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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The
+Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12), by S. Rappoport
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)
+
+Author: S. Rappoport
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2005 [EBook #17330]
+Last Updated: September 8, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF EGYPT FROM 330 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF EGYPT
+
+From 330 B.C. to the Present Time
+
+
+By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel; Member of the Ecole
+Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German, French Orientalist and
+Philologist
+
+VOL. X.
+
+Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations
+
+THE GROLIER SOCIETY
+
+PUBLISHERS, LONDON
+
+
+[Illustration: Spines]
+
+[Illustration: Cover]
+
+[Illustration: Frontispiece]
+
+OSIRIS AND ISIS AND THE FOUR CHILDREN OF HORUS WITHIN A SHRINE.
+
+[Illustration: Titlepage]
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+Professor Maspero closes his History of Egypt with the conquest of
+Alexander the Great. There is a sense of dramatic fitness in this
+selection, for, with the coming of the Macedonians, the sceptre of
+authority passed for ever out of the hand of the Egyptian. For several
+centuries the power of the race had been declining, and foreign nations
+had contended for the vast treasure-house of Egypt. Alexander found the
+Persians virtually rulers of the land. The ancient people whose fame
+has come down to us through centuries untarnished had been forced to
+bow beneath the yoke of foreign masters, and nations of alien blood were
+henceforth to dominate its history.
+
+The first Ptolemy founded a Macedonian or Greek dynasty that maintained
+supremacy in Egypt until the year 30 B.C. His successors were his lineal
+descendants, and to the very last they prided themselves on their
+Greek origin; but the government which they established was essentially
+Oriental in character. The names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra convey an
+Egyptian rather than a Greek significance; and the later rulers of
+the dynasty were true Egyptians, since their ancestors had lived in
+Alexandria for three full centuries.
+
+In the year 30 B.C. Augustus Cæsar conquered the last of the Ptolemies,
+the famous Cleopatra. Augustus made Egypt virtually his private
+province, and drew from it resources that were among the chief elements
+of his power. After Augustus, the Romans continued in control until
+the coming of the Saracens under Amr, in the seventh century. Various
+dynasties of Mohammedans, covering a period of several centuries,
+maintained control until the Mamluks, in 1250, overthrew the legitimate
+rulers, to be themselves overthrown three centuries later by the Turks
+under Selim I. Turkish rule was maintained until near the close of the
+eighteenth century, when the French, under Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded
+Egypt. In 1806, after the expulsion of the French by the English, the
+famous Mehemet Ali destroyed the last vestiges of Mamluk power, and set
+up a quasi-independent sovereignty which was not disturbed until toward
+the close of the nineteenth century. The events of the last twenty-five
+years, comprising a short period of joint control of Egypt by the French
+and English, followed by the British occupation, are fresh in the mind
+of the reader.
+
+What may be termed the modern history of Egypt covers a period of more
+than twenty-two centuries. During this time the native Egyptian can
+scarcely be said to have a national history, but the land of Egypt, and
+the races who have become acclimated there, have passed through many
+interesting phases. Professor Maspero completes the history of antiquity
+in that dramatic scene in which the ancient Egyptian makes his last
+futile struggle for independence. But the Nile Valley has remained the
+scene of the most important events where the strongest nations of the
+earth contended for supremacy. It is most interesting to note that
+the invaders of Egypt, while impressing their military stamp upon the
+natives, have been mastered in a very real sense by the spell of
+Egypt’s greatness; but the language, the key to ancient learning and
+civilisation, still remained a well-guarded secret. Here and there one
+of the Ptolemies or Greeks thought it worth his while to master the
+hieroglyphic writing. Occasionally a Roman of the later period may have
+done the same, but such an accomplishment was no doubt very unusual from
+the first. The subordinated Egyptians therefore had no resource but to
+learn the language of their conquerors, and presently it came to pass
+that not even the native Egyptian remembered the elusive secrets of
+his own written language. Egyptian, as a spoken tongue, remained, in
+a modified form, as Koptic, but at about the beginning of our era the
+classical Egyptian had become a dead language. No one any longer wrote
+in the hieroglyphic, hieratic, or demotic scripts; in a word, the
+hieroglyphic writing was forgotten. The reader of Professor Maspero’s
+pages has had opportunity to learn how this secret was discovered in the
+nineteenth century. This information is further amplified in the present
+volumes, and we see how in our own time the native Egyptian has regained
+something of his former grandeur through the careful and scientific
+study of monuments, inscriptions, and works of art. Thus it will appear
+in the curious rounding out of the enigmatic story that the most ancient
+history of civilisation becomes also the newest and most modern human
+history.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER’S NOTE
+
+It should be explained that Doctor Rappoport, in preparing these
+volumes, has drawn very largely upon the authorities who have previously
+laboured in the same field, and in particular upon the works of Creasy,
+Duruy, Ebers, Lavisse, Marcel, Michaud, Neibuhr, Paton, Ram-baud, Sharp,
+and Weil. The results of investigations by Professor W. M. Flinders
+Petrie and other prominent Egyptologists have been fully set forth and
+profusely illustrated.
+
+[Illustration: 001.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
+
+[Illustration: 002.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
+
+
+
+
+
+_EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIES_
+
+_ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT--THE REIGNS OP THE
+PTOLEMIES--GRADUAL GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE--INTRIGUES OF CLEOPATRA
+WITH POMPEY, CAESAR, AND ANTONY_
+
+_Alexander the Great in Egypt--Alexandria founded--The Greeks favour
+the Jews--Ptolemy Soter establishes himself in Egypt and overcomes
+Perdiccas--Struggles for Syria--Beginning of Egyptian coinage--Art and
+Scholarship--Ptolemy resigns in favour of his son Philadelphus
+--First treaty with Rome--Building of the Pharos--Growth of
+Commerce--Encouragement of Learning--The library of Alexandria--Euclid
+the geometer--Poets, astronomers, historians, and critics--The
+Septuagint--Marriage of Philadelphus to his sister Arsinoë--Ptolemy
+Euergetes plunders Asia--Egyptian temples enlarged--Religious
+tolerance--Annual tribute of the Jews--Eratosthenes the
+astronomer--Philosophy and Science--Culmination of Ptolemaic rule--The
+dynasty declines under Philopator--Syrians invade Egypt; Philopator
+retaliates; visits Jerusalem--The Jews persecuted--The king’s
+follies--Riots at Alexandria--Inglorious end of Philopator--The
+young Ptolemy Epiphanes protected by Rome--Military revolt
+suppressed--Coronation of Epiphanes--The Rosetta Stone--Marriage of
+Epiphanes and Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus the Cheat--A second
+rebellion repressed--Accession of Ptolemy Philometer under
+the guardianship of Cleopatra--Antiochus Epiphanes defeats
+Philometer--Euergetes seizes the throne and appeals to Rome--Antiochus
+supports Philometor against his brother Euergetes--The brothers combine
+against Antiochus--Fraternal rivalry--Philometer appeals to the Romans
+who adjust the quarrel--Philometer arbitrates in a dispute between
+the Jews and the Samaritans--New temples built--Egyptian
+asceticism--Philometer’s death; Euergetes reigns alone, and divorces
+his queen Cleopatra--Popular tumult in Alexandria--Euergetes
+flees--Cleopatra in power--Euergetes regains the throne; conquers
+Syria and makes peace with Cleopatra--The reign of Cleopatra Cocce with
+Lathyrus (Ptolemy Soter II.)--Cleopatra in the ascendent--She helps
+the Jews, while Lathyrus helps the Samaritans--Lathyrus flees to
+Cyprus--Ptolemy Alexander I rules with Cleopatra--Death of Alexander
+and restoration of Lathyrus--Accession of Cleopatra Berenicê--Ptolemy
+Alexander II. bequeaths Egypt to Rome, murders Berenicê, and is slain
+by his guards--Auletes succeeds--The Romans claim Egypt--Pompey assists
+Auletes who is expelled by the Egyptians--Cleopatra Tryphama and
+Berenicê placed on the throne--Grabinius and Mark Antony march
+into Egypt and restore Auletes--The reign of Cleopatra--Pompey made
+governor--The Egyptian fleet aids Pompey--Pompey is slain--Cæsar
+besieged by the Alexandrians--He overcomes opposition, is captivated
+by Cleopatra and establishes her authority--The Queen’s
+extravagance--Defeat of Antony--Death of Cleopatra--Octavianus annexes
+Egypt._
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
+
+
+HELLENISM AND 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 of
+their national art and literature. Greek culture and civilisation,
+passing beyond the boundaries of their national domain, crossed this
+bridge and spread over the Asiatic world. To perpetuate his name, the
+great Macedonian king founded a city, and selected for this purpose,
+with extraordinary prescience, a spot on the banks of the Nile, which,
+on account of its geographical position, was destined to become a
+centre, not only of international commerce and an entrepôt between Asia
+and Europe, but also a centre of intellectual culture. The policy of
+Alexander 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, was
+continued by the Lagidæ dynasty in Egypt. With her independence and
+native dynasties, Egypt had also lost her political strength and unity;
+she retained, however, her ancient institutions, her customs, and
+religious system. The sway of Persian dominion had passed over her
+without overthrowing this huge rock of sacerdotal power which, deeply
+rooted with many ramifications, seemed to mock the wave of time. Out
+of the ruins of political independence still towered the monuments
+of civilisation of a mighty past which gave to this country moral
+independence, and prevented the obliteration of nationality. It would
+have mattered very little in the vast empire of Alexander if one
+province had a special physiognomy. It was different, however, with the
+Lagidæ: their power was concentrated in Egypt, and they were therefore
+compelled to obliterate the separation existing between the conquering
+and the conquered races, and fuse them, if possible, into one. A
+great obstacle which confronted the Macedonian rulers in Egypt was
+the religion of the country. The interest and the policy of the Lagidæ
+demanded the removal of this obstacle, not by force but by diplomacy.
+Greek gods were therefore identified with Egyptian; Phtah became
+Hephæstos; Thot, Hermes; Ra, Helios; Amon, Zeus; and, in consequence of
+a dream which commanded him to offer adoration to a foreign god, Ptolemy
+Soter created a new Greek god who was of Egyptian origin. Osiris at that
+period was the great god of Egypt; Memphis was the religious centre of
+the cult of Apis, the representative of Osiris, and who, when living,
+was called Apis-Osiris, and when dead Osiris-Apis. Cambyses had killed
+the god or his representative: it was a bad move. Alexander made
+sacrifices to him: Ptolemy Soter did more. He endeavoured to persuade
+the Egyptians that Osirapi or Osiris-Apis was also sacred to the Greeks,
+and to identify him with some Greek divinity. There was a Greek deity
+known as Serapis, identified with Pluton, the god of Hades. Serapis,
+by a clever manouvre, a _coup de religion_, was identified with
+Osiris-Apis. The lingual similarity and the fact that Osirapi was the
+god of the Egyptian Hades made the identification acceptable.
+
+Like true Greek princes, the Ptolemies had broad views and were very
+tolerant. Keeping the Greek religion themselves, they were favourably
+disposed towards the creeds of other nationalities under their
+dominion. Thanks to this broad-mindedness and tolerance which had
+become traditional in the Lagidas family, and which has only rarely been
+imitated--to the detriment of civilisation--in the history of European
+dynasties, 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 the
+world; and it might truly be said to have been the Paris of antiquity.
+At the courts of the Ptolemies, the Medicis of Egypt, the greatest
+men of the age lived and taught. Demetrius Phalerius, one of the most
+learned and cultured men of an age of learning and knowledge, when
+driven from his luxurious palace at Athens, found hospitality at the
+court of Ptolemy Soter. The foundation of the famous Museion and
+library of Alexandria was most probably due to his influence. He
+advised the first Ptolemy to found a building where poets, scholars, and
+philosophers would have facilities for study, research, and speculation.
+The Museion was similar in some respects to the Academy of Plato. It
+was an edifice where scholars lived and worked together. Mental
+qualification was the only requirement for admission. Nationality and
+creed were no obstacles to those whose learning rendered them worthy of
+becoming members of this ideal academy and of being received among the
+immortals of antiquity. The Museion was in no sense a university, but an
+academy for the cultivation of the higher branches of learning. It might
+be compared in some respects to the College de France, or regarded as
+a development of the system under which scholars had already lived and
+worked together in the Ramesseum under Ramses II. The generosity of the
+Lagidas provided amply for this new centre of learning and study. Free
+from worldly cares, the scholars could leisurely gather information and
+hand down to posterity the fruits of their researches. From all parts
+of the world men flocked to this centre of fashionable learning, the
+birthplace of modern science. All that was brilliant and cultured,
+all the coryphées in the domain of intellect, were attracted by that
+splendid court.
+
+In the shade of the Museion a brilliant assembly--Ptolemy, Euclid,
+Hipparchus, Apollonius, and Eratosthenes--made great discoveries and
+added materially to the sum of human knowledge. Here Euclid wrote
+his immortal “Elements;” and Herophilos, the father of surgery, added
+valuable information to the knowledge of anatomy. The art and process
+of embalming, in such vogue among the Egyptians, naturally fostered the
+advance of this science. Whilst Alexandria in abstract speculation could
+not rival Greece, yet it became the home of the pioneers of positive
+science, who left a great and priceless legacy to modern civilisation.
+The importance of this event (the foundation of the Museion), says
+Draper, in his _Intellectual Development of Europe_, though hitherto
+little understood, admits of no exaggeration so far as the intellectual
+progress of Europe is concerned. The Museum made an impression upon the
+intellectual career of Europe so powerful and enduring that we still
+enjoy its results. If the purely literary productions of that age have
+sometimes been looked upon with contempt, European intellectual
+culture is still greatly indebted to Alexandria, and especially for the
+patronage she accorded to the works of Aristotle. Whilst the speculative
+mind was in later centuries allured by the supernatural, and the
+discussion of the criterion of truth and the principles of morality
+ended in the mystic doctrines of Neo-Platonism, the practical
+tendencies of the great Alexandrine scholars were instrumental in laying
+the foundations of science. To the Museion were attached the libraries:
+one in the Museion itself, and another in the quarter Rhacotis in the
+temple of Serapis, which contained about 700,000 volumes. New books were
+continually acquired. The librarians had orders to pay any sum for the
+original of the works of great masters. The Ptolemies were not only
+patrons of learning but were themselves highly educated. Ptolemy Soter
+was an historian of no mean talent, and his son Philadelphus, as a pupil
+of the poet Philetas and the philosopher Strabo, was a man of great
+learning. Ptolemy III. was a mathematician, and Ptolemy Philopator,
+who had erected and dedicated a temple to Homer, was the writer of a
+tragedy. The efforts of the Ptolemies to bring the two nationalities,
+Hellenic and Egyptian, nearer to each other, to mould and weld them
+into one if possible, to mix and mingle the two civilisations and thus
+strengthen their own power, was greatly aided by the national character
+of the Greeks and the political position of the Egyptians.
