Pontus, who had conquered Asia 
 Minor. Among the treasures in that island the Alex- 
 
EGYPT BEQUEATHED TO ROME 281 
 
 andrians lost one of the sacred relics of the kingdom, 
 the chlamys or war-cloak which had belonged to Alex- 
 ander the Great, and which they had kept with religious 
 care as the safeguard of the empire. It then fell into 
 the hands of Mithridates, and on his overthrow it be- 
 came the prize of Pompey, who wore it in his triumph 
 at the end of the Mithridatic war. With this chlamys, 
 as had always been foretold by the believers in wonders, 
 Egypt lost its rank among nations, and the command 
 of the world passed to the Romans, who now possessed 
 this time-worn symbol of sovereignty. 
 
 Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of 
 Mithridates; but he afterwards escaped, and reached 
 the army of Sulla, imder whose care he lived for some 
 time in Rome. The Alexandrian prince hoped to gain 
 the throne of his father by means of the friendship of 
 one who could make and unmake kings at his pleasure; 
 and Sulla might have thought that the wealth of Egypt 
 would be at his command by means of his young friend. 
 To these reasons Alexander added the bribe which was 
 then becoming common with the princes who held their 
 thrones by the help of Rome, he made a will, in which 
 he named the Roman people as his heirs; and the senate 
 then took care that the kingdom of Egypt should be a 
 part of the wealth which was afterwards to be theirs 
 by inheritance. After Berenice, his stepmother, had 
 been queen about six months, they sent Mm to Alex- 
 andria, with orders that he should be received as king; 
 and, to soften the harshness of this command, he was 
 told to marry Berenice, and reign jointly with her. 
 
282 EOMAJSr INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 The orders of Sulla, the Roman dictator, were of 
 course obeyed; and the young Alexander landed at 
 Alexandria, as King of Egypt and the friend of Rome. 
 He married Berenice; and on the nineteenth day of his 
 reign, with a cruelty unfortunately too common in this 
 history, he put her to death. The marriage had been 
 forced upon him by the Romans, who ordered all the 
 political affairs of the kingdom; but, as they took no 
 part in the civil or criminal affairs, he seems to have 
 been at liberty to murder his wife. But Alexander was 
 hated by the people as a king thrust upon them by for- 
 eign arms; and Berenice, whatever they might have 
 before thought of her, was regretted as the queen of 
 their choice. Hence his crime met with its reward. His 
 own guards immediately rose upon him; they dragged 
 him from the palace to the gymnasium, and there put 
 him to death. 
 
 Though the Romans had already seized the smaller 
 kingdom of Cyrene under the will of Ptolemy Apion, 
 they could not agree among themselves upon the whole- 
 sale robbery of taking Egypt under the will which Alex- 
 ander had made in their favour. They seized, however, 
 a paltry sum of money which he had left at Tyre as a 
 place of safety; and it was a matter of debate for many 
 years afterwards in Rome, whether they should not claim 
 the kingdom of Egypt. But the nobles of Rome, who 
 sold their patronage to kings for sums equal to the rev- 
 enues of provinces, would have lost much by handing 
 the kingdom over to the senate. Hence the Egyptian 
 monarchy was left standing for two reigns longer. 
 
AULETES OCCUPIES THE THRONE 283 
 
 On the death of Ptolemy Alexander, the Alexandrians 
 might easily have changed their weak and wicked rulers, 
 and formed a government for themselves, if they had 
 known how. The legitimate male line of the Ptolemies 
 came to an end on the death of the young Alexander 11. 
 The two natural sons of Soter II. were then the next in 
 succession; and, as there was no other claimant, the crown 
 f eU to the elder. He was young, perhaps even a minor 
 under the age of fourteen. His claims had been wholly 
 overlooked at the death of his father; for though by 
 the Egyptian law every son was held to be equally legit- 
 imate, it was not so by the Macedonian law. He took 
 the name of Neus Dionysus, or the young Osiris, as we 
 find it written in the hieroglyphics, though he is usually 
 called Auletes, the piper; a name afterwards given him 
 because he was more proud of his skill in playing on the 
 flute than of his very slender knowledge of the art of 
 governing. 
 
 It was in this reign that the historian Diodorus 
 Siculus travelled in Egypt, and wrote his account of the 
 manners and religion of the people. What he tells us 
 of the early Egyptian history is of little value when com- 
 pared with the history by Manetho, who was a native 
 of the country and could read the hieroglyphic records, 
 or even with that by Herodotus; but nevertheless he 
 deserves great praise, and our warmest thanks, for being 
 nearly the first Greek writer when Egyptian learning 
 could no longer be thought valuable; when the religion, 
 though looked down upon, might at any rate be studied 
 with ease— for being nearly the first writer who thought 
 
284 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 the manners of this ancient people, after they had ahnost 
 passed off the page of history, worth the notice of a 
 philosopher. 
 
 Diodorus never quotes Manetho, but follows Herod- 
 otus in making one great hero for the chief actions of 
 antiquity, whom he calls Sesoosis or Sesonchosis. To 
 him he assigns every great work of which the author 
 was unknown, the canals in the Delta, the statue of 
 Amenhothes III., the obelisks of Ramses 11., the distant 
 navigation under Necho, the mounds and trenches dug 
 against Assyrian and Persian invasion, and even the 
 great ship of Ptolemy Philopator; and not knowing that 
 Southern Arabia and even Ethiopia had by the Alex- 
 andrians been sometimes called India, he says that this 
 hero conquered even India beyond the Ganges. On the 
 other hand, the fabulous conquest of the great serpent, 
 the enemy of the human race, which we see sculptured 
 on the sarcophagus of Oimenepthah, he describes as an 
 historic fact of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He 
 teUs us how this huge beast, forty-five feet long, was 
 beaten down by troops of archers, slingers, and cavalry, 
 and brought alive in a net to Alexandria, where Eve's 
 old enemy was shown in a cage for the amusement of the 
 curious citizens. 
 
 Memphis was then a great city; in its crowded 
 streets, its palaces and temples, it was second only to 
 Alexandria. A little to the west stood the pyramids, 
 which were thought one of the seven wonders of the 
 world. Their broad bases, sloping sides, and solid ma- 
 sonry had withstood the weather for ages; and their 
 
PYEAMID VERSUS PAPEE 285 
 
 huge unwieldy stones were a less easy quarry for after 
 builders than the live rock when nearer to the river's 
 side. The priests of Memphis knew the names of the 
 kings who, one after the other, had built a new portico 
 to their great temple of Phtah; but as to when or by 
 whom the pyramids were built, they had perhaps less 
 knowledge than the present day historian. The modern 
 Egyptologist, with his patient investigation, assigns the 
 largest of these three pyramids to Khufui or Kheops, a 
 famous ruler of the fourth dynasty, and the others were 
 erected by his immediate successors. The temple of 
 Phtah, and every other building of Memphis, is now 
 gone, and near the spot stands the great city of Cairo, 
 whose mosques and minarets have been quarried of its 
 ruins, but the pyramids still stand, after fifty-six cen- 
 turies of broken and changing history, unbroken and 
 unchanged. They have outlived any portion of time that 
 their builders could have dreamed of, but their worn 
 surface no longer declares to us their builders' names 
 and history. Their sloping sides, formed to withstand 
 attacks, have not saved the inscriptions which they once 
 held; and the builders, in thus overlooking the reed 
 which was growing in their marshes, the papyrus, to 
 which the great minds of Greece afterwards trusted their 
 undying names, have only taught us how much safer it 
 would have been, in their wish to be thought of and 
 talked of in after ages, to have leaned upon the poet and 
 historian. 
 
 The beautiful temples of Dendera and Latopolis, 
 which were raised by the untiring industry of ages and 
 
286 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 finished iinder the Roman emperors, were begun about 
 this reign. Though some of the temples of Lower Egypt 
 had fallen into decay; and though the throne was then 
 tottering to its faU, the priests in Upper Egypt were still 
 building for immortality. The religion of the Kopts was 
 still flourishing. 
 
 The Egyptian's opinion of the creation was the 
 growth of his own river's bank. The thoughtful man, 
 who saw the Nile every year lay a body of solid manure 
 upon his field, was able to measure against the walls 
 of the old temples that the ground was slowly but 
 certainly rising. An increase of the earth was being 
 brought about by the river. Hence he readily believed 
 that the world itself had of old been formed out of water, 
 and by means of water. The philosophers were nearly 
 of the same opinion. They held that matter was itself 
 eternal, like the other gods, and that our world, in the 
 beginning, before it took any shape upon itself, was hke 
 thin mud, or a mass of water containing all things that 
 were afterwards to be brought forth out of it. When 
 the water had by its divine will separated itself from the 
 earth, then the great Ra, the sun, sent down his quick- 
 ening heat, and plants and animals came forth out of 
 the wet land, as the insects are spawned out of the fields, 
 before the eyes of the husbandman, every autumn after 
 the Nile's overflow has retreated. The crafty priests 
 of the Nile declared that they had themselves visited 
 and dwelt in the caverns beneath the river, where these 
 treasures, while yet unshaped, were kept in store and 
 waiting to come into being. And on the days sacred to 
 
EGYPTIAl^ MYTHS AND THE BIBLE 
 
 287 
 
 the Nile, boys, the children of priestly families, were 
 every year dedicated to the blue river-god that they 
 might spend their youth in monastic retirement, and 
 
 HOKUS ON THE CROCODILES. BULAK MUSEUM. 
 
 as it was said in these caverns beneath his waves. These 
 early Egyptian myths seem to have influenced the com- 
 pilers of the Hebrew Scriptures. The author of the book 
 of Genesis tells us that the Hebrew God formed the earth 
 and its inhabitants by dividing the land from the water, 
 
288 EOMAJST INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 and then commanding them both to bring forth living 
 creatures; and again one of the Psahnists says that his 
 substance, while yet imperfect, was by the Creator curi- 
 ously wrought in the lowest depths of the earth. The 
 Hebrew writer, however, never thinks that any part of 
 the creation was its own creator. But in the Egyptian 
 philosophy sunshine and the river Nile are themselves 
 the divine agents; and hence fire and water received 
 divine honours, as the two purest of the elements; and 
 every day when the temple of Serapis in Alexandria was 
 opened, the singer standing on the steps of the portico 
 sprinkled water over the marble floor while he held forth 
 the fire to the people; and though he and most of his 
 hearers were Greeks, he called upon the god in the Egyp- 
 tian language. 
 
 The inner waUs of the temples glittered with gold 
 and silver and amber, and sparkled with gems from 
 Ethiopia and India; and the recesses were veiled with 
 rich curtains. The costliness was often in striking con- 
 trast with the chief inmate, much to the surprise of the 
 Oreek traveller, who, having leave to examine a temple, 
 had entered the sacred rooms, and asked to be shown 
 the image of the god for whose sake it was built. One 
 of the priests in waiting then approached with a solemn 
 look, chanting a hymn, and pulling aside the veil al- 
 lowed him to peep in at a snake, a crocodile, or a cat, 
 or some other beast, fitter to inhabit a bog or cavern 
 than to lie on a purple cushion in a stately palace. The 
 funerals of the sacred animals were celebrated with great 
 pomp, particularly that of the bull Apis; and at a cost, 
 
OLD CEREMONIES SURVIVE 289 
 
 in one case, of one hundred talents, or eighty-five thou- 
 sand dollars, which was double what Ptolemy Soter, in 
 his wish to please his new subjects, spent upon the Apis 
 of his day. After the fimeral the priests looked for a 
 calf with the right spots, and when they had found one 
 they fattened it for forty days, and brought it to Mem- 
 phis in a boat under a golden awning, and lodged it safely 
 in the temple. The religious feelings of the Egyptians 
 were much warmer and stronger than those of the 
 Greeks or Romans; they have often been accused of 
 
 ^i^KMli0%^Ms^ 
 
 BELIOIOUS PROCESSION ON THE NILE. 
 
 eating one another, but never of eating a sacred animal. 
 Once a year the people of Memphis celebrated the birth- 
 day of Apis with great pomp and expense, and one of the 
 chief ceremonies on the occasion was the throwing a 
 golden dish into the Nile. During the week that these 
 rejoicings lasted, while the sacred river was appeased 
 by gifts, the crocodile was thought to lose its fierceness, 
 its teeth were harmless, and it never attempted to bite; 
 and it was not till six o'clock on the eighth day that this 
 animal again became an object of fear to those whose 
 occupations brought them to the banks of the Nile. Once 
 a year also the statues of the gods were removed from 
 
290 ROMAJSr INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 their pedestals and placed in barges, and thus carried 
 in solenrn procession along the Nile, and only brought 
 back to the temples after some days. It was supposed 
 that the gods were passing these days on a visit to the 
 righteous Ethiopians. 
 
 The cat was at all times one of the animals held 
 most sacred by the Egyptians. In the earliest and latest 
 times we find the statues of their goddesses with cats' 
 heads. The cats of Alexandria were looked upon as so 
 many images of Neith or the Minerva of Sais, a goddess 
 worshipped both by Greeks and Egyptians; and it passed 
 into a proverb with the Greeks, when they spoke of any 
 two things being unKke, to say that they were as much 
 like one another as a cat was to Minerva. It is to Alex- 
 andria also that we trace the story of a cat turned into 
 a lady to please a prince who had fallen in love with it. 
 The lady, however, when dressed in her bridal robes, 
 could not help scampering about the room after a mouse 
 seen upon the floor; and when Plutarch was in Egypt 
 it had already become a proverb, that any one in too 
 much finery was as awkward as a cat in a crocus-col- 
 oured robe. 
 
 So deeply rooted in the minds of the Egyptians was 
 the worship of these animals that, when a Roman soldier 
 had killed a cat imawares, though the Romans were 
 masters of the country, the people rose against him in 
 a fury. In vain the king sent a message to quiet the 
 mob, to let them know that the cat was kiUed by accident; 
 and, though the fear of Rome would most likely have 
 saved a Roman soldier unharmed whatever other crime 
 
ROMAN TOLEEATION 291 
 
 lie nugM have been guilty of, in this case nothing would 
 quiet the people but his death, and he was killed before 
 the eyes of Diodorus, the historian. One nation rises 
 above another not so much from its greater strength or 
 skill in arms as from its higher aim and stronger wish 
 for power. The Egyptians, we see, had not lost their 
 courage, and when the occasion called them out they 
 showed a fearlessness not unworthy of their Theban 
 forefathers; on seeing a dead cat in the streets they 
 rose against the king's orders and the power of Rome; 
 
 EGYPTIAN FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 
 
 had they thought their own freedom or their country's 
 greatness as much worth fighting for, they could perhaps 
 have gained them. But the Egyptians had no civil laws 
 or rights that they cared about; they had nothing left 
 that they valued but their religion, and this the Romans 
 took good care not to meddle with. Had the Romans 
 made war upon the priests and temples, as the Persians 
 had done, they would perhaps in the same way have 
 been driven out of Egypt: but they never shocked the 
 reKgious feelings of the people, and even after Egypt 
 had become a Roman province, when the beautiful tem- 
 ples of Esne, Dendera, and other cities, were dedicated 
 in the names of the Roman emperors, they seldom copied 
 
292 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 the example of Philometor, and put Greek, much less 
 Roman, writing on the portico, but continued to let the 
 walls be covered with hieroglyphical inscriptions. 
 
