HISTORY OF EGYPT

From 330 B. C. To the Present Time

By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel; Member of the EcoleLangues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German, French Orientalist andPhilologist

VOL. X. 

Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS, LONDON

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OSIRIS AND ISIS AND THE FOUR CHILDREN OF HORUS WITHIN A SHRINE. 

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PREFACE

Professor Maspero closes his History of Egypt with the conquest ofAlexander the Great. There is a sense of dramatic fitness in thisselection, for, with the coming of the Macedonians, the sceptre ofauthority passed for ever out of the hand of the Egyptian. For severalcenturies the power of the race had been declining, and foreign nationshad contended for the vast treasure-house of Egypt. Alexander found thePersians virtually rulers of the land. The ancient people whose famehas come down to us through centuries untarnished had been forced tobow beneath the yoke of foreign masters, and nations of alien blood werehenceforth to dominate its history. 

The first Ptolemy founded a Macedonian or Greek dynasty that maintainedsupremacy in Egypt until the year 30 B. C. His successors were his linealdescendants, and to the very last they prided themselves on theirGreek origin; but the government which they established was essentiallyOriental in character. The names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra convey anEgyptian rather than a Greek significance; and the later rulers ofthe dynasty were true Egyptians, since their ancestors had lived inAlexandria for three full centuries. 

In the year 30 B. C. Augustus Cæsar conquered the last of the Ptolemies, the famous Cleopatra. Augustus made Egypt virtually his privateprovince, and drew from it resources that were among the chief elementsof his power. After Augustus, the Romans continued in control untilthe coming of the Saracens under Amr, in the seventh century. Variousdynasties of Mohammedans, covering a period of several centuries, maintained control until the Mamluks, in 1250, overthrew the legitimaterulers, to be themselves overthrown three centuries later by the Turksunder Selim I. Turkish rule was maintained until near the close of theeighteenth century, when the French, under Napoleon Bonaparte, invadedEgypt. In 1806, after the expulsion of the French by the English, thefamous Mehemet Ali destroyed the last vestiges of Mamluk power, and setup a quasi-independent sovereignty which was not disturbed until towardthe close of the nineteenth century. The events of the last twenty-fiveyears, comprising a short period of joint control of Egypt by the Frenchand English, followed by the British occupation, are fresh in the mindof the reader. 

What may be termed the modern history of Egypt covers a period of morethan twenty-two centuries. During this time the native Egyptian canscarcely be said to have a national history, but the land of Egypt, andthe races who have become acclimated there, have passed through manyinteresting phases. Professor Maspero completes the history of antiquityin that dramatic scene in which the ancient Egyptian makes his lastfutile struggle for independence. But the Nile Valley has remained thescene of the most important events where the strongest nations of theearth contended for supremacy. It is most interesting to note thatthe invaders of Egypt, while impressing their military stamp upon thenatives, have been mastered in a very real sense by the spell ofEgypt's greatness; but the language, the key to ancient learning andcivilisation, still remained a well-guarded secret. Here and there oneof the Ptolemies or Greeks thought it worth his while to master thehieroglyphic writing. Occasionally a Roman of the later period may havedone the same, but such an accomplishment was no doubt very unusual fromthe first. The subordinated Egyptians therefore had no resource but tolearn the language of their conquerors, and presently it came to passthat not even the native Egyptian remembered the elusive secrets ofhis own written language. Egyptian, as a spoken tongue, remained, ina modified form, as Koptic, but at about the beginning of our era theclassical Egyptian had become a dead language. No one any longer wrotein the hieroglyphic, hieratic, or demotic scripts; in a word, thehieroglyphic writing was forgotten. The reader of Professor Maspero'spages has had opportunity to learn how this secret was discovered in thenineteenth century. This information is further amplified in the presentvolumes, and we see how in our own time the native Egyptian has regainedsomething of his former grandeur through the careful and scientificstudy of monuments, inscriptions, and works of art. Thus it will appearin the curious rounding out of the enigmatic story that the most ancienthistory of civilisation becomes also the newest and most modern humanhistory. 

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

It should be explained that Doctor Rappoport, in preparing thesevolumes, has drawn very largely upon the authorities who have previouslylaboured 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. FlindersPetrie and other prominent Egyptologists have been fully set forth andprofusely illustrated. 

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_EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIES_

_ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT--THE REIGNS OP THEPTOLEMIES--GRADUAL GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE--INTRIGUES OF CLEOPATRAWITH POMPEY, CAESAR, AND ANTONY_

_Alexander the Great in Egypt--Alexandria founded--The Greeks favourthe Jews--Ptolemy Soter establishes himself in Egypt and overcomesPerdiccas--Struggles for Syria--Beginning of Egyptian coinage--Art andScholarship--Ptolemy resigns in favour of his son Philadelphus--First treaty with Rome--Building of the Pharos--Growth ofCommerce--Encouragement of Learning--The library of Alexandria--Euclidthe geometer--Poets, astronomers, historians, and critics--TheSeptuagint--Marriage of Philadelphus to his sister Arsinoë--PtolemyEuergetes plunders Asia--Egyptian temples enlarged--Religioustolerance--Annual tribute of the Jews--Eratosthenes theastronomer--Philosophy and Science--Culmination of Ptolemaic rule--Thedynasty declines under Philopator--Syrians invade Egypt; Philopatorretaliates; visits Jerusalem--The Jews persecuted--The king'sfollies--Riots at Alexandria--Inglorious end of Philopator--Theyoung Ptolemy Epiphanes protected by Rome--Military revoltsuppressed--Coronation of Epiphanes--The Rosetta Stone--Marriage ofEpiphanes and Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus the Cheat--A secondrebellion repressed--Accession of Ptolemy Philometer underthe guardianship of Cleopatra--Antiochus Epiphanes defeatsPhilometer--Euergetes seizes the throne and appeals to Rome--Antiochussupports Philometor against his brother Euergetes--The brothers combineagainst Antiochus--Fraternal rivalry--Philometer appeals to the Romanswho adjust the quarrel--Philometer arbitrates in a dispute betweenthe Jews and the Samaritans--New temples built--Egyptianasceticism--Philometer's death; Euergetes reigns alone, and divorceshis queen Cleopatra--Popular tumult in Alexandria--Euergetesflees--Cleopatra in power--Euergetes regains the throne; conquersSyria and makes peace with Cleopatra--The reign of Cleopatra Cocce withLathyrus (Ptolemy Soter II. )--Cleopatra in the ascendent--She helpsthe Jews, while Lathyrus helps the Samaritans--Lathyrus flees toCyprus--Ptolemy Alexander I rules with Cleopatra--Death of Alexanderand restoration of Lathyrus--Accession of Cleopatra Berenicê--PtolemyAlexander II. Bequeaths Egypt to Rome, murders Berenicê, and is slainby his guards--Auletes succeeds--The Romans claim Egypt--Pompey assistsAuletes who is expelled by the Egyptians--Cleopatra Tryphama andBerenicê placed on the throne--Grabinius and Mark Antony marchinto Egypt and restore Auletes--The reign of Cleopatra--Pompey madegovernor--The Egyptian fleet aids Pompey--Pompey is slain--Cæsarbesieged by the Alexandrians--He overcomes opposition, is captivatedby Cleopatra and establishes her authority--The Queen'sextravagance--Defeat of Antony--Death of Cleopatra--Octavianus annexesEgypt. _

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

HELLENISM AND HEBRÆISM IN EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIES

I. 

When Alexander the Great bridged the gulf dividing Occident and Orient, the Greeks had attained to a state of maturity in the development oftheir national art and literature. Greek culture and civilisation, passing beyond the boundaries of their national domain, crossed thisbridge and spread over the Asiatic world. To perpetuate his name, thegreat Macedonian king founded a city, and selected for this purpose, with extraordinary prescience, a spot on the banks of the Nile, which, on account of its geographical position, was destined to become acentre, not only of international commerce and an entrepôt between Asiaand Europe, but also a centre of intellectual culture. The policy ofAlexander to remove the barriers between the Greeks and the Asiatics, and to pave the way for the union of the races of his vast empire, wascontinued by the Lagidæ dynasty in Egypt. With her independence andnative dynasties, Egypt had also lost her political strength and unity;she retained, however, her ancient institutions, her customs, andreligious system. The sway of Persian dominion had passed over herwithout overthrowing this huge rock of sacerdotal power which, deeplyrooted with many ramifications, seemed to mock the wave of time. Outof the ruins of political independence still towered the monumentsof civilisation of a mighty past which gave to this country moralindependence, and prevented the obliteration of nationality. It wouldhave mattered very little in the vast empire of Alexander if oneprovince had a special physiognomy. It was different, however, with theLagidæ: their power was concentrated in Egypt, and they were thereforecompelled to obliterate the separation existing between the conqueringand the conquered races, and fuse them, if possible, into one. Agreat obstacle which confronted the Macedonian rulers in Egypt wasthe religion of the country. The interest and the policy of the Lagidædemanded the removal of this obstacle, not by force but by diplomacy. Greek gods were therefore identified with Egyptian; Phtah becameHephæstos; Thot, Hermes; Ra, Helios; Amon, Zeus; and, in consequence ofa dream which commanded him to offer adoration to a foreign god, PtolemySoter created a new Greek god who was of Egyptian origin. Osiris at thatperiod was the great god of Egypt; Memphis was the religious centre ofthe cult of Apis, the representative of Osiris, and who, when living, was called Apis-Osiris, and when dead Osiris-Apis. Cambyses had killedthe god or his representative: it was a bad move. Alexander madesacrifices to him: Ptolemy Soter did more. He endeavoured to persuadethe Egyptians that Osirapi or Osiris-Apis was also sacred to the Greeks, and to identify him with some Greek divinity. There was a Greek deityknown as Serapis, identified with Pluton, the god of Hades. Serapis, by a clever manouvre, a _coup de religion_, was identified withOsiris-Apis. The lingual similarity and the fact that Osirapi was thegod of the Egyptian Hades made the identification acceptable. 

Like true Greek princes, the Ptolemies had broad views and were verytolerant. Keeping the Greek religion themselves, they were favourablydisposed towards the creeds of other nationalities under theirdominion. Thanks to this broad-mindedness and tolerance which hadbecome traditional in the Lagidas family, and which has only rarely beenimitated--to the detriment of civilisation--in the history of Europeandynasties, Oriental and Hellenic culture could flourish side by side. This benign government attracted many scholars, scientists, poets, and philosophers. Alexandria became the intellectual metropolis of theworld; and it might truly be said to have been the Paris of antiquity. At the courts of the Ptolemies, the Medicis of Egypt, the greatestmen of the age lived and taught. Demetrius Phalerius, one of the mostlearned and cultured men of an age of learning and knowledge, whendriven from his luxurious palace at Athens, found hospitality at thecourt of Ptolemy Soter. The foundation of the famous Museion andlibrary of Alexandria was most probably due to his influence. Headvised the first Ptolemy to found a building where poets, scholars, andphilosophers would have facilities for study, research, and speculation. The Museion was similar in some respects to the Academy of Plato. Itwas an edifice where scholars lived and worked together. Mentalqualification was the only requirement for admission. Nationality andcreed were no obstacles to those whose learning rendered them worthy ofbecoming members of this ideal academy and of being received among theimmortals of antiquity. The Museion was in no sense a university, but anacademy for the cultivation of the higher branches of learning. It mightbe compared in some respects to the College de France, or regarded asa development of the system under which scholars had already lived andworked together in the Ramesseum under Ramses II. The generosity of theLagidas provided amply for this new centre of learning and study. Freefrom worldly cares, the scholars could leisurely gather information andhand down to posterity the fruits of their researches. From all partsof the world men flocked to this centre of fashionable learning, thebirthplace of modern science. All that was brilliant and cultured, all the coryphées in the domain of intellect, were attracted by thatsplendid court. 

In the shade of the Museion a brilliant assembly--Ptolemy, Euclid, Hipparchus, Apollonius, and Eratosthenes--made great discoveries andadded materially to the sum of human knowledge. Here Euclid wrotehis immortal "Elements;" and Herophilos, the father of surgery, addedvaluable information to the knowledge of anatomy. The art and processof embalming, in such vogue among the Egyptians, naturally fostered theadvance of this science. Whilst Alexandria in abstract speculation couldnot rival Greece, yet it became the home of the pioneers of positivescience, who left a great and priceless legacy to modern civilisation. The importance of this event (the foundation of the Museion), saysDraper, in his _Intellectual Development of Europe_, though hithertolittle understood, admits of no exaggeration so far as the intellectualprogress of Europe is concerned. The Museum made an impression upon theintellectual career of Europe so powerful and enduring that we stillenjoy its results. If the purely literary productions of that age havesometimes been looked upon with contempt, European intellectualculture is still greatly indebted to Alexandria, and especially for thepatronage she accorded to the works of Aristotle. Whilst the speculativemind was in later centuries allured by the supernatural, and thediscussion of the criterion of truth and the principles of moralityended in the mystic doctrines of Neo-Platonism, the practicaltendencies of the great Alexandrine scholars were instrumental in layingthe foundations of science. To the Museion were attached the libraries:one in the Museion itself, and another in the quarter Rhacotis in thetemple of Serapis, which contained about 700, 000 volumes. New books werecontinually acquired. The librarians had orders to pay any sum for theoriginal of the works of great masters. The Ptolemies were not onlypatrons of learning but were themselves highly educated. Ptolemy Soterwas an historian of no mean talent, and his son Philadelphus, as a pupilof the poet Philetas and the philosopher Strabo, was a man of greatlearning. Ptolemy III. Was a mathematician, and Ptolemy Philopator, who had erected and dedicated a temple to Homer, was the writer of atragedy. The efforts of the Ptolemies to bring the two nationalities, Hellenic and Egyptian, nearer to each other, to mould and weld theminto one if possible, to mix and mingle the two civilisations and thusstrengthen their own power, was greatly aided by the national characterof the Greeks and the political position of the Egyptians. 

The Greeks found in Egypt a national culture and especially a religioussystem. The pliant Hellenic genius could not remain insensible to thatancient and marvellous civilisation with its sphinxes and hieroglyphics, its pyramids and temples, its learning and thought, so strangelyperplexing and interesting to the Greek mind. Not only the magnificenceof Egyptian art, the majesty of her temples and palaces, but the wisdomof her social and political institutions impressed the conquerors. Theymade themselves acquainted with the institutions of the country; theystudied its history and took an interest in its religion and mythology. Similarly, the conquered Egyptians, who had preferred the Macedonianruler to their Persian oppressors, exhibited a natural desire to learnthe languages and habits of their rulers, to make themselves acquaintedwith their knowledge and phases of thought, and art and science. Theinterest of the Greeks was strengthened by this, and the Egyptians weremade to see their history in its proper light. To this endeavour we owethe history of Manetho. But, in spite of the policy of the Ptolemies, the impressionable nature of the Hellenic character and the interest ofthe Egyptians, --in spite of all that tended to a fusion of Hellenism andOrientalism, it never came to a proper amalgamation. The contradictionbetween the free-thought philosophy of Greece, which was fast outgrowingits polytheism and Olympian worship, and the deeply rooted sacerdotalsystem of the Pharaonian institutions, was too great and too flagrant. Thus there never was an Egypto-Hellenic phase of thought. But there wasanother civilisation of great antiquity, possessing peculiar features, not less interesting for the Greek mind than that of Egypt itself, withwhich Hellenism found itself face to face in the ancient land of thePharaohs. It was the civilisation of Judæa, between which and Greekthought a greater fusion was effected. 

II. 

From time immemorial the Hebrew race, with all its conservativetendencies in religious matters, has been amenable to the influenceof foreign culture and civilian. Egypt and Phoenicia, Babylonia andAssyria, Hellas and Rome have exercised an immense influence over it. It still is and always has been endeavouring to bring into harmonythe exclusiveness of its national religion, with a desire to adopt thehabits culture, language, and manners of its neighbours; an attempt inwhich it may be apparently successful, for a certain period at least, but which must always have a tragic end. It is impossible to beconservative and progressive at the same time, to be both national andcosmopolitan. The attempts to reconcile religious formalism and freereasoning have never succeeded in the history of human thought. It soonled to the conviction that one factor must be sacrificed, and, as soonas this was perceived, the party of zealots was quickly at hand topreach reaction. In the times of the successors of Alexander, theDiadochæ and Epigones, the Seleucidæ and the Lagidæ, who had divided thevast dominion among them, Greek influence had spread all over Palestine. Greek towns were founded, theatres and gymnasia established; Greekart was admired and her philosophy studied. The Hellenic movement wasparamount, and the aristocratic families did their best to further it. Even the high priests, like Jason and Menelaos, who were supposed to bethe guardians of the national exclusive movement, favoured Greek cultureand institutions. 

In the mother country, however, the germ of reaction was always verystrong. A constant opposition was directed against the influx offoreign modes of life and thought, which effaced and obliterated theintellectual movement. It was different, however, in the other countriesof Macedonian dominion, and especially in Egypt. Alexander the Great, who seems to have been favourably inclined towards the Jews, settled anumber of them in Alexandria. His policy was kept up by the descendantsof Lagos, that great general of Alexander, who made himself king of theprovince which was entrusted to the care of his administration. Egyptbecame the resort of many refugees from Judæa, who gradually came underthe influence of the dazzling Greek thought and culture, so new andtherefore so attractive to the Semitic mind. Hellenism and Hebraism hadknown each other for some time, for Phoenician merchants and seafarershad carried the seed of Oriental wisdom to the distant west. Theacquaintance, however, was a slight one. At the court of the Ptolemies, on the threshold of Europe and Asia, they met at last. On the shoresof the Mediterranean, on the soil where lay the traces of the ancientEgyptian civilisation, in the silent avenues of mysterious sphinxes, amongst hieroglyphic-covered obelisks, Greek and Hebrew thought stoodface to face. The two civilisations embodied the principles of theBeautiful and the Sublime, of Morality and Æstheticism, of religiousand philosophic speculation. The result of this meeting marks a gloriouspage in the annals of human thought. Among the monuments of a greathistoric past, the speculative spirit of the East made love to theplastic beauty of the West, until, at last, they were united in happyunion. Hellenic taste and sense of beauty and Semitic speculation notonly evolved side by side in Egypt but mixed and commingled; theirthoughts were intertwined and interwoven, giving rise to a newintellectual movement, a new philosophy of thought: the Judæo-Hellenic. Alexandrian culture, during the reign of the Ptolemies, is the offspringof a mixed marriage between two parents belonging to two widelydifferent races, and, as a cross breed, is endowed with many qualities. It had the seriousness of the one parent and the delicacy of the other. 

The Ptolemies encouraged the movement towards fusion. The result wasthat the Jews in Egypt, not being hampered by reactionary endeavoursfrom the side of conservative parties, and with an adaptability peculiarto their race, soon acquired the language of the people in whose midstthey dwelt. They conversed and wrote in Greek; they moulded and shapedtheir own thoughts into Greek form; they clothed the Semitic mode ofthinking in Hellenic garb. The immediate result was the translation ofthe Pentateuch into Greek. Vanity, of which no individual or race isfree, had embellished this literary production, which has acquired ahigh degree of importance alike among Jews and Christians, with manylegends. This translation, known as the Septuaginta (LXX), was followedby independent histories relating to Biblical events. One of the bestknown authors is the chronographer Demetrius, who lived in the secondhalf of the third century, and whose work Flavius Josephus is supposedto have utilised. Not to speak of the Greek authors in Judæa and Syria, we may mention Artapanos, who, following the fashion of the day, wrotehistory in the form of a romance, and showed traces of an apologeticcharacter. He endeavoured to attribute all that was great in Egyptiancivilisation to Moses. This was due to the fact that Manetho, theEgyptian historian, and others following his example, had spread fablesand venomous tales about the ancient sojourn and exodus of the Hebrewsand their leader. To counterbalance these accusations, fables had tobe interwoven into history, and history became romance. Moses wasthus identified with Hermes, and made out to be the father of Egyptianwisdom. But, if the close acquaintanceship of Hebraism and Hellenismbegan with a mere flirtation, encouraged by the rulers of the land andkept up by the Jews, who wished to gain the favour of the conqueringrace and to show themselves and their history in as favourable a lightas possible, it soon ended in a serious attachment. The Hebrews madethemselves acquainted with Hellenic life and thought. They studied Homerand Hesiod, Empedocles and Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, and theywere startled by the discovery that in Greek thought there were manyelements, moral and religious, familiar to them: this enhanced theattraction. The narrowness and exclusiveness to which strict nationalityalways gives rise, engendering contempt and hatred for everythingforeign--which made even the Greeks, with all their intellectualculture, draw a line of demarcation between Greek and barbarian--gaveway to a spirit of cosmopolitan breadth of view which has only veryrarely been equalled in history. Hellenic and Hebrew forms ofthought were brought into friendly union, and gave birth to ideasand aspirations of which humanity may always be proud. Greek æstheticjudgment and Semitic mysticism, different phases of thought inthemselves, were welded into one. The religious conceptions of Mosesand the Prophets were expressed in the language of the philosophicalschools; an attempt was made to bring into harmony the dogmas ofsupernatural revelation and the fruits of human speculative thought. Such an attempt is a great undertaking, for, if sincerely andrelentlessly pursued, it must end in breaking down the barriers ofseparation, in the establishment of a common truth, and in the sacrificeof cherished ideals and convictions which prove to be wrong. If carriedto its logical conclusion, such a cosmopolitan broad-mindedness, sucha cross-fertilisation of intellectual products, must give rise to theennobling idea that there is only one truth, and that the external formsare only fleeting waves upon the vast ocean of human ideals. Theattempt was made in Alexandria by the Judæo-Hellenic philosophers. Unfortunately, however, the Hebrews, with all their adaptability, havenot yet carried this attempt to its logical conclusion. The spiritof reaction has ever and anon been ready to crush in its infancy theendeavour of truth and sincerity, of broad-mindedness and tolerance. When placed before the question to be or not to be, to be logical orillogical, 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 Hebraismin Egypt had a tragic end. The union was dissolved, not, however, without having produced its issue: the Alexandrian culture, which wascarried to Rome by Philo Judæus, and thus influenced later Europeanthought and humanity at large. 

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CHAPTER I--EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS

_Alexander the Great. --Cleomenes. --B. C. 332-323_

The way for the Grecian conquest of Egypt had been preparing for manyyears. Ever since the memorable march of Xenophon, who led, in the faceof unknown difficulties, ten thousand Greeks across Asia Minor, theGreek statesman had suspected that the Hellenic soldier was capable ofundreamed possibilities. 

When the young Alexander, succeeding his father Philip on the throneof Macedonia, got himself appointed general by the chief of the Greekstates, and marched against Darius Codomanus, King of Persia, at thehead of the allied armies, it was not difficult to foresee the result. The Greeks had learned the weakness of the Persians by having been sooften hired to fight for them. For a century past, every Persian armyhad had a body of ten or twenty thousand Greeks in the van, andwithout this guard the Persians were like a flock of sheep without theshepherd's dog. Those countries which had trusted to Greek mercenariesto defend them could hardly help falling when the Greek states unitedfor their conquest. 

Alexander defeated the Persians under Darius in a great and memorablebattle near the town of Issus at the foot of the Taurus, at the passwhich divides Syria from Asia Minor, and then, instead of marching uponPersia, he turned aside to the easier conquest of Egypt. On his waythere 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, andmade slaves of the rest. He was then stopped for some time before thelittle town of Gaza, where Batis, the brave governor, had the courage toclose the gates against the Greek army. His angry fretfulness at beingchecked by so small a force was only equalled by his cruelty when he hadovercome it; he tied Batis by the heels to his chariot, and dragged himround the walls of the city, as Achilles had dragged the body of Hector. 

On the seventh day after leaving Gaza he reached Pelusium, the mosteasterly town in Egypt, after a march of one hundred and seventy milesalong the coast of the Mediterranean, through a parched, glaring desertwhich forms the natural boundary of the country; while the fleet keptclose to the shore to carry the stores for the army, as no fresh wateris to be met with on the line of march. The Egyptians did not even tryto hide their joy at his approach; they were bending very unwillinglyunder the heavy and hated yoke of Persia. The Persians had long beenlooked upon as their natural enemies, and in the pride of their successhad added insults to the other evils of being governed by the satrap ofa conqueror. They had not even gained the respect of the conquered bytheir warlike courage, for Egypt had in a great part been conquered andheld by Greek mercenaries. 

The Persian forces had been mostly withdrawn from the country bySabaces, 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 thetown of Issus on the coast of Cilicia. The garrisons were not strongenough to guard the towns left in their charge; the Greek fleet easilyoverpowered the Egyptian fleet in the harbour of Pelusium, and the townopened its gates to Alexander. Here he left a garrison, and, orderinghis fleet to meet him at Memphis, he marched along the river's bank toHeliopolis. All the towns, on his approach, opened their gates to him. Mazakes, who had been left without an army, as satrap of Egypt, whenSabaces led the troops into Asia Minor, and who had heard of the deathof Sabaces, and that Alexander was master of Phoenicia, Syria, and thenorth of Arabia, had no choice but to yield. The Macedonian army crossedthe Nile near Heliopolis, and then entered Memphis. 

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Memphis had long been the chief city of all Egypt, even when not theseat of government. In earlier ages, when the warlike virtues of theThebans had made Egypt the greatest kingdom in the world, Memphis andthe lowland corn-fields of the Delta paid tribute to Thebes; but, with the improvements in navigation, the cities on the coast rose inimportance; the navigation of the Red Sea, though always dangerous, became less dreaded, and Thebes lost the toll on the carrying trade ofthe Nile. Wealth alone, however, would not have given the sovereigntyto Lower Egypt, had not the Greek mercenaries been at hand to fight forthose who would pay them. The kings of Saïs had guarded their throneswith Greek shields; and it was on the rash but praiseworthy attemptof Amasis to lessen the power of these mercenaries that they joinedCambyses, and Egypt became a Persian province. In the struggles of theEgyptians to throw off the Persian yoke, we see little more than theAthenians and Spartans carrying on their old quarrels on the coastsand plains of the Delta; and the Athenians, who counted their lossesby ships, not by men, said that in their victories and defeats togetherEgypt had cost them two hundred triremes. Hence, when Alexander, byhis successes in Greece, had put a stop to the feuds at home, themercenaries of both parties flocked to his conquering standard, andhe found himself on the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt without anystruggle being made against him by the Egyptians. The Greek part ofthe population, who had been living in Egypt as foreigners, now foundthemselves masters. Egypt became at once a Greek kingdom, as thoughthe blood and language of the people were changed at the conqueror'sbidding. 

Alexander's character as a triumphant general gains little from thiseasy conquest of an unwarlike country, and the overthrow of a crumblingmonarchy. But as the founder of a new Macedonian state, and forreuniting the scattered elements of society in Lower Egypt after thePersian conquest, in the only form in which a government could bemade to stand, he deserves to be placed among the least mischievous ofconquerors. We trace his march, not by the ruin, misery, and anarchywhich usually follow in the rear of an army, but by the building ofnew cities, the more certain administration of justice, the revival oftrade, and the growth of learning. On reaching Memphis, his first carewas to prove to the Egyptians that he was come to re-establish theirancient monarchy. He went in state to the temple of Apis, and sacrificedto the sacred bull, as the native kings had done at their coronations;and gamed the good-will of the crowd by games and music, Performed byskilful Greeks for their amusement. 

[Illustration: 021. Jpg PHTAH the god of Memphis]

But though the temple of Phtah at Memphis, in which the state ceremonieswere performed, had risen in beauty and importance by the repeatedadditions of the later kings, who had fixed the seat of government inLower Egypt, yet the Sun, or Amon-Ra, or Kneph-Ra, the god of Thebes, orJupiter-Amnion, as he was called by the Greeks, was the god under whosespreading wings Egypt had seen its proudest days. Every Egyptian kinghad called himself "the son of the Sun;" those who had reigned at Thebeshad boasted that they were "beloved by Amon-Ra;" and when Alexanderordered the ancient titles to be used towards himself, he wished to layhis offerings in the temple of this god, and to be acknowledged by thepriests 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 properplace for this ceremony; and it could only have been because, as ageneral, he had not time for a march of five hundred miles, that hechose the nearer and less known temple of Kneph-Ra, in the oasis ofAmmon, 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 ofknights-companions. When he reached Canopus, he sailed westward alongthe coast, and landed at Rhacotis, a small village on the spot whereAlexandria now stands. Here he made no stay; but, as he passed throughit, 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 witha little help from art it would be the port of all Egypt. The mouths ofthe Nile were too shallow for the ever increasing size of the merchantvessels which were then being built; and the engineers found the deeperwater which was wanted, between the village of Rhacotis and the littleisland of pharos. It was all that he had seen and admired at Tyre, butit was on a larger scale and with deeper water. It was the very spotthat he was in search of; in every way suitable for the Greek colonywhich he proposed to found as the best means of keeping Egypt inobedience. Even before the time of Homer, the island of Pharos hadgiven shelter to the Greek traders on that coast. He gave his ordersto Hinocrates the architect to improve the harbour, and to lay downthe plan of his new city; and the success of the undertaking provedthe wisdom both of the statesman and of the builder, for the city ofAlexandria subsequently became the most famous of all the commercial andintellectual centres of antiquity. From Rhacotis Alexander marched alongthe coast to Parastonium, a distance of about two hundred milesthrough the desert; and there, or on his way there, he was met by theambassadors from Cyrene, who were sent with gifts to beg for peace, and to ask him to honour their city with a visit. Alexander graciouslyreceived the gifts of the Cyrenæans, and promised them his friendship, but could not spare time to visit their city; and, without stopping, heturned southward to the oasis. 

At Memphis Alexander received the ambassadors that came from Greece towish him joy of his success; he reviewed his troops, and gave out hisplans for the government of the kingdom. He threw bridges of boats overthe Nile at the ford below Memphis, and also over the several branchesof the river. He divided the country into two nomarchies or judgeships, and to fill these two offices of nomarchs or chief judges, the highestcivil offices in the kingdom, he chose Doloaspis and Petisis, twoEgyptians. Their duty was to watch over the due administration ofjustice, one in Upper and the other in Lower Egypt, and perhaps to hearappeals from the lower judges. 

He left the garrisons in the command of his own Greek generals;Pantaleon commanded the counts, or knights-companions, who garrisonedMemphis, and Pole-mon was governor of Pelusium. These were the chieffortresses in the kingdom: Memphis overlooked the Delta, the navigationof the river, and the pass to Upper Egypt; Pelusium was the harbour forthe ships of war, and the frontier town on the only side on which Egyptcould be attacked. The other cities were given to other governors;Licidas commanded the mercenaries, Peucestes and Balacrus the othertroops, Eugnostus was secretary, while Æschylus and Ephippus were leftas overlookers, or perhaps, in the language of modern governments, ascivil commissioners. Apollonius was made prefect of Libya, of whichdistrict Parætonium was the capital, and Cleomenes prefect of Arabia atHeroopolis, in guard of that frontier. Orders were given to all thesegenerals that justice was to be administered by the Egyptian nomarchsaccording to the common law or ancient customs of the land. Petisis, however, either never entered upon his office or soon quitted it, andDoloaspis was left nomarch of all Egypt. 

Alexander sent into the Thebaid a body of seven thousand 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 hadgone out of cultivation with the gradual decline of Upper Egypt; and heemployed them to guard the province against invasion or rebellion. Hedid not stay in Egypt longer than was necessary to give these orders, but hastened towards the Euphrates to meet Darius. In his absence Egyptremained quiet and happy. Peucestes soon followed him to Babylon withsome of the troops that had been left in Egypt; and Cleomenes, thegovernor of Heroopolis, was then made collector of the taxes and prefectof Egypt. Cleomenes was a bad man; he disobeyed the orders sent fromAlexander on the Indus, and he seems to have forgotten the mild feelingswhich guided his master; yet, upon the whole, after the galling yoke ofthe Persians, the Egyptians must have felt grateful for the blessings ofjustice 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. Onthis plea, he called together the priests, probably of Crocodilopolis, where this animal was held sacred, and told them that he intendedto revenge himself upon the crocodiles by having them all caughtand killed; and he was only bought off from carrying his threat intoexecution by the priests giving him all the treasure that they couldget together. Alexander had left orders that the great market should bemoved from Canopus to his new city of Alexandria, as soon as it shouldbe ready to receive it. As the building went forward, the priests andrich traders of Canopus, in alarm at losing the advantages of theirport, gave Cleomenes a large sum of money for leave to keep theirmarket open. This sum he took, and, when the building at Alexandria wasfinished, he again came to Canopus, and because the traders would not orcould not raise a second and larger sum, he carried Alexander's ordersinto execution, and closed the market of their city. 

But instances such as these, of a public officer making use of dishonestmeans to increase the amount of the revenue which it was his duty tocollect, might unfortunately be found even in countries which were forthe most part enjoying the blessings of wise laws and good government;and it is not probable that, while Alexander was with the army inPersia, the acts of fraud and wrong should have been fewer in his ownkingdom of Macedonia. The dishonesty of Cleomenes was indeed equallyshown toward the Macedonians, by his wish to cheat the troops out ofpart of their pay. The pay of the soldiers was due on the first day ofeach month, but on that day he took care to be out of the way, andthe soldiers were paid a few days later; and by doing the same on eachfollowing month, he at length changed the pay-day to the last day of themonth, and cheated the army out of a whole month's pay. 

Another act for which Cleomenes was blamed was not so certainly wrong. One summer, when the harvest had been less plentiful than usual, heforbade the export of grain, which was a large part of the trade ofEgypt, thereby lowering the price to the poor so far as they couldafford to purchase such costly food, but injuring the landowners. Onthis, the heads of the provinces sent to him in alarm, to say that theyshould not be able to get in the usual amount of tribute; he thereforeallowed the export as usual, but raised the duty; and he was reproachedfor receiving a larger revenue while the landowners were suffering froma smaller crop. 

[Illustration: 027. Jpg LIGHTHOUSE AT ALEXANDRIA]

At Ecbatana, the capital of Media, Alexander lost his friend Hephæstion, and in grief for his death he sent to Egypt to enquire of the oracle atthe temple of Kneph in the oasis of Ammon, what honours he might payto the deceased. The messengers brought him an answer, that he mightdeclare Hephæstion a demigod, and order that he should be worshipped. Accordingly, Alexander then sent an express command to Cleomenes thathe should build a temple to his lost favourite in his new city ofAlexandria, and that the lighthouse which was to be built on the islandof Pharos should be named after him; and as modern insurances againstrisks by sea usually begin with the words "In the name of God; Amen;"so all contracts between merchants in the port of Alexandria were tobe written solemnly "In the name of Hephæstion. " Feeling diffidentof enforcing obedience at the mouth of the Nile, while he was himselfwriting from the sources of the Indus, he added that if, when he came toEgypt he found his wish carried into effect, he would pardon Cleomenesfor those acts of misgovernment of which he had been accused, and forany others which might then come to his ears. 

A somatophylax in the Macedonian army was no doubt at first, as theword 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 householdtroops; but as, in unmixed monarchies, the faithful officer who wasnearest the king's person, to whose watchfulness he trusted in the hourof danger, often found himself the adviser in matters of state, so, in the time of Alexander, the title of somatophylax was given to thosegenerals on whose wisdom the king chiefly leaned, and by whose advicehe was usually guided. Among these, and foremost in Alexander's love andesteem, was Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. Philip, the father of Alexander, had given Arsinoë, one of his relations, in marriage to Lagus; and hereldest son Ptolemy, born soon after the marriage, was always thought tobe the king's son, though never so acknowledged. As he grew up, he wasput into the highest offices by Philip, without raising in the youngAlexander's mind the distrust which might have been felt if Ptolemycould have boasted that he was the elder brother. He earned the goodopinion of Alexander by his military successes in Asia, and gained hisgratitude by saving his life when he was in danger among the Oxydracæ, near the river Indus; and moreover, Alexander looked up to him as thehistorian whose literary powers and knowledge of military tactics wereto hand down to the wonder of future ages those conquests which hewitnessed. 

Alexander's victories over Darius, and march to the river Indus, are nopart of this history: it is enough to say that he died at Babylon eightyears after he had entered Egypt; and his half-brother Philip Arridæus, a weak-minded, unambitious young man, was declared by the generalsassembled at Babylon to be his successor. His royal blood united morevoices in the army in his favour than the warlike and statesmanlikecharacter of any one of the rival generals. They were forced to becontent with sharing the provinces between them as his lieutenants;some hoping to govern by their power over the weak mind of Arridæus, andothers secretly meaning to make themselves independent. 

In this weighty matter, Ptolemy showed the wisdom and judgment whichhad already gained him his high character. Though his military rank andskill were equal to those of any one of Alexander's generals, and hisclaim by birth perhaps equal to that of Arridæous, he was not one ofthose 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 ofAlexander's conquests. But Ptolemy, more wisely measuring his strengthwith the several tasks, chose the province of Egypt, the province which, cut off as it was from the rest by sea and desert, was of all othersthe easiest to be held as an independent kingdom against the power ofPerdiccas. When Egypt was given to Ptolemy by the council of generals, Cleomenes was at the same time and by the same power made second incommand, and he governed Egypt for one year before Ptolemy's arrival, that being in name the first year of the reign of Philip Arridæus, or, according to the chronologer's mode of dating, the first year afterAlexander's death. 

[Illustration: 031. Jpg PAGE IMAGE]

CHAPTER II--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, hadraised their voices against giving the whole of the conquered countriesto one king; he wished that they should have been shared equally amongthe generals as independent kingdoms. In this he was overruled, andhe accepted his government as the lieutenant of the youthful PhilipArridæus, though no doubt with the fixed purpose of making Egypt anindependent kingdom. On reaching Memphis, the seat of his government, his whole thoughts were turned towards strengthening himself againstPerdiccas, who hoped to be obeyed, in the name of his young andweak-minded king, by all his fellow generals. 

The Greek and foreign mercenaries of which the army of Alexander wasmade up, and who were faithful to his memory and to his family, hadlittle to guide them in the choice of which leader they should followto his distant province, beside the thought of where they should bebest treated; and Ptolemy's high character for wisdom, generosity, andwarlike skill had gained many friends for him among the officers; theysaw that the wealth of Egypt would put it in his power to reward thosewhose services were valuable to him; and hence crowds flocked to hisstandard. On reaching their provinces, the Greek soldiers, whetherSpartans or Athenians, forgetting the glories of Thermopylæ andMarathon, and proud of their wider conquests under the late king, alwayscalled themselves Macedonians. They pleased themselves with the thoughtthat the whole of the conquered countries were still governed bythe brother of Alexander; and no one of his generals, in his wildestthoughts of ambition, whether aiming, like Ptolemy, at founding akingdom, or, like Perdiccas, at the government of the world, was unwiseenough to throw off the title of lieutenant to Philip Arridæus, and toforfeit the love of the Macedonian soldiers and his surest hold on theirloyalty. 

The first act of Ptolemy was to put to death Cleomenes, who had beenmade sub-governor of Egypt by the same council of generals whichhad made Ptolemy governor. This act may have been called for by thedishonesty and crooked dealing which Cleomenes had been guilty of incollecting taxes; but, though the whole tenor of Ptolemy's life wouldseem to disprove the charge, we cannot but fear that he was in partled to this deed because he looked upon Cleomenes as the friend ofPerdiccas, or because he could not trust him in his plans for makinghimself king of Egypt. 

From the very commencement of his government, Ptolemy prepared for thewar which he knew must follow a declaration of his designs. Perhapsbetter than any other general of Alexander, he knew how to win thefavour of the people under his rule. The condition of the countryquickly improved under his mild administration. The growing seaport ofAlexandria was a good market for a country rich in natural produce, and, above all, Egypt's marvellously good geographical position stood herin good stead in time of war. Surrounded nearly on all sides by desertland, the few inhabitants, roving Bedouins, offered no danger. The landof the Nile was accessible to an enemy in one direction only, along thecoast of Syria. This even teemed with difficulties. Transports therecould only be managed with the greatest ingenuity, and, in case ofdefeat, retreat was almost impossible. On the other hand, the Egyptianarmy, helped by all the advantages of a land irrigated on the canalsystem, and which could be flooded at will, had only to act on thedefensive to be certain of victory. The country is perhaps more open toan attack from the sea, but, by a moderately well-conducted defensivemovement, the enemy could be kept to the coast. Even the landing thereis scarcely possible, on account of the natural difficulties at themouth of the Nile. The one easy spot--Alexandria--was so well fortifiedthat an invader had but little chance of success. 

About the time of Alexander's death (and to some extent brought about bythis event), civil war broke out in Cyrenaica, in consequence of whichthe followers of one party were forced out of the town of Cyrene. Thesejoined themselves with the exiles of the town of Barca, and togethersought help of foreigners. They placed themselves under the leadershipof the Spartan Thibron, formerly Alexander's chancellor of theexchequer. Begged by the exiled Cyrenians to help them, he now directedhis forces against Libya, fought a fierce battle, and took possessionof the harbour of Apollonia, two miles distant from the town. He thenbesieged the town of Cyrene, and forced the Cyrenians at last to sue forpeace. They were obliged to make a payment of five hundred talents andto take back the exiles. Messengers were sent by Thibron to incitethe other towns in Cyrenaica to join him and to help him conquer theirneighbour, Libya. Thibron's followers were allowed to plunder, and thisled to quarrels, desertions, treacherous acts, and the recruiting of hisarmy from the Peloponnesus. After varying fortunes of war, in thespring of 322 B. C. , some of the Cyrenians fled to Egypt, and related toPtolemy what had occurred in Cyrenaica, begging him to help them backto their homes. The suggestion was welcome to him, for victory would beeasy over these struggling factions. He sent a strong military and navalforce, under Ophelas, the Macedonian, to Cyrenaica in the summer. Whenthese were seen approaching, those exiles who had found refuge withThibron decided to join them. Their plan, however, was discovered, andthey were put to death. The leader of the rabble in Cyrene (fearfulfor his own safety, now that the exiles who had fled to Egypt werereturning) made overtures of peace to Thibron, and joined with him torepulse Ophelas. The latter worked with the utmost caution, sent an armyunder Epicides of Olynth against Tancheira, whilst he himself marchedagainst Cyrene. 

[Illustration: 036. Jpg THE DÔM PALM. ]

He met Thibron in a fierce fight. The latter was completely defeated andfled towards Tancheira, where he hoped to find help, but instead fellinto Epicides' hands. Thibron was given over to the people of Tancheirafor punishment. He was cruelly scourged, and then dragged to Apollonia, where he was crucified. Ophelas, however, was not able to conquer theCyrenians until Ptolemy himself arrived with fresh troops, overpoweredthe town and joined the province to his own satrapy. 

The conquest of this Greek province was a gain equally for himself andfor the Greeks. He put an end to the horrible anarchy that prevailedthere, and proved himself their saviour as well as their conqueror. Hisname was now an honoured one among all the Greeks. When it was rumouredthat war was likely to break out between Ptolemy and the royal party, the Macedonians flocked to Alexandria, "every man ready to give all andto sacrifice himself in order to help his friend. " A popular belief ofthe day was that, although Ptolemy was known as the son of Lagos, he wasin reality the son of Philip, and indeed much in his manner resembledthe great founder of the Macedonian power. Amongst the successors ofAlexander, not one understood as well as he how to retain and increasethe power which he had won. He recognised, also, from the first, thetendency of the age: the tendency to split up the kingdom into differentstates; and he had made this the basis of his policy. It was under himthat the first state (in the new sense of the word) was founded. He wasthe leader of the new movement that soon generated disunity, and tothis end he made a secret contract with Antipatros against the regentPerdiccas. About this time also misunderstandings between the regent andthe rulers in the West began to take a serious aspect. 

At a great meeting in Babylon in the summer of the year 323, it wasdecided that the body of Alexander was to be taken with great solemnityto the Temple of Amon, and that the equipping and guidance of thefuneral procession should be entrusted to Arridæus. At the end of theyear 323, the necessary preparations were finished. The giganticfuneral car that was to carry the kingly bier had been decorated withunparalleled magnificence. Without waiting for orders from the regent, Arridæus started with the funeral procession from Babylon. Crowds fromfar and near filled the streets, some curious to see the magnificentsight, others eager to show this last token of respect to the dead king. It was firmly believed amongst the Macedonians that the country inwhich Alexander's body had its last resting-place would become happy andpowerful above all countries. This prophecy was uttered by the old seerTelmissus soon after the king's death. Did Ptolemy have this belief, ordid he wish to make use of it? There were probably other reasons whichhad caused him to enter into an understanding with Arridæus, and toarrange 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 theprocession, would himself accompany the body with the imperial army toEgypt. Ptolemy felt that his position in the lands entrusted to hiscare would be greatly weakened if a higher authority than himself couldappear there with a military force. Arridæus led the funeral train toDamascus, as had been arranged before with Ptolemy. It was in vain thatPole-mon (one of Perdiccas' generals), who was in the neighbourhood, went to meet him. He was able to obtain no aspect for the express orderof the regent. The funeral procession passed Damascus on its way toEgypt. Ptolemy accompanied the body with his army as far as Syria. Itwas then taken on to Memphis to rest there until it could be shelteredby that beautiful sepulchre of the kings at Alexandria. 

Arridæus' action, in starting without permission, and the defiance ofPolemon's order, were acts of open revolt against the higher authorityof the kingdom. Perdiccas called all loyal followers to the councilof war. Ptolemy, he said, had defied the order of the kings in hisbehaviour concerning the funeral procession; and he had also givenshelter to the exiled satraps of Phrygia. He was prepared for war, whichhe hoped to bring about. It was for them (the loyal ones) to upholdthe dignity of the kingdom. They must try to take him unawares, and toovercome them individually. The question was, if the Egyptians or theMacedonians ought to be first attacked. In the end, plans were carefullyconcerted for an attack on Egypt and the protection of Europe. In theearly spring of B. C. 321, Perdiccas and his colleagues set out forEgypt with the imperial army, ordering the fleet to follow, and leavingEumenes with skilled officers and troops in general command of AsiaMinor for the purpose of guarding the Hellespont. 

At the Egyptian frontier, Perdiccas summoned the army together, that themen themselves should give judgment in the case of the satrap of Egypt, in the same way as in the preceding autumn they had given judgment inthe case of Antigones. He expected a decision which would enable himto finish what he had already begun. The accusations were that he hadrefused obedience to the kings, that he had fought against and overcomethe Greeks of Cyrenaica (who had received freedom from Alexander), and that he had taken possession of the king's body, and carried it toMemphis. 

According to the single account, which tells us of these proceedings, Ptolemy himself appeared to conduct his own defence before the assembledwarriors. He had good reason for reckoning on the impression hisconfidence in them would make upon them, and on the love that he knewthe Macedonians bore towards him. He knew, too, of the increasingdislike of the imperial regent. His defence was heard with growingapproval, and the army's judgment was "freedom. "

In spite of this the regent kept to the war. The decision of the troopsalienated him still more from them. The war with Egypt was contrary totheir wishes, and they murmured openly. Perdiccas sought to put down therefractory spirit with a stern military hand, but the remonstrancesof his officers were in vain. He treated the first in the land in aninconsiderate and despotic manner, removed the most deserving from theircommand, and trusted himself alone. This same man, who had climbed thepath to greatness with so much foresight, self-command, energy, andstatesmanship, seemed now, the nearer he grew to the summit of hisambition, to lose all clearness of sight and moderation, which traitsalone could help him to take this last and dangerous step. He had theadvantage of tried troops, the elephants of Alexander, and the fleetunder the command 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 hadconquered Neoptolemas, the governor of Armenia, who had taken the sideof Ptolemy. 

With all the more hope, Perdiccas went to meet the enemy. He reachedPelusium undisturbed. It was highly necessary that the army shouldcross to the Pelusaic side of the Nile, for there were several secureplaces there, which, if allowed to remain in the hands of the enemy, would endanger the forward movement. 

[Illustration: 040. Jpg A SILHOUETTE ON THE NILE]

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 himselfwithin one of the fortresses on that side, and thence conduct operationsagainst them, and, at the same time, remain in connection with hisfleet, on which he could fall back in case of need. To enable thecrossing to be accomplished as easily as possible, Perdiccas ordered thecleaning 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 notbeen considered that, at the rising of the Nile, the canal would wanta much deeper bed than the present stream required. The canal hadonly just been opened up, when the water rose with unusual force andrapidity; the dam was completely destroyed, and many workers lost theirlives. During the disturbance, many officers and men left the camp andhurried to Ptolemy. This was the beginning of the Egyptian war. Thedesertion of so many important men made Perdiccas think seriously. He summoned the officers of the army, spoke to them with muchcondescension, gave presents to some, honoured others with promotion, and begged them, for the sake of their honour and for the cause of theirkings, to fight their hardest against this rebel, and with the order tohold their men in-readiness, he left them. The army was only told in theevening, at the signal for starting, where they were to march. Perdiccasfeared, on account of the desertion that was taking place in his army, that his march might be discovered by the enemy. They marched with greatspeed through the night, and camped at last on the side of the river. At daybreak, after the troops had rested, Perdiccas gave the orderto cross. First came the elephants, then the light infantry, next thestorming party with ladders, and lastly, the pick of the cavalry, who, if the enemy should burst out during the storming, could easily drivethem back. Perdiccas hoped, if he could only get a firm footing onthat side of the river, to annihilate the Egyptian army easily with hissuperior force. He was right in feeling that his Macedonian troops, whenface to face with the enemy, would forget their antipathy to him, and think only of their military honour. When about half the army hadcrossed, and just as the elephants were moving towards the fortress, theenemy were seen hurrying thither with great speed; their trumpet-callsand war-cries even were heard. They reached the fort before theMacedonians, and withdrew into the shelter of its walls. Not discouragedby this, the infantry stormed the fort. Ladders were placed againstthe walls, the elephants driven forward, and palisades taken from theirbacks to attack the ramparts. 