+
+The Greeks found in Egypt a national culture and especially a religious
+system. The pliant Hellenic genius could not remain insensible to that
+ancient and marvellous civilisation with its sphinxes and hieroglyphics,
+its pyramids and temples, its learning and thought, so strangely
+perplexing and interesting to the Greek mind. Not only the magnificence
+of Egyptian art, the majesty of her temples and palaces, but the wisdom
+of her social and political institutions impressed the conquerors. They
+made themselves acquainted with the institutions of the country; they
+studied its history and took an interest in its religion and mythology.
+Similarly, the conquered Egyptians, who had preferred the Macedonian
+ruler to their Persian oppressors, exhibited a natural desire to learn
+the languages and habits of their rulers, to make themselves acquainted
+with their knowledge and phases of thought, and art and science. The
+interest of the Greeks was strengthened by this, and the Egyptians were
+made to see their history in its proper light. To this endeavour we owe
+the history of Manetho. But, in spite of the policy of the Ptolemies,
+the impressionable nature of the Hellenic character and the interest of
+the Egyptians,--in spite of all that tended to a fusion of Hellenism and
+Orientalism, it never came to a proper amalgamation. The contradiction
+between the free-thought philosophy of Greece, which was fast outgrowing
+its polytheism and Olympian worship, and the deeply rooted sacerdotal
+system of the Pharaonian institutions, was too great and too flagrant.
+Thus there never was an Egypto-Hellenic phase of thought. But there was
+another civilisation of great antiquity, possessing peculiar features,
+not less interesting for the Greek mind than that of Egypt itself, with
+which Hellenism found itself face to face in the ancient land of the
+Pharaohs. It was the civilisation of Judæa, between which and Greek
+thought a greater fusion was effected.
+
+
+II.
+
+From time immemorial the Hebrew race, with all its conservative
+tendencies in religious matters, has been amenable to the influence
+of foreign culture and civilian. Egypt and Phoenicia, Babylonia and
+Assyria, Hellas and Rome have exercised an immense influence over it.
+It still is and always has been endeavouring to bring into harmony
+the exclusiveness of its national religion, with a desire to adopt the
+habits culture, language, and manners of its neighbours; an attempt in
+which it may be apparently successful, for a certain period at least,
+but which must always have a tragic end. It is impossible to be
+conservative and progressive at the same time, to be both national and
+cosmopolitan. The attempts to reconcile religious formalism and free
+reasoning have never succeeded in the history of human thought. It soon
+led to the conviction that one factor must be sacrificed, and, as soon
+as this was perceived, the party of zealots was quickly at hand to
+preach reaction. In the times of the successors of Alexander, the
+Diadochæ and Epigones, the Seleucidæ and the Lagidæ, who had divided the
+vast dominion among them, Greek influence had spread all over Palestine.
+Greek towns were founded, theatres and gymnasia established; Greek
+art was admired and her philosophy studied. The Hellenic movement was
+paramount, and the aristocratic families did their best to further it.
+Even the high priests, like Jason and Menelaos, who were supposed to be
+the guardians of the national exclusive movement, favoured Greek culture
+and institutions.
+
+In the mother country, however, the germ of reaction was always very
+strong. A constant opposition was directed against the influx of
+foreign modes of life and thought, which effaced and obliterated the
+intellectual movement. It was different, however, in the other countries
+of Macedonian dominion, and especially in Egypt. Alexander the Great,
+who seems to have been favourably inclined towards the Jews, settled a
+number of them in Alexandria. His policy was kept up by the descendants
+of Lagos, that great general of Alexander, who made himself king of the
+province which was entrusted to the care of his administration. Egypt
+became the resort of many refugees from Judæa, who gradually came under
+the influence of the dazzling Greek thought and culture, so new and
+therefore so attractive to the Semitic mind. Hellenism and Hebraism had
+known each other for some time, for Phoenician merchants and seafarers
+had carried the seed of Oriental wisdom to the distant west. The
+acquaintance, however, was a slight one. At the court of the Ptolemies,
+on the threshold of Europe and Asia, they met at last. On the shores
+of the Mediterranean, on the soil where lay the traces of the ancient
+Egyptian civilisation, in the silent avenues of mysterious sphinxes,
+amongst hieroglyphic-covered obelisks, Greek and Hebrew thought stood
+face to face. The two civilisations embodied the principles of the
+Beautiful and the Sublime, of Morality and Æstheticism, of religious
+and philosophic speculation. The result of this meeting marks a glorious
+page in the annals of human thought. Among the monuments of a great
+historic past, the speculative spirit of the East made love to the
+plastic beauty of the West, until, at last, they were united in happy
+union. Hellenic taste and sense of beauty and Semitic speculation not
+only evolved side by side in Egypt but mixed and commingled; their
+thoughts were intertwined and interwoven, giving rise to a new
+intellectual movement, a new philosophy of thought: the Judæo-Hellenic.
+Alexandrian culture, during the reign of the Ptolemies, is the offspring
+of a mixed marriage between two parents belonging to two widely
+different 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 was
+that the Jews in Egypt, not being hampered by reactionary endeavours
+from the side of conservative parties, and with an adaptability peculiar
+to their race, soon acquired the language of the people in whose midst
+they dwelt. They conversed and wrote in Greek; they moulded and shaped
+their own thoughts into Greek form; they clothed the Semitic mode of
+thinking in Hellenic garb. The immediate result was the translation of
+the Pentateuch into Greek. Vanity, of which no individual or race is
+free, had embellished this literary production, which has acquired a
+high degree of importance alike among Jews and Christians, with many
+legends. This translation, known as the Septuaginta (LXX), was followed
+by independent histories relating to Biblical events. One of the best
+known authors is the chronographer Demetrius, who lived in the second
+half of the third century, and whose work Flavius Josephus is supposed
+to have utilised. Not to speak of the Greek authors in Judæa and Syria,
+we may mention Artapanos, who, following the fashion of the day, wrote
+history in the form of a romance, and showed traces of an apologetic
+character. He endeavoured to attribute all that was great in Egyptian
+civilisation to Moses. This was due to the fact that Manetho, the
+Egyptian historian, and others following his example, had spread fables
+and venomous tales about the ancient sojourn and exodus of the Hebrews
+and their leader. To counterbalance these accusations, fables had to
+be interwoven into history, and history became romance. Moses was
+thus identified with Hermes, and made out to be the father of Egyptian
+wisdom. But, if the close acquaintanceship of Hebraism and Hellenism
+began with a mere flirtation, encouraged by the rulers of the land and
+kept up by the Jews, who wished to gain the favour of the conquering
+race and to show themselves and their history in as favourable a light
+as possible, it soon ended in a serious attachment. The Hebrews made
+themselves acquainted with Hellenic life and thought. They studied Homer
+and Hesiod, Empedocles and Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, and they
+were startled by the discovery that in Greek thought there were many
+elements, moral and religious, familiar to them: this enhanced the
+attraction. The narrowness and exclusiveness to which strict nationality
+always gives rise, engendering contempt and hatred for everything
+foreign--which made even the Greeks, with all their intellectual
+culture, draw a line of demarcation between Greek and barbarian--gave
+way to a spirit of cosmopolitan breadth of view which has only very
+rarely been equalled in history. Hellenic and Hebrew forms of
+thought were brought into friendly union, and gave birth to ideas
+and aspirations of which humanity may always be proud. Greek æsthetic
+judgment and Semitic mysticism, different phases of thought in
+themselves, were welded into one. The religious conceptions of Moses
+and the Prophets were expressed in the language of the philosophical
+schools; an attempt was made to bring into harmony the dogmas of
+supernatural revelation and the fruits of human speculative thought.
+Such an attempt is a great undertaking, for, if sincerely and
+relentlessly pursued, it must end in breaking down the barriers of
+separation, in the establishment of a common truth, and in the sacrifice
+of cherished ideals and convictions which prove to be wrong. If carried
+to its logical conclusion, such a cosmopolitan broad-mindedness, such
+a cross-fertilisation of intellectual products, must give rise to the
+ennobling idea that there is only one truth, and that the external forms
+are only fleeting waves upon the vast ocean of human ideals. The
+attempt was made in Alexandria by the Judæo-Hellenic philosophers.
+Unfortunately, however, the Hebrews, with all their adaptability, have
+not yet carried this attempt to its logical conclusion. The spirit
+of reaction has ever and anon been ready to crush in its infancy the
+endeavour of truth and sincerity, of broad-mindedness and tolerance.
+When placed before the question to be or not to be, to be logical or
+illogical, 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 Hebraism
+in Egypt had a tragic end. The union was dissolved, not, however,
+without having produced its issue: the Alexandrian culture, which was
+carried to Rome by Philo Judæus, and thus influenced later European
+thought and humanity at large.
+
+[Illustration: 015.jpg PAGE IMAGE--Alexandria]
+
+
+
+
+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 many
+years. Ever since the memorable march of Xenophon, who led, in the face
+of unknown difficulties, ten thousand Greeks across Asia Minor, the
+Greek statesman had suspected that the Hellenic soldier was capable of
+undreamed possibilities.
+
+When the young Alexander, succeeding his father Philip on the throne
+of Macedonia, got himself appointed general by the chief of the Greek
+states, and marched against Darius Codomanus, King of Persia, at the
+head of the allied armies, it was not difficult to foresee the result.
+The Greeks had learned the weakness of the Persians by having been so
+often hired to fight for them. For a century past, every Persian army
+had had a body of ten or twenty thousand Greeks in the van, and
+without this guard the Persians were like a flock of sheep without the
+shepherd’s dog. Those countries which had trusted to Greek mercenaries
+to defend them could hardly help falling when the Greek states united
+for their conquest.
+
+Alexander defeated the Persians under Darius in a great and memorable
+battle near the town of Issus at the foot of the Taurus, at the pass
+which divides Syria from Asia Minor, and then, instead of marching upon
+Persia, he turned aside to the easier conquest of Egypt. On his way
+there he spent seven months in the siege of the wealthy city of Tyre,
+and he there punished with death every man capable of carrying arms, and
+made slaves of the rest. He was then stopped for some time before the
+little town of Gaza, where Batis, the brave governor, had the courage to
+close the gates against the Greek army. His angry fretfulness at being
+checked by so small a force was only equalled by his cruelty when he had
+overcome it; he tied Batis by the heels to his chariot, and dragged him
+round the walls of the city, as Achilles had dragged the body of Hector.
+
+On the seventh day after leaving Gaza he reached Pelusium, the most
+easterly town in Egypt, after a march of one hundred and seventy miles
+along the coast of the Mediterranean, through a parched, glaring desert
+which forms the natural boundary of the country; while the fleet kept
+close to the shore to carry the stores for the army, as no fresh water
+is to be met with on the line of march. The Egyptians did not even try
+to hide their joy at his approach; they were bending very unwillingly
+under the heavy and hated yoke of Persia. The Persians had long been
+looked upon as their natural enemies, and in the pride of their success
+had added insults to the other evils of being governed by the satrap of
+a conqueror. They had not even gained the respect of the conquered by
+their warlike courage, for Egypt had in a great part been conquered and
+held by Greek mercenaries.
+
+The Persian forces had been mostly withdrawn from the country by
+Sabaces, the satrap of Egypt, to be led against Alexander in Asia Minor,
+and had formed part of the army of Darius when he was beaten near the
+town of Issus on the coast of Cilicia. The garrisons were not strong
+enough to guard the towns left in their charge; the Greek fleet easily
+overpowered the Egyptian fleet in the harbour of Pelusium, and the town
+opened its gates to Alexander. Here he left a garrison, and, ordering
+his fleet to meet him at Memphis, he marched along the river’s bank to
+Heliopolis. All the towns, on his approach, opened their gates to him.
+Mazakes, who had been left without an army, as satrap of Egypt, when
+Sabaces led the troops into Asia Minor, and who had heard of the death
+of Sabaces, and that Alexander was master of Phoenicia, Syria, and the
+north of Arabia, had no choice but to yield. The Macedonian army crossed
+the Nile near Heliopolis, and then entered Memphis.
+
+[Illustration: 019.jpg TRANSPORTING GRAIN ON THE NILE]
+
+Memphis had long been the chief city of all Egypt, even when not the
+seat of government. In earlier ages, when the warlike virtues of the
+Thebans had made Egypt the greatest kingdom in the world, Memphis and
+the lowland corn-fields of the Delta paid tribute to Thebes; but,
+with the improvements in navigation, the cities on the coast rose in
+importance; the navigation of the Red Sea, though always dangerous,
+became less dreaded, and Thebes lost the toll on the carrying trade of
+the Nile. Wealth alone, however, would not have given the sovereignty
+to Lower Egypt, had not the Greek mercenaries been at hand to fight for
+those who would pay them. The kings of Saïs had guarded their thrones
+with Greek shields; and it was on the rash but praiseworthy attempt
+of Amasis to lessen the power of these mercenaries that they joined
+Cambyses, and Egypt became a Persian province. In the struggles of the
+Egyptians to throw off the Persian yoke, we see little more than the
+Athenians and Spartans carrying on their old quarrels on the coasts
+and plains of the Delta; and the Athenians, who counted their losses
+by ships, not by men, said that in their victories and defeats together
+Egypt had cost them two hundred triremes. Hence, when Alexander, by
+his successes in Greece, had put a stop to the feuds at home, the
+mercenaries of both parties flocked to his conquering standard, and
+he found himself on the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt without any
+struggle being made against him by the Egyptians. The Greek part of
+the population, who had been living in Egypt as foreigners, now found
+themselves masters. Egypt became at once a Greek kingdom, as though
+the blood and language of the people were changed at the conqueror’s
+bidding.
+
+Alexander’s character as a triumphant general gains little from this
+easy conquest of an unwarlike country, and the overthrow of a crumbling
+monarchy. But as the founder of a new Macedonian state, and for
+reuniting the scattered elements of society in Lower Egypt after the
+Persian conquest, in the only form in which a government could be
+made to stand, he deserves to be placed among the least mischievous of
+conquerors. We trace his march, not by the ruin, misery, and anarchy
+which usually follow in the rear of an army, but by the building of
+new cities, the more certain administration of justice, the revival of
+trade, and the growth of learning. On reaching Memphis, his first care
+was to prove to the Egyptians that he was come to re-establish their
+ancient monarchy. He went in state to the temple of Apis, and sacrificed
+to 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 by
+skilful Greeks for their amusement.