 The Egyptians, when rich enough to pay for it, stUl 
 had the bodies of their friends embalmed at their death, 
 and made into mummies; though the priests, to save 
 part of the cost, often put the mummy of a man just 
 dead into a mummy-case which had been made and used 
 in the reign of a Thutmosis or an Amenhothes. They 
 thought that every man at his death took upon himself 
 the character of Osiris, that the nurses who laid out the 
 dead body represented the goddesses Isis and Nepthys, 
 while the man who made the mummy was supposed to 
 be the god Anubis. When the embalming was finished, 
 it was part of the funeral to bring the dead man to trial 
 for what he had done when living, and thus to determine 
 whether he was entitled to an honourable burial. The 
 mummy was ferried across the lake belonging to the 
 temple, and taken before the judge Osiris. A pair of 
 scales was brought forth by the dog-headed Anubis and 
 the hawk-headed Horus; and with this they weighed 
 the past life of the deceased. The judge, with the advice 
 of a jury of forty-two, then pronounced the solemn ver- 
 dict, which was written down by the ibis-headed Thot. 
 But hiunan nature is the same in all ages and in all 
 countries, and, whatever might have been the past life 
 of the dead, the judge, not to hurt the feelings of the 
 friends, always declared that he was " a righteous and 
 a good man: " and, notwithstanding the show of truth 
 in the trial, it passed into a proverb to say of a wicked 
 
EMBALMING AND MUMMIES 
 
 293 
 
 man, that he was too bad to be praised even at his 
 funeral. This custom of embahning was thought right 
 by all; but from examining the mummies that have come 
 down to us, it would seem to have been very much con- 
 fined to the priestly families, and seldom used in the 
 case of children. The mummies, however, were highly 
 valued by the survivors of the family, and when from 
 poverty any man was driven to borrow money, the mum- 
 
 MUMMT, MUMMT- CASES, AND CASKET. 
 
 mies were thought good security by the lender, and 
 taken as such for the loan. The mummy-cases indeed 
 could be sold for a large sum, as when made of wood 
 they were covered with painting, and sometimes in part 
 gilt, and often three in mmiber, one enclosing the other. 
 The stone mimmiy-cases were yet more valuable, as they 
 were either of white alabaster or hard black basalt, 
 beautifully polished, in either case carved with hiero- 
 glyphics, and modelled to the shape of the body like 
 the inner wooden cases. 
 
294 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 It is interesting to note here that the pigment known 
 to modern art by the name of mummy is, in many cases, 
 actually prepared from the bituminous substances pre- 
 served within the wrappings of the ancient mummies. 
 The grinding up of mummies imported from Thebes or 
 Memphis for the purpose of enabling the twentieth cen- 
 tury painter to paint the golden tresses of contemporary 
 belles is of course not very extensively carried on, for 
 one mummy will make several thousand tubes of paint, 
 but the practice exists, and of late has been protested 
 against both in England and Prance. 
 
 Though the old laws of Egypt must very much have 
 fallen into disuse during the reigns of the latter Ptol- 
 emies, they had at least been left unchanged; and they 
 teach us that the shadow of freedom may be seen, as 
 in Rome under the Caesars, and in Florence under the 
 Medici, long after the substance has been lost. In quar- 
 rels between man and man, the thirty judges, from the 
 cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, were still 
 guided by the eight books of the law. The king, the 
 priests, and the soldiers were the only landholders 
 in the country, while the herdsmen, husbandmen, and 
 handicraftsmen were thought of lower caste. Though 
 the armies of Egypt were for the most part filled with 
 Greek mercenaries, and the landholders of the order of 
 soldiers could then have had as little to do with arms 
 as knights and esquires have in our days, yet they stiU 
 boasted of the wisdom of their laws, by which arms were 
 only to be trusted to men who had a stake in the country 
 worth fighting for. The old manners had long since 
 
AET OF CARICATUEE 
 
 296 
 
 passed away. The priests alone obeyed the old mar- 
 riage law, that a man should have only one wife. Other 
 men, when rich enough, married several. All children 
 were held equally legitimate, whatever woman was the 
 mother. 
 
 It is to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high 
 feeling was sadly wanting in all classes of society, when 
 literature and art were alike in a very low state, that 
 we may place the rise of caricature in Egypt. We find 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OP EGYPTIAN CABICATTTRE. 
 
 drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation 
 used to hold sacred. The sculptures on the waUs of the 
 temples are copied in little; and cats, dogs, and monkeys 
 are there placed in the attitudes of the gods and kings 
 of old. In one picture we have the mice attacking a 
 castle defended by the cats, copied from a battle-scene 
 of Ramses II. fighting against the Ethiopians. In an- 
 other the king on his throne as a dog, with a second dog 
 behind him as a fan-bearer, is receiving the sacred offer- 
 ings from a cat. In a third the king and queen are seen 
 
296 EOMAJSr INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 playing at chess or checkers in the form of a lion playing 
 with a imicorn or horned ass. 
 
 We may form some opinion of the wealth of Egypt 
 in its more prosperous times when we learn from Cicero 
 that in this reign, when the Romans had good means 
 of knowing, the revenues of the country amoimted to 
 twelve thousand five hundred talents, or ten million 
 dollars; just one-half of which was paid by the port of 
 Alexandria. This was at a time when the foreign trade 
 had, through the faults of the government, simk down 
 to its lowest ebb; when not more than twenty ships 
 sailed each year from the Red Sea to India; when the 
 free population of the kingdom had so far fallen off that 
 it was not more than three millions, which was only half 
 of what it had been in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, 
 though Alexandria alone still held three hundred thou- 
 sand persons. 
 
 But, though much of the trade of the country was 
 lost, though many of the royal works had ceased, though 
 the manufacture of the finer linen had left the country, 
 the digging in the gold mines, the favourite source of 
 wealth to a despot, never ceased. Night and day in the 
 mines near the Golden Berenice did slaves, criminals, 
 and prisoners of war work without pause, chained to- 
 gether in gangs, and guarded by soldiers, who were care- 
 fully chosen for their not being able to speak the lan- 
 guage of these unhappy workmen. The rock which held 
 the gold was broken up into small pieces; when hard it 
 was first made brittle in the fire; the broken stone was 
 then washed to separate the waste from the heavier 
 
NEAB THE MINES OF MAGHAEAH. 
 
DEUNKENNESS Ai^D VICE 299 
 
 grains which held the gold; and, lastly, the valuable 
 parts when separated were kept heated in a furnace for 
 five days, at the end of which time the pure gold was 
 found melted into a button at the bottom. But the mines 
 were nearly worn out; and the value of the gold was a 
 very small part of the thirty-five million dollars which 
 they are said to have yielded every year in the reign 
 of Eamses II. 
 
 As Auletes felt himself hardly safe upon the throne, 
 Ms first wish was to get himself acknowledged as king 
 by the Eoman senate. For this end he sent to Rome a 
 large sum of money to buy the votes of the senators, and 
 he borrowed a further sum of Rabirius Posthumus, one 
 of the richest farmers of the Roman taxes, which he 
 spent on the same object. But though the Romans never 
 tried to turn him out of his kingdom, he did not get the 
 wished-for decree before he went to Rome in the twenty- 
 fourth year of his reign. But we know nothing of the 
 first years of his reign. A nation must be in a very 
 demoraKsed state when its history disproves the saying, 
 fhat the people are happy while their annals are short. 
 There was more virtue and happiness, and perhaps even 
 less bloodshed, with the stir of mind while Ptolemy Soter 
 was at war with Antigonus than during this dull, un- 
 warHke, and vicious time. The king gave himself up to 
 his natural bent for pleasure and debauchery. At times 
 when virtue is uncopied and unrewarded it is usually 
 praised and let alone; but in this reign sobriety was a 
 ■crime in the eyes of the king, a quiet behaviour was 
 -thought a reproach against his irregularities. The 
 
300 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 Platonic philosopher Demetrius was in danger of being 
 put to death because it was told to the king that he 
 never drank wine, and had been seen at the feast of 
 Bacchus in his usual dress, while every other man was 
 in the dress of a woman. But the philosopher was 
 allowed to disprove the charge of sobriety, or at least 
 to make amends for his fault; and, on the king sending 
 for him the next day, he made himself drunk publicly 
 in the sight of all the court, and danced with cymbals 
 in a loose dress of Tarentine gauze. But so few are the 
 deeds worth mentioning in the falling state that we are 
 pleased even to be told that, in the one hundred and sev- 
 enty-eighth Olympiad, Strato of Alexandria conquered 
 in the Olympic games and was crowned in the same day 
 for wrestling, and for pancratium, or wrestling and box- 
 ing joined, these sports being considered among the most 
 honourable in which athletes could contend. 
 
 In the thirteenth year of this reign (b. c. 68), when 
 the war against the pirates called for the whole naval 
 force of Rome, Pompey sent a fleet imder Lentulus 
 Marcellinus to clear the coast and creeks of Egypt from 
 these robbers. The Egyptian government was too weak 
 to guard its own trade; and Lentulus in his consulship 
 put the Ptolemaic eagle and thunderbolt on his coins, 
 to show that he had exercised an act of sovereignty. 
 Three years later, we again meet with the eagle and 
 thunderbolt on the consular coins of Aurelius Cotta; 
 and we learn from Cicero that in that year it was foimd 
 necessary to send a fleet to Alexandria to enforce the 
 orders of the senate. 
 
POMPEY AIDS AULETES 301 
 
 We next find the Roman senate debating whether 
 they should not seize the kingdom as their inheritance 
 under the will of Ptolemy Alexander 11., but, moved 
 by the bribes of Auletes, and perhaps by other reasons 
 which we are not told, they forbore to grasp the prize. 
 In this difficulty Auletes was helped by the great Pom- 
 pey, to whom he had sent an embassy with a golden 
 crown worth four thousand pieces of gold, which met 
 him at Damascus on his Syrian campaign. He then 
 formed a secret treaty with Mithridates, King of Pontus, 
 who was engaged in warfare with the Romans, their 
 common enemy. Auletes was now a widower with six 
 young children, and Mithridates had two daughters; 
 and accordingly it was agreed that one daughter should 
 be married to Auletes, and the other to his brother, the 
 King of Cyprus. But the ruin and death of Mithridates 
 broke off the marriages; and Auletes was able to conceal 
 from the Romans that he had ever formed an alliance 
 with their enemy. 
 
 In the year which was made famous by the consulship 
 of Cicero, Jerusalem was taken by the Roman army 
 imder Pompey; and Judsea, which had enjoyed a short- 
 lived freedom of less than one hundred years under the 
 Maccabees, was then put under a Roman governor. The 
 fortifications of the temple were destroyed. This was 
 felt by the Jews of Lower Egypt as a heavy blow, and 
 from this time their sufferings in that country began. 
 While their brethren had been lords of Judaea, they had 
 held up their heads with the Greeks in Alexandria, but 
 upon the fall of Jerusalem they sunk down to the rank 
 
502 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 of the Egyptians. They thought worse of themselves, 
 and they were thought worse of by others. The Egyptian 
 Jews were very closely allied to the people of the Delta. 
 Though they had been again and again warned by their 
 prophets not to mix with the Egyptians, they seem not 
 to have listened to the warning. They were in many 
 religious points less strict than their brethren in Judaea. 
 The living in Egypt, the building a second temple, and 
 the using a Greek Bible, were all breaches, if not of the 
 law, at least of the tradition. They surrounded their 
 synagogues with sacred groves, which were clearly for- 
 bidden by Moses. Though they were not guilty of wor- 
 shipping images, yet they did not think it wrong to have 
 portraits and statues of themselves. In their dishke of 
 pork, in their washings, and in other Eastern customs, 
 they were like the Egyptians; and hence the Greeks, 
 who thought them both barbarians, very grudgingly 
 yielded to them the privileges of choosing their own 
 magistrates, of having their own courts of justice, and 
 the other rights of citizenship which the policy of the 
 Ptolemies had granted. The Jews, on the other hand, 
 in whose eyes religion was everything, saw the Greeks 
 and Egyptians worshipping the same gods and the same 
 sacred animals, and felt themselves as far above the 
 Greeks in those branches of philosophy which arise out 
 of religion as they were below them in that rank which 
 is gained by success in war. Hence it was with many 
 heartburnings, and not without struggles which shed 
 blood in the streets of Alexandria, that they found them- 
 selves, in the years which ushered in the Christian era, 
 
AULETES FLEES TO ROME 303 
 
 sinking down to the level of the Egyptians, and losing 
 one by one the rights of Macedonian citizenship. 
 
 During these years Auletes had been losing his 
 friends and weakening his government, and, at last, 
 when he refused to quarrel with the senate about the 
 island of Cyprus, the Egyptians rose against Viirn in arms, 
 and he was forced to fly from Alexandria. He took ship 
 for Rome, and in his way there he met Cato, who was 
 at Rhodes on his voyage to Cyprus. He sent to Cato 
 to let him know that he was in the city, and that he 
 wished to see him. But the Roman sent word back that 
 he was unweU, and that if the king wanted to speak to 
 him he must come himself. This was not a time for 
 Auletes to quarrel with a senator, when he was on his 
 way to Rome to beg for help against his subjects; so 
 he was forced to go to Cato's lodgings, who did not even 
 rise from his seat when the king entered the room. But 
 this treatment was not quite new to Auletes; in his flight 
 from Alexandria, in disguise and without a servant, he 
 had had to eat brown bread in the cottage of a peasant; 
 and he now learned how much more irksome it was to 
 wait upon the pleasure of a Roman senator. Cato gave 
 him the best advice; that, instead of going to Rome, 
 where he would find that all the wealth of Egypt would 
 be thought a bribe too small for the greediness of the 
 senators whose votes he wanted, he would do better to 
 return to Alexandria, and make peace with his rebellious 
 subjects. Auletes, however, went on to Italy, and he 
 arrived at Rome in the twenty-fourth year of his reign; 
 and in the three years that he spent there in courting 
 
304 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 and bribing the senators, he learned the truth of Cato's 
 statements, and the value of his advice. 
 
 His brother Ptolemy, who was reigning in Cyprus, 
 was not even so well treated. The Romans passed a 
 law making that wealthy island a Roman province, no 
 doubt upon the plea of the will of Alexander 11. and 
 the king's illegitimacy; and they sent Cato, rather 
 against his will, to turn Ptolemy out of his kingdom. 
 Ptolemy gave up the island without Cato being called 
 upon to use force, and in return the Romans made him 
 high priest in the temple of the Paphian Venus ; but 
 he soon put himself to death by poison. Canidius Cras- 
 sus, who had been employed by Cato in this affair, may 
 have had some fighting at sea with the Egyptians, as 
 on one of his coins we see on one side a crocodile, and 
 on the other the prow of a ship, as if he had beaten the 
 Egyptian fleet in the mouth of the Nile. 
 
 On the flight of their king, the rebellious Alexandrians 
 set on the throne the two eldest of his daughters, Cleo- 
 patra Tryphsena and Berenice, and sent an embassy, at 
 the head of which was Dion, the academic philosopher, 
 to plead their cause at Rome against the king. But the 
 gold of Auletes had already gained the senate; and 
 Cicero spoke, on his behalf, one of his great speeches, 
 now unfortunately lost, in which he rebutted the charge 
 that Auletes was at aU to be blamed for the death of 
 Alexander, whom he thought justly killed by his guards 
 for the murder of his queen and kinswoman. Caesar, 
 whose year of consulship was then drawing to an end, 
 took his part warmly; and Auletes became in debt to 
 
A LOAJ^ TO C^SAR 306 
 
 Tiim in the sum of seventeen million drachmse, or nearly 
 two and a half million dollars, either for money lent to 
 bribe the senators, or for bonds then given to Caesar in- 
 stead of money. By these means Auletes got his title 
 acknowledged; the door of the senate was shut against 
 the Alexandrian ambassadors; and the philosopher Dion, 
 the head of the embassy, was poisoned in Rome by the 
 slaves of his friend Lucceius, in whose house he was 
 dwelling. But nevertheless, Auletes was not able to get 
 an army sent to help him against his rebellious subjects 
 and his daughters; nor was Caesar able to get from the 
 senate, for the employment of his proconsular year, the 
 task of replacing Auletes on the throne. 
 