Ptolemy, in the dress of a Macedonian soldier, stood on the wallsurrounded by a few selected men. He was first in the fight. From wherehe stood he pierced with his lance the eyes of the leading elephant, andstabbed the Indian on its back, and he wounded many and killed numbersof the storming party. His officers and men fought with the greatestspirit; the driver of the second elephant was killed and the infantrywere driven back. 

Perdiccas led new troops to the attack, wishing to take the fortress atall costs. By word and deed, Ptolemy urged on his men, who fought withmarvellous endurance. The dreadful battle waged the whole day; many werekilled and wounded; evening came on and nothing was decided. Perdiccasordered a retreat and returned to his camp. 

In the middle of the night he again started with his army, hoping thatPtolemy would stay in the fort with his troops, and that, after a tryingmarch of some miles up-stream, he (Perdiccas) would be able to cross theriver more easily. At daybreak he found himself opposite one of the manyislands 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 armythere. The water reached up to the soldiers' knees, and it was with thegreatest difficulty that they kept their footing against the forceof the current. In order to break this current, Perdiccas ordered theelephants into the river to stand up-stream to the left of the fordingparty; he ordered the horsemen to stand at the other end to help thoseacross that were driven down by the current. Some had, with greatdifficulty, managed to get across; others were still in the stream whenit was noticed that the water was becoming deeper; the heavily armed mensank, and the elephants and horses stood deeper and deeper in the water. A fearful panic seized the army. They called out that the enemy hadclosed in the canals up-stream, and that the gods had destined badweather in the upper provinces, on account of which the river wasswollen. Those who understood saw that the bed of the river had becomedeepened by the crossing of so great a cavalcade. It was impossible forthe remainder to cross or for those on the island to return. They werecompletely cut off and were at the mercy of the enemy, who were alreadyseen approaching. There was nothing left but to order them to get backas well as they could; lucky indeed were those who could swim, and hadsufficient strength to bring them across the broad expanse of water. 

[Illustration: 044. Jpg CROCODILES BASKING IN THE SUN]

Many saved themselves in this way. They came without weapons, worn outand desperate, to the shore; others were drowned or eaten by crocodiles. Some were carried down-stream, and reached the shore where the enemystood. Two thousand men were missing, many officers among them. The campof the Egyptians was situated on the other side, and they could be seenhelping the men in the water and burning logs of wood to show honourto the dead. On this side of the river there was sad silence; each mansought his comrade, or officer, and sought in vain. Food was scarce, andthere was no means of overcoming this dreadful state of affairs; nightcame on, and curses and complaints were heard on all sides. The lives ofso many brave men had been sacrificed for nothing; it was bad enough tolose the "honour of their arms, " but now, through the stupidity of theirleader, their lives had been lost, and to be swallowed by crocodiles wasnow the distinguished death of Macedonian warriors. Many of the officerswent to the tent of the regent, and told him openly that he was thecause of this calamity. Outside the tent the Macedonians yelled, besidethemselves with rage. About a hundred of the officers, headed by thesatrap Python, refused to share further responsibility, resigned theircommissions, and left the tent. The excitement grew intense. The troops, in ungovernable rage, entered the regent's tent and threw themselvesupon him. Antigonus struck the first blow, others followed, and, aftera desperate but short struggle, Perdiccas fell to the ground coveredwith 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 himworthy of more success had he given himself up to this idea with moreconscientiousness. Unfortunately, with growing power, he becamedespotic and unjust. He was not great enough to become the successor ofAlexander, to be another "ruler of the world. " This last step, the onewhich was to lead him to his long-coveted goal, led him instead to hisdeath. 

Ptolemy soon heard the news, and the next morning he crossed the riverand came to the camp. He asked to be taken to the kings, presented themand some of the nobles with gifts; was kind and considerate to all, andwas greeted with great joy. Then he called the troops together and spoketo them. He told the Macedonians that it was only stern necessity thatcaused him to take up arms against his old comrades. No man regrettedmore than he the untimely death of so many heroes. Perdiccas was thecause of this calamity; he had but received his just punishment. Now allenmity was to be ended. He had saved as many as he could from death inthe water, and the corpses which the river had brought to the shore hehad buried with all honour; and finally he told them that he had givenorders for the immediate alleviation of the want which he knew was beingfelt in the camp. His speech was received with loud cheers. He stoodthere unhurt and admired before the Macedonians, who but a few hoursearlier had been his bitterest foes. Now they looked upon him as theirsaviour; they all acknowledged him as the conqueror, and for the momenthe stood in unequivocal possession of that power for which Perdiccashad worked so hard, and which he had so much abused. Who was now tobe Perdiccas' successor, and to manage the kingdom in the name of thekings? With one voice the people begged Ptolemy to undertake this task. The foresight and presence of mind of the son of Lagus were not cloudedby the allurement of such an offer gained by his sudden change offortune. At this supreme moment he acted with consummate sagacity. Hedivined that a refusal of the proffered honour would make him in realitymore powerful, although, at the moment, he would seem to be acting in anunselfish manner. He recommended to the army, as a favour which he hadto bestow, those he thought worthy of his thanks; they were Python, the Median strategist, who had taken the first decisive step againstPerdiccas; and Arridæus, who, in spite of Perdiccas' orders, had takenthe body of the king to Egypt. These two were nominated regents withloud cheers. 

The Macedonian army, accordingly, chose Python and Arridæus asguardians, and as rulers with unlimited power over the whole ofAlexander's conquests; but, though none of the Greek generals who nowheld Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia, Thrace, or Egypt dared to acknowledgeit to the soldiers, yet in reality the power of the guardians waslimited to the little kingdom of Macedonia. With the death of Perdiccas, and the withdrawal of his army, Phoenicia and Coele-Syria were leftunguarded, and almost without a master. In order that Egypt might takean important part in the universal policy, Ptolemy felt he must possessSyria, which would open up the way for him to the countries along theEuphrates and the Tigris, and also the island of Cyprus, where he wouldbe near the coast of Asia Minor. He could not yet think of conqueringCyprus, which had an important fleet. He felt that, if he annexed Syria, either by diplomacy or by force, the organisation of the kingdom and theterritorial division of power would be changed in a tangible manner. The Egyptian satraps already possessed some measure of authority, and hecould also depend upon the satrap of Syria joining him. 

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 wasready to compensate him with a sum of money. Laomedon refused this offerwith scorn. Thereupon, an army under Nicanor, one of the "friends" ofPtolemy, marched into Palestine. Jerusalem was the only place thatheld out against the Egyptian army; but Nicanor, says the historianAgathareides, seeing that on every seventh day the garrison withdrewfrom the walls, chose that day for the assault, and thus gained thecity. Without further opposition the Egyptians marched onwards. Atlast he met Laomedon, took him prisoner, and brought him back to Egypt. Egyptian sentries now guarded the strongholds of the country; Egyptianships took the towns along the coast. A great number of the Jews weretransported to Alexandria; they received the rights of citizenshipthere. 

[Illustration: 049. Jpg A THEBAN BELLE]

Without altering local conditions, Syria gradually came under the swayof the Egyptian satraps. Laomedon found means of escaping from Egypt;he fled to Alcetas in Caria, who had just withdrawn himself to themountainous regions of Pisida, thence to begin the decisive war againstAntigonus. 

[Illustration: 049b. Jpg Prayer to Isis]

 Painted by Alexander Cabanel

In the earlier times of Egyptian history, when navigation was less easy, and when seas separated kingdoms instead of joining them, the Thebaidenjoyed, under the Koptic kings, the trading wealth which followed thestream of its great river, the longest piece of inland navigationthen known; but, with the improvement in navigation and ship-building, countries began to feel their strength in the timber of their forestsand the number of their harbours; and, as timber and sea-coast wereequally unknown in the Thebaid, that country fell as Lower Egypt rose;the wealth which before centred in Thebes was then found in the portsof the Delta, where the barges of the Nile met the ships of theMediterranean. What used to be Egypt was an inland kingdom, surrounded bythe desert; but Egypt under Ptolemy was country on the sea-coast; and, on the conquest of Phoenicia and Coele-Syria, he was master of theforests of Lebanon and Antilibanus, and stretched his coast from Cyreneto Antioch, a distance of twelve hundred miles. The wise and mild planswhich were laid down by Alexander for the government of Egypt when aprovince were easily followed by Ptolemy when it became his own kingdom. The Greek soldiers lived in their garrisons or in Alexandria under theMacedonian laws, while the Egyptian laws were administered by their ownpriests, who were upheld in all the rights of their order and in theirfreedom from land-tax. The temples of Phtah, of Amon-Ra, and the othergods of the country were not only kept open, but were repaired and evenbuilt at the cost of the king; the religion of the people, and not thatof their rulers, was made the established religion of the state. Onthe death of the god Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, the chief of theanimals which were kept and fed at the cost of the several cities, andwho had died of old age soon after Ptolemy came to Egypt, he spent thesum of fifty talents, or $42, 500, on its funeral; and the priests, whohad not forgotten that Cambyses, their former conqueror, had wounded theApis of his day with his own sword, must have been highly pleased withthis mark of his care for them. The burial-place for the bulls is anarched gallery tunnelled into the hill behind Memphis for more than twothousand feet, with a row of cells on each side of it. In every cell isa huge granite sarcophagus, within which were placed the remains of abull that had once been the Apis of its day, which, after having forperhaps twenty years received the honours of a god, was there buriedwith more than kingly state. The cell was then walled up, and ornamentedon the outside with various tablets in honour of the deceasedanimal, which were placed in these dark passages by the piety of hisworshippers. The priests of Thebes were now at liberty to cut out fromtheir monuments the names of usurping gods, and to restore those thathad been before cut out. They also rebuilt the inner room, or the holyof holies, in the great temple of Karnak. 

It had been overthrown by the Persians in wantonness, or in hatredof the Egyptian religion; and the priests now put upon it the name ofPhilip Arridæus, for whom Ptolemy was nominally governing Egypt. 

[Illustration: 052. Jpg TOMBS OF THE SACRED BULLS]

The Egyptians, who during the last two centuries had sometimes seentheir temples plundered and their trade crushed by the grasping tyrannyof the Persian satraps, and had at other times been almost as much hurtby their own vain struggles for freedom, now found themselves in thequiet enjoyment of good laws, with a prosperity which promised soon toequal that of the reigns of Necho or Amasis. It is true that they hadnot regained their independence and political liberty; that, as comparedwith the Greeks, they felt themselves an inferior race, and that theyonly enjoyed their civil rights during the pleasure of a Greek autocrat;but then it is to be remembered that the native rulers with whom Ptolemywas compared were the kings of Lower Egypt, who, like himself, weresurrounded by Greek mercenaries, and who never rested their power on thebroad base of national pride and love of country; and that nobodycould have hoped to see a Theban king arise to bring back the daysof Thûtmosis and Ramses. Thebes was every day sinking in wealth andstrength; and its race of hereditary soldiers, proud in the recollectionof former glory, who had, after centuries of struggles, been forcedto receive laws from Memphis, perhaps yielded obedience to a Greekconqueror with less pain than they did formerly to their own vassals ofLower Egypt. 

Ptolemy's government was in form nearly the same in Alexandria as in therest of Egypt, but in reality it was wholly different. His sway over theEgyptians was supported by Greek force, but over the Greeks it restedon the broad base of public opinion. Every Greek had the privilege ofbearing arms, and of meeting in the gymnasium in public assembly, toexplain a grievance, and petition for its redress. The citizens andthe soldiers were the same body of men; they at the same time held theforce, and had the spirit to use it. But they had no senate, no bodyof nobles, no political constitution which might save their freedom inafter generations from the ambitious grasp of the sovereign, or fromtheir own degeneracy. While claiming to be equal among themselves theywere making themselves slaves; and though at present the government soentirely bore the stamp of their own will that they might fancy theyenjoyed a democracy, yet history teaches us that the simple paternalform of government never fails to become sooner or later a crueltyranny. The building of Alexandria must be held the master-stroke ofpolicy by which Egypt was kept in obedience. Here, and afterwards ina few other cities, such as Ptolemais in the Thebaid and Parembole inNubia, 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 inthe kingdom, and to leave the Egyptians under their own laws andmagistrates, and in the enjoyment of their own religion; and yet it wasnecessary to have the country garrisoned with Greeks, whose presence inthe old cities could not but be extremely galling to the Egyptians. Thiswas done by means of these new Greek cities, where the power by whichEgypt was governed was stronger by being united, and less hateful bybeing out of sight. Seldom or never was so great a monarchy founded withso little force and so little crime. 

Ptolemy, however, did not attempt the difficult task of uniting the tworaces, and of treating the conquered and the conquerors as entitled tothe same privileges. From the time of Necho and Psammetichus, many ofthe Greeks who settled in Egypt intermarried with the natives, and verymuch laid aside their own habits; and sometimes their offspring, aftera generation or two, became wholly Egyptian. By the Greek laws thechildren of these mixed marriages were declared to be barbarians; notGreeks but Egyptians, and were brought up accordingly. They left theworship of Jupiter and Juno for that of Isis and Osiris, and perhaps themore readily for the greater earnestness with which the Egyptian godswere worshipped. We now trace their descendants by the form of theirskulls, even into the priestly families; and of one hundred mummiescovered with hieroglyphics, taken up from the catacombs near Thebes, about twenty show a European origin, while of those from the tombsnear Memphis, seventy out of every hundred have lost their Kopticpeculiarities. It is easy to foresee that an important change wouldhave been wrought in the character of the people and in their politicalinstitutions, if the Greek laws had been humane and wise enough to grantto the children of mixed marriages the privileges, the education, andthereby the moral feelings of the more favoured parent; and it is nottoo much to suppose, if the Greek law of marriage had been altered byPtolemy, that within three centuries above half the nation would havespoken the Greek language, and boasted of its Greek origin. 

[Illustration: 055. Jpg THE GOD SERAPIS]

The stimulus given by Ptolemy Soter to the culture of the age has beenalready mentioned. The founding of the famous museum and libraryof Alexandria may be, perhaps, regarded as the rounding-off of hispolitical plans for the consolidation of his kingdom. Alexandria became, in fact, not only a centre of commerce and government, but also theintellectual capital of the Greeks. But for this supreme importance ofthe city, it is doubtful whether the descendants of Ptolemy Lagus couldhave continued to rule the Valley of the Nile. 

In return for the literature which Greece then gave to Egypt, she gainedthe knowledge of papyrus, a tall rush which grows wild near the sourcesof the Nile, and was then cultivated in the Egyptian marshes. Beforethat time books had been written on linen, wax, bark, or the leaves oftrees; and public records on stone, brass, or lead: but the knowledge ofpapyrus was felt by all men of letters like the invention of printingin modern Europe. Books were then known by many for the first time, and very little else was afterwards used in Greece or Rome; for, whenparchment was made about two centuries later, it was too costly to beused as long as papyrus was within reach. Copies were multiplied onfrail strips of this plant, and it was found that mere thoughts, whenworth preserving, were less liable to be destroyed by time than templesand palaces of the hardest stone. 

[Illustration: 056. Jpb MANUSCRIPT ON PAPYRUS; HIEROGLYPHICS, THEBES]

While Egypt, under Ptolemy, was thus enjoying the advantages of itsinsulated position, and cultivating the arts of peace, the otherprovinces were being harassed by the unceasing wars of Alexander'sgenerals, who were aiming, like Ptolemy, at raising their own power. Many changes had taken place among them in the short space of eightyears which had passed since the death of Alexander. Philip Arridæus, in whose name the provinces had been governed, had been put to death;Antigonus was master of Asia Minor, with a kingdom more powerful thoughnot so easily guarded as Egypt; Cassander held Macedonia, and had thecare of the young Alexander Ægus, who was then called the heir to thewhole of his father's wide conquests, and whose life, like that ofArridæus, was soon to end with his minority; Lysimachus was tryingto form a kingdom in Thrace; and Seleucus had for a brief period heldBabylonia. 

Ptolemy bore no part in the wars which brought about these changes, beyond being once or twice called upon to send troops to guard hisprovince of Cole-Syria. 

[Illustration: 057. Jpg Alexander adoring Horus]

But Antigonus, in his ambitious efforts to stretch his power over allthe provinces, had by force or by treachery driven Seleucus out ofBabylon, and forced him to seek Egypt for safety, where Ptolemy receivedhim with the kindness and good policy which had before gained so manyfriends. No arguments of Seleucus were wanting to persuade Ptolemy thatAntigonus was dreaming of universal conquest, and that his next attackwould be upon Egypt. He therefore sent ambassadors to make treaties ofalliance with Cassander and Lysimachus, who readily joined him againstthe common enemy. 

The large fleet and army which Antigonus got together for the invasionof Egypt proved his opinion of the strength and skill of Ptolemy. AllSyria, except one or two cities, laid down its arms before him on hisapproach. But he found that the whole of the fleet had been alreadyremoved to the ports of Egypt, and he ordered Phoenicia to furnish himwith eight thousand shipbuilders and carpenters, to build galleys fromthe forests of Lebanon and Antilibanus, and ordered Syria to send fourhundred and fifty thousand medimni, or nearly three millions of bushelsof wheat, for the use of his army within the year. By these means heraised his fleet to two hundred and forty-three long galleys or ships ofwar. 

Ptolemy was for a short time called off from the war in Syria by arising in Cyrene. The Cyrenians, who clung to their Doric love offreedom, and were latterly smarting at its loss, had taken arms and werebesieging the Egyptian, or, as they would have called themselves, theMacedonian garrison, who had shut themselves up in the citadel. He atfirst sent messengers to order the Cyrenians to return to their duty;but his orders were not listened to; the rebels no doubt thoughtthemselves safe, as his armies seemed more wanted on the easternfrontier; his messengers were put to death, and the siege of the citadelpushed forward with all possible speed. On this he sent a large landforce, followed by a fleet, in order to crush the revolt at a singleblow; and the ringleaders were brought to Alexandria in chains. Magas, ason of Queen Berenicê and stepson of Ptolemy, was then made governor ofCyrene. 

When this trouble at home was put an end to, Ptolemy crossed over toCyprus to punish the kings of the little states on that island forhaving joined Antigonus. For now that the fate of empires was to besettled by naval battles the friendship of Cyprus became very importantto the neighbouring states. The large and safe harbours gave to thisisland a great value in the naval warfare between Egypt, Phoenicia, andAsia Minor. Alexander had given it as his opinion that the commandof the sea went with the island of Cyprus. When he held Asia Minor hecalled Cyprus the key to Egypt; and with still greater reason mightPtolemy, looking from Egypt, think that island the key to Phoenicia. Accordingly he landed there with so large a force that he met with noresistance. He added Cyprus to the rest of his dominions: he banishedthe kings, and made Nicocreon governor of the whole island. 

From Cyprus, Ptolemy landed with his army in Upper Syria, as thenorthern part of that country was called, while the part nearer toPalestine was called Coele-Syria. Here he took the towns of Posideionand Potami-Caron, and then marching hastily into Asia Minor he tookMalms, a city of Cilicia. Having rewarded his soldiers with the bootythere seized, he again embarked and returned to Alexandria. This inroadseems to have been meant to draw off the enemy from Coele-Syria; and ithad the wished-for effect, for Demetrius, who commanded the forces ofhis father Antigonus in that quarter, marched northward to the reliefof Cilicia, but he did not arrive there till Ptolemy's fleet was alreadyunder sail for its return journey to Egypt. 

Ptolemy, on reaching Alexandria, set his army in motion towardsPelusium, on its way to Palestine. His forces were eighteen thousandfoot and four thousand horse, part Macedonians, as the Greeks living inEgypt were always called, and part mercenaries, followed by a crowd ofEgyptians, of whom some were armed for battle, and some were to takecare of the baggage. He had twenty-two thousand Greeks, and was met atGaza by the young Demetrius with an army of eleven thousand foot andtwenty-three hundred horse, followed by forty-three elephants and abody of light-armed barbarians, who, like the Egyptians in the army ofPtolemy, were not counted. But the youthful courage of Demetrius was nomatch for the cool skill and larger army of Ptolemy; the elephants wereeasily stopped by iron hurdles, and the Egyptian army, after gaining acomplete victory, entered Gaza, while Demetrius fled to Azotus. Ptolemy, in his victory, showed a generosity unknown in modern warfare; he notonly gave leave to the conquered army to bury their dead, but sent backthe whole of the royal baggage which had fallen into his hands, and alsothose personal friends of Demetrius who were found among the prisoners;that is to say, all those who wished to depart, as the larger part ofthese Greek armies were equally ready to fight on either side. 

By this victory the whole of Phoenicia was again joined to Egypt, andSeleucus regained Babylonia. There, by following the example of Ptolemyin his good treatment of the people, and in leaving them their own lawsand religion, he founded a monarchy, and gave his name to a race ofkings which rivalled even the Lagidæ. He raised up again for a shorttime the throne of Nebuchadnezzar. But it was only for a short time. TheChal-dees and Assyrians now yielded the first rank to the Greeks whohad settled among them; and the Greeks were more numerous in the Syrianportion of his empire. Accordingly Seleucus built a new capital onthe river Orontes, and named it Antioch after his father. Babylon thenyielded the same obedience to this new Greek city that Memphis paidto Alexandria. Assyria and Babylonia became subject provinces; andthe successors of Seleucus, who came to be known as Selucids, styledthemselves 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 withall his forces to give battle to Ptolemy. He soon crossed Mount Taurus, the lofty range which divides Asia Minor from Syria and Mesopotamia, andjoined his camp to that of his son in Upper Syria. But Ptolemy had gonethrough life without ever making a hazardous move; not indeed withoutever suffering a loss, but without ever fighting a battle when its losswould have ruined him, and he did not choose to risk his kingdom againstthe far larger forces of Antigonus. Therefore, with the advice of hiscouncil 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 theface of Ptolemy's army. He had, therefore, first, either to conquer orgain the friendship of the Nabatæans, a warlike race of Arabs, who heldthe north of Arabia; and then he might march by Petra, Mount Sinai, andthe coast of the Red Sea, without being in want of water for his army. The Nabatæans were the tribe at an earlier time called Edomites. Butthey lost that name when they carried it to the southern portion ofJudæa, then called Idumæa; for when the Jews regained Idumæa, theycalled these Edomites of the desert Nebaoth or Nabatæans. The Nabatænsprofessed neutrality between Antigonus and Ptolemy, the two contendingpowers; but the mild temper of Ptolemy had so far gained theirfriendship that the haughty Antigonus, though he did not refuse theirpledges of peace, secretly made up his mind to conquer them. Petra, thecity of the Nabatæans, is in a narrow valley between steep overhangingrocks, so difficult of approach that a handful of men could guard itagainst the largest army. Not more than two horsemen can ride abreastthrough 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 fora loaded camel. 

[Illustration: 062. Jpg ON THE COAST OF THE RED SEA]

The Eastern proverb reminds us that "Water is the chief thing;" anda large stream within the valley, in addition to the strength of thefortress, made it a favourite resting-place for caravans, which, whetherthey were coming from Tyre or Jerusalem, were forced to pass by thiscity in their way to the Incense Country of Arabia Felix, or to theElanitic Gulf of the Red Sea, and for other caravans from Egypt to Dedamon the Persian Gulf. These warlike Arabs seem to have received a tollfrom the caravans, and they held their rocky fastness unconquered bythe great nations which surrounded them. Their temples and tombs werecut out of the live rock, and hence the city was by the Jews namedSelah, (the rock), and by the Greeks named Petra, from which last thecountry was sometimes called Arabia Petræa. 

Antigonus heard that the Nabatæans had left Petra less guarded thanusual, and had gone to a neighbouring fair, probably to meet a caravanfrom the south, and to receive spices in exchange for the woollen goodsfrom Tyre. He therefore sent forward four thousand light-armed foot andsix hundred horse, who overpowered the guard and seized the city. TheArabs, when they heard of what had happened, returned in the night, surrounded the place, came upon the Greeks from above, by paths knownonly to themselves, and overcame them with such slaughter that, out ofthe four thousand six hundred men, only fifty returned to Antigonus totell the tale. 

The Nabatæans then sent to Antigonus to complain of this crafty attackbeing made upon Petra after they had received from him a promise offriendship. He endeavoured to put them off their guard by disowning theacts of his general; he sent them home with promises of peace, but atthe same time sent forward his son Demetrius, with four thousand horseand four thousand foot, to take revenge upon them, and again seize theircity. But the Arabs were this time upon their guard; the nature ofthe place was as unfavourable to the Greek arms and warfare as it wasfavourable to the Arabs; and these eight thousand men, the flower of thearmy, under brave Demetrius, were unable to force their way through thenarrow pass into this remarkable city. 

Had Antigonus been master of the sea, he might perhaps have marchedthrough the desert along the coast of the Mediterranean to Pelusium, with his fleet to wait upon his army, as Perdiccas had done. Butwithout this, the only way that he could enter Egypt was through theneighbourhood of Petra, and then along the same path which the Jews aresupposed to have followed; and the stop thus put upon the invasion ofEgypt by this little city shows us the strength of Ptolemy's easternfrontier. Antigonus then led his army northward, leaving the kingdom ofEgypt unattacked. 

This retreat was followed by a treaty of peace between these generals, by which it was agreed that each should keep the country that he thenheld; that Cassan-der should govern Macedonia until Alexander Ægus, theson of Alexander the Great, should be of age; that Lysimachus shouldkeep Thrace, Ptolemy Egypt, and Antigonus Asia Minor and Palestine; andeach wishing to be looked upon as the friend of the soldiers by whomhis power was upheld, and the whole of these wide conquests kept in awe, added the very unnecessary article, that the Greeks living in each ofthese countries should be governed according to their own laws. 

All the provinces held by these generals became more or less Greekkingdoms, 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, thecity of Alexandria was under Macedonian law. It did not form part of thenome of Hermopolites in which it was built. It scarcely formed a part ofEgypt, but was a Greek state in its neighbourhood, holding the Egyptiansin a state of slavery. In that city no Egyptian could live withoutfeeling himself of a conquered race. He was not admitted to theprivileges of Macedonian citizenship, while they were at once granted toevery Greek, and soon to every Jew, who would settle there. 

By the treaty just spoken of, Ptolemy, in the thirteenth year after thedeath of Alexander, was left undisputed master of Egypt. During theseyears he had not only gained the love of the Egyptians and Alexandriansby his wise and just government, but had won their respect as a generalby the skill with which he had kept the war at a distance. He had lostand won battles in Syria, in Asia Minor, in the island of Cyprus, and atsea; but since Perdiccas marched against him, before he had a force todefend himself with, no foreign army had drunk the sacred waters of theNile. 

It was under the government of Ptolemy that the wonders of Upper Egyptwere first seen by any Greeks who had leisure, a love of knowledge, andenough of literature, to examine carefully and to describe what theysaw. Loose and highly coloured accounts of the wealth of Thebeshad reached Greece even before the time of Homer, and again throughHerodotus and other travellers in the Delta; but nothing was certainlyknown of it till it was visited by Hecatæus of Abdera, who, among otherworks, wrote a history of the Hyperborean or northern nations, and alsoa history, or rather a description of Egypt, part of which we now readin the pages of Dio-dorus Siculus. When he travelled in Upper Egypt, Thebes, though still a populous city, was more thought of by theantiquary than by the statesman. Its wealth, however, was still great;and when, under the just government of Ptolemy, it was no longernecessary for the priests to hide their treasures, it was found that thetemples still held the very large sum of three hundred talents of gold, and two thousand three hundred talents of silver, or above five milliondollars, which had escaped the plundering hands of the Persian satraps. Many of the Theban tombs, which are sets of rooms tunnelled into thehills on the Libyan side of the Nile, had even then been opened togratify 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 inthe sloping sides of the hills, in the hope that they might remainundisturbed and unplundered, and might keep safe the embalmed bodiesof the kings till they should rise again at the end of the world; andseventeen of these had already been found out and broken open. Hecatæuswas told that the other tombs had been before destroyed; and we owe it, perhaps, to this mistake that they remained unopened for more than twothousand years longer, to reward the searches of modern travellers, andto unfold to us the history of their builders. 

The Memnonium, the great palace of Ramses II. , was then standing; andthough it had been plundered by the Persians, the building itself wasunhurt. Its massive walls had scarcely felt the wear of the centurieswhich had rolled over them. Hecataaus measured its rooms, itscourtyards, and its avenue of sphinxes; and by his measurements we cannow distinguish its ruins from those of the other palaces of Thebes. Oneof its rooms, perhaps after the days of its builder, had been fitted upas a library, and held the histories and records of the priests; but thegolden 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. Hecataausalso saw the three other palace-temples of Thebes, which we now callby the names of the villages in which they stand, namely, of Luxor, ofKarnak, and of Medinet-Habu. But the Greeks, in their accounts ofEgypt, have sadly puzzled us by their careless alteration of names fromsimilarity of sound. To Miamun Ramses, they gave the common Greek nameMemnon; and the city of Hahiroth they called Heroopolis, as if it meantthe _city of heroes_. The capital of Upper Egypt, which was called TheCity, as a capital is often called, or in Koptic, _Tape or Thabou_, theynamed Thebes, and in their mythology they confounded it with Thebes inBootia. The city of the god Kneph they called Canopus, and said itwas so named after the pilot of Menelaus. The hill of Toorah oppositeMemphis they called the Trojan mountain. One of the oldest cities inEgypt, 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 theEgyptian gods. They thought them the same as their own, though with newfaces; and, instead of describing their qualities, they have in the maincontented themselves with translating their names. 

If Ptolemy did not make his government as much feared by the half-armedEthiopians as it was by the well-disciplined Europeans, it must havebeen because the Thebans wished to guard their own frontier rather thanbecause his troops were always wanted against a more powerful enemy; butthe inroads of the Ethiopians were so far from being checked that thecountry to the south of Thebes was unsafe for travellers, and no Greekwas able to reach Syênê and the lower cataracts during his reign. Thetrade through Ethiopia was wholly stopped, and the caravans went fromThebes to Cosseir to meet the ships which brought the goods of Arabiaand India from the opposite coast of the Red Sea. 

In the wars between Egypt and Asia Minor, in which Palestine had themisfortune to be the prize struggled for and the debatable land on whichthe battles were fought, the Jews were often made to smart underthe stern pride of Antigonus, and to rejoice at the milder temperof Ptolemy. The Egyptians of the Delta and the Jews had always beenfriends; and hence, when Ptolemy promised to treat the Jews with thesame kindness as the Greeks, and more than the Egyptians, and held outall the rights of Macedonian citizenship to those who would settle inhis rising city of Alexandria, he was followed by crowds of industrioustraders, manufacturers, and men of letters. They chose to live in Egyptin peace and wealth, rather than to stay in Palestine in the daily fearof having their houses sacked and burnt at every fresh quarrel betweenPtolemy and Antigonus. In Alexandria, a suburb by the sea, on the eastside of the city, was allotted for their use, which was afterwardsincluded within the fortifications, and thus made a fifth ward of theLagid metropolis. 

No sooner was the peace agreed upon between the four generals, who werethe most powerful kings in the known world, than Cassander, who heldMacedonia, put to death both the Queen Roxana and her son, the youngAlexander Ægus, then thirteen years old, in whose name these generalshad each governed his kingdom with unlimited sway, and who was then ofan age that the soldiers, the givers of all power, were alreadyplanning to make him the real King of Macedonia and of his father's wideconquests. 

The Macedonian phalanx, which formed the pride and sinews of everyarmy, were equally held by their deep-rooted loyalty to the memory ofAlexander, whether they were fighting for Ptolemy or for Antigonus, andequally thought that they were guarding a province for his heir; and itwas through fear of loosening their hold upon the faithfulness of thesetheir best troops that Ptolemy and his rivals alike chose to governtheir kingdoms under the unpretending title of lieutenants of the Kingof Macedonia. Hence, upon the death of Alexander Ægus, there was athrone, or at least a state prison, left empty for a new claimant. Polysperchon, an old general of Alexander's army, then thought that hesaw a way to turn Cassander out of Macedonia, by the help of Hercules, the natural son of Alexander by Barce; and, having proclaimed him king, he led him with a strong army against Cassander. But Polysperchon wantedeither courage or means for what he had undertaken, and he soon yieldedto the bribes of Cassander and put Hercules to death. 

The cities on the southern coast of Asia Minor yielded to Antigonusobedience as slight as the ties which held them to one another. Thecities of Pamphylia and Cilicia, in their habits as in their situation, were nearer the Syrians, and famous for their shipping. They all enjoyeda full share of the trade and piracy of those seas, and were a temptingprize to Ptolemy. The treaty of peace between the generals neverlessened their jealousy nor wholly stopped the warfare, and thenext year Ptolemy, finding that his troops could hardly keep theirpossessions in Cilicia, carried over an army in person to attack theforces of Antigonus in Lycia. He landed at Phaselis, the frontier townof Pamphylia, and, having carried that by storm, he moved westward alongthe coast of Lycia. He made himself master of Xanthus, the capital, which was garrisoned by the troops of Antigonus; and then of Caunus, astrong place on the coast of Caria, with two citadels, one of which hegained by force and the other by surrender. He then sailed to the islandof Cos, which he gained by the treachery of Ptolemy, the nephew ofAntigonus, who held it for his uncle, but who went over to the Egyptianking with all his forces. By this success he gained the whole southerncoast 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, andThessalonica, his niece, were alone left alive of the royal familyof Macedonia. Almost every one of the generals had already courted amarriage with Cleopatra, which had either been refused by herself orhindered by his rivals; and lastly Ptolemy, now that by the death of hernephews she brought kingdoms, or the love of the Macedonian mercenaries, which was worth more than kingdoms, as her dower, sent to ask her handin marriage. This offer was accepted by Cleopatra; but, on her journeyfrom Sardis, the capital of Lydia, to Egypt, on her way to join herfuture husband, she was put to death by Antigonus. The niece was putto death a few years later. Thus every one who was of the family ofAlexander paid the forfeit of life for that honour, and these two deathsended the Macedonian dynasty with a double tragedy. 

While Ptolemy was busy in helping the Greek cities of Asia to gain theirliberty, Menelaus, his brother and admiral, was almost driven out ofCyprus by Demetrius. On this Ptolemy got together his fleet, to thenumber of one hundred and forty long galleys and two hundred transports, manned with not less than ten thousand men, and sailed with them to thehelp of his brother. This fleet, under the command of Menelaus, was metby Demetrius with the fleet of Antigonus, consisting of one hundred andtwelve long galleys and a number of transports; and the Egyptian fleet, which had hitherto been master of the sea, was beaten near the cityof Salamis in Cyprus by the smaller fleet of Demetrius. This was theheaviest loss that had ever befallen Ptolemy. Eighty long galleys weresunk, and forty long galleys, with one hundred transports and eightthousand men, were taken prisoners. He could no longer hope to keepCyprus, and he sailed hastily back to Egypt, leaving to Demetrius thegarrisons of the island as his prisoners, all of whom were enrolled inthe army of Antigonus, to the number of sixteen thousand foot and sixhundred horse. 

This naval victory gave Demetrius the means of unburdening his proudmind of a debt of gratitude to his enemy; and accordingly, rememberingwhat Ptolemy had done after the battle of Gaza, he sent back to Egypt, unasked for and unransomed, those prisoners who were of high rank, thatis to say, all those who had any choice about which side they foughtfor; and among them were Leontiscus, the son, and Menelaus, the brother, of Ptolemy. 

Antigonus was overjoyed with the news of his son's victory. By lesseningthe power of Ptolemy, it had done much to smooth his own path to thesovereignty of Alexander's empire, which was then left without an heir;and he immediately took the title of king, and gave the same title tohis son Demetrius. In this he was followed by Ptolemy and the othergenerals, but with this difference, that while Antigonus called himselfking of all the provinces, Ptolemy called himself King of Egypt; andwhile Antigonus gained Syria and Cyprus, Ptolemy gained the friendshipof every other kingdom and of every free city in Greece; they all lookedupon him as their best ally against Antigonus, the common enemy. 

The next year Antigonus mustered his forces in Coele-Syria, and gotready for a second attack upon Egypt. He had more than eighty thousandfoot, accompanied with what was then the usual proportion of cavalry, namely, eight thousand horse and eighty-three elephants. Demetriusbrought with him from Cyprus the fleet of one hundred and fifty longgalleys, and one hundred transports laden with stores and engines ofwar. With this fleet, to which Ptolemy, after his late loss, had noships that he could oppose, Antigonus had no need to ask leave of theArabs of the little city of Petra to march through their passes; but heled his army straight through the desert to Pelusium, while the ships ofburden kept close to the shore with the stores. The pride of Antigonuswould not let him follow the advice of the sailors, and wait eight daystill the north winds of the spring equinox had passed; and by this hastemany of his ships were wrecked on the coast, while others were driveninto the Nile and fell into the hands of Ptolemy. Antigonus himself, marching with the land forces, found all the strong places well guardedby the Egyptian army; and, being driven back at every point, discouragedby the loss of his ships and by seeing whole bodies of his troops goover to Ptolemy, he at last took the advice of his officers and led backhis army to Syria, while Ptolemy returned to Alexandria, to employ thosepowers of mind in the works of peace which he had so successfully usedin his various wars. 

Antigonus then turned the weight of his mighty kingdom against thelittle island of Rhodes, which, though in sight of the coast of AsiaMinor, held itself independent of him, and in close friendship withPtolemy. The Dorian island of Rhodes had from the earliest dawn ofhistory held a high place among the states of Greece; and in all thearts of civilised life, in painting, sculpture, letters, and commerce, it had been lately rising in rank while the other free states had beenfalling. Its maritime laws were so highly thought of that they werecopied by most other states, and, being afterwards adopted into thePandects of Justinian, they have in part become the law of modernEurope. It was the only state in which Greek liberty then kept itsground against the great empires of Alexander's successors. 

Against this little state Demetrius led two hundred long galleys and onehundred and seventy transports, with more than forty thousand men. TheGreek world looked on with deep interest while the veterans of Antigonuswere again and again driven back from the walls of the blockaded cityby its brave and virtuous citizens; who, while their houses were burningand their walls crumbling under the battering-ram, left the statues ofAntigonus and Demetrius standing unhurt in the market-place, saved bytheir love of art and the remembrance of former kindness, which, witha true greatness of mind, they would not let the cruelties of the siegeoutweigh. The galleys of Ptolemy, though unable to keep at sea againstthe larger fleet of Demetrius, often forced their way into the harbourwith the welcome supplies of grain. Month after month every stratagemand machine which the ingenuity of Demetrius could invent were tried andfailed; and, after the siege had lasted more than a year, he was glad tofind an excuse for withdrawing his troops; and the Rhodians in their joyhailed Ptolemy with the title of Soter or _saviour_. This name he everafterwards kept, though by the Greek writers he is more often calledPtolemy the son of Lagus. If we search the history of the world for asecond instance of so small a state daring to withstand the armies of somighty an empire, we shall perhaps not find any one more remarkable thanthat of the same island, when, seventeen hundred years afterwards, itagain drew upon itself the eyes of the world, while it beat off theforces of the Ottoman empire under Mahomet II. ; and, standing like arock 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 theGreat, after a siege of many months. 

The next of Ptolemy's conquests was Coele-Syria; and soon after thisthe wars between these successors of Alexander were put an end to bythe death of Antigonus, whose overtowering ambition was among thechief causes of quarrel. This happened at the great battle of Ipsus inPhrygia, where they all met, with more than eighty thousand men ineach army. Antigonus, King of Asia Minor, was accompanied by his sonDemetrius, and by Pyrrhus, King of Epirus; and he was defeated byPtolemy, King of Egypt, Seleucus, King of Babylon, Lysimachus, King ofThrace, and Cassander, King of Macedonia; and the old man lost his lifefighting bravely. After the battle Demetrius fled to Cyprus, and yieldedto the terms of peace which were imposed on him by the four alliedsovereigns. He sent his friend Pyrrhus as a hostage to Alexandria; andthere this young King of Epirus soon gained the friendship of Ptolemyand afterwards his stepdaughter in marriage. Ptolemy was thus leftmaster of the whole of the southern coast of Asia Minor and Syria, indeed of the whole coast of the eastern end of the Mediterranean, fromthe island of Cos on the north to Cyrene on the south. 

During these formidable wars with Antigonus, Ptolemy had never beentroubled with any serious rising of the conquered Egyptians; and perhapsthe wars may not have been without their use in strengthening histhrone. The first danger to a successful conqueror is from the avariceand disappointment of his followers, who usually claim the kingdom astheir booty, and who think themselves wronged and their past servicesforgotten if any limit is placed to their tyranny over the conquered. But these foreign wars may have taught the Alexandrians that Ptolemy wasnot strong enough to ill-treat the Egyptians, and may thus have savedhim from the indiscretion of his friends and from their reproaches foringratitude. 

In the late war, the little Dorian island of Cos on the coast of AsiaMinor fell, as we have seen, under the power of Ptolemy. This island wasremarkable as being the first spot in Europe into which the manufactureof silk was introduced, which it probably gained when under the powerof Persia before the overthrow of Darius. The luxury of the Egyptianladies, who affected to be overheated by any clothing that could concealtheir limbs, had long ago introduced a tight, thin dress which neitherour climate nor notions of modesty would allow, and for this dress, silk, when it could be obtained, was much valued; and Pamphila of Coshad the glory of having woven webs so transparent that the Egyptianwomen were enabled to display their fair forms yet more openly by meansof this clothing. 

[Illustration: 081. Jpg ALEXANDRIAN LADY, ATTIRED IN BOMBYX SILK]

Cos continued always in the power of the Ptolemies, who used it as aroyal fortress, occasionally sending their treasures and their childrenthere as to a place of safety from Alexandrian rebellion; and there thesilk manufacture flourished in secret for two or three centuries. When it ceased is unknown, as it was part of the merchants' craft toendeavour to keep each branch of trade to themselves, by concealing thechannel through which they obtained their supply of goods, and many ofthe dresses which were sold in Rome under the emperors by the name ofCoan robes may have been brought from the East through Alexandria. 

One of the most valuable gifts which Egypt owed to Ptolemy was itscoinage. Even Thebes, "where treasures were largest in the houses" neverwas able to pass gold and silver from hand to hand without the troubleof weighing, and the doubt as to the fineness of the metal. The Greekmerchants who crowded the markets of Canopus and Alexandria must havefilled Lower Egypt with the coins of the cities from whence they came, all unlike one another in stamp and weight; but, while every little cityor even colony of Greece had its own coinage, Egypt had as yet very fewcoins of its own. We are even doubtful whether we know by sight thosecoined by the Persians In the early years of Ptolemy's governmentPtolemy had issued a very few coins bearing the names of the young kingsin whose name he held the country, but he seems not to have coined anyquantity of money till after he had himself taken the title of king. Hiscoins are of gold, silver, and bronze, and are in a fine style of Greekworkmanship. Those of gold and silver bear on one side the portrait ofthe king, without a beard, having the head bound with the royal diadem, which, unlike the high priestly crown of the native Egyptian kings, orthe modern crown of gold and precious stones, is a plain riband tied ina bow behind. On the other side they have the name of Ptolemy Soter, orKing Ptolemy, with an eagle standing upon a thunderbolt, which was onlyanother way of drawing the eagle and sun, the hieroglyphical charactersfor the title Pharaoh. 

[Illustration: 082. Jpg EGYPTIAN COINAGE]

The gold coins of Egypt were probably made in Alexandria. The coinsare not of the same weight as those of Greece; but Ptolemy followed theEgyptian standard of weight, which was that to which the Jewish shekelwas adjusted, and which was in use in the wealthy cities of Tyre andSidon and Beryttus. The drachma weighs fifty-five grains, making thetalent of silver worth about seven hundred and fifty dollars. Ptolemy'sbronze coins have the head of Serapis or Jupiter in the place of that ofthe king, as is also the case with those of his successors; but few ofthese bronze pieces bear any marks from which we can learn the reignin which they were coined. They are of better metal than those of othercountries, as the bronze is free from lead and has more tin in it. Thehistorian, in his very agreeable labours, should never lose sight of thecoins. They teach us by their workmanship the state of the arts, and bytheir 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 learnfrom other sources, they are still the living witnesses to which weappeal, to prove the truth of the authors who have told us more. 

[Illustration: 083. Jpg COIN OF SOTER, WITH JUPITER]

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 seenthem to surpass any that had been before painted, or were likely to bepainted, had quarrelled with Ptolemy, who had known him well when hewas the friend and painter of Alexander. Once when he was at Alexandria, somebody wickedly told him that he was invited to dine at the royaltable, and when Ptolemy asked who it was that had sent his unwelcomeguest, Apelles drew the face of the mischief-maker on the wall, and hewas known to all the court by the likeness. It was, perhaps, at oneof these dinners, at which Ptolemy enjoyed the society of the men ofletters, or perhaps when visiting the philosophers in their schools, that he asked Euclid if he could not show him a shorter and easier wayto the higher truths of mathematics than that by which he led the pupilsin the Museum; and Euclid, as if to remind him of the royal roads ofPersia, which ran by the side of the highroads, but were kept clear andfree for the king's own use, made him the well-known answer, that therewas no royal road to geometry. 

Ptolemy lived in easy familiarity with the learned men of Alexandria;and at another of these literary dinners, when Diodorus, therhetorician, 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 saidthat his name should be Cronus, a god who had been laughed at in thecomedies. Indeed, he was so teased by Ptolemy for not being able toanswer it, that he got up and left the room. He afterwards wrote a bookupon the subject; but the ridicule was said to have embittered the restof his life. This was the person against whom Callimachus, some yearslater, wrote a bitter epigram, beginning "Cronus is a wise man. "Diodorus was of the sceptical school of philosophy, which, though notfar removed from the Cyrenaic school, was never popular in Alexandria. Among other paradoxes he used to deny the existence of motion. He arguedthat the motion was not in the place where the body moved from, nor inthe place that the body moved to, and that accordingly it did not existat all. Once he met with a violent fall which put his shoulder out ofjoint, and he applied to Herophilus, the surgeon, to set it. Herophilusbegan by asking him where the fall took place, whether in the placewhere the shoulder was, or in the place where it fell to; but thesmarting philosopher begged him to begin by setting his limb, and theywould talk about the existence of motion after the operation. 

Stilpo was at this time only on a visit to Ptolemy, for he had refusedhis offer of money and a professorship in the Museum, and had chosento remain at Megara where he was the ornament of his birthplace. Hehad been banished from Athens for speaking against their gods, and forsaying that the colossal Minerva was not the daughter of Jupiter, but ofPhidias, the sculptor. His name as a philosopher stood so high that whenDemetrius, in his late wars with Ptolemy, took the city of Megara bystorm, the conqueror bid spare the house of Stilpo, when temple andtower went to the ground; and when Demetrius gave orders that Stilposhould be repaid for what he had lost in the siege, the philosopherproudly answered that he had lost nothing, and that he had no wealth buthis learning. 

The historian Theopompus of Chios then came to Alexandria, and wrote anaccount of the wars between the Egyptians and the Persians. It is nowlost, but it contained at least the events from the successful invasionby Artaxerxes Longimanus till the unsuccessful invasion by ArtaxerxesMnemon. 

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 maybe called the father of the science of anatomy: his writings are oftenquoted by Dioscorides. Antiochus in his youth had fallen deeply in lovewith his young stepmother, and was pining away in silence and despair. Erasistratus found out the cause of his illness, which was straightwaycured by Seleucus giving up his wife to his own son. This act stronglypoints out the changed opinions of the world as to the matrimonialrelation; for it was then thought the father's best title to the nameof Nicator; he had before conquered his enemies, but he then conqueredhimself. 

Erasistratus was the first who thought that a knowledge of anatomyshould be made a part of the healing art. Before his time surgery andmedicine had been deemed one and the same; they had both been studied bythe slow and uncertain steps of experience, unguided by theory. Many aman who had been ill, whether through disease or wound, and had regainedhis health, thought it his duty to Esculapius and to his neighbours towrite up in the temple of the god the nature of his ailings, and thesimples to which he fancied that he owed his cure. By copying theseloose but well-meant inscriptions of medical cases, Hippocrates had, a century earlier, laid the foundations of the science; but nothingfurther was added to it till Erasistratus, setting at nought theprejudices in which he was born, began dissecting the human body in theschools of Alexandria. There the mixing together of Greeks and Egyptianshad weakened those religious feelings of respect for the dead which areusually shocked by anatomy; and this study flourished from the lowtone of the morality as much as from the encouragement which good senseshould grant to every search for knowledge. 