+
+[Illustration: 021.jpg PHTAH the god of Memphis]
+
+But though the temple of Phtah at Memphis, in which the state ceremonies
+were performed, had risen in beauty and importance by the repeated
+additions of the later kings, who had fixed the seat of government in
+Lower Egypt, yet the Sun, or Amon-Ra, or Kneph-Ra, the god of Thebes, or
+Jupiter-Amnion, as he was called by the Greeks, was the god under whose
+spreading wings Egypt had seen its proudest days. Every Egyptian king
+had called himself “the son of the Sun;” those who had reigned at Thebes
+had boasted that they were “beloved by Amon-Ra;” and when Alexander
+ordered the ancient titles to be used towards himself, he wished to lay
+his offerings in the temple of this god, and to be acknowledged by the
+priests as his son. As a reader of Homer, and the pupil of Aristotle,
+he must have wished to see the wonders of “Egyptian Thebes,” the proper
+place for this ceremony; and it could only have been because, as a
+general, he had not time for a march of five hundred miles, that he
+chose the nearer and less known temple of Kneph-Ra, in the oasis of
+Ammon, one hundred and eighty miles from the coast.
+
+Accordingly, he floated down the river from Memphis to the sea,
+taking with him the light-armed troops and the royal band of
+knights-companions. When he reached Canopus, he sailed westward along
+the coast, and landed at Rhacotis, a small village on the spot where
+Alexandria now stands. Here he made no stay; but, as he passed through
+it, he must have seen at a glance, for he was never there a second time,
+that the place was formed by nature to be a great harbour, and that with
+a little help from art it would be the port of all Egypt. The mouths of
+the Nile were too shallow for the ever increasing size of the merchant
+vessels which were then being built; and the engineers found the deeper
+water which was wanted, between the village of Rhacotis and the little
+island of pharos. It was all that he had seen and admired at Tyre, but
+it was on a larger scale and with deeper water. It was the very spot
+that he was in search of; in every way suitable for the Greek colony
+which he proposed to found as the best means of keeping Egypt in
+obedience. Even before the time of Homer, the island of Pharos had
+given shelter to the Greek traders on that coast. He gave his orders
+to Hinocrates the architect to improve the harbour, and to lay down
+the plan of his new city; and the success of the undertaking proved
+the wisdom both of the statesman and of the builder, for the city of
+Alexandria subsequently became the most famous of all the commercial and
+intellectual centres of antiquity. From Rhacotis Alexander marched along
+the coast to Parastonium, a distance of about two hundred miles
+through the desert; and there, or on his way there, he was met by the
+ambassadors from Cyrene, who were sent with gifts to beg for peace,
+and to ask him to honour their city with a visit. Alexander graciously
+received the gifts of the Cyrenæans, and promised them his friendship,
+but could not spare time to visit their city; and, without stopping, he
+turned southward to the oasis.
+
+At Memphis Alexander received the ambassadors that came from Greece to
+wish him joy of his success; he reviewed his troops, and gave out his
+plans for the government of the kingdom. He threw bridges of boats over
+the Nile at the ford below Memphis, and also over the several branches
+of the river. He divided the country into two nomarchies or judgeships,
+and to fill these two offices of nomarchs or chief judges, the highest
+civil offices in the kingdom, he chose Doloaspis and Petisis, two
+Egyptians. Their duty was to watch over the due administration of
+justice, one in Upper and the other in Lower Egypt, and perhaps to hear
+appeals from the lower judges.
+
+He left the garrisons in the command of his own Greek generals;
+Pantaleon commanded the counts, or knights-companions, who garrisoned
+Memphis, and Pole-mon was governor of Pelusium. These were the chief
+fortresses in the kingdom: Memphis overlooked the Delta, the navigation
+of the river, and the pass to Upper Egypt; Pelusium was the harbour for
+the ships of war, and the frontier town on the only side on which Egypt
+could be attacked. The other cities were given to other governors;
+Licidas commanded the mercenaries, Peucestes and Balacrus the other
+troops, Eugnostus was secretary, while Æschylus and Ephippus were left
+as overlookers, or perhaps, in the language of modern governments, as
+civil commissioners. Apollonius was made prefect of Libya, of which
+district Parætonium was the capital, and Cleomenes prefect of Arabia at
+Heroopolis, in guard of that frontier. Orders were given to all these
+generals that justice was to be administered by the Egyptian nomarchs
+according to the common law or ancient customs of the land. Petisis,
+however, either never entered upon his office or soon quitted it, and
+Doloaspis 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 had
+gone out of cultivation with the gradual decline of Upper Egypt; and he
+employed them to guard the province against invasion or rebellion. He
+did not stay in Egypt longer than was necessary to give these orders,
+but hastened towards the Euphrates to meet Darius. In his absence Egypt
+remained quiet and happy. Peucestes soon followed him to Babylon with
+some of the troops that had been left in Egypt; and Cleomenes, the
+governor of Heroopolis, was then made collector of the taxes and prefect
+of Egypt. Cleomenes was a bad man; he disobeyed the orders sent from
+Alexander on the Indus, and he seems to have forgotten the mild feelings
+which guided his master; yet, upon the whole, after the galling yoke of
+the Persians, the Egyptians must have felt grateful for the blessings of
+justice and good government.
+
+At one time, when passing through the Thebaid in his barge on the Nile,
+Cleomenes was wrecked, and one of his children bitten by a crocodile. On
+this plea, he called together the priests, probably of Crocodilopolis,
+where this animal was held sacred, and told them that he intended
+to revenge himself upon the crocodiles by having them all caught
+and killed; and he was only bought off from carrying his threat into
+execution by the priests giving him all the treasure that they could
+get together. Alexander had left orders that the great market should be
+moved from Canopus to his new city of Alexandria, as soon as it should
+be ready to receive it. As the building went forward, the priests and
+rich traders of Canopus, in alarm at losing the advantages of their
+port, gave Cleomenes a large sum of money for leave to keep their
+market open. This sum he took, and, when the building at Alexandria was
+finished, he again came to Canopus, and because the traders would not or
+could not raise a second and larger sum, he carried Alexander’s orders
+into execution, and closed the market of their city.
+
+But instances such as these, of a public officer making use of dishonest
+means to increase the amount of the revenue which it was his duty to
+collect, might unfortunately be found even in countries which were for
+the most part enjoying the blessings of wise laws and good government;
+and it is not probable that, while Alexander was with the army in
+Persia, the acts of fraud and wrong should have been fewer in his own
+kingdom of Macedonia. The dishonesty of Cleomenes was indeed equally
+shown toward the Macedonians, by his wish to cheat the troops out of
+part of their pay. The pay of the soldiers was due on the first day of
+each month, but on that day he took care to be out of the way, and
+the soldiers were paid a few days later; and by doing the same on each
+following month, he at length changed the pay-day to the last day of the
+month, and cheated the army out of a whole month’s pay.
+
+Another act for which Cleomenes was blamed was not so certainly wrong.
+One summer, when the harvest had been less plentiful than usual, he
+forbade the export of grain, which was a large part of the trade of
+Egypt, thereby lowering the price to the poor so far as they could
+afford to purchase such costly food, but injuring the landowners. On
+this, the heads of the provinces sent to him in alarm, to say that they
+should not be able to get in the usual amount of tribute; he therefore
+allowed the export as usual, but raised the duty; and he was reproached
+for receiving a larger revenue while the landowners were suffering from
+a 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 at
+the temple of Kneph in the oasis of Ammon, what honours he might pay
+to the deceased. The messengers brought him an answer, that he might
+declare Hephæstion a demigod, and order that he should be worshipped.
+Accordingly, Alexander then sent an express command to Cleomenes that
+he should build a temple to his lost favourite in his new city of
+Alexandria, and that the lighthouse which was to be built on the island
+of Pharos should be named after him; and as modern insurances against
+risks by sea usually begin with the words “In the name of God; Amen;”
+ so all contracts between merchants in the port of Alexandria were to
+be written solemnly “In the name of Hephæstion.” Feeling diffident
+of enforcing obedience at the mouth of the Nile, while he was himself
+writing from the sources of the Indus, he added that if, when he came to
+Egypt he found his wish carried into effect, he would pardon Cleomenes
+for those acts of misgovernment of which he had been accused, and for
+any others which might then come to his ears.
+
+A somatophylax in the Macedonian army was no doubt at first, as the
+word means, one of the officers who had to answer for the king’s safety;
+perhaps in modern language a colonel in the body-guards or household
+troops; but as, in unmixed monarchies, the faithful officer who was
+nearest the king’s person, to whose watchfulness he trusted in the hour
+of danger, often found himself the adviser in matters of state, so,
+in the time of Alexander, the title of somatophylax was given to those
+generals on whose wisdom the king chiefly leaned, and by whose advice
+he was usually guided. Among these, and foremost in Alexander’s love and
+esteem, was Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. Philip, the father of Alexander,
+had given Arsinoë, one of his relations, in marriage to Lagus; and her
+eldest son Ptolemy, born soon after the marriage, was always thought to
+be the king’s son, though never so acknowledged. As he grew up, he was
+put into the highest offices by Philip, without raising in the young
+Alexander’s mind the distrust which might have been felt if Ptolemy
+could have boasted that he was the elder brother. He earned the good
+opinion of Alexander by his military successes in Asia, and gained his
+gratitude by saving his life when he was in danger among the Oxydracæ,
+near the river Indus; and moreover, Alexander looked up to him as the
+historian whose literary powers and knowledge of military tactics were
+to hand down to the wonder of future ages those conquests which he
+witnessed.
+
+Alexander’s victories over Darius, and march to the river Indus, are no
+part of this history: it is enough to say that he died at Babylon eight
+years after he had entered Egypt; and his half-brother Philip Arridæus,
+a weak-minded, unambitious young man, was declared by the generals
+assembled at Babylon to be his successor. His royal blood united more
+voices in the army in his favour than the warlike and statesmanlike
+character of any one of the rival generals. They were forced to be
+content with sharing the provinces between them as his lieutenants;
+some hoping to govern by their power over the weak mind of Arridæus, and
+others secretly meaning to make themselves independent.
+
+In this weighty matter, Ptolemy showed the wisdom and judgment which
+had already gained him his high character. Though his military rank and
+skill were equal to those of any one of Alexander’s generals, and his
+claim by birth perhaps equal to that of Arridæous, he was not one of
+those who aimed at the throne; nor did he even aim at the second place,
+but left to Perdiccas the regency, with the care of the king’s person,
+in whose name that ambitious general vainly hoped to govern the whole of
+Alexander’s conquests. But Ptolemy, more wisely measuring his strength
+with 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 others
+the easiest to be held as an independent kingdom against the power of
+Perdiccas. When Egypt was given to Ptolemy by the council of generals,
+Cleomenes was at the same time and by the same power made second in
+command, 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 after
+Alexander’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, had
+raised their voices against giving the whole of the conquered countries
+to one king; he wished that they should have been shared equally among
+the generals as independent kingdoms. In this he was overruled, and
+he accepted his government as the lieutenant of the youthful Philip
+Arridæus, though no doubt with the fixed purpose of making Egypt an
+independent kingdom. On reaching Memphis, the seat of his government,
+his whole thoughts were turned towards strengthening himself against
+Perdiccas, who hoped to be obeyed, in the name of his young and
+weak-minded king, by all his fellow generals.
+
+The Greek and foreign mercenaries of which the army of Alexander was
+made up, and who were faithful to his memory and to his family, had
+little to guide them in the choice of which leader they should follow
+to his distant province, beside the thought of where they should be
+best treated; and Ptolemy’s high character for wisdom, generosity, and
+warlike skill had gained many friends for him among the officers; they
+saw that the wealth of Egypt would put it in his power to reward those
+whose services were valuable to him; and hence crowds flocked to his
+standard. On reaching their provinces, the Greek soldiers, whether
+Spartans or Athenians, forgetting the glories of Thermopylæ and
+Marathon, and proud of their wider conquests under the late king, always
+called themselves Macedonians. They pleased themselves with the thought
+that the whole of the conquered countries were still governed by
+the brother of Alexander; and no one of his generals, in his wildest
+thoughts of ambition, whether aiming, like Ptolemy, at founding a
+kingdom, or, like Perdiccas, at the government of the world, was unwise
+enough to throw off the title of lieutenant to Philip Arridæus, and to
+forfeit the love of the Macedonian soldiers and his surest hold on their
+loyalty.
+
+The first act of Ptolemy was to put to death Cleomenes, who had been
+made sub-governor of Egypt by the same council of generals which
+had made Ptolemy governor. This act may have been called for by the
+dishonesty and crooked dealing which Cleomenes had been guilty of in
+collecting taxes; but, though the whole tenor of Ptolemy’s life would
+seem to disprove the charge, we cannot but fear that he was in part
+led to this deed because he looked upon Cleomenes as the friend of
+Perdiccas, or because he could not trust him in his plans for making
+himself king of Egypt.
+
+From the very commencement of his government, Ptolemy prepared for the
+war which he knew must follow a declaration of his designs. Perhaps
+better than any other general of Alexander, he knew how to win the
+favour of the people under his rule. The condition of the country
+quickly improved under his mild administration. The growing seaport of
+Alexandria was a good market for a country rich in natural produce, and,
+above all, Egypt’s marvellously good geographical position stood her
+in good stead in time of war. Surrounded nearly on all sides by desert
+land, the few inhabitants, roving Bedouins, offered no danger. The land
+of the Nile was accessible to an enemy in one direction only, along the
+coast of Syria. This even teemed with difficulties. Transports there
+could only be managed with the greatest ingenuity, and, in case of
+defeat, retreat was almost impossible. On the other hand, the Egyptian
+army, helped by all the advantages of a land irrigated on the canal
+system, and which could be flooded at will, had only to act on the
+defensive to be certain of victory. The country is perhaps more open to
+an attack from the sea, but, by a moderately well-conducted defensive
+movement, the enemy could be kept to the coast. Even the landing there
+is scarcely possible, on account of the natural difficulties at the
+mouth of the Nile. The one easy spot--Alexandria--was so well fortified
+that an invader had but little chance of success.
+
+About the time of Alexander’s death (and to some extent brought about by
+this event), civil war broke out in Cyrenaica, in consequence of which
+the followers of one party were forced out of the town of Cyrene. These
+joined themselves with the exiles of the town of Barca, and together
+sought help of foreigners. They placed themselves under the leadership
+of the Spartan Thibron, formerly Alexander’s chancellor of the
+exchequer. Begged by the exiled Cyrenians to help them, he now directed
+his forces against Libya, fought a fierce battle, and took possession
+of the harbour of Apollonia, two miles distant from the town. He then
+besieged the town of Cyrene, and forced the Cyrenians at last to sue for
+peace. They were obliged to make a payment of five hundred talents and
+to take back the exiles. Messengers were sent by Thibron to incite
+the other towns in Cyrenaica to join him and to help him conquer their
+neighbour, Libya. Thibron’s followers were allowed to plunder, and this
+led to quarrels, desertions, treacherous acts, and the recruiting of his
+army from the Peloponnesus. After varying fortunes of war, in the
+spring of 322 B. C., some of the Cyrenians fled to Egypt, and related to
+Ptolemy what had occurred in Cyrenaica, begging him to help them back
+to their homes. The suggestion was welcome to him, for victory would be
+easy over these struggling factions. He sent a strong military and naval
+force, under Ophelas, the Macedonian, to Cyrenaica in the summer. When
+these were seen approaching, those exiles who had found refuge with
+Thibron decided to join them. Their plan, however, was discovered, and
+they were put to death. The leader of the rabble in Cyrene (fearful
+for his own safety, now that the exiles who had fled to Egypt were
+returning) made overtures of peace to Thibron, and joined with him to
+repulse Ophelas. The latter worked with the utmost caution, sent an army
+under Epicides of Olynth against Tancheira, whilst he himself marched
+against Cyrene.