 This high employment was then sought for both by 
 Lentulus and by Pompey. The senate at first leaned in 
 favour of the former; and he would perhaps have gained 
 it if the Roman creditors of Auletes, who were already 
 trembling for their money, had not bribed openly in 
 favour of Pompey, as the more powerful of the two. On 
 Pompey, therefore, the choice of the senate at last fell, 
 Pompey then took Auletes into his house, as his friend 
 and guest, and would have got orders to lead him back 
 into his kingdom at the head of a Roman army had not 
 the tribunes of the people, fearing any addition to Pom- 
 pey 's great power, had recom-se to their usual state- 
 engine, the Sibylline books; and the pontifex, at their 
 bidding, publicly declared that it was written in those 
 sacred pages that the King of Egypt should have the 
 friendship of Rome, but should not be helped with an 
 army. 
 
306 EOMAJSr rNFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 But though Lentulus and Pompey were each strong 
 enough to stop the other from having this high command, 
 Auletes was not without hopes that some Roman general 
 would be led, by the promise of money, and by the hon- 
 our, to undertake his cause, though it would be against 
 the laws of Rome to do so without orders from the senate. 
 Cicero then took him under his protection, and carried 
 him in a litter of state to his villa at Bai®, and wrote 
 to Lentulus, the proconsul of Cilicia and Cyprus, strongly 
 urging him to snatch the glory of replacing Auletes on 
 the throne, and of being the patron of the King of Egypt. 
 But Lentulus seems not to have chosen to run the risk 
 of so far breaking the laws of his country. 
 
 Auletes then went, with pressing letters from Pom- 
 pey, to Gabinius, the proconsul of Syria, and offered him 
 the large bribe of ten thousand talents, or seven and a 
 half million dollars, if he would lead the Roman army 
 into Egypt, and replace him on the throne. Most of the 
 officers were against this undertaking; but the letters 
 of Pompey, the advice of Mark Antony, the master of 
 the horse, and perhaps the greatness of the bribe, out- 
 weighed those cautious opinions. 
 
 While Auletes had been thus pleading his cause at 
 Rome and with the army, Cleopatra Tryphsena, the elder 
 of the two queens, had died; and, as no one of the other 
 children of Auletes was old enough to be joined with 
 Berenice on the throne, the Alexandrians sent to Syria 
 for Seleucus, the son of Antiochus G-rypus and of Selene, 
 the sister of Lathyrus, to come to Egypt and marry Bere- 
 nice. He was low-minded in all his pleasures and tastes, 
 
MAEK ANTONY IN EGYPT 307 
 
 and got the nickname of Cybiosactes, the scullion. He 
 was even said to have stolen the golden sarcophagus in 
 which the body of Alexander was buried; and was so 
 much disliked by his young wife that she had him 
 strangled on the fifth day after their marriage. Berenice 
 then married Archelaus, a son of Mithridates Eupator, 
 King of Pontus; and she had reigned one year with her 
 sister and two years with her husbands when the Roman 
 army brought back her father, Ptolemy Auletes, into 
 Egypt. 
 
 G-abinius, on marching, gave out as an excuse for 
 quitting the province entrusted to him by the senate, 
 that it was in self-defence; and that Syria was in danger 
 from the Egyptian fleet commanded by Archelaus. He 
 was accompanied by a Jewish army under the command 
 of Antipator, sent by Hyrcanus, whom the Romans had 
 just made governor of Judaea. Mark Antony was sent 
 forward with the horse, and routed the Egyptian army 
 near Pelusiimi, and then entered the city with Auletes. 
 The king, in the cruelty of his revenge, wished to put 
 the citizens to the sword, and was only stopped by An- 
 tony's forbidding it. The Egyptian army was at this 
 time in the lowest state of discipline; it was the only 
 place where the sovereign was not despotic. The sol- 
 diers, who prized the lawlessness of their trade even 
 more than its pay, were a cause of fear only to their 
 fellow-citizens. When Archelaus led them out against 
 the Romans, and ordered them to throw up a trench 
 aroimd their camp, they refused to obey; they said that 
 ditch-making was not work for soldiers, but that it ought 
 
308 KOMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 to be done at the cost of the state. Hence, when on this 
 first success Gabinius followed with the body of the 
 army, he easily conquered the rest of the country and 
 put to death Berenice and Archelaus. He then led back 
 the army into his province of Syria, but left behind him 
 a body of troops under Lucius Septimius to guard the 
 throne of Auletes and to check the risings of the Alex- 
 andrians. 
 
 Gabinius had refused to undertake this affair, which 
 was the more dangerous because against the laws of 
 Rome, unless the large bribe were first paid down in 
 money. He would take no promises; and Auletes, who 
 in his banishment had no money at his command, had to 
 borrow it of some one who would listen to his large 
 promises of after payment. He found this person in 
 Rabirius Posthumus, who had before lent him money, 
 and who saw that it would be all lost unless Auletes 
 regained the throne. Rabirius therefore lent him all 
 he was worth, and borrowed the rest from his friends; 
 and as soon as Auletes was on the throne, -he went to 
 Alexandria to claim his money and his reward. While 
 Auletes still stood in need of Roman help, and saw the 
 advantage of keeping faith with his foreign creditors, 
 Rabirius was allowed to hold the office of royal dicecetes, 
 or paymaster-general, which was one of great state and 
 profit, and one by which he could in time have repaid 
 himself his loan. He wore a royal robe; the taxes of 
 Alexandria went through his hands; he was indeed 
 master of the city. But when the king felt safe on his 
 throne, he sent away his troublesome creditor, who 
 
VOCAL STATDB OP MEMNON. 
 
JEWISH AEISTOCEACY ESTABLISHED 311 
 
 returned to Rome with the loss of his money, to stand 
 his trial as a state criminal for having lent it. Rabirius 
 had been for a time mortgagee in possession of the 
 revenues of Egypt; and Auletes had felt more indebted 
 for his crown to a Roman citizen than to the senate. 
 But in the dealings of Rome with foreign kings, these 
 evUs had often before arisen, and at last been made crim- 
 inal; and while Gabinius was tried for treason, de 
 majestate, for leading his army out of his province, 
 Rabirius was tried, under the Lex Julia de pecuniis repe- 
 tundis, for lending money and taking office under Au- 
 letes. 
 
 One of the last acts of G-abinius in Syria was to 
 change the form of the Jewish government into an aris- 
 tocracy, leaving Hyrcanus as the high priest. The Jews 
 thereon began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, that 
 had been thrown down by Pompey. Among the pris- 
 oners sent to Rome by Gabinius was Timagenes, the 
 son of the king's banker, who probably lost his liberty 
 as a hostage on Ptolemy's failure to repay the loan. But 
 he was afterwards ransomed from slavery by a son of 
 Sulla, and he remained at Rome teaching Greek elo- 
 quence in the schools, and writing his nmnerous works. 
 
 The climate of Egypt is hardly suited to Europeans, 
 and perhaps at no time did the births in the Greek fam- 
 ilies equal the deaths. That part of the population was 
 kept up by newcomers; and latterly the Romans had 
 been coming over to share in the plimder that was there 
 scattered among the ruling class. For some time past 
 Alexandria had been a favourite place of settlement for 
 
312 
 
 EOMAN mrLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 such Romans as either through their fault or their mis- 
 fortune were forced to leave their homes. All who were 
 banished for their crimes or who went away to escape 
 
 THE SPHINX. 
 
 from trial, aU runaway slaves, all ruined debtors, found 
 a place of safety in Alexandria; and by enrolling them- 
 selves in the Egyptian army they joined in bonds of 
 
DISOEDER IN ALEXANDRIA 313 
 
 fellowship with thousands like themselves, who made it 
 a point of honour to screen one another from being over- 
 taken by justice or reclaimed by their masters. With 
 such men as these, together with some bands of robbers 
 from Syria and Cilicia, had the ranks of the Egyptian 
 army latterly been recruited. These were now joined 
 by a number of soldiers and officers from the army of 
 Grabinius, who liked the Egyptian high pay and lawless- 
 ness better than the strict discipline of the Romans. 
 As, in this mixed body of men, the more regular courage 
 and greater skill in war was foimd among the Romans, 
 they were chiefly chosen as officers, and the whole had 
 something of the form of a Roman army. These sol- 
 diers in Alexandria were above all law and discipline. 
 
 The laws were everywhere badly enforced, crimes 
 passed unpunished, and property became unsafe. Rob- 
 beries were carried on openly, and the only hope of 
 recovering what was stolen was by buying it back from 
 the thief. In many cases, whole villages lived upon 
 plimder, and for that purpose formed themselves into 
 a society, and put themselves under the orders of a chief; 
 and, when any merchant or husbandman was robbed, he 
 applied to this chief, who usually restored to him the 
 stolen property on payment of one-fourth of its value. 
 
 As the country fell off in wealth, power, and popu- 
 lation, the schools of Alexandria fell off in learning, and 
 we meet with few authors whose names can brighten 
 the pages of this reign. ApoUonius of Citium, indeed, 
 who had studied surgery and anatomy at Alexandria 
 under Zopyrus, when he returned to Cyprus, wrote a 
 
314 
 
 ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT 
 
 treatise on the joints of the body, and dedicated his work 
 to Ptolemy, king of that island. The work is still re- 
 maining in manuscript. 
 
 Beside his name of Neus Dionysus, the king is in 
 the hieroglyphics sometimes called Philopator and Phila- 
 delphus ; and in a Greek inscription on a statue at Philse 
 he is called by the three names, Neus Dionysus, Philo- 
 pator, Philadelphus. The coins which are usually 
 thought to be his are in a worse style of art than those 
 of the kings before him. He died in b. c. 51, in the 
 twenty-ninth year of his reign, leaving four children, 
 namely, Cleopatra, Arsinoe, and two Ptolemies. 
 
Bearers of Evil Tidings 
 
 From the painting by Le Compte de Nouy 
 
1^ 
 
 l^^^^iip^^^lt^^^iJii^D^^^^^^^HI^HMRfl^^^^ffl^^H 
 
 ■. '" ^-^*^p% 
 
 
 ^_^' .: -■ '■'^^m"'W^-\^^m^ ■■-■■.:...■ 
 
 CLEOPATRA ON THE CTDNUS. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn 
 
 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 Pompey, Caesar, and Antony in Egypt — Cleopatra's extravagance and intrigues 
 — Octavianus annexes Egypt — Retrospect. 
 
 pTOLEMY NEUS DIONYSUS had by 
 his will left his kingdom to Cleopatra 
 and Ptolemy, his elder daughter and 
 elder son, who, agreeably to the custom 
 of the country, were to marry one another 
 and reign with equal power. He had sent one copy 
 of his will to Rome, to be lodged in the public treas- 
 ury, and in it he called upon the Roman people, by 
 all the gods and by the treaties by which they were 
 bound, to see that it was obeyed. He had also begged 
 them to undertake the guardianship of his son. The 
 senate voted Pompey tutor to the young king, or 
 governor of Egypt; and the Alexandrians in the third 
 year of his reign sent sixty ships of war to help 
 
 315 
 
316 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 the great Pompey in his struggle against Julius Caesar 
 for the chief power in Rome. But Pompey 's power was 
 by that time drawing to an end, and the votes of the 
 senate could give no strength to the weak: hence the 
 eunuch Pothinus, who had the care of the elder Ptolemy^ 
 was governor of Egypt, and his first act was to declare 
 his young pupil king, and to set at nought the will of 
 Auletes, by which Cleopatra was joined with him on the 
 throne. 
 
 Cleopatra fled into Syria, and, with a manly spirit 
 which showed what she was afterwards to be, raised an 
 army and marched back to the borders of Egypt, to claim 
 her rights by force of arms. It was in the fourth year 
 of her reign, when the Egyptian troops were moved tp^ 
 Pelusiiun to meet her, and the two armies were within 
 a few leagues of one another, that Pompey, who had been 
 the friend of Auletes when the king wanted a friend, 
 landed on the shores of Egypt in distress, and almost 
 alone. His army had just been beaten at Pharsalia, and 
 he was flying from Csesar, and he hoped to receive from 
 the son the kindness which he had shown to the father. 
 But gratitude is a virtue little known in palaces, and 
 Ptolemy had been cradled in princely selfishness. In 
 this civil war between Pompey and Csesar, the Alex- 
 andrians would have been glad to be the friends of both, 
 but that was now out of the question; Pompey 's com- 
 ing made it necessary for them to choose which they 
 should join, and Ptolemy's council, like cowards, only 
 washed to side with the strong. Pothinus the eunuch,. 
 Achilles the general, who was a native Egyptian, and 
 

 PILLAR OF POMPET AT ALEXANDRIA. 
 
MURDER OF POMPEY 319 
 
 Theodotus of CMos, who was the prince's tutor in rhet- 
 oric, were the men by whom the fate of this great Roman 
 was decided. " By putting him to death," said Theodo- 
 tus, " you will oblige Caesar, and have nothing to fear 
 from Pompey; " and he added with a smile, " Dead men 
 do not bite. ' ' So Achilles and Lucius Septimius, the head 
 of the Roman troops in the Egyptian army, were sent 
 down to the seaside to welcome him, to receive him as 
 a friend, and to murder him. They handed him out of 
 his galley into their boat, and put him to death on his 
 landing. They then cut off from his lifeless trunk the 
 head which had been three times crowned with laurels 
 in the capitol; and in that disfigured state the young 
 Ptolemy saw for the first time, and without regret, the 
 face of his father's best friend. 
 
 When Caesar, following the track of Pompey, arrived 
 in the roadstead of Alexandria, all was already over. 
 With deep agitation he turned away when the murderer 
 brought to his ship the head of the man who had been his 
 son-in-law and for long years his colleague in rule, and 
 to get whom alive into his power he had come to Egypt. 
 The dagger of the rash assassin precluded an answer 
 to the question, how Caesar would have dealt with the 
 captive Pompey; but, while the human sjnnpathy which 
 still found a place in the great soul of Caesar, side by 
 side with ambition, enjoined that he should spare his 
 former friend, his interest also required that he should 
 annihilate Pompey otherwise than by the executioner. 
 Pompey had been for twenty years the acknowledged 
 ruler of Rome; a dominion so deeply rooted does not 
 
320 CLEOPATEA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 end witli the rulei''s death. The death of Pompey did not 
 break up the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an 
 aged, incapable, and worn-out chief, in his sons Gnacus 
 and Sextus, two leaders, both of whom were young and 
 active, and the second of them of decided capacity. To 
 the newly founded hereditary monarchy, hereditary pre- 
 tendership attached itself at once like a parasite, and it 
 was very doubtful whether by this change of persons 
 Caesar did not lose more than he gained. 
 