Herophilus lived about the same time with Erasistratus, and was, likehim, famous for his knowledge of the anatomy of man. But so hateful wasthis study in the eyes of many, that these anatomists were charged bywriters who ought to have known better, with the cruelty of cuttingmen open when alive. They had few followers in the hated use of thedissecting-knife. It was from their writings that Galen borrowed theanatomical parts of his work; and thus it was to the dissections ofthese two great men, helped indeed by opening the bodies of animals, that the world owed almost the whole of its knowledge of the anatomy ofman, till the fifteenth century, when surgeons were again bold enough toface the outcry of the mob, and to study the human body with the knife. 

Hegesias of Cyrene was an early lecturer on philosophy at Alexandria. His short and broken sentences are laughed at by Cicero, yet he was somuch listened to, when lecturing against the fear of death, and showingthat in quitting life we leave behind us more pains than pleasures, thathe was stopped by Ptolemy Soter through fear of his causing self-murderamong his hearers. He then wrote a book upon the same subject, forthough the state watched over the public teaching, it took no noticeof books; writing had not yet become the mightiest power on earth. Themiseries, however, of this world, which he so eloquently and feelinglydescribed in his lectures and writings, did not drive him to put an endto his own life. 

Philostephanus of Cyrene, the friend of Callimachus, was a naturalistwho wrote upon fishes, and is the first investigator that we hear of whothought it desirable to limit his studies to one branch of the scienceof natural history. 

But Cyrene did not send all its great men to Alexandria. Plato hadstudied mathematics there under Theodorus, and it had a school of itsown which gave its name to the Cyrenaic sect. The founder of this sectwas Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates who had missed the high honour ofbeing present at his death. He was the first philosopher who took moneyfrom his pupils, and used to say that they valued their lessons morefor having to pay for them; but he was blamed by his brethren forthus lowering the dignity of the teacher. He died several years beforePtolemy 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. Itwould hardly be fair to take their opinions from the mouths of theirenemies; and the dialogues of Socrates, with their founder, as told tous by Xeno-phon, would prove a lower tone of morality than he is likelyto 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 thelove of goodness for its own sake, which is the groundwork of religion, was certainly far better than unguided passion and the love of to-day'spleasure. But often as this unsafe rule has been set up for ourguidance, there have always been found many to make use of it in a waynot meant by the teacher. The Cyrenaic sect soon fell into the disreputeto which these principles were likely to lead it, and wholly ceased whenEpicurus taught the same opinions more philosophically, Anniceris ofCyrene, though a follower of Aristippus, somewhat improved upon thelow-toned philosophy of his master. He granted that there were manythings worth our aim, which could not be brought within the narrowbounds of what is useful. He did not overlook friendship, kindness, honouring our parents, and serving our country; and he thought that awise man would undertake many labours which would bring him no return inthe things which were alone thought happiness. 

The chair of philosophy at Cyrene was afterwards filled by Arete, thedaughter of Aristippus; for such were the hindrances in the way ofgaining knowledge, that few could be so well qualified to teach as thephilosopher's daughter. Books were costly, and reading by no meansa cheap amusement. She was followed, after her death, by her sonAristippus, who, having been brought up in his mother's lecture-room, was called, in order to distinguish him from his grandfather of the samename, Metrodidactus, or _mother-taught_. History has not told us whetherhe took the name himself in gratitude for the debt which he owed to thislearned lady, or whether it was given him by his pupils; but in eithercase it was a sure way of giving to the mother the fame which was due toher for the education of her son; for no one could fail to ask who wasthe mother of Metrodidactus. 

Theodorus, one of the pupils of Metrodidactus, though at one timebanished from Cyrene, rose to honour under Soter, and was sent by him asambassador to Lysimachus, He was called the Atheist by his enemies, andthe Divine by his friends, but we cannot now determine which title hebest deserved. It was then usual to call those atheists who questionedthe existence of the pagan gods; and we must not suppose that all whosuffered under that reproach denied that the world was governed by aruling providence. The disbeliever in the false religion of the many isoften the only real believer in a God. Theodorus was of the cold schoolof philosophy, which was chiefly followed in Alexandria. It was earthly, lifeless, and unpoetical, arising from the successful cultivation ofthe physical sciences, not enough counteracted by the more ennoblingpursuits of poetry and the fine arts. Hence, while commerce and the artsof production were carried to higher perfection than at any formertime, and science was made greatly to assist in the supply of our bodilywants, the arts of civilisation, though by no means neglected, werecultivated without any lofty aim, or any true knowledge of theirdignity. 

[Illustration: 092. Jpg THE CHARIOT OF ANTIPHILUS]

Antiphilus, who was born in Egypt and had studied painting underCtesidemus, rose to high rank as a painter in Alexandria. Among hisbest-known pictures were the bearded Bacchus, the young Alexander, andHip-polytus, or rather his chariot-horses, frightened by the bull. Hisboy, blowing up a fire with his mouth, was much praised for the mouthof the boy, and for the light and shade of the room. His Ptolemyhunting was also highly thought of. Antiphilus showed a mean jealousyof Apelles, and accused him of joining in a plot against the king, forwhich the painter narrowly escaped punishment; but Ptolemy, finding thatthe charge was not true, sent Apelles a gift of one hundred talents tomake amends. The angry feelings of Apelles were by no means cooled bythis gift, but they boiled over in his great picture of Calumny. On theright of the picture sat Ptolemy, holding out his hand to Calumny, whowas coming up to him. On each side of the king stood a woman who seemedmeant for Ignorance and Suspicion. Calumny was a beautiful maiden, butwith angry and deep-rooted malice in her face: in her left hand was alighted torch, and with her right she was dragging along by the haira young man, who was stretching forth his hands to heaven, and callingupon the gods to bear witness that he was guiltless. Before her walkedEnvy, a pale, hollow-eyed, diseased man, perhaps a portrait ofthe accuser; and behind were two women, Craft and Deceit, who wereencouraging and supporting her. At a distance stood Repentance, in theragged, black garb of mourning, who was turning away her face for shameas Truth came up to her. 

Ptolemy Soter was plain in his manners, and scarcely surpassed his owngenerals in the costliness of his way of life. He often dined and sleptat the houses of his friends; and his own house had so little of thepalace, that he borrowed dishes and tables of his friends when he askedany number of them to dine with him in return, saying that it was thepart of a king to enrich others rather than to be rich himself. Beforehe took the title of king, he styled himself, and was styled by friendlystates, by the simple name of Ptolemy the Macedonian; and during thewhole of his reign he was as far from being overbearing in his behaviouras from being kinglike in his dress and household. Once when he wishedto laugh at a boasting antiquary, he asked him, what he knew could notbe answered, who was the father of Peleus; and the other let his wit sofar get the better of his prudence as in return to ask the king, who hadperhaps never heard the name of his own grandfather, if he knew who wasthe father of Lagus. But Ptolemy took no further notice of this than toremark that if a king cannot bear rude answers he ought not to ask rudequestions. 

An answer which Ptolemy once made to a soothsayer might almost be takenas the proverb which had guided him through life. When his soldiers metwith an anchor in one of their marches, and were disheartened on beingtold by the soothsayer that it was a proof that they ought to stop wherethey then were, the king restored their courage by remarking, that ananchor was an omen of safety, not of delay. 

Ptolemy's first children were by Thais, the noted courtesan, but theywere not thought legitimate. Leontiscus, the eldest, we afterwards hearof fighting bravely against Demetrius; of the second, named Lagus afterhis grandfather, we hear nothing. 

He then married Eurydice, the daughter of Antipater, by whom he hadseveral children. The eldest son, Ptolemy, was named Ceraunus, _theThunderer_, and was banished by his father from Alexandria. In hisdistress he fled to Seleucus, by whom he was kindly received; but afterthe death of Ptolemy Soter he basely plotted against Seleucus andput him to death. He then defeated in battle Antigonus, the son ofDemetrius, and got possession of Macedonia for a short time. He marriedhis half-sister Arsinoë, and put her children to death; and was soonafterwards put to death himself by the Gauls, who were either fightingagainst him or were mercenaries in his own army. Another son of Ptolemyand Eurydice was put to death by Ptolemy Philadelphus, for plottingagainst his throne, to which, as the elder brother, he might havethought himself the best entitled. Their daughter Lysander marriedAgathocles, the son of Lysimachus; but when Agathocles was put to deathby his father, she fled to Egypt with her children, and put herselfunder 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 Berenicê, a ladywho had come into Egypt with Eurydice, and had formed part of herhousehold. She was the widow of a man named Philip; and she had by herfirst husband a son named Magas, whom Ptolemy made governor of Cyrene, and a daughter, Antigone, whom Ptolemy gave in marriage to Pyrrhus whenthat young king was living in Alexandria as hostage for Demetrius. 

Berenicê's mildness and goodness of heart were useful in softening herhusband's severity. Once, when Ptolemy was unbending his mind at a gameof dice with her, one of his officers came up to his side, and began toread over to him a list of criminals who had been condemned to death, with their crimes, and to ask his pleasure on each. 

[Illustration: 095. Jpg BERENICE SOTER]

Ptolemy continued playing, and gave very little attention to the unhappytale; but Berenice's feelings overcame the softness of her character, and she took the paper out of the officer's hand, and would not let himfinish reading it; saying it was very unbecoming in the king to treatthe matter so lightly, as if he thought no more of the loss of a lifethan the loss of a throw. 

With Berenicê Ptolemy spent the rest of his years without anything totrouble 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, grow up everything that he could wish him to be; and, moved alike by hislove for the mother and by the good qualities of the son, he chosehim as his successor on the throne, instead of his eldest son, PtolemyCeraunus, who had shown, by every act in his life, his unfitness for theroyal position. 

His daughter Arsinoë married Lysimachus in his old age, and urgedhim against his son, Agathocles, the husband of her own sister. Sheafterwards married her half-brother, Ptolemy Ceraunus; and lastly becamethe wife of her brother Philadelphus. Argzeus, the youngest son ofPtolemy, was put to death by Philadelphus on a charge of treason. Ofhis youngest daughter Philotera we know nothing, except that her brotherPhiladelphus afterwards named a city on the coast of the Red Sea afterher. 

After the last battle with Demetrius, Ptolemy had regained the island ofCyprus and Cole-Syria, including Judæa; and his throne became strongeras 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 atuniversal power; and he was led, both by his kind feelings andwise policy, to befriend all those states which, like his own, werethreatened by that mad ambition in others. 

His history of Alexander's wars is lost, and we therefore cannot judgeof his merits as an author; but we may still point out with pleasure howmuch his people gained from his love of letters; though indeed we do notneed the example of Ptolemy to show that learning and philosophy are asmuch in place, and find as wide a field of usefulness, in governinga kingdom as in the employments of the teacher, the lawyer, or thephysician, who so often claim them as their own. 

His last public act, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, was orderedby the same forbearance which had governed every part of his life. Feeling the weight of years press heavily upon him, that he was lessable than formerly to bear the duties of his office, and wishing to seehis son firmly seated on the throne, he laid aside his diadem andhis title, and, without consulting either the army or the capital, proclaimed Ptolemy, his son by Berenicê, king, and contented himselfwith the modest rank of somatophylax, or satrap, to his successor. Hehad used his power so justly that he was not afraid to lay it down;and he has taught us how little of true greatness there is in rank byshowing how much more there is in resigning it. This is perhaps the mostsuccessful instance known of a king, who had been used to be obeyed byarmies and by nations, willingly giving up his power when he found hisbodily strength no longer equal to it. Ptolemy Soter had the happinessof having a son willing to follow in the track which he had laid downfor him, and of living to see the wisdom of his own laws proved by thewell-being of the kingdom under his son and successor. 

But while we are watching the success of Ptolemy's plans, and the riseof this Greek monarchy at Alexandria, we cannot help being pained withthe thought that the Kopts of Upper Egypt are forgotten, and askingwhether it would not have been still better to have raised Thebes tothe place which it once held, and to have recalled the days of Ramses, instead of trying what might seem the hopeless task of planting Greekarts in Africa. But a review of this history will show that, as far ashuman forethought can judge, this could not have been done. A peoplewhose religious opinions were fixed against all change, like the pillarsupon which they were carved, and whose philosophy had not noticed thatmen's minds were made to move forward, had no choice but to be leftbehind and trampled on, as their more active neighbours marched onwardsin the path of improvement. If Thebes had fallen only on the conquest byCambyses, if the rebellions against the Persians had been those of Koptsthrowing off their chains and struggling for freedom, we might havehoped to have seen Egypt, on the fall of Darius, again rise under kingsof the blood and language of the people; and we should have thought thegilded and half-hid chains of the Ptolemies were little better than theheavy yoke of the Persians. This, however, is very far from having beenthe case. We first see the kings of Lower Egypt guarding their thronesat Saïs by Greek soldiers; and then, that every struggle of Inarus, ofNectanebo, and of Tachos, against the Persians, was only made by thecourage and arms of Greeks hired in the Delta by Egyptian gold. Duringthe three hundred years before Alexander was hailed by Egypt as itsdeliverer, scarcely once had the Kopts, trusting to their own courage, stood up in arms against either Persians or Greeks; and the country wasonly then con-quered without a battle because the power and arms werealready in the hands of the Greeks; because in the mixed races ofthe Delta the Greeks were so far the strongest, though not the mostnumerous, that a Greek kingdom rose there with the same ease, and forthe same reasons, that an Arab kingdom rose in the same place ninecenturies later. 

[Illustration: 098. Jpg NIT, GODDESS OF SAIS. ]

[Illustration: 099. Jpg A CAT MUMMY]

Moral worth, national pride, love of country, and the better feelings ofclanship are the chief grounds upon which a great people can be raised. These feelings are closely allied to self-denial, or a willingness onthe part of each man to give up much for the good of the whole. By this, chiefly, public monuments are built, and citizens stand by one anotherin battle; and these feelings were certainly strong in Upper Egyptin the days of its greatness. But, when the throne was moved to LowerEgypt, when the kingdom was governed by the kings of Saïs, and evenafterwards, when it was struggling against the Persians, these virtueswere wanting, and they trusted to foreign hirelings in their strugglefor freedom. The Delta was peopled by three races of men, Kopts, Greeks, and Phoenicians, or Arabs; and even before the sceptre was given to theGreeks by Alexander's conquests, we have seen that the Kopts had lostthe virtues needed to hold it. 

[Illustration: 100. Jpg TAILPIECE]

CHAPTER III. --PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS. B. C. 284-246

We know of few princes who ever mounted a throne with such fairprospects before them as the second Ptolemy. He was born in Cos, anisland on the coast of Caria, which the Ptolemies kept as a familyfortress, safe from Egyptian rebellion and Alexandrian rudeness, and, while their fleets were masters of the sea, safe from foreign armies. Hehad been brought up with great care, and, being a younger son, was notspoilt by that flattery which in all courts is so freely offered to theheir. He first studied letters and philosophy under Philetas of Cos, an author of some elegies and epigrams now lost; and as he grew up, hefound himself surrounded by all the philosophers and writers with whomhis father mixed on the easiest terms of friendship. During thelong reign of Ptolemy Soter the people had been made happy by wiseregulations and good laws, trade had been flourishing, the cities hadgreatly prospered, and the fortresses had been everywhere strengthened. 

[Illustration: 102. Jpg PHAROS IN OLD ALEXANDRIA]

The Grecian troops were well trained, their loyalty undoubted, and theEgyptians were enrolled in a phalanx, armed and disciplined likethe Macedonians. The population of the country was counted at sevenmillions. Alexandria, the capital of the kingdom, was not only thelargest trading city in the world, but was one of the most favouredseats of learning. It surely must have been easy to foresee that theprince, then mounting the throne, even if but slightly gifted withvirtues, would give his name to a reign which could not be otherwisethan remarkable in the history of Egypt. But Philadelphus, though likehis 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 wecannot but see that he was only watering the plants and gatheringthe fruit where his father had planted, yet we must at the same timeacknowledge that Philadelphus was a successor worthy of Ptolemy Soter. He may have been in the twenty-third year of his age when his fathergave up to him the cares and honours of royalty. 

The first act of his reign, or rather the last of his father's reign, was the proclamation, or the ceremony, of showing the new king tothe troops and people. All that was dazzling, all that was costly orcurious, all that the wealth of Egypt could buy or the gratitude of theprovinces could give, was brought forth to grace this religious show, which, as we learn from the sculptures in the old tombs, was copiedrather from the triumphs of Ramses and Thûtmosis than from anything thathad been seen in Greece. 

The procession began with the pomp of Osiris, at the head of which werethe Sileni in scarlet and purple cloaks, who opened the way through thecrowd. Twenty satyrs followed on each side of the road, bearing torches;and then Victories with golden wings, clothed in skins, each witha golden staff six cubits long, twined round with ivy. An altar wascarried next, covered with golden ivy-leaves, with a garland of goldenvine-leaves tied with white ribands; and this was followed by a hundredand twenty boys in scarlet frocks, carrying bowls of crocus, myrrh, and frankincense, which made the air fragrant with the scent. Then cameforty dancing satyrs crowned with golden ivy-leaves, with their nakedbodies stained with gay colours, each carrying a crown of vine leavesand gold; then two Sileni in scarlet cloaks and white boots, one havingthe hat and wand of Mercury and the other a trumpet; and between themwalked a man, six feet high, in tragic dress and mask, meant for theYear, carrying a golden cornucopia. He was followed by a tall andbeautiful woman, meant for the Lustrum of five years, carrying in onehand a crown and in the other a palm-branch. Then came an altar, and atroop of satyrs in gold and scarlet, carrying golden drinking-cups. 

Then came Philiscus the poet, the priest of Osiris, with all theservants of the god; then the Delphic tripods, the prizes which wereto be given in the wrestling matches; that for the boys was nine cubitshigh, and that for the men twelve cubits high. Next came a four-wheeledcar, fourteen cubits long and eight wide, drawn along by one hundredand 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 tohis feet, with a yellow transparent robe over it, and over all a scarletcloak. Before the statue was a large golden bowl, and a tripod withbowls of incense on it. Over the whole was an awning of ivy and vineleaves; and in the same chariot were the priests and priestesses of thegod. 

This was followed by a smaller chariot drawn by sixty men, in which wasthe statue of Isis in a robe of yellow and gold. Then came a chariotfull of grapes, and another with a large cask of wine, which was pouredout on the road, as the procession moved on, and at which the eagercrowd filled their jugs and drinking-cups. Then came another band ofsatyrs and Sileni, and more chariots of wine; then eighty Delphic vasesof silver, and Panathenaic and other vases; and sixteen hundred dancingboys in white frocks and golden crowns: then a number of beautifulpictures; and a chariot carrying a grove of trees, out of which flewpigeons and doves, so tied that they might be easily caught by thecrowd. 

On another chariot, drawn by an elephant, came Osiris, as he returnedfrom his Indian conquests. He was followed by twenty-four chariots drawnby elephants, sixty drawn by goats, twelve by some kind of stags, seven by gazelles, four by wild asses, fifteen by buffaloes, eight byostriches, and seven by stags of some other kind. Then came chariotsloaded with the tributes of the conquered nations; men of Ethiopiacarrying six hundred elephants' teeth; sixty huntsmen leading twothousand four hundred dogs; and one hundred and fifty men carryingtrees, in the branches of which were tied parrots and other beautifulbirds. Next walked the foreign animals, Ethiopian and Arabian sheep, Brahmin bulls, a white bear, leopards, panthers, bears, a camelopard, and a rhinoceros; proving to the wondering crowd the variety andstrangeness of the countries that owned their monarch's sway. 

In another chariot was seen Bacchus running away from Juno, and flyingto the altar of Rhea. After that came the statues of Alexander andPtolemy Soter crowned with gold and ivy: by the side of Ptolemy stoodthe 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 camecrowds of singers and cymbal-players, and two thousand bulls with gilthorns, crowns, and breast-plates. Then came Amon-Ra and other gods;and the statue of Alexander between Victory and the goddess Neith, in achariot drawn by elephants: then a number of thrones of ivory and gold;on one was a golden crown, on another a golden cornucopia, and on thethrone of Ptolemy Soter was a crown worth ten thousand _aurei_, ornearly thirty thousand dollars; then three thousand two hundred goldencrowns, twenty golden shields, sixty-four suits of golden armour; andthe whole was closed with forty waggons of silver vessels, twentyof golden vessels, eighty of costly Eastern scents, and fifty-seventhousand six hundred foot soldiers, and twenty-three thousand twohundred horse. The procession began moving by torchlight before daybroke in the morning, and the sun set in the evening before it had allpassed on its way. 

[Illustration: 106. Jpg BRONZE COSMETIC HOLDER]

It went through the streets of Alexandria to the royal tents on theoutside of the city, where, as in the procession, everything that wascostly in art, or scarce in nature, was brought together in honour ofthe day. At the public games, as a kind of tax or coronation money, twenty golden crowns were given to Ptolemy Soter, twenty-three toBerenice, and twenty to their son, the new king, beside other costlygifts; and two thousand two hundred and thirty-nine talents, or onemillion seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, were spent on theamusements of the day. For the account of this curious procession we areindebted to Callixenes of Rhodes, who was then travelling in Egypt, andwho wrote a history of Alexandria. 

Ptolemy Soter lived two years after he had withdrawn himself from thecares of government; and the weight of his name was not without itsuse in adding steadiness to the throne of his successor. Instead ofparcelling out his wide provinces among his sons as so many kingdoms, hehad given them all to one son, and that not the eldest; and on his deaththe jealousy of those who had been disinherited and disappointed brokeout in rebellion. 

It is with peculiar interest that we hear in this reign for thefirst time that the bravery and rising power of the Romans had forcedthemselves into the notice of Philadelphus. Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus, had been beaten by the Romans, and driven out of Italy; and the King ofEgypt thought it not beneath him to send an ambassador to the senate, towish them joy of their success, and to make a treaty of peace with therepublic. The embassy, as we might suppose, was received in Rome withgreat joy; and three ambassadors, two of the proud name of Fabius, withQuintus Ogulnius, were sent back to seal the treaty. Philadelphus gavethem some costly gifts, probably those usually given to ambassadors;but Rome was then young, her citizens had not yet made gold the end forwhich they lived, and the ambassadors returned the gifts, for they couldreceive nothing beyond the thanks of the senate for having done theirduty. This treaty was never broken; and in the war which broke out inthe middle of this reign between Rome and Carthage, usually called thefirst Punic war, when the Carthaginians sent to Alexandria to beg fora loan of two thousand talents, Philadelphus refused it, saying that hewould help them against his enemies, but not against his friends. 

From that time forward we find Egypt in alliance with Rome. But we alsofind that they were day by day changing place with one another: Egyptsoon began to sink, while Rome was rising in power; Egypt soon receivedhelp from her stronger ally, and at last became a province of the Romanempire. 

At the time of this embassy, when Greek arts were nearly unknown to theRomans, the ambassadors must have seen much that was new to them, andmuch that was worth copying; and three years afterwards, when one ofthem, Quintus Ogulnius, together with Caius Fabius Pictor, were chosenconsuls, they coined silver for the first time in Rome. With them beginsthe series of consular denarii, which throws such light on Roman lifeand history. 

About the middle of this reign, Berenicê, the mother of the king, died, and it was most likely then that Philadelphus began to date from thebeginning 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 herdeath, the great feast of Osiris, in the month of Mesore, was celebratedat Alexandria with more than usual pomp by the Queen Arsinoë. Venus, orIsis, had just raised Berenice to heaven; and Arsinoë, in return, showedher gratitude by the sums of money spent on the feast of Osiris, orAdonis as he was sometimes called by the Greeks. Theocritus, who wasthere, wrote a poem on the day, and tells us of the crowds in thestreets, of the queen's gifts to the temple, and of the beautifultapestries, on which were woven the figures of the god and goddessbreathing as if alive; and he has given a free translation of theManeros, the national poem in which the priests each year consoled thegoddess Isis for the death of Osiris, which was sung through the streetsof Alexandria by a Greek girl in the procession. One of the chieftroubles in the reign of Philadelphus was the revolt of Cyrene. Thegovernment of that part of Africa had been entrusted to Magas, thehalf-brother of the king, a son of Berenice by her former husband. Berenice, who had been successful in setting aside Ceraunus to make roomfor her son Philadelphus on the throne of Egypt, has even been said tohave favoured the rebellious and ungrateful efforts of her elder sonMagas to make himself King of Cyrene. Magas, without waiting till thelarge armies of Egypt were drawn together to crush his little state, marched hastily towards Alexandria, in the hopes of being joined bysome of the restless thousands of that crowded city. But he was quicklyrecalled to Cyrene by the news of the rising of the Marmaridas, the raceof Libyan herdsmen that had been driven back from the coast by the Greeksettlers who founded Cyrene. Philadelphus then led his army along thecoast against the rebels; but he was, in the same way, stopped by thefear of treachery among his own Gallic mercenaries. With a measuredcruelty which the use of foreign mercenaries could alone have taughthim, he led back his army to the marshes of the Delta, and, entrappingthe four thousand distrusted Gauls* on one of the small islands, hehemmed them in between the water and the spears of the phalanx, and theyall died miserably, by famine, by drowning, or by the sword. 

 * It is not known for certain from what part of the world these Gauls were recruited. The race known as Gallic was at one time spread over a wide district from Gallicia in the East to Gallia in the West. 

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-Syriaand Palestine, to call off the army of Philadelphus from Cyrene. ButPhiladelphus did not wait for this attack: his armies moved beforeAntiochus was ready, and, by a successful inroad upon Syria, heprevented any relief being sent to Magas. 

After the war between the brothers had lasted some years, Magas madean offer of peace, which was to be sealed by betrothing his onlychild, Berenicê, to the son of Philadelphus. To this offer Philadelphusyielded; as by the death of Magas, who was already worn out by luxuryand disease, Cyrene would then fall to his own son. Magas, indeed, diedbefore the marriage took place; but, notwithstanding the efforts madeby his widow to break the agreement, the treaty was kept, and on thismarriage Cyrene again formed part of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt. 

The black spot upon the character of Philadelphus, which all the blazeof science and letters by which he was surrounded can not make usoverlook, is the death of two of his brothers: a son of Eurydice, whomight, perhaps, have thought that he was robbed of the throne of Egyptby his younger brother, and who was unsuccessful in raising the islandof Cyprus in rebellion; and a younger brother, Argasus, who was alsocharged 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 formore than fifty years under the rule of the Macedonians, that the evilswhich often follow conquest were brought to an end. Before this reignno Greek was ever known to have reached Elephantine and Syênê or Aswansince Herodotus made his hasty tour in the Thebaid; and during much ofthe 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, whosefeelings of hatred we can hardly wonder at, waylaid the stragglers, andEgyptian-like as the Greeks said, or slave-like as it would be wiser tosay, often put them to death in cold blood. But a long course of goodgovernment had at last quieted the whole country, and left room forfurther improvements by Philadelphus. 

Among other buildings, Philadelphus raised a temple in Alexandria to thehonour of his father and mother, and placed in it their statues, made ofivory and gold, and ordered that they should be worshipped like thegods and other kings of the country. He also built a temple to Ceres andProserpine, and then the Eleusinian mysteries were taught in Alexandriato the few who were willing and worthy to be admitted. The southeastquarter 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 basketthrough the streets, and singing hymns in honour of the goddess; whilethey charged all profane persons, who met the procession, to keeptheir eyes upon the ground, lest they should see the basket and thepriestesses, who were too pure for them to look upon. 

In this reign was finished the lighthouse on the island of Pharos, asa guide to ships when entering the harbour of Alexandria by night. Thenavigation of the waters of the Red Sea, along which the wind blows hardfrom the north for nine months in the year, was found so dangerous bythe little vessels from the south of Arabia, that they always chose themost southerly port in which they could meet the Egyptian buyers. Themerchants with their bales of goods found a journey on camels throughthe desert, where the path is marked only by the skeletons of theanimals that have died upon the route, less costly than a coastingvoyage. Hence, when Philadelphus had made the whole of Upper Egypt tothe cataracts at Aswan (Syênê) as quiet and safe as the Delta, he made anew port on the rocky coast of the Red Sea, nearly two hundred miles tothe south of Cosseir, and named it Berenicê after his mother. He alsobuilt four public inns, or watering-houses, where the caravans mightfind water for the camels, and shelter from the noonday sun, on theirtwelve days' journey through the desert from Koptos on the Nile to thisnew port. He rebuilt, and at the same time renamed, the old port ofCosseir, or Ænnum as it was before called, and named it Philotera afterhis younger sister. The trade which thus passed down the Nile fromSyênê, from Berenicê, and from Philotera, paid a toll or duty at thecustom-house station of Phylake a little below Lycopolis on the westbank of the river, where a guard of soldiers was encamped; and thisstation gradually grew into a town. 

[Illustration: 112. Jpg ROSETTA BRANCH OF THE NILE]

Philadelphus also built a city on the sands at the head of the Red Sea, near where Suez now stands, and named it Arsinoë, after his sister; andhe again opened the canal which Necho II. And Darius had begun, by whichships were to pass from the Nile to this city on the Red Sea. This canalbegan in the Pelusiac branch of the river, a little above Bubastis, and was carried to the Lower Bitter Lakes in the reign of Darius. Fromthence Philadelphus wished to carry it forward to the Red Sea, nearthe town of Arsinoë, and moreover cleared it from the sands whichsoon overwhelmed it and choked it up whenever it was neglected by thegovernment. But his undertaking was stopped by the engineers finding thewaters of the canal several feet lower than the level of the Red Sea;and that, if finished, it would become a salt-water canal, which couldneither water the fields nor give drink to the cities in the valley. Healso built a second city of the name of Berenicê, called the BerenicêEpidires, at the very mouth of the Red Sea on a point of land whereAbyssinia is hardly more than fifteen miles from the opposite coast ofArabia. This naming of cities after his mother and sisters was no idlecompliment; they probably received the crown revenues of those citiesfor their personal maintenance. 

With a view further to increase the trade with the East, Philadelphussent Dionysius on an expedition overland to India, to gain a knowledgeof the country and of its means and wants. He went by the way of theCaspian Sea through Bactria, in the line of Alexander's march. Hedwelt there, at the court of the sovereign, soon after the time thatMegasthenes 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 historyof past times, that the information gained on this interesting journeyof 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 mayform some opinion of the profit which was gained from the trade of theRed Sea from the report of Clitarchus to Alexander, that the people ofone of the islands would give a talent of gold for a horse, so plentifulwith them was gold, and so scarce the useful animals of Europe; and oneof the three towns named after the late queen, on that coast, was knownby the name of the Nubian or Golden Berenicê, from the large supply ofgold which was dug from the mines in the neighbourhood. In latitude 17°, separated from the Golden Berenicê by one of the forests of Ethiopia, was the new city of Ptolemais, which, however, was little more than apost from which the hunting parties went out to catch elephants forthe armies of Egypt. Philadelphus tried to command, to persuade, and tobribe the neighbouring tribes not to kill these elephants for food, butthey refused all treaty with him; these zealous huntsmen answered that, if he offered them the kingdom of Egypt with all its wealth, they wouldnot give up the pleasure of catching and eating elephants. The Ethiopianforests, however, were able to supply the Egyptian armies with about oneelephant for every thousand men, which was the number then thought bestin the Greek military tactics. Asia had been the only country from whichthe armies had been supplied with elephants before Philadelphus broughtthem from Ethiopia. 

The temple of Isis among the palm groves in Philæ, a rocky island in theNile near the cataracts of Syênê, was begun in this reign, though notfinished till some reigns later. It is still the wonder of travellers, and by its size and style proves the wealth and good taste of thepriests. But its ornaments are not so simple as those of the oldertemples; and the capitals of its columns are varied by the full-blownpapyrus flower of several sizes, its half-opened buds, its closed buds, and its leaves, and by palm-branches. It seems to have been built on thesite of an older temple which may have 'been overthrown by the Persians. This island of Philo is the most beautiful spot in Egypt; where the bendof the river just above the cataracts forms a quiet lake surrounded onall sides by fantastic cliffs of red granite. Its name is a corruptionfrom Abu-lakh, the city of the frontier. This temple was one of theplaces in which Osiris was said to be buried. None but priests ever setfoot on this sacred island, and no oath was so binding as that sworn inthe name of Him that lies buried in Philæ. The statues of the goddessin the temple were all meant for portraits of the queen Arsinoë. Thepriests who dwelt in the cells within the courtyards of the temples ofwhich we see the remains in this temple at Philæ, were there confinedfor life to the service of the altar by the double force of religion andthe stone walls. They showed their zeal for their gods by the amount ofwant which they were able to endure, and they thought that sitting uponthe ground in idleness, with the knees up to the chin, was one of thefirst of religious duties. 

[Illustration: 116. Jpg TEMPLE OF PHILAE]

The Museum of Alexandria held at this time the highest rank among theGreek schools, whether for poetry, mathematics, astronomy, or medicine, the four branches into which it was divided. Its library soon held twohundred thousand rolls of papyrus; which, however, could hardly havebeen equal to ten thousand printed volumes. Many of these were bought byPhiladelphus in Athens and Rhodes; and his copy of Aristotle's works wasbought of the philosopher Nileus, who had been a hearer of that greatman, and afterwards inherited his books through Theophrastus, to whomthey had been left by Aristotle. The books in the museum were of courseall Greek; the Greeks did not study foreign languages, and thought theEgyptian writings barbarous. 

At the head of this library had been Demetrius Phalereus, who, afterruling Athens with great praise, was banished from his country, and fledto Ptolemy Soter, under whom he consoled himself for the loss of powerin the enjoyment of literary leisure. He was at the same time the mostlearned and the most polished of orators. He brought learning from thecloset into the forum; and, by the soft turn which he gave to publicspeaking, made that sweet and lovely which had before been grave andsevere. Cicero thought him the great master in the art of speaking, andseems to have taken him as the model upon which he wished to form hisown style. He wrote upon philosophy, history, government, and poetry;but the only one of his works which has reached our time is his treatiseon elocution; and the careful thought which he there gives to thechoice of words and to the form of a sentence, and even the parts of asentence, shows the value then set upon style. Indeed he seems ratherto have charmed his hearers by the softness of his words than to haveroused them to noble deeds by the strength of his thoughts. He not onlyadvised Ptolemy Soter what books he should buy, but which he shouldread, and he chiefly recommended those on government and policy; andit is alike to the credit of the king and of the librarian, that heput before him books which, from their praise of freedom and hatred oftyrants, few persons would even speak of in the presence of a king. But Demetrius had also been consulted by Soter about the choice of asuccessor, and had given his opinion that the crown ought to be leftto his eldest son, and that wars would arise between his children ifit were not so left; hence we can hardly wonder that, on the death ofSoter, Demetrius should have lost his place at the head of the museum, and been ordered to leave Alexandria. He died, as courtiers say, indisgrace; and he was buried near Diospolis in the Busirite nome of theDelta. According to one account he was put to death by the bite ofan asp, in obedience to the new king's orders, but this story is notgenerally credited; although this was not an uncommon way of inflictingdeath. 

[Illustration: 118. Jpg ANUBIS, GOD OF THE LOWER WORLD]

Soon after this we find Zenodotus of Ephesus filling the office oflibrarian to the museum. He was a poet, who, with others, had beenemployed by Soter in the education of his children. He is also known asthe first of those Alexandrian critics who turned their thoughts towardsmending the text of Homer, and to whom we are indebted for the tolerablycorrect state of the great poet's works, which had become faulty throughthe carelessness of the copiers. Zenodotus was soon followed by othercritics in this task of editing Homer. But their labours were notapproved of by all; and when Aratus asked Timon which he thought thebest edition of the poet, the philosopher shrewdly answered, "That whichhas 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 owninvaluable work on geometry. This is one of the few of the scientificwritings of the ancients that are still in use. The discoveries of theman of science are made use of by his successor, and the discovererperhaps loses part of his reward when his writings are passed by, afterthey have served us as a stepping-stone to mount by. If he wishes hisworks to live with those of the poet and orator, he must, like them, cultivate those beauties of style which are fitted to his matter. Eucliddid so; and his Elements have been for more than two thousand years themodel for all writers on geometry. He begins at the beginning, andleads the learner, step by step, from the simplest propositions, calledaxioms, which rest upon metaphysical rather than mathematical proof, tohigh geometrical truths. The mind is indeed sometimes wearied by beingmade to stop at every single step in the path, and wishes, with PtolemySoter, for a shorter road; but, upon the whole, Euclid's clearness hasnever been equalled. 

Ctesibus wrote on the theory of hydrostatics, and was the inventor ofseveral water-engines; an application of mathematics which was muchcalled for by the artificial irrigation of Egypt. He also invented thatuseful instrument, the water-clock, to tell the time after sunset. 

[Illustration: 120. Jpg AT THE HEAD OF THE RED SEA]

Among the best known of the men of letters who came to Alexandria toenjoy the patronage of Philadelphus was Theocritus. Many of his poemsare lost; but his pastoral poems, though too rough for the polishedtaste of Quintilian, and perhaps more like nature than we wish any worksof imitative art to be, have always been looked upon as the model ofthat kind of poetry. If his shepherds do not speak the language ofcourtiers, they have at least a rustic propriety which makes us admirethe manners and thoughts of the peasant. He repaid the bounty of theking 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 therank of the demigods; and, writing with the pyramids and the Memnoniumbefore his eyes, assured him that generosity towards the poets woulddo more to make his name live for ever than any building that he couldraise. 

In a back street of Alexandria, in the part of the city named Eleusinis, near the temple of Ceres and Proserpine, lived the poet Callimachus, earning his livelihood by teaching. But the writer of the Hymns couldnot long dwell so near the court of Philadelphus unknown and unhonoured. He was made professor of poetry in the museum, and even now repaysthe king and patron for what he then received. He was a man of greatindustry, and wrote in prose and in all kinds of verse; but of theseonly a few hymns and epigrams have come down to our time. Egypt seems tohave been the birthplace of the mournful elegy, and Callimachus was thechief of the elegiac poets. He was born at Cyrene; and though, from thelanguage in which he wrote, his thoughts are mostly Greek, yet he didnot forget the place of his birth. He calls upon Apollo by the name ofCarneus, because, after Sparta and Thera, Cyrene was his chosen seat. He paints Latona, weary and in pain in the island of Delos, as leaningagainst a palm-tree, by the side of the river Inopus, which, sinkinginto the ground, was to rise again in Egypt, near the cataracts ofSyênê; and, prettily pointing to Philadelphus, he makes Apollo, yetunborn, 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 begoverned by a Macedonian. 

[Illustration: 123. Jpg THE CARARACT ON THE ASWAN]

The poet Philastas, who had been the first tutor of Philadelphus, wasin elegy second only to Callimachus; but Quintilian (while advising usabout books, to read much but not many) does not rank him among thefew first-rate poets by whom the student should form his taste; and hisworks are now lost. He was small and thin in person, and it was jokinglysaid of him that he wore leaden soles to his shoes lest he should beblown away by the wind. But in losing his poetry, we have perhaps lostthe point of the joke. While these three, Theocritus, Callimachus, andPhilastas, were writing in Alexandria, the museum was certainly thechief seat of the muses. Athens itself could boast of no such poetbut Menander, with whom Attic literature ended; and him Philadelphusearnestly invited to his court. He sent a ship to Greece on purpose tofetch him; but neither this honour nor the promised salary could makehim quit his mother country and the schools of Athens; and, in the timeof Pausanias, his tomb was still visited by the scholar on the road tothe Pmeus, and his statue was still seen in the theatre. 

Strato, the pupil of Theophrastus, though chiefly known for his writingson physics, was also a writer on many branches of knowledge. He wasone of the men of learning who had taken part in the education ofPhil-adelphus; and the king showed his gratitude to his teacher bymaking him a present of eighty talents, or sixty thousand dollars. Hewas for eighteen years at the head of one of the Alexandrian schools. 

Timocharis, the astronomer, made some of his observations at Alexandriain the last reign, and continued them through half of this reign. Hebegan a catalogue of the fixed stars, with their latitudes and theirlongitudes measured from the equinoctial point; by the help of whichHipparchus, one hundred and fifty years afterwards, made the greatdiscovery that the equinoctial point had moved. He has left anobservation of the place of Venus, on the seventeenth day of the monthof Mesore, in the thirteenth year of this reign, which by the moderntables of the planets is known to have been on the eighth dayof October, B. C. 272; from which we learn that the first year ofPhiladelphus ended in October, B. C. 284, and the first year of PtolemySoter ended in October, B. C. 322; thus fixing the chronology ofthese reigns with a certainty which leaves nothing to be wished for. Aris-tillus also made some observations of the same kind at Alexandria. Few of them have been handed down to us, but they were made use of byHipparchus. 

Aristarchus, the astronomer of Samos, most likely came to Alexandriain the last reign, as some of his observations were made in the verybeginning of the reign of Philadelphus. He is the first astronomer whois known to have taken the true view of the solar system. He said thatthe sun was the centre round which the earth moved in a circle; and, asif he had foreseen that even in after ages we should hardly be able tomeasure the distance of the fixed stars, he said that the earth's yearlypath bore no greater proportion to the hollow globe of the heavens inwhich the stars were set, than the point without size in the centre of acircle does to its circumference. But the work in which he proved thesegreat truths, or perhaps threw out these happy guesses, is lost; and theastronomers who followed him clung to the old belief that the earth wasthe centre round which the sun moved. The only writings of Aristarchuswhich now remain are his short work on the distances and magnitude ofthe sun and moon, in which the error in his results arises from the wantof good observations, rather than from any mistake in his mathematicalprinciples. 

Aratus, who was born in Cilicia, is sometimes counted among thepléiades, or seven stars of Alexandria. His _Phenomena_ is a shortastronomical poem, without life or feeling, which scarcely aims atany of the grace or flow of poetry. It describes the planets and theconstellations one by one, and tells us what stars are seen in the head, feet, and other parts of each figure; and then the seasons, and thestars seen at night at each time of the year. When maps were littleknown, it must have been of great use, to learners; and its being inverse made it the more easy to remember. The value which theancients set upon this poem is curiously shown by the number of Latintranslations which were made from it. Cicero in his early youth, beforehe was known as an orator or philosopher, perhaps before he himself knewin which path of letters he was soon to take the lead, translated thispoem. The next translation is by Germanicus Cæsar, whose early deathand many good qualities have thrown such a bright light upon his name. He shone as a general, as an orator, and as an author; but his Greekcomedies, his Latin orations, and his poem on Augustus are lost, whilehis translation of Aratus is all that is left to prove that this highname in literature was not given to him for his political virtues alone. Lastly Avienus, a writer in the reign of Diocletian, or perhapsof Theodosius, has left a rugged, unpolished translation of thismuch-valued poem. Aratus, the poet of the heavens, will be read, saidOvid, as long as the sun and moon shall shine. 

Sosibius was one of the rhetoricians of the museum who lived upon thebounty of Philadelphus. The king, wishing to laugh at his habit ofverbal criticism, once told his treasurer to refuse his salary, and saythat it had been already paid. Sosibius complained to the king, and thebook of receipts was sent for, in which Philadelphus found the names ofSoter, Sosigines, Bion, and Apollonius, and showing to the critic onesyllable of his name in each of those words, said that putting themtogether, they must be taken as the receipt for his salary. Otherauthors wrote on lighter matters. Apollodorus Gelous, the physician, addressed to Philadelphus a volume of advice as to which Greek wineswere best fitted for his royal palate. The Italian and Sicilian werethen unknown in Egypt, and those of the Thebaid were wholly beneathhis notice, while the vine had as yet hardly been planted in theneighbourhood of Alexandria. He particularly praised the Naspercenitewine from the southern banks of the Black Sea, the Oretic from theisland of Euboea; the OEneatic from Locris; the Leuca-dian from theisland of Leucas; and the Ambraciote from the kingdom of Epirus. 

[Illustration: 128. Jpg AN ATHLETE DISPORTING ON A CROCODILE]

But above all these he placed the Peparethian wine from the island ofPeparethus, a wine which of course did not please the many, as thisexperienced taster acknowledges that nobody is likely to have a truerelish for it till after six years' acquaintance. Such were the Greekauthors who basked in the sunshine of royal favour at Alexandria; whocould have told us, if they had thought it worth their while, all thatwe now wish to know of the trade, religion, language, and early historyof Egypt. But they thought that the barbarians were not worth thenotice of men who called themselves Macedonians. Philadelphus, however, thought otherwise; and by his command Manetho, an Egyptian, wrote inGreek a history of Egypt, copied from the hieroglyphical writing onthe temples, and he dedicated it to the king. We know it only in thequotations of Josephus and Julius Africanus, and what we have is littlemore than a list of kings' names. He was a priest of Heliopolis, thegreat seat of Egyptian learning. The general correctness of Manetho'shistory, which runs back for nearly two thousand years, is shown by ourfinding the kings' names agree with many Egyptian inscriptions. Manethoowes his reputation to the merit of being the first who distinguishedhimself as a writer and critic upon religion and philosophy, as wellas chronology and history, using the Greek language, but drawing hismaterials from native sources, especially the Sacred Books. That he was"skilled in Greek letters": we learn from Josephus, who also declaresthat he contradicted many of Herodotus' erroneous statements. Manethowas better suited for the task of writing a history of Egypt than any ofhis contemporaries. 

As an Egyptian he could search out and make use of all the nativeEgyptian sources, and, thanks to his knowledge of Greek, he couldpresent them in a form intelligible to the Hellenes. It must beconfessed that he has occasionally fallen into the error of allowingGreek thoughts and traditions to slip into his work. The great worthin Manetho's work lies in the fact that he relates the history of Egyptbased on monumental sources and charters preserved in the temples. Moreover, he treats quite impartially the times of the foreign rulers, which the form of the Egyptian history employed by Diodorus does notmention; but above all, Manetho gives us a list of Egyptian rulersarranged according to a regular system. But however important inthis respect Manetho's work may be, it must not be forgotten whatdifficulties he had to contend with in the writing of it, and whatunreliable sources lay in these difficulties. He could not use thesources in the form in which he found them. He was obliged to re-writethem, and he added to them synchronisms and relations to other peopleswhich necessarily exposed him to the dangers of colouring his reportcorrespondingly. 

But a much greater difficulty consisted in the fact that thechronological reports of the earlier history were all arranged accordingto the reigning years of the rulers, so that Manetho was obliged toconstruct an era for his work. Boeckh was the first to discoverwith certainty the existence and form of this era. According to hisresearches, the whole work of Manetho is based upon Sothicycles of 1460Julianic years. The Egyptian year was movable, and did not need theextra day every few years, but the consequence was that every yearremained a quarter of a day behind the real year. 

[Illustration: 131. Jpg MODERN SPHINX-LIKE FACE]

When 1460-1 years had elapsed this chronological error had mounted toa whole year, and so the movable year and the fixed year fell togetheragain. It is this Sothic period which Manetho has employed in hisaccount of Egyptian history. Besides his history, Manetho has left us awork on astrology, called _Apotelesmatica_, or Events, a work of whichthere seems no reason to doubt the genuineness. 

It is a poem in hexameter verse, in good Greek, addressed to KingPtolemy, in which he calls, not only upon Apollo and the Muse, but, likea true Egyptian, upon Hermes, from whose darkly worded writings he hadgained his knowledge. He says that the king's greatness might have beenforetold from the places of Mars and the Sun at the time of his birth, and that his marriage with his sister Arsinoë arose from the places ofVenus and Saturn at the same time. But while we smile at this being saidas the result of astronomical calculations, we must remember that forcenturies afterwards, almost in our own time, the science of judicialastrology was made a branch of astronomy, and that the fault lay ratherin 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 andreaders of manuscripts have carefully saved for us this nearly worthlesspoem on astrology. 

Petosiris was another writer on astrology and astronomy who was highlypraised by his friend Manetho; and his calculations on the distancesof the sun and planets are quoted by Pliny. His works are lost; but hisname calls for our notice, as he must have been a native Egyptian, anda priest. Like Manetho, he also wrote on the calculation of nativities;and the later Greek astrologers, when what they had foretold did notcome to pass, were wont to lay the blame on Petosiris. The priests werebelieved to possess these and other supernatural powers; and to helptheir claims to be believed many of them practised ventriloquism. 

Timosthenes, the admiral under Philadelphus, must not be forgotten inthis list of authors; for though his verses to Apollo were little worthnotice, his voyages of discovery, and his work in ten books on harbours, placed him in the first rank among geographers. Colotes, a pupil andfollower of Epicurus, dedicated to Philadelphus a work of which the verytitle proves the nature of his philosophy, and how soon the rules of hismaster had fitted themselves to the habits of the sensualist. Itstitle was "That it is impossible even to support life according to thephilosophical rules of any but the Epicureans. " It was a good deal readand talked about; and three hundred years afterwards Plutarch thought itnot 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 ofthe many, and indeed when the number of those who could read must havebeen small, other means were of course taken to meet the thirst afterknowledge; and the chief of these were the public readings in thetheatre. This was not overlooked by Phila-delphus, who employedHegesias to read Herodotus, and Hermophantus to read Homer, the earliesthistorian and the earliest poet, the two authors who had taken deepestroot in the minds of the Greeks. These public readings, which werecommon throughout Greece and its colonies, had not a little effect onthe authors. They then wrote for the ear rather than the eye, to belistened to rather than to be read, which was one among the causes ofGreek elegance and simplicity of style. 