+
+[Illustration: 036.jpg THE DÔM PALM.]
+
+He met Thibron in a fierce fight. The latter was completely defeated and
+fled towards Tancheira, where he hoped to find help, but instead fell
+into Epicides’ hands. Thibron was given over to the people of Tancheira
+for punishment. He was cruelly scourged, and then dragged to Apollonia,
+where he was crucified. Ophelas, however, was not able to conquer the
+Cyrenians until Ptolemy himself arrived with fresh troops, overpowered
+the town and joined the province to his own satrapy.
+
+The conquest of this Greek province was a gain equally for himself and
+for the Greeks. He put an end to the horrible anarchy that prevailed
+there, and proved himself their saviour as well as their conqueror. His
+name was now an honoured one among all the Greeks. When it was rumoured
+that war was likely to break out between Ptolemy and the royal party,
+the Macedonians flocked to Alexandria, “every man ready to give all and
+to sacrifice himself in order to help his friend.” A popular belief of
+the day was that, although Ptolemy was known as the son of Lagos, he was
+in reality the son of Philip, and indeed much in his manner resembled
+the great founder of the Macedonian power. Amongst the successors of
+Alexander, not one understood as well as he how to retain and increase
+the power which he had won. He recognised, also, from the first, the
+tendency of the age: the tendency to split up the kingdom into different
+states; and he had made this the basis of his policy. It was under him
+that the first state (in the new sense of the word) was founded. He was
+the leader of the new movement that soon generated disunity, and to
+this end he made a secret contract with Antipatros against the regent
+Perdiccas. About this time also misunderstandings between the regent and
+the rulers in the West began to take a serious aspect.
+
+At a great meeting in Babylon in the summer of the year 323, it was
+decided that the body of Alexander was to be taken with great solemnity
+to the Temple of Amon, and that the equipping and guidance of the
+funeral procession should be entrusted to Arridæus. At the end of the
+year 323, the necessary preparations were finished. The gigantic
+funeral car that was to carry the kingly bier had been decorated with
+unparalleled magnificence. Without waiting for orders from the regent,
+Arridæus started with the funeral procession from Babylon. Crowds from
+far and near filled the streets, some curious to see the magnificent
+sight, others eager to show this last token of respect to the dead king.
+It was firmly believed amongst the Macedonians that the country in
+which Alexander’s body had its last resting-place would become happy and
+powerful above all countries. This prophecy was uttered by the old seer
+Telmissus soon after the king’s death. Did Ptolemy have this belief, or
+did he wish to make use of it? There were probably other reasons which
+had caused him to enter into an understanding with Arridæus, and to
+arrange with him that he was to start without orders from the regent.
+He was afraid that Perdiccas, in order to add to the solemnity of the
+procession, would himself accompany the body with the imperial army to
+Egypt. Ptolemy felt that his position in the lands entrusted to his
+care would be greatly weakened if a higher authority than himself could
+appear there with a military force. Arridæus led the funeral train to
+Damascus, as had been arranged before with Ptolemy. It was in vain that
+Pole-mon (one of Perdiccas’ generals), who was in the neighbourhood,
+went to meet him. He was able to obtain no aspect for the express order
+of the regent. The funeral procession passed Damascus on its way to
+Egypt. Ptolemy accompanied the body with his army as far as Syria. It
+was then taken on to Memphis to rest there until it could be sheltered
+by that beautiful sepulchre of the kings at Alexandria.
+
+Arridæus’ action, in starting without permission, and the defiance of
+Polemon’s order, were acts of open revolt against the higher authority
+of the kingdom. Perdiccas called all loyal followers to the council
+of war. Ptolemy, he said, had defied the order of the kings in his
+behaviour concerning the funeral procession; and he had also given
+shelter to the exiled satraps of Phrygia. He was prepared for war, which
+he hoped to bring about. It was for them (the loyal ones) to uphold
+the dignity of the kingdom. They must try to take him unawares, and to
+overcome them individually. The question was, if the Egyptians or the
+Macedonians ought to be first attacked. In the end, plans were carefully
+concerted for an attack on Egypt and the protection of Europe. In the
+early spring of B.C. 321, Perdiccas and his colleagues set out for
+Egypt with the imperial army, ordering the fleet to follow, and leaving
+Eumenes with skilled officers and troops in general command of Asia
+Minor for the purpose of guarding the Hellespont.
+
+At the Egyptian frontier, Perdiccas summoned the army together, that the
+men themselves should give judgment in the case of the satrap of Egypt,
+in the same way as in the preceding autumn they had given judgment in
+the case of Antigones. He expected a decision which would enable him
+to finish what he had already begun. The accusations were that he had
+refused obedience to the kings, that he had fought against and overcome
+the Greeks of Cyrenaica (who had received freedom from Alexander),
+and that he had taken possession of the king’s body, and carried it to
+Memphis.
+
+According to the single account, which tells us of these proceedings,
+Ptolemy himself appeared to conduct his own defence before the assembled
+warriors. He had good reason for reckoning on the impression his
+confidence in them would make upon them, and on the love that he knew
+the Macedonians bore towards him. He knew, too, of the increasing
+dislike of the imperial regent. His defence was heard with growing
+approval, and the army’s judgment was “freedom.”
+
+In spite of this the regent kept to the war. The decision of the troops
+alienated him still more from them. The war with Egypt was contrary to
+their wishes, and they murmured openly. Perdiccas sought to put down the
+refractory spirit with a stern military hand, but the remonstrances
+of his officers were in vain. He treated the first in the land in an
+inconsiderate and despotic manner, removed the most deserving from their
+command, and trusted himself alone. This same man, who had climbed the
+path to greatness with so much foresight, self-command, energy, and
+statesmanship, seemed now, the nearer he grew to the summit of his
+ambition, to lose all clearness of sight and moderation, which traits
+alone could help him to take this last and dangerous step. He had the
+advantage of tried troops, the elephants of Alexander, and the fleet
+under the 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 had
+conquered Neoptolemas, the governor of Armenia, who had taken the side
+of Ptolemy.
+
+With all the more hope, Perdiccas went to meet the enemy. He reached
+Pelusium undisturbed. It was highly necessary that the army should
+cross to the Pelusaic side of the Nile, for there were several secure
+places there, which, if 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 himself
+within one of the fortresses on that side, and thence conduct operations
+against them, and, at the same time, remain in connection with his
+fleet, on which he could fall back in case of need. To enable the
+crossing to be accomplished as easily as possible, Perdiccas ordered the
+cleaning out of an old and filled-in canal, that led up from the Nile.
+The work was evidently begun without much thought, for the fact had not
+been considered that, at the rising of the Nile, the canal would want
+a much deeper bed than the present stream required. The canal had
+only just been opened up, when the water rose with unusual force and
+rapidity; the dam was completely destroyed, and many workers lost their
+lives. During the disturbance, many officers and men left the camp and
+hurried to Ptolemy. This was the beginning of the Egyptian war. The
+desertion of so many important men made Perdiccas think seriously.
+He summoned the officers of the army, spoke to them with much
+condescension, gave presents to some, honoured others with promotion,
+and begged them, for the sake of their honour and for the cause of their
+kings, to fight their hardest against this rebel, and with the order to
+hold their men in-readiness, he left them. The army was only told in the
+evening, at the signal for starting, where they were to march. Perdiccas
+feared, on account of the desertion that was taking place in his army,
+that his march might be discovered by the enemy. They marched with great
+speed through the night, and camped at last on the side of the river.
+At daybreak, after the troops had rested, Perdiccas gave the order
+to cross. First came the elephants, then the light infantry, next the
+storming party with ladders, and lastly, the pick of the cavalry, who,
+if the enemy should burst out during the storming, could easily drive
+them back. Perdiccas hoped, if he could only get a firm footing on
+that side of the river, to annihilate the Egyptian army easily with his
+superior force. He was right in feeling that his Macedonian troops, when
+face to face with the enemy, would forget their antipathy to him,
+and think only of their military honour. When about half the army had
+crossed, and just as the elephants were moving towards the fortress, the
+enemy were seen hurrying thither with great speed; their trumpet-calls
+and war-cries even were heard. They reached the fort before the
+Macedonians, and withdrew into the shelter of its walls. Not discouraged
+by this, the infantry stormed the fort. Ladders were placed against
+the walls, the elephants driven forward, and palisades taken from their
+backs to attack the ramparts.
+
+Ptolemy, in the dress of a Macedonian soldier, stood on the wall
+surrounded by a few selected men. He was first in the fight. From where
+he stood he pierced with his lance the eyes of the leading elephant, and
+stabbed the Indian on its back, and he wounded many and killed numbers
+of the storming party. His officers and men fought with the greatest
+spirit; the driver of the second elephant was killed and the infantry
+were driven back.
+
+Perdiccas led new troops to the attack, wishing to take the fortress at
+all costs. By word and deed, Ptolemy urged on his men, who fought with
+marvellous endurance. The dreadful battle waged the whole day; many were
+killed and wounded; evening came on and nothing was decided. Perdiccas
+ordered a retreat and returned to his camp.
+
+In the middle of the night he again started with his army, hoping that
+Ptolemy would stay in the fort with his troops, and that, after a trying
+march of some miles up-stream, he (Perdiccas) would be able to cross the
+river more easily. At daybreak he found himself opposite one of the many
+islands of the Nile; it was large enough for the camp of a great army.
+In spite of the difficulties of crossing, he decided to encamp his army
+there. The water reached up to the soldiers’ knees, and it was with the
+greatest difficulty that they kept their footing against the force
+of the current. In order to break this current, Perdiccas ordered the
+elephants into the river to stand up-stream to the left of the fording
+party; he ordered the horsemen to stand at the other end to help those
+across that were driven down by the current. Some had, with great
+difficulty, managed to get across; others were still in the stream when
+it was noticed that the water was becoming deeper; the heavily armed men
+sank, and the elephants and horses stood deeper and deeper in the water.
+A fearful panic seized the army. They called out that the enemy had
+closed in the canals up-stream, and that the gods had destined bad
+weather in the upper provinces, on account of which the river was
+swollen. Those who understood saw that the bed of the river had become
+deepened by the crossing of so great a cavalcade. It was impossible for
+the remainder to cross or for those on the island to return. They were
+completely cut off and were at the mercy of the enemy, who were already
+seen approaching. There was nothing left but to order them to get back
+as well as they could; lucky indeed were those who could swim, and had
+sufficient 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 out
+and desperate, to the shore; others were drowned or eaten by crocodiles.
+Some were carried down-stream, and reached the shore where the enemy
+stood. Two thousand men were missing, many officers among them. The camp
+of the Egyptians was situated on the other side, and they could be seen
+helping the men in the water and burning logs of wood to show honour
+to the dead. On this side of the river there was sad silence; each man
+sought his comrade, or officer, and sought in vain. Food was scarce, and
+there was no means of overcoming this dreadful state of affairs; night
+came on, and curses and complaints were heard on all sides. The lives of
+so many brave men had been sacrificed for nothing; it was bad enough to
+lose the “honour of their arms,” but now, through the stupidity of their
+leader, their lives had been lost, and to be swallowed by crocodiles was
+now the distinguished death of Macedonian warriors. Many of the officers
+went to the tent of the regent, and told him openly that he was the
+cause of this calamity. Outside the tent the Macedonians yelled, beside
+themselves with rage. About a hundred of the officers, headed by the
+satrap Python, refused to share further responsibility, resigned their
+commissions, and left the tent. The excitement grew intense. The troops,
+in ungovernable rage, entered the regent’s tent and threw themselves
+upon him. Antigonus struck the first blow, others followed, and, after
+a desperate but short struggle, Perdiccas fell to the ground covered
+with wounds.
+
+Thus died Perdiccas, in the third year of his regency. His great idea,
+the unity of the kingdom entrusted to his care, should have made him
+worthy of more success had he given himself up to this idea with more
+conscientiousness. Unfortunately, with growing power, he became
+despotic and unjust. He was not great enough to become the successor of
+Alexander, to be another “ruler of the world.” This last step, the one
+which was to lead him to his long-coveted goal, led him instead to his
+death.
+
+Ptolemy soon heard the news, and the next morning he crossed the river
+and came to the camp. He asked to be taken to the kings, presented them
+and some of the nobles with gifts; was kind and considerate to all, and
+was greeted with great joy. Then he called the troops together and spoke
+to them. He told the Macedonians that it was only stern necessity that
+caused him to take up arms against his old comrades. No man regretted
+more than he the untimely death of so many heroes. Perdiccas was the
+cause of this calamity; he had but received his just punishment. Now all
+enmity was to be ended. He had saved as many as he could from death in
+the water, and the corpses which the river had brought to the shore he
+had buried with all honour; and finally he told them that he had given
+orders for the immediate alleviation of the want which he knew was being
+felt in the camp. His speech was received with loud cheers. He stood
+there unhurt and admired before the Macedonians, who but a few hours
+earlier had been his bitterest foes. Now they looked upon him as their
+saviour; they all acknowledged him as the conqueror, and for the moment
+he stood in unequivocal possession of that power for which Perdiccas
+had worked so hard, and which he had so much abused. Who was now to
+be Perdiccas’ successor, and to manage the kingdom in the name of the
+kings? With one voice the people begged Ptolemy to undertake this task.
+The foresight and presence of mind of the son of Lagus were not clouded
+by the allurement of such an offer gained by his sudden change of
+fortune. At this supreme moment he acted with consummate sagacity. He
+divined that a refusal of the proffered honour would make him in reality
+more powerful, although, at the moment, he would seem to be acting in an
+unselfish manner. He recommended to the army, as a favour which he had
+to bestow, those he thought worthy of his thanks; they were Python,
+the Median strategist, who had taken the first decisive step against
+Perdiccas; and Arridæus, who, in spite of Perdiccas’ orders, had taken
+the body of the king to Egypt. These two were nominated regents with
+loud cheers.