 Meanwhile in Egypt Csesar had now nothing further 
 to do, and the Romans and Egyptians expected that he 
 would immediately set sail and apply himself to the sub- 
 jugation of Africa, and to the huge task of organisation 
 which awaited him after the victory. But Csesar, faithful 
 to his custom— wherever he found himself in the wide 
 Empire— of finally regulating matters at once and in 
 person, and firmly convinced that no resistance was to 
 be expected either from the Roman garrison or from the 
 court; being, moreover, in urgent pecuniary embarrass- 
 ment, landed in Alexandria with the two amalgamated 
 legions accompanying him to the number of thirty-two 
 hundred men and eight hundred Celtic and German 
 cavalry, took up his quarters in the royal palace, and 
 proceeded to collect the necessary sums of money and to 
 regulate the Egyptian succession, without allowing him- 
 self to be disturbed by the saucy remark of Pothinus that 
 Caesar should not for such petty matters neglect his own 
 so important affairs. In his dealings with the Egyptians 
 he was just and even indulgent. Although the aid which 
 they had given to Pompey justified the imposing of a war 
 
CiESAE'S ARBITEATION 321 
 
 contribution, the exhausted land was spared from this; 
 and, while the arrears of the sums stipulated for in 
 B. c. 59, and since then only about half paid, were re- 
 mitted, there was required merely a final payment of 
 ten million denarii (two million dollars). The belligerent 
 brother and sister were enjoined immediately to suspend 
 hostilities, and were invited to have their dispute investi- 
 gated and decided before the arbiter. They submitted; 
 the royal boy was already in the palace and Cleopatra 
 also presented herself there. Caesar adjudged the king- 
 dom of Egypt, agreeably to the testament of Auletes, to 
 the intermarried brother and sister Cleopatra and Ptolo- 
 moreus Dionysus, and further gave unasked the kingdom 
 of Cyprus— cancelling the earlier act of annexation— as 
 the appanage of the second-born of Egypt to the younger 
 children of Auletes, Arsinoe and Ptolemy the younger. 
 But a storm was secretly preparing. Alexandria was 
 a cosmopolitan city as well as Rome, hardly inferior to 
 the Italian capital in the nmnber of its inhabitants, far 
 superior to it in stirring commercial spirit, in skill of 
 handicraft, in taste for science and art: in the citizens 
 there was a lively sense of their own national importance, 
 and, if there was no political sentiment, there was at any 
 rate a turbulent spirit, which induced them to indulge in 
 their street riots regularly and heartily. We, may con- 
 ceive their feelings when they saw the Roman general 
 ruling in the palace of the Lagids, and their kings ac- 
 cepting the award of his tribunal. Pothinus and the boy- 
 king, both, as may be conceived, very dissatisfied at once 
 with the peremptory requisition of all debts and with 
 
322 CLEOPATRA AJSTD HER BROTHERS 
 
 the intervention in the throne-dispute which could only- 
 issue, as it did, in the favour of Cleopatra, sent— in order 
 to pacify the Roman demands— the treasures of the 
 temple and the gold plate of the king with intentional 
 ostentation to be melted at the mint; with increasing 
 indignation the Egyptians— who were pious even to 
 superstition, and who rejoiced in the world-renowned 
 magnificence of their court as if it were a possession 
 of their own— beheld the bare walls of their temples and 
 the wooden cups on the table of their king. The Roman 
 army of occupation also, which had been essentially 
 denationalised by its long abode in Egypt and the 
 many intermarriages between the soldiers and Egyptian 
 women, and which moreover numbered a multitude of 
 the old soldiers of Pompey and runaway Italian crim- 
 inals and slaves in its ranks, was indignant at Caesar, 
 by whose orders it had been obliged to suspend its ac- 
 tion on the Syrian frontier, and at his handful of haughty 
 legionaries. The tumult even at the landing, when the 
 multitude saw the Roman axes carried into the old 
 palace, and the numerous instances in which his soldiers 
 were assassinated in the city, had taught Caesar the 
 immense danger in which he was placed with his small 
 force in presence of the exasperated multitude. But 
 it was difficult to return on account of the northwest 
 winds prevailing at this season of the year, and the 
 attempt of embarkation might easily become a signal 
 for the outbreak of the insurrection; besides, it was 
 not the nature of Caesar to take his departure without 
 having accomplished his work. He accordingly ordered 
 
C^SAE BESIEGED 323 
 
 up at once reinforcements from Asia, and meanwhile, 
 tUl these arrived, made a show of the utmost self-pos- 
 session. Never was there greater gaiety in his camp 
 than during this rest at Alexandria, and while the beau- 
 tiful and clever Cleopatra was not sparing of her charms 
 in general and least of all towards her judge, Caesar also 
 appeared among all his victories to value most' those 
 won over beautiful women. It was a merry prelude to 
 graver scenes. Under the leadership of Achilles and, 
 as was afterwards proved, by the secret orders of the 
 king and his guardian, the Roman army of occupation 
 stationed in Egypt appeared unexpectedly in Alexan- 
 dria, and, as soon as the citizens saw that it had come 
 to attack Caesar, they made common cause with the 
 soldiers. 
 
 With a presence of mind, which in some measure 
 justifies his foolhardiness, Caesar hastily collected his 
 scattered men; seized the persons of the king and his 
 ministers; entrenched himself in the royal residence 
 and adjoining theatre; and gave orders, as there was 
 no time to place in safety the war-fleet stationed in the 
 principal harbour immediately in front of the theatre, 
 that it should be set on fire and that Pharos, the island 
 with the light-tower commanding the harbour, should 
 be occupied by means of boats. Thus at least a re- 
 stricted position for defence was secured, and the way 
 was kept open to procure supplies and reinforcements. 
 At the same time orders were issued to the commandant 
 of Asia Minor as well as to the nearest subject countries, 
 the Syrians and the Nabataeans, the Cretans and the 
 
324 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 Rhodians, to send men and ships in all haste to Egypt. 
 The insurrection, at the head of which the Princess 
 Arsinoe and her confidant, the eunuch Ganymedes, had 
 placed themselves, meanwhile had free course in all 
 Egypt and in the greater part of the capital. In the 
 streets of the latter there was daily fighting, but with- 
 out success either on the part of Caesar in gaining freer 
 scope and breaking through to the fresh water lake of 
 Mariut which lay behind the town, where he could have 
 provided himself with water and forage; or on the part 
 of the Alexandrians in acquiring superiority in besieg- 
 ing and depriving them of all drinking water; for, when 
 the Mle canals in Csesar's part of the town had been 
 spoiled by the introduction of salt water, drinkable water 
 was unexpectedly foimd in wells dug on the beach. 
 
 As Caesar was not to be overcome from the landward 
 side, the exertions of the besiegers were directed to 
 destroy his fleet and cut him off from the sea, by which 
 supplies reached him. The island with the lighthouse 
 and the mole by which this was connected with the main- 
 land divided the harbour into a western and an eastern 
 half, which were in communication with each other 
 through two arch-openings in the mole. Caesar com- 
 manded the island and the east harbour, while the mole 
 and the west harbour were in possession of the citizens; 
 and, as the Alexandrian fleet was burnt, his vessels 
 sailed in and out without hindrance. The Alexandrians, 
 after having vainly attempted to introduce fire-ships 
 from the western into the eastern harbour, equipped 
 with the remnant of their arsenal a small squadron, and 
 
NAVAL MAJSfCEUVEES 325 
 
 with this blocked up the way of Caesar's vessels, when 
 these were towing in a fleet of transports with a legion 
 that had arrived from Asia Minor; but the excellent 
 Rhodian mariners of Caesar mastered the enemy. Not 
 long afterwards, however, the citizens captured the 
 lighthouse-island, and from that point totally closed the 
 narrow and rocky mouth of the east harbour for larger 
 ships; so that Caesar's fleet was compelled to take its 
 station in the open roads before the east harbour, and 
 his communication with the sea hung only on a weak 
 thread. Caesar's fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeat- 
 edly by the superior naval force of the enemy, could 
 neither shim the unequal strife, since the loss of the 
 Hghthouse-island closed the inner harbour against it, 
 nor yet withdraw, for the loss of the roadstead would 
 have debarred Caesar wholly from the sea. Though the 
 brave legionaries, supported by the dexterity of the 
 Rhodian sailors, had always hitherto decided these con- 
 flicts in favour of the Romans, the Alexandrians renewed 
 and augmented their naval armaments with unwearied 
 perseverance; the besieged had to fight as often as it 
 pleased the besiegers, and, if the former should be on 
 a signal occasion vanquished, Cffisar would be totally 
 hemmed in and probably lost. 
 
 It was absolutely necessary to make an attempt to 
 recover the lighthouse-island. The double attack, which 
 was made by boats from the side of the harbour and by 
 the war-vessels from the seaboard, in reality brought 
 not only the island but also the lower part of the mole 
 into his power; it was only at the second arch-opening 
 
326 CLEOPATEA AND HER BEOTHEES 
 
 of the mole that Caesar ordered the attack to be stopped, 
 and the mole to be there closed towards the city by a 
 transverse wall. But while a violent conflict arose here 
 round the entrenchers, the Roman troops left the lower 
 part of the mole adjoining the island bare of defenders; 
 a division of Egyptians landed there unexpectedly, at- 
 tacked in the rear the Roman soldiers and sailors 
 crowded together on the mole of the transverse wall, 
 and drove the whole mass in wild confusion into the sea. 
 A part were taken on board by the Roman ships; but 
 more were drowned. Some four hundred soldiers and a 
 still greater munber of men belonging to the fleet were 
 sacrificed on this day; the general himself, who had 
 shared the fate of his men, had been obliged to seek 
 refuge in his ship, and, when this sank from having been 
 overloaded with men, he had to save himself by swim- 
 ming to another. But, severe as was the loss suffered, 
 it was amply compensated by the recovery of the light- 
 house-island, which along with the mole as far as the 
 first arch-opening remained in the hands of CaBsar. 
 
 At length the longed-for relief arrived, Mithridates 
 of Pergamus, an able warrior of the school of Mithri- 
 dates Eupator, whose natural son he claimed to be, 
 brought up by land from Syria a motley army,— the 
 Ituraans of the prince of the Libanus, the Bedouins of 
 Jamblichus, son of Sampsiceramus, the Jews under the 
 minister Antipater, and the contingents generally of the 
 petty chiefs and communities of Cilicia and Syria. From 
 Pelusium, which Mithridates had the fortune to occupy 
 on the day of his arrival, he took the great road towards 
 
CESAR'S VICTORY 327 
 
 Memphis, with the view of avoiding the intersected 
 ground of the Delta and crossing the Nile before its 
 division; during which movement his troops received 
 manifold support from the Jewish peasants who were 
 settled in this part of Egypt. The Egyptians, with the 
 young king Ptolemy now at their head, whom Caesar had 
 released to his people in the vain hope of allaying the 
 insurrection by his means, despatched an army to the 
 Nile, to detain Mithridates on its farther bank. The 
 army fell in with the enemy even beyond Memphis at 
 the so-called Jews' camp, between Onion and HeKopolis; 
 nevertheless Mithridates, trained in the Roman fashion 
 of manoeuvring and encamping, amidst successful con- 
 flicts gained the opposite bank at Memphis. Caesar, on 
 the other hand, as soon as he obtained news of the arrival 
 of the relieving army, conveyed a part of his troops in 
 ships to the end of the lake of Morea to the west of 
 Alexandria, and marched round this lake and down the 
 Nile to meet Mithridates advancing up the river. 
 
 The junction took place without the enemy attempting 
 to hinder it. Caesar then marched into the Delta, whither 
 the king had retreated, overthrew, notwithstanding the 
 deeply cut canal in their front, the Egyptian vanguard 
 at the first onset, and immediately stormed the Egyptian 
 camp itself. It lay at the foot of a rising ground be- 
 tween the Nile— from which only a narrow path sep- 
 arated it— and marshes difficult of access. Cssar caused 
 the camp to be assailed simultaneously from the front 
 and from the flank on the path along the Nile ; and during 
 this assault ordered a third detachment to ascend unseen 
 
328 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 the heights of the camp. The victory was complete; the 
 camp was taken, and those of the Egyptians who did not 
 fall beneath the sword of the enemy were drowned in 
 the attempt to escape to the fleet on the Nile. With one 
 of the boats, which sank overladen with men, the young 
 king also disappeared in the waters of his native stream. 
 Immediately after the battle Caesar advanced at the 
 head of his cavalry from the land side straight into the 
 portion of the capital occupied by the Egyptians. In 
 mourning attire, with the images of their gods in their 
 hands, the enemy received him and sued for peace; and 
 his troops, when they saw him return as victor from the 
 side opposite to that by which he had set forth, welcomed 
 him with boundless joy. The fate of the town, which 
 had ventured to thwart the plans of the master of the 
 world and had brought him within a hair's-breadth of 
 destruction, lay in Csesar's hands; but he was too much 
 of a ruler to be sensitive, and dealt with the Alexandrians 
 as with the Massiliots. Caesar— pointing to their city 
 severely devastated and deprived of its granaries, of its 
 world-renowned library, and of other important public 
 buildings on the occasion of the burning of the fleet- 
 exhorted the inhabitants in future earnestly to cultivate 
 the arts of peace alone, and to heal the wounds inflicted 
 on themselves; for the rest, he contented himself with 
 granting to the Jews settled in Alexandria the same 
 rights which the Greek population of the city enjoyed, 
 and with placing in Alexandria instead of the previous 
 Roman army of occupation— which nominally at least 
 obeyed the kings of Egypt, a Roman garrison— two of 
 
CiESAR'S TRIUMPH 329 
 
 the legions besieged there, and a third which afterwards 
 arrived from Syria— under a commander nominated by 
 himself. For this position of trust a man was purposely 
 selected whose birth made it impossible for him to abuse 
 it— Eufio, an able soldier, but the son of a freed man. 
 Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy obtained 
 the sovereignty of Egypt under the supremacy of Rome; 
 the Princess Arsinoe was carried off to Italy, that she 
 might not serve once more as a pretext for insurrections 
 to the Egyptians, who were after the Oriental fashion 
 quite as much devoted to their dynasty as they were 
 indifferent towards the individual dynasts; and Cyprus 
 became again a part of the Roman province of Cilicia. 
 
 Caesar's love for Cleopatra, who had just borne him a 
 son named Caesarion, was not so strong as his ambition; 
 and after having been above a year in Egypt he left her 
 to govern the kingdom in her own name, but on his 
 behalf; and sailed for Italy, taking with him the sixth 
 legion. While engaged in this warfare in Alexandria, 
 Caesar had been appointed dictator in Rome, where his 
 power was exercised by Mark Antony, his master of the 
 horse; and for above six months he had not written one 
 letter home, as though ashamed to write about the foolish 
 difficulty he had entangled himself in, until he had got 
 out of it. 
 
 On reaching Rome Caesar amused the people and him- 
 self with a grand triumphal show, in which, among the 
 other prisoners of war, the Princess Arsinoe followed his 
 car in chains; and, among the works of art and nature 
 which were got together to prove to the gazing crowd 
 
330 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 the greatness of his conquests, was that remarkable 
 African animal the camelopard, then for the first time 
 seen in Rome. In one chariot was a statue of the N^ile 
 god; and in another the Pharos lighthouse on fire, with 
 painted flames. Nor was this the last of Caesar's tri- 
 umphs, for soon afterwards Cleopatra, and her brother 
 Ptolemy, then twelve years old, who was called her hus- 
 band, came to Rome as his guests, and dwelt for some 
 time with him in his house. 
 
 The history of Egypt, at this time, is almost lost in 
 that of Rome. Within five years of Csesar's landing in 
 Alexandria, and finding that by the death of Pompey he 
 was master of the world, he paid his own life as the 
 forfeit for crushing his coimtry's liberty. The Queen of 
 Egypt, with her infant son Csesarion about four years 
 old, was then in Rome, living with Caesar in his villa on 
 the farther side of the Tiber. On Caesar's death her first 
 wish was to get the child acknowledged by the Roman 
 senate as her colleague on the throne of Egypt, and as a 
 friend of the Roman people. With this view she applied 
 to Cicero for help, making him an offer of some books 
 or works of art; but he was offended at her haughtiness 
 and refused her gifts. Besides, she was more likely to 
 thwart than to help the cause for which he was strug- 
 gling. He was alarmed at hearing that she was soon to 
 give birth to another child. He did not want any more 
 Caesars. He hoped she would miscarry, as he wished she 
 had before miscarried. So he bluntly refused to under- 
 take her cause. On this she thought herself unsafe in 
 Rome, she fled privately, and reached Egypt in safety 
 
THE ROMANS RULE EGYPT 331 
 
 with Csesarion; but we hear of no second child by Julius. 
 The Romans were now the masters of Egypt, and Cleo- 
 patra could hardly hope to reign but by the help of one 
 of the great generals who were struggling for the sov- 
 ereignty of the republic. Among these was the young 
 Sextus Pompeius, whose large fleet made him for a time 
 master of Sicily and of the sea; and he was said to have 
 been admitted by the Queen of Egypt as a lover. But he 
 was able to be of but little use to her in return for her 
 favours, as his fleet was soon defeated by Octavianus. 
 
 Caesar had left behind him, in the neighbourhood of 
 Alexandria, a large body of Roman troops, in the pay and 
 nominally imder the orders of Cleopatra, but in reality 
 to keep Egypt in obedience. There they lived as if above 
 all Egyptian law or Roman discipline, indulging in the 
 vices of that luxurious capital. When some of them in 
 a riot, in the year 45 b. c, killed two sons of Bibulus the 
 consul,- Cleopatra was either afraid or unable to punish 
 the murderers; the most she could do was to get them 
 sent in chains into Syria to the grieving father, who with 
 true greatness of mind sent them back to the Egyptian 
 legions, saying that it was for the senate to punish them, 
 not for him. 
 