Among others who were brought to Alexandria by the fame of Philadelphus'bounty was Zoilus, the grammarian, whose ill-natured criticism onHomer's poems had earned for him the name of Homeromastix, or thescourge of Homer. He read his criticisms to Philadelphus, who was somuch displeased with his carping and unfair 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 beautiesof the Iliad and Odyssey in their public readings, surely one person whowas 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 drinking than of philosophy, we neednot wonder at our knowing nothing of his tragedies, or at his notbeing made a professor by Philadelphus. But he took his revenge on thebetter-fed philosophers of the court, in a poem in which he calls themliterary fighting-cocks, who were being fattened by the king, and werealways quarrelling in the coops of the museum. 

The Alexandrian men of science and letters maintained themselves, somefew by fees received from their pupils, others as professors holdingsalaries in the museum, and others by civil employments under thegovernment. There was little to encourage in them the feelings of noblepride or independence. The first rank in Alexandria was held by thecivil and military servants of the crown, who enjoyed the lucrativeemployments of receiving the taxes, hearing the lawsuits by appeal, andrepressing rebellions. With these men the philosophers mixed, not asequals, but partaking of their wealth and luxuries, and paying theirscore with wit and conversation. There were no landholders in the city, as the soil of the country was owned by Egyptians; and the wealthytrading classes, of all nations and languages, could bestow littlepatronage on Greek learning, and therefore little independence on itsprofessors. 

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 ofthe pictures which Aratus, its general, was in the habit of sendingto him, as for political reasons. Aratus, the chief of Sicyon, was anacknowledged judge of paintings, and Sicyon was then the first schoolof Greece. The pieces which he sent to Philadelphus were mostly those ofPamphilus, the master, and of Melanthius, the fellow-pupil, of Apelles. Pamphilus was famed for his perspective; and he is said to have receivedfrom every pupil the large sum of ten talents, or seven thousand fivehundred dollars, a year. His best known pieces were, Ulysses in hisship, and the victory of the Athenians near the town of Phlius. It wasthrough Pamphilus that, at first in Sicyon, and afterwards throughoutall Greece, drawing was taught to boys as part of a liberal education. Neacles also painted for Aratus; and we might almost suppose that it wasas a gift to the King of Egypt that he painted his Sea-fight between theEgyptians and the Persians, in which the painter shows us that it wasfought within the mouth of the Nile by making a crocodile bite at an assdrinking on the shore. 

Helena, the daughter of Timon, was a painter of some note at this time, at Alexandria; but the only piece of hers known to us by name is theBattle of Issus, which three hundred years afterwards was hung up byVespasian in the Temple of Peace at Rome. We must wonder at a womanchoosing to paint the horrors and pains of a battle-piece; but, as weare not told what point of time was chosen, we may hope that it wasafter the battle, when Alexander, in his tent, raised up from theirknees the wife and lovely daughter of Darius, who had been found amongthe prisoners. As for the Egyptians, they showed no taste in painting. 

[Illustration: 137. Jpg METHOD OF EGYPTIAN DRAFTSMANSHIP]

Their method of drawing the human figure mathematically by means ofsquares, which was not unsuitable in working a statue sixty feet high, checked all flights of genius; and it afterwards destroyed Greek art, when the Greek painters were idle enough to use it. We hear but littleof the statues and sculptures made for Philadelphus; but we cannot helpremarking that, while the public places of Athens were filled withthe statues of the great and good men who had deserved well of theircountry, the statues which were most common in Alexandria were those ofCline, a favourite damsel, who filled the office of cup-bearer to theking of Egypt. 

The favour shown to the Jews by Ptolemy Soter was not withdrawn by hisson. He even bought from his own soldiers and freed from slavery onehundred and twenty thousand men of that nation, who were scattered overEgypt. He paid for each, out of the royal treasury, one hundred andtwenty drachmas, or about fifteen dollars, to those of his subjects whoheld them either by right of war or by purchase. In fixing the amountof the ransom, the king would seem to have been guided by his Jewishadvisers, as this is exactly equal to thirty shekels, the sum fixedby the Jewish law as the price of a slave. The Jews who lived in LowerEgypt, in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, looked upon thatcountry as their home. They had already a Greek translation of eitherthe whole or some part of their sacred writings, which had been made forthose whose families had been for so many generations in Egypt that theycould not read the language of their forefathers. But they now hoped, by means of the king's friendship and the weight which his wishes mustcarry with them, to have a Greek translation of the Bible which shouldbear the stamp of official authority. 

Accordingly, to please them, Philadelphus sent Aris-taaus, a man whosewisdom had gained his friendship, and Andrseus, a captain of the guard, both of them Greek Jews, with costly gifts to Eleazer, the high priestof Jerusalem; and asked him to employ learned and fit men to make aGreek translation of the Bible for the library at Alexandria. Eleazer, so runs the tradition, named seventy elders to undertake the task, whoheld their first sitting on the business at the king's dinner-table;when Menedemus, the Socratic philosopher, the pupil of Plato, was alsopresent, who had been sent to Philadelphus as ambassador from Eubcea. The translators then divided the work among themselves; and when eachhad finished his task it wras laid before a meeting of the seventy, andthen published by authority. Thus was said to have been made theGreek translation of the Old Testament, which, from the number of thetranslators, we now call the Septuagint; but a doubt is thrown uponthe whole story by the fables which have been mingled with it to giveauthority to the translation. By this translation the Bible became knownfor the first time to the Greek philosophers. We do not indeed hear thatthey immediately read it or noticed it, we do not find it quoted tillafter the spread of Christianity; but it had a silent effect ontheir opinions, which we trace in the new school of Platonists soonafterwards rising in Alexandria. 

When Aratus of Sicyon first laid a plot to free his country from itstyrant, who reigned by the help of the King of Macedonia, he sent toPhiladelphus to beg for money. He naturally looked to the King of Egyptfor help when entering upon a struggle against their common rival; butthe king seems to have thought the plans of this young man too wild tobe countenanced. Aratus, however, soon raised Sicyon to a level with thefirst states of Greece, and made himself leader of the Achaian league, under which band and name the Greeks were then struggling for freedomagainst Macedonia; and when, by his courage and success, he had shownhimself worthy of the proud name which was afterwards given him, of the"Last of the Greeks, " Philadelphus, like other patrons, gave himthe help which he less needed. Aratus, as we have seen, bought hisfriendship with pictures, the gifts of all others the most welcome;and, when he went to Egypt, Philadelphus gave him one hundred and fiftytalents, or forty-five thousand dollars, and joined the Achaian league, on the agreement that in carrying on the war by sea and land they shouldobey the orders from Alexandria. 

The friendship of Philadelphus, indeed, was courted by all theneighbouring states; the little island of Delos set up its statue tohim; 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 oneof their public lecture-rooms by his name; and two hundred yearsafterwards, when Cicero and his friend Atticus were learning wisdom andeloquence from the lips of Antiochus in Athens, it was in the gymnasiumof Ptolemy. 

Philadelphus, when young, had married Arsinoë, the daughter ofLysimachus of Thrace, by whom he had three children, Ptolemy, whosucceeded him, Lysimachus, and Berenicê; but, having found that hiswife was intriguing with Amyntas, and with his physician Chrysippusof Rhodes, he put these two to death and banished the Queen Arsinoë toKoptos in the Thebaid. 

He then took Arsinoë, his own sister, as the partner of his throne. Shehad married first the old Lysimachus, King of Thrace, and then Ceraunus, her half-brother, when he was King of Macedonia. As they were notchildren of the same mother, this second marriage was neither illegalnor improper in Macedonia; but her third marriage with Philadelphuscould only be justified by the laws of Egypt, their adopted country. They were both past the middle age, and whether Philadelphus lookedupon her as his wife or not, at any rate they had no children. Herown children by Lysimachus had been put to death by Ceraunus, and shereadily adopted those of her brother with all the kindness of a mother. She was a woman of an enlarged mind; her husband and her stepchildrenalike valued her; and Eratosthenes showed his opinion of her learningand strong sense by giving the name of Arsinoë to one of his works, which perhaps a modern writer would have named Table-talk. 

[Illustration: 141. Jpg Coin with the heads of Soter and Philadelphus andArsinoë]

This seeming marriage, however, between brother and sister did notescape blame with the Greeks of Alexandria. The poet Sotades, whoseverses were as licentious as his life, wrote some coarse lines againstthe queen, for which he was forced to fly from Egypt, and, beingovertaken at sea, he was wrapped up in lead and thrown overboard. 

In the Egyptian inscriptions Ptolemy and Arsinoë are always called thebrother-gods; on the coins they are called Adelphi, the brothers; andafterwards the king took the name of Philadelphus, or sister-loving, by which he is now usually known. In the first half of his reignPhiladelphus dated his coins from the year that his father came to thethrone; and it was not till the nineteenth year of his reign, soon afterthe death of his mother, that he made an era of his own, and dated hiscoins by the year of his own reign. The wealth of the country is wellshown by the great size of those most in use, which were, in gold thetetra-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 goldlarger than the single stater. In Alexandrian accounts also the unitof money was the silver didrachm, and thus double that in use among themerchants of Greece. 

[Illustration: 142. Jpg COIN WITH THE HEADS OF SOTER, PHILADELPHUS ANDBERENICE]

Among the coins is one with the heads of Soter and Philadelphus on theone side, and the head of Berenicê, the wife of the one and mother ofthe other, on the other side. This we may suppose to have been struckduring the first two years of his reign, in the lifetime of his father. Another bears on one side the heads of Ptolemy Soter and Berenicê, withthe title of "the gods, " and on the other side the heads of Philadelphusand his wife Arsinoë, with the title of "the brothers. " This was struckafter the death of his parents. A third was struck by the king in honourof his queen and sister. On the one side is the head of the queen, andon the other is the name of "Arsinoë, the brother-loving, " with thecornucopia, or horn of Amalthea, an emblem borrowed by the queens ofEgypt from the goddess Amalthea, the wife of the Libyan Anion. This wasstruck after his second marriage. 

On the death of Arsinoë, Philadelphus built a tomb for her inAlexandria, called the Arsinoëum, and set up in it an obelisk eightycubits high, which had been made by King Nectanebo, but had been leftplain, without carving. 

[Illustration: 143. Jpg COIN OF ARSINOË, SISTER OF PTOLEMY II. ]

Satyrus, the architect, had the charge of moving it. He dug a canal toit as it lay upon the ground, and moved two heavily laden barges underit. The burdens were then taken out of the barges, and as they floatedhigher they raised the obelisk off the ground. He then found it a taskas great or greater to set it up in its place; and this Greek engineermust surely have looked back with wonder on the labour and knowledge ofmechanics which must have been used in setting up the obelisks, colossalstatues, and pyramids, which he saw scattered over the country. Thisobelisk now ornaments the cathedral of the Popes on the Vatican hill atRome. Satyrus wrote a treatise on precious stones, and he also carvedon them with great skill; but his works are known only in the followinglines, which were written by Diodorus on his portrait of Arsinoë cut incrystal:

 E'en Zeuxis had been proud to trace The lines within this pebble seen; Satyrus here hath carved the face Of fair Arsinoë, 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 ofPhiladelphus and his first wife, Arsinoe, and the other with the headsof the same king and his second wife, Arsinoë. It is not impossible thatone or both of them may be the work of Satyrus. 

Philadelphus is also said to have listened to the whimsical proposalof Dinochares, the architect, to build a room of loadstone in Arsinoë'stomb, so that an iron statue of the queen should hang in the air betweenthe floor and the roof. But the death of the king and of the architecttook place before this was tried. He set up there, however, her statuesix feet high, carved out of a most remarkable block of topaz, which hadbeen presented to his mother by Philemon, the prefect of the Troglodyticcoast in the last reign. 

Philadelphus lived in peace with Ergamenes, King of Meroë or UpperEthiopia, who, while seeking for a knowledge of philosophy and the artsof life from his Greek neighbours, seems also to have gained a loveof despotism, and a dislike of that control with which the priests ofEthiopia and Egypt had always limited the power of their kings. The Kingof Meroë had hitherto reigned like Amenôthes or Thutmosis of old, asthe head of the priesthood, supported and controlled by the priestlyaristocracy by which he was surrounded. But he longed for the absolutepower of Philadelphus. Accordingly he surrounded the golden temple witha chosen body of troops, and put the whole of the priests to death; andfrom that time he governed Ethiopia as an autocrat. But, with the lossof their liberties, the Ethiopians lost the wish to guard the throne; bygrasping 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 neighbour, Antiochus Theos, seem not to have been carried on very actively, though they did notwholly cease till Philadelphus offered as a bribe his daughter Berenicê, with a large sum of money under the name of a dower. Antiochus wasalready married to Laodice, whom he loved dearly, and by whom he had twochildren, Seleucus and Antiochus; but political ambition had deadenedthe feelings of his heart, and he agreed to declare this first marriagevoid and his two sons illegitimate, and that his children, if any shouldbe born to him by Berenicê, should inherit the throne of Babylon and theEast. Philadelphus, with an equal want of feeling, and disregarding theconsequences of such a marriage, led his daughter to Pelusium on herjourney to her betrothed husband, and sent with her so large a sum ofgold and silver that he was nicknamed the "dower-giver. "

The peace between the two countries lasted as long as Philadelphuslived, and was strengthened by kindnesses which each did to the other. Ptolemy, when in Syria, was much struck by the beauty of a statue ofDiana, and begged it of Antiochus as an ornament for Alexandria. But assoon as the statue reached Egypt, Arsinoë fell dangerously ill, and shedreamed that the goddess came by night, and told her that the illnesswas sent to her for the wrong done to the statue by her husband; andaccordingly it was sent back with many gifts to the temple from which ithad been brought. 

While Berenicê and her husband lived at Antioch, Philadelphus kindlysent there from time to time water from the sacred Nile for her use, asthe Egyptians believed that none other was so wholesome. Antiochus, when ill, sent to Alexandria for a physician; and Cleombrotus of Cosaccordingly went, by command of Ptolemy, to Syria. He was successfulin curing the king, and on his return he received from Philadelphus apresent of one hundred talents, or seventy-five thousand dollars, as afee 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 alsosurpassed them in his unmeasured luxury and love of pleasure. He hadmany mistresses, Egyptian as well as Greek, and the names of some ofthem have been handed down to us. He often boasted that he had found outthe 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, andindeed to wish that he could change places with the beggar whom he sawfrom his palace windows, eating the garbage on the banks of the Nilewith an appetite which he had long wanted. It was during illness thathe found most time for reading, and his mind most open to the truths ofphilosophy; and he chiefly wooed the Muses when ill health left him atleisure from his other courtships. He had a fleet of eight hundred statebarges with gilt prows and poops and scarlet awnings upon the decks, which were used in the royal processions and religious shows, and whichusually lay in dock at Schedia, on the Canopic River, five and twentymiles from Alexandria. He was no doubt in part withheld from war by thisluxurious love of ease; but his reign taught the world the new lesson, that an ambitious monarch may gratify his wish for praise and gain theadmiration of surrounding nations, as much by cultivating the blessedarts of peace as by plunging his people into the miseries of war. 

He reigned over Egypt, with the neighbouring parts of Arabia; also overLibya, Phoenicia, Cole-Syria, part of Ethiopia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, Lycia, Caria, Cyprus, and the isles of the Cyclades. The island ofRhodes and many of the cities of Greece were bound to him by the closestties of friendship, for past help and for the hope of future. Thewealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon did homage to him, as before to hisfather, by putting his crowned head upon their coins. The forces ofEgypt reached the very large number of two hundred thousand foot andtwenty thousand horse, two thousand chariots, four hundred Ethiopianelephants, fifteen hundred ships of war and one thousand transports. Ofthis large force, it is not likely that even one-fourth should have beenGreeks; the rest must have been Egyptians and Syrians, with some Gauls. The body of chariots, though still forming part of the force furnishedfor military service by the Theban tenants of the crown, was of nouse against modern science; and the other Egyptian troops, though nowchiefly armed and disciplined like Greeks, were very much below theMacedonian phalanx in real strength. The galleys also, though no doubtunder the guidance and skill of Greeks and Phoenicians, were in partmanned by Egyptians, whose inland habits wholly unfitted them for thesea, and whose religious prejudices made them feel the conscription forthe navy as a heavy grievance. 

These large forces were maintained by a yearly income equally large, offourteen thousand eight hundred talents, or twelve million two hundredand fifty thousand dollars, beside the tax on grain, which was takenin kind, of a million and a half of artabas, or about five millions ofbushels. To this we may add a mass of gold, silver, and other valuablestores in the treasury, which were boastfully reckoned at the unheard-ofsum of seven hundred and forty thousand talents, or above five hundredmillion dollars. 

[Illustration: 149. Jpg A TYPICAL NILE PILOT]

The trade down the Nile was larger than it had ever been before; thecoasting trade on the Mediterranean was new; the people were rich andhappy; justice was administered to the Egyptians according to their ownlaws, and to the Greeks of Alexandria according to the Macedonian laws:the navy commanded the whole of the eastern half of the Mediterranean;the schools and library had risen to a great height upon the wise plansof Ptolemy Soter; in every point of view Alexandria was the chief cityin the world. Athens had no poets or other writers during this centuryequal in merit to those who ennobled the museum. Philadelphus, byjoining to the greatness and good government of his father the costlysplendour and pomp of an eastern monarch, so drew the eyes of after agesupon his reign that his name passed into a proverb: if any work ofart was remarkable for its good taste or costliness, it was calledPhiladelphian; even history and chronology were set at nought, and wesometimes find poets of a century later counted among the Pleiades ofAlexandria in the reign of Philadelphus. It is true that many of theseadvantages were forced in the hotbed of royal patronage; that the navywas built in the harbours of Phoenicia and Asia Minor; and that the menof letters who then drew upon themselves the eyes of the world wereonly Greek settlers, whose writings could have done little to raisethe character of the native Kopts. But the Ptolemies, in raising thisbuilding of their own, were not at the same time crushing another. Theirsplendid monarchy had not been built on the ruins of freedom; and evenif the Greek settlers in the Delta had formed themselves into a freestate, we can hardly believe that the Egyptians would have been so welltreated as they were by this military despotism. From the templeswhich were built or enlarged in Upper Egypt, and from the beauty of thehieroglyphical inscriptions, we find that even the native arts weremore flourishing than they had ever been since the fall of the kings ofThebes; and we may almost look upon the Greek conquest as a blessing toUpper Egypt. 

Philadelphus, though weak in body, was well suited by hiskeen-sightedness and intelligence for the tasks which the state ofaffairs at that time demanded from an Egyptian king. He was a diplomatrather than a warrior, and that was exactly what Egypt needed. 

A curious anecdote about Ptolemy Philadelphus is related by Niebuhr. Hehad reached the zenith of his glory, when suddenly he was attacked bya species of insanity, consisting of an indescribable fear of death. Chemical artifices were practised in Egypt from the earliest times; andhence Ptolemy took every imaginable 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 theseacoast, and seriously meditated upon the subject of his longing; itmust have been in winter-time, when the sand, exposed to the rays of thesun, becomes very warm. He saw some poor boys burying themselves in thewarm sand and screaming with delight, and the aged king began bitterlyto cry, seeing the ragged urchins enjoying their life without anyapprehension of losing it; for he felt that with all his riches he couldnot purchase that happiness, and that his end was very near at hand. Hedied in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, and perhaps the sixty-firstof his age. He left the kingdom as powerful and more wealthy than whenit came to him from his father; and he had the happiness of having a sonwho would carry on, even for the third generation, the wise plans of thefirst Ptolemy. 

[Illustration: 153. Jpg PAGE IMAGE]

CHAPTER IV--PTOLEMY EUERGETES, PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR, AND PTOLEMYEPIPHANES. 

_The struggle for Syria--Decline of the dynasty--Advent of Romancontrol. _

Ptolemy, the eldest son of Philadelphus, succeeded his father onthe throne of Egypt, and after a short time was accorded the name ofEuergetes. The new reign was clouded by dark occurrences, which againinvolved Egypt and Syria in war. It has been already related that whenpeace was concluded between Antiochus and Philadelphus, the latter gaveto the former his daughter Berenicê in marriage, stipulating that theoffspring of that union should succeed to the Syrian throne, thoughAntiochus had, by his wife Laodice, a son, already arrived at the age ofmanhood. The repudiated queen murdered her husband, and placed Seleucuson the vacant throne; who, in order to remove all competition on thepart of Berenicê and her child, made no scruple to deprive them bothof life. Euergetes could not behold such proceedings unmoved. Advancinginto Syria at the head of a powerful army, he took possession of thegreater part of the country, which seems not to have been defended, the majority of the cities opening their gates at his approach. Theimportant town of Seleucia Pieria, the seaport of the capital, fell intohis hands, in the neighbourhood of which he was still further gratifiedwith the apprehension of the cruel Laodice, at whose instigation hissister and nephew lost their lives. The punishment of this unprincipledwoman seems, however, to have completely satiated his resentment; for, instead of securing his conquests in Syria, and achieving the entirehumiliation of Seleucus, he led his army on a plundering expedition intothe remote provinces of Asia, whence, on the news of domestic troubles, he returned to the shores of Africa in triumph, laden with an immensebooty, comprising among other objects all the statues of the Egyptiandeities which had been carried off by Cambyses to Persia or Babylon. These he restored to their respective temples, an act by which he earnedthe greatest popularity among his native Egyptian subjects, who bestowedupon him, in consequence, the title of Euergetes (Benefactor), by whichhe is generally known. He brought back also from this expedition a vastnumber of other works of art, for the museums were a passion with thePtolemies. The Asiatics might, indeed, have got over these things, buthe levied, in addition, immense contributions from the Asiatics, and issaid to have raised over forty thousand talents. On his march homeward, he laid his gifts upon the altar in the Temple of Jerusalem, and therereturned thanks to Heaven for his victories. He had been taught to bowthe knee to the crowds of Greek and Egyptian gods; and, as Palestine waspart of his kingdom, it seemed quite natural to add the God of the Jewsto the list. 

Of the insurrection in Egypt, which obliged him to return, we know noparticulars, but Euergetes seems to have become convinced that Egypt wastoo small a basis for such an empire. "If he had wished to retain allhis conquests" relates the chronicler, "he would have been obliged tomake Antioch his residence, and this would weaken the ground of hisstrength. He, moreover, appears to have been well aware that theconquests had been made too quickly. " He accordingly divided them, retaining for himself Syria as far as Euphrates, and the coast districtsof Asia Minor and Thrace, so that he had a complete maritime empire. Theremaining territories he divided into two states: the country beyond theEuphrates was given, according to St. Jerome, to one Xantippus, whois otherwise unknown, and Western Asia was left to Antiochus Hierax. Itwould seem that after this he never visited those countries again. 

One of the notable incidents of the war against Syria was an offerof help to Egypt from the Romans. From the middle of the reign ofPhiladelphus till the fifth year of this reign, for twenty-two years, the Romans had been struggling with the Carthaginians for their verybeing, 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 withfriendly offers of help. But their ambassadors did not reach Alexandriabefore peace was made, and they were sent home with many thanks. Theevent serves to show the trend of the aspirations of this now importantnation, which was afterwards destined to engulf the kingdoms of Egyptand 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, withtheir wise policy, who had hitherto given no decided support to eitherempire, now stepped forward, setting to other maritime cities theexample of joining that hostile party. The confederates formed a fleet, with the assistance of which, and supported by a general insurrection ofthe Asiatics, who were exasperated against the Egyptians on account oftheir rapacity, Seleucus Callinicus rallied again. 

[Illustration: 157. Jpg AN ABYSSINIAN SLAVE]

He recovered the whole of upper Asia, and for a time he was united withhis brother, Antiochus Hierax. The insurrection in Egypt must havebeen of a very serious nature, and Ptolemy, being pressed on allsides, concluded a truce of ten years with Seleucus on basis of _utipossidetis_. Both parties seem to have retained the places which theypossessed at the time, so that all the disadvantage was on the side ofthe Seleucidæ, for the fortified town of Seleucia, for example, remainedin the hands of the Egyptians, whereby the capital was placed in adangerous position. A part of Cilicia, the whole of Caria, the Ioniancities, the Thracian Chersonesus, and several Macedonian towns likewisecontinued to belong to Egypt. Soon after his re-appearance in Egypt, Euergetes was solicited by Cleomenes, the King of Sparta, to grant theassistance of his arms in the struggle which that republic was thensupporting with Antigonus, the ruler of Macedon, and with the membersof the Achaian league. But the battle of Sellasia proved that the aidoffered was inadequate. Cleomenes fled to the banks of the Nile, wherehe found his august ally reposing under the successful banners of anumerous army, which he had just led home from the savage mountains ofEthiopia, whither his love of romantic conquest had conducted them. Heappears to have penetrated into the interior provinces of Abyssinia, and to have subdued the rude tribes which dwelt on the shores of theRed Sea, levying on the unfortunate natives the most oppressivecontributions in cattle, gold, perfumes, and other articles belongingto that valuable merchandise which the Ethiopians and Arabs had longcarried on with their Egyptian neighbours. At Adule, the principalseaport of Abyssinia, he collected his victorious troops, and made thema speech on the wonderful exploits which they had achieved under hisauspices, and on the numerous benefits which they had thereby securedto their native country. The throne on which he sat, composed of whitemarble and supported by a slab of porphyry, was consecrated to the godof war, whom he chose to claim for his father and patron, and that thedescendants of the vanquished Ethiopians might not be ignorant of theirobligations to Ptolemy Euergetes, King of Egypt, he gave orders that hisname and principal triumphs should be inscribed on the votive chair. Butnot content with his real conquests, which reached from the Hellespontto the Euphrates, he added, like Ramsesr that he had conqueredThrace, Persia, Media, and Bactria. He thus teaches us that monumentalinscriptions, though read with difficulty, do not always tell the truth. This was the most southerly spot to which the kings of Egypt ever sentan army. But they kept no hold on the country. Distance had placed itnot only beyond their power, but almost beyond their knowledge; andtwo hundred years afterwards, when the geographer Strabo was makinginquiries about that part of Arabia, as it was called, he was told ofthis monument as set up by the hero Sesostris, to whom it was usual togive the credit of so many wonderful works. These inscriptions, itis worthy of remark, are still preserved, and constitute the onlyhistorical account that has reached these times of the Ethiopian warfareof this Egyptian monarch. About seven hundred years after the reignof Euergetes, they were first published in the _Topography_ of CosmasIndicopleustes, a Grecian monk, by whom they were copied on the spot. The traveller Bruce, moreover, informs us that the stone containing thename of Ptolemy Euergetes serves as a footstool to the throne on whichthe kings of Abyssinia are crowned to this day. 

[Illustration: 160b. Jpg SIGNS, ARMS AND INSTRUMENTS FROM THE FIFTH TOMB]

Amid the ruins of Ascum, also, the ancient capital of that country, various fragments of marble have been found bearing the name and titleof the same Egyptian sovereign. This empty fame, however, is the onlyreturn that ever recompensed the toils of Euergetes among the fiercebarbarians 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 templeof Karnak, on the walls of which we see him handing an offering tohis father and mother, the brother-gods. In one place he is in a Greekdress, which is not common on the Ptolemaic buildings, as most of theGreek kings are carved upon the walls in the dress of the country. Theearly kings had often shown their piety to a temple by enlarging thesacred area and adding a new wall and gateway in front of the former;and this custom Euergetes followed at Karnak. As these grand stonesculptured gateways belonged to a wall of unbaked bricks which has longsince crumbled to pieces, they now stand apart like so many triumphalarches. He also added to the temple at Hibe in the Great Oasis, andbegan a small temple at Esne, or Latopolis, where he is drawn upon thewalls in the act of striking down the chiefs of the conquered nations, and is followed by a tame lion. 

[Illustration: 161. Jpg GATE AT KARNAK]

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 settledthere, the ancient religion was not yet driven out of the Delta; and hededicated it to the god in a Greek inscription on a plate of gold, inthe names of himself and Berenicê, whom he called his wife and sister. She is also called the king's sister in many of the hieroglyphicalinscriptions, as are many of the other queens of the Ptolemies who werenot so related to their husbands. This custom, though it took its risein the Egyptian mythology, must have been strengthened by the marriagesof Philadelphus and some of his successors with their sisters. In thehieroglyphical inscriptions he is usually called "beloved by Phtah, "the god of Memphis, an addition to his name which was used by most ofhis successors. 

During this century the Greek artists in Egypt, as indeed elsewhere, adopted in their style an affectation of antiquity, which, unless seenthrough, would make us think their statues older than they really are. They sometimes set a stiff beard upon a face without expression, orarranged the hair of the head in an old-fashioned manner, and, whilemaking 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 werehanging down in quiet. At other times, while they gave to the humanfigure all the truth to which their art had then reached, they yet gaveto the drapery these stiff zigzag forms. 

[Illustration: 163. Jpg RUINS OF SAIS]

No habit of mind would have been more improving to the Alexandriancharacter than a respect for antiquity; but this respect ought to beshown in a noble rivalry, in trying to surpass those who have gonebefore them, and not as in this manner by copying their faults. Hieroglyphics seem to have flourished in their more ancient style andforms under the generous patronage of the Ptolemies. In the time of theEgyptian kings of Lower Egypt, we find new grammatical endings to thenouns, and more letters used to spell each word than under the kings ofThebes; but, on comparing the hieroglyphics of the Ptolemies with theothers, we find that in these and some other points they are more likethe older writings, under the kings of Thebes, than the newer, under thekings of Saïs. 

But, while the Egyptians were flattered, and no doubt raised in moralworth, by their monarch's taking up the religious feelings of thecountry, and throwing aside some of the Greek habits of his father andgrandfather, Euergetes was sowing the seeds of a greater change than hecould himself have been aware of. It was by Greek arms and arts of warthat Egypt then held its place among nations, and we shall see inthe coming reigns that, while the court became more Asiatic andless European, the army and government did not retain their formercharacteristics. 

Since Coele-Syria and Judæa were by the first Ptolemy made a province ofEgypt, the Jews had lived in unbroken tranquillity, and with verylittle loss of freedom. The kings of Egypt had allowed them to governthemselves, to live under their own laws, and choose their own highpriest; but they required of them the payment to Alexandria of a yearlytribute. Part of this was the sacred poll-tax of half a shekel, orabout sixteen cents for every male above the age of twenty, which by theMosaic law they had previously paid for the service of the Temple. This is called in the Gospels the Didrachms; though the Alexandriantranslators of the Bible, altering the sum, either through mistake or onpurpose, have made it in the Greek Pentateuch only half a didrachm, orabout eight cents. This yearly tribute from the Temple the high priestof Jerusalem had been usually allowed to collect and farm; but in thelatter end of this reign, the high priest Onias, a weak and covetousold man, refused to send to Alexandria the twenty talents, or fifteenthousand dollars, at which it was then valued. When Euergetes sentAthenion as ambassador to claim it, and even threatened to send a bodyof troops to fetch it, still the tribute was not paid; notwithstandingthe fright of the Jews, the priest would not part with his money. Onthis, Joseph, the nephew of Onias, set out for Egypt, to try and turnaway the king's anger. He went to Memphis, and met Euergetes riding inhis chariot with the queen and Athenion, the ambassador. The king, whenhe knew him, begged him to get into the chariot and sit with him; andJoseph made himself so agreeable that he was lodged in the palaceat Memphis, and dined every day at the royal table. While he was atMemphis, the revenues of the provinces for the coming year were put upto auction; and the farmers bid eight thousand talents, or six milliondollars, for the taxes of Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Samaria. Josephthen bid double that sum, and, when he was asked what security he couldgive, he playfully said that he was sure that Euergetes and the queenwould willingly become bound for his honesty; and the king was so muchpleased with him that the office was at once given to him, and he heldit for twenty-two years. 

Among the men of letters who at this time taught in the Alexandrianschools was Aristophanes, the grammarian, who afterwards held the officeof head of the museum. At one of the public sittings at which the kingwas to hear the poems and other writings of the pupils read, and, bythe help of seven men of letters who sat with him as judges, was togive away honours and rewards to the best authors, one of the chairs wasempty, one of the judges happened not to be there. The king asked whoshould be called up to fill his place; and, after thinking over thematter, the six judges fixed upon Aristophanes, who had made himselfknown to them by being seen daily studying in the public library. Whenthe reading was over, the king, the public, and the six other judgeswere agreed upon which was the best piece of writing; but Aristophaneswas bold enough to think otherwise, and he was able, by means of hisgreat reading, to find the book in the library from which the pupil hadcopied the greater part of his work. The king was much struck withthis proof of his learning, and soon afterwards made him keeper ofthe library which he had already so well used. Aristophanes followedZenodotus in his critical efforts to mend the text of Homer's poems. Healso invented the several marks by which grammarians now distinguish thelength and tone of a syllable and the breathing of a vowel, that is, themarks for long and short, and the accents and aspirate. The last two, after his time, were always placed over Greek words, and are still usedin printed books. 

Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the inventor of astronomical geography, was atthis time the head of the mathematical school. He has the credit forbeing the first to calculate the circumference of the earth by meansof his Theory of Shadows. As a poet he wrote a description of theconstellations. He also wrote a history of Egypt, to correct the errorsof Manetho. What most strikes us with wonder and regret is, that ofthese two writers, Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote in Greek, Eratosthenes, a Greek who understood something of Egyptian, neither ofthem took the trouble to lay open to their readers the peculiarities ofthe hieroglyphics. Through all these reigns, the titles and praises ofthe Ptolemies were carved upon the temples in the sacred characters. These two histories were translated from the same inscriptions. We evennow read the names of the kings which they mention carved on the statuesand temples; and yet the language of the hieroglyphics still remainedunknown beyond the class of priests; such was the want of curiosity onthe part of the Greek grammarians of Alexandria. Such, we may add, wastheir want of respect for the philosophy of the Egyptians; and weneed no stronger proof that the philosophers of the museum had hithertoborrowed none of the doctrines of the priests. 

[Illustration: 169. Jpg GATEWAY OF PTOLEMY EUERGETES AT KARNAK]

Lycon of Troas was another settler in Alexandria. He followed Strato atthe head of one of the schools in the museum. He was very successful inbringing up the young men, who needed, he used to say, modesty and thelove of praise, as a horse needs bridle and spur. His eloquence was sopleasing that he was wittily called Glycon, or the sweet. Carneades ofCyrene at the same time held a high place among philosophers; but ashe had removed to Athens, where he was at the head of a school, and waseven sent to Rome as the ambassador of the Athenians, we must not claimthe whole honour of him for the Ptolemies under whom he was born. It istherefore enough to say of him that, though a follower of Plato, he madesuch changes in the opinions of the Academy, by not wholly throwing offthe evidence of the senses, that his school was called the New Academy. 

Apollonius, who was born at Alexandria, but is commonly calledApollonius Rhodius because he passed many years of his life at Rhodes, had been, like Eratosthenes, a hearer of Callimachus. His only workwhich we now know is his _Argonautics_, a poem on the voyage of Jasonto Colchis in search of the golden fleece. It is a regular epic poem, in imitation of Homer; and, like other imitations, it wants the interestwhich hangs upon reality of manners and story in the Iliad. 

Callimachus showed his dislike of his young rival by hurling against hima 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 samename; and from the Roman we can gather something of the dark and learnedstyle in which Callimachus threw out his biting reproaches. We do notknow from what this quarrel arose, but it seems to have been the causeof Apollonius leaving Alexandria. He removed to Rhodes, where he taughtin the schools during all the reign of Philopator, till he was recalledby Epiphanes, and made librarian of the museum in his old age, on thedeath of Eratosthenes. 

Lycophron, the tragic writer, lived about this time at Alexandria, andwas one of the seven men of letters sometimes called the AlexandrianPleiades, though writers are not agreed upon the names which fill up thelist. His tragedies are all lost, and the only work of his which we nowhave is the dark and muddy poem of Alcandra, or Cassandra, of which thelines most striking to the historian are those in which the prophetessforetells the coming greatness of Rome; that the children of Æneas willraise the crown upon their spears, and seize the sceptres of sea andland. Lycophron was the friend of Menedemus and Aratus; and it is noteasy to believe that these lines were written before the overthrow ofHannibal in Italy, and of the Greek phalanx at Cynocéphale, or thatone who was a man in the reign of Philadelphus should have foreseen thetriumph of the Roman arms. These words must have been a later additionto the poem, to improve the prophecy. 

Conon, one of the greatest of the Alexandrian astronomers, has left nowritings for us to judge of his merits, though they were thought highlyof, and made great use of, by his successors. He worked both as anobserver and an inquirer, mapping out the heavens by his observations, and collecting the accounts of the eclipses which had been beforeobserved in Egypt. He was the friend of Archimedes of Syracuse, towhom he sent his problems, and from whom he received that greatgeometrician's writings in return. 

Apollonius of Perga came to Alexandria in this reign, to studymathematics under the pupils of Euclid. He is well known for his workon conic sections, and he may be called the founder of this study. The Greek mathematicians sought after knowledge for its own sake, andfollowed up those branches of their studies which led to no end thatcould in the narrow sense be called useful, with the same zeal that theydid other branches out of which sprung the great practical truths ofmechanics, astronomy, and geography. They found reward enough in theenlargement of their minds and in the beauty of the truth learnt. Alexandrian science gained in loftiness of tone what its poetry andphilosophy wanted. Thus the properties of the ellipse, the hyperbola, and the parabola, continued to be studied by after mathematicians; butno use was made of this knowledge till nearly two thousand years later, when Kepler crowned the labours of Apollonius with the great discoverythat 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 ofSyracuse, who came to Alexandria about this time to study under Conon, did the country a real service by his invention of the cochlea, orscrew-pump. The more distant fields of the valley of the Nile, risingabove the level of the inundation, have to be watered artificially bypumping out of the canals into ditches at a higher level. For this workArchimedes proposed a spiral tube, twisting round an axis, which was tobe put in motion either by the hand or by the force of the stream outof which it was to pump; and this was found so convenient that it soonbecame the machine most in use throughout Egypt for irrigation. 

But while we are dazzled by the brilliancy of these clusters of men ofletters and science who graced the court of Alexandria, we must not shutour eyes to those faults which are always found in works called forthrather by the fostering warmth of royal pensions than by a love ofknowledge in the people. The well-fed and well-paid philosophers of themuseum were not likely to overtake the mighty men of Athens in itsbest days, who had studied and taught without any pension from thegovernment, without taking any fee from their pupils; who were urgedforward towards excellence by the love of knowledge and of honour; whohad no other aim than that of being useful to their hearers, and lookedfor no reward beyond their love and esteem. 

In oratory Alexandria made no attempts whatever; it is a branch ofliterature not likely to flourish under a despotic monarchy. In Athensit fell with the loss of liberty, and Demetrius Phalereus was thelast of the real Athenian orators. After his time the orations weredeclamations written carefully in the study, and coldly spoken in theschool for the instruction of the pupils, and wholly wanting in fire andgenius; and the Alexandrian men of letters forbore to copy Greece inits lifeless harangues. For the same reasons the Alexandrians were notsuccessful in history. A species of writing, which a despot requiresto be false and flattering, is little likely to flourish; and hencethe only historians of the museum were chronologists, antiquaries, andwriters of travels. The coins of Euergetes bear the name of "Ptolemy theking, " round the head on the one side, with no title by which they canbe known from the other kings of the same name. 

[Illustration: 175. Jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY III. ]

But his portrait is known from his Phoenician coins. In the same way thecoins of his queen have only the name of "Berenicê the queen, " butthey are known from those of the later queens by the beauty of theworkmanship, which soon fell far below that of the first Ptolemies. 

Euergetes had married his cousin Berenicê, who like the other queens ofEgypt is sometimes called Cleopatra; by her he left two sons, Ptolemyand Magas, to the eldest of whom he left his kingdom, after a reign oftwenty-five years of unclouded prosperity. Egypt was during this reignat 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 monarchyor to raise the literature of a people, were equally successful in theparts which they had undertaken. Euergetes left to his son a kingdomperhaps as large as the world had ever seen under one sceptre; andthough many of his boasted victories were like letters written inthe sand, of which the traces were soon lost, yet he was by far thegreatest, and possibly the wisest, monarch of his day. 

We may be sure that in these prosperous reigns life and property weresafe, and justice was administered fairly by judges who were independentof the crown; as even centuries afterwards we find that it was part ofa judge's oath on taking office, that, if he were ordered by the king todo what was wrong, he would not obey him. But here the bright pages inthe history of the Ptolemies end. 

[Illustration: 176. Jpg COIN OF BERENICE, WIFE OF PTOLEMY III. ]

Though trade and agriculture still enriched the country, though arts andletters did not quit Alexandria, we have from this time forward to markthe growth only of vice and luxury, and to measure the wisdom of PtolemySoter by the length of time that his laws and institutions were able tobear up against the misrule and folly of his descendants. 

Ptolemy, the eldest son of Euergetes, inherited the crown of hisforefathers, but none of the great qualities by which they had won andguarded it. He was then about thirty-four years old. His first act wasto call together his council, and to ask their advice about putting todeath his mother Berenicê and his brother Magas. Their crime was thebeing too much liked by the army; and the council was called upon to saywhether it would be safe to have them killed. Cleomenes, the banishedKing of Sparta, who was one of the council, alone raised his voiceagainst their murder, and wisely said that the throne would be stillsafer if there were more brothers to stand between the king and thedaring 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 themwere Peloponnesians, and that they would follow him sooner than theywould follow Magas. 

Berenicê and Magas were, however, put to death, but the speech ofCleomenes was not forgotten. If his popularity with the mercenariescould 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 chanceof being helped to regain his kingdom. Nothing is known of the death ofEuergetes, the late king, and there is no proof that it was by unfairmeans. But when his son began a cruel and wicked reign by putting todeath his mother and brother, and by taking the name of Philopator, orfather-loving, the world seems to have thought that he was the murdererof 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 foundhimself safe from enemies either at home or abroad, and he gave himselfup to a life of thoughtlessness and pleasure. The army and fleet wereleft to go to ruin, and the foreign provinces, which had hitherto beenlooked upon as the bulwarks of Egypt, were only half-guarded; but thethrone rested on the virtues of his forefathers, and it was not till hisdeath that it was found to have been undermined by his own follies andvice. 

Egypt had been governed by kings of more than usual wisdom for above onehundred years, and was at the very height of its power when Philopatorcame to the throne. He found himself master of Ethiopia, Cy-rene, Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, part of Upper Syria, Cyprus, Rhodes, the citiesalong the coast of Asia Minor from Pamphilia to Lysimachia, and thecities of Ænos and Maronea in Thrace. The unwilling obedience ofdistant provinces usually costs more than it is worth; but many of thesepossessions across the Mediterranean had put themselves willingly intothe power of his predecessors for the sake of their protection, andthey cost little more than a message to warn off invaders. Egypt was thegreatest naval power in the world, having the command of the sea and thewhole of the coast at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. 

On the death of Euergetes, the happiness of the people came to an end. The first trouble arose from the loose and vicious habits of the newking, and was an attempt made upon his life by Cleomenes, who found thepalace in Alexandria had now become a prison. The Spartan took advantageof the king's being at Canopus to escape from his guards, and to raisea riot in Alexandria; but not being able to gain the citadel, and seeingthat disgrace and death must follow upon his failure, he stabbed himselfwith his own dagger. 

The kingdom of Syria, after being humbled by Ptolemy Euergetes, had risen lately under the able rule of Antiochus, son of SeleucusCallinicus. He was a man possessed of abilities of a high order. Hisenergy and courage soon recovered from Egypt the provinces that Syriahad before lost, and afterwards gained for him the name of Antiochus theGreat. He made himself master of the city of Damascus by a stratagem. Soon after this, Seleucia, the capital, which had been taken byEuergetes, was retaken by Antiochus, or rather given up to him bytreachery. Theodotus also, the Alexandrian governor of Coele-Syria, delivered up to him that province; and Antiochus marched southward, andhad taken Tyre and Ptolemaïs before the Egyptian army could be broughtinto the field. There he gained forty ships of war, of which twenty weredecked vessels with four banks of oars, and the others smaller. Hethen marched towards Egypt, and on his way learned that Ptolemy was atMemphis. On his arrival at Pelusium he found that the place was stronglyguarded, and that the garrison had opened the flood-gates from theneighbouring lake, and thereby spoiled the fresh water of all theneighbourhood; he therefore did not lay siege to that city, but seizedmany of the open towns on the east side of the Nile. 

On this, Philopator roused himself from his idleness, and got togetherhis forces against the coming danger. His troops consisted of Greeks, Egyptians, and mercenaries to the total of seventy-three thousand menand seventy-three elephants, or one elephant to every thousand men, which was the number usually allowed to the armies about this time. Butbefore this army reached Pelusium, Antiochus had led back his forcesto winter in Seleucia. The next spring Antiochus again marched towardsEgypt with an army of seventy-two thousand foot, six thousand horse, andone hundred and two elephants. Philopator led his whole forces to thefrontier to oppose his march, and met the Syrian army near the villageof Raphia, the border town between Egypt and Palestine. Arsinoë, hisqueen and sister, rode with him on horseback through the ranks, andcalled upon the soldiers to fight for their wives and children. At firstthe Egyptians seemed in danger of being beaten. As the armies approachedone another, the Ethiopian elephants trembled at the very smell of theIndian elephants, and shrunk from engaging with beasts so much largerthan 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 inthe shield, every soldier kept moving to the right, and thus left theleft wing uncovered. But before the end of the day the invading army wasdefeated; and, though some of the Egyptian officers treacherously lefttheir posts, and carried their troops over to Antiochus, yet the Syrianarmy was wholly routed, and Arsinoë enjoyed the knowledge and the praiseof having been the chief cause of her husband's success. The king ingratitude sacrificed to the gods the unusual offering of four elephants. 

By this victory Philopator regained Coele-Syria, and there he spentthree months; he then made a hasty, and, if we judge his reasonsrightly, we must add, a disgraceful treaty with the enemy, that he mightthe sooner get back to his life of ease. Before going home he passedthrough Jerusalem, where he gave thanks and sacrificed to the Hebrewgod in the temple of the Jews; and, being struck with the beauty of thebuilding, asked to be shown into the inner room, in which were keptthe ark of the covenant, Aaron's rod that budded, and the golden pot ofmanna, with the tables of the covenant. The priests told him of theirlaw, by which every stranger, every Jew, and every priest but the highpriest, was forbidden to pass beyond the second veil; but Philopatorroughly answered that he was not bound by the Jewish laws, and orderedthem to lead him into the holy of holies. 

The city was thrown into alarm by this unheard-of wickedness; thestreets were filled with men and women in despair; the air was rentwith shrieks and cries, and the priests prayed to Javeh to guard his owntemple from the stain. The king's mind, however, was not to be changed;the refusal of the priests only strengthened his wish, and all strugglewas useless while the court of the temple was filled with Greeksoldiers. But, says the Jewish historian, the prayer of the priests washeard; the king fell to the ground in a fit, like a reed broken by thewind, and was carried out speechless by his friends and generals. 

On his return to Egypt, he showed his hatred of the nation by histreatment of the Jews in Alexandria. He made a law that they should losethe rank of Macedonians, and be enrolled among the class of Egyptians. He ordered them to have their bodies marked with pricks, in the form ofan ivy leaf, in honour of Bacchus; and those who refused to have thisdone were outlawed, or forbidden to enter the courts of justice. Theking himself had an ivy leaf marked with pricks upon his forehead, fromwhich he received the nickname of Gallus. This custom of marking thebody had been forbidden in the Levitical law: it was not known among theKopts, but must always have been in use among the Lower Egyptians. Itwas used by the Arab prisoners of Ramses, and is still practiced amongthe Egyptian Arabs of the present day. 

He also ordered the Jews to sacrifice on the pagan altars, and many ofthem were sent up to Alexandria to be punished for rebelling againsthis decree. Their resolution, however, or, as their historian asserts, a miracle from heaven changed the king's mind. They expected to betrampled to death in the hippodrome by furious elephants; but after somedelay they were released unhurt. The history of their escape, however, is more melancholy than the history of their danger. No sooner did thepersecution cease than they turned with Pharisaical cruelty againsttheir weaker brethren who had yielded to the storm; and they put todeath three hundred of their countrymen, who in the hour of danger hadyielded to the threats of punishment, and complied with the ceremoniesrequired of them. 