+
+The Macedonian army, accordingly, chose Python and Arridæus as
+guardians, and as rulers with unlimited power over the whole of
+Alexander’s conquests; but, though none of the Greek generals who now
+held Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia, Thrace, or Egypt dared to acknowledge
+it to the soldiers, yet in reality the power of the guardians was
+limited to the little kingdom of Macedonia. With the death of Perdiccas,
+and the withdrawal of his army, Phoenicia and Coele-Syria were left
+unguarded, and almost without a master. In order that Egypt might take
+an important part in the universal policy, Ptolemy felt he must possess
+Syria, which would open up the way for him to the countries along the
+Euphrates and the Tigris, and also the island of Cyprus, where he would
+be near the coast of Asia Minor. He could not yet think of conquering
+Cyprus, which had an important fleet. He felt that, if he annexed Syria,
+either by diplomacy or by force, the organisation of the kingdom and the
+territorial division of power would be changed in a tangible manner.
+The Egyptian satraps already possessed some measure of authority, and he
+could also depend upon the satrap of Syria joining him.
+
+Perdiccas had bestowed this satrapy upon Laomedon, the Amphysolite,
+who had taken no part in the great fight between Perdiccas and Ptolemy.
+Ptolemy now informed him that he wished to possess his satrapy, but was
+ready to compensate him with a sum of money. Laomedon refused this offer
+with scorn. Thereupon, an army under Nicanor, one of the “friends” of
+Ptolemy, marched into Palestine. Jerusalem was the only place that
+held out against the Egyptian army; but Nicanor, says the historian
+Agathareides, seeing that on every seventh day the garrison withdrew
+from the walls, chose that day for the assault, and thus gained the
+city. Without further opposition the Egyptians marched onwards. At
+last he met Laomedon, took him prisoner, and brought him back to Egypt.
+Egyptian sentries now guarded the strongholds of the country; Egyptian
+ships took the towns along the coast. A great number of the Jews were
+transported to Alexandria; they received the rights of citizenship
+there.
+
+[Illustration: 049.jpg A THEBAN BELLE]
+
+Without altering local conditions, Syria gradually came under the sway
+of the Egyptian satraps. Laomedon found means of escaping from Egypt;
+he fled to Alcetas in Caria, who had just withdrawn himself to the
+mountainous regions of Pisida, thence to begin the decisive war against
+Antigonus.
+
+[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 Thebaid
+enjoyed, under the Koptic kings, the trading wealth which followed the
+stream of its great river, the longest piece of inland navigation
+then known; but, with the improvement in navigation and ship-building,
+countries began to feel their strength in the timber of their forests
+and the number of their harbours; and, as timber and sea-coast were
+equally unknown in the Thebaid, that country fell as Lower Egypt rose;
+the wealth which before centred in Thebes was then found in the ports
+of the Delta, where the barges of the Nile met the ships of the
+Mediterranean. What used to be Egypt was an inland kingdom, surrounded by
+the desert; but Egypt under Ptolemy was country on the sea-coast; and,
+on the conquest of Phoenicia and Coele-Syria, he was master of the
+forests of Lebanon and Antilibanus, and stretched his coast from Cyrene
+to Antioch, a distance of twelve hundred miles. The wise and mild plans
+which were laid down by Alexander for the government of Egypt when a
+province were easily followed by Ptolemy when it became his own kingdom.
+The Greek soldiers lived in their garrisons or in Alexandria under the
+Macedonian laws, while the Egyptian laws were administered by their own
+priests, who were upheld in all the rights of their order and in their
+freedom from land-tax. The temples of Phtah, of Amon-Ra, and the other
+gods of the country were not only kept open, but were repaired and even
+built at the cost of the king; the religion of the people, and not that
+of their rulers, was made the established religion of the state. On
+the death of the god Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, the chief of the
+animals which were kept and fed at the cost of the several cities, and
+who had died of old age soon after Ptolemy came to Egypt, he spent the
+sum of fifty talents, or $42,500, on its funeral; and the priests, who
+had not forgotten that Cambyses, their former conqueror, had wounded the
+Apis of his day with his own sword, must have been highly pleased with
+this mark of his care for them. The burial-place for the bulls is an
+arched gallery tunnelled into the hill behind Memphis for more than two
+thousand feet, with a row of cells on each side of it. In every cell is
+a huge granite sarcophagus, within which were placed the remains of a
+bull that had once been the Apis of its day, which, after having for
+perhaps twenty years received the honours of a god, was there buried
+with more than kingly state. The cell was then walled up, and ornamented
+on the outside with various tablets in honour of the deceased
+animal, which were placed in these dark passages by the piety of his
+worshippers. The priests of Thebes were now at liberty to cut out from
+their monuments the names of usurping gods, and to restore those that
+had been before cut out. They also rebuilt the inner room, or the holy
+of holies, in the great temple of Karnak.
+
+It had been overthrown by the Persians in wantonness, or in hatred
+of the Egyptian religion; and the priests now put upon it the name of
+Philip 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 seen
+their temples plundered and their trade crushed by the grasping tyranny
+of the Persian satraps, and had at other times been almost as much hurt
+by their own vain struggles for freedom, now found themselves in the
+quiet enjoyment of good laws, with a prosperity which promised soon to
+equal that of the reigns of Necho or Amasis. It is true that they had
+not regained their independence and political liberty; that, as compared
+with the Greeks, they felt themselves an inferior race, and that they
+only enjoyed their civil rights during the pleasure of a Greek autocrat;
+but then it is to be remembered that the native rulers with whom Ptolemy
+was compared were the kings of Lower Egypt, who, like himself, were
+surrounded by Greek mercenaries, and who never rested their power on the
+broad base of national pride and love of country; and that nobody
+could have hoped to see a Theban king arise to bring back the days
+of Thûtmosis and Ramses. Thebes was every day sinking in wealth and
+strength; and its race of hereditary soldiers, proud in the recollection
+of former glory, who had, after centuries of struggles, been forced
+to receive laws from Memphis, perhaps yielded obedience to a Greek
+conqueror with less pain than they did formerly to their own vassals of
+Lower Egypt.
+
+Ptolemy’s government was in form nearly the same in Alexandria as in the
+rest of Egypt, but in reality it was wholly different. His sway over the
+Egyptians was supported by Greek force, but over the Greeks it rested
+on the broad base of public opinion. Every Greek had the privilege of
+bearing arms, and of meeting in the gymnasium in public assembly, to
+explain a grievance, and petition for its redress. The citizens and
+the soldiers were the same body of men; they at the same time held the
+force, and had the spirit to use it. But they had no senate, no body
+of nobles, no political constitution which might save their freedom in
+after generations from the ambitious grasp of the sovereign, or from
+their own degeneracy. While claiming to be equal among themselves they
+were making themselves slaves; and though at present the government so
+entirely bore the stamp of their own will that they might fancy they
+enjoyed a democracy, yet history teaches us that the simple paternal
+form of government never fails to become sooner or later a cruel
+tyranny. The building of Alexandria must be held the master-stroke of
+policy by which Egypt was kept in obedience. Here, and afterwards in
+a few other cities, such as Ptolemais in the Thebaid and Parembole in
+Nubia, the Greeks lived without insulting or troubling the Egyptians,
+and by their numbers held the country like so many troops in garrison.
+It was a wise policy to make no greater change than necessary in
+the kingdom, and to leave the Egyptians under their own laws and
+magistrates, and in the enjoyment of their own religion; and yet it was
+necessary to have the country garrisoned with Greeks, whose presence in
+the old cities could not but be extremely galling to the Egyptians. This
+was done by means of these new Greek cities, where the power by which
+Egypt was governed was stronger by being united, and less hateful by
+being out of sight. Seldom or never was so great a monarchy founded with
+so little force and so little crime.
+
+Ptolemy, however, did not attempt the difficult task of uniting the two
+races, and of treating the conquered and the conquerors as entitled to
+the same privileges. From the time of Necho and Psammetichus, many of
+the Greeks who settled in Egypt intermarried with the natives, and very
+much laid aside their own habits; and sometimes their offspring, after
+a generation or two, became wholly Egyptian. By the Greek laws the
+children of these mixed marriages were declared to be barbarians; not
+Greeks but Egyptians, and were brought up accordingly. They left the
+worship of Jupiter and Juno for that of Isis and Osiris, and perhaps the
+more readily for the greater earnestness with which the Egyptian gods
+were worshipped. We now trace their descendants by the form of their
+skulls, even into the priestly families; and of one hundred mummies
+covered with hieroglyphics, taken up from the catacombs near Thebes,
+about twenty show a European origin, while of those from the tombs
+near Memphis, seventy out of every hundred have lost their Koptic
+peculiarities. It is easy to foresee that an important change would
+have been wrought in the character of the people and in their political
+institutions, if the Greek laws had been humane and wise enough to grant
+to the children of mixed marriages the privileges, the education, and
+thereby the moral feelings of the more favoured parent; and it is not
+too much to suppose, if the Greek law of marriage had been altered by
+Ptolemy, that within three centuries above half the nation would have
+spoken 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 been
+already mentioned. The founding of the famous museum and library
+of Alexandria may be, perhaps, regarded as the rounding-off of his
+political plans for the consolidation of his kingdom. Alexandria became,
+in fact, not only a centre of commerce and government, but also the
+intellectual capital of the Greeks. But for this supreme importance of
+the city, it is doubtful whether the descendants of Ptolemy Lagus could
+have continued to rule the Valley of the Nile.
+
+In return for the literature which Greece then gave to Egypt, she gained
+the knowledge of papyrus, a tall rush which grows wild near the sources
+of the Nile, and was then cultivated in the Egyptian marshes. Before
+that time books had been written on linen, wax, bark, or the leaves of
+trees; and public records on stone, brass, or lead: but the knowledge of
+papyrus was felt by all men of letters like the invention of printing
+in modern Europe. Books were then known by many for the first time,
+and very little else was afterwards used in Greece or Rome; for, when
+parchment was made about two centuries later, it was too costly to be
+used as long as papyrus was within reach. Copies were multiplied on
+frail strips of this plant, and it was found that mere thoughts, when
+worth preserving, were less liable to be destroyed by time than temples
+and palaces of the hardest stone.
+
+[Illustration: 056.jpb MANUSCRIPT ON PAPYRUS; HIEROGLYPHICS, THEBES]
+
+While Egypt, under Ptolemy, was thus enjoying the advantages of its
+insulated position, and cultivating the arts of peace, the other
+provinces were being harassed by the unceasing wars of Alexander’s
+generals, who were aiming, like Ptolemy, at raising their own power.
+Many changes had taken place among them in the short space of eight
+years which had passed since the death of 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 though
+not so easily guarded as Egypt; Cassander held Macedonia, and had the
+care of the young Alexander Ægus, who was then called the heir to the
+whole of his father’s wide conquests, and whose life, like that of
+Arridæus, was soon to end with his minority; Lysimachus was trying
+to form a kingdom in Thrace; and Seleucus had for a brief period held
+Babylonia.
+
+Ptolemy bore no part in the wars which brought about these changes,
+beyond being once or twice called upon to send troops to guard his
+province of Cole-Syria.
+
+[Illustration: 057.jpg Alexander adoring Horus]
+
+But Antigonus, in his ambitious efforts to stretch his power over all
+the provinces, had by force or by treachery driven Seleucus out of
+Babylon, and forced him to seek Egypt for safety, where Ptolemy received
+him with the kindness and good policy which had before gained so many
+friends. No arguments of Seleucus were wanting to persuade Ptolemy that
+Antigonus was dreaming of universal conquest, and that his next attack
+would be upon Egypt. He therefore sent ambassadors to make treaties of
+alliance with Cassander and Lysimachus, who readily joined him against
+the common enemy.
+
+The large fleet and army which Antigonus got together for the invasion
+of Egypt proved his opinion of the strength and skill of Ptolemy. All
+Syria, except one or two cities, laid down its arms before him on his
+approach. But he found that the whole of the fleet had been already
+removed to the ports of Egypt, and he ordered Phoenicia to furnish him
+with eight thousand shipbuilders and carpenters, to build galleys from
+the forests of Lebanon and Antilibanus, and ordered Syria to send four
+hundred and fifty thousand medimni, or nearly three millions of bushels
+of wheat, for the use of his army within the year. By these means he
+raised his fleet to two hundred and forty-three long galleys or ships of
+war.
+
+Ptolemy was for a short time called off from the war in Syria by a
+rising in Cyrene. The Cyrenians, who clung to their Doric love of
+freedom, and were latterly smarting at its loss, had taken arms and were
+besieging the Egyptian, or, as they would have called themselves, the
+Macedonian garrison, who had shut themselves up in the citadel. He at
+first sent messengers to order the Cyrenians to return to their duty;
+but his orders were not listened to; the rebels no doubt thought
+themselves safe, as his armies seemed more wanted on the eastern
+frontier; his messengers were put to death, and the siege of the citadel
+pushed forward with all possible speed. On this he sent a large land
+force, followed by a fleet, in order to crush the revolt at a single
+blow; and the ringleaders were brought to Alexandria in chains. Magas, a
+son of Queen Berenicê and stepson of Ptolemy, was then made governor of
+Cyrene.
+
+When this trouble at home was put an end to, Ptolemy crossed over to
+Cyprus to punish the kings of the little states on that island for
+having joined Antigonus. For now that the fate of empires was to be
+settled by naval battles the friendship of Cyprus became very important
+to the neighbouring states. The large and safe harbours gave to this
+island a great value in the naval warfare between Egypt, Phoenicia, and
+Asia Minor. Alexander had given it as his opinion that the command
+of the sea went with the island of Cyprus. When he held Asia Minor he
+called Cyprus the key to Egypt; and with still greater reason might
+Ptolemy, looking from Egypt, think that island the key to Phoenicia.
+Accordingly he landed there with so large a force that he met with no
+resistance. He added Cyprus to the rest of his dominions: he banished
+the kings, and made Nicocreon governor of the whole island.
+
+From Cyprus, Ptolemy landed with his army in Upper Syria, as the
+northern part of that country was called, while the part nearer to
+Palestine was called Coele-Syria. Here he took the towns of Posideion
+and Potami-Caron, and then marching hastily into Asia Minor he took
+Malms, a city of Cilicia. Having rewarded his soldiers with the booty
+there seized, he again embarked and returned to Alexandria. This inroad
+seems to have been meant to draw off the enemy from Coele-Syria; and it
+had the wished-for effect, for Demetrius, who commanded the forces of
+his father Antigonus in that quarter, marched northward to the relief
+of Cilicia, but he did not arrive there till Ptolemy’s fleet was already
+under sail for its return journey to Egypt.