 While Ptolemy her second husband was a boy and 
 could claim no share of the government, he was allowed 
 to live with all the outward show of royalty, but as soon 
 as he reached the age of fifteen, in b. c. 44, at which he 
 might call himself her equal and would soon be her mas- 
 ter, Cleopatra had him put to death. She had then 
 reigned four years with her elder brother and four years 
 
332 CLEOPATEA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 with her younger brother, and from that time forward 
 she reigned alone, calling her child by Caesar her col- 
 league on the throne. 
 
 At a time when vice and luxury claimed the thoughts 
 of all who were not busy in the civil wars, we cannot 
 hope to find the fruits of genius in Alexandria; but the 
 mathematics are plants of a hardy growth, and are not 
 choked so easily as poetry and history. Sosigenes was 
 then the first astronomer in Egypt, and JtOius Caesar 
 was guided by his advice in setting right the Roman 
 Calendar. He was a careful and painstaking mathemati- 
 cian, and, after fixing the length of the year at three 
 hundred and sixty -five days and a quarter, he three times 
 changed the beginning of the year, in his doubts as to 
 the day on which the eqiunox fell; for the astronomer 
 could then only make two observations in a year with a 
 view to learn the time of the equinox, by seeing when the 
 sun shone in the plane of the equator. Photinus the 
 mathematician wrote both on arithmetic and geometry, 
 and was usually thought the author of a mathematical 
 work published in the name of the queen, called the 
 Canon of Cleopatra. 
 
 Didymus was another of the writers that we hear of 
 at that time. He was a man of great industry, both in 
 reading and writing ; but when we are told that he wrote 
 three thousand five hundred ^''oliunes, or rolls, it rather 
 teaches us that a great many rolls of papyrus would be 
 wanted to make a modern book, than what number of 
 books he wrote. These writings were mostly on verbal 
 criticism, and all have long since perished except some 
 
MEDICINE AND SUEGERY 333 
 
 notes or scholia on the Iliad and Odyssey which bear his 
 name, and are still printed in some editions of Homer. 
 
 Dioscorides, the physician of Cleopatra, has left a 
 work on herbs and minerals, and on their uses in medi- 
 cine; also on poisons and poisonous bites. To these he 
 has added a list of prescriptions. His works have been 
 much read in all ages, and have only been set aside by 
 
 EUINS OP HERMONTHI8. 
 
 the discoveries of the last few centuries. Serapion, an- 
 other physician, was perhaps of this reign. He followed 
 medicine rather than surgery; and, while trusting chiefly 
 to his experience gained in clinical or bedside practice, 
 was laughed at by the surgeons as an empiric. 
 
 The small temple at Hermonthis, near Thebes, seems 
 to have been built in this reign, and it is dedicated to 
 Mandoo, or the sun, in the name of Cleopatra and Csesa- 
 rion. It is unlike the older Egyptian temples in being 
 
334 CLEOPATRA AND HEE BROTHERS 
 
 much less of a fortress; for what in them is a strongly 
 walled courtyard, with towers to guard the narrow door- 
 way, is here a small space between two double rows of 
 columns, wholly open, without walls, while the roofed 
 building is the same as in the older temples. Near it is 
 a small pool, seventy feet square, with stone sides, which 
 was used in the funerals and other religious rites. 
 
 The murder of Csesar did not raise the character of 
 the Romans, or make them more fit for self-government. 
 It was followed by the well-known civil war; and when, 
 by the battle of Philippi and* the death of Brutus and 
 Cassius, his party was again uppermost, the Romans 
 willingly bowed their necks to his adopted son Octa- 
 vianus, and his friend Mark Antony. 
 
 It is not easy to determine which side Cleopatra meant 
 to take in the war between Antony and the murderers of 
 Csesar; she did not openly declare herself, and she prob- 
 ably waited to join that which fortune favoured. AI- 
 lienus had been sent to her by Dolobella to ask for such 
 troops as she could spare to help Antony, and he led a 
 little army of four Roman legions out of Egypt into 
 Syria; but when there he added them to the force which 
 Cassius had assembled against Antony. Whether he 
 acted through treachery to the queen or by her orders 
 is doubtful, for Cassius felt more gratitude to Allienus 
 than to Cleopatra. Serapion also, the Egyptian governor 
 of Cyprus, joined what was then the stronger side, and 
 sent all the ships that he had in his ports to the assistance 
 of Cassius. Cleopatra herself was getting ready another 
 large fleet, but since the war was over, and Brutus and 
 
Cleopatra before Julius Caesar 
 
 From the painting by Gerome 
 
CLEOPATRA COQUETS WITH ANTONY 336 
 
 Cassius dead before it sailed, she said it was meant to 
 help Octavianus and Antony. Thus, by the acts of her 
 generals and her own hesitation, Cleopatra fairly laid 
 herself open to the reproach of ingratitude to her late 
 friend Csesar, or at least of thinking that the interests 
 of his son Caesarion were opposed to those of his nephew 
 Octavianus; and accordingly, as Antony was passing 
 through Cilicia with his army, he sent orders to her to 
 come from Egypt and meet him at Tarsus, to answer the 
 charge of having helped Brutus and Cassius in the late 
 military campaign. 
 
 Dellius, the bearer of the message, showed that he 
 understood the meaning of it, by beginning himself to 
 pay court to her as his queen. He advised her to go, 
 like Juno in the Iliad, " tricked in her best attire," and 
 told her that she had nothing to fear from the kind and 
 gallant Antony. On this she sailed for Cilicia laden with 
 money and treasures for presents, full of trust in her 
 beauty and power of pleasing. She had won the heart 
 of Csesar when, though younger, she was less skilled in 
 the arts of love, and she was stiU. only twenty-five years 
 old; and, carrying with her such gifts and treasures as 
 became her rank, she entered the river Cydnus with the 
 Egyptian fleet in a magnificent galley. The stem was 
 covered with gold; the sails were of scarlet cloth: and 
 the silver oars beat time to the music of flutes and harps. 
 The queen, dressed like Venus, lay under an awning 
 embroidered with gold, while pretty dimpled boys, like 
 Cupids, stood on each side of the sofa fanning her. Her 
 maidens, dressed like sea-nymphs and graces, handled 
 
336 CLEOPATRA AJSTD HER BROTHERS 
 
 the silken tackle and steered the vessel. As she ap- 
 proached the town of Tarsus the winds wafted the per- 
 fumes and the scent of the burning incense to the shores, 
 which were lined with crowds who had come out to see 
 her land; and Antony, who was seated on the tribunal 
 waiting to receive her, found himself left alone. 
 
 Tarsus on the river Cydnus was situated at the foot 
 of the wooded slopes of Mount Taurus, and it guarded 
 the great pass in that range between the Phrygian tribes 
 and the Phoenician tribes. It was a city half-Greek 
 and half-Asiatic, and had from the earliest days been 
 famed for ship-building and commerce. Mount Taurus 
 supplied it with timber, and around the mouth of its 
 river, as it widens into a quiet lake, were the ancient 
 dockyards which had made the ships of Tarshish pro- 
 verbial with the Hebrew writers. Its merchants, en- 
 riched by industry and enlightened by foreign trade, had 
 ornamented their city with pubUc buildings, and estab- 
 lished a school of Greek learning. Its philosophers, how- 
 ever, were more known as travelling teachers than as 
 scholars. No learned men came to Tarsus; but it sent 
 forth its rhetoricians in its own ships, who spread them- 
 selves as teachers over the neighbouring coasts. In Rome 
 there were more professors of rhetoric, oratory, and 
 poetry from Tarsus than from Alexandria or Athens. 
 Athenodorus Cordylion, the stoic, taught Cato; Athen- 
 odorus, the son of Sandon, taught Caesar; Nestor a little 
 later taught the young Marcellus; while Demetrius was 
 one of the first men of learning who sailed to the distant 
 island of Britain. This school, in the next generation. 
 
CLEOPATRA'S EXTRAVAGANCE 337 
 
 sent forth the apostle Paul, who taught Christianity 
 throughout the same coasts. 
 
 Tarsus was now to be amused by the costly follies 
 and extravagances of Cleopatra. As an initial display, 
 soon after landing, she invited Antony and his generals 
 to a dinner, at which the whole of the dishes placed before 
 them were of gold, set with precious stones, and the room 
 and the twelve couches were ornamented with purple 
 and gold. On his praising the splendour of the sight, as 
 passing anything he had before seen, she said it was a 
 trifle, and begged that he would take the whole of it as 
 a gift from her. The next day he again dined with her, 
 and brought a larger number of his friends and generals, 
 and was of course startled to see a costliness which made 
 that of the day before seem nothing; and she again gave 
 him the whole of the gold upon the table, and gave to 
 each of his friends the couch upon which he sat. 
 
 These costly and delicate dinners were continued 
 every day; and one evening, when Antony playfully 
 blamed her wastefulness, and said that it was not possi- 
 ble to fare in a more costly manner, she told him that 
 the dinner of the next day should cost ten thousand ses- 
 tertia, or three hundred thousand dollars. This he would 
 not believe, and laid her a wager that she would fail in 
 her promise. When the day came the dinner was as 
 grand and dainty as those of the former days; but when 
 Antony called upon her to count up the cost of the meats 
 and wines, she said that she did not reckon them, but 
 that she should herself soon eat and drink the ten thou- 
 sand sestertia. She wore in her ears two pearls, the 
 
338 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 largest known in the world, which, like the diamonds of 
 European kings, had come to her with her crown and 
 kingdom, and were together valued at that large sum. 
 On the servants removing the meats, they set before her 
 
 EGYPTIAN PICTURE OF CLEOPATRA. 
 
 a glass of vinegar, and she took one of these earrings 
 from her ear and dropped it into the glass, and when 
 dissolved drank it off. Plancus, one of the guests, who 
 had been made judge of the wager, snatched the other 
 from the queen's ear, and saved it from being drunk up 
 like the first, and then declared that Antony had lost his 
 
CLEOPATEA'S PEARL EARRINGS 339 
 
 bet. The pearl which was saved was afterwards cut in 
 two and made into a pair of earrings for the statue of 
 Venus in the Pantheon at Rome; and the fame of the 
 wager may be said to have made the two half pearls at 
 least as valuable as the two whole ones. 
 
 The beauty, sweetness, and gaiety of this young queen, 
 joined to her great powers of mind, which were all turned 
 to the art of pleasing, had quite overcome Antony; he 
 had sent for her as her master, but he was now her slave. 
 Her playful wit was delightful; her voice was as an 
 instrument of many strings; she spoke readily to every 
 ambassador in his own language; and was said to be 
 the only sovereign of Egypt who could understand the 
 languages of aU her subjects: Greek, Egyptian, Ethi- 
 opic, Troglodytic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. With 
 these charms, at the age of five-and-twenty, the luxurious 
 Antony could deny her nothing. The first favour which 
 she asked of her lover equals any cruelty that we have 
 met with in this history: it was, that he would have her 
 sister Arsinoe put to death. Caesar had spared her life, 
 after his triumph, through love of Cleopatra; but he was 
 mistaken in the heart of his mistress; she would have 
 been then better pleased at Arsinoe 's death; and Antony, 
 at her bidding, had her murdered in the temple of Diana, 
 at Ephesus. 
 
 Though Fulvia, the faithful wife of Antony, could 
 scarcely keep together his party at Rome against the 
 power of Octavianus, his colleague in the triumvirate, and 
 though Labienus, with the Parthian legions, was ready 
 to march into Syria against him, yet he was so entangled 
 
340 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 in the artful nets of Cleopatra, that she led him captive 
 to Alexandria; and there the old warrior feU into every 
 idle amusement, and offered up at the shrine of pleasure 
 one of the greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of his time. 
 The lovers visited each other every day, and the waste 
 of their entertainments passed belief. Philotas, a phy- 
 sician who was following his studies at Alexandria, told 
 Plutarch's grandfather that he was once invited to see 
 Antony's dinner cooked, and among other meats were 
 eight wild boars roasting whole; and the cook explained 
 to him that, though there were only twelve guests, yet 
 as each dish had to be roasted to a single turn of the spit, 
 and Antony did not know at what hour he should dine, 
 it was necessary to cook at least eight dinners. But the 
 most costly of the luxuries then used in Egypt were the 
 scents and the ointments. Gold, silver, and jewels, as 
 Pliny remarks, will pass to a man's heirs, even clothes 
 will last a few months or weeks, but scents fly off and 
 are lost at the first moment that they are admired; and 
 yet ointments, like the attar of roses, which melted and 
 gave out their scent, and passed into air when placed 
 upon the back of the hand, as the coolest part of the body, 
 were sold for four hundred denarii the pound. But the 
 ointment was not meant to be used quite so wastefully. 
 It was usually sealed up in small alabaster jars, which 
 were made in the town of Alabastron, on the east of the 
 Nile, and thence received their name. These were long 
 in shape, without a foot, and had a narrow mouth. They 
 were meant never to be opened, but to let the scent escape 
 slowly and sparingly through the porous stone. In these 
 
FAMINE IN EGYPT 341 
 
 Egyptian jars scented ointment was carried by trade to 
 the banks of the Tigris and to the shores of the Mediter- 
 ranean. 
 
 The tenth and eleventh years of the queen's reign 
 were marked by a famine through the land, caused by the 
 NUe's not rising to the wished-for height and by the want 
 of the usual overflow; and an inscription which was 
 written both in the Greek and Egyptian languages de- 
 clares the gratitude of the Theban priests and elders and 
 citizens to Callitnachus, the prefect of the Theban taxes, 
 who did what he could to lessen the sufferings in that 
 city. The citizens of Alexandria on those years received 
 from the government a smaller gift of com than usual, 
 and the Jews then felt their altered rank in the state. 
 They were told that they were not citizens, and accord- 
 ingly received no portion whatever out of the public 
 granaries, but were left like the Egyptians to take care 
 of themselves. From this time forward there was an 
 unceasing quarrel between Greeks and Jews in the city 
 •of Alexandria. 
 
 Cleopatra, who held her power at the pleasure of the 
 Roman legions, spared no pains to please Antony. She 
 had borne him first a son named Ptolemy, and then a son 
 and daughter, twins, Alexander Helius and Cleopatra 
 Selene, or Sun and Moon. She gamed, she drank, she 
 hunted, she reviewed the troops with him, and, to hiunour 
 his coarser tastes, she, followed him, in his midnight ram- 
 bles through the city, in the dress of a servant; and 
 nothing that youth, beauty, wealth, and elegance could 
 do to throw a cloak over the grossness of vice and crime 
 
342 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 was forgotten by her. The biographer thought it waste 
 of time to mention all Cleopatra's arts and Antony's 
 follies, but the story of his fishing was not to be 
 forgotten. One day, when sitting in the boat with her, he 
 caught but little, and was vexed at her seeing his want 
 of success. So he ordered one of his men to dive into 
 the water and put upon his hook a fish which had been 
 before taken. Cleopatra, however, saw what was being 
 done, and quietly took the hint for a joke of her own. 
 The next day she brought a larger number of friends 
 to see the fishing, and, when Antony let down his line, 
 she ordered one of her divers to put on the hook a salted 
 fish. The line was then drawn up and the fish landed 
 amid no little mirth of their friends ; and Cleopatra play- 
 fully consoled him, saying: '^ Well, general, you may 
 leave fishing to us petty princes of Pharos and Canopus; 
 your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms." 
 
 Antony's eldest son by Fulvia came to Alexandria at 
 this time, and lived in the same princely style with his 
 father. Philotas the physician lived in his service, and 
 one day at supper when Philotas silenced a tiresome 
 talker with a foolish sophism the young Antony gave him 
 as a reward the whole sideboard of plate. But in the 
 middle of this gaiety and feasting Antony was recalled 
 to Europe by letters which told him that his wife and 
 brother had been driven out of Rome by Octavianus. 
 Before, however, he reached Rome his wife Fulvia was 
 dead; and, wishing to strengthen his party, he at once 
 married Octavia, the sister of Octavianus and widow of 
 Marcellus. 
 