The Egyptians, who, when the Persians were conquered by Alexander, couldneither help nor hinder the Greek army, and who, when they formed partof the troops under the first Ptolemy, were uncounted and unvalued, hadby this time been armed and disciplined like Greeks; and in the battleof Raphia the Egyptian phalanx had shown itself not an unworthy rivalof the Macedonians. By this success in war, and by their hatred oftheir vicious and cruel king, the Egyptians were now for the firsttime encouraged to take arms against the Greek government. The Egyptianphalanx murmured against their Greek officers, and claimed their rightto be under an Egyptian general. But history has told us nothing moreof the rebellion than that it was successfully put down. The Greekswere still the better soldiers. The ships built by Philopator weremore remarkable for their unwieldy size, their luxurious and costlyfurniture, than for their fitness for war. One was four hundred andtwenty feet long and fifty-seven feet wide, with forty banks of oars. The longest oars were fifty-seven feet long, and weighted with lead atthe handles that they might be the more easily moved. This huge shipwas to be rowed by four thousand rowers, its sails were to be shifted byfour hundred sailors, and three thousand soldiers were to stand in ranksupon deck. There were seven beaks in front, by which it was to strikeand sink the ships of the enemy. The royal barge, in which the king andcourt moved on the quiet waters of the Nile, was nearly as large as thisship of war. It was three hundred and thirty feet long, and forty-fivefeet wide; it was fitted up with staterooms and private rooms, and wasnearly sixty feet high to the top of the royal awning. A third ship, which even surpassed these in its fittings and ornaments, was given toPhilopator by Hiero, King of Syracuse. It was built under the careof Archimedes, and its timbers would have made sixty triremes. Besidebaths, and rooms for pleasures of all kinds, it had a library, andastronomical instruments, not only for navigation, as in modern ships, but for study, as in an observatory. It was a ship of war, and had eighttowers, from each of which stone's were to be thrown at the enemy bysix men. Its machines, like modern cannons, could throw stones of threehundred pounds weight, and arrows of eighteen feet in length. It hadfour anchors of wood, and eight of iron. It was called the ship ofSyracuse, but after it had been given to Philopator it was known by thename of the ship of Alexandria. 

In the second year of Philopator's reign the Romans began that longand doubtful war with Hannibal, called the second Punic war, and in thetwelfth year of this reign they sent ambassadors to renew their treatyof peace with Egypt. They sent as their gifts robes of purple forPhilopator and Arsinoë, and for Philopator a chair of ivory andgold, which was the usual gift of the republic to friendly kings. The Alexandrians kept upon good terms both with the Romans and theCarthaginians during the whole of the Punic wars. 

When the city of Rhodes, which had long been joined in close friendshipwith Egypt, was shaken by an earthquake, that threw down the colossalstatue of Apollo, together with a large part of the city walls anddocks, Philopator was not behind the other friendly kings and states inhis gifts and help. He sent to his brave allies a large sum of money, with grain, timber, and hemp. 

On the birth of his son and heir, in B. C. 209, ambassadors crowded toAlexandria with gifts and messages of joy. But they were all thrown intothe shade by Hyrcanus, the son of Joseph, who was sent from Jerusalem byhis father, and who brought to the king one hundred boys and one hundredgirls, each carrying a talent of silver. 

Philopator, soon after the birth of this his only child, employedPhilammon, at the bidding of his mistress, to put to death his queen andsister Arsinoë, or Eurydice, as she is sometimes called. He had alreadyforgotten his rank, and his name ennobled by the virtues of threegenerations, and had given up his days and nights to vice and riot. He kept in his pay several fools, or laughing-stocks as they were thencalled, who were the chosen companions of his meals; and he was thefirst who brought eunuchs into the court of Alexandria. His mistressAgathoclea, her brother Agathocles, and their mother OEnanthe, held himbound by those chains which clever, worthless, and selfish favouritesthrow around the mind of a weak and debauched king. Agathocles, whonever left his side, was his adviser in matters of business or pleasure, and governed alike the army, the courts of justice, and the women. Thuswas spent a reign of seventeen years, during which the king had neverbut once, when he met Antiochus in battle, roused himself from his lifeof sloth. 

The misconduct and vices of Agathocles raised such an outcry againsthim, that Philopator, without giving up the pleasure of his favourite'scompany, was forced to take away from him the charge of receiving thetaxes. That high post was then given to Tlepolemus, a young man, whosestrength of body and warlike courage had made him the darling of thesoldiers. Another charge given to Tlepolemus was that of watching overthe supply and price of corn in Alexandria. The wisest statesmen of oldthought 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 thepeople were left to take care of themselves. They thought it moreover apiece of wise policy, or at any rate of clever kingcraft, to keep downthe 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 eachcitizen. By such means as these the crowd of poor and restless citizens, who swell the mob of every capital, was larger in Alexandria than itotherwise would have been; and the danger of riot, which it was meant tolessen, was every year increased. 

Sosibius had made himself more hated than Agathocles; he had been theking's ready tool in all his murders. He had been stained, or at leastreproached, with the murder of Lysimachus, the son of Philadelphus; thenof Magas, the son of Euergetes, and Berenicê, the widow of Euergetes; ofCleomenes, the Spartan; and lastly, of Arsinoë, the wife of Philopator. For these crimes Sosibius was forced by the soldiers to give up toTlepolemus the king's ring, or what in modern language would be calledthe great seal of the kingdom, the badge of office by which Egypt wasgoverned; but the world soon saw that a body of luxurious mercenarieswere as little able to choose a wise statesman as the king had been. 

[Illustration: 187. Jpg TEMPLE OF HATHOR. ]

With all his vices, Philopator had yet inherited the love of letterswhich has thrown so bright a light around the whole of the family; andto his other luxuries he sometimes added that of the society of thelearned men of the museum. When one of the professorships was empty hewrote to Athens, and invited to Alexandria, Sphærus, who had been thepupil of Zeno. One day when Sphærus was dining with the king, hesaid that a wise man should never guess, but only say what he knows. Philopator, wishing to tease him, ordered some waxen pomegranates to behanded to him, and when Sphærus bit one of them he laughed at him forguessing that it was real fruit. But the stoic answered that there aremany cases in which our actions must be guided by what seems probable. None of the works of Sphærus have come down to us. Eratosthenes, ofwhom we have before spoken, was librarian of the museum during thisreign; and Ptolemy, the son of Agesarchus, then wrote his history ofAlexandria, a work now lost. 

[Illustration: 188jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY PHILOPATER]

The want of moral feeling in Alexandria was poorly supplied by therespect for talent. Philopator built there a shrine or temple to Homer, in which he placed a sitting figure of the poet, and round it sevenworshippers, meant for the seven cities which claimed the honour ofgiving him birth. Had Homer himself worshipped in such temples, and hadhis thoughts been raised by no more lofty views, he would not have leftus an Iliad or an Odyssey. In Upper Egypt there was no such want ofreligious earnestness; there the priests placed the name of Philopatorupon a small temple near Medinet-Habu, dedicated to Amon-Ra and thegoddess Hâthor; his name is also seen upon the temple at Karnak, andon the additions to the sculptures on the temple of Thot at Pselcis inEthiopia. 

Some of this king's coins bear the name of "Ptolemy Philopator, " whilethose of the queen have her name, "Arsinoë Philopator, " around the head. They are of a good style of art. He was also sometimes named Eupator;and it was under that name that the people of Paphos set up a monumentto him in the temple of Venus. 

The first three Ptolemies had been loved by their subjects and feared bytheir enemies; but Philopator, though his power was still acknowledgedabroad, had by his vices and cruelty made himself hated at home, and hadundermined the foundations of the government. He began his reign like anEastern despot; instead of looking to his brother as a friend for helpand strength, he distrusted him as a rival, and had him put to death. Heemployed the ministers of his vicious pleasures in the high offices ofgovernment; and instead of philosophers and men of learning, he broughteunuchs into the palace as the companions of his son. In B. C. 204 hedied, worn out with disease, in the seventeenth year of his reign andabout 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 ministerAgathocles, who had ruled over the country with unbounded power, endeavoured, by the help of his sister Agathoclea and the othermistresses of the late king, to keep his death secret; so that while thewomen seized the money and jewels of the palace, he might have time totake such steps as would secure his own power over the kingdom. 

[Illustration: 189. Jpg COIN OF ARSINOE PHILOPATE]

But the secret could not be long kept, and Agathocles called togetherthe citizens of Alexandria to tell them of the death of Philopator, andto show them their young king. 

He went to the meeting, followed by his sister Agathoclea and the youngPtolemy, afterwards called Epiphanes. He began his speech, "Ye men ofMacedonia, " as this mixed body of Greeks and Jews was always called. Hewiped 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 ofAgathoclea and to their loyalty. He then accused Tlepolemus of aiming atthe throne, and brought forward a creature of his own to prove the truthof the charge. But his voice was soon drowned in the loud murmurs of thecitizens; they had smarted too long under his tyranny, and were too wellacquainted with his falsehoods, to listen to anything that he couldsay against his rival. Besides, Tlepolemus had the charge of supplyingAlexandria with corn, a duty which was more likely to gain friends thanthe pandering to the vices of their hated tyrant. Agathocles soon sawthat his life was in danger, and he left the meeting and returned to thepalace, in doubt whether he should seek for safety in flight, or boldlyseize the power which he was craftily aiming at, and rid himself of hisenemies by their murder. 

While he was wasting these precious minutes in doubt, the streets werefilled with groups of men, and of boys, who always formed a part of themobs of Alexandria. They sullenly but loudly gave vent to their hatredof the minister; and if they had but found a leader they would have beenin rebellion. In a little while the crowd moved off to the tents ofthe Macedonians, to learn their feelings on the matter, and then to thequarters of the mercenaries, both of which were close to the palace, andthe mixed mob of armed and unarmed men soon told the fatal news, thatthe soldiers were as angry as the citizens. But they were still withouta leader; they sent messengers to Tlepolemus, who was not in Alexandria, and he promised that he would soon be there; but perhaps he no more knewwhat to do than his guilty rival. 

Agathocles, in his doubt, did nothing; he sat down to supper withhis friends, perhaps hoping that the storm might blow over of itself, perhaps trusting to chance and to the strong walls of the palace. Hismother, OEnanthe, ran to the temple of Ceres and Proserpine, and satdown before the altar in tears, believing that the sanctuary of thetemple would be her best safeguard; as if the laws of heaven, which hadnever bound her, would bind her enemies. It was a festal day, and thewomen in the temple, who knew nothing of the storm which had risen inthe forum within these few hours, came forward to comfort her; but sheanswered them with curses; she knew that she was hated and would soon bedespised, and she added the savage prayer, that they might have to eattheir own children. The riot did not lessen at sunset. Men, women, andboys were moving through the streets all night with torches. The crowdswere greatest in the stadium and in the theatre of Bacchus, but mostnoisy in front of the palace. Agathocles was awakened by the noise, andin his fright ran to the bedroom of the young Ptolemy; and, distrustingthe palace walls, hid himself, with his own family, the king, and twoor three guards, in the underground passage which led from the palace tothe theatre. 

The night, however, passed off without any violence; but at daybreak themurmurs became louder, and the thousands in the palace yard called forthe young king. By that time the Greek soldiers joined the mob, and thenthe guards within were no longer to be feared. The gates were soon burstopen, and the palace searched. The mob rushed through the hallsand lobbies, and, learning where the king had fled, hastened to theunderground passage. It was guarded by three doors of iron grating; but, when the first was beaten in, Aristomenes was sent out to offer terms ofsurrender. Agathocles was willing to give up the young king, his misusedpower, his ill-gotten wealth and estates; he asked only for his life. But this was sternly refused, and a shout was raised to kill themessenger; and Aristomenes, the best of the ministers, whose only faultwas the being a friend of Agathocles, and the having named his littledaughter Agathoclea, would certainly have been killed upon the spot ifsomebody had not reminded them that they wanted to send back an answer. 

Agathocles, seeing that he could hold out no longer, then gave up thelittle king, who was set upon a horse, and led away to the stadium amidthe shouts of the crowd. There they seated him on the throne, and, while he was crying at being surrounded by strange faces, the mob loudlycalled for revenge on the guilty ministers. Sosibius, the somatophylax, the son of the former general of that name, seeing no other way ofstopping the fury of the mob and the child's sobs, asked him if theenemies of his mother and of his throne should be given up to thepeople. The child of course answered "yes, " without understanding whatwas meant; and on that they let Sosibius take him to his own house to beout of the uproar. Agathocles was soon led out bound, and was stabbed bythose who two days before would have felt honoured by a look from him. Agathoclea and her sister were then brought out, and lastly OEnanthe, 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 limbs scattered among the crowd;to such lengths of madness and angry cruelty was the Alexandrian mobsometimes driven. 

In the meanwhile some of the women called to mind that Philammon, whohad been employed in the murder of Arsinoë, had within those three dayscome to Alexandria, and they made a rush at his house. The doors quicklygave way before their blows, and he was killed upon the spot by clubsand stones; his little son was strangled by these raging mothers, andhis wife dragged naked into the street, and there torn to pieces. Thusdied Agathocles and all his family; and the care of the young king thenfell to Sosibius, and to Aristomenes, who had already gained a highcharacter for wisdom and firmness. 

While Egypt was thus without a government, Philip of Macedonia andAntiochus of Syria agreed to divide the foreign provinces between them;and Antiochus marched against Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. The guardiansof the young Ptolemy sent against him an army under Scopas, the Ætolian, who was at first successful, but was afterwards beaten by Antiochus atPaneas in the valley of the Jordan, three and twenty miles above theLake of Tiberias, and driven back into Egypt. In these battles the Jews, who had not forgotten the ill treatment that they had received fromPhilopator, joined Antiochus, after having been under the government ofEgypt for exactly one hundred years; and in return Antiochus releasedJerusalem from all taxes for three years, and afterwards from one-thirdof the taxes. He also sent a large sum of money for the service of thetemple, and released the elders, priests, scribes, and singing men fromall taxes for the future. 

The Alexandrian statesmen had latterly shown themselves in their foreignpolicy very unworthy pupils of Ptolemy Soter and Philadelphus, who hadboth ably trimmed the balance of power between the several successors ofAlexander. But even had they been wiser, they could hardly, before theend of the second Punic war, have foreseen that the Romans would soon betheir most dangerous enemies. The overthrow of Hannibal, however, mightperhaps have opened their eyes; but it was then too late; Egypt was tooweak to form an alliance with Macedonia or Syria against the Romans. About this time, also, the Romans sent to Alexandria, to inform theking that they had conquered Hannibal, and brought to a close the secondPunic war, and to thank him for the friendship of the Egyptians duringthat long and doubtful struggle of eighteen years, when so many of theirnearer neighbours had joined the enemy. They begged that if the senatefelt called upon to undertake a war against Philip, who, though nofriend to the Egyptians, had not yet taken arms against them, it mightcause no breach in the friendship between the King of Egypt and theRomans. In answer to this embassy, the Alexandrians, rushing to theirown destruction, sent to Rome a message, which was meant to placethe kingdom wholly in the hands of the senate. It was to beg them toundertake the guardianship of the young Ptolemy, and the defence of thekingdom against Philip and Antiochus during his childhood. 

The Romans, in return, gave the wished-for answer; they sent ambassadorsto Antiochus and Philip, to order them to make no attack upon Egypt, on pain of falling under the displeasure of the senate; and they sentMarcus Lepidus to Alexandria, to accept the offered prize, and to governthe foreign affairs of the kingdom, under the modest name of tutor tothe young king. This high honour was afterwards mentioned by Lepidus, with pride, upon the coins struck when he was consul, in the eighteenthyear 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 figureof the Roman in his toga, putting the diadem on the head of the youngPtolemy. 

The haughty orders of the senate at first had very little weight withthe two kings. Antiochus conquered Phoenicia and Coele-Syria; and he wasthen met by a second message from the senate, who no longer spoke in thename of their ward, the young King of Egypt, but ordered him to give upto the Roman people the states which he had seized, and which belonged, they said, to the Romans by the right of war. 

[Illustration: 196. Jpg ROMAN COIN, ISSUED UNDER PTOLEMY V. ]

On this, Antiochus made peace with Egypt by a treaty, in which hebetrothed his daughter Cleopatra to the young Ptolemy, and added thedisputed provinces of Phoenicia and Ccele-Syria as a dower, which wereto be given up to Egypt when the king was old enough to be married. 

Philip marched against Athens and the other states of Greece which hadheretofore held themselves 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 senatethat they sent to Rome to ask whether they should help their oldfriends, the Athenians, against Philip, the common enemy, or whetherthey should leave it to the Romans to help them. And these haughtyrepublicans, who wished all their allies to forget the use of arms, whovalued their friends not for their strength but for their obedience, sent them word that the senate did not wish them to help the Athenians, and that the Roman people would take care of their own allies. TheAlexandrians looked upon the proud but unlettered Romans only asfriends, as allies, who asked for no pay, who took no reward, who foughtonly for ambition and for the glory of their country. 

Soon after this, the battle of Cynocephake in Thessaly was foughtbetween Philip and the Romans, in which the Romans lost only sevenhundred men, while as many as eight thousand Macedonians were left deadupon the field. This battle, though only between Rome and Macedonia, must not be passed unnoticed in the history of Egypt, where the troopswere armed and disciplined like Macedonians; as it was the first timethat the world had seen the Macedonian phalanx routed and in flightbefore any troops not so armed. 

The phalanx was a body of spearsmen, in such close array that each manfilled 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 thesoldier's breast. There were sixteen ranks of these men, and, when thefirst five ranks lowered their spears, the point of the fifth spear wasone yard in front of the foremost rank. The Romans, on the other hand, fought in open ranks, with one yard between each, or each man filleda space of four square yards, and in a charge would have to meet tenMacedonian spears. But then the Roman soldiers went into battle withmuch higher feelings than those of the Greeks. In Rome, arms weretrusted only to the citizens, to those who had a country to love, ahome to guard, and who had some share in making the laws which they werecalled upon to obey. But the Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syriawere made up either of natives who bowed their necks in slavery, or ofmercenaries who made war their trade and rioted in its lawlessness; bothof whom felt that they had little to gain from victory, and nothing tolose by a change of masters. Moreover, the warlike skill of the Romanswas far greater than any that had yet been brought against the Greeks. It had lately been improved in their wars with Hannibal, the greatmaster of that science. They saw that the phalanx could use its wholestrength only on a plain; that a wood, a bog, a hill, or a river weredifficulties which this close body of men could not always overcome. Acharge or a retreat equally lessened its force; the phalanx was meant tostand the charge of others. The Romans, therefore, chose their own timeand 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 phalanxwas not unconquerable, and that closed ranks were only strong againstbarbarians. This news must have been heard by every statesman of Egyptand the East with alarm; the 'Romans were now their equals, and weresoon to be their masters. 

But to return to Egypt. It was, as we have seen, a country governed bymen of a foreign race. Neither the poor who tilled the land, nor therich who owned the estates, had any share in the government. They had nopublic duty except to pay taxes to their Greek masters, who walked amongthem as superior beings, marked out for fitness to rule by greater skillin the arts both of war and peace. The Greeks by their arms, or ratherby their military discipline, had enforced obedience for one hundred andfifty 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 ofits own earnings, this obedience had been for the most part granted tothem willingly. They had even trusted the Egyptians with arms. But noneare able to command unless they are at the same time able to obey. TheAlexandrians were now almost in rebellion against their young kingand his ministers; and the Greek government no longer gave the usualadvantages 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 TheIllustrious. The Egyptian phalanx had in the last reign shown signsof disobedience, and at length it broke out in open rebellion. Thediscontented party strengthened themselves in the Busirite nome, in themiddle of the Delta, and fortified the city of Lycopolis against thegovernment; and a large supply of arms and warlike stores whichthey there got together proved the length of time that they had beenpreparing for resistance. The royal troops laid siege to the city in dueform; they surrounded it with mounds and ditches; they dammed up thebed of the river on each side of it, and, being helped by a rise in theNile, which was that year greater than usual, they forced the rebels tosurrender, on the king's promise that they should be spared. But Ptolemywas not bound by promises; he was as false and cruel as he was weak; therebels were punished; and many of the troubles in his reign arose fromhis discontented subjects not being able to rely upon his word. 

The rich island of Cyprus also, which had been left by Philopator underthe command of Polyerates, showed some signs of wishing to throw offthe Egyptian yoke. But Polyerates was true to his trust; and, thoughthe king's ministers were almost too weak either to help the faithful orpunish the treacherous, he not only saved the island for the minor, but, when he gave up his government to Ptolemy of Megalopolis, he brought tothe royal treasury at Alexandria a large sum from the revenues ofhis province. By this faithful conduct he gained great weight in theAlexandrian councils, till, corrupted by the poisonous habits of theplace, he gave way to luxury and vice. 

About the same time Scopas, who had lately led back to Alexandria hisÆtolian mercenaries, so far showed signs of discontent and disobediencethat the minister, Aristomenes, began to suspect him of planningresistance to the government. Scopas was greedy of money; nothing wouldsatisfy his avarice. 

[Illustration: 201. Jpg THE ROSETTA STONE (BRITISH MUSEUM)]

The other Greek generals of his rank received while in the Egyptianservice a mina, or ten dollars a day, under the name of mess-money, beyond the usual military pay; and Scopas claimed and received for hisservices the large sum of ten minas, or one hundred and twenty-fivedollars, a day for mess-money. But even this did not content him. Aristomenes observed that he was collecting his friends for some secretpurpose, and in frequent consultation with them. He therefore summonedhim to the king's presence, and, being prepared for his refusal, he senta large force to fetch him. Fearing that the mercenaries might supporttheir general, Aristomenes had even ordered out the elephants andprepared for battle. But, as the blow came upon Scopas unexpectedly, no resistance was made, and he was brought prisoner to the palace. Aristomenes, however, did not immediately venture to punish him, but wisely summoned the Ætolian ambassadors and the chiefs of themercenaries to his trial, and, as they made no objection, he then hadhim poisoned in prison. 

No sooner was this rebellion crushed than the council took intoconsideration the propriety of declaring the king's minority at anend, as the best means of re-establishing the royal authority; and theythereupon determined shortly to celebrate his Anacleteria, or the grandceremony of exhibiting him to the people as their monarch, though hewanted some years of the legal age; and accordingly, in the ninth yearof his reign, the young king was crowned with great pomp at Memphis, theancient capital of the kingdom. 

On this occasion he came to Memphis by barge, in grand state, wherehe was met by the priests of Upper and Lower Egypt, and crowned in thetemple of Phtah with the double crown, called Pschent, the crown of thetwo provinces. After the ceremony, the priests made the Decree in honourof the king, which is carved on the stone known by the name of theRosetta Stone, in the British Museum. Ptolemy is there styled King ofUpper and Lower Egypt, son of the gods Philopatores, approved by Phtah, to whom Ra has given victory, a living image of Amon, son of Ra, Ptolemyimmortal, beloved by Phtah, god Epiphanes most gracious. In the dateof the decree we are told the names of the priests of Alexander, of thegods Soteres, of the gods Adelphi, of the gods Euergetae, of the godsPhilopatores, of the god Epiphanes himself, of Berenicê Euergetis, ofArsinoë Philadelphus, and of Arsinoë Philopator. The preamble mentionswith gratitude the services of the king, or rather of his wise minister, Aristomenes; and the enactment orders that the statue of the kingshall be worshipped in every temple of Egypt, and be carried out in theprocessions with those of the gods of the country; and lastly, thatthe decree is to be carved at the foot of every statue of the king, insacred, in common, and in Greek writing. It is to this stone, with itsthree kinds of letters, and to the skill and industry of Dr. ThomasYoung, and of the French scholar, Champollion, that we now owe ourknowledge of hieroglyphics. The Greeks of Alexandria, and after them theRomans, who might have learned how to read this kind of writing if theyhad wished, seem never to have taken the trouble: it fell into disuse onthe rise of Christianity in Egypt; and it was left for an Englishmanto unravel the hidden meaning after it had been forgotten for nearlythirteen centuries. 

The preamble of this decree tells us also that during the minority ofthe king the taxes were lessened; the crown debtors were forgiven; thosewho were found in prison charged with crimes against the state werereleased; the allowance from government for upholding the splendour ofthe temples was continued, as was the rent from land belonging to thepriests; the first-fruits, or rather the coronation money, a tax paid bythe priests to the king on the year of his coming to the throne, whichwas by custom allowed to be less than what the law ordered, was notincreased; the priests were relieved from the heavy burden of making ayearly voyage to do homage at Alexandria; there was a stop put to theimpressing men for the navy, which had been felt as a great cruelty byan inland people, whose habits and religion alike made them hate thesea, and this was a boon which was the more easily granted, as thenavy of Alexandria, which was built in foreign dockyards and steered byforeign pilots, had very much fallen off in the reign of Philopator. Theduties on linen cloth, which was the chief manufacture of the kingdom, and, after grain, the chief article exported, were lessened; thepriests, who manufactured linen for the king's own use, probably for theclothing of the army, and the sails for the navy, were not called uponfor so large a part of what they made as before; and the royalties onthe 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 yearsof the minority, were wisely forgiven. All the temples of Egypt, andthat of Apis at Memphis in particular, were enriched by his gifts; inwhich pious actions, in grateful remembrance of their former benefactor, and with a marked slight to Philopator, they said that he was followingthe wishes of his grandfather, the god Euergetes. From this decree wegain some little insight into the means by which the taxes were raisedunder the Ptolemies; and we also learn that they were so new and foreignthat they had no Egyptian word by which they could speak of them, andtherefore borrowed the Greek word _syntaxes_. 

History gives us many examples of kings who, like Epiphanes, gainedgreat praise for the mildness and weakness of the government duringtheir minorities. Aristomenes, the minister, who had governed Egypt forEpiphanes, fully deserved that trust. While the young king looked up tohim as a father, the country was well governed, and his orders obeyed;but, as he grew older, his good feelings were weakened by the pleasureswhich usually beset youth and royalty. The companions of his vicesgained that power over his mind which Aristomenes lost, and it was notlong before this wise tutor and counsellor was got rid of. The king, weary perhaps with last night's debauchery, had one day fallenasleep when he should have been listening to the speech of a foreignambassador. Aristomenes gently shook him and awoke him. His flatterers, when alone with him, urged him to take this as an affront. If, saidthey, it was right to blame the king for falling asleep when wornout with business and the cares of state, it should have been done inprivate, and not in the face of the whole court. So Aristomenes was putto death by being ordered to drink poison. Epiphanes then lost that loveof his people which the wisdom of the minister had gained for him; andhe governed the kingdom with the cruelty of a tyrant, rather than withthe legal power of a king. 

[Illustration: 207. Jpg OUTSIDE ROSETTA]

Even Aristonicus, his favourite eunuch, who was of the same age ashimself, and had been brought up as his playfellow, passed him in themanly virtues of his age, and earned the praise of the country forsetting 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 kingreached the age of eighteen, Antiochus the Great sent his daughterCleopatra into Egypt, and the marriage, which had been agreed uponsix years before, was then carried into effect; and the provinces ofCoele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Judæa, which had been promised as a dower, were, in form at least, handed over to the generals of Epiphanes. Cleopatra was a woman of strong mind and enlarged understanding; andAntiochus hoped that, by means of the power which she would have overthe weaker mind of Epiphanes, he should gain more than he lost by givingup Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. But she acted the part of a wife anda queen, and, instead of betraying her husband into the hands of herfather, she was throughout the reign his wisest and best counsellor. 

Antiochus seems never to have given up his hold upon the provinces whichhad been promised as the dower; and the peace between the two countries, which had been kept during the six years after Cleopatra had beenbetrothed, was broken as soon as she was married. The war was stillgoing on between Antiochus and the Romans; and Epiphanes soon sent toRome a thousand pounds weight of gold and twenty thousand pounds ofsilver, to help the republic against their common enemy. But the Romansneither hired mercenaries nor fought as such, the thirst for gold hadnot yet become the strongest feeling in the senate, and they sent backthe money to Alexandria with many thanks. 

In the twentieth year of his reign Epiphanes was troubled by a secondserious rebellion of the Egyptians. Polycrates marched against them atthe head of the Greek troops; and, as he brought with him a superiorforce, and the king's promise of a free pardon to all who should returnto their obedience, the rebels yielded to necessity and laid down theirarms. The leaders of the rebellion, Athinis, Pausiras, Chesuphus, andIrobashtus, whose Koptic names prove that this was a struggle on thepart of the Egyptians to throw off the Greek yoke, were brought beforethe king at Saïs. Epiphanes, in whose youthful heart were joined thecruelty and cowardice of a tyrant, who had not even shown himself to thearmy during the danger, was now eager to act the conqueror; and in spiteof the promises of safety on which these brave Kopts had laid down theirarms, he had them tied to his chariot wheels, and copying the vicesof men whose virtues he could not even understand, like Achilles andAlexander, he dragged them living round the city walls, and then orderedthem to be put to death. He then led the army to Naucratis, which wasthe port of Saïs, and there he embarked on the Nile for Alexandria, andtaking with him a further body of mercenaries, which Aristonicus hadjust brought from Greece, he entered the city in triumph. 

Ptolemy of Megalopolis, the new governor of Cyprus, copied hispredecessor, Polycrates, in his wise and careful management. His chiefaim 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 sumof 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 muchpleased as they were surprised. 

Apollonius, whom we have spoken of in the reign of Euergetes, and whohad been teaching at Rhodes during the reign of Philopator, was recalledto Alexandria in the beginning of this reign, and made librarian ofthe museum on the death of Eratosthenes. But he did not long enjoy thathonour. He was already old, and shortly afterwards died at the age ofninety. 

[Illustration: 210. Jpg A DESERT ROAD BETWEEN EGYPT AND SYRIA. ]

The coins of this king are known by the glory or rays of sun whichsurround 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"King Ptolemy. " No temples, and few additions to temples, seem to havebeen built in Upper Egypt during this reign, which began and ended inrebellion. We find, however, a Greek inscription at Philas, of "KingPtolemy and Queen Cleopatra, gods Epiphanes, and Ptolemy their son, toAsclepius, " a god whom the Egyptians called Imothph the son of Pthah. 

Cyprus and Cyrene were nearly all that were left to Egypt of itsforeign provinces. The cities of Greece, which had of their own wishput themselves under Egypt for help against their nearer neighbours, nowlooked to Rome for that help; part of Asia Minor was under Seleu-cus, the son of Antiochus the Great; Cole-Syria and Phoenicia, which had beengiven up to Epiphanes, had been again soon lost; and the Jews, who inall former wars had sided with the Kings of Egypt, as being not only thestronger but the milder rulers, now joined Seleucus. The ease with whichthe wide-spreading provinces of this once mighty empire fell off fromtheir allegiance, showed how the whole had been upheld by the warlikeskill of its kings, rather than by a deep-rooted hold in the habitsof the people. Instead of wondering that the handful of Greeks inAlexandria, on whom the power rested, lost those wide provinces, weshould rather wonder that they were ever able to hold them. 

After the death of Antiochus the Great, Ptolemy again proposed toenforce his rights over Ccele-Syria, which he had given up only in theweakness of his minority; and he is said to have been asked by one ofhis generals, how he should be able to pay for the large forces whichhe' was getting together for that purpose; and he playfully answered, that his treasure was in the number of his friends. But his joke wastaken in earnest; they were afraid of new taxes and fresh levies ontheir estates; and means were easily taken to poison him. He died inthe 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. 

Just before his death he had sent to the Achaians to offer to send tengalleys to join their fleet; and Polybius, the historian, to whom weowe so much of our knowledge of these reigns, although he had not yetreached the age called for by the Greek law, was sent by the Achaiansas one of the ambassadors, with his father, to return thanks; but beforethey had quitted their own country they were stopped by the news of thedeath of Epiphanes. 

Those who took away the life of the king seem to have had no thoughts ofmending the form of government, nor any plan by which they might lessenthe power of his successor. It was only one of those outbreaks ofprivate vengeance which have often happened in unmixed monarchies, wheremen are taught that the only way to check the king's tyranny is by hismurder; and the little notice that was taken of it by the people provestheir want of public virtue as well as of political wisdom. 

[Illustration: 212. Jpg TAILPIECE]

CHAPTER V--PTOLEMY PHILOMETOR AND PTOLEMY EUERGETES II. 

_The Syrian Invasion: The Jews and the Bible: Relations with Rome:Literature of the Age. _

At the beginning of the last reign the Alexandrians had sadly felt thewant of a natural guardian to the young king, and they were now glad tocopy the customs of the conquered Egyptians. Epiphanes had left behindhim two sons, each named Ptolemy, and a daughter named Cleopatra; andthe elder son, though still a child, mounted the throne under the ableguardianship of his mother, Cleopatra, and took the very suitable nameof Philometor, or _mother-loving_. The mother governed the kingdom forseven years as regent during the minority of her son. "When Philometorreached his fourteenth year, the age at which his minority ceased, hiscoronation was celebrated with great pomp. Ambassadors from severalforeign states were sent to Egypt to wish the king joy, to do honour tothe day, and to renew the treaties of peace with him: Caius Valerius andfour others were sent from Rome; Apollonius, the son of Mnestheus, wassent from Judæa; and we may regret with Polybius that he himself was notable to form part of the embassy then sent from the Achaians, that hemight have seen the costly and curious ceremony, and given us an accountof it. 

While Cleopatra lived, she had been able to keep her son at peace withher brother, Antiochus Epiphanes, but upon her death, Leneus and theeunuch Eulaius, who then had the care of the young king, sought toreconquer Coele-Syria; and they embroiled the country in a war, at atime when weakness and decay might have been seen in every part ofthe army and navy, and when there was the greatest need of peace. Coele-Syria and Phoenicia had been given to Ptolemy Epiphanes as hiswife's dower; but, when Philometor seemed too weak to grasp them, Antiochus denied that his father had ever made such a treaty, and gotready to march against Egypt, as the easiest way to guard Coele-Syria. 

By this time the statesmen of Egypt ought to have learned the mistakein their foreign policy. By widening their frontier they always weakenedit. They should have fortified the passes between the Red Sea and theMediterranean, not cities in Asia. When Antiochus entered Egypt he wasmet at Pelusium by the army of Philometor, which he at once routed ina pitched battle. The whole of Egypt was then in his power; he marchedupon Memphis with a small force, and seized it without having to strikea blow, helped perhaps by the plea that he was acting on behalf of hisnephew, Ptolemy Philometor, who then fell into his hands. 

On this, the younger Ptolemy, the brother of Philometor, who was withhis sister Cleopatra in Alexandria, and was about fifteen years old, declared himself king, and sent ambassadors to Rome to ask for helpagainst Antiochus; and taking the name of the most popular of hisforefathers, he called himself Euergetes. He is, however, better knownin history as Ptolemy Physcon, or _bloated_, a nickname which wasafterwards given to him when he had grown fat and unwieldy from thediseases of luxury. 

Comanus and Cineas were the chief advisers of the young Euergetes; andin their alarm they proposed to send the foreign ambassadors to meet theinvader on his march from Memphis, and to plead for peace. This taskthe ambassadors kindly undertook. There were then in Alexandria twoembassies from the Achaians, one to renew the treaty of peace, and oneto settle the terms of the coming wrestling match. There were therethree embassies from Athens, one with gifts from the city, one about thePanathenaic games, and one about the celebration of the mysteries. Therewas also an embassy from Miletus, and one from Clazomenæ. On the day oftheir arrival at Memphis, Antiochus feasted these numerous ambassadorsin grand state, and on the next day gave them an audience. But theirarguments for peace carried no weight with him; and he denied that hisfather, Antiochus the Great, had ever given Coele-Syria as a dowerwith his daughter Cleopatra to Epiphanes. To gain time he promisedthe ambassadors that he would give them an answer as soon as his ownambassadors returned from Alexandria; and in the meanwhile he carriedhis army down the Nile to Naucratis, and thence marched to the capitalto 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 anend, he sent off an embassy to Rome with a hundred and fifty talents ofgold, fifty as a present to the senate, and the rest to be divided amongthe states of Greece, whose help he might need. At the same time, also, an embassy from the Rhodians arrived in the port of Alexandria, toattempt to restore peace to the country of their old allies. Antiochusreceived the Rhodian ambassadors in his tent, but would not listen tothe long speech with which they threatened him, and shortly told themthat he came as the friend of his elder nephew, the young Philometor, and if the Alexandrians wished for peace they should open the gatesto their rightful king. Antiochus was, however, defeated in all hisassaults on the city, and he at last withdrew his army and returnedto Syria. He left Euergetes, King of the Greeks, at Alexandria, andPhilometor at Memphis, King of the rest of Egypt. But he kept Pelusium, where he placed a strong garrison that he might be able easily tore-enter Egypt whenever he chose. 

Ptolemy Macron, the Alexandrian governor of Cyprus, added to thetroubles of the country by giving up his island to Antiochus. But hemet with the usual fate of traitors, he was badly rewarded; and when hecomplained of his treatment, he was called a traitor by the very men whohad gained by his treachery, and he poisoned himself in the bitternessof his grief. Antiochus, like most invaders, carried off whatevertreasure fell into his hands. Egypt was a sponge which had not latelybeen squeezed, and his court and even his own dinner-table then shonewith a blaze of silver and gold unknown in Syria before this inroad intoEgypt. 

By these acts, and by the garrison left in Pelusium, the eyes ofPhilometor were opened, and he saw that his uncle had not entered Egyptfor his sake, but to make it a province of Syria, after it had beenweakened by civil war. He therefore wisely forgave his rebelliousbrother and sister in Alexandria, and sent offers of peace to them; andit was agreed that the two Ptolemies should reign together, and turntheir forces against the common enemy. It was most likely at thistime, and as a part of this treaty, that Philometor married his sisterCleopatra. It was mainly by her advice and persuasion that the quarrelbetween the two brothers was for the time healed. On this treaty betweenthe brothers the year was called the twelfth of Ptolemy Philometor andthe first of Ptolemy Euergetes, and the public deeds of the kingdom wereso dated. 

The next year Antiochus Epiphanes again entered Egypt, claiming theisland of Cyprus and the country round Pelusium as the price of hisforbearance; and, on his marching forward, Memphis a second time openedits gates to him without a battle. He came down by slow marches towardsAlexandria, and crossed the canal at Leucine, four miles from the city. There he was met by the Roman ambassadors, who ordered him to quit thecountry. On his hesitating, Popilius, who was one of them, drew a circleround him on the sand with his stick, and told him that, if he crossedthat line without promising to leave Egypt at once, it should be takenas a declaration of war against Rome. On this threat Antiochus againquitted Egypt, and the brothers sent ambassadors to Rome to thank thesenate for their help, and to acknowledge that they owed more to theRoman people than they did to the gods or to their forefathers. 

The treaty made on this occasion between Philometor and Antiochuswas written by Heraclides Lembus, the son of Serapion, a native ofOxyrynchus, who wrote on the succession of the philosophers in theseveral Greek schools, and other works on philosophy, but whose chiefwork was a history named the Lembeutic History. 

Four years afterwards, in B. C. 164, Antiochus Epiphanes died; and theJews of Judæa, who had been for some time struggling for liberty, thengained a short rest for their unhappy country. Judas Maccabæus hadraised his countrymen in rebellion against the foreigners; he haddefeated the Syrian forces in several battles; and was at last ableto purify the temple and re-establish the service there as of old. Hetherefore sent to the Jews of Egypt to ask them to join their Hebrewbrethren in celebrating the feast of tabernacles on that great occasion. 

[Illustration: 219. Jpg TEMPLE OF HERMONTHIS. ]

The unhappy quarrels between the Egyptian kings soon broke out again;and, as the party of Euergetes was the stronger, Philometor was drivenfrom his kingdom, and he fled to Rome for safety and for help. Heentered the city privately, and took up his lodgings in the house ofone of his own subjects, a painter of Alexandria. His pride led himto refuse the offers of better entertainment which were made to him byDemetrius, the nephew of Antiochus, who, like himself, was hoping toregain his kingdom by the help of the Romans. The Kings of Egypt andSyria, the two greatest kingdoms in the world, were at the same timeasking to be heard at the bar of the Roman senate, and were claiming thethrones of their fathers at the hands of men who could make and unmakekings at their pleasure. 

As soon as the senate heard that Philometor was in Rome, they lodged himat the cost of the state in a manner becoming his high rank, and soonsent him back to Egypt, with orders that Euergetes should reign inCyrene, and that the rest of the kingdom should belong to Philometor. This happened in the seventeenth year of Philometor and the sixth ofEuergetes, which was the last year that was named after the two kings. Cassius Longinus, who was next year consul at Rome, was most likelyamong the ambassadors who replaced Philometor on the throne; for he putthe Ptolemaic eagle and thunderbolt on his coins, as though to claim thesovereignty of Egypt for the senate. 

To these orders Euergetes was forced to yield; but the next year hewent himself to Rome to complain to the senate that they had made avery unfair division of the kingdom, and to beg that they would addthe island of Cyprus to his share. After hearing the ambassadors fromPhilometor, who were sent to plead on the other side, the senate grantedthe prayer of Euergetes, and sent ambassadors to Cyprus, with orders tohand that island over to Euergetes, and to make use of the fleets andarmies of the republic if these orders were disobeyed. 

Euergetes, during his stay in Rome, if we may believe Plutarch, made anoffer of marriage to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but this offerof a throne could not make the high-minded matron quit her children andher country. He left Italy with the Roman ambassadors, and, in passingthrough Greece, he raised a large body of mercenaries to help him towrest Cyprus from his brother, as it would seem that the governor, faithful to his charge, would not listen to the commands of Rome. Butthe ambassadors had been told to conquer Cyprus, if necessary, with thearms of the republic only, and they therefore made Euergetes disbandhis levies. They sailed for Alexandria to enforce their orders uponPhilometor, and sent Euergetes home to Cyrene. Philometor received theRoman ambassadors with all due honours; he sometimes gave them fairpromises, and sometimes put them off till another day; and tried to spinout the time without saying either yes or no to the message from thesenate. Euergetes sent to Alexandria to ask if they had gained theirpoint; but though they threatened to return to Rome if they were not atonce 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 theywent to Cyrene, to let Euergetes know that his brother had disobeyed theorders of the senate, and would not give up Cyprus; and Euergetes thensent two ambassadors to Rome to beg them to revenge their affronteddignity and to enforce their orders by arms. The senate of coursedeclared the peace with Egypt at an end, and ordered the ambassadorsfrom Philometor to quit Rome within five days, and sent their ownambassadors to Cyrene to tell Euergetes of their decree. 

But while this was going on, the state of Cyrene had risen in armsagainst Euergetes; his vices and cruelty had made him hated, they hadgained for him the nicknames of Kakergetes, or _mischief-maker_, andPhyscon, or _bloated_; and while wishing to gain Cyprus he was in dangerof losing his own kingdom. When he marched against the rebels, he wasbeaten and wounded, either in the battle or by an attack upon his lifeafterwards, and his success was for some time doubtful. When he had atlast put down this rising, he sailed for Rome, to urge his complaintsagainst Philometor, upon whom he laid the blame of the late rebellion, and to ask for help. The senate, after hearing both sides, sent a smallfleet with Euergetes, not large enough to put him on the throne ofCyprus, but gave him, what they had before refused, leave to levyan army of his own, and to enlist their allies in Greece and Asia asmercenaries under his standard. 

The Roman troops seem not to have helped Euergetes; but he landed inCyprus with his own mercenaries, and was there met by Philometor, whohad brought over the Egyptian army in person. Euergetes, however, wasbeaten in several battles, he was soon forced to shut himself up inthe city of Lapitho, and at last to lay down his arms before his elderbrother. 

If Philometor had upon this put his brother to death, the deed wouldhave seemed almost blameless after the family murders already relatedin this history. But, with a goodness of heart, he a second time forgavehis brother all that had passed, replaced him on the throne of Cyrene, and promised to give him his daughter in marriage. 

[Illustration: 223. Jpg GARDEN NEAR HELIOPOLIS]

We are not told whether the firmness and forgiving mildness ofPhilometor had turned the Roman senate in his favour, but their troopsseemed wanted in other quarters; at any rate they left off trying toenforce their decree; Philometor kept Cyprus, and sent Euergetes ayearly gift of grain from Alexandria. 

During the wars in Syria between Philometor and Antiochus Epiphanes, atthe beginning of this reign, the Jews were divided into two parties, onefavouring the Egyptians and one the Syrians. At last the Syrian partydrove their enemies out of Jerusalem; and Onias, the high priest, witha large body of Jews, fled to Egypt. There they were well receivedby Philometor, who allowed them to dwell in the neighbourhood ofHeliopolis; and he gave them leave to build a temple and ordain priestsfor themselves. Onias built his temple at On or Onion, a city abouttwenty-three miles from Memphis, once the capital of the district ofHeliopolis. It was on the site of an old Egyptian temple of the goddessPasht, which had fallen into disuse and decay, and was built after themodel of the temple of Jerusalem. Though by the Jewish law there was tobe no second temple, yet Onias defended himself by quoting, as if meantfor his own times, the words of Isaiah, who says that in that day thereshall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt. Thebuilding of this temple, and the celebrating the Jewish feasts there, as in rivalry to the temple of Jerusalem, were a never-failing causeof quarrel between the Hebrew and the Greek Jews. They each altered thewords of the Bible to make it speak their own opinions. The Hebrew Biblenow says that the new temple was in the City of Destruction, and theGreek Bible says that it was in the City of Righteousness; whereas, fromthe Arabic version and some early commentaries, it seems that Isaiah wasspeaking of the city of Heliopolis, where there had been of old an altarto the Lord. The leaders of the Greek party wished the Jews to throwaside the character of strangers and foreign traders; to be at home andto become owners of the soil. "Hate not laborious work, " says the son ofSirach; "neither husbandry, which the Most High hath ordained. "

About the same time the Jews brought before Ptolemy, as a judge, theirquarrel with the Samaritans, as to whether, according to the law ofMoses, the temple ought to have been built at Jerusalem, or on the greenand fertile Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans built their temple, oron the barren white crags of Mount Ebal, where the Hebrew Bible saysthat it should be built; and as to which nation had altered their copiesof the Bible in the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy and eighthchapter of Joshua. This dispute had lately been the cause of riots andrebellion. Ptolemy seems to have decided the question for politicalreasons, and to please his own subjects, the Alexandrian Jews; andwithout listening to the arguments as to what the law ordered, he wascontent with the proof that the temple had stood at Jerusalem for abouteight hundred years, and he put to death the two Samaritan pleaders, whohad probably been guilty of some outrage against the Jews in zeal forMount Gerizim, and for which they might then have been on their trial. 

Onias, the high priest, was much esteemed by Philometor, and bore highoffices in the government; as also did Dositheus, another Jew, who hadbeen very useful in helping the king to crush a rebellion. Dositheuscalled himself a priest and a Levite, though his title to that honourseems to have been doubted by his countrymen. He had brought with himinto Egypt the book of Esther, written in Greek, which he said had beentranslated out of the Hebrew in Jerusalem by Lysimachus. It containedsome additions for which the Hebrew has never been brought forward, andwhich are now placed among the uncanonical books in the Apocrypha. 

Since the Ptolemies had found themselves too weak to hold Ethiopia, theyhad placed a body of soldiers on the border of the two countries, toguard Egypt from the inroads of the enemy. This station, twelve milesto the south of Syênê, had by degrees grown into a city, and was calledParembole, or _The Camp_; and, as most of the soldiers were Greekmercenaries, it was natural that the temple which Philometor built thereshould be dedicated in the Greek language. Of the temples hitherto builtby the Ptolemies, in the Egyptian cities, every one seems to have hadthe king's name and titles, and its dedication to the gods, carved onits massive portico in hieroglyphics; but this was in a Greek city, andit was dedicated to Isis and Serapis, on behalf of Philometor and hisqueen, in a Greek inscription. 

[Illustration: 227. Jpg TEMPLE OF APOLLONOPOLIS]

Philometor also built a temple at Antseopolis to Antaeus, a god of whomwe know little, but that he gave his name to the city; and another toAroëris at Ombos; and in the same way he carved the dedications on theporticoes in the Greek language. This custom became common after thattime, and proves both the lessened weight which the native Egyptiansbore in the state, and that the kings had forgotten the wise rules ofPtolemy Soter, in regard to the religious feelings of the people. Theymust have been greatly shocked by this use of foreign writing in theplace of the old characters of the country, which, from having been usedin the temples, even for ages beyond the reach of history, had at lastbeen called sacred. In the temple at Antoopolis we note a marked changein the style of building. The screen in front of the great portico isalmost removed by having a doorway made in it between every pair ofcolumns. 

It is to this reign, also, that we seem to owe the great temple atApollinopolis Magna, although it was not finished till one or tworeigns later. It is one of the largest and least ruined of the Egyptiantemples. Its front is formed of two huge square towers, with slopingsides, between which is the narrow doorway, the only opening in itsmassive walls. Through this the worshipper entered a spacious courtyardor cloister, where he found shade from the sun under a covered walk oneither side. In front is the lofty portico with six large columns, theentrance to the body of the building. This last is flat-roofed, and farlower than the grand portico which hid it from the eyes of the crowd inthe courtyard. The staircases in the towers are narrow. The sacred roomswithin were small and dark, with only a glimmering flame here and therebefore an altar, except when lighted up with a blaze of lamps on afeast-day. As a castle it must have had great strength; from the topand loopholes of the two towers, stones and darts might be hurled at theenemy; and as it was in the hands of the Egyptians, it is the strongestproof that they were either not distrusted or not feared by their Greekrulers. The city of Apollinopolis stands on a grand and lofty situation, overlooking the river and the valley; and this proud temple, risingover all, can only have been planned by military skill as a fortress tocommand the whole. 