+
+Ptolemy, on reaching Alexandria, set his army in motion towards
+Pelusium, on its way to Palestine. His forces were eighteen thousand
+foot and four thousand horse, part Macedonians, as the Greeks living in
+Egypt were always called, and part mercenaries, followed by a crowd of
+Egyptians, of whom some were armed for battle, and some were to take
+care of the baggage. He had twenty-two thousand Greeks, and was met at
+Gaza by the young Demetrius with an army of eleven thousand foot and
+twenty-three hundred horse, followed by forty-three elephants and a
+body of light-armed barbarians, who, like the Egyptians in the army of
+Ptolemy, were not counted. But the youthful courage of Demetrius was no
+match for the cool skill and larger army of Ptolemy; the elephants were
+easily stopped by iron hurdles, and the Egyptian army, after gaining a
+complete victory, entered Gaza, while Demetrius fled to Azotus. Ptolemy,
+in his victory, showed a generosity unknown in modern warfare; he not
+only gave leave to the conquered army to bury their dead, but sent back
+the whole of the royal baggage which had fallen into his hands, and also
+those personal friends of Demetrius who were found among the prisoners;
+that is to say, all those who wished to depart, as the larger part of
+these Greek armies were equally ready to fight on either side.
+
+By this victory the whole of Phoenicia was again joined to Egypt, and
+Seleucus regained Babylonia. There, by following the example of Ptolemy
+in his good treatment of the people, and in leaving them their own laws
+and religion, he founded a monarchy, and gave his name to a race of
+kings which rivalled even the Lagidæ. He raised up again for a short
+time the throne of Nebuchadnezzar. But it was only for a short time. The
+Chal-dees and Assyrians now yielded the first rank to the Greeks who
+had settled among them; and the Greeks were more numerous in the Syrian
+portion of his empire. Accordingly Seleucus built a new capital on
+the river Orontes, and named it Antioch after his father. Babylon then
+yielded the same obedience to this new Greek city that Memphis paid
+to Alexandria. Assyria and Babylonia became subject provinces; and
+the successors of Seleucus, who came to be known as Selucids, styled
+themselves not kings of Babylon but of Syria.
+
+When Antigonus, who was in Phrygia on the other side of his kingdom,
+heard that his son Demetrius had been beaten at Gaza, he marched with
+all his forces to give battle to Ptolemy. He soon crossed Mount Taurus,
+the lofty range which divides Asia Minor from Syria and Mesopotamia, and
+joined his camp to that of his son in Upper Syria. But Ptolemy had gone
+through life without ever making a hazardous move; not indeed without
+ever suffering a loss, but without ever fighting a battle when its loss
+would have ruined him, and he did not choose to risk his kingdom against
+the far larger forces of Antigonus. Therefore, with the advice of his
+council of generals, he levelled the fortifications of Acre, Joppa,
+Samaria, and Gaza, and withdrew his forces and treasure into Egypt,
+leaving the desert between himself and the army of Antigonus.
+
+Antigonus could not safely attempt to march through the desert in the
+face of Ptolemy’s army. He had, therefore, first, either to conquer or
+gain the friendship of the Nabatæans, a warlike race of Arabs, who held
+the north of Arabia; and then he might march by Petra, Mount Sinai, and
+the coast of the Red Sea, without being in want of water for his army.
+The Nabatæans were the tribe at an earlier time called Edomites. But
+they lost that name when they carried it to the southern portion of
+Judæa, then called Idumæa; for when the Jews regained Idumæa, they
+called these Edomites of the desert Nebaoth or Nabatæans. The Nabatæns
+professed neutrality between Antigonus and Ptolemy, the two contending
+powers; but the mild temper of Ptolemy had so far gained their
+friendship that the haughty Antigonus, though he did not refuse their
+pledges of peace, secretly made up his mind to conquer them. Petra, the
+city of the Nabatæans, is in a narrow valley between steep overhanging
+rocks, so difficult of approach that a handful of men could guard it
+against the largest army. Not more than two horsemen can ride abreast
+through the chasm in the rock by which it is entered from the east,
+while the other entrance from the west is down a hillside too steep for
+a loaded camel.
+
+[Illustration: 062.jpg ON THE COAST OF THE RED SEA]
+
+The Eastern proverb reminds us that “Water is the chief thing;” and
+a large stream within the valley, in addition to the strength of the
+fortress, made it a favourite resting-place for caravans, which, whether
+they were coming from Tyre or Jerusalem, were forced to pass by this
+city in their way to the Incense Country of Arabia Felix, or to the
+Elanitic Gulf of the Red Sea, and for other caravans from Egypt to Dedam
+on the Persian Gulf. These warlike Arabs seem to have received a toll
+from the caravans, and they held their rocky fastness unconquered by
+the great nations which surrounded them. Their temples and tombs were
+cut out of the live rock, and hence the city was by the Jews named
+Selah, (the rock), and by the Greeks named Petra, from which last the
+country was sometimes called Arabia Petræa.
+
+Antigonus heard that the Nabatæans had left Petra less guarded than
+usual, and had gone to a neighbouring fair, probably to meet a caravan
+from the south, and to receive spices in exchange for the woollen goods
+from Tyre. He therefore sent forward four thousand light-armed foot and
+six hundred horse, who overpowered the guard and seized the city. The
+Arabs, when they heard of what had happened, returned in the night,
+surrounded the place, came upon the Greeks from above, by paths known
+only to themselves, and overcame them with such slaughter that, out of
+the four thousand six hundred men, only fifty returned to Antigonus to
+tell the tale.
+
+The Nabatæans then sent to Antigonus to complain of this crafty attack
+being made upon Petra after they had received from him a promise of
+friendship. He endeavoured to put them off their guard by disowning the
+acts of his general; he sent them home with promises of peace, but at
+the same time sent forward his son Demetrius, with four thousand horse
+and four thousand foot, to take revenge upon them, and again seize their
+city. But the Arabs were this time upon their guard; the nature of
+the place was as unfavourable to the Greek arms and warfare as it was
+favourable to the Arabs; and these eight thousand men, the flower of the
+army, under brave Demetrius, were unable to force their way through the
+narrow pass into this remarkable city.
+
+Had Antigonus been master of the sea, he might perhaps have marched
+through the desert along the coast of the Mediterranean to Pelusium,
+with his fleet to wait upon his army, as Perdiccas had done. But
+without this, the only way that he could enter Egypt was through the
+neighbourhood of Petra, and then along the same path which the Jews are
+supposed to have followed; and the stop thus put upon the invasion of
+Egypt by this little city shows us the strength of Ptolemy’s eastern
+frontier. Antigonus then led his army northward, leaving the kingdom of
+Egypt unattacked.
+
+This retreat was followed by a treaty of peace between these generals,
+by which it was agreed that each should keep the country that he then
+held; that Cassan-der should govern Macedonia until Alexander Ægus, the
+son of Alexander the Great, should be of age; that Lysimachus should
+keep Thrace, Ptolemy Egypt, and Antigonus Asia Minor and Palestine; and
+each wishing to be looked upon as the friend of the soldiers by whom
+his power was upheld, and the whole of these wide conquests kept in awe,
+added the very unnecessary article, that the Greeks living in each of
+these countries should be governed according to their own laws.
+
+All the provinces held by these generals became more or less Greek
+kingdoms, yet in no one did so many Greeks settle as in Lower Egypt.
+Though the rest of Egypt was governed by Egyptian laws and judges, the
+city of Alexandria was under Macedonian law. It did not form part of the
+nome of Hermopolites in which it was built. It scarcely formed a part of
+Egypt, but was a Greek state in its neighbourhood, holding the Egyptians
+in a state of slavery. In that city no Egyptian could live without
+feeling himself of a conquered race. He was not admitted to the
+privileges of Macedonian citizenship, while they were at once granted to
+every Greek, and soon to every Jew, who would settle there.
+
+By the treaty just spoken of, Ptolemy, in the thirteenth year after the
+death of Alexander, was left undisputed master of Egypt. During these
+years he had not only gained the love of the Egyptians and Alexandrians
+by his wise and just government, but had won their respect as a general
+by the skill with which he had kept the war at a distance. He had lost
+and won battles in Syria, in Asia Minor, in the island of Cyprus, and at
+sea; but since Perdiccas marched against him, before he had a force to
+defend himself with, no foreign army had drunk the sacred waters of the
+Nile.
+
+It was under the government of Ptolemy that the wonders of Upper Egypt
+were first seen by any Greeks who had leisure, a love of knowledge, and
+enough of literature, to examine carefully and to describe what they
+saw. Loose and highly coloured accounts of the wealth of Thebes
+had reached Greece even before the time of Homer, and again through
+Herodotus and other travellers in the Delta; but nothing was certainly
+known of it till it was visited by Hecatæus of Abdera, who, among other
+works, wrote a history of the Hyperborean or northern nations, and also
+a history, or rather a description of Egypt, part of which we now read
+in the pages of Dio-dorus Siculus. When he travelled in Upper Egypt,
+Thebes, though still a populous city, was more thought of by the
+antiquary than by the statesman. Its wealth, however, was still great;
+and when, under the just government of Ptolemy, it was no longer
+necessary for the priests to hide their treasures, it was found that the
+temples still held the very large sum of three hundred talents of gold,
+and two thousand three hundred talents of silver, or above five million
+dollars, which had escaped the plundering hands of the Persian satraps.
+Many of the Theban tombs, which are sets of rooms tunnelled into the
+hills on the Libyan side of the Nile, had even then been opened to
+gratify the curiosity of the learned or the greediness of the conqueror.
+Forty-seven royal tombs were mentioned in the records of the priests,
+of which the entrances had been covered up with earth, and hidden in
+the sloping sides of the hills, in the hope that they might remain
+undisturbed and unplundered, and might keep safe the embalmed bodies
+of the kings till they should rise again at the end of the world; and
+seventeen of these had already been found out and broken open. Hecatæus
+was told that the other tombs had been before destroyed; and we owe it,
+perhaps, to this mistake that they remained unopened for more than two
+thousand years longer, to reward the searches of modern travellers, and
+to unfold to us the history of their builders.
+
+The Memnonium, the great palace of Ramses II., was then standing; and
+though it had been plundered by the Persians, the building itself was
+unhurt. Its massive walls had scarcely felt the wear of the centuries
+which had rolled over them. Hecataaus measured its rooms, its
+courtyards, and its avenue of sphinxes; and by his measurements we can
+now distinguish its ruins from those of the other palaces of Thebes. One
+of its rooms, perhaps after the days of its builder, had been fitted up
+as a library, and held the histories and records of the priests; but the
+golden zodiac, or circle, on which were engraved the days of the year,
+with the celestial bodies seen to rise at sunrise and set at sunset,
+by which each day was known, had been taken away by Cambyses. Hecataaus
+also saw the three other palace-temples of Thebes, which we now call
+by the names of the villages in which they stand, namely, of Luxor, of
+Karnak, and of Medinet-Habu. But the Greeks, in their accounts of
+Egypt, have sadly puzzled us by their careless alteration of names from
+similarity of sound. To Miamun Ramses, they gave the common Greek name
+Memnon; and the city of Hahiroth they called Heroopolis, as if it meant
+the _city of heroes_. The capital of Upper Egypt, which was called The
+City, as a capital is often called, or in Koptic, _Tape or Thabou_, they
+named Thebes, and in their mythology they confounded it with Thebes in
+Bootia. The city of the god Kneph they called Canopus, and said it
+was so named after the pilot of Menelaus. The hill of Toorah opposite
+Memphis they called the Trojan mountain. One of the oldest cities in
+Egypt, This, or with the prefix for city, Abouthis, they called Abydos,
+and then said that it was colonised by Milesians from Abydos in Asia.
+In the same careless way have the Greeks given us an account of the
+Egyptian gods. They thought them the same as their own, though with new
+faces; and, instead of describing their qualities, they have in the main
+contented themselves with translating their names.
+
+If Ptolemy did not make his government as much feared by the half-armed
+Ethiopians as it was by the well-disciplined Europeans, it must have
+been because the Thebans wished to guard their own frontier rather than
+because his troops were always wanted against a more powerful enemy; but
+the inroads of the Ethiopians were so far from being checked that the
+country to the south of Thebes was unsafe for travellers, and no Greek
+was able to reach Syênê and the lower cataracts during his reign. The
+trade through Ethiopia was wholly stopped, and the caravans went from
+Thebes to Cosseir to meet the ships which brought the goods of Arabia
+and India from the opposite coast of the Red Sea.
+
+In the wars between Egypt and Asia Minor, in which Palestine had the
+misfortune to be the prize struggled for and the debatable land on which
+the battles were fought, the Jews were often made to smart under
+the stern pride of Antigonus, and to rejoice at the milder temper
+of Ptolemy. The Egyptians of the Delta and the Jews had always been
+friends; and hence, when Ptolemy promised to treat the Jews with the
+same kindness as the Greeks, and more than the Egyptians, and held out
+all the rights of Macedonian citizenship to those who would settle in
+his rising city of Alexandria, he was followed by crowds of industrious
+traders, manufacturers, and men of letters. They chose to live in Egypt
+in peace and wealth, rather than to stay in Palestine in the daily fear
+of having their houses sacked and burnt at every fresh quarrel between
+Ptolemy and Antigonus. In Alexandria, a suburb by the sea, on the east
+side of the city, was allotted for their use, which was afterwards
+included within the fortifications, and thus made a fifth ward of the
+Lagid metropolis.
+
+No sooner was the peace agreed upon between the four generals, who were
+the most powerful kings in the known world, than Cassander, who held
+Macedonia, put to death both the Queen Roxana and her son, the young
+Alexander Ægus, then thirteen years old, in whose name these generals
+had each governed his kingdom with unlimited sway, and who was then of
+an age that the soldiers, the givers of all power, were already
+planning to make him the real King of Macedonia and of his father’s wide
+conquests.
+
+The Macedonian phalanx, which formed the pride and sinews of every
+army, were equally held by their deep-rooted loyalty to the memory of
+Alexander, whether they were fighting for Ptolemy or for Antigonus, and
+equally thought that they were guarding a province for his heir; and it
+was through fear of loosening their hold upon the faithfulness of these
+their best troops that Ptolemy and his rivals alike chose to govern
+their kingdoms under the unpretending title of lieutenants of the King
+of Macedonia. Hence, upon the death of Alexander Ægus, there was a
+throne, or at least a state prison, left empty for a new claimant.
+Polysperchon, an old general of Alexander’s army, then thought that he
+saw a way to turn Cassander out of Macedonia, by the help of Hercules,
+the natural son of Alexander by Barce; and, having proclaimed him king,
+he led him with a strong army against Cassander. But Polysperchon wanted
+either courage or means for what he had undertaken, and he soon yielded
+to the bribes of Cassander and put Hercules to death.
+
+The cities on the southern coast of Asia Minor yielded to Antigonus
+obedience as slight as the ties which held them to one another. The
+cities of Pamphylia and Cilicia, in their habits as in their situation,
+were nearer the Syrians, and famous for their shipping. They all enjoyed
+a full share of the trade and piracy of those seas, and were a tempting
+prize to Ptolemy. The treaty of peace between the generals never
+lessened their jealousy nor wholly stopped the warfare, and the
+next year Ptolemy, finding that his troops could hardly keep their
+possessions in Cilicia, carried over an army in person to attack the
+forces of Antigonus in Lycia. He landed at Phaselis, the frontier town
+of Pamphylia, and, having carried that by storm, he moved westward along
+the coast of Lycia. He made himself master of Xanthus, the capital,
+which was garrisoned by the troops of Antigonus; and then of Caunus, a
+strong place on the coast of Caria, with two citadels, one of which he
+gained by force and the other by surrender. He then sailed to the island
+of Cos, which he gained by the treachery of Ptolemy, the nephew of
+Antigonus, who held it for his uncle, but who went over to the Egyptian
+king with all his forces. By this success he gained the whole southern
+coast of Asia Minor.