AI^TONY'S GIFTS TO CLEOPATRA 343 
 
 In that year Herod passed through Egypt on his way 
 to Rome to claim Judsea as his kingdom. He came 
 through Arabia to Pelusium, and thence he sailed to 
 Alexandria. Cleopatra, who wanted his services, gave 
 him honourable entertainment in her capital, and made 
 him great offers in order to persuade him to take the 
 command of her army. But the Jewish prince saw that a 
 kingdom was to be gained by offering his services to 
 Antony and Octavianus; and he went on to Rome. There 
 through the friendship of Antony he was declared King 
 of Judaea by the senate. He then returned to Syria to 
 collect an army and to win the kingdom which had been 
 granted to him; and by the help of Sosius, Antony's 
 lieutenant, he had conquered Jerusalem when the war 
 broke out between Antony and Octavianus. 
 
 In the next year (b. c. 38) Antony was himself in 
 Syria, carrying on the war which ended with the battle 
 of Actium; and he sent to Alexandria to beg Cleopatra 
 to join him there. On her coming, he made her perhaps 
 the largest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress: 
 he gave her the wide provinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, 
 Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part of Judaea, and part of Arabia 
 Nabataea. These large gifts only made her ask for more, 
 and she begged him to put to death Herod, King of 
 Judaea, and Malichus, King of Arabia Nabataea, the 
 former of whom had advised Antony to break through 
 the disgraceful ties which bound him to Cleopatra, as the 
 only means of saving himself from being crushed by the 
 rising power of Octavianus. She asked to have the whole 
 of Arabia and Judaea given to her. But Antony had not 
 
344 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 SO far forgotten himself as to yield to these commands; 
 and he only gave her the balsam eomitry around Jericho^ 
 and a rent-charge of two hundred talents, or one hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand dollars, a year, on the revenues 
 of Judaea. On receiving this large addition to her king- 
 dom, and perhaps in honour of Antony, who had then lost 
 all power in Italy but was the real king of Egypt and its 
 Greek provinces, Cleopatra began to count the years of 
 her reign afresh: what was really the sixteenth of her 
 reign, and had been called the sixteenth of Ptolemy, her 
 elder brother, she called the first of her own reign, and 
 she reckoned them in the same way till her death. Cleo- 
 patra had accompanied Antony on his expedition against 
 Armenia, as far as the river Euphrates, and returned 
 through Damascus to Judaea. There she was politely 
 received by her enemy Herod, who was too much in fear 
 of Antony to take his revenge on her. She farmed out 
 to him the revenues of her parts of Arabia and Judaea, 
 and was accompanied by him on her way towards Egypt. 
 But after wondering at the wasteful feasts and gifts, 
 in which pearls and provinces were alike trifled with, we 
 are reminded that even Cleopatra was of the family of 
 the Lagidffi, and that she was well aware how much the 
 library of the museum had added to the glory of Alex- 
 andria. It had been burnt by the Roman troops under 
 Caesar, and, to make amends for this, x\ntony gave her 
 the large library of the city of Pergamus, by which 
 Eumenes and Attains had hoped to raise a school that 
 should equal the museum of Alexandria. Cleopatra 
 placed these two hundred thousand volumes in the temple 
 
THE NEW LIBRARY 345 
 
 of Serapis; and Alexandria again held the largest library 
 in the world; while Pergamus ceased to be a place of 
 learning. By the help of this new library, the city stiU 
 £ept its trade in books and its high rank as a school of 
 letters; and, when the once proud kingdom of Egypt was 
 a province of Rome, and when almost every trace of the 
 monarchy was lost, and half a century afterwards Philo, 
 the Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, asked, '' Where 
 are now the Ptolemies? " the historian could have found 
 an answer by pointing to the mathematical schools and 
 the library of the Serapeiun. 
 
 But to return to our history. When Antony left Cleo- 
 patra, he marched against the Parthians, and on his re- 
 turn he again entered Alexandria in triimiph, leading 
 Artavasdes, King of Armenia, chained behind his chariot 
 as he rode in procession through the city. He soon after- 
 wards made known his plans for the government of 
 Egypt and the provinces. He called together the Alex- 
 andrians in the Gymnasium, and, seating himself and 
 Cleopatra on two golden thrones, he declared her son 
 Csesarion her colleague, and that they should hold Egypt, 
 Cyprus, Africa, and Coele-Syria. To her sons by himself 
 he gave the title of kings the children of kings; and to 
 Alexander, though still a child, he gave Armenia and 
 Media, with Parthia when it should be conquered; and 
 to Ptolemy he gave Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Cleo- 
 patra wore the sacred robe of Isis, and took the title of 
 the New Isis, while the young Alexander wore a Median 
 dress with turban and tiara, and the little Ptolemy a 
 long cloak and slippers, with a bonnet encircled by a 
 
346 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 diadem, like the successors of Alexander. Antony him- 
 self wore an Eastern scimetar by his side, and a royal 
 diadem round his head, as being not less a sovereign than 
 Cleopatra. To Cleopatra he then gave the whole of his 
 Parthian booty, and his prisoner Tigranes. 
 
 But notwithstanding Antony's love for Cleopatra, her 
 falsehood and cruelty were such that when his power in 
 Rome fell he could no longer trust her. He even feared 
 that she might have him poisoned, and would not eat or 
 
 drink in her palace without 
 having the food first tasted 
 herself. But she had no such 
 thoughts, and only laughed 
 at him for his distrust. One 
 
 COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY. ^^^ ^^ pj.Q^g J^gj. pQ^gr, aUd 
 
 at the same time her good faith, she had the flowers 
 with which he was to be crowned, as he reclined at 
 her dinner-table, dipped in deadly poison. Antony 
 dined with these round his head, while she wore a crown 
 of fresh flowers. During the dinner Cleopatra playfully 
 took off her garland and dipped it in her cup to flavour 
 the wine, and Antony did the same with his poisoned 
 flowers, steeping them in his own cup of wine. He even 
 raised it to his lips to drink, when she hastily caught hold 
 of his hand. " Now," said she, " I am the enemy against 
 whom you have latterly been so careful. If I could have 
 endured to live without you, that draught would have 
 given me the opportunity." She then ordered the wine 
 to be taken to one of the condemned criminals, and sent 
 Antony out to see that the man died on drinking it. 
 
COINS OF CLEOPATRA 347 
 
 On the early coins of Cleopatra we see her head on 
 the one side and the eagle or the cornucopia on the other 
 side, with the name of " Queen Cleopatra.^ ^ After she 
 had borne Antony children, we find the words round 
 their heads, " Of Antony, on the conquest of Armenia; " 
 ^* Of Cleopatra the queen, and of the kings the children 
 of kings." On the later coins we find the head of Antony 
 joined with hers, as king and queen, and he is styled 
 *' the emperor " and she " the young goddess." Cleopatra 
 was perhaps the last Greek sovereign that bore the title 
 of god. Nor did it seem unsuitable to her, so common had 
 the Greeks of Asia and Egypt made that epithet, by 
 giving it to their kings, and even to their kings' families 
 and favourites. But the use of the word made no change 
 in their religious opinions; they never for a moment 
 supposed that the persons whom they so styled had any 
 share in the creation and government of the world. 
 
 The death of Julius Caesar and afterwards of Brutus 
 and Cassius had left Antony with the chief sway in the 
 Roman world; but his life of pleasure in Egypt had done 
 much to forfeit it; and Octa-sdanus, afterwards called 
 
 Augustus, had been for 
 some time rising in power 
 against him. His party, 
 however, was still strong 
 enough in Rome to choose 
 
 lATEE COIN or CLEOPATKA AND ANTONY, f qj. CQUSUl MS f rlCUd SOSlUS, 
 
 who put the head of Antony on one side of his coins, 
 and the Egyptian eagle and thunderbolt on the other. 
 Soon afterwards Antony was himself chosen as consul 
 
348 
 
 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 elect for the coming year, and he then struck his last 
 coins in Egypt. The rude copper coins have on one side 
 the name of " The queen, the young goddess,^' and on the 
 other side of " Antony, Consul a third time.'''' But he 
 never was consul for the third time; before the day of 
 entering on the office he was made an enemy of Rome by 
 the senate. Octavianus, however, would not declare war 
 against him, but declared war against Cleopatra, or 
 rather, as he said, against Mardion her slave, Iris her 
 waiting - woman, and Charmion, another favourite 
 woman; for these had the chief management of Antony's 
 affairs. 
 
 At the beginning of the year b. c. 31, which was to 
 end with the battle of Actium, Octavianus held Italy^ 
 Gaul, Spain, and Carthage, with an army of eighty thou- 
 sand foot, twelve thousand 
 horse, and a fleet of two 
 hundred and fifty ships: 
 Antony held Egypt, Ethi- 
 opia, and Cyrene, with one 
 hundred thousand foot, 
 twelve thousand horse, and five hundred ships; he was 
 followed by the kings of Africa, Upper Cilicia, Cappa- 
 docia, Paphlagonia, Commagene, and Thrace; and he re- 
 ceived help from the kings of Pontus, Arabia, Judsea, 
 Lycaonia, Galatia, and Media. Thus Octavianus held 
 Rome, with its western provinces and hardy legions, 
 while Antony held the Greek kingdom of Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus. Cleopatra was confident of success and as boast- 
 ful as she was confident. Her most solemn manner of 
 
 CONSULAR COIN Or ANTONT. 
 
ANTONY'S DEFEAT 349 
 
 promising was: " As svirely as I shall issue my decrees 
 from the Roman Capitol." But the mind of Antony was 
 ruined by his life of pleasure. He carried her with him 
 into battle, at once his strength and his weakness, and 
 he was beaten at sea by Octavianus, on the coast of 
 Epirus, near Actium. This battle, which sealed the fate 
 of Antony, of Egypt, and of Rome, would never have 
 been spoken of in history if he had then had the courage 
 to join his land forces; but he sailed away in a fright 
 with Cleopatra, leaving an army larger than that of 
 Octavianus, which would not believe that he was gone. 
 They landed at ParaBtonium in Libya, where he remained 
 in the desert with Aristocrates the rhetorician and one 
 or two other friends, and sent Cleopatra forward to 
 Alexandria. There she talked of carrying her ships 
 across the isthmus to the head of the Red Sea, along the 
 canal from Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, and thence 
 flying to some unknown land from the power of the con- 
 queror. Antony soon however followed her, but not to 
 join in society. He locked himself up in his despair 
 in a small fortress by the side of the harbour, which he 
 named his Timonium, after Timon, the Athenian philos- 
 opher who forsook the society of men. When the news, 
 however, arrived that his land forces had joined Oc- 
 tavianus, and his allies had deserted him, he came out 
 of his Timonium and joined the queen. 
 
 Li Alexandria, Antony and Cleopatra only so far re- 
 gained their courage as to forget their losses, and to 
 plunge into the same round of costly feasts and shows 
 that they had amused themselves with before their fall; 
 
360 CLEOPATKA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 but, while they were wasting these few weeks in pleas- 
 ure, Octavianus was moving his fleet and army upon 
 Egypt. 
 
 When he landed on the coast, Egypt held three mil- 
 lions of people; he might have been met by three hundred 
 thousand men able to bear arms. As for money, which 
 has sometimes been called the sinews of war, though 
 there might have been none in the treasury, yet it could 
 not have been wanting in Alexandria. But the Egyptians, 
 like the ass in the fable, had nothing to fear from a change 
 of masters; they could hardly be kicked and cuffed worse 
 than they had been; and, though they themselves were 
 the prize struggled for, they looked on with the idle stare 
 of a bystander. Some few of the garrisons made a show 
 of holding out; but, as Antony had left the whole of 
 his army in Greece when he fled away after the battle 
 of Actium, he had lost all chance of safety. 
 
 When Pelusium was taken, it was said by some that 
 Seleucus the commander had given it up by Cleopatra's 
 orders; but the queen, to justify herself, put the wife 
 and children of Seleucus into the hands of Antony to be 
 punished if he thought fit. When Octavianus arrived 
 in front of Alexandria he encamped not far from the 
 hippodrome, a few miles from the Canopic or eastern 
 gate. On this Antony made a brisk sally, and, routing 
 the Roman cavalry, returned to the city in triumph. 
 On his way to the palace he met Cleopatra, whom he 
 kissed, armed as he was, and recommended to her favour 
 a brave soldier who had done good service in the battle. 
 She gave the man a cuirass and helmet of gold; but he 
 
THE JEWS AND CLEOPATRA 351 
 
 saw that Antony's cause was ruined; his new-gotten 
 treasure made him selfish, and he went over to the ene- 
 my's camp that very night. The next morning Antony 
 ordered out his forces, both on land and sea, to engage 
 with those of Octavianus; but he was betrayed by his 
 generals: his fleet and cavalry deserted him without a 
 
 GREEK PICTUHE OP CLEOPATRA. 
 
 blow being struck; and his infantry, easily routed, re- 
 treated into the city. 
 
 Cleopatra had never acted justly towards her Jewish 
 subjects; and, during a late famine, had denied to them 
 their share of the wheat distributed out of the public 
 granaries to the citizens of Alexandria. The Jews in 
 return showed no loyalty to Cleopatra, nor regret at her 
 enemy's success; and on this defeat of her troops her 
 
362 CLEOPATKA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 rage fell upon them. She made a boast of her cruelty 
 towards them, and thought if she could have killed all 
 the Jews with her own hand she should have been repaid 
 for the loss of the city. On the other hand, Antony 
 thought that he had been betrayed by Cleopatra, as she 
 had received many messengers from Octavianus. To 
 avoid his anger, therefore, she fled to a monument which 
 she had built near the temple of Isis, and in which she 
 had before placed her treasure, her gold, silver, emeralds, 
 pearls, ebony, ivory, and cinnamon, together with a large 
 quantity of flax and a number of torches, as though to 
 burn herself and her wealth in one flame. Here she re- 
 tired with two of her women, and secured herself with 
 bars and bolts, and sent word to Antony that she was 
 dead. Antony, when he heard it, believing that she had 
 killed herself, and wishing not to be outdone in courage 
 by a woman, plunged his sword into his breast. But the 
 wound was not fatal, and when Cleopatra heard of it 
 she sent to beg that he would come to her. Accordingly 
 his servants carried him to the door of her monument. 
 But the queen, in fear of treachery, would not suffer the 
 door to be opened; but she let a cord down from the 
 window, and she with her two women drew him up. 
 Nothing could be more affecting than the sight to all 
 who were near; Antony covered with blood, in the ago- 
 nies of death, stretching out his hands to Cleopatra, and 
 she straining every nerve and every feature of her face 
 with the effort she was making. He was at last lifted 
 in at the window, but died soon afterwards. By this 
 time the city was in the power of Octavianus; he had 
 
OCT AVIAN us AT ALEXANDRIA 353 
 
 not found it necessary to storm the walls, for Antony's 
 troops had all joined him, and he sent in Gallus to en- 
 deavour to take Cleopatra aUve. This he succeeded in 
 doing by drawing her into conversation at the door of 
 her monument, while three men scaled the window and 
 snatched out of her hand the dagger with which she would 
 have stabbed herself. 
 