At this time the Greeks in Egypt were beginning to follow the custom oftheir Egyptian brethren, to take upon themselves monastic vows, andto shut themselves up in the temples in religious idleness. But theseforeigners were looked upon with jealousy by the Egyptian monks asintruders on their endowments, and we meet with a petition addressedto Philometor by Ptolemy, the son of Glaucias, a monk in the temple ofSerapis at Memphis, who styles himself a Macedonian, complaining thathis cell had been violently entered and himself ill-treated becausehe was a Greek; and reminding the king that last year, when the kingvisited the Serapium, he had addressed the same petition to him throughthe bars of his window. The priests in temples of Egypt were maintained, partly by their own estates, and partly by the offerings of the pious;and we still possess a deed of sale made in this reign by the Thebanpriests, of one-half of a third of their collections for the dead whohad been buried in Thynabunum, the Libyan suburb of Thebes. This sixthshare of the collections consisted of seven or eight families of slaves;the price of it was four hundred pieces of brass; the bargain was madein the presence of sixteen witnesses, whose names are given; and thedeed was registered and signed by a public notary in the city of Thebes. The custom of giving offerings to the priests for the good of the deadwould seem to have been a cause of some wealth to the temples. It wasone among the many Egyptian customs forbidden by the law of Moses. 

From this deed of sale we also gain some knowledge of the state ofslavery in Egypt. The names of the slaves and of their fathers areKoptic, and in some cases borrowed from the names of the gods; hencethe slaves were probably of the same religion, and spoke nearly the samelanguage as their masters. They sunk into that low state rather by theirown want of mind than by their masters' power. In each case the slavewas joined in the same lot with his children; and the low price of fourhundred pieces of brass, perhaps about thirty-eight dollars for eightfamilies, or even if it be meant for the half of eight families, provesthat they were of the nature of serfs, and that the master, either bylaw or custom, could have had no power of cruelly overworking them. Onthe other hand, in the reign of Philadelphus, the prisoners taken inbattle, who might be treated with greater severity, were ransomed atfifteen dollars each. We see by the monuments that there were also afew negroes in the same unhappy state of slavery. They were probably nottreated much worse than the lowest class of those born on the soil, but they were much more valuable. Other slaves of the Berber race werebrought in coasting vessels from Opone on the incense coast, near to theisland of Dioscorides. 

Aristarchus, who had been the tutor of Euergetes II. , and of a son ofPhilometor, was one of the ornaments of this reign. He had been a pupilof Aristophanes, the grammarian, and had then studied under Crates atPergamus, the rival school to Alexandria. He died at Cyprus, whither heprobably withdrew on the death of Philometor. He was chiefly known forhis critical writings, in which his opinions of poetry were thoughtso just that few dared to disagree with them; and his name soon becameproverbial for a critic. Aristarchus had also the good fortune to belistened to in his lecture-room by one whose name is far more known thanthose 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 hejoined softness and sweetness to the rude plainness of the Doric muse. Indeed in this he only followed his young friend Bion, whose death heso beautifully bewails, and from whose poems he generously owns that helearned so much. It may be as well to add that the lines in which hesays that Theocritus, who had been dead above one hundred years, joinedwith him in his sorrow for the death of Bion are later additions notfound in the early manuscripts of his poems. 

From our slight acquaintance with Bion's life, we are left in doubtwhether he accompanied his friend Moschus to the court of Alexandria;but it is probable that he did. In his beautiful lamentation for thedeath of Adonis, we have an imitation of the melancholy chant of theEgyptians, named _maneros_, which they sang through the streets in theprocession 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 dealchanged by the Sicilian muse of Bion, but in the boar which killedAdonis, we have the wicked Typhon as carved on the monuments; we havealso the wound in the thigh, and the consolations of the priests, who every year ended their mournful song with advising the goddess toreserve her sorrow for another year, when on the return of the festivalthe same lament would be again celebrated. The whole poem has a depthand earnestness of feeling which is truly Egyptian, but which was verylittle known in Alexandria. 

To the Alexandrian grammarians, and more particularly to Aristophanes, Aristarchus, and their pupil, Ammonius, we are indebted for ourpresent copies of Homer. These critics acted like modern editors, eachpublishing an edition, or rather writing out a copy, which was thenre-copied in the museum as often as called for by the demands of thepurchasers of books. Aristophanes left perhaps only one such copy oredition, while Aristarchus, in his efforts to correct the text of thegreat epic poet, made several such copies. These were in the hands ofthe later scholiasts, who appealed to them as their authority, andventured to make no further alterations; we therefore now read the Iliadand Odyssey nearly as left by these Alexandrian critics. They no doubttook some liberties in altering the spelling and smoothing the lines;and, though we should value most highly a copy in the rougher form inwhich it came into their hands, yet, on the whole, we must be greatgainers by their labours. They divided the Iliad and Odyssey intotwenty-four books each, and corrected the faulty metres; but one oftheir chief tasks was to set aside, or put a mark against, those moremodern lines which had crept into the ancient poems. It had beenusual to call every old verse Homer's or Homeric, and these it was thebusiness of the critic to mark as not genuine. Aristarchus was jocoselysaid to have called every line spurious which he did not like; buteverything that we can learn of him leads us to believe that he executedhis task with judgment. From these men sprang the school of Alexandriangrammarians, who for several centuries continued their minute and oftenunprofitable studies in verbal criticism. 

[Illustration: 234. Jpg THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER]

These were the palmy days of criticism. Never before or since havecritics held so high a place in literature. The world was called upon toworship and do honour to the poet, but chiefly that it might admire theskill of the critic who could name the several sources of his beauties. The critic now ranked higher than a priest at the foot of MountParnassus. Homer was lifted to the skies that the critic might stand ona raised pedestal among the Muses. Such seems to be the meaning ofthe figures on the upper part of the well-known sculpture called theApotheosis of Homer. It was made in this reign; and at the foot Ptolemyand his mother, in the characters of Time and the World, are crowningthe statue of the poet, in the presence of ten worshippers who representthe literary excellences which shine forth in his poems. The figuresof the Iliad and Odyssey kneel beside his seat, and the Frogs and Micecreep under his footstool, showing that the latter mock-heroic poem wasalready written and called the work of Homer. 

Other celebrities who flourished under the fifth Ptolemy werePamphilius, an Alexandrian physician who wrote on medical plants;Meander, a poet and physician who studied poisons, and the greatHipparchus, the founder of mathematical astronomy. Hero, also, in thisreign, invented a kind of primitive steam-engine. 

[Illustration: 235. Jpg HERO'S ROTATING STEAM ENGINE]

These men and their contemporaries were in the habit of writing theirscientific observations in the form of poetry, but it was verse withoutearnestness and feeling, and such of it as survives is valued not forits literary qualities or charms of diction, but for the side-lights itthrows upon the manners and education of the age. 

The portrait of the king is known from those coins which bear the nameof "_King Ptolemy the mother-loving god_. " The eagle on the other sideof the coins has a phoenix or palm-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 ofthe Ptolemies; but, as every one of them had been so named in thehieroglyphical inscriptions, it can scarcely be called new. 

When Philometor quitted the island of Cyprus after beating his brotherin battle, he left Archias as governor, who entered into a plot to giveit 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 ownlife, to escape from punishment and self-reproach. By this treachery ofDemetrius, Philometor was made his enemy, and he joined Attalus, Kingof Pergamus, and Ariarathes, King of Cappadocia, in setting up AlexanderBalas as a pretender to the throne of Syria, who beat Demetrius inbattle, and put him to death. Philometor two years afterwards gave hiselder daughter, Cleopatra, in marriage to Alexander, and led her himselfto Ptolemaïs, or Acre, where the marriage was celebrated with greatpomp. 

But even in Ptolemaïs, the city in which Alexander had been so coveredwith favours, Philometor was near falling under the treachery of his newson-in-law. He learned that a plot had been formed against his life byAmmonius, and he wrote to Alexander to beg that the traitor might begiven up to justice. But Alexander acknowledged the plot as his own, and refused to give up his servant. On this, Philometor recalled hisdaughter, and turned against Alexander the forces which he had led intoSyria to uphold him. He then sent to the young Demetrius, afterwardscalled Nicator, the son of his late enemy, to offer him the throne andwife which he had lately given to Alexander Balas. Demetrius was equallypleased with the two offers. Philometor then entered Antioch at the headof his army, and there he was proclaimed by the citizens King of Asiaand Egypt; but with a forbearance then very uncommon, he called togetherthe council of the people, and refused the crown, and persuaded them toreceive Demetrius as their king. 

[Illustration: 237. Jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY V. ]

It is interesting to note that Alexander Balas and Demetrius Nicatoreach in his turn acknowledged his debt to the King of Egypt by puttingthe Ptolemaic eagle on his coins, and adjusting them to the Egyptianstandard of weight: and in this they were afterwards followed byAntiochus, the son of Demetrius. The Romans, on the other hand, sometimes used the same eagle in boast of their power over Egypt; but wecannot be mistaken in what was meant by these Syrian kings, who none ofthem, 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 ofthe Egyptian eagle on the coins was an act of homage. 

Philometor and Demetrius, as soon as the latter was acknowledged king atAntioch, then marched against Alexander, routed his army, and drove himinto Arabia. But in this battle Philometor's horse was frightened by thebraying 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 fivedays, and the surgeons then endeavoured to cut out a piece of the brokenbone from his skull. He died under the operation: but not before thehead 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. Hisreign began in trouble; before he reached the years of manhood thecountry had been overrun by foreigners, and torn to pieces by civil war;but he left the kingdom stronger than he found it, a praise which healone can share with Ptolemy Soter. He was alike brave and mild; hewas the only one of the race who fell in battle, and the only one whosehands were unstained with civil blood. At an age and in a country whenpoison and the dagger were too often the means by which the king'sauthority was upheld, when goodness was little valued, and whenconquests were thought the only measure of greatness, he spared the lifeof a brother taken in battle, he refused the crown of Syria when offeredto him; and not only no one of his friends or kinsmen, but no citizenof Alexandria, was put to death during the whole of his reign. We findgrateful inscriptions to his honour at the city of Citium in Cyprus, inthe island of Therse, and at Methone in Argolis. 

Philometor had reigned thirty-five years in all; eleven years alone, partly while under age, then six years jointly with his brother, Euergetes II. , and eighteen more alone while his brother reigned inCyrene. He married his sister Cleopatra, and left her a widow, with twodaughters, each named Cleopatra. The elder daughter we have seen offeredto Euergetes, then married to Alexander Balas, and lastly to Demetrius. The younger daughter, afterwards known by the name of Cleopatra Cocce, was still in the care of her mother. He had most likely had three sons. One perhaps had been the pupil of Aristarchus, and died before hisfather; as the little elegy by Antipator of Sidon, which is addressed tothe dead child, on the grief of his father and mother, would seem to bemeant for a son of Philometor. A second son was murdered, and a thirdlived in Syria. 

On the death of Philometor, his widow, Cleopatra, and some of the chiefmen of Alexandria proclaimed his young son king, most likely under thename of Ptolemy Eupator; but Euergetes, whose claim was favoured bythe 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 madeby the help of Thermus, the Roman ambassador, and on this the gates ofAlexandria were opened. It was agreed that Euergetes should be king, andmarry Cleopatra, his sister and his brother's widow. We may take it forgranted that one article of the treaty was that her son should reign onthe death of his uncle; but Euergetes, forgetting that he owed his ownlife to Philometor, and also disregarding the Romans who were a party tothe treaty, had the boy put to death on the day of the marriage. 

The Alexandrians, after the vices and murders of former kings, could nothave been much struck by the behaviour of Euergetes towards his family;but he was not less cruel towards his people. Alexandria, which hehad entered peaceably, was handed over to the unbridled cruelty of themercenaries, and blood flowed in every street. The anger of Euergetesfell more particularly on the Jews for the help which they had given toCleopatra, and he threatened them with utter destruction. The threatwas not carried into execution; but such was the Jews' alarm, that theycelebrated a yearly festival in Alexandria for several hundred years, inthankfulness for their escape from it. The population of the city, wholooked upon it less as a home than as a place of trade in which theycould follow their callings with the greatest gain, seemed to quitAlexandria as easily as they had come there under Ptolemy Soter; andEuergetes, who was afraid that he should soon be left to reign over awilderness, made new laws in favour of trade and of strangers who wouldsettle there. 

In the lifetime of Philometor he had never laid aside his claim to thethrone of Egypt, but had only yielded to the commands of Rome and to hisbrother's forces, and he now numbered the years of his reign from hisformer seizing of Alexandria. He had reigned six years with his brother, and then eighteen years in Cyrene, and he therefore called the firstyear of his real reign the twenty-fifth. 

In the next year he went to Memphis to be crowned; and, while the pompsand rites were there being performed, his queen and sister bore him ason, whom, from the place and to please the people, he named Memphites. But his queen was already in disgrace; and some of those very friendswho on his brother's death had marched with him against Alexandria werepublicly put to death for speaking ill of his mistress Irene. He soonafterwards put away his wife and married her younger daughter, hisniece, Cleopatra Cocce. The divorced Cleopatra was allowed to keep hertitle; and, as she was the widow of the late king, she held a rank inthe state before the wife of the reigning king. Thus, the small templeof Hâthor in the island of Philæ was dedicated to the goddess in thename of King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra his sister, and Queen Cleopatrahis wife, designated as the gods Euergetæ. 

[Illustration: 241. Jpg TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT PHILAE]

The Roman senate, however, felt its authority slighted by this murderof the young Eupator, and divorce of Cleopatra, both of whom were livingunder its protection. The late ambassador, Thermus, by whose treacheryor folly Euergetes had been enabled to crush his rivals and gain thesovereign power, was on his return to Rome called to account for hisconduct. Cato the Censor, in one of his great speeches, accused him ofhaving been seduced from his duty by the love of Egyptian gold, and ofhaving betrayed the queen to the bribes of Euergetes. In the meanwhileScipio Africanus the younger and two other Roman ambassadors weresent by the senate to see that the kingdom of their ally was peaceablysettled. Euergetes went to meet him with great pomp, and received himwith all the honours due to his rank; and the whole city followed him incrowds through the streets, eager to catch a sight of the conqueror ofCarthage, of the greatest man who had been seen in Alexandria, of onewho by his virtues and his triumphs had added a new glory even to thename of Scipio. He brought with him, as his friend and companion (inthe case of a modern ambassador we should say, as his chaplain), thephilosopher, Pansetius, the chief of the Stoics, who had gained a greatname for his three books on the "Duty of Man, " which were afterwardscopied by Cicero. 

[Illustration: 242b. Jpg]

Euergetes showed them over the palace and the treasury; but, though theRomans had already begun to run the down-hill race of luxury, in whichthe Egyptians were so far ahead of them, yet Scipio, who held to the oldfashions and plain manners of the republic, was not dazzled by mere goldand purple. But the trade of Alexandria, the natural harbour, the forestof masts, and the lighthouse, the only one in the world, surpassedanything that his well-stored mind had looked for. He went by boat toMemphis, and saw the rich crops on either bank, and the easy navigationof the Nile, in which the boats were sailing up the river by the forceof the wind and floating down by the force of the stream. The villageson the river side were large and thickly set, each in the bosom of itsown grove of palm-trees; and the crowded population was well fed andwell clothed. The Roman statesman saw that nothing was wanting but agood government to make Egypt what it used to be, the greatest kingdomin the world. 

Scipio went no higher than Memphis; the buildings of Upper Egypt, theoldest and the largest in the world, could not draw him to Thebes, acity whose trade had fallen off, where the deposits of bullion in thetemples had lessened, and whose linen manufacture had moved towards theDelta. Had this great statesman been a Greek he would perhaps have goneon to this city, famous alike in history and in poetry; but, as it was, Scipio and his friends then sailed for Cyprus, Syria, and the otherprovinces or kingdoms under the power of Rome, to finish this tour ofinspection. 

For some time past, the Jews, taking advantage of the weakness of Egyptand Syria, had been struggling to make themselves free; and, at thebeginning of this reign Simon Maccabæus, the high priest, sent anembassy to Rome, with a shield of gold weighing one thousand _minae_, asa present, to get their independence acknowledged by the Romans. On thisthe 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 time pastbeen accustomed, they wrote to Euergetes and the King of Syria, orderingthem not to make war upon their friends, the Jews. But in an afterdecree the Romans recognise the close friendship and the tradingintercourse between Egypt and Judæa; and when they declared that theywould protect the Jews in their right to levy custom-house duties, theymade an exception in favour of the Egyptian trade. The people of Judæain these struggles were glad to forget the jealousy which had separatedthem from their brethren in Egypt, and the old quarrel between theHebrews and the Hellenists; the Sanhedrim of Jerusalem wrote to theSanhedrim of Alexandria, telling them that they were going to keep theFeast of the Tabernacles in solemn thanksgiving to the Almighty fortheir deliverance, and begging for the benefit of their prayers. 

The Jews, however, of Judæa, on their gaining their former place as anation, did not, as before, carry forward the chain of history in theirsacred books. While they had been under the yoke of the Babylonians, thePersians, and the Syrians, their language had undergone some changes;and when the Hebrew of the Old Testament was no longer the spokenlanguage, they perhaps thought it unworthy of them to write in anyother. At any rate, it is to their Greek brethren in Egypt that weare indebted for the history of the bravery of the Maccabees. Jasonof Cyrene wrote the history of the Maccabees, and of the Jewish warsagainst Antiochus Epiphanes and his son, Antiochus Eupator. This work, which was in five books, is lost, and we now read only the short historywhich was drawn from it by some unknown Greek writer, which, with theletter from the Jews of Judaaa to their brethren of Egypt, forms thesecond book of Maccabees. 

In the list of Alexandrian authors, we must not forget to mention Jesus, the son of Sirach, who came into Egypt in this reign, and translatedinto Greek the Hebrew work of his grandfather Jesus, which is named theBook of Wisdom, or Ecclesiasticus. It is written in imitation of theProverbs of Solomon; and though its pithy sayings fall far short of thedeep wisdom and lofty thoughts which crowd every line of that wonderfulwork, yet it will always be read with profit and pleasure. In thisbook we see the earliest example that we now possess of a Jewish writerborrowing from the Greek philosophers; though how far the Greek thoughtswere part of the original Hebrew may be doubted, because the workwas left unfinished by Jesus the grandfather, and completed by theAlexandrian translator, his grandson. Hereafter we shall see theAlexandrian Jews engrafting on the Jewish theology more and more of thePlatonic philosophy, which very well suited the serious earnestness oftheir character, and which had a most remarkable effect in making theirwritings and opinions more fitted to spread into the ancient schools. 

This and other writings of the Alexandrian Jews were by them added tothe list of sacred books which together made their Greek Bible; but theywere never acknowledged at Jerusalem. The Hebrew books of the law andthe prophets were first gathered together by Nehemiah after the returnof the Hebrews from Babylon; but his library had been broken up duringthe Syrian wars. These Hebrew books, with some few which had since beenwritten, were again got together by Judas Maccabaeus; and after his timenothing more seems to have been added to them, though the AlexandrianJews continued to add new books to their Greek Bible, while cultivatingthe Platonic philosophy with a success which made a change in theirreligious opinions. It was in Alexandria, and very much by the helpof the Jews, that Eastern and Western opinions now met. Each made somechange in the other, and, on the union of the two, Alexandria gave tothe world a new form of philosophy. The vices and cruelty of Euergetescalled for more than usual skill in the minister to keep down the angryfeelings of the people. This skill was found in the general Hierax, who was one of those men whose popular manners, habits of business, and knowledge of war, make them rise over every difficulty in timesof trouble. On him rested the whole weight of the government; his wisemeasures in part made up for the vices of his master; and, when thetreasure of the state had been turned to the king's pleasures, and thesoldiers were murmuring for want of pay, Hierax brought forward his ownmoney to quiet the rebellion. But at last the people could bear theirgrievances no longer; the soldiers without pay, instead of guarding thethrone, were its greatest enemies, and the mob rose in Alexandria, set fire to the palace, and Euergetes was forced to leave the city andwithdraw to Cyprus. 

The Alexandrians, when free from their tyrant, sent for Cleopatra, his sister and divorced queen, and set her upon the throne. Her son byPhilometor, in whose name she had before claimed the throne, had beenput to death by Euergetes; Memphites, one of her sons by Euergetes, waswith his father in the island of Cyprus; and Euergetes, fearing that hisfirst wife Cleopatra and her advisers might make use of his son'sname to strengthen her throne, had the child at once put to death. The birthday of Cleopatra was at hand, and it was to be celebrated inAlexandria with the usual pomp; and Euergetes, putting the head, hands, and feet of his son Memphites into a box, sent it to Alexandria by amessenger, who had orders to deliver it to Cleopatra in the midst ofthe feast, when the nobles and ambassadors were making their accustomedgifts. The grief of Cleopatra was only equalled by the anger of theAlexandrians, who the more readily armed themselves under Marsyas todefend the queen against the invasion for which Euergetes was thenmaking preparations. 

The queen's forces shortly marched against the army of Euergetes thatwas entering Egypt under the command of Hegelochus; but the Egyptianarmy was beaten on the Syrian frontier. Marsyas was sent prisoner toEuergetes; and the king then showed the only act of mercy which canbe mentioned to his praise, and spared the life of a prisoner whomhe thought he could make use of. Cleopatra then sent to Syria, toher son-in-law Demetrius, to ask for help, which was at first readilygranted, but Demetrius was soon called home again by a rising inAntioch. But great indeed must be the cruelty which a people will notbear from their own king rather than call in a foreign master to relievethem. 

[Illustration: 249. Jpg OBELISK AT HELIOPOLIS]

The return of the hated and revengeful Euergetes was not dreaded so muchby the Alexandrians as the being made a province of Syria. Cleopatrareceived no help from Demetrius, but she lost the love of her people byasking for it, and she was soon forced to fly from Alexandria. Sheput her treasures on board a ship, and joined her son Ptolemy and herson-in-law Demetrius in Syria, while Euergetes regained his throne. As soon as Euergetes was again master of Egypt, it was his turn tobe revenged upon Demetrius; and he brought forward Zabbineus, a youngEgyptian, the son of Protarchus, a merchant, and sent him into Syriawith an army to claim the throne under the name of Alexander, theadopted son of Antiochus. Alexander easily conquered and then put todeath Demetrius, but, when he found that he really was King of Syria, hewould no longer receive orders from Egypt; and Euergetes found that thesame plots and forces were then wanted to put down this puppet, which hehad before used to set him up. He began by making peace with his sisterCleopatra, who was again allowed to return to Egypt; and we find hername joined with those of Euergetes and his second queen in one ofthe public acts of the priests. He then sent an army and his daughterTryphaena in marriage to Antiochus Grypus, one of the sons of Demetrius, who gladly received his help, and conquered Alexander and gained thethrone of his father. 

We possess a curious inscription upon an obelisk that once stood in theisland of Philæ, recording, as one of the grievances that the villagerssmarted under, the necessity of finding supplies for the troops on theirmarches, and also for all the government messengers and public servants, or those who claimed to travel as such. The cost of this grievance wasprobably greater at Philæ than in other places, because the travellerwas there stopped in his voyage by the cataracts on the Nile, and he hadto be supplied with labourers to carry his luggage where the navigationwas interrupted. Accordingly the priests at Philæ petitioned the kingthat their temple might be relieved from this heavy and vexatiouscharge, which they said lessened their power of rightly performing theirappointed sacrifices; and they further begged to be allowed to set up amonument to record the grant which they hoped for. Euergetes granted thepriests' prayer, and accordingly they set up a small obelisk; and thepetition and the king's answer were carved on the base of this monument. 

The gold mines near the Nubian or Golden Berenicê, though not so richas they used to be, were worked with full activity by the unhappyprisoners, criminals, and slaves, who were there condemned to labour ingangs under the lash of their taskmasters. Men and women alike, even oldmen and children, each at such work as his overstretched strength wasequal to, were imprisoned in these caverns tunnelled under the sea orinto the side of the mountain; and there by torchlight they sufferedthe cruel tortures of their overseers without having power to make theirgroans heard above ground. No lot upon earth could be more wretched thanthat of these unhappy men; to all of them death would have been thoughta boon. 

The survey of the coast of the Red Sea, which was undertaken in this orthe last reign, did not reach beyond the northern half of that sea. Itwas made by Agatharcides, who, when the philosopher Heracleides Lembusfilled the office of secretary to the government under Philometor, hadbeen his scribe and reader. Agatharcides gives a curious account of thehalf-savage people on these coasts, and of the more remarkable animalsand products of the country. He was a most judicious historian, and gavea better guess than many at the true cause of why there was most waterin the Nile in the dry est season of the year; which was a subject ofnever-ceasing inquiry with the travellers and writers on physics. Thaïessaid that its waters were held back at its mouths by the Etesian winds, which blow from the north during the summer months; and Democritus ofAbdera 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 followed by Euripides, the poet, thought that thelarge supply of water came from the melting of snow in Ethiopia. Ephorusthought that there were deep springs in the river's bed, which gushedforth with greater force in summer than in winter. Herodotus andOEnopides both thought that the river was in its natural state whenthe country was overflowed; and the former said that its waters werelessened in winter by the attraction of the sun, then over SouthernEthiopia; and the latter said that, as the earth grew cool, the waterswere sucked into its pores. The sources of the Nile were hidden by thebarbarism of the tribes on its banks; but by this time travellers hadreached the region of tropical rains; and Agatharcides said that theoverflow in Egypt arose from the rains in Upper Ethiopia. But theAbyssinian rains begin to fall at midsummer, too late to cause theinundation in Egypt; and therefore the truth seemed after all to liewith the priests of Memphis, who said the Nile rises on the other sideof the equator, and the rain falling in what was winter on that side ofthe globe made the Nile overflow in the Egyptian summer. 

From the very earliest times, says Ebers, the Pharaohs had understoodthe necessity of measuring exactly the amount or deficiency of theinundations of the Nile, and Nilometers are preserved which were erectedhigh up the river in Nubia by kings of the Old Empire, by princes, thatis to say, who reigned before the invasion of the Hyksos. Herodotustells us that the river must rise sixteen ells for the inundation to beconsidered a favourable one. If it remained below this mark, the higherfields failed in obtaining a due supply of water, and a dearth was theresult. If it greatly exceeded it, it broke down the dykes, damaged thevillages, and had not retired into its bed by the time for sowing theseed. Thus the peasant, who could expect no rain, and was threatenedneither by frosts nor storms, could have his prospects of a good or badharvest read off by the priests with perfect certainty by the scale ofthe Nilometer, and not by the servants of the divinities only, but bythe officers of the realm, who calculated the amount of taxes to be paidto them in proportion to the rising of the river. 

[Illustration: 254. Jpg NILOMETER AT RHODHA]

The standard was protected by the magic power of unapproachablesanctity, and the husbandman has been strictly interdicted from theearliest time to this very day from casting a glance at it during thetime when the river is rising; for what sovereign could bear to disclosewithout reserve the decrees of Providence as to the most important ofhis rights, that of estimating the amount of taxes to be imposed? In thetime of the Pharaohs it was the priesthood that declared to the king andto the people their estimate of the inundations, and at the present day, the sheik, who is sworn to secrecy, is under the control of the policeof Cairo, and has his own Nilometer, the zero point of which is saidto be somewhat below that of the ancient standard. The engineers ofthe French expedition first detected the fraud, by means of which thegovernment endeavoured every year to secure the full amount of taxes. 

When the Nile has reached a height of a little over fifteen old Arabicells, it exceeds its lowest level by more than eight ells, and hasreached the height requisite to enable it to irrigate the highestfields. This happy event is announced to the people, who await it withbreathless anxiety, and the opening of the dykes may be proceeded with. A festival to celebrate this occasion has been held from the remotesttimes. At the present time customs prevail which can, it is alleged, betraced by direct descent to the times of the Pharaohs, and yet duringthe dominion of Christianity in Egypt, and later again under sovereignsgoverning a nation wholly converted to Islam, the old worship of theNile, with all its splendour, its display, and its strange ceremonies, was extirpated with the utmost rigour. But some portion of everydiscarded religion becomes merged in the new one that has supplanted itas a fresh form of superstition, and thus we discover from a Christiandocument dating from the sixth century, that the rising of the Nile "inits time" was no longer attributed to Osiris, but to a certain SaintOrion, and, as the priest of antiquity taught that a tear of Isis led tothe overflowing of the Nile, so we hear the Egyptians of the presentday say that "a divine tear" has fallen into the stream and caused theflood. 

The trade of the Egyptians had given them very little knowledge ofgeography. Indeed the whole trade of the ancients was carried on bybuying goods from their nearest neighbours on one side, and sellingthem to those on the other side of them. Long voyages were unknown; and, though the trading wealth of Egypt had mainly arisen from carrying themerchandise of India and Arabia Felix from the ports on the Red Sea tothe ports on the Mediterranean, the Egyptians seem to have gained noknowledge of the countries from which these goods came. 

[Illustration: 256b. Jpg SUK EL SALEH, CAIRO]

They bought them of the Arab traders, who came to Cosseir and theTroglodytic Berenicê from the opposite coast; the Arabs had probablybought them from the caravans that had carried them across the desertfrom the Persian Gulf; and that these land journeys across the desertwere both easier and cheaper than a coasting voyage, we have beforelearned, from Phila-delphus thinking it worth while to build wateringand resting-houses in the desert between Koptos and Berenicê, to savethe voyage between Berenicê and Cosseir. India seems to have been onlyknown to the Greeks as a country that by sea was to be reached by theway of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; and though Scylax had, bythe orders of Darius, dropped down the river Indus, coasted Arabia, and thence reached the Red Sea, this voyage was either forgotten ordisbelieved, and in the time of the Ptolemies it seems probable thatnobody thought that India could be reached by sea from Egypt. Arrianindeed thought that the difficulty of carrying water in their smallships, with large crews of rowers, was alone great enough to stop avoyage of such a length along a desert coast that could not supply themwith fresh water. 

The long voyages of Solomon and Necho had been limited to coastingAfrica; the voyage of Alexander the Great had been from the Indus to thePersian Gulf; hence it was that the court of Euergetes was startled bythe strange news that the Arabian guards on the coast of the Red Sea hadfound a man in a boat by himself, who could not speak Koptic, but whothey afterwards found was an Indian, who had sailed straight from India, and had lost his shipmates. He was willing to show any one the routeby which he had sailed; and Eudoxus of Cyzicus in Asia Minor came toAlexandria to persuade Euergetes to give him the command of a vessel forthis voyage of discovery. A vessel was given him; and, though he was butbadly fitted out, he reached a country, which he called India, by sea, and brought back a cargo of spices and precious stones. He wrote anaccount 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, whichEudoxus visited, was on the west coast of Africa. Abyssinia was oftencalled India by the ancients. 

In these attempts at maritime discovery, and efforts after a cheapermeans of obtaining the Indian products, the Greek sailors of Euergetesmade a settlement in the island of Dioscorides, now called Socotara, in the Indian Ocean, forty leagues eastward of the coast of Africa; andthere they met the trading vessels from India and Ceylon. This littleisland continued a Greek colony for upwards of seven centuries, andGreek was the only language spoken there till it fell under the Arabsin the twilight of history, when all the European possessions in Africawere overthrown. But the art of navigation was so far unknown that butlittle use was made of this voyage; the goods of India, which were allcostly and of small weight, were still for the most part carried acrossthe desert on camels' backs, and we may remark that at a later periodhardly more than twenty small vessels ever went to India in one yearduring the reigns of the Ptolemies, and that it was not till Egypt was aprovince of Rome that the trade-winds across the Arabian Sea were foundout by Hippalus, a pilot in the Indian trade. The voyage was littleknown in the time of Pliny; even the learned Propertius seems to havethought that silk was a product of Arabia; and Palmyra and Petra, thetwo chief cities in the desert, whose whole wealth rested and whose verybeing hung upon their being watering-places for these caravans, werestill wealthy cities in the second century of our era, when the voyageby the Arabian Sea became for the first time easier and cheaper than thejourneys across the desert. 

Euergetes had been a pupil of Aristobolus, a learned Jew, a writer ofthe peripatetic sect of philosophers, one who had made his learningrespected by the pagans from his success in cultivating theirphilosophy; and also of Aristarchus, the grammarian, the editorof Homer; and, though the king had given himself up to the lowestpleasures, yet he held with his crown that love of letters and oflearning which had ennobled his forefathers. He was himself an author, and wrote, like Ptolemy Soter, his Memorabilia, or an account of whathe had seen most remarkable in his lifetime. We may suppose that hiswritings were not of a very high order; they were quoted by Athengeus, who wrote in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; but we learn little else fromthem than the names of the mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and thata flock of pheasants was kept in the palace of Alexandria. He alsowrote a commentary on Homer, of which we know nothing. When busyupon literature, he would allow his companions to argue with him tillmidnight on a point of history or a verse of poetry; but not one of themever uttered a word against his tyranny, or argued in favour of a lesscruel treatment of his enemies. 

In this reign the schools of Alexandria, though not holding the rankwhich they had gained under Philadelphus, 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 verylarge sum of twelve talents, or ten thousand dollars a year. Sositheusand his rival, the younger Homer, the tragic poets of this reign, haveeven been called two of the Pleiades of Alexandria; but that was atitle given to many authors of very different times, and to some ofvery little merit. Such indeed was the want of merit among the poets ofAlexandria that many of their names would have been unknown to posterityhad they not been saved in the pages of the critics and grammarians, andpieced together by the skill of nineteenth century investigators. 

[Illustration: 260. Jpg TEMPLE OF KOM OMBO. ]

But, unfortunately, the larger number of the men of letters had in thelate wars taken part with Philome-tor against the cruel and luxuriousEuergetes. Hence, when the streets of Alexandria were flowing with theblood of those whom he called his enemies, crowds of learned men leftEgypt, and were driven to earn a livelihood by teaching in the citiesto which they then fled. They were all Greeks, and few of them had beenborn in Alexandria. They had been brought there by the wealth of thecountry and the favour of the sovereign; and they now withdrew whenthese advantages were taken away from them. The isles and coasts of theMediterranean were so filled with grammarians, philosophers, geometers, musicians, schoolmasters, painters, and physicians from Alexandria thatthe cruelty of Euergetes II. , like the taking of Constantinople by theTurks, may be said to have spread learning by the ill-treatment of itsprofessors. 

The city which was then rising highest in arts and letters was Pergamusin Asia Minor, which, under Eumenes and Attalus, was almost taking theplace which Alexandria had before held. Its library already heldtwo hundred thousand volumes, and raised a jealousy in the mind ofEuergetes. Not content with buying books and adding to the size ofhis own library, he wished to lessen the libraries of his rivals; and, nettled at the number of volumes which Eumenes had got together atPergamus, he made a law, forbidding the export of the Egyptian papyruson which they were written. On this the copiers employed by Eumeneswrote their books upon sheepskins, which were called _charta pergamena_, or parchment, from the name of the city in which they were written. Thusour own two words, parchment from _Pergamus_, and paper from _papyrus_, remain as monuments of the rivalry in book-collecting between the twokings. 

Euergetes was so bloated with disease that his body was nearly six feetround, 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, whichreached to his feet and hands. He gave himself up very much to eatingand drinking, and on the year that he was chosen priest of Apollo bythe Cyrenians, he showed his pleasure at the honour by a memorable feastwhich he gave in a costly manner to all those who had before filled thatoffice. He had reigned six years with his brother, then eighteen yearsin Cyrene, and lastly twenty-nine years after the death of his brother, and he died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign, and perhaps thesixty-ninth of his age. He left a widow, Cleopatra Cocce; two sons, Ptolemy and Ptolemy Alexander; and three daughters, Cleopatra, marriedto her elder brother; Tryphsena, married to Antiochus Grypus; and Seleneunmarried; and also a natural son, Ptolemy Apion, to whom by will heleft the kingdom of Cyrene; while he left the kingdom of Egypt to hiswidow and one of his sons, giving her the power of choosing which shouldbe her colleague. The first Euergetes earned and deserved the name, which was sadly disgraced by the second; but such was the fame ofEgypt's greatness that the titles of its kings were copied in nearlyevery 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 thatof Euergetes, _the benefactor_, was at last used as another name for atyrant. 

CHAPTER VI--THE GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT

_The weakness of the Ptolemies: Egypt bequeathed to Rome: Pompey, Cæsar, and Antony befriend Egypt. _

On the death of Ptolemy Euergetes II. , his widow, Cleopatra Cocce, wouldhave chosen her younger son, Ptolemy Alexander, then a child, for herpartner on the throne, most likely because it would have been longer inthe course of years before he would have claimed his share of power; butshe was forced, by a threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make herelder son king. Before, however, she would do this she made a treatywith him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting, the vice and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, althoughmarried to his sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should puther away, and marry his younger sister Selene; because the mother hopedthat Selene would be false to her husband's cause, and weaken his partyin the state by her treachery. 

Ptolemy took the name of Soter II. , though he is more often calledLathyrus, from a stain upon his face in the form of an ivy-leaf, prickedinto his skin in honour of Osiris. He was also called Philometor; and welearn from an inscription on a temple at Apollinopolis Parva, that boththese names formed part of the style in which the public acts ran inthis reign; it is dedicated by "the Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy, gods Philometores, Soteres, and his children, " without mentioning hiswife. Here, as in Persia and Judaaa, the king's mother often held rankabove his wife. The name of Philometor was given to him by his mother, because, though he had reached the years of manhood, she wished toact as his guardian; but her unkindness to him was so remarkable thathistorians have thought that it was a nickname. The mother and the sonwere jointly styled sovereigns of Egypt; but they lived apart, and indistrust of one another, each surrounded by personal friends; whileCleopatra's stronger mind and greater skill in kingcraft gained for herthe larger share of power, and the effective control of Egypt. 

Cleopatra, the daughter, put away by her husband at the command of hermother, soon made a treaty of marriage with Antiochus Cyzicenus, thefriend of her late husband, who was struggling for the throne of Syriawith his brother, Antiochus Grypus, the husband of her sister Tryphaana;and on her way to Syria she stopped at Cyprus, where she raised a largearmy and took it with her as her dower, to help her new husband againsthis brother and her sister. 

With this addition to his army Cyzicenus thought his forces equal tothose of his brother; he marched against him and gave him battle. Buthe was beaten, and he fled with his wife Cleopatra; and they shutthemselves up in the city of Antioch. Grypus and Tryphaana then laidsiege to the city, and the astute Tryphaana soon took her revenge onher sister for coming into Syria to marry the brother and rival of herhusband. The city was taken; and Tryphaana ordered her sister to be tornfrom the temple into which she had fled, and to be put to death. In vainGrypus urged that he did not wish his victory to be stained by the deathof a sister; that Cleopatra was by marriage his sister as well as hers;that she was the aunt of their children; and that the gods would punishthem if they dragged her from the altar. But Tryphaana was mercilessand unmoved; she gave her own orders to the soldiers, and Cleopatra waskilled as she clung with her arms to the statue of the goddess. Thiscruelty, however, was soon overtaken by punishment: in the next battleCyzicenus was the conqueror, and he put Tryphaana to death, to quiet, aswas said, the ghost of her murdered sister. 

In the third year of her reign Cleopatra Cocce gave the island of Cyprusto her younger son, Alexander, as an independent kingdom, thinking thathe would be of more use to her there, in upholding her power against hisbrother Lathyrus, than he could be at Alexandria. 

In the last reign Eudoxus had been entrusted by Euergetes with a vesseland a cargo for a trading voyage of discovery towards India; and in thisreign he was again sent by Cleopatra down the Red Sea to trade with theunknown countries in the east. How far he went may be doubted, buthe brought back with him from the coast of Africa the prow of a shipornamented with a horse's head, the usual figurehead of the Carthaginianships. This he showed to the Alexandrian pilots, who knew it asbelonging to one of the Phoenician ships of Cadiz or Gibraltar. Eudoxusjustly argued that this prow proved that it was possible to sail roundAfrica and to reach India by sea from Alexandria. The government, however, would not fit him out for a third voyage; but his reasons werestrong enough to lead many to join him, and others to help him withmoney, and he thereby fitted out three vessels on this attempt to sailround Africa by the westward voyage. He passed the Pillars of Hercules, or Straits of Gibraltar, and then turned southward. He even reached thatpart of Africa where the coast turns eastward. Here he was stopped byhis ships wanting repair. The only knowledge that he brought back for usis, that the natives of that western coast were of nearly the same raceas the Ethiopians on the eastern coast. He was able to sail only partof the way back, and he reached Mauritania with difficulty by land. Hethence returned home, where he met with the fate not unusual to earlytravellers. His whole story was doubted; and the geographers at home didnot believe that he had ever visited the countries that he attempted todescribe. 

The people of Lower Egypt were, as we have seen, of several races; and, as each of the surrounding nations was in its turn powerful, that raceof men was uppermost in Lower Egypt. Before the fall of Thebes the Koptsruled in the Delta; when the free states of Greece held the first rankin the world, even before the time of Alexander's conquests, the Greeksof Lower Egypt were masters of their fellow-countrymen; and now thatJudæa, under the bravery of the Maccabees, had gained among nations arank far higher than what its size entitled it to, the Egyptian Jewsfound that they had in the same way gained weight in Alexandria. Cleopatra had given the command of her army to two Jews, Chelcias andAnanias, the sons of Onias, the priest of Heliopolis; and hence, whenthe civil war broke out between the Jews and Samaritans, Cleopatrahelped the Jews, and perhaps for that reason Lathyrus helped theSamaritans. 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 ofHyrcanus, the high priest. 

By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will of the Jews of LowerEgypt, and hence Cleopatra again ventured to choose her own partner onthe throne. She raised a riot in Alexandria against him, in the tenthyear of their reign, on his putting to death some of her friends, ormore likely, as Pausanias says, by showing to the people some of hereunuchs covered with blood, who she said were wounded by him; and sheforced him to fly from Egypt. She took from him his wife, Selene, whomshe had before thrust upon him, and who had borne him two children; andshe allowed him to withdraw to the kingdom of Cyprus, from which placeshe recalled her favourite son, Alexander, to reign with her in Egypt. 

[Illustration: 268. Jpg TEMPLE PORTICO AT CONTRA-LATOPOLI]

During these years the building was going forward of the beautifultemple at the city, afterwards named by the Romans Contra-Latopolis, onthe other side of the Nile from Latopolis or Esne. Little now remainsof it but its massive portico, upheld by two rows of four columns each, having the globe with outstretched wings carved on the overhangingeaves. The earliest names found among the hieroglyphics with which itswalls are covered are those of Cleopatra Cocce and her son, PtolemySoter, while the latest name is that of the Emperor Commodus. Even underCleopatra Cocce, who was nearly the worst of the family, the building ofthese 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 governmentbeyond that of the names which were placed at the head of the publicacts. The former year was called the tenth of Cleopatra and PtolemySoter, and this year was called the eleventh of Cleopatra and eighth ofPtolemy Alexander; as Alexander counted his years from the time when hewas 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 hieroglyphicalinscriptions called _mother-loving_. 

While the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria were alike weakened by civil warsand by the vices of their kings, Judæa, as we have seen, had risenunder the wise government of the Maccabees to the rank of an independentstate; and latterly Aristobulus, the eldest son of Hyr-canus, andafterwards Alexander Jannseus, his second son, had made themselveskings. But Gaza, Ptolemaïs, and some other cities, bravely refused topart with their liberty, and sent to Lathyrus, then King of Cyprus, forhelp. This was not, however, done without many misgivings; for some werewise enough to see that, if Lathyrus helped them, Cleopatra would, onthe other hand, help their king, Jannasus; and when Lathyrus landed atSicaminos with thirty thousand men, the citizens of Ptolemaïs refusedeven to listen to a message from him. 

The city of Gaza then eagerly sent for the help which the city ofPtolemaïs refused. Lathyrus drove back Jannasus, and marched uponAsochis, a city of Galilee, where he scaled the walls on the SabbathDay, and took ten thousand prisoners and a large booty. He then sat downbefore the city of Saphoris, but left it on hearing that Jannasus wasmarching against him on the other side of the Jordan, at the head of aforce larger than his own. He crossed the river in face of the Jewisharmy, and routed it with great slaughter. The Jewish historian adds, that between thirty and fifty thousand men were slain upon the fieldof battle, and that the women and children of the neighbouring villageswere cruelly put to death. 

Cleopatra now began to fear that her son Lathyrus would soon makehimself too powerful, if not checked in his career of success, and thathe might be able to march upon Egypt. She therefore mustered her forces, and put them under the command of Chelcias and Ananias, her Jewishgenerals. She sent her treasure, her will, and the children ofAlexander, to the island of Cos, as a place of safety, and then marchedwith the army into Palestine, having sent forward her son Alexander withthe fleet. By this movement Lathyrus was unable to keep his ground inCoele-Syria, and he took the bold step of marching towards Egypt. Buthe was quickly followed by Chelcias, and his army was routed, thoughChelcias lost his life in the battle. Cleopatra, after taking Ptolemaïs, sent part of her army to help that which had been led by Chelcias; andLathyrus was forced to shut himself up in Gaza. Soon after this thecampaign ended, by Lathyrus returning to Cyprus, and Cleopatra to Egypt. 

On this success, Cleopatra was advised to seize upon the throne ofJannseus, and again to add to Egypt the provinces of Palestineand Coele-Syria, which had so long made part of the kingdom of herforefathers. She yielded, however, to the reasons of her generalAnanias, for the Jews of Lower Egypt were too strong to be treated withslight. It was by the help of the Jews that Cleopatra had driven her sonLathyrus 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 bythese clear and unanswerable reasons that Ananias was able to turnthe queen from the thoughts of this conquest, and to renew the leaguebetween Egypt and Judæa. 

Cleopatra, however, was still afraid that Lathyrus would be helped byhis friend Antiochus Cyzicenus to conquer Egypt, and she therefore keptup the quarrel between the brothers by again sending troops to helpAntiochus Grypus; and lastly, she gave him in marriage her daughterSelene, whom she had before forced upon Lathyrus. She then sent anarmy against Cyprus; and Lathyrus was beaten and forced to fly from theisland. 

In the middle of this reign died Ptolemy Apion, King of Cyrene. He wasthe half-brother of Lathyrus and Alexander, and, having been made Kingof Cyrene by his father Euergetes II. , he had there reigned quietly fortwenty years. Being between Egypt and Carthage, then called the Romanprovince of Africa, and having no army which he could lead against theRoman legions, he had placed himself under the guardianship of Rome; hehad bought a truce during his lifetime, by making the Roman people hisheirs in his will, so that on his death they were to have his kingdom. Cyrene had been part of Egypt for above two hundred years, and wasusually governed by a younger son or brother of the king. But on thedeath of Ptolemy Apion, the Roman senate, who had latterly beengrasping at everything within their reach, claimed his kingdom as theirinheritance, and in the flattering language of their decree by which thecountry was enslaved, they declared Cyrene free. From that time forwardit 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 throwingthem off, or of gaining that power in the state which his birth andtitle, 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 wouldcertainly have been punished with death; so he took perhaps the onlypath open to him: he left Egypt by stealth, and chose rather to quit histhrone and palace than to live surrounded by the creatures of his motherand in daily fear for his life. Cleopatra might well doubt whether shecould keep her throne against both her sons, and she therefore sentmessengers with fair promises to Alexander, to ask him to return toEgypt. But he knew his mother too well ever again to trust himself inher hands; and while she was taking steps to have him put to death onhis return, he formed a plot against her life by letters. In this doublegame Alexander had the advantage of his mother; her character was sowell known that he needed not to be told of what was going on; while sheperhaps thought that the son whom she had so long ruled as a child wouldnot dare to act as a man. Alexander's plot 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 yearthe Alexandrians rose against him in a fury. He was hated not so muchperhaps for the murder of his mother as for the cruelties which he hadbeen guilty of, or at least had to bear the blame of, while he reignedwith her. His own soldiers turned against him, and he was forced to seekhis safety by flying on board a vessel in the harbour, and he left Egyptwith his wife and daughter. He was followed by a fleet under the commandof Tyrrhus, but he reached Myrse, a city of Lycia, in safety; andafterwards, in crossing over to Cyprus, he was met by an Egyptian fleetunder Chaereas, and killed in battle. 

Though others may have been guilty of more crimes, Alexander had perhapsthe fewest good qualities of any of the family of the Lagidaa. Duringhis idle reign of twenty years, in which the crimes ought in fairness tobe laid chiefly to his mother, he was wholly given up to the lowest andworst of pleasures, by which his mind and body were alike ruined. He wasso bloated with vice and disease that he seldom walked without crutches;but at his feasts he could leap from his raised couch and dance withnaked feet upon the floor with the companions of his vices. He wasblinded by flattery, ruined by debauchery, and hated by the people. 