+
+The brother and two children of Alexander having been in their turns,
+as we have seen, murdered by their guardians, Cleopatra, his sister, and
+Thessalonica, his niece, were alone left alive of the royal family
+of Macedonia. Almost every one of the generals had already courted a
+marriage with Cleopatra, which had either been refused by herself or
+hindered by his rivals; and lastly Ptolemy, now that by the death of her
+nephews she brought kingdoms, or the love of the Macedonian mercenaries,
+which was worth more than kingdoms, as her dower, sent to ask her hand
+in marriage. This offer was accepted by Cleopatra; but, on her journey
+from Sardis, the capital of Lydia, to Egypt, on her way to join her
+future husband, she was put to death by Antigonus. The niece was put
+to death a few years later. Thus every one who was of the family of
+Alexander paid the forfeit of life for that honour, and these two deaths
+ended the Macedonian dynasty with a double tragedy.
+
+While Ptolemy was busy in helping the Greek cities of Asia to gain their
+liberty, Menelaus, his brother and admiral, was almost driven out of
+Cyprus by Demetrius. On this Ptolemy got together his fleet, to the
+number of one hundred and forty long galleys and two hundred transports,
+manned with not less than ten thousand men, and sailed with them to the
+help of his brother. This fleet, under the command of Menelaus, was met
+by Demetrius with the fleet of Antigonus, consisting of one hundred and
+twelve long galleys and a number of transports; and the Egyptian fleet,
+which had hitherto been master of the sea, was beaten near the city
+of Salamis in Cyprus by the smaller fleet of Demetrius. This was the
+heaviest loss that had ever befallen Ptolemy. Eighty long galleys were
+sunk, and forty long galleys, with one hundred transports and eight
+thousand men, were taken prisoners. He could no longer hope to keep
+Cyprus, and he sailed hastily back to Egypt, leaving to Demetrius the
+garrisons of the island as his prisoners, all of whom were enrolled in
+the army of Antigonus, to the number of sixteen thousand foot and six
+hundred horse.
+
+This naval victory gave Demetrius the means of unburdening his proud
+mind of a debt of gratitude to his enemy; and accordingly, remembering
+what Ptolemy had done after the battle of Gaza, he sent back to Egypt,
+unasked for and unransomed, those prisoners who were of high rank, that
+is to say, all those who had any choice about which side they fought
+for; and among them were Leontiscus, the son, and Menelaus, the brother,
+of Ptolemy.
+
+Antigonus was overjoyed with the news of his son’s victory. By lessening
+the power of Ptolemy, it had done much to smooth his own path to the
+sovereignty of Alexander’s empire, which was then left without an heir;
+and he immediately took the title of king, and gave the same title to
+his son Demetrius. In this he was followed by Ptolemy and the other
+generals, but with this difference, that while Antigonus called himself
+king of all the provinces, Ptolemy called himself King of Egypt; and
+while Antigonus gained Syria and Cyprus, Ptolemy gained the friendship
+of every other kingdom and of every free city in Greece; they all looked
+upon him as their best ally against Antigonus, the common enemy.
+
+The next year Antigonus mustered his forces in Coele-Syria, and got
+ready for a second attack upon Egypt. He had more than eighty thousand
+foot, accompanied with what was then the usual proportion of cavalry,
+namely, eight thousand horse and eighty-three elephants. Demetrius
+brought with him from Cyprus the fleet of one hundred and fifty long
+galleys, and one hundred transports laden with stores and engines of
+war. With this fleet, to which Ptolemy, after his late loss, had no
+ships that he could oppose, Antigonus had no need to ask leave of the
+Arabs of the little city of Petra to march through their passes; but he
+led his army straight through the desert to Pelusium, while the ships of
+burden kept close to the shore with the stores. The pride of Antigonus
+would not let him follow the advice of the sailors, and wait eight days
+till the north winds of the spring equinox had passed; and by this haste
+many of his ships were wrecked on the coast, while others were driven
+into the Nile and fell into the hands of Ptolemy. Antigonus himself,
+marching with the land forces, found all the strong places well guarded
+by the Egyptian army; and, being driven back at every point, discouraged
+by the loss of his ships and by seeing whole bodies of his troops go
+over to Ptolemy, he at last took the advice of his officers and led back
+his army to Syria, while Ptolemy returned to Alexandria, to employ those
+powers of mind in the works of peace which he had so successfully used
+in his various wars.
+
+Antigonus then turned the weight of his mighty kingdom against the
+little island of Rhodes, which, though in sight of the coast of Asia
+Minor, held itself independent of him, and in close friendship with
+Ptolemy. The Dorian island of Rhodes had from the earliest dawn of
+history held a high place among the states of Greece; and in all the
+arts of civilised life, in painting, sculpture, letters, and commerce,
+it had been lately rising in rank while the other free states had been
+falling. Its maritime laws were so highly thought of that they were
+copied by most other states, and, being afterwards adopted into the
+Pandects of Justinian, they have in part become the law of modern
+Europe. It was the only state in which Greek liberty then kept its
+ground against the great empires of Alexander’s successors.
+
+Against this little state Demetrius led two hundred long galleys and one
+hundred and seventy transports, with more than forty thousand men. The
+Greek world looked on with deep interest while the veterans of Antigonus
+were again and again driven back from the walls of the blockaded city
+by its brave and virtuous citizens; who, while their houses were burning
+and their walls crumbling under the battering-ram, left the statues of
+Antigonus and Demetrius standing unhurt in the market-place, saved by
+their love of art and the remembrance of former kindness, which, with
+a true greatness of mind, they would not let the cruelties of the siege
+outweigh. The galleys of Ptolemy, though unable to keep at sea against
+the larger fleet of Demetrius, often forced their way into the harbour
+with the welcome supplies of grain. Month after month every stratagem
+and machine which the ingenuity of Demetrius could invent were tried and
+failed; and, after the siege had lasted more than a year, he was glad to
+find an excuse for withdrawing his troops; and the Rhodians in their joy
+hailed Ptolemy with the title of Soter or _saviour_. This name he ever
+afterwards kept, though by the Greek writers he is more often called
+Ptolemy the son of Lagus. If we search the history of the world for a
+second instance of so small a state daring to withstand the armies of so
+mighty an empire, we shall perhaps not find any one more remarkable than
+that of the same island, when, seventeen hundred years afterwards, it
+again drew upon itself the eyes of the world, while it beat off the
+forces of the Ottoman empire under Mahomet II.; and, standing like a
+rock in front of Christendom, it rolled back for years the tide of war,
+till its walls were at last crumbled to a heap of ruins by Suleiman the
+Great, after a siege of many months.
+
+The next of Ptolemy’s conquests was Coele-Syria; and soon after this
+the wars between these successors of Alexander were put an end to by
+the death of Antigonus, whose overtowering ambition was among the
+chief causes of quarrel. This happened at the great battle of Ipsus in
+Phrygia, where they all met, with more than eighty thousand men in
+each army. Antigonus, King of Asia Minor, was accompanied by his son
+Demetrius, and by Pyrrhus, King of Epirus; and he was defeated by
+Ptolemy, King of Egypt, Seleucus, King of Babylon, Lysimachus, King of
+Thrace, and Cassander, King of Macedonia; and the old man lost his life
+fighting bravely. After the battle Demetrius fled to Cyprus, and yielded
+to the terms of peace which were imposed on him by the four allied
+sovereigns. He sent his friend Pyrrhus as a hostage to Alexandria; and
+there this young King of Epirus soon gained the friendship of Ptolemy
+and afterwards his stepdaughter in marriage. Ptolemy was thus left
+master of the whole of the southern coast of Asia Minor and Syria,
+indeed of the whole coast of the eastern end of the Mediterranean, from
+the island of Cos on the north to Cyrene on the south.
+
+During these formidable wars with Antigonus, Ptolemy had never been
+troubled with any serious rising of the conquered Egyptians; and perhaps
+the wars may not have been without their use in strengthening his
+throne. The first danger to a successful conqueror is from the avarice
+and disappointment of his followers, who usually claim the kingdom as
+their booty, and who think themselves wronged and their past services
+forgotten if any limit is placed to their tyranny over the conquered.
+But these foreign wars may have taught the Alexandrians that Ptolemy was
+not strong enough to ill-treat the Egyptians, and may thus have saved
+him from the indiscretion of his friends and from their reproaches for
+ingratitude.
+
+In the late war, the little Dorian island of Cos on the coast of Asia
+Minor fell, as we have seen, under the power of Ptolemy. This island was
+remarkable as being the first spot in Europe into which the manufacture
+of silk was introduced, which it probably gained when under the power
+of Persia before the overthrow of Darius. The luxury of the Egyptian
+ladies, who affected to be overheated by any clothing that could conceal
+their limbs, had long ago introduced a tight, thin dress which neither
+our climate nor notions of modesty would allow, and for this dress,
+silk, when it could be obtained, was much valued; and Pamphila of Cos
+had the glory of having woven webs so transparent that the Egyptian
+women were enabled to display their fair forms yet more openly by means
+of this clothing.
+
+[Illustration: 081.jpg ALEXANDRIAN LADY, ATTIRED IN BOMBYX SILK]
+
+Cos continued always in the power of the Ptolemies, who used it as a
+royal fortress, occasionally sending their treasures and their children
+there as to a place of safety from Alexandrian rebellion; and there the
+silk manufacture flourished in secret for two or three centuries.
+When it ceased is unknown, as it was part of the merchants’ craft to
+endeavour to keep each branch of trade to themselves, by concealing the
+channel through which they obtained their supply of goods, and many of
+the dresses which were sold in Rome under the emperors by the name of
+Coan robes may have been brought from the East through Alexandria.
+
+One of the most valuable gifts which Egypt owed to Ptolemy was its
+coinage. Even Thebes, “where treasures were largest in the houses” never
+was able to pass gold and silver from hand to hand without the trouble
+of weighing, and the doubt as to the fineness of the metal. The Greek
+merchants who crowded the markets of Canopus and Alexandria must have
+filled Lower Egypt with the coins of the cities from whence they came,
+all unlike one another in stamp and weight; but, while every little city
+or even colony of Greece had its own coinage, Egypt had as yet very few
+coins of its own. We are even doubtful whether we know by sight those
+coined by the Persians In the early years of Ptolemy’s government
+Ptolemy had issued a very few coins bearing the names of the young kings
+in whose name he held the country, but he seems not to have coined any
+quantity of money till after he had himself taken the title of king. His
+coins are of gold, silver, and bronze, and are in a fine style of Greek
+workmanship. Those of gold and silver bear on one side the portrait of
+the king, without a beard, having the head bound with the royal diadem,
+which, unlike the high priestly crown of the native Egyptian kings, or
+the modern crown of gold and precious stones, is a plain riband tied in
+a bow behind. On the other side they have the name of Ptolemy Soter, or
+King Ptolemy, with an eagle standing upon a thunderbolt, which was only
+another way of drawing the eagle and sun, the hieroglyphical characters
+for the title Pharaoh.
+
+[Illustration: 082.jpg EGYPTIAN COINAGE]
+
+The gold coins of Egypt were probably made in Alexandria. The coins
+are not of the same weight as those of Greece; but Ptolemy followed the
+Egyptian standard of weight, which was that to which the Jewish shekel
+was adjusted, and which was in use in the wealthy cities of Tyre and
+Sidon and Beryttus. The drachma weighs fifty-five grains, making the
+talent of silver worth about seven hundred and fifty dollars. Ptolemy’s
+bronze coins have the head of Serapis or Jupiter in the place of that of
+the king, as is also the case with those of his successors; but few of
+these bronze pieces bear any marks from which we can learn the reign
+in which they were coined. They are of better metal than those of other
+countries, as the bronze is free from lead and has more tin in it. The
+historian, in his very agreeable labours, should never lose sight of the
+coins. They teach us by their workmanship the state of the arts, and by
+their weight, number, and purity of metal, the wealth of the country.
+They also teach dates, titles, and the places where they were struck;
+and even in those cases where they seem to add little to what we learn
+from other sources, they are still the living witnesses to which we
+appeal, 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 seen
+them to surpass any that had been before painted, or were likely to be
+painted, had quarrelled with Ptolemy, who had known him well when he
+was the friend and painter of Alexander. Once when he was at Alexandria,
+somebody wickedly told him that he was invited to dine at the royal
+table, and when Ptolemy asked who it was that had sent his unwelcome
+guest, Apelles drew the face of the mischief-maker on the wall, and he
+was known to all the court by the likeness. It was, perhaps, at one
+of these dinners, at which Ptolemy enjoyed the society of the men of
+letters, or perhaps when visiting the philosophers in their schools,
+that he asked Euclid if he could not show him a shorter and easier way
+to the higher truths of mathematics than that by which he led the pupils
+in the Museum; and Euclid, as if to remind him of the royal roads of
+Persia, which ran by the side of the highroads, but were kept clear and
+free for the king’s own use, made him the well-known answer, that there
+was no royal road to geometry.
+
+Ptolemy lived in easy familiarity with the learned men of Alexandria;
+and at another of these literary dinners, when Diodorus, the
+rhetorician, who was thought to have been the inventor of the Dilemma,
+was puzzled by a question put to him by Stilpo, the king in joke said
+that his name should be Cronus, a god who had been laughed at in the
+comedies. Indeed, he was so teased by Ptolemy for not being able to
+answer it, that he got up and left the room. He afterwards wrote a book
+upon the subject; but the ridicule was said to have embittered the rest
+of his life. This was the person against whom Callimachus, some years
+later, wrote a bitter epigram, beginning “Cronus is a wise man.”
+ Diodorus was of the sceptical school of philosophy, which, though not
+far removed from the Cyrenaic school, was never popular in Alexandria.
+Among other paradoxes he used to deny the existence of motion. He argued
+that the motion was not in the place where the body moved from, nor in
+the place that the body moved to, and that accordingly it did not exist
+at all. Once he met with a violent fall which put his shoulder out of
+joint, and he applied to Herophilus, the surgeon, to set it. Herophilus
+began by asking him where the fall took place, whether in the place
+where the shoulder was, or in the place where it fell to; but the
+smarting philosopher begged him to begin by setting his limb, and they
+would talk about the existence of motion after the operation.