 Octavianus, henceforth called Augustus, began by 
 promising his soldiers two hundred and fifty drachmas 
 each as prize money, for not being allowed to plunder 
 Alexandria. He soon afterwards entered the city, not 
 on horseback armed at the head of his victorious legions, 
 but on foot, leaning on the arm of the philosopher Arius; 
 and, as he wished to be thought as great a lover of learn- 
 ing as of mercy, he gave out that he spared the place 
 to the prayers of his Alexandrian friend. He called the 
 Greek citizens together in the gymnasium, and, mount- 
 ing the tribunal, promised that they should not be hurt. 
 Cleopatra's three children by Antony, who had not the 
 misfortune to be of the same blood with the conqueror, 
 were kindly treated and taken care of; while Csesarion, 
 her son by Julius Caesar, who was betrayed by his tutor 
 Ehodon while flying towards Ethiopia, was put to death 
 as a rival. The flatterers of the conqueror would of 
 course say that Csesarion was not the son of Julius, but 
 of Ptolemy, the elder of the two boys who had been called 
 Cleopatra's husbands. The feelings of humanity might 
 have answered that, if he was not the only son of the 
 uncle to whom Octavianus owed everything, he was at 
 least helpless and friendless, and that he never could 
 
354 CLEOPATRA AND HEE BROTHERS 
 
 trouble the undisputed master of the world; but Augus- 
 tus, with the heartless cruelty which murdered Cicero, 
 and the cold caution which marked his character through 
 life, listening to the remark of Arius, that there ought 
 not to be two Caesars, had him at once put to death. 
 
 Augustus gave orders that Cleopatra should be care- 
 fully guarded lest she should put an end to her own 
 life; he wished to carry her with him to Rome as the 
 ornament of his triumph. He paid her a visit of con- 
 dolence and consolation. He promised her she should 
 receive honourable treatment. He allowed her to bury 
 Antony. He threatened that her children should be pun- 
 ished if she hurt herself; but she deceived her guards 
 and put herself to death, either by poison, or, as was 
 more commonly thought, by the bite of an asp brought 
 to her in a basket of fruit. She was thirty-nine years 
 of age, having reigned twenty-two years, of which the 
 last seven were in conjunction with Antony; and she 
 was buried in his tomb with all regal splendour. 
 
 The death of Cleopatra was hailed at Rome as a relief 
 from a sad disgrace by others besides the flatterers of 
 the conqueror. When governed by Julius Caesar, and 
 afterwards by Antony, the Romans sometimes fancied 
 they were receiving orders from the barbarian queen to 
 whom their master was a slave. When Antony was in 
 arms against his countrymen, they were not without 
 alarm at Cleopatra's boast that she would yet make her 
 power felt in the Capitol; and many feared that even 
 when Antony was overthrown the conqueror might him- 
 self be willing to wear her chains. But the prudent 
 
ROMAN DEPRAVITY 355 
 
 Augustus was in no danger of being dazzled by beauty. 
 He saw clearly all that was within his reach; he did not 
 want her help to the sovereignty of Egypt; and from the 
 day that he entered the empty palace in Alexandria, his 
 reign began as sole master of Rome and its dependent 
 provinces. 
 
 While we have in this history been looking at the 
 Romans from afar, and only seen their dealings with 
 foreign kings, we have been able to note some of the 
 changes in their manners nearly as well as if we had stood 
 in the Forum. When Epiphanes, Philometor, and Euer- 
 getes II. owed their crowns to Roman help, Rome gained 
 nothing but thanks, and that weight in their councils 
 which is fairly due to usefulness: the senate asked for 
 no tribute, and the citizens took no bribes. But with 
 the growth of power came the love of conquest and of 
 its spoils. Macedonia was conquered in what might be 
 called self-defence; in the reign of Cleopatra Cocce, 
 Cyrene was won by fraud, and Cyprus was then seized 
 without a plea. The senators were even more eager for 
 bribes than the senate for provinces. The nobles who 
 governed these wide provinces grew too powerful for 
 the senate, and found that they could heap up ill-gotten 
 wealth faster by patronising kings than by conquering 
 them; and the Egyptian monarchy was left to stand in 
 the reigns of Auletes and Cleopatra, because the Romans 
 were still more greedy than when they seized Cyrene 
 and Cyprus. And, lastly, when the Romans were worn 
 out by quarrels and the want of a steady government, 
 and were ready to obey any master who could put a stop 
 
;5r,(; CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 to civil bloodshed, they made Octavianus autocrat of 
 Rome; he then gained for himself whatever he seized 
 in the name ol' the republic, and he at once put an end 
 to the Egyptian monarchy. 
 
 Thus fell the family of the Ptolemies, a family that 
 had perhaps done more for arts and letters than any 
 that can be pointed out in history. Like other kings 
 who have bought the praises of poets, orators, and his- 
 torians, they may have misled the talents which they 
 wished to guide, and have smothered the fire which they 
 seemed to foster; but, in rewarding the industry of the 
 mathematicians and anatomists, of the critics, commen- 
 tators, and compilers, they seem to have been highly 
 successful. It is true that Alexandria never sent forth 
 works with the high tone of philosophy, the lofty moral 
 aim and the pure taste which mark the writings of Greece 
 in its best ages, and which ennoble the mind and mend 
 the heart ; but it was the school to which the world long 
 looked for knowledge in all those sciences which help 
 the body and improve the arts of life, and which are 
 sometimes called useful knowledge. Though great and 
 good actions may not have been unknown in Alexandria, 
 so few valued them that none took the trouble to record 
 them. The well-paid writers never wrote the lives of the 
 Ptolemies. The muse of history had no seat in the 
 museum, but it was almost the birthplace of anatomy, 
 geometry, conic sections, geography, astronomy, and 
 hydrostatics. 
 
 If we retrace the steps by which this Grgeco-Egyptian 
 monarchy rose and fell, we shall see that virtue and vice, 
 

 l_^sf^^Si&^^2^:^,^3S?^'^*^#^^ :m 
 
 GRAND COLUMN AT KARNAK. 
 
RETROSPECT 359 
 
 wisdom and folly, care and thoughtlessness, were for the 
 most part followed by the rewards which to us seem 
 natural. The Egyptian gold which first tempted the 
 Greeks into the country, and then helped their energies 
 to raise the monarchy, afterwards undermined those same 
 energies, and became one of the principal causes of its 
 final overthrow. 
 
 In Ptolemy Soter we see plaia manners, careful plans, 
 imtiring activity, and a wise choice of friends. By him 
 talents were highly paid wherever they were found; nO 
 service left unrewarded; the people trusted and taught 
 the use of arms; their love gained by wise laws and even- 
 handed justice; docks, harbours, and fortresses built, 
 schools opened; and by these means a great monarchy 
 founded. Ptolemy was eager to fill the ranks of his 
 armies with soldiers, and his new city with traders. 
 Instead of trying to govern against the will of the people, 
 to thwart or overlook their wishes and feelings, his ut- 
 most aim was to guide them, and to make Alexandria 
 a more agreeable place of settlement than the cities of 
 Asia Minor and Syria, for the thousands who were then 
 pouring out of Greece on the check given to its trading 
 industry by the overthrow of its freedom. Though every 
 thinking man might have seen that the new government, 
 when it gained shape and strength, would be a military 
 despotism; yet his Greek subjects must have felt, while 
 it was weak and resting on their good-will rather than 
 on their habits, that they were enjoying many of the 
 blessings of freedom. Had they then claimed a share 
 in the government, they would most likely have gained 
 
360 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 it, and thereby they would have handed down those bless- 
 ings to their children. 
 
 Before the death of Ptolemy Soter, the habits of the 
 people had so closely entwined themselves round the 
 throne, that Philadelphus was able to take the kingdom 
 and the whole of its wide provinces at the hands of his 
 father as a family estate. He did nothing to mar his 
 father's wise plans, which then ripened into fruit-bear- 
 ing. Trade crowded the harbours and markets, learning 
 filled the schools, conquests rewarded the discipline of 
 the fleets and armies; power, wealth, and splendour fol- 
 lowed in due order. The blaze thus cast around the 
 throne would by many kings have been made to stand 
 in the place of justice and mildness, but under Philadel- 
 phus it only threw a light upon his good government. 
 He was acknowledged both at home and abroad to be 
 the first king of his age; Greece and its philosophers 
 looked up to him as a friend and patron; and though 
 as a man he must take rank far below his father, by whose 
 wisdom the eminence on which he stood was raised, yet 
 in all the gold and glitter of a king Philadelphus was 
 the greatest of his family. 
 
 The Egyptians had been treated with kindness by 
 both of these Greek kings. As far as they had been able 
 or willing to copy the arts of Greece they had been raised 
 to a level with the Macedonians. The Egyptian worship 
 and temples had been upheld, as if in obedience to the 
 oft-repeated answer of the Delphic oracle, that the gods 
 should everywhere be worshipped according to the laws 
 of the country. But Euergetes was much more of an 
 
CAUSE OF DECLINE 361 
 
 Egyptian, and wMle he was bringing back the ancient 
 splendour to the temples, the priests must have regained 
 something of their former rank. But they had no hold 
 on the minds of the soldiers. Had the mercenaries, upon 
 whom the power of the king rested, been worshippers 
 in the Egyptian temples, the priests might, as in the 
 earlier times, like a body of nobles, have checked his 
 power when too great, and at other times upheld it. But 
 it was not so; and upon the whole, little seems to have 
 been gained by the court becoming more Egyptian, while 
 the army must have lost something of its Greek discipline 
 and plainness of manners. 
 
 But in the next reign the fruits of this change were 
 seen to be most unfortunate, Philopator was an Eastern 
 despot, surrounded by eunuchs, and drowned in pleas- 
 ures. The country was governed by his women and 
 vicious favourites. The army, which at the beginning 
 of his reign amounted to seventy-three thousand men, 
 beside the garrisons, was at first weakened by rebellion, 
 and before the end of his reign it fell to pieces. Nothing, 
 however, happened to prove his weakness to surrounding 
 nations; Egypt was still the greatest of kingdoms, 
 though Rome on the conquest of Carthage, and Syria 
 under Antiochus the Great, were fast gaining ground 
 upon it ; but he left to his infant son a throne shaken to 
 the very foundations. 
 
 The ministers of Epiphanes, the infant autocrat, 
 found the government without a head and without an 
 army, the treasury without money, and the people with- 
 out virtue or courage; and they placed the kingdom 
 
362 
 
 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 under the hands of the Romans to save it from being 
 shared between the kings of Syria and Macedonia. Thus 
 passed the first five reigns, the first one hundred and fifty 
 years, the first half of the three centuries that the king- 
 dom of the Ptolemies lasted. It was then rotten at the 
 core with vice and luxury. Its population was lessening, 
 its trade falling off, its treasury empty, its revenue too 
 small for the wasteful expenses of the government; but, 
 
 nevertheless, in the eyes of 
 surrounding nations, its trade 
 and wealth seemed boundless. 
 Taste, genius, and poetry had 
 passed away; but mathemat- 
 ics, surgery, and granunar 
 still graced the museum. The 
 decline of art is shown upon 
 the coins, and even in the 
 shape of the letters upon the 
 coins. On those of Cleopatra 
 the engraver followed the 
 fashion of the penman; the 
 S is written like our C, the E 
 has a round back, and the 
 long O is formed like an M 
 reversed. 
 
 During the reigns of the 
 later Ptolemies the kingdom was under the shield, but 
 also under the sceptre of Rome. Its kings sent to Rome 
 for help, sometimes against their enemies, and some- 
 times against their subjects; sometimes they humbly 
 
 Cleopatra's needle. 
 
CHANGES IN ART 363 
 
 asked the senate for advice, and at other times were able 
 respectfully to disobey the Roman orders. One by one 
 the senate seized the provinces; Coele-Syria, the coast 
 of Asia Minor, Cyrene, and the island of Cyprus; and 
 lastly, though the Ptolemies still reigned, they were 
 counted among the clients of the Roman patrician, to 
 whom they looked up for patronage. From this low 
 state Egypt could scarcely be said to fall when it became 
 a part of the great empire of Augustus. 
 
 During the reigns of the Ptolemies, the sculpture, the 
 style of building, the religion, the writing, and the lan- 
 guage of the Kopts in the Thebaid were nearly the same 
 as when their own kings were reigning in Thebes, with 
 even fewer changes than usually creep in through time. 
 They had all become less simple; and though it would 
 be difficult, and would want a volume by itself to trace 
 these changes, and to show when they came into use, 
 yet a few of them may be pointed out. The change of 
 fashion must needs be slower in buildings which are 
 only raised by the imtiring labour of years, and which 
 when built stand for ages; but in the later temples we 
 find less strength as fortresses, few obelisks or sphinxes, 
 and no colossal statues; we no longer meet with vast 
 caves or pyramids. The columns in a temple have sev- 
 eral new patterns. The capitals which used to be copied 
 from the papyrus plant are now formed of lotus flowers, 
 or palm branches. In some cases, with a sad want of 
 taste, the weight of the roof rests on the weak head 
 of a woman. The buildings, however, of the Ptolemies 
 are such that, before the hieroglyphics on them had been 
 
364 
 
 CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS 
 
 read by Doctor Young, nobody had ever guessed tbat 
 they were later than the time of Cambyses, while three 
 or four pillars at Alexandria were almost the only proof 
 that the country had ever been held by Greeks. 
 
 In the religion we find many new gods or old gods 
 in new dresses. Hapimou, the Nile, now pours water 
 out of a jar like a Greek river god. The moon, which 
 before ornamented the heads of gods, is now a goddess 
 under the name of loh. The favourite Isis had appeared 
 in so many characters that she is called the goddess with 
 ten thousand names. The gods had also 
 changed their rank; Phtah and Serapis 
 now held the chief place. Strange change 
 had also taken place in the names of men 
 and cities. In the place of Pet-isis, Pet- 
 amun, Psammo, and Serapion, we find 
 men named Eudoxus, Hermophantus, and 
 Poly crates; while of the cities, Oshmoo- 
 nayn is called Hermopolis; Esne, Latopo- 
 lis; Chemmis, Panopolis; and Thebes, 
 Diospolis; and Ptolemais, Phylace, Par- 
 embole, and others had sprung into being. 
 Many new characters crept into the hieroglyphics, as 
 the camelopard, the mummy lying on a couch, the ships 
 with sails, and the chariot with horses; there were more 
 words spelled with letters, the groups were more 
 crowded, and the titles of the kings within the ovals 
 became much longer. 
 
 With the papyrus, which was becoming common 
 about the time of the Persian invasion, we find the 
 
 OILSCO EGYPTIAN 
 COLUMN. 
 
DECLINE OF THE KOPTS 365 
 
 running hand, the enchorial or common writing, as it 
 was called, coming into use, in which there were few 
 symbols, and most of the words were spelt with letters. 
 Each letter was of the easy sloping form, which came 
 from its being made with a reed or pen, instead of the 
 stiff form of the hieroglyphics, which were mostly cut 
 in stone. But there is a want of neatness, which has 
 thrown a difficulty over them, and has made these writ- 
 ings less easy to read than the hieroglyphics. 
 
 When the country fell into the hands of Augustus, 
 the Kopts were in a much lower state than when con- 
 quered by Alexander. Of the old moral worth and purity 
 of manners very little remained. All respect for women 
 was lost; and, when men degrade those who should be 
 their helps towards excellence, they degrade themselves 
 also. Not a small part of the nation was sunk in vice. 
 They had been slaves for three hundred years, some- 
 times trusted and weU-treated, but more often trampled 
 on and ground down with taxes and cruelty. They had 
 never held up their heads as freemen, or felt themselves 
 lords of their own soil; they had fallen off in numbers, 
 in wealth, and in knowledge; nothing was left to them 
 but their religion, their temples, their hieroglyphics, and 
 the painful remembrance of their faded glories. 
 