His coins are not easily known from those of the other kings, which alsobore the name of "Ptolemy the king" round the eagle. Some of the coinsof his mother have 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 anelephant, or her head with the name of "Queen Cleopatra" There are othercoins with the usual head of Jupiter, and with two eagles to point outthe joint sovereignty of herself and son. 

Few buildings or parts of buildings mark the reign of Ptolemy Alexander;but his name is not wholly unknown among the sculptures of Upper Egypt. On the walls of the temple of Apollinopolis Magna he is representedas making an offering to the god Horus. There the Egyptian artist hascarved 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 hemay have hardly known by name. 

History has not told us who was the first wife of Alexander, but he lefta son by her named after himself Ptolemy Alexander, whom we have seensent by his grandmother for safety to the island of Cos, the fortressof the family, and a daughter whom he carried with him in his flightto Lycia. His second wife was Cleopatra Berenicê, the daughter of hisbrother Lathyrus, by whom he had no children, and who is called in thehieroglyphics his queen and sister. 

[Illustration: 274. Jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ALEXANDER]

On the flight of Alexander, the Alexandrians sent an embassy to Cyprusto bring back Soter II. , or Lathyrus, as he is called; and he enteredEgypt without any opposition. He had reigned ten years with his mother, and then eighteen years by himself in Cyprus; and during those years ofbanishment had shown a wisdom and good behaviour which must have wonthe esteem of the Alexandrians, when compared with his younger brotherAlexander. He had held his ground against the fleets and armies of hismother, but either through weakness or good feeling had never invadedEgypt. 

His reign is remarkable for the rebellion and ruin of the once powerfulcity of Thebes. It had long been falling in trade and in wealth, and hadlost its superiority in arms; but its temples, like so many citadels, its obelisks, its colossal statues, and the tombs of its great kingsstill remained, and with them the memory of its glory then gone by. 

[Illustration: 275. Jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ALEXANDER, WITH EAGLES]

The hieroglyphics on the walls still recounted to its fallen priestsand nobles the provinces in Europe, Asia, and Africa which they oncegoverned, and the weight of gold, silver, and corn which these provincessent as a yearly tribute. The paintings and sculptures showed the men ofall nations and of all colours, from the Tatar of the north to the Negroof the south, who had graced the triumphs of their kings: and with theseproud trophies before their eyes they had been bending under the yokeof Euergetes II. And Cleopatra Cocce for about fifty years. So small ameasure of justice has usually been given to a conquered people by theirrulers, that their highest hopes have risen to nothing more thanan escape from excess of tyranny. If life, property, female honour, national and religious feelings have not been constantly and wantonlyoutraged, lesser evils have been patiently endured. 

[Illustration: 276. Jpg THE MEMNONIUM AT THEBES]

Political servitude, heavy taxes, daily ill-treatment, and occasionalcruelty the Thebans had borne for two centuries and a half under theirGreek masters, as no less the lot of humanity than poverty, disease, anddeath. But under the government of Cleopatra Cocce the measure oftheir injuries overflowed, and taking advantage of the revolutions inAlexandria, a large part of Upper Egypt rose in rebellion. 

We can therefore hardly wonder that when Lathyrus landed in Egypt, andtried to recall the troubled cities to quiet government and good order, Thebes should have refused to obey. The spirit of the warriors whofollowed Ramses to the shores of the Black Sea was not quite dead. Forthree years the brave Kopts, entrenched within their temples, every oneof which was a castle, withstood his armies; but the bows, the hatchets, and the chariots could do little against Greek arms; while the overthrowof the massive temple walls, and the utter ruin of the city, provehow slowly they yielded to greater skill and numbers, and mark theconqueror's distrust lest the temples should be again so made use of. Perhaps the only time before when Thebes had been stormed after a longsiege was when it first fell under the Persians; and the ruin whichmarked the footsteps of Cambyses had never been wholly repaired. But thewanton cruelty of the foreigners did little mischief, when compared withthe unpitying and unforgiving distrust of the native conquerors. Thetemples of Tentyra, Apollinopolis, Latopolis, and Philæ show that themassive Egyptian buildings, when let alone, can withstand the wearof time for thousands of years; but the harder hand of man works muchfaster, and the wide acres of Theban ruins prove alike the greatnessof the city and the force with which it was overthrown; and this is thelast time that Egyptian Thebes is met with in the pages of history. 

The traveller, whose means and leisure have allowed him to reach thespot, now counts the Arab villages which have been built within thecity's bounds, and perhaps pitches his tent in the open space in themiddle of them. But the ruined temples still stand to call forth hiswonder. They have seen the whole portion of time of which history keepsthe reckoning roll before them; they have seen kingdoms and nations riseand fall: Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. They have seen the childhood of all that we call ancient; and they stillseem likely to stand, to tell their tale to those who will hereaftercall us ancients. After this rebellion, Lathyrus reigned in quiet, andwas even able to be of use to his Greek allies; and the Athenians, ingratitude, set up statues of bronze to him and Berenicê, 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 headof the republic, sent Lucullus, the soldier, the scholar, and thephilosopher, as ambassador to Alexandria, to ask for help against theenemy. The Egyptian fleet moved out of harbour to meet him, a pompwhich the kings of Egypt had before kept for themselves alone. Lathyrusreceived him on shore with the greatest respect, lodged him in thepalace, and invited him to his own table, an honour which no foreignerhad enjoyed since the kings of Egypt had thrown aside the plain mannersof the first Ptolemies. Lucullus had brought with him the philosopherAntiochus of Athens, who had been the pupil of Philo, and they foundtime to enjoy the society of Dion, the academic philosopher, who wasthen teaching at Alexandria; and there they might have been seen withHeraclitus of Tyre, talking together about the changes which werecreeping into the Platonic philosophy, and about the two newest works ofPhilo, which had just come to Alexandria. Antiochus could not read themwithout showing his anger: such sceptical opinions had never before beenheard of in the Academy; but they knew the handwriting of Philo, theywere certainly his. Selius and Tetrilius, who were there, had heard himteach the same opinions at Rome, whither he had fled, and where he wasthen teaching Cicero. The next day, the matter was again talked overwith Lucullus, Heraclitus, Aristus of Athens, Ariston, and Dion; and itended in Antiochus writing a book, which he named Sosus, against thosenew opinions of his old master, against the new Academy, and in behalfof the old Academy. 

Lathyrus understood the principles of the balance of power and his owninterest too well to help the Romans to crush Mithridates, and he wiselywished not to quarrel with either. He therefore at once made up his mindnot to grant the fleet which Lucullus had been sent to ask for. Ithad been usual for the kings of Egypt to pay the expenses of the Romanambassadors while living in Alexandria; and Lathyrus offered fourtimes the usual allowance to Lucullus, beside eighty talents of silver. Lucullus, however, would take nothing beyond his expenses, and returnedthe gifts, which were meant as a civil refusal of the fleet; and, havingfailed in his embassy, he sailed hastily for Cyprus, leaving the wondersof Egypt unvisited. Lathyrus sent a fleet of honour to accompany him onhis voyage, and gave him his portrait cut in an emerald. Mithridateswas soon afterwards conquered by the Romans; and it was only by skilfulembassies and well-timed bribes that Lathyrus was able to keep offthe punishment which seemed to await him for having thus disobeyed theorders of Sulla. 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 ofthe other Ptolemies; but those of his second wife bear her head on theone side, with the name of "Queen Selene, " and on the other side theeagle, with the name of "King Ptolemy. "

[Illustration: 280. Jpg COIN OF Ptolemy Lathyrus AND SELENE. ]

He had before reigned ten years with his mother, and after his brother'sdeath he reigned six years and a half more, but, as he counted the yearsthat he had reigned in Cyprus, he died in the thirty-seventh year ofhis reign. He left a daughter named Berenicê, and two natural sons, eachnamed Ptolemy, one of whom reigned in Cyprus, and the other, nicknamedAuletes, _the piper_, afterwards gained the throne of Egypt. 

On the death of Lathyrus, or Ptolemy Soter II. , his daughter CleopatraBerenicê, the widow of Ptolemy Alexander, mounted the throne of Egyptin B. C. 80; but it was also claimed by her stepson, the young Alexander, who was then living in Rome. Alexander had been sent to the island ofCos, as a place of safety, when his grandmother Cleopatra Cocce followedher army into Coele-Syria. But, as the Egyptians had lost the command ofthe sea, the royal treasure in Cos was no longer out of danger, and theisland was soon afterwards taken by Mithridates, King of Pontus, whohad conquered Asia Minor. Among the treasures in that island theAlexandrians lost one of the sacred relics of the kingdom, the chlamysor war-cloak which had belonged to Alexander the Great, and which theyhad kept with religious care as the safeguard of the empire. It thenfell into the hands of Mithridates, and on his overthrow it becamethe prize of Pompey, who wore it in his triumph at the end of theMithridatic war. With this chlamys, as had always been foretold by thebelievers in wonders, Egypt lost its rank among nations, and the commandof the world passed to the Romans, who now possessed this time-wornsymbol of sovereignty. 

Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of Mithridates; but heafterwards escaped, and reached the army of Sulla, under whose care helived for some time in Rome. The Alexandrian prince hoped to gain thethrone of his father by means of the friendship of one who could makeand unmake kings at his pleasure; and Sulla might have thought that thewealth of Egypt would be at his command by means of his young friend. Tothese reasons Alexander added the bribe which was then becoming commonwith the princes who held their thrones by the help of Rome, he made awill, in which he named the Roman people as his heirs; and the senatethen took care that the kingdom of Egypt should be a part of the wealthwhich was afterwards to be theirs by inheritance. After Berenicê, his stepmother, had been queen about six months, they sent him toAlexandria, with orders that he should be received as king; and, tosoften the harshness of this command, he was told to marry Berenicê, andreign jointly with her. 

The orders of Sulla, the Roman dictator, were of course obeyed; and theyoung Alexander landed at Alexandria, as King of Egypt and the friend ofRome. He married Berenicê; and on the nineteenth day of his reign, witha 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 thepolitical affairs of the kingdom; but, as they took no part in the civilor criminal affairs, he seems to have been at liberty to murder hiswife. But Alexander was hated by the people as a king thrust upon themby foreign arms; and Berenicê, whatever they might have before thoughtof her, was regretted as the queen of their choice. Hence his crime metwith its reward. His own guards immediately rose upon him; they draggedhim from the palace to the gymnasium, and there put him to death. 

Though the Romans had already seized the smaller kingdom of Cyrene underthe will of Ptolemy Apion, they could not agree among themselves uponthe wholesale robbery of taking Egypt under the will which Alexander hadmade in their favour. They seized, however, a paltry sum of money whichhe had left at Tyre as a place of safety; and it was a matter of debatefor many years afterwards in Rome, whether they should not claim thekingdom of Egypt. But the nobles of Rome, who sold their patronage tokings for sums equal to the revenues of provinces, would have lost muchby handing the kingdom over to the senate. Hence the Egyptian monarchywas left standing for two reigns longer. 

On the death of Ptolemy Alexander, the Alexandrians might easily havechanged their weak and wicked rulers, and formed a government forthemselves, if they had known how. The legitimate male line of thePtolemies came to an end on the death of the young Alexander II. Thetwo natural sons of Soter II. Were then the next in succession; and, asthere was no other claimant, the crown fell to the elder. He was young, perhaps even a minor under the age of fourteen. His claims had beenwholly overlooked at the death of his father; for though by the Egyptianlaw every son was held to be equally legitimate, it was not so by theMacedonian law. He took the name of Neus Dionysus, or the young Osiris, as we find it written in the hieroglyphics, though he is usually calledAuletes, _the piper_; a name afterwards given him because he was moreproud of his skill in playing on the flute than of his very slenderknowledge of the art of governing. 

It was in this reign that the historian Diodorus Siculus travelled inEgypt, 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 whencompared with the history by Manetho, who was a native of the countryand could read the hieroglyphic records, or even with that by Herodotus;but nevertheless he deserves great praise, and our warmest thanks, forbeing nearly the first Greek writer when Egyptian learning could nolonger be thought valuable; when the religion, though looked down upon, might at any rate be studied with ease--for being nearly the firstwriter who thought the manners of this ancient people, after theyhad almost passed off the page of history, worth the notice of aphilosopher. 

Diodorus never quotes Manetho, but follows Herodotus in making onegreat hero for the chief actions of antiquity, whom he calls Sesoosis orSesonchosis. To him he assigns every great work of which the author wasunknown, the canals in the Delta, the statue of Amenhôthes III. , theobelisks of Ramses II. , the distant navigation under Necho, the moundsand trenches dug against Assyrian and Persian invasion, and even thegreat ship of Ptolemy Philopator; and not knowing that Southern Arabiaand even Ethiopia had by the Alexandrians been sometimes called India, he says that this hero conquered even India beyond the Ganges. On theother hand, the fabulous conquest of the great serpent, the enemy of thehuman race, which we see sculptured on the sarcophagus of Oimenepthah, he describes as an historic fact of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He tells us how this huge beast, forty-five feet long, was beaten downby troops of archers, slingers, and cavalry, and brought alive in anet to Alexandria, where Eve's old enemy was shown in a cage for theamusement of the curious citizens. 

Memphis was then a great city; in its crowded streets, its palaces andtemples, it was second only to Alexandria. A little to the west stoodthe pyramids, which were thought one of the seven wonders of the world. Their broad bases, sloping sides, and solid masonry had withstood theweather for ages; and their huge unwieldy stones were a less easy quarryfor 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 theother, had built a new portico to their great temple of Phtah; but as towhen or by whom the pyramids were built, they had perhaps less knowledgethan the present day historian. The modern Egyptologist, with hispatient investigation, assigns the largest of these three pyramids toKhûfûi or Kheops, a famous ruler of the fourth dynasty, and the otherswere erected by his immediate successors. The temple of Phtah, and everyother building of Memphis, is now gone, and near the spot stands thegreat city of Cairo, whose mosques and minarets have been quarried ofits ruins, but the pyramids still stand, after fifty-six centuries ofbroken and changing history, unbroken and unchanged. They have outlivedany portion of time that their builders could have dreamed of, but theirworn surface no longer declares to us their builders' names and history. Their sloping sides, formed to withstand attacks, have not saved theinscriptions which they once held; and the builders, in thus overlookingthe reed which was growing in their marshes, the papyrus, to which thegreat minds of Greece afterwards trusted their undying names, have onlytaught us how much safer it would have been, in their wish to bethought of and talked of in after ages, to have leaned upon the poet andhistorian. 

The beautiful temples of Dendera and Latopolis, which were raised by theuntiring industry of ages and finished, under the Roman emperors, werebegun about this reign. Though some of the temples of Lower Egypt hadfallen into decay; and though the throne was then tottering to its fall, the priests in Upper Egypt were still building for immortality. Thereligion of the Kopts was still flourishing. 

The Egyptian's opinion of the creation was the growth of his own river'sbank. The thoughtful man, who saw the Nile every year lay a body ofsolid manure upon his field, was able to measure against the walls ofthe old temples that the ground was slowly but certainly rising. Anincrease of the earth was being brought about by the river. Hence hereadily believed that the world itself had of old been formed out ofwater, and by means of water. The philosophers were nearly of the sameopinion. They held that matter was itself eternal, like the other gods, and that our world, in the beginning, before it took any shape uponitself, was like thin mud, or a mass of water containing all things thatwere afterwards to be brought forth out of it. When the water had by itsdivine will separated itself from the earth, then the great Ra, the sun, sent down his quickening heat, and plants and animals came forth out ofthe wet-land, as the insects are spawned out of the fields, beforethe eyes of the husbandman, every autumn after the Nile's overflowhas retreated. The crafty priests of the Nile declared that they hadthemselves visited and dwelt in the caverns beneath the river, wherethese treasures, while yet unshaped, were kept in store and waiting tocome into being. 

[Illustration: 287. Jpg HORUS ON THE CROCODILES. BULAK MUSEUM. ]

And on the days sacred to the Nile, boys, the children of priestlyfamilies, were every year dedicated to the blue river-god that theymight spend their youth in monastic retirement, and as it was said inthese caverns beneath his waves. These early Egyptian myths seem to haveinfluenced the compilers of the Hebrew Scriptures. The author of thebook of Genesis tells us that the Hebrew God formed the earth and itsinhabitants by dividing the land from the water, and then commandingthem both to bring forth living creatures; and again one of thePsalmists says that his substance, while yet imperfect, was by theCreator curiously wrought in the lowest depths of the earth. The Hebrewwriter, however, never thinks that any part of the creation was its owncreator. But in the Egyptian philosophy sunshine and the river Nile arethemselves the divine agents; and hence fire and water received divinehonours, as the two purest of the elements; and every day when thetemple of Serapis in Alexandria was opened, the singer standing on thesteps of the portico sprinkled water over the marble floor while he heldforth the fire to the people; and though he and most of his hearers wereGreeks, he called upon the god in the Egyptian language. 

The inner walls of the temples glittered with gold and silver and amber, and sparkled with gems from Ethiopia and India; and the recesses wereveiled with rich curtains. The costliness was often in striking contrastwith the chief inmate, much to the surprise of the Greek traveller, who, having leave to examine a temple, had entered the sacred rooms, andasked to be shown the image of the god for whose sake it was built. Oneof the priests in waiting then approached with a solemn look, chantinga hymn, and pulling aside the veil allowed him to peep in at a snake, a crocodile, or a cat, or some other beast, fitter to inhabit a bog orcavern than to lie on a purple cushion in a stately palace. The funeralsof the sacred animals were celebrated with great pomp, particularly thatof the bull Apis; and at a cost, in one case, of one hundred talents, or eighty-five thousand dollars, which was double what Ptolemy Soter, in his wish to please his new subjects, spent upon the Apis of his day. After the funeral the priests looked for a calf with the right spots, and when they had found one they fattened it for forty days, and broughtit to Memphis in a boat under a golden awning, and lodged it safely inthe temple. 

[Illustration: 289. Jpg RELIGIOUS PROCESSION ON THE NILE]

The religious feelings of the Egyptians were much warmer and strongerthan those of the Greeks or Romans; they have often been accused ofeating one another, but never of eating a sacred animal. Once a year thepeople of Memphis celebrated the birthday of Apis with great pompand expense, and one of the chief ceremonies on the occasion wasthe throwing a golden dish into the Nile. During the week that theserejoicings lasted, while the sacred river was appeased by gifts, thecrocodile 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 theeighth day that this animal again became an object of fear to thosewhose occupations brought them to the banks of the Nile. Once a yearalso the statues of the gods were removed from their pedestals andplaced in barges, and thus carried in solemn procession along the Nile, and only brought back to the temples after some days. It was supposedthat the gods were passing these days on a visit to the righteousEthiopians. 

The cat was at all times one of the animals held most sacred by theEgyptians. In the earliest and latest times we find the statues of theirgoddesses with cats' heads. The cats of Alexandria were looked upon asso many images of Neith or the Minerva of Saïs, a goddess worshippedboth by Greeks and Egyptians; and it passed into a proverb with theGreeks, when they spoke of any two things being unlike, to say thatthey were as much like one another as a cat was to Minerva. It is toAlexandria also that we trace the story of a cat turned into a lady toplease a prince who had fallen in love with it. The lady, however, whendressed in her bridal robes, could not help scampering about the roomafter a mouse seen upon the floor; and when Plutarch was in Egypt it hadalready become a proverb, that any one in too much finery was as awkwardas a cat in a crocus-coloured robe. 

So deeply rooted in the minds of the Egyptians was the worship of theseanimals that, when a Roman soldier had killed a cat unawares, thoughthe Romans were masters of the country, the people rose against him in afury. In vain the king sent a message to quiet the mob, to let them knowthat the cat was killed by accident; and, though the fear of Rome wouldmost likely have saved a Roman soldier unharmed whatever other crime hemight have been guilty of, in this case nothing would quiet the peoplebut his death, and he was killed before the eyes of Diodorus, thehistorian. One nation rises above another not so much from its greaterstrength or skill in arms as from its higher aim and stronger wish forpower. The Egyptians, we see, had not lost their courage, and when theoccasion called them out they showed a fearlessness not unworthy oftheir Theban forefathers; on seeing a dead cat in the streets they roseagainst the king's orders and the power of Rome; had they thought theirown freedom or their country's greatness as much worth fighting for, they could perhaps have gained them. 

[Illustration: 291. Jpg EGYPTIAN FUNERAL CEREMONIES]

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 theRomans took good care not to meddle with. Had the Romans made war uponthe priests and temples, as the Persians had done, they would perhaps inthe same way have been driven out of Egypt: but they never shocked thereligious feelings of the people, and even after Egypt had become aRoman province, when the beautiful temples of Esne, Dendera, and othercities, were dedicated in the names of the Roman emperors, they seldomcopied the example of Philometor, and put Greek, much less Roman, writing on the portico, but continued to let the walls be covered withhieroglyphical inscriptions. 

The Egyptians, when rich enough to pay for it, still had the bodies oftheir friends embalmed at their death, and made into mummies; thoughthe priests, to save part of the cost, often put the mummy of a man justdead into a mummy-case which had been made and used in the reign of aThûtmosis or an Amenhôthes. They thought that every man at his deathtook upon himself the character of Osiris, that the nurses who laid outthe dead body represented the goddesses Isis and Nepthys, while the manwho made the mummy was supposed to be the god Anubis. When the embalmingwas finished, it was part of the funeral to bring the dead man to trialfor what he had done when living, and thus to determine whether he wasentitled to an honourable burial. The mummy was ferried across the lakebelonging to the temple, and taken before the judge Osiris. A pair ofscales was brought forth by the dog-headed Anubis and the hawk-headedHorus; and with this they weighed the past life of the deceased. Thejudge, with the advice of a jury of forty-two, then pronounced thesolemn verdict, which was written down by the ibis-headed Thot. Buthuman nature is the same in all ages and in all countries, and, whatevermight have been the past life of the dead, the judge, not to hurt thefeelings of the friends, always declared that he was "a righteous anda good man:" and, notwithstanding the show of truth in the trial, itpassed into a proverb to say of a wicked man, that he was too bad to bepraised even at his funeral. This custom of embalming was thought rightby all; but from examining the mummies that have come down to us, itwould seem to have been very much confined to the priestly families, andseldom used in the case of children. The mummies, however, were highlyvalued by the survivors of the family, and when from poverty any man wasdriven to borrow money, the mummies were thought good security by thelender, and taken as such for the loan. 

[Illustration: 293. Jpg MUMMY, MUMMY-CASES, AND CASKET]

The mummy-cases indeed could be sold for a large sum, as when made ofwood they were covered with painting, and sometimes in part gilt, andoften three in number, one enclosing the other. The stone mummy-caseswere yet more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster orhard black basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved withhieroglyphics, and modelled to the shape of the body like the innerwooden cases. 

It is interesting to note here that the pigment known to modern artby the name of mummy is, in many cases, actually prepared from thebituminous substances preserved within the wrappings of the ancientmummies. The grinding up of mummies imported from Thebes or Memphisfor the purpose of enabling the twentieth century painter to paint thegolden tresses of contemporary belles is of course not very extensivelycarried on, for one mummy will make several thousand tubes of paint, but the practice exists, and of late has been protested against both inEngland and France. 

Though the old laws of Egypt must very much have fallen into disuseduring the reigns of the latter Ptolemies, they had at least been leftunchanged; and they teach us that the shadow of freedom may be seen, asin Rome under the Cæsars, and in Florence under the Medici, long afterthe substance has been lost. In quarrels between man and man, the thirtyjudges, from the cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, were stillguided by the eight books of the law. The king, the priests, and thesoldiers were the only landholders in the country, while the herdsmen, husbandmen, and handicraftsmen were thought of lower caste. Though thearmies of Egypt were for the most part filled with Greek mercenaries, and the landholders of the order of soldiers could then have had aslittle to do with arms as knights and esquires have in our days, yetthey still boasted of the wisdom of their laws, by which arms were onlyto be trusted to men who had a stake in the country worth fighting for. The old manners had long since passed away. The priests alone obeyed theold marriage law, that a man should have only one wife. Other men, whenrich enough, married several. All children were held equally legitimate, whatever woman was the mother. 

[Illustration: 295. Jpg DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTIAN CARICATURE]

It is to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling wassadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art werealike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature inEgypt. We find drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation usedto hold sacred. The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied inlittle; and cats, dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes ofthe gods and kings of old. In one picture we have the mice attacking acastle defended by the cats, copied from a battle-scene of Ramses II. Fighting against the Ethiopians. In another the king on his throne asa dog, with a second dog behind him as a fan-bearer, is receiving thesacred offerings from a cat. In a third the king and queen are seenplaying at chess or checkers in the form of a lion playing with aunicorn or horned ass. 

We may form some opinion of the wealth of Egypt in its more prosperoustimes when we learn from Cicero that in this reign, when the Romans hadgood means of knowing, the revenues of the country amounted to twelvethousand five hundred talents, or ten million dollars; just one-half ofwhich wras paid by the port of Alexandria. This was at a time when theforeign trade had, through the faults of the government, sunk down toits lowest ebb; when not more than twenty ships sailed each year fromthe Red Sea to India; when the free population of the kingdom had so farfallen off that it was not more than three millions, which was only halfof what it had been in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, though Alexandriaalone still held three hundred thousand persons. 

But, though much of the trade of the country was lost, though many ofthe royal works had ceased, though the manufacture of the finer linenhad left the country, the digging in the gold mines, the favouritesource of wealth to a despot, never ceased. Night and day in the minesnear the Golden Berenicê did slaves, criminals, and prisoners of warwork without pause, chained together in gangs, and guarded by soldiers, who were carefully chosen for their not being able to speak the languageof these unhappy workmen. 

[Illustration: 297. Jpg THE MINES OF MAGHARA]

The rock which held the gold was broken up into small pieces; when hardit was first made brittle in the fire; the broken stone was then washedto separate the waste from the heavier grains which held the gold; and, lastly, the valuable parts when separated were kept heated in a furnacefor five days, at the end of which time the pure gold was found meltedinto a button at the bottom. But the mines were nearly worn out; andthe value of the gold was a very small part of the thirty-five milliondollars which they are said to have yielded every year in the reign ofRamses II. 

As Auletes felt himself hardly safe upon the throne, his first wish wasto get himself acknowledged as king by the Roman senate. For this end hesent 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 richestfarmers of the Roman taxes, which he spent on the same object. Butthough the Romans never tried to turn him out of his kingdom, he did notget the wished-for decree before he went to Rome in the twenty-fourthyear of his reign. But we know nothing of the first years of his reign. A nation must be in a very demoralised state when its history disprovesthe saying, that 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 thanduring this dull, un-warlike, and vicious time. The king gave himself upto his natural bent for pleasure and debauchery. At times when virtue isuncopied and unrewarded it is usually praised and let alone; but in thisreign sobriety was a crime in the eyes of the king, a quiet behaviourwas thought a reproach against his irregularities. The Platonicphilosopher Demetrius was in danger of being put to death because itwas told to the king that he never drank wine, and had been seen at thefeast of Bacchus in his usual dress, while every other man was in thedress of a woman. But the philosopher was allowed to disprove the chargeof sobriety, or at least to make amends for his fault; and, on the kingsending for him the next day, he made himself drunk publicly in thesight of all the court, and danced with cymbals in a loose dress ofTarentine gauze. But so few are the deeds worth mentioning in thefalling state that we are pleased even to be told that, in the onehundred and seventy-eighth Olympiad, Strato of Alexandria conquered inthe Olympic games and was crowned in the same day for wrestling, andfor _pancratium_, or wrestling and boxing joined, these sports beingconsidered among the most honourable in which athletes could contend. 

In the thirteenth year of this reign (B. C. 68), when the war against thepirates called for the whole naval force of Rome, Pompey sent a fleetunder Lentulus Marcellinus to clear the coast and creeks of Egypt fromthese robbers. The Egyptian government was too weak to guard its owntrade; and Lentulus in his consulship put the Ptolemaic eagle andthunderbolt on his coins, to show that he had exercised an act ofsovereignty. Three years later, we again meet with the eagle andthunderbolt on the consular coins of Aurelius Cotta; and we learn fromCicero that in that year it was found necessary to send a fleet toAlexandria to enforce the orders of the senate. 

We next find the Roman senate debating whether they should not seize thekingdom as their inheritance under the wall of Ptolemy Alexander II. , but, moved by the bribes of Auletes, and perhaps by other reasons whichwe are not told, they forbore to grasp the prize. In this difficultyAuletes was helped by the great Pompey, to whom he had sent an embassywith a golden crown wrorth four thousand pieces of gold, which met himat Damascus on his Syrian campaign. He then formed a secret treaty withMithridates, 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 thatone 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 themarriages; and Auletes was able to conceal from the Romans that he hadever formed an alliance with their enemy. 

In the year which was made famous by the consulship of Cicero, Jerusalemwas taken by the Roman army under Pompey; and Judæa, which had enjoyeda shortlived freedom of less than one hundred years under the Maccabees, was then put under a Roman governor. The fortifications of the templewere destroyed. This was felt by the Jews of Lower Egypt as a heavyblow, and from this time their sufferings in that country began. Whiletheir brethren had been lords of Judæa, they had held up their headswith the Greeks in Alexandria, but upon the fall of Jerusalem they sunkdown to the rank of the Egyptians. They thought worse of themselves, and they were thought worse of by others. The Egyptian Jews were veryclosely allied to the people of the Delta. Though they had been againand again warned by their prophets not to mix with the Egyptians, theyseem not to have listened to the warning. They were in many religiouspoints less strict than their brethren in Judæa. The living in Egypt, the building a second temple, and the using a Greek Bible, were allbreaches, if not of the law, at least of the tradition. They surroundedtheir synagogues with sacred groves, which were clearly forbidden byMoses. Though they were not guilty of worshipping images, yet they didnot think it wrong to have portraits and statues of themselves. In theirdislike of pork, in their washings, and in other Eastern customs, theywere like the Egyptians; and hence the Greeks, who thought them bothbarbarians, very grudgingly yielded to them the privileges of choosingtheir own magistrates, of having their own courts of justice, andthe other rights of citizenship which the policy of the Ptolemieshad granted. The Jews, on the other hand, in whose eyes religion waseverything, saw the Greeks and Egyptians worshipping the same gods andthe same sacred animals, and felt themselves as far above the Greeks inthose branches of philosophy which arise out of religion as they werebelow them in that rank which is gained by success in war. Hence it waswith many heartburnings, and not without struggles which shed bloodin the streets of Alexandria, that they found themselves, in the yearswhich ushered in the Christian era, sinking down to the level of theEgyptians, and losing one by one the rights of Macedonian citizenship. 

During these years Auletes had been losing his friends and weakeninghis government, and, at last, when he refused to quarrel with the senateabout the island of Cyprus, the Egyptians rose against him in arms, andhe was forced to fly from Alexandria. He took ship for Rome, and in hisway there he met Cato, who was at Rhodes on his voyage to Cyprus. Hesent to Cato to let him know that he was in the city, and that he wishedto see him. But the Roman sent word back that he was unwell, and thatif the king wanted to speak to him he must come himself. This was nota time for Auletes to quarrel with a senator, when he was on his wayto Rome to beg for help against his subjects; so he was forced to goto Cato's lodgings, who did not even rise from his seat when the kingentered the room. But this treatment was not quite new to Auletes; inhis flight from Alexandria, in disguise and without a servant, he hadhad to eat brown bread in the cottage of a peasant; and he now learnedhow much more irksome it was to wait upon the pleasure of a Romansenator. Cato gave him the best advice; that, instead of going to Rome, where he would find that all the wealth of Egypt would be thoughta bribe too small for the greediness of the senators whose votes hewanted, he would do better to return to Alexandria, and make peace withhis rebellious subjects. Auletes, however, went on to Italy, and hearrived at Rome in the twenty-fourth year of his reign; and in thethree years that he spent there in courting and bribing the senators, helearned the truth of Cato's statements, and the value of his advice. 

His brother Ptolemy, who was reigning in Cyprus, was not even so welltreated. The Romans passed a law making that wealthy island a Romanprovince, no doubt upon the plea of the will of Alexander II. And theking's illegitimacy; and they sent Cato, rather against his will, toturn Ptolemy out of his kingdom. Ptolemy gave up the island without Catobeing called upon to use force, and in return the Romans made him highpriest in the temple of the Paphian Venus; but he soon put himself todeath by poison. Canidius Crassus, who had been employed by Cato inthis affair, may have had some fighting at sea with the Egyptians, ason one of his coins we see on one side a crocodile, and on the other theprow of a ship, as if he had beaten the Egyptian fleet in the mouth ofthe Nile. 

On the flight of their king, the rebellious Alexandrians set onthe throne the two eldest of his daughters, Cleopatra Tryphaena andBerenicê, and sent an embassy, at the head of which was Dion, theacademic philosopher, to plead their cause at Rome against the king. Butthe gold of Auletes had already gained the senate; and Cicero spoke, onhis behalf, one of his great speeches, now unfortunately lost, in whichhe rebutted the charge that Auletes was at all to be blamed for thedeath of Alexander, whom he thought justly killed by his guards for themurder of his queen and kinswoman. Cæsar, whose year of consulship wasthen drawing to an end, took his part warmly; and Auletes became in debtto him in the sum of seventeen million drachmas, or nearly two and ahalf million dollars, either for money lent to bribe the senators, orfor bonds then given to Cæsar instead of money. By these means Auletesgot his title acknowledged; the door of the senate was shut againstthe Alexandrian ambassadors; and the philosopher Dion, the head of theembassy, was poisoned in Rome by the slaves of his friend Lucceius, inwhose house he was dwelling. But nevertheless, Auletes was not able toget an army sent to help him against his rebellious subjects and hisdaughters; nor was Cæsar able to get from the senate, for the employmentof 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 perhapshave gained it if the Roman creditors of Auletes, who were alreadytrembling for their money, had not bribed openly in favour of Pompey, as the more powerful of the two. On Pompey, therefore, the choice ofthe senate at last fell. Pompey then took Auletes into his house, as hisfriend and guest, and would have got orders to lead him back into hiskingdom at the head of a Roman army had not the tribunes of the people, fearing any addition to Pompey's great power, had recourse to theirusual state-engine, the Sibylline books; and the pontifex, at theirbidding, publicly declared that it was written in those sacred pagesthat the King of Egypt should have the friendship of Rome, but shouldnot be helped with an army. 

But though Lentulus and Pompey were each strong enough to stop the otherfrom having this high command, Auletes was not without hopes that someRoman general would be led, by the promise of money, and by the honour, to undertake his cause, though it would be against the laws of Rome todo so without orders from the senate. Cicero then took him under hisprotection, and carried him in a litter of state to his villa at Baiæ, and wrote to Lentulus, the proconsul of Cilicia and Cyprus, stronglyurging him to snatch the glory of replacing Auletes on the throne, andof being the patron of the King of Egypt. But Lentulus seems not to havechosen to run the risk of so far breaking the laws of his country. 

Auletes then went, with pressing letters from Pompey, to Gabinius, theproconsul of Syria, and offered him the large bribe of ten thousandtalents, or seven and a half million dollars, if he would lead the Romanarmy into Egypt, and replace him on the throne. Most of the officerswere against this undertaking; but the letters of Pompey, the advice ofMark Antony, the master of the horse, and perhaps the greatness of thebribe, outweighed those cautious opinions. 

While Auletes had been thus pleading his cause at Rome and with thearmy, Cleopatra Tryphæna, the elder of the two queens, had died; and, asno one of the other children of Auletes was old enough to be joined withBerenicê on the throne, the Alexandrians sent to Syria for Seleucus, theson of Antiochus Grypus and of Selene, the sister of Lathyrus, to cometo Egypt and marry Berenicê. He was low-minded in all his pleasures andtastes, and got the nickname of _Cybiosactes_, the scullion. He waseven said to have stolen the golden sarcophagus in which the body ofAlexander was buried; and was so much disliked by his young wife thatshe had him strangled on the fifth day after their marriage. Berenicêthen married Archelaus, a son of Mithridates Eupator, King of Pontus;and she had reigned one year with her sister and two years with herhusbands when the Roman army brought back her father, Ptolemy Auletes, into Egypt. 

Gabinius, on marching, gave out as an excuse for quitting the provinceentrusted to him by the senate, that it was in self-defence; and thatSyria was in danger from the Egyptian fleet commanded by Archelaus. Hewas accompanied by a Jewish army under the command of Antipator, sent byHyrcanus, whom the Romans had just made governor of Judæa. Mark Antonywas sent forward with the horse, and routed the Egyptian army nearPelusium, and then entered the city with Auletes. The king, in thecruelty of his revenge, wished to put the citizens to the sword, and wasonly stopped by Antony's forbidding it. The Egyptian army was at thistime in the lowest state of discipline; it was the only place where thesovereign was not despotic. The soldiers, who prized the lawlessness oftheir trade even more than its pay, were a cause of fear only to theirfellow-citizens. When Archelaus led them out against the Romans, andordered them to throw up a trench around their camp, they refused toobey; they said that ditch-making was not work for soldiers, but thatit ought to be done at the cost of the state. Hence, when on this firstsuccess Gabinius followed with the body of the army, he easily conqueredthe rest of the country and put to death Berenicê and Archelaus. He thenled back the army into his province of Syria, but left behind him a bodyof troops under Lucius Septimius to guard the throne of Auletes and tocheck the risings of the Alexandrians. 

Gabinius had refused to undertake this affair, which was the moredangerous because against the laws of Rome, unless the large bribe werefirst paid down in money. He would take no promises; and Auletes, who inhis banishment had no money at his command, had to borrow it of some onewho would listen to his large promises of after payment. He found thisperson in Rabirius Posthumus, who had before lent him money, and who sawthat it would be all lost unless Auletes regained the throne. Rabiriustherefore lent him all he was worth, and borrowed the rest from hisfriends; and as soon as Auletes was on the throne, he went to Alexandriato claim his money and his reward. 

[Illustration: 309. Jpg VOCAL STATUE OF MEMNON]

While Auletes still stood in need of Roman help, and saw the advantageof keeping faith with his foreign creditors, Rabirius was allowed tohold the office of royal _dioecetes_, or paymaster-general, which wasone of great state and profit, and one by which he could in time haverepaid himself his loan. He wore a royal robe; the taxes of Alexandriawent through his hands; he was indeed master of the city. But when theking felt safe on his throne, he sent away his troublesome creditor, who returned to Rome with the loss of his money, to stand his trial asa state criminal for having lent it. Rabirius had been for a timemortgagee in possession of the revenues of Egypt; and Auletes had feltmore indebted for his crown to a Roman citizen than to the senate. Butin the dealings of Rome with foreign kings, these evils had often beforearisen, and at last been made criminal; and while Gabinius was triedfor treason, _de majestate_, for leading his army out of his province, Rabirius was tried, under the _Lex Julia de pecuniis repetundis_, forlending money and taking office under Auletes. 

One of the last acts of Gabinius in Syria was to change the form ofthe Jewish government into an aristocracy, leaving Hyrcanus as the highpriest. The Jews thereon began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, thathad been thrown down by Pompey. Among the prisoners sent to Rome byGabinius was Timagenes, the son of the king's banker, who probably losthis liberty as a hostage on Ptolemy's failure to repay the loan. But hewas afterwards ransomed from slavery by a son of Sulla, and he remainedat Rome teaching Greek eloquence in the schools, and writing hisnumerous works. 

The climate of Egypt is hardly suited to Europeans, and perhaps at notime did the births in the Greek families equal the deaths. That partof the population was kept up by newcomers; and latterly the Romans hadbeen coming over to share in the plunder that was there scattered amongthe ruling class. For some time past Alexandria had been a favouriteplace of settlement for such Romans as either through their fault ortheir misfortune were forced to leave their homes. 

[Illustration: 312. Jpg THE SPHINX]

All who were banished for their crimes or who went away to escape fromtrial, all runaway slaves, all ruined debtors, found a place of safetyin Alexandria; and by enrolling themselves in the Egyptian army theyjoined in bonds of fellowship with thousands like themselves, who madeit a point of honour to screen one another from being overtaken byjustice or reclaimed by their masters. With such men as these, togetherwith some bands of robbers from Syria and Cilicia, had the ranks of theEgyptian army latterly been recruited. These were now joined by anumber of soldiers and officers from the army of Gabinius, who liked theEgyptian high pay and lawlessness better than the strict discipline ofthe Romans. As, in this mixed body of men, the more regular courageand greater skill in war was found among the Romans, they were chieflychosen as officers, and the whole had something of the form of a Romanarmy. These soldiers in Alexandria were above all law and discipline. 

The laws were everywhere badly enforced, crimes passed unpunished, andproperty became unsafe. Robberies were carried on openly, and the onlyhope of recovering what was stolen was by buying it back from the thief. In many cases, whole villages lived upon plunder, and for that purposeformed themselves into a society, and put themselves under the orders ofa chief; and, when any merchant or husbandman was robbed, he applied tothis chief, who usually restored to him the stolen property on paymentof one-fourth of its value. 

As the country fell off in wealth, power, and population, the schoolsof Alexandria fell off in learning, and we meet with few authors whosenames can brighten the pages of this reign. Apollonius of Citium, indeed, who had studied surgery and anatomy at Alexandria under Zopyrus, when he returned to Cyprus, wrote a treatise on the joints of the body, and dedicated his work to Ptolemy, king of that island. The work isstill remaining in manuscript. 

[Illustration: 314. Jpg]

[Illustration: 314b. Jpg BEARERS OF EVIL TIDINGS]

Beside his name of Neus Dionysus, the king is in the hieroglyphicssometimes called Philopator and Philadelphus; and in a Greek inscriptionon a statue at Philae he is called by the three names, Neus Dionysus, Philopator, Philadelphus. The coins which are usually thought to be hisare in a worse style of art than those of the kings before him. Hedied in B. C. 51, in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, leaving fourchildren, namely, Cleopatra, Arsinoë, and two Ptolemies. 

[Illustration: 315. Jpg PAGE IMAGE]

CHAPTER VII--CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS

_Pompey, Cæsar, and Antony in Egypt--Cleopatra's extravagance andintrigues--Octavianus annexes Egypt--Retrospect. _

Ptolemy Neus Dionysus had by his will left his kingdom to Cleopatra andPtolemy, his elder daughter and elder son, who, agreeably to the customof 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 publictreasury, and in it he called upon the Roman people, by all the gods andby 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. Thesenate voted Pompey tutor to the young king, or governor of Egypt; andthe Alexandrians in the third year of his reign sent sixty ships of warto help the great Pompey in his struggle against Julius Cæsar for thechief power in Rome. But Pompey's power was by that time drawing to anend, 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, wasgovernor of Egypt, and his first act was to declare his young pupilking, and to set at nought the will of Auletes, by which Cleopatra wasjoined with him on the throne. 

Cleopatra fled into Syria, and, with a manly spirit which showed whatshe was afterwards to be, raised an army and marched back to the bordersof Egypt, to claim her rights by force of arms. It was in the fourthyear of her reign, when the Egyptian troops were moved to Pelusium tomeet 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 afriend, landed on the shores of Egypt in distress, and almost alone. Hisarmy had just been beaten at Pharsalia, and he was flying from Cæsar, and he hoped to receive from the son the kindness which he had shownto the father. But gratitude is a virtue little known in palaces, andPtolemy had been cradled in princely selfishness. In this civil warbetween Pompey and Cæsar, the Alexandrians would have been glad to bethe friends of both, but that was now out of the question; Pompey'scoming made it necessary for them to choose which they should join, andPtolemy's council, like cowards, only wished to side with the strong. 

[Illustration: 317. Jpg PILLAR OF POMPEY AT ALEXANDRIA]

Pothinus the eunuch, Achilles the general, who was a native Egyptian, and Theodotus of Chios, who was the prince's tutor in rhetoric, were themen by whom the fate of this great Roman was decided. "By putting him todeath, " said Theodotus, "you will oblige Cæsar, and have nothing tofear 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 theEgyptian army, were sent down to the seaside to welcome him, to receivehim as a friend, and to murder him. They handed him out of his galleyinto their boat, and put him to death on his landing. They then cut offfrom his lifeless trunk the head which had been three times crowned withlaurels in the capitol; and in that disfigured state the young Ptolemysaw for the first time, and without regret, the face of his father'sbest friend. 

When Cæsar, following the track of Pompey, arrived in the roadstead ofAlexandria, all was already over. With deep agitation he turned awaywhen the murderer brought to his ship the head of the man who had beenhis son-in-law and for long years his colleague in rule, and to getwhom alive into his power he had come to Egypt. The dagger of the rashassassin precluded an answer to the question, how Cæsar would have dealtwith the captive Pompey; but, while the human sympathy which still founda place in the great soul of Cæsar, side by side with ambition, enjoinedthat he should spare his former friend, his interest also required thathe should annihilate Pompey otherwise than by the executioner. Pompeyhad been for twenty years the acknowledged ruler of Rome; a dominion sodeeply rooted does not end with the ruler's death. The death of Pompeydid not break up the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an aged, incapable, and worn-out chief, in his sons Gnacus and Sextus, twoleaders, both of whom were young and active, and the second of them ofdecided capacity. To the newly founded hereditary monarchy, hereditarypretendership attached itself at once like a parasite, and it was verydoubtful whether by this change of persons Cæsar did not lose more thanhe gained. 

Meanwhile in Egypt Cæsar had now nothing further to do, and the Romansand Egyptians expected that he would immediately set sail andapply himself to the subjugation of Africa, and to the huge task oforganisation which awaited him after the victory. But Cæsar, faithfulto his custom--wherever he found himself in the wide Empire--of finallyregulating matters at once and in person, and firmly convinced that noresistance was to be expected either from the Roman garrison or fromthe court; being, moreover, in urgent pecuniary embarrassment, landedin Alexandria with the two amalgamated legions accompanying him to thenumber of thirty-two hundred men and eight hundred Celtic and Germancavalry, took up his quarters in the royal palace, and proceededto collect the necessary sums of money and to regulate the Egyptiansuccession, without allowing himself to be disturbed by the saucy remarkof Pothinus that Cæsar should not for such petty matters neglect his ownso important affairs. In his dealings with the Egyptians he was justand even indulgent. Although the aid which they had given to Pompeyjustified the imposing of a war contribution, the exhausted land wasspared from this; and, while the arrears of the sums stipulated for inB. C. 59, and since then only about half paid, were remitted, there wasrequired merely a final payment of ten million denarii (two milliondollars). The belligerent brother and sister were enjoined immediatelyto suspend hostilities, and were invited to have their disputeinvestigated and decided before the arbiter. They submitted; the royalboy was already in the palace and Cleopatra also presented herselfthere. Cæsar adjudged the kingdom of Egypt, agreeably to the testamentof Auletes, to the intermarried brother and sister Cleopatra andPtolomoreus Dionysus, and further gave unasked the kingdom ofCyprus--cancelling the earlier act of annexation--as the appanage ofthe second-born of Egypt to the younger children of Auletes, Arsinoë andPtolemy the younger. But a storm was secretly preparing. Alexandriawas a cosmopolitan city as well as Rome, hardly inferior to the Italiancapital in the number of its inhabitants, far superior to it in stirringcommercial spirit, in skill of handicraft, in taste for science andart: in the citizens there was a lively sense of their own nationalimportance, and, if there was no political sentiment, there was at anyrate a turbulent spirit, which induced them to indulge in their streetriots regularly and heartily. We may conceive their feeling when theysaw the Roman general ruling in the palace of the Lagids, and theirkings accepting the award of his tribunal. Pothinus and the boy-king, both, as may be conceived, very dissatisfied at once with the peremptoryrequisition of all debts and with the intervention in the throne-disputewhich could only issue, as it did, in the favour of Cleopatra, sent--inorder to pacify the Roman demands--the treasures of the temple and thegold plate of the king with intentional ostentation to be melted at themint; with increasing indignation the Egyptians--who were pious evento superstition, and who rejoiced in the world-renowned magnificenceof their court as if it were a possession of their own--beheld the barewalls of their temples and the wooden cups on the table of theirking. The Roman army of occupation also, which had been essentiallydenationalised by its long abode in Egypt and the many intermarriagesbetween the soldiers and Egyptian women, and which moreover numbered amultitude of the old soldiers of Pompey and runaway Italian criminalsand slaves in its ranks, was indignant at Cæsar, by whose orders it hadbeen obliged to suspend its action on the Syrian frontier, and at hishandful of haughty legionaries. The tumult even at the landing, whenthe multitude saw the Roman axes carried into the old palace, and thenumerous instances in which his soldiers were assassinated in the city, had taught Cæsar the immense danger in which he was placed with hissmall force in presence of the exasperated multitude. But it wasdifficult to return on account of the northwest winds prevailing at thisseason of#the year, and the attempt of embarkation might easily becomea signal for the outbreak of the insurrection; besides, it was not thenature of Cæsar to take his departure without having accomplished hiswork. He accordingly ordered up at once reinforcements from Asia, and meanwhile, till these arrived, made a show of the utmostself-possession. Never was there greater gaiety in his camp than duringthis rest at Alexandria, and while the beautiful and clever Cleopatrawas not sparing of her charms in general and least of all towards herjudge, Cæsar also appeared among all his victories to value most thosewon over beautiful women. It was a merry prelude to graver scenes. Underthe leadership of Achilles and, as was afterwards proved, by the secretorders of the king and his guardian, the Roman army of occupationstationed in Egypt appeared unexpectedly in Alexandria, and, as soonas the citizens saw that it had come to attack Cæsar, they made commoncause with the soldiers. 

With a presence of mind, which in some measure justifies hisfoolhardiness, Cæsar hastily collected his scattered men; seized thepersons of the king and his ministers; entrenched himself in the royalresidence and adjoining theatre; and gave orders, as there was no timeto place in safety the war-fleet stationed in the principal harbourimmediately in front of the theatre, that it should be set on fire andthat Pharos, the island with the light-tower commanding the harbour, should be occupied by means of boats. Thus at least a restrictedposition for defence was secured, and the way was kept open to procuresupplies and reinforcements. At the same time orders were issued to thecommandant of Asia Minor as well as to the nearest subject countries, the Syrians and the Nabatæans, the Cretans and the Rhodians, to sendmen and ships in all haste to Egypt. The insurrection, at the head ofwhich the Princess Arsinoë and her confidant, the eunuch Ganymedes, hadplaced themselves, meanwhile had free course in all Egypt and in thegreater part of the capital. In the streets of the latter there wasdaily fighting, but without success either on the part of Cæsar ingaining freer scope and breaking through to the fresh water lake ofMariut which lay behind the town, where he could have provided himselfwith water and forage; or on the part of the Alexandrians in acquiringsuperiority in besieging and depriving them of all drinking water; for, when the Nile canals in Cæsar's part of the town had been spoiled by theintroduction of salt water, drinkable water was unexpectedly found inwells dug on the beach. 

As Cæsar was not to be overcome from the landward side, the exertionsof the besiegers were directed to destroy his fleet and cut him off fromthe sea, by which supplies reached him. The island with the lighthouseand the mole by which this was connected with the mainland divided theharbour into a western and an eastern half, which were in communicationwith each other through two arch-openings in the mole. Cæsar commandedthe island and the east harbour, while the mole and the west harbourwere in possession of the citizens; and, as the Alexandrian fleetwas burnt, his vessels sailed in and out without hindrance. TheAlexandrians, after having vainly attempted to introduce fire-ships fromthe western into the eastern harbour, equipped with the remnant of theirarsenal a small squadron, and with this blocked up the way of Cæsar'svessels, when these were towing in a fleet of transports with a legionthat had arrived from Asia Minor; but the excellent Rhodian marinersof Cæsar mastered the enemy. Not long afterwards, however, the citizenscaptured the lighthouse-island, and from that point totally closed thenarrow and rocky mouth of the east harbour for larger ships; so thatCæsar's fleet was compelled to take its station in the open roads beforethe east harbour, and his communication with the sea hung only on aweak thread. Cæsar's fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeatedly bythe superior naval force of the enemy, could neither shun the unequalstrife, since the loss of the lighthouse-island closed the inner harbouragainst it, nor yet withdraw, for the loss of the roadstead wouldhave debarred Cæsar wholly from the sea. Though the brave legionaries, supported by the dexterity of the Rhodian sailors, had always hithertodecided these conflicts in favour of the Romans, the Alexandriansrenewed 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, Cæsar would betotally hemmed in and probably lost. 

It was absolutely necessary to make an attempt to recover thelighthouse-island. The double attack, which was made by boats from theside of the harbour and by the war-vessels from the seaboard, in realitybrought not only the island but also the lower part of the mole intohis power; it was only at the second arch-opening of the mole thatCæsar ordered the attack to be stopped, and the mole to be there closedtowards the city by a transverse wall. But while a violent conflictarose here round the entrenchers, the Roman troops left the lowerpart of the mole adjoining the island bare of defenders; a divisionof Egyptians landed there unexpectedly, attacked in the rear the Romansoldiers and sailors crowded together on the mole of the transversewall, and drove the whole mass in wild confusion into the sea. A partwere taken on board by the Roman ships; but more were drowned. Somefour hundred soldiers and a still greater number of men belonging to thefleet were sacrificed on this day; the general himself, who had sharedthe 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 savehimself by swimming to another. But, severe as was the loss suffered, it was amply compensated by the recovery of the lighthouse-island, whichalong with the mole as far as the first arch-opening remained in thehands of Cæsar. 

At length the longed-for relief arrived, Mithridates of Pergamus, anable warrior of the school of Mithridates Eupator, whose natural sonhe claimed to be, brought up by land from Syria a motley army, --theIturæans of the prince of the Libanus, the Bedouins of Jamblichus, son of Sampsiceramus, the Jews under the minister Antipater, and thecontingents generally of the petty chiefs and communities of Cilicia andSyria. From Pelusium, which Mithridates had the fortune to occupy onthe day of his arrival, he took the great road towards Memphis, with theview of avoiding the intersected ground of the Delta and crossing theNile before its division; during which movement his troops receivedmanifold support from the Jewish peasants who were settled in this partof Egypt. The Egyptians, with the young king Ptolemy now at their head, whom Cæsar had released to his people in the vain hope of allaying theinsurrection by his means, despatched an army to the Nile, to detainMithridates on its farther bank. The army fell in with the enemyeven beyond Memphis at the so-called Jews' camp, between Onion andHeliopolis; nevertheless Mithridates, trained in the Roman fashionof manoeuvring and encamping, amidst successful conflicts gained theopposite bank at Memphis. Cæsar, on the other hand, as soon as heobtained news of the arrival of the relieving army, conveyed a partof his troops in ships to the end of the lake of Morea to the westof Alexandria, and marched round this lake and down the Nile to meetMithridates advancing up the river. 

The junction took place without the enemy attempting to hinder it. Cæsarthen marched into the Delta, whither the king had retreated, overthrew, notwithstanding the deeply cut canal in their front, the Egyptianvanguard at the first onset, and immediately stormed the Egyptian campitself. It lay at the foot of a rising ground between the Nile--fromwhich only a narrow path separated it--and marshes difficult of access. Cæsar caused the camp to be assailed simultaneously from the frontand from the flank on the path along the Nile; and during this assaultordered a third detachment to ascend unseen the heights of the camp. Thevictory was complete; the camp was taken, and those of the Egyptians whodid not fall beneath the sword of the enemy were drowned in the attemptto escape to the fleet on the Nile. With one of the boats, which sankoverladen with men, the young king also disappeared in the waters of hisnative stream. Immediately after the battle Cæsar advanced at the headof his cavalry from the land side straight into the portion of thecapital occupied by the Egyptians. In mourning attire, with the imagesof their gods in their hands, the enemy received him and sued forpeace; and his troops, when they saw him return as victor from the sideopposite to that by which he had set forth, welcomed him with boundlessjoy. The fate of the town, which had ventured to thwart the plans ofthe master of the world and had brought him within a hair's-breadth ofdestruction, lay in Cæsar's hands; but he was too much of a ruler tobe sensitive, and dealt with the Alexandrians as with the Massiliots. Cæsar--pointing to their city severely devastated and deprived of itsgranaries, of its world-renowned library, and of other important publicbuildings on the occasion of the burning of the fleet--exhorted theinhabitants in future earnestly to cultivate the arts of peace alone, and to heal the wounds inflicted on themselves; for the rest, hecontented himself with granting to the Jews settled in Alexandria thesame rights which the Greek population of the city enjoyed, andwith placing in Alexandria instead of the previous Roman army ofoccupation--which nominally at least obeyed the kings of Egypt, aRoman garrison--two of the legions besieged there, and a third whichafterwards arrived from Syria--under a commander nominated by himself. For this position of trust a man was purposely selected whose birth madeit impossible for him to abuse it--Rufio, an able soldier, but the sonof a freed man. Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy obtained thesovereignty of Egypt under the supremacy of Rome; the Princess Arsinoëwas carried off to Italy, that she might not serve once more as apretext for insurrections to the Egyptians, who were after the Orientalfashion quite as much devoted to their dynasty as they were indifferenttowards the individual dynasts; and Cyprus became again a part of theRoman province of Cilicia. Cæsar's love for Cleopatra, who had justborne him a son named Cæsarion, was not so strong as his ambition;and after having been above a year in Egypt he left her to govern thekingdom in her own name, but on his behalf; and sailed for Italy, takingwith him the sixth legion. While engaged in this warfare in Alexandria, Cæsar had been appointed dictator in Rome, where his power was exercisedby Mark Antony, his master of the horse; and for above six months hehad not written one letter home, as though ashamed to write about thefoolish difficulty he had entangled himself in, until he had got out ofit. 

On reaching Rome Cæsar amused the people and himself with a grandtriumphal show, in which, among the other prisoners of war, the PrincessArsinoë followed his car in chains; and, among the works of artand nature which were got together to prove to the gazing crowd thegreatness of his conquests, was that remarkable African animal thecamelopard, then for the first time seen in Rome. In one chariot was astatue of the Nile god; and in another the Pharos lighthouse on fire, with painted flames. Nor was this the last of Cæsar's triumphs, for soonafterwards Cleopatra, and her brother Ptolemy, then twelve years old, who was called her husband, came to Rome as his guests, and dwelt forsome time with him in his house. 

The history of Egypt, at this time, is almost lost in that of Rome. Within five years of Cæsar's landing in Alexandria, and finding that bythe death of Pompey he was master of the world, he paid his own life asthe forfeit for crushing his country's liberty. The Queen of Egypt, withher infant son Cæsarion about four years old, was then in Rome, livingwith Cæsar in his villa on the farther side of the Tiber. On Cæsar'sdeath her first wish was to get the child acknowledged by the Romansenate as her colleague on the throne of Egypt, and as a friend of theRoman people. With this view she applied to Cicero for help, makinghim an offer of some books or works of art; but he was offended ather haughtiness and refused her gifts. Besides, she was more likelyto thwart than to help the cause for which he was struggling. He wasalarmed at hearing that she was soon to give birth to another child. Hedid not want any more Cæsars. He hoped she would miscarry, as he wishedshe had before miscarried. So he bluntly refused to undertake her cause. On this she thought herself unsafe in Rome, she fled privately, andreached Egypt in safety with Cæsarion; but we hear of no second childby Julius. The Romans were now the masters of Egypt, and Cleopatra couldhardly hope to reign but by the help of one of the great generals whowere struggling for the sovereignty of the republic. Among these was theyoung Sextus Pompeius, whose large fleet made him for a time masterof Sicily and of the sea; and he was said to have been admitted by theQueen of Egypt as a lover. But he was able to be of but little useto her in return for her favours, as his fleet was soon defeated byOctavianus. 

Cæsar had left behind him, in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, a largebody of Roman troops, in the pay and nominally under the orders ofCleopatra, but in reality to keep Egypt in obedience. There they livedas if above all Egyptian law or Roman discipline, indulging in the vicesof that luxurious capital. When some of them in a riot, in the year 45B. C. , killed two sons of Bibulus the consul, Cleopatra was either afraidor unable to punish the murderers; the most she could do was to getthem sent in chains into Syria to the grieving father, who with truegreatness of mind sent them back to the Egyptian legions, saying that itwas for the senate to punish them, not for him. 

While Ptolemy her second husband was a boy and could claim no shareof the government, he was allowed to live with all the outward show ofroyalty, but as soon as he reached the age of fifteen, in B. C. 44, atwhich he might call himself her equal and would soon be her master, Cleopatra had him put to death. She had then reigned four years withher elder brother and four years with her younger brother, and from thattime forward she reigned alone, calling her child by Cæsar her colleagueon the throne. 

At a time when vice and luxury claimed the thoughts of all who were notbusy in the civil wars, we cannot hope to find the fruits of genius inAlexandria; but the mathematics are plants of a hardy growth, and arenot choked so easily as poetry and history. Sosigenes was then thefirst astronomer in Egypt, and Julius Cæsar was guided by his advicein setting right the Roman Calendar. He was a careful and painstakingmathematician, and, after fixing the length of the year at three hundredand sixty-five days and a quarter, he three times changed the beginningof the year, in his doubts as to the day on which the equinox fell; forthe astronomer could then only make two observations in a year with aview to learn the time of the equinox, by seeing when the sun shonein the plane of the equator. Photinus the mathematician wrote bothon arithmetic and geometry, and was usually thought the author of amathematical work published in the name of the queen, called the Canonof Cleopatra. 

Didymus was another of the writers that we hear of at that time. He wasa man of great industry, both in reading and writing; but when we aretold that he wrote three thousand five hundred volumes, or rolls, itrather teaches us that a great many rolls of papyrus would be wanted tomake a modern book, than what number of books he wrote. These writingswere mostly on verbal criticism, and all have long since perished exceptsome notes or scholia on the Hiad and Odyssey which bear his name, andare still printed in some editions of Homer. 

Dioscorides, the physician of Cleopatra, has left a work on herbs andminerals, and on their uses in medicine; also on poisons and poisonousbites. To these he has added a list of prescriptions. His workshave been much read in all ages, and have only been set aside by thediscoveries of the last few centuries. Serapion, another physician, wasperhaps of this reign. 

[Illustration: 333. Jpg RUINS OF HERMONTHIS]

He followed medicine rather than surgery; and, while trusting chiefly tohis experience gained in clinical or bedside practice, was laughed at bythe surgeons as an empiric. 

The small temple at Hermonthis, near Thebes, seems to have been builtin this reign, and it is dedicated to Mandoo, or the sun, in the nameof Cleopatra and Cassation. It is unlike the older Egyptian temples inbeing much less of a fortress; for what in them is a strongly walledcourtyard, with towers to guard the narrow doorway, is here a smallspace between two double rows of columns, wholly open, without walls, while the roofed building is the same as in the older temples. Near itis a small pool, seventy feet square, with stone sides, which was usedin the funerals and other religious rites. 

The murder of Cæsar did not raise the character of the Romans, or makethem more fit for self-government. It was followed by the well-knowncivil war; and when, by the battle of Philippi and the death of Brutusand Cassius, his party was again uppermost, the Romans willingly bowedtheir necks to his adopted son Octavianus, and his friend Mark Antony. 

It is not easy to determine which side Cleopatra meant to take inthe war between Antony and the murderers of Cæsar; she did not openlydeclare herself, and she probably waited to join that which fortunefavoured. Allienus had been sent to her by Dolobella to ask for suchtroops as she could spare to help Antony, and he led a little army offour Roman legions out of Egypt into Syria; but when there he addedthem to the force which Cassius had assembled against Antony. Whether heacted through treachery to the queen or by her orders is doubtful, forCassius felt more gratitude to Allienus than to Cleopatra. Serapionalso, the Egyptian governor of Cyprus, joined what was then the strongerside, and sent all the ships that he had in his ports to the assistanceof Cassius. Cleopatra herself was getting ready another large fleet, butsince the war was over, and Brutus and Cassius dead before it sailed, she said it was meant to help Octavianus and Antony. Thus, by the actsof her generals and her own hesitation, Cleopatra fairly laid herselfopen to the reproach of ingratitude to her late friend Cæsar, or atleast of thinking that the interests of his son Cæsarion were opposed tothose of his nephew Octavianus; and accordingly, as Antony was passingthrough Cilicia with his army, he sent orders to her to come from Egyptand meet him at Tarsus, to answer the charge of having helped Brutus andCassius in the late military campaign. 

Dellius, the bearer of the message, showed that he understood themeaning of it, by beginning himself to pay court to her as his queen. Headvised 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 gallantAntony. On this she sailed for Cilicia laden with money and treasuresfor presents, full of trust in her beauty and power of pleasing. She hadwon the heart of Cæsar when, though younger, she was less skilled inthe arts of love, and she was still only twenty-five years old; and, carrying with her such gifts and treasures as became her rank, sheentered the river Cydnus with the Egyptian fleet in a magnificentgalley. The stern was covered with gold; the sails were of scarletcloth: and the silver oars beat time to the music of flutes and harps. The queen, dressed like Venus, lay under an awning embroidered withgold, while pretty dimpled boys, like Cupids, stood on each side ofthe sofa fanning her. Her maidens, dressed like sea-nymphs and graces, handled the silken tackle and steered the vessel. As she approachedthe town of Tarsus the winds wafted the perfumes and the scent of theburning incense to the shores, which were lined with crowds who had comeout to see her land; and Antony, who was seated on the tribunal waitingto receive her, found himself left alone. 

Tarsus on the river Cydnus was situated at the foot of the wooded slopesof Mount Taurus, and it guarded the great pass in that range between thePhrygian tribes and the Phoenician tribes. It was a city half-Greekand half-Asiatic, and had from the earliest days been famed forship-building and commerce. Mount Taurus supplied it with timber, andaround the mouth of its river, as it widens into a quiet lake, were theancient dockyards which had made the ships of Tarshish proverbial withthe Hebrew writers. Its merchants, enriched by industry and enlightenedby foreign trade, had ornamented their city with public buildings, andestablished a school of Greek learning. Its philosophers, however, weremore known as travelling teachers than as scholars. No learned men cameto Tarsus; but it sent forth its rhetoricians in its own ships, whospread themselves as teachers over the neighbouring coasts. In Romethere were more professors of rhetoric, oratory, and poetry from Tarsusthan from Alexandria or Athens. Athenodorus Cordylion, the stoic, taughtCato; Athenodorus, the son of Sandon, taught Cæsar; Nestor a littlelater taught the young Marcellus; while Demetrius was one of the firstmen of learning who sailed to the distant island of Britain. Thisschool, in the next generation, sent forth the apostle Paul, who taughtChristianity throughout the same coasts. 

Tarsus was now to be amused by the costly follies and extravagances ofCleopatra. As an initial display, soon after landing, she invited Antonyand his generals to a dinner, at which the whole of the dishes placedbefore them were of gold, set with precious stones, and the room and thetwelve couches were ornamented with purple and gold. On his praising thesplendour of the sight, as passing anything he had before seen, she saidit was a trifle, and begged that he would take the whole of it as a giftfrom her. The next day he again dined with her, and brought a largernumber of his friends and generals, and was of course startled to see acostliness which made that of the day before seem nothing; and she againgave him the whole of the gold upon the table, and gave to each of hisfriends the couch upon which he sat. 

These costly and delicate dinners were continued every day; and oneevening, when Antony playfully blamed her wastefulness, and said that itwas not possible to fare in a more costly manner, she told him that thedinner of the next day should cost ten thousand ses-tertia, or threehundred thousand dollars. This he would not believe, and laid her awager that she would fail in her promise. When the day came the dinnerwas as grand and dainty as those of the former days; but when Antonycalled upon her to count up the cost of the meats and wines, she saidthat she did not reckon them, but that she should herself soon eat anddrink the ten thousand sestertia. She wore in her ears two pearls, thelargest known in the world, which, like the diamonds of European kings, had come to her with her crown and kingdom, and were together valued atthat large sum. 

[Illustration: 338. Jpg EGYPTIAN PICTURE OF CLEOPATRA]

On the servants removing the meats, they set before her a glass ofvinegar, and she took one of these earrings from her ear and droppedit into the glass, and when dissolved drank it off. Plancus, one of theguests, who had been made judge of the wager, snatched the other fromthe queen's ear, and saved it from being drunk up like the first, andthen declared that Antony had lost his bet. The pearl which was savedwas afterwards cut in two and made into a pair of earrings for thestatue of Venus in the Pantheon at Rome; and the fame of the wager maybe said to have made the two half pearls at least as valuable as the twowhole ones. 

The beauty, sweetness, and gaiety of this young queen, joined to hergreat powers of mind, which were all turned to the art of pleasing, hadquite overcome Antony; he had sent for her as her master, but he wasnow her slave. Her playful wit was delightful; her voice was as aninstrument of many strings; she spoke readily to every ambassador in hisown language; and was said to be the only sovereign of Egypt who couldunderstand the languages of all her subjects: Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopie, Troglodytic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. With these charms, at the ageof five-and-twenty, the luxurious Antony could deny her nothing. Thefirst favour which she asked of her lover equals any cruelty that wehave met with in this history: it was, that he would have her sisterArsinoë put to death. Cæsar had spared her life, after his triumph, through love of Cleopatra; but he was mistaken in the heart of hismistress; she would have been then better pleased at Arsinoe's death;and Antony, at her bidding, had her murdered in the temple of Diana, atEphesus. 

Though Fulvia, the faithful wife of Antony, could scarcely keep togetherhis party at Rome against the power of Octavianus, his colleague in thetriumvirate, and though Labienus, with the Parthian legions, was readyto march into Syria against him, yet he was so entangled in the artfulnets of Cleopatra, that she led him captive to Alexandria; and there theold warrior fell into every idle amusement, and offered up at the shrineof pleasure one of the greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of histime. The lovers visited each other every day, and the waste of theirentertainments passed belief. Philotas, a physician who was followinghis studies at Alexandria, told Plutarch's grandfather that he was onceinvited to see Antony's dinner cooked, and among other meats were eightwild boars roasting whole; and the cook explained to him that, thoughthere were only twelve guests, yet as each dish had to be roasted to asingle turn of the spit, and Antony did not know at what hour he shoulddine, it was necessary to cook at least eight dinners. But the mostcostly of the luxuries then used in Egypt were the scents and theointments. Gold, silver, and jewels, as Pliny remarks, will pass to aman's heirs, even clothes will last a few months or weeks, but scentsfly off and are lost at the first moment that they are admired; andyet ointments, like the attar of roses, which melted and gave out theirscent, and passed into air when placed upon the back of the hand, as thecoolest 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 wasusually sealed up in small alabaster jars, which were made in the townof 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. Theywere meant never to be opened, but to let the scent escape slowly andsparingly through the porous stone. In these Egyptian jars scentedointment was carried by trade to the banks of the Tigris and to theshores of the Mediterranean. 

The tenth and eleventh years of the queen's reign were marked bya famine through the land, caused by the Nile's not rising to thewished-for height and by the want of the usual overflow; and aninscription which was written both in the Greek and Egyptian languagesdeclares the gratitude of the Theban priests and elders and citizens toCallimachus, the prefect of the Theban taxes, who did what he could tolessen the sufferings in that city. The citizens of Alexandria on thoseyears received from the government a smaller gift of corn than usual, and the Jews then felt their altered rank in the state. They weretold that they were not citizens, and accordingly received no portionwhatever out of the public granaries, but were left like the Egyptiansto take care of themselves. From this time forward there was anunceasing 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 namedPtolemy, and then a son and daughter, twins, Alexander Helius andCleopatra Selene, or _Sun_ and _Moon_. She gamed, she drank, she hunted, she reviewed the troops with him, and, to humour his coarser tastes, shefollowed him, in his midnight rambles through the city, in the dress ofa servant; and nothing that youth, beauty, wealth, and elegance could doto throw a cloak over the grossness of vice and crime was forgotten byher. The biographer thought it waste of time to mention all Cleopatra'sarts and Antony's follies, but the story of his fishing was not to beforgotten. One day, when sitting in the boat with her, he caught butlittle, and was vexed at her seeing his want of success. So he orderedone of his men to dive into the water and put upon his hook a fish whichhad been before taken. Cleopatra, however, saw what was being done, andquietly took the hint for a joke of her own. The next day she brought alarger number of friends to see the fishing, and, when Antony let downhis line, she ordered one of her divers to put on the hook a saltedfish. The line was then drawn up and the fish landed amid no littlemirth of their friends; and Cleopatra playfully consoled him, saying:"Well, general, you may leave fishing to us petty princes of Pharos andCanopus; your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms. "

Antony's eldest son by Fulvia came to Alexandria at this time, and livedin the same princely style with his father. Philotas the physician livedin his service, and one day at supper when Philotas silenced a tiresometalker with a foolish sophism the young Antony gave him as a reward thewhole sideboard of plate. But in the middle of this gaiety and feastingAntony was recalled to Europe by letters which told him that his wifeand brother had been driven out of Rome by Octavianus. Before, however, he reached Rome his wife Fulvia was dead; and, wishing to strengthen hisparty, he at once married Octavia, the sister of Octavianus and widow ofMarcellus. 

In that year Herod passed through Egypt on his way to Rome to claimJudæa as his kingdom. He came through Arabia to Pelusium, and thencehe sailed to Alexandria. Cleopatra, who wanted his services, gave himhonourable entertainment in her capital, and made him great offers inorder to persuade him to take the command of her army. But the Jewishprince saw that a kingdom was to be gained by offering his servicesto Antony and Octavianus; and he went on to Rome. There through thefriendship of Antony he was declared King of Judæa by the senate. Hethen returned to Syria to collect an army and to win the kingdom whichhad been granted to him; and by the help of Sosius, Antony's lieutenant, he had conquered Jerusalem when the war broke out between Antony andOctavianus. 

In the next year (B. C. 38) Antony was himself in Syria, carrying on thewar which ended with the battle of Actium; and he sent to Alexandria tobeg Cleopatra to join him there. On her coming, he made her perhaps thelargest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress: he gave her the wideprovinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part ofJudæa, and part of Arabia Nabataea. These large gifts only made her askfor more, and she begged him to put to death Herod, King of Judæa, andMalichus, King of Arabia Nabataea, the former of whom had advised Antonyto break through the disgraceful ties which bound him to Cleopatra, asthe only means of saving himself from being crushed by the rising powerof Octavianus. She asked to have the whole of Arabia and Judæa given toher. But Antony had not so far forgotten himself as to yield to thesecommands; and he only gave her the balsam country around Jericho, anda rent-charge of two hundred talents, or one hundred and fifty thousanddollars, a year, on the revenues of Judæa. On receiving this largeaddition to her kingdom, and perhaps in honour of Antony, who had thenlost all power in Italy but was the real king of Egypt and its Greekprovinces, Cleopatra began to count the years of her reign afresh: whatwas really the sixteenth of her reign, and had been called the sixteenthof Ptolemy, her elder brother, she called the first of her own reign, and she reckoned them in the same way till her death. Cleopatra hadaccompanied Antony on his expedition against Armenia, as far as theriver Euphrates, and returned through Damascus to Judæa. There she waspolitely received by her enemy Herod, who was too much in fear of Antonyto take his revenge on her. She farmed out to him the revenues of herparts of Arabia and Judæa, and was accompanied by him on her way towardsEgypt. But after wondering at the wasteful feasts and gifts, in whichpearls and provinces were alike trifled with, we are reminded that evenCleopatra was of the family of the Lagido, and that she was well awarehow much the library of the museum had added to the glory of Alexandria. It had been burnt by the Roman troops under Cæsar, and, to make amendsfor this, Antony gave her the large library of the city of Pergamus, bywhich Eumenes and Attalus had hoped to raise a school that should equalthe museum of Alexandria. Cleopatra placed these two hundred thousandvolumes in the temple of Serapis; and Alexandria again held the largestlibrary in the world; while Pergamus ceased to be a place of learning. By the help of this new library, the city still kept its trade in booksand its high rank as a school of letters; and, when the once proudkingdom of Egypt was a province of Rome, and when almost every trace ofthe monarchy was lost, and half a century afterwards Philo, the Jewishphilosopher of Alexandria, asked, "Where are now the Ptolemies?" thehistorian could have found an answer by pointing to the mathematicalschools and the library of the Serapeum. 

But to return to our history. When Antony left Cleopatra, he marchedagainst the Parthians, and on his return he again entered Alexandria intriumph, leading Artavasdes, King of Armenia, chained behind his chariotas he rode in procession through the city. He soon afterwards madeknown his plans for the government of Egypt and the provinces. He calledtogether the Alexandrians in the Gymnasium, and, seating himself andCleopatra on two golden thrones, he declared her son Cæsarion hercolleague, and that they should hold Egypt, Cyprus, Africa, andCoele-Syria. To her sons by himself he gave the title of kings thechildren of kings; and to Alexander, though still a child, he gaveArmenia and Media, with Parthia when it should be conquered; and toPtolemy he gave Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Cleopatra wore thesacred robe of Isis, and took the title of the New Isis, while the youngAlexander wore a Median dress with turban and tiara, and the littlePtolemy a long cloak and slippers, with a bonnet encircled by a diadem, like the successors of Alexander. Antony himself wore an Easternscimetar by his side, and a royal diadem round Ins head, as being notless a sovereign than Cleopatra. To Cleopatra he then gave the whole ofhis Parthian booty, and his prisoner Tigranes. 

[Illustration: 346. Jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTHONY]

But notwithstanding Antony's love for Cleopatra, her falsehood andcruelty were such that when his power in Rome fell he could no longertrust her. He even feared that she might have him poisoned, and wouldnot eat or drink in her palace without having the food first tastedherself. But she had no such thoughts, and only laughed at him for hisdistrust. One day to prove her power, and at the same time her goodfaith, she had the flowers with which he was to be crowned, as hereclined at her dinner-table, dipped in deadly poison. Antony dined withthese round his head, while she wore a crown of fresh flowers. Duringthe dinner Cleopatra playfully took off her garland and dipped it inher cup to flavour the wine, and Antony did the same with his poisonedflowers, steeping them in his own cup of wine. He even raised it to hislips to drink, when she hastily caught hold of his hand. "Now, " saidshe, "I am the enemy against whom you have latterly been so careful. IfI could have endured to live without you, that draught would have givenme the opportunity. " She then ordered the wine to be taken to one ofthe condemned criminals, and sent Antony out to see that the man died ondrinking it. 

On the early coins of Cleopatra we see her head on the one side andthe eagle or the cornucopia on the other side, with the name of "_QueenCleopatra_. " After she had borne Antony children, we find the wordsround their heads, "_Of Antony, on the conquest of Armenia;" "OfCleopatra the queen, and of the kings the children of kings_. " On thelater coins we find the head of Antony joined with hers, as king andqueen, and he is styled "_the emperor_" and she "_the young goddess_. "Cleopatra was perhaps the last Greek sovereign that bore the title ofgod. Nor did it seem unsuitable to her, so common had the Greeks of Asiaand Egypt made that epithet, by giving it to their kings, and even totheir kings' families and favourites. But the use of the word made nochange in their religious opinions; they never for a moment supposedthat the persons whom they so styled had any share in the creation andgovernment of the world. 

[Illustration: 347. Jpg LATER COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY. ]

The death of Julius Cæsar and afterwards of Brutus and Cassius had leftAntony with the chief sway in the Roman world; but his life of pleasurein Egypt had done much to forfeit it; and Octavianus, afterwards calledAugustus, had been for some time rising in power against him. His party, however, was still strong enough in Rome to choose for consul his friendSoslus, who put the head of Antony on one side of his coins, and theEgyptian eagle and thunderbolt on the other. Soon afterwards Antony washimself chosen as consul elect for the coming year, and he then struckhis last coins in Egypt. The rude copper coins have on one side the nameof "_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 bythe senate. Octavianus, however, would not declare war against him, butdeclared war against Cleopatra, or rather, as he said, against Mardionher slave, Iris her waiting-woman, and Charmion, another favouritewoman; 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 battleof Actium, Octavianus held Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Carthage, with anarmy of eighty thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and a fleet of twohundred and fifty ships: Antony held Egypt, Ethiopia, and Cyrene, withone hundred thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and five hundredships; he was followed by the kings of Africa, Upper Cilicia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Commagene, and Thrace; and he received helpfrom the kings of Pontus, Arabia, Judæa, 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. Cleopatrawas confident of success and as boastful as she was confident. Her mostsolemn manner of promising was: "As surely as I shall issue my decreesfrom the Roman Capitol. " But the mind of Antony was ruined by his lifeof pleasure. He carried her with him into battle, at once his strengthand his weakness, and he was beaten at sea by Octavianus, on the coastof Epirus, near Actium. This battle, which sealed the fate of Antony, ofEgypt, and of Rome, would never have been spoken of in history if he hadthen had the courage to join his land forces; but he sailed away in afright with Cleopatra, leaving an army larger than that of Octavianus, which would not believe that he was gone. They landed at Parastonium inLibya, where he remained in the desert with Aristocrates the rhetoricianand one or two other friends, and sent Cleopatra forward to Alexandria. There she talked of carrying her ships across the isthmus to the headof the Red Sea, along the canal from Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, andthence flying to some unknown land from the power of the conqueror. Antony soon however followed her, but not to join in society. Helocked himself up in his despair in a small fortress by the side ofthe harbour, which he named his Timonium, after Timon, the Athenianphilosopher who forsook the society of men. When the news, however, arrived that his land forces had joined Octavianus, and his allies haddeserted him, he came out of his Timonium and joined the queen. 

In Alexandria, Antony and Cleopatra only so far regained their courageas to forget their losses, and to plunge into the same round of costlyfeasts and shows that they had amused themselves with before their fall;but, while they were wasting these few weeks in pleasure, Octavianus wasmoving his fleet and army upon Egypt. 

When he landed on the coast, Egypt held three millions of people; hemight have been met by three hundred thousand men able to bear arms. As for money, which has sometimes been called the sinews of war, thoughthere might have been none in the treasury, yet it could not have beenwanting in Alexandria. But the Egyptians, like the ass in the fable, hadnothing to fear from a change of masters; they could hardly be kickedand cuffed worse than they had been; and, though they themselveswere the prize struggled for, they looked on with the idle stare of abystander. Some few of the garrisons made a show of holding out; but, asAntony had left the whole of his army in Greece when he fled away afterthe battle of Actium, he had lost all chance of safety. 

When Pelusium was taken, it was said by some that Seleucus the commanderhad given it up by Cleopatra's orders; but the queen, to justifyherself, put the wife and children of Seleucus into the hands of Antonyto be punished if he thought fit. When Octavianus arrived in front ofAlexandria he encamped not far from the hippodrome, a few miles from theCanopic or eastern gate. On this Antony made a brisk sally, and, routingthe Roman cavalry, returned to the city in triumph. On his way tothe palace he met Cleopatra, whom he kissed, armed as he was, andrecommended to her favour a brave soldier who had done good service inthe battle. She gave the man a cuirass and helmet of gold; but hesaw that Antony's cause was ruined; his new-gotten treasure made himselfish, and he went over to the enemy's camp that very night. The nextmorning Antony ordered out his forces, both on land and sea, to engagewith those of Octavianus; but he was betrayed by his generals: his fleetand cavalry deserted him without a blow being struck; and his infantry, easily routed, retreated into the city. 

[Illustration: 351. Jpg GREEK PICTURE OF CLEOPATRA]

Cleopatra had never acted justly towards her Jewish subjects; and, during a late famine, had denied to them their share of the wheatdistributed out of the public granaries to the citizens of Alexandria. The Jews in return showed no loyalty to Cleopatra, nor regret at herenemy's success; and on this defeat of her troops her rage fell uponthem. She made a boast of her cruelty towards them, and thought if shecould have killed all the Jews with her own hand she should have beenrepaid for the loss of the city. On the other hand, Antony thought thathe had been betrayed by Cleopatra, as she had received many messengersfrom Octavianus. To avoid his anger, therefore, she fled to a monumentwhich she had built near the temple of Isis, and in which she had beforeplaced her treasure, her gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory, and cinnamon, together with a large quantity of flax and a number oftorches, as though to burn herself and her wealth in one flame. Here sheretired 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 incourage by a woman, plunged his sword into his breast. But the wound wasnot fatal, and when Cleopatra heard of it she sent to beg that he wouldcome to her. Accordingly his servants carried him to the door of hermonument. But the queen, in fear of treachery, would not suffer the doorto be opened; but she let a cord down from the window, and she with hertwo women drew him up. Nothing could be more affecting than the sight toall who were near; Antony covered with blood, in the agonies of death, stretching out his hands to Cleopatra, and she straining every nerve andevery feature of her face with the effort she was making. He was at lastlifted in at the window, but died soon afterwards. By this time the citywas in the power of Octavianus; he had not found it necessary to stormthe walls, for Antony's troops had all joined him, and he sent in Gallusto endeavour to take Cleopatra alive. This he succeeded in doing bydrawing her into conversation at the door of her monument, while threemen scaled the window and snatched out of her hand the dagger with whichshe would have stabbed herself. 

Octavianus, henceforth called Augustus, began by promising his soldierstwo hundred and fifty drachmas each as prize money, for not beingallowed to plunder Alexandria. He soon afterwards entered the city, noton 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 bethought as great a lover of learning as of mercy, he gave out that hespared the place to the prayers of his Alexandrian friend. He called theGreek citizens together in the gymnasium, and, mounting the tribunal, promised that they should not be hurt. Cleopatra's three children byAntony, who had not the misfortune to be of the same blood with theconqueror, were kindly treated and taken care of; while Cæsarion, herson by Julius Cæsar, who was betrayed by his tutor Rhodon while flyingtowards Ethiopia, was put to death as a rival. The flatterers of theconqueror would of course say that Cæsarion was not the son ofJulius, but of Ptolemy, the elder of the two boys who had been calledCleopatra's husbands. The feelings of humanity might have answeredthat, if he was not the only son of the uncle to whom Octavianus owedeverything, he was at least helpless and friendless, and that he nevercould trouble the undisputed master of the world; but Augustus, withthe heartless cruelty which murdered Cicero, and the cold caution whichmarked his character through life, listening to the remark of Arius, that there ought not to be two Cæsars, had him at once put to death. 

Augustus gave orders that Cleopatra should be carefully guarded lest sheshould put an end to her own life; he wished to carry her with him toRome as the ornament of his triumph. He paid her a visit of condolenceand consolation. He promised her she should receive honourabletreatment. He allowed her to bury Antony. He threatened that herchildren should be punished if she hurt herself; but she deceived herguards and put herself to death, either by poison, or, as was morecommonly thought, by the bite of an asp brought to her in a basketof fruit. She was thirty-nine years of age, having reigned twenty-twoyears, of which the last seven were in conjunction with Antony; and shewas buried in his tomb with all regal splendour. 

The death of Cleopatra was hailed at Rome as a relief from a saddisgrace by others besides the flatterers of the conqueror. Whengoverned by Julius Cæsar, and afterwards by Antony, the Romans sometimesfancied they were receiving orders from the barbarian queen towhom their master was a slave. When Antony was in arms against hiscountrymen, they were not without alarm at Cleopatra's boast that shewould yet make her power felt in the Capitol; and many feared that evenwhen Antony was overthrown the conqueror might himself be willing towear her chains. But the prudent Augustus was in no danger of beingdazzled by beauty. He saw clearly all that was within his reach; he didnot want her help to the sovereignty of Egypt; and from the day that heentered the empty palace in Alexandria, his reign began as sole masterof Rome and its dependent provinces. 

While we have in this history been looking at the Romans from afar, andonly seen their dealings with foreign kings, we have been able to notesome of the changes in their manners nearly as well as if we had stoodin the Forum. When Epiphanes, Philometor, and Euergetes II. Owed theircrowns to Roman help, Rome gained nothing but thanks, and that weight intheir councils which is fairly due to usefulness: the senate asked forno tribute, and the citizens took no bribes. But with the growthof power came the love of conquest and of its spoils. Macedoniawas conquered in what might be called self-defence; in the reign ofCleopatra Cocce, Cyrene was won by fraud, and Cyprus was then seizedwithout a plea. The senators were even more eager for bribes than thesenate for provinces. The nobles who governed these wide provincesgrew too powerful for the senate, and found that they could heap upill-gotten wealth faster by patronising kings than by conquering them;and the Egyptian monarchy was left to stand in the reigns of Auletesand Cleopatra, because the Romans were still more greedy than when theyseized Cyrene and Cyprus. And, lastly, when the Romans were worn out byquarrels and the want of a steady government, and were ready to obeyany master who could put a stop to civil bloodshed, they made Octavianusautocrat of Rome; he then gained for himself whatever he seized inthe name of the republic, and he at once put an end to the Egyptianmonarchy. 

Thus fell the family of the Ptolemies, a family that had perhaps donemore for arts and letters than any that can be pointed out in history. Like other kings who have bought the praises of poets, orators, andhistorians, they may have misled the talents which they wished toguide, and have smothered the fire which they seemed to foster; but, in rewarding the industry of the mathematicians and anatomists, of thecritics, commentators, and compilers, they seem to have been highlysuccessful. It is true that Alexandria never sent forth works with thehigh tone of philosophy, the lofty moral aim and the pure taste whichmark the writings of Greece in its best ages, and which ennoble the mindand mend the heart; but it was the school to which the world long lookedfor knowledge in all those sciences which help the body and improve thearts of life, and which are sometimes called useful knowledge. Thoughgreat and good actions may not have been unknown in Alexandria, so fewvalued them that none took the trouble to record them. The well-paidwriters never wrote the lives of the Ptolemies. The muse of historyhad no seat in the museum, but it was almost the birthplace of anatomy, geometry, conic sections, geography, astronomy, and hydrostatics. 

[Illustration: 357. Jpg GRAND COLUMN AT KARNAK]

If we retrace the steps by which this Græco-Egyptian monarchy rose andfell, we shall see that virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, care andthoughtlessness, were for the most part followed by the rewards which tous seem natural. The Egyptian gold which first tempted the Greeks intothe country, and then helped their energies to raise the monarchy, afterwards undermined those same energies, and became one of theprincipal causes of its final overthrow. 

In Ptolemy Soter we see plain manners, careful plans, untiring activity, and a wise choice of friends. By him talents were highly paid whereverthey were found; no service left unrewarded; the people trusted andtaught the use of arms; their love gained by wise laws and even-handedjustice; docks, harbours, and fortresses built, schools opened; andby these means a great monarchy founded. Ptolemy was eager to fillthe ranks of his armies with soldiers, and his new city with traders. Instead of trying to govern against the will of the people, to thwartor overlook their wishes and feelings, his utmost aim was to guide them, and to make Alexandria a more agreeable place of settlement than thecities of Asia Minor and Syria, for the thousands who were thenpouring out of Greece on the check given to its trading industry by theoverthrow of its freedom. Though every thinking man might have seenthat the new government, when it gained shape and strength, would be amilitary despotism; yet his Greek subjects must have felt, while it wasweak and resting on their good-will rather than on their habits, thatthey were enjoying many of the blessings of freedom. Had they thenclaimed a share in the government, they would most likely have gainedit, and thereby they would have handed down those blessings to theirchildren. 

Before the death of Ptolemy Soter, the habits of the people had soclosely entwined themselves round the throne, that Philadelphus was ableto take the kingdom and the whole of its wide provinces at the hands ofhis father as a family estate. He did nothing to mar his father's wiseplans, which then ripened into fruit-bearing. Trade crowded the harboursand markets, learning filled the schools, conquests rewarded thediscipline of the fleets and armies; power, wealth, and splendourfollowed in due order. The blaze thus cast around the throne would bymany kings have been made to stand in the place of justice and mildness, but under Philadelphus it only threw a light upon his good government. He was acknowledged both at home and abroad to be the first king ofhis age; Greece and its philosophers looked up to him as a friend andpatron; and though as a man he must take rank far below his father, bywhose wisdom the eminence on which he stood was raised, yet in all thegold and glitter of a king Philadelphus was the greatest of his family. 

The Egyptians had been treated with kindness by both of these Greekkings. As far as they had been able or willing to copy the arts ofGreece they had been raised to a level with the Macedonians. TheEgyptian worship and temples had been upheld, as if in obedience tothe oft-repeated answer of the Delphic oracle, that the gods shouldeverywhere be worshipped according to the laws of the country. ButEuergetes was much more of an Egyptian, and while he was bringing backthe ancient splendour to the temples, the priests must have regainedsomething of their former rank. But they had no hold on the minds of thesoldiers. Had the mercenaries, upon whom the power of the king rested, been worshippers in the Egyptian temples, the priests might, as in theearlier times, like a body of nobles, have checked his power when toogreat, and at other times upheld it. But it was not so; and upon thewhole, little seems to have been gained by the court becoming moreEgyptian, while the army must have lost something of its Greekdiscipline and plainness of manners. 

But in the next reign the fruits of this change were seen to be mostunfortunate. Philopator was an Eastern despot, surrounded by eunuchs, and drowned in pleasures. The country was governed by his women andvicious favourites. The army, which at the beginning of his reignamounted to seventy-three thousand men, beside the garrisons, was atfirst weakened by rebellion, and before the end of his reign it fell topieces. Nothing, however, happened to prove his weakness to surroundingnations; Egypt was still the greatest of kingdoms, though Rome on theconquest of Carthage, and Syria under Antiochus the Great, were fastgaining ground upon it; but he left to his infant son a throne shaken tothe very foundations. 

The ministers of Epiphanes, the infant autocrat, found the governmentwithout a head and without an army, the treasury without money, and thepeople without virtue or courage; and they placed the kingdom under thehands of the Romans to save it from being shared between the kings ofSyria and Macedonia. Thus passed the first five reigns, the first onehundred and fifty years, the first half of the three centuries that thekingdom of the Ptolemies lasted. It was then rotten at the core withvice and luxury. Its population was lessening, its trade falling off, its treasury empty, its revenue too small for the wasteful expenses ofthe government; but, nevertheless, in the eyes of surrounding nations, its trade and wealth seemed boundless. 

[Illustration: 362. Jpg Cleopatra's needle. ]

Taste, genius, and poetry had passed away; but mathematics, surgery, andgrammar still graced the museum. The decline of art is shown upon thecoins, and even in the shape of the letters upon the coins. On thoseof Cleopatra the engraver followed the fashion of the penman; the S iswritten like our C, the E has a round back, and the long O is formedlike an M reversed. 

During the reigns of the later Ptolemies the kingdom was under theshield, but also under the sceptre of Rome. Its kings sent to Romefor help, sometimes against their enemies, and sometimes against theirsubjects; sometimes they humbly asked the senate for advice, and atother times were able respectfully to disobey the Roman orders. Oneby one the senate seized the provinces; Coele-Syria, the coast ofAsia Minor, Cyrene, and the island of Cyprus; and lastly, though thePtolemies still reigned, they were counted among the clients of theRoman patrician, to whom they looked up for patronage. From this lowstate Egypt could scarcely be said to fall when it became a part of thegreat empire of Augustus. 

During the reigns of the Ptolemies, the sculpture, the style ofbuilding, the religion, the writing, and the language of the Kopts inthe Thebaid were nearly the same as when their own kings were reigningin Thebes, with even fewer changes than usually creep in through time. They had all become less simple; and though it would be difficult, andwould want a volume by itself to trace these changes, and to show whenthey came into use, yet a few of them may be pointed out. The change offashion must needs be slower in buildings which are only raised by theuntiring labour of years, and which when built stand for ages; but inthe later temples we find less strength as fortresses, few obelisks orsphinxes, and no colossal statues; we no longer meet with vast cavesor pyramids. The columns in a temple have several new patterns. Thecapitals which used to be copied from the papyrus plant are now formedof lotus flowers, or palm branches. In some cases, with a sad want oftaste, the weight of the roof rests on the weak head of a woman. The buildings, however, of the Ptolemies are such that, before thehieroglyphics on them had been read by Doctor Young, nobody had everguessed that they were later than the time of Cambyses, while three orfour pillars at Alexandria were almost the only proof that the countryhad 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 goddessunder the name of Ioh. The favourite Isis had appeared in so manycharacters that she is called the goddess with ten thousand names. 

[Illustration: 364. Jpg GRAECO-EGYPTIAN COLUMN]

The gods had also changed their rank; Phtah and Serapis now held thechief place. Strange change had also taken place in the names of menand cities. In the place of Petisis, Petamun, Psammo, and Serapion, we find men named Eudoxus, Hermophantus, and Poly crates; while of thecities, Oshmoonayn is called Hermopolis; Esne, Latopolis; Chemmis, Panopolis; and Thebes, Diospolis; and Ptolemais, Phylace, Parembole, and others had sprung into being. Many new characters crept into thehieroglyphics, as the camelopard, the mummy lying on a couch, the shipswith sails, and the chariot with horses; there were more words spelledwith letters, the groups were more crowded, and the titles of the kingswithin the ovals became much longer. 

With the papyrus, which was becoming common about the time of thePersian invasion, we find the running hand, the enchorial or commonwriting, as it was called, coming into use, in which there were fewsymbols, and most of the words were spelt with letters. Each letter wasof the easy sloping form, which came from its being made with a reed orpen, instead of the stiff form of the hieroglyphics, which were mostlycut in stone. But there is a want of neatness, which has thrown adifficulty over them, and has made these writings less easy to read thanthe hieroglyphics. 

When the country fell into the hands of Augustus, the Kopts were ina much lower state than when conquered by Alexander. Of the old moralworth and purity of manners very little remained. All respect for womenwas lost; and, when men degrade those who should be their helps towardsexcellence, they degrade themselves also. Not a small part of thenation was sunk in vice. They had been slaves for three hundred years, sometimes trusted and well-treated, but more often trampled on andground down with taxes and cruelty. They had never held up their headsas freemen, or felt themselves lords of their own soil; they had fallenoff in numbers, in wealth, and in knowledge; nothing was left to thembut their religion, their temples, their hieroglyphics, and the painfulremembrance of their faded glories. 

END OF VOL. X.