+
+Stilpo was at this time only on a visit to Ptolemy, for he had refused
+his offer of money and a professorship in the Museum, and had chosen
+to remain at Megara where he was the ornament of his birthplace. He
+had been banished from Athens for speaking against their gods, and for
+saying that the colossal Minerva was not the daughter of Jupiter, but of
+Phidias, the sculptor. His name as a philosopher stood so high that when
+Demetrius, in his late wars with Ptolemy, took the city of Megara by
+storm, the conqueror bid spare the house of Stilpo, when temple and
+tower went to the ground; and when Demetrius gave orders that Stilpo
+should be repaid for what he had lost in the siege, the philosopher
+proudly answered that he had lost nothing, and that he had no wealth but
+his learning.
+
+The historian Theopompus of Chios then came to Alexandria, and wrote an
+account of the wars between the Egyptians and the Persians. It is now
+lost, but it contained at least the events from the successful invasion
+by Artaxerxes Longimanus till the unsuccessful invasion by Artaxerxes
+Mnemon.
+
+No men of learning in Alexandria were more famous than the physicians.
+Erasistratus of Cos had the credit of having once cured Antiochus,
+afterwards King of Syria. He was the grandson of Aristotle, and may
+be called the father of the science of anatomy: his writings are often
+quoted by Dioscorides. Antiochus in his youth had fallen deeply in love
+with his young stepmother, and was pining away in silence and despair.
+Erasistratus found out the cause of his illness, which was straightway
+cured by Seleucus giving up his wife to his own son. This act strongly
+points out the changed opinions of the world as to the matrimonial
+relation; for it was then thought the father’s best title to the name
+of Nicator; he had before conquered his enemies, but he then conquered
+himself.
+
+Erasistratus was the first who thought that a knowledge of anatomy
+should be made a part of the healing art. Before his time surgery and
+medicine had been deemed one and the same; they had both been studied by
+the slow and uncertain steps of experience, unguided by theory. Many a
+man who had been ill, whether through disease or wound, and had regained
+his health, thought it his duty to Esculapius and to his neighbours to
+write up in the temple of the god the nature of his ailings, and the
+simples to which he fancied that he owed his cure. By copying these
+loose but well-meant inscriptions of medical cases, Hippocrates had,
+a century earlier, laid the foundations of the science; but nothing
+further was added to it till Erasistratus, setting at nought the
+prejudices in which he was born, began dissecting the human body in the
+schools of Alexandria. There the mixing together of Greeks and Egyptians
+had weakened those religious feelings of respect for the dead which are
+usually shocked by anatomy; and this study flourished from the low
+tone of the morality as much as from the encouragement which good sense
+should grant to every search for knowledge.
+
+Herophilus lived about the same time with Erasistratus, and was, like
+him, famous for his knowledge of the anatomy of man. But so hateful was
+this study in the eyes of many, that these anatomists were charged by
+writers who ought to have known better, with the cruelty of cutting
+men open when alive. They had few followers in the hated use of the
+dissecting-knife. It was from their writings that Galen borrowed the
+anatomical parts of his work; and thus it was to the dissections of
+these two great men, helped indeed by opening the bodies of animals,
+that the world owed almost the whole of its knowledge of the anatomy of
+man, till the fifteenth century, when surgeons were again bold enough to
+face the outcry of the mob, and to study the human body with the knife.
+
+Hegesias of Cyrene was an early lecturer on philosophy at Alexandria.
+His short and broken sentences are laughed at by Cicero, yet he was so
+much listened to, when lecturing against the fear of death, and showing
+that in quitting life we leave behind us more pains than pleasures, that
+he was stopped by Ptolemy Soter through fear of his causing self-murder
+among his hearers. He then wrote a book upon the same subject, for
+though the state watched over the public teaching, it took no notice
+of books; writing had not yet become the mightiest power on earth. The
+miseries, however, of this world, which he so eloquently and feelingly
+described in his lectures and writings, did not drive him to put an end
+to his own life.
+
+Philostephanus of Cyrene, the friend of Callimachus, was a naturalist
+who wrote upon fishes, and is the first investigator that we hear of who
+thought it desirable to limit his studies to one branch of the science
+of natural history.
+
+But Cyrene did not send all its great men to Alexandria. Plato had
+studied mathematics there under Theodorus, and it had a school of its
+own which gave its name to the Cyrenaic sect. The founder of this sect
+was Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates who had missed the high honour of
+being present at his death. He was the first philosopher who took money
+from his pupils, and used to say that they valued their lessons more
+for having to pay for them; but he was blamed by his brethren for
+thus lowering the dignity of the teacher. He died several years before
+Ptolemy Soter came into Egypt. The Cyrenaic sect thought happiness,
+not goodness, was the end to be aimed at through life, and selfishness,
+rather than kindness to others, the right spring of men’s actions. It
+would hardly be fair to take their opinions from the mouths of their
+enemies; and the dialogues of Socrates, with their founder, as told to
+us by Xeno-phon, would prove a lower tone of morality than he is likely
+to have held. The wish for happiness and the philosophical love of self,
+which should lead to goodness, though a far worse rule of life than the
+love of goodness for its own sake, which is the groundwork of religion,
+was certainly far better than unguided passion and the love of to-day’s
+pleasure. But often as this unsafe rule has been set up for our
+guidance, there have always been found many to make use of it in a way
+not meant by the teacher. The Cyrenaic sect soon fell into the disrepute
+to which these principles were likely to lead it, and wholly ceased when
+Epicurus taught the same opinions more philosophically, Anniceris of
+Cyrene, though a follower of Aristippus, somewhat improved upon the
+low-toned philosophy of his master. He granted that there were many
+things worth our aim, which could not be brought within the narrow
+bounds of what is useful. He did not overlook friendship, kindness,
+honouring our parents, and serving our country; and he thought that a
+wise man would undertake many labours which would bring him no return in
+the things which were alone thought happiness.
+
+The chair of philosophy at Cyrene was afterwards filled by Arete, the
+daughter of Aristippus; for such were the hindrances in the way of
+gaining knowledge, that few could be so well qualified to teach as the
+philosopher’s daughter. Books were costly, and reading by no means
+a cheap amusement. She was followed, after her death, by her son
+Aristippus, who, having been brought up in his mother’s lecture-room,
+was called, in order to distinguish him from his grandfather of the same
+name, Metrodidactus, or _mother-taught_. History has not told us whether
+he took the name himself in gratitude for the debt which he owed to this
+learned lady, or whether it was given him by his pupils; but in either
+case it was a sure way of giving to the mother the fame which was due to
+her for the education of her son; for no one could fail to ask who was
+the mother of Metrodidactus.
+
+Theodorus, one of the pupils of Metrodidactus, though at one time
+banished from Cyrene, rose to honour under Soter, and was sent by him as
+ambassador to Lysimachus, He was called the Atheist by his enemies, and
+the Divine by his friends, but we cannot now determine which title he
+best deserved. It was then usual to call those atheists who questioned
+the existence of the pagan gods; and we must not suppose that all who
+suffered under that reproach denied that the world was governed by a
+ruling providence. The disbeliever in the false religion of the many is
+often the only real believer in a God. Theodorus was of the cold school
+of philosophy, which was chiefly followed in Alexandria. It was earthly,
+lifeless, and unpoetical, arising from the successful cultivation of
+the physical sciences, not enough counteracted by the more ennobling
+pursuits of poetry and the fine arts. Hence, while commerce and the arts
+of production were carried to higher perfection than at any former
+time, and science was made greatly to assist in the supply of our bodily
+wants, the arts of civilisation, though by no means neglected, were
+cultivated without any lofty aim, or any true knowledge of their
+dignity.
+
+[Illustration: 092.jpg THE CHARIOT OF ANTIPHILUS]
+
+Antiphilus, who was born in Egypt and had studied painting under
+Ctesidemus, rose to high rank as a painter in Alexandria. Among his
+best-known pictures were the bearded Bacchus, the young Alexander, and
+Hip-polytus, or rather his chariot-horses, frightened by the bull. His
+boy, blowing up a fire with his mouth, was much praised for the mouth
+of the boy, and for the light and shade of the room. His Ptolemy
+hunting was also highly thought of. Antiphilus showed a mean jealousy
+of Apelles, and accused him of joining in a plot against the king, for
+which the painter narrowly escaped punishment; but Ptolemy, finding that
+the charge was not true, sent Apelles a gift of one hundred talents to
+make amends. The angry feelings of Apelles were by no means cooled by
+this gift, but they boiled over in his great picture of Calumny. On the
+right of the picture sat Ptolemy, holding out his hand to Calumny, who
+was coming up to him. On each side of the king stood a woman who seemed
+meant for Ignorance and Suspicion. Calumny was a beautiful maiden, but
+with angry and deep-rooted malice in her face: in her left hand was a
+lighted torch, and with her right she was dragging along by the hair
+a young man, who was stretching forth his hands to heaven, and calling
+upon the gods to bear witness that he was guiltless. Before her walked
+Envy, a pale, hollow-eyed, diseased man, perhaps a portrait of
+the accuser; and behind were two women, Craft and Deceit, who were
+encouraging and supporting her. At a distance stood Repentance, in the
+ragged, black garb of mourning, who was turning away her face for shame
+as Truth came up to her.
+
+Ptolemy Soter was plain in his manners, and scarcely surpassed his own
+generals in the costliness of his way of life. He often dined and slept
+at the houses of his friends; and his own house had so little of the
+palace, that he borrowed dishes and tables of his friends when he asked
+any number of them to dine with him in return, saying that it was the
+part of a king to enrich others rather than to be rich himself. Before
+he took the title of king, he styled himself, and was styled by friendly
+states, by the simple name of Ptolemy the Macedonian; and during the
+whole of his reign he was as far from being overbearing in his behaviour
+as from being kinglike in his dress and household. Once when he wished
+to laugh at a boasting antiquary, he asked him, what he knew could not
+be answered, who was the father of Peleus; and the other let his wit so
+far get the better of his prudence as in return to ask the king, who had
+perhaps never heard the name of his own grandfather, if he knew who was
+the father of Lagus. But Ptolemy took no further notice of this than to
+remark that if a king cannot bear rude answers he ought not to ask rude
+questions.
+
+An answer which Ptolemy once made to a soothsayer might almost be taken
+as the proverb which had guided him through life. When his soldiers met
+with an anchor in one of their marches, and were disheartened on being
+told by the soothsayer that it was a proof that they ought to stop where
+they then were, the king restored their courage by remarking, that an
+anchor was an omen of safety, not of delay.
+
+Ptolemy’s first children were by Thais, the noted courtesan, but they
+were not thought legitimate. Leontiscus, the eldest, we afterwards hear
+of fighting bravely against Demetrius; of the second, named Lagus after
+his grandfather, we hear nothing.
+
+He then married Eurydice, the daughter of Antipater, by whom he had
+several children. The eldest son, Ptolemy, was named Ceraunus, _the
+Thunderer_, and was banished by his father from Alexandria. In his
+distress he fled to Seleucus, by whom he was kindly received; but after
+the death of Ptolemy Soter he basely plotted against Seleucus and
+put him to death. He then defeated in battle Antigonus, the son of
+Demetrius, and got possession of Macedonia for a short time. He married
+his half-sister Arsinoë, and put her children to death; and was soon
+afterwards put to death himself by the Gauls, who were either fighting
+against him or were mercenaries in his own army. Another son of Ptolemy
+and Eurydice was put to death by Ptolemy Philadelphus, for plotting
+against his throne, to which, as the elder brother, he might have
+thought himself the best entitled. Their daughter Lysander married
+Agathocles, the son of Lysimachus; but when Agathocles was put to death
+by his father, she fled to Egypt with her children, and put herself
+under Ptolemy’s care.
+
+Ptolemy then, as we have seen, asked in marriage the hand of Cleopatra,
+the sister of Alexander; but on her death he married Berenicê, a lady
+who had come into Egypt with Eurydice, and had formed part of her
+household. She was the widow of a man named Philip; and she had by her
+first husband a son named Magas, whom Ptolemy made governor of Cyrene,
+and a daughter, Antigone, whom Ptolemy gave in marriage to Pyrrhus when
+that young king was living in Alexandria as hostage for Demetrius.
+
+Berenicê’s mildness and goodness of heart were useful in softening her
+husband’s severity. Once, when Ptolemy was unbending his mind at a game
+of dice with her, one of his officers came up to his side, and began to
+read over to him a list of criminals who had been 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 unhappy
+tale; 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 him
+finish reading it; saying it was very unbecoming in the king to treat
+the matter so lightly, as if he thought no more of the loss of a life
+than the loss of a throw.
+
+With Berenicê Ptolemy spent the rest of his years without anything to
+trouble the happiness of his family. He saw their elder son, Ptolemy,
+whom we must call by the name which he took late in life, Philadelphus,
+grow up everything that he could wish him to be; and, moved alike by his
+love for the mother and by the good qualities of the son, he chose
+him as his successor on the throne, instead of his eldest son, Ptolemy
+Ceraunus, who had shown, by every act in his life, his unfitness for the
+royal position.
+
+His daughter Arsinoë married Lysimachus in his old age, and urged
+him against his son, Agathocles, the husband of her own sister. She
+afterwards married her half-brother, Ptolemy Ceraunus; and lastly became
+the wife of her brother Philadelphus. Argzeus, the youngest son of
+Ptolemy, was put to death by Philadelphus on a charge of treason. Of
+his youngest daughter Philotera we know nothing, except that her brother
+Philadelphus afterwards named a city on the coast of the Red Sea after
+her.
+
+After the last battle with Demetrius, Ptolemy had regained the island of
+Cyprus and Cole-Syria, including Judæa; and his throne became stronger
+as his life drew to an end. With a wisdom rare in kings and conquerors,
+he had never let his ambition pass his means; he never aimed at
+universal power; and he was led, both by his kind feelings and
+wise policy, to befriend all those states which, like his own, were
+threatened by that mad ambition in others.
+
+His history of Alexander’s wars is lost, and we therefore cannot judge
+of his merits as an author; but we may still point out with pleasure how
+much his people gained from his love of letters; though indeed we do not
+need the example of Ptolemy to show that learning and philosophy are as
+much in place, and find as wide a field of usefulness, in governing
+a kingdom as in the employments of the teacher, the lawyer, or the
+physician, who so often claim them as their own.
+
+His last public act, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, was ordered
+by the same forbearance which had governed every part of his life.
+Feeling the weight of years press heavily upon him, that he was less
+able than formerly to bear the duties of his office, and wishing to see
+his son firmly seated on the throne, he laid aside his diadem and
+his title, and, without consulting either the army or the capital,
+proclaimed Ptolemy, his son by Berenicê, king, and contented himself
+with the modest rank of somatophylax, or satrap, to his successor. He
+had used his power so justly that he was not afraid to lay it down;
+and he has taught us how little of true greatness there is in rank by
+showing how much more there is in resigning it. This is perhaps the