 END OF VOL. X. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abydos (Abouthis), 70 
 
 Abyssinia, 159 
 
 Academy, of Plato, 6 
 
 Aotium, Battle of, 349 
 
 ^schylus, 24 
 
 Agatharoides, 252 
 
 Agathooles, 185, 189-193 
 
 Alabastron, 340 
 
 Alexander ^gus, 57 
 
 Alexander Balas, 236, 237 
 
 Alexander Jannaeus, 269, 270 
 
 Alexander the Great, 3, 4, 15, 22-37, 51 
 
 Alexandria, 5, 7, 22-28, 33, 56, 73, 102, 
 
 111, 117, 151, 216, 240, 259, 321, 356 
 Alexandrian Library, 344, 345 
 Allienus, 334 
 Araasis, 18 
 Amnion, 22 
 Ammonius, 233 
 Amon-Ea (Kneph-Ra, Jupiter-Ammon), 
 
 4, 22, 51 
 Amon, temple, 37 
 Auacleterla, 203 
 Anatomy, 87, 88 
 
 Animal worship, 25, 51, 52, 288-290 
 Anniceris, 90 
 Antseopolis, 226 
 
 Antigonus, 57, 58, 61, 62, 66, 75-77 
 Antioch, 61 
 
 Antiochus Cyzicenus, 264, 265 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, 214-218 
 Antiochus the Great, 179, 180, 194 
 Antiochus Theos, 145 
 Antipatros, 36 
 Antiphilus, 91, 92 
 Apelles, 84 
 
 Apis, 4, 21, 51, 52, 288, 289 
 Apis-Osiris, 4 
 ApoUinopolis Magna, 229 
 Apollodorus Gelous, 128 
 ApoUonia, 34 
 Apollonius, 6, 24, 209 
 Apollonius of Citium, 313, 314 
 Apollonius of Perga, 173 
 
 Apollonius Rhodius, 171 
 Arabia, 24 
 Arabia Petraea, 65 
 Aratus, 126, 139, 140 
 Archelaus, 307 
 Archimedes, 173, 174, 184 
 Architecture, 363, 364 
 Arete, 90 
 
 Aristarchus, 126, 232, 233, 258 
 Aristippus, 89 
 Aristobolus, 258 
 Aristomenes, 200, 206, 207 
 Aristophanes, the grammarian, 167, 232, 
 233 ' . . 
 
 Aristotle, 7, 22 
 
 Arius, 353 
 
 Army, Egypt, 147, 148, 307, 313, 361 
 
 ArridsBus. See Philip Arridseus 
 
 Arsinoe, 96, 339 
 
 Arsinoeum, 143 
 
 Art, Egypt, 8, 136, 137, 162, 362 
 
 Artapanos, 12 
 
 Astronomy, 125-127, 332 
 
 Augustus. See Octavianus 
 
 B 
 
 Babylonia, 19 
 Balacrus, 24 
 Berenice, 94, 95, 175 
 Bible, Hebrew, 245, 246 
 Bion, 232, 233 
 Britain, 336 
 Burial customs, 292-294 
 
 Caesar Julius, 304, 305, 316, 319-331 
 
 Csesarion, 329, 353 
 
 Calendar, Roman, 332 
 
 Callimachus, 121, 171 
 
 Camelopard, 330 
 
 Cambyses, 4, 52 
 
 Canals, 113 
 
 Canon of Cleopatra, 322 
 
 Canopus, 22, 26, 70 
 
INDEX 
 
 Caravans, 258 
 
 Caricature, 295 
 
 Carneades of Cyrene, 171 
 
 Cassander, 57, 66, 73 
 
 Cassius Longiuus, 220 
 
 Cato the Censor, 242, 303 
 
 Cat worship, 290 
 
 Cicero, 304, 330 
 
 Cleomenes, 24-28, 30, 32, 176-178 
 
 Cleoraenes, King of Sparta, 159 
 
 Cleopatra, 315-354 
 
 Cleopatra Berenice, 274, 280-283 
 
 Cleopatra Cocce, 289, 241, 262, 264-268, 
 
 270-272 
 Coast survey, 252 
 Cochlea, or Screw-pump, 173 
 Coins, Egypt, 82-84, 141-143, 175, 176, 
 
 188, 189, 210, 236, 237, 273-275, 280, 
 
 346-348, 362 
 Coins, Roman, 108, 195, 300, 304 
 Colossus of Khodes, 184 
 Conon, 172 
 
 Contracts, Form of, 28 
 Contra-Latopolis, temple, 268 
 Cornelia, 220 
 Costume, Egypt, 81 
 Creation, Theory of, 286-288 
 Crocodile worship, 25 
 Crocodilopolis, 25 
 Ctesibus, 120 
 Culture, Egyptian, 8, 56 
 
 Greek, 3, 10, 11 
 Cybiosactes, 307 
 Cynocephalse, battle, 197 
 Cyprus, 47, 59, 220, 221 
 Cyrene, 23, 34, 58, 59, 109, 110 
 Cyrenaica, 34 
 
 D 
 
 Darius, 25 
 
 Deed of sale, 230 
 
 Demetrius Phalereus, 5, 117, 118 
 
 Demetrius the philosopher, 300 
 
 Didymus, 332 
 
 Dinocrates, 23 
 
 Diodonis Siculus, 85, 283, 284 
 
 Dioscorides, 333 
 
 Doloaspis, 24 
 
 Duties, export, 27 
 
 E 
 
 Earthquake, at Rhodes, 184 
 Elephants, 115, 180 
 Embalming, 7, 292, 293 
 Enchorial, 365 
 Epicides, 35 
 
 Ephippus, 24 
 
 Erasistratus, 86, 87 
 
 Eratosthenes, 6, 168, 188 
 
 Euclid, 6, 84, 119 
 
 Eudoxus, 257, 265-266 
 
 Eugnostus, 24 
 
 Eumenes, 38, 40 
 
 Eupator. See Ptolemy Philopator 
 
 Euphrates, 26 
 
 Eurydice, 94, 95 
 
 Explorations, 257, 258, 265, 266 
 
 G 
 
 Gabinius, 306-308, 311 
 
 Gauls, 110 
 
 Gold mining, 251, 296-299 
 
 Government, Egypt, 52-54 
 
 Grain, 27 
 
 Great seal of Egypt, 186 
 
 Greek, culture and civilisation, 3, 5 
 Cities in Egypt, 54-56 
 Language in Egypt, 226 
 
 H 
 Hades, 5 
 
 Hahiroth. See Heroopolis 
 Hapimou, 364 
 Hebrews, 11-14 
 Hegesias, 88 
 Helena, 136, 137 
 Hellas, 9 
 Helios, 4 
 Hephaestos, 4 
 Heraclides Lembus, 218 
 Hermes, 4 
 Hermopolites, 67 
 Hero, 235 
 Herod, 343 
 Heroopolis, 24, 69 
 Herophilus, 6, 87, 88 
 Hierax, 246 
 
 Hieroglyphics, 162, 165, 204, 364 
 Hipparchus, 6, 125, 235 
 Homer, 22, 23, 233, 234 
 
 Temple of, 8, 188 
 Horses, 115 
 
 Imothph, 210 
 
 India, 266 
 
 Inscriptions, 160, 251, 264 
 
 loh, 364 
 
 Isis, 116, 233, 364 
 
 Jason of Cyrene, 244 
 
INDEX 
 
 Jesus, son of Sirach, 245 
 
 Jews, 70, 73, 138, 155, 156, 181, 182, 
 
 224, 243-245, 267, 302, 328, 361, 352 
 Judaea, 9, 301 
 
 Judaeo-Hellenic philosophy, 11, 12 
 Judas Maccabaeus, 246 
 Jupiter- Amm on. See Amon-Ra 
 
 K 
 
 Kakergetes, 222 
 
 Karnak, 52, 161 
 
 Khfifai (Kheops), 285 
 
 King's mother, Kank of, 264 
 
 Kneph, 70 
 
 Kneph-Ra. See Amon-Ra 
 
 Kopts, 97-100, 267, 277 
 
 LagidsB, 3-6 
 
 Laomedon, 50 
 
 Lathyrus. See Ptolemy Soter II. 
 
 Laws, 294, 295 
 
 Libraries, 117 
 
 Library, Alexandria, 5, 7, 344, 345 
 
 Library, Pergamus, 261 
 
 Libya, 24, 34 
 
 Licidas, 24 
 
 Lighthouse, 28, 112, 242 
 
 LucuUus, 278, 279 
 
 Lycon, 168, 171 
 
 Lyoophron, 172 
 
 Lysimachus, 57, 66 
 
 M 
 
 Magas, 109, 110, 175, 176 
 
 Mandoo, 333 
 
 Manetho, 9, 12, 128-133 
 
 Marcus Lepidus, 195 
 
 Mark Antony, 307, 326, 327, 329, 334, 
 
 335, 338-345, 348-353 
 Marriage laws, 141 
 Mazakes, 17 
 Melauthus, 136 
 Memnon, 69 
 Memnonium, 69 
 
 Memphis, 4, 18, 22, 23, 38, 39, 284, 285 
 Memphites, 241, 247 
 Menander, 122 
 Meroe, 144 
 
 Miamun Ramses. See Memnon 
 Military tactics, Roman, 197, 198 
 Mining, 251, 296-299 
 Mithridates of Pergamus, 326 
 Monasticism, 230 
 Morals, 365 
 Moschus of Syracuse, 232 
 
 Moses, 12, 13 
 
 Mummies, 293, 294 
 
 Museum of Alexandria, 5, 7, 117 
 
 N 
 
 Nabatseans, 62, 65 
 
 Naval power, 178 
 
 Negro slaves, 231 
 
 Neo-Platonism, 7 
 
 Neus Dionysus. See Ptolemy Auletes. 
 
 New Isis, 345 
 
 Nicander, 235 
 
 Nicanor, 50 
 
 Nile, Commerce on, 18, 112, 243 
 Bridges on, 24 
 
 Sacred, 62, 146, 255, 287-289 
 Inundations, 252-255, 286, 341 
 
 Nilometers, 253, 264 
 
 Nomes, 67 
 
 O 
 
 Obelisk, 251 
 
 Octavianus, 348-356 
 
 Ointments, 340 
 
 Onias, 224, 226 
 
 Ophelas, 34, 35 
 
 Oracle of Ammon, 27 
 
 Osaripi. See Osiris-Apis 
 
 Osiris, 4, 103-105, 161 
 
 Osiris-Apis, 4 
 
 P 
 
 Palestine, 10 
 
 Pamphilius, 235 
 
 Pamphilus, 136 
 
 Pansetius, 242 
 
 Pantaleon, 24 
 
 Papyrus, 56, 261, 364 
 
 Paraetonium, 23, 24 
 
 Parchment, 261 
 
 Parembole, 226 
 
 Peithon (Python), 47 
 
 Pelusium, 17, 24, 40 
 
 Perdiccas, 30, 31, 35^0, 42-47 
 
 Pergamus, 261 
 
 Persia, 4 
 
 Petisis, 24 
 
 Petosiris, 133 
 
 Petra, 62, 65 
 
 Peucestes, 24 
 
 Phalanx, Macedonian, 197 
 
 Pharos, 23, 28, 112 
 
 Philse, 116, 251 
 
 Philsetas, 122 
 
 Philetas, 8 
 
 Philip, 194-198 
 
 Philip ArridsBus, 29, 31, 37, 38, 57 
 
 Philo, 278, 279 
 
 Philosophers, 85-91 
 
INDEX 
 
 Philosophy, Greek and Hebrew, 246 
 
 Philostephanus, 88 
 
 Photinus, 332 
 
 Phtah, 4, 21, 22, 51, 364 
 
 Physoon. See Ptolemy Euergetes II. 
 
 Plato, Academy of, 6 
 
 Pluton. See Serapis 
 
 Polemon, 24 
 
 Polybius, 211 
 
 Polycrates, 200, 209 
 
 Pompey, 300, 301, 305, 315, 316, 319 
 
 Popilius, 218 
 
 Pothinus, 317, 320, 321 
 
 Pschent, 203 
 
 Ptolemies, Achievements of, 356-363 
 
 Ptolemy Alexander, 268, 271-275 
 
 Ptolemy Alexander II., 279-281 
 
 Ptolemy Apion, 271, 272 
 
 Ptolemy Auletes, 280, 283-306 
 
 Ptolemy Ceraunus, 94 
 
 Ptolemy Epiphanes 153, 190-211, 361, 
 362 
 
 Ptolemy Euergetes 153-176, 360, 361 
 
 Ptolemy Euergetes II., 215, 217, 219-267 
 
 Ptolemy Lagus. See Ptolemy Soter 
 
 Ptolemy Macron, 216, 217 
 
 Ptolemy Neus Dionysus. See Ptolemy 
 Aulptss 
 
 Ptolemy Philadelphus, 8, 94, 95, 101-152 
 
 Ptolemy Philometor, 213-239 
 
 Ptolemy Philopator, 8, 176-190, 361 
 
 Ptolemy Physoon. See Ptolemy Euer- 
 getes II. 
 
 Ptolemy Soter (Lagus), 4-6, 8, 28-99, 
 107, 359 
 
 Ptolemy Soter II. (Lathyrus), 263-265, 
 267-278 
 
 Ptolemy of Megalopolis, 209 
 
 Public readings, 134 
 
 Pump of Archimedes, 174 
 
 Punic War, second, 184 
 
 Pyramids, 284, 285 
 
 Pyrrhus, 80, 95, 107 
 
 Python. See Peithon 
 
 R 
 
 Ra, 4 
 
 Rabirius Posthumus, 308, 311 
 
 Ramesseum, 6 
 
 Ramses II., 6 
 
 Raphia, Battle, 180 
 
 Red Sea, 112 
 
 Religion, Egypt, 8, 51, 364 
 
 Religion, Hebrew, 9 
 
 Revenues, 296 
 
 Rhaeatis, 22, 23 
 
 Rhodes, 78, 79, 184 
 
 Roman Calendar, 332 
 
 Rome, 9, 107, 108, 155, 156, 194-196, 208, 
 216, 218, 219, 221, 230, 271, 272, 278, 
 301, 330, 331, 355, 356, 362, 363 
 
 Rosetta Stone, 203-206 
 
 Ruflo, 329 
 
 S 
 
 Sabaces, 17 
 
 Salaries of teachers, 259 
 
 Samaritans, 225 
 
 Schools of Alexandria, 259 
 
 Science, 356 
 
 Scipio African us, 242 
 
 Scopas, 200, 202 
 
 Sculpture, 137, 144, 363 
 
 Seleucus, 57, 61 
 
 Septuagint, 11, 139, 245 
 
 Serapion, 333 
 
 Serapis (Pluton), 5, 364 
 
 Sesoosis (Sesonchosis), 284 
 
 Sextus Pompeius, 331 
 
 Ships, Egyptian, 183, 184 
 
 Silk, 81 
 
 Simon Maccabaeus, 243 
 
 Slavery, 230, 231, 251 
 
 Somatophylax, 28, 97 
 
 Sosibius, 127, 186, 193 
 
 Sosigenes, 332 
 
 Sosisthenes, 259 
 
 Sphserus, 187, 188 
 
 Steam engine, 235 
 
 Stilpo, 85, 86 
 
 Strabo, 8 
 
 Strato, 125 
 
 Sibylline books, 305 
 
 Syria, 47, 50, 58, 59 
 
 Tancheira, 35 
 
 Tarsus, 336 
 
 Tattooing, 182 
 
 Taxes, 148, 165 
 
 Teachers' salaries, 259 
 
 Telmissus, 37 
 
 Temples, 151, 188, 224, 226, 229, 277, 
 
 278, 333 
 Temple at Jerusalem, 181 
 Thais, 94 
 Thebaid, 50, 51 
 
 Thebes, 18, 22, 52, 53, 68, 69, 275-278 
 Theocritus, 109, 120, 121 
 Theodoras, 90, 91 
 Thermus, 241 
 Thibron, 34 
 Thot, 4 
 
 Timagenes, 311 
 Timocharis, 125 
 Timon, 135 
 Timosthenes, 133 
 
INDEX 
 
 Tlepolemus, 186, 190 
 
 Tombs, 68, 69 
 
 Trade, Egypt, 27, 50, 51, 70, 113-115, 
 
 148, 255-257, 360, 362 
 Trade, Tarsus, 336 
 Trade-winds, 258 
 Tyre, 23 
 
 V 
 
 Voyages, 257, 266 
 
 W 
 
 Water-clock, 120 
 Writing, 265, 362, 365 
 
 Zabbineus, 248 
 Zenodotus, 119 
 Zeus, 4 
 Zoilus, 134 
 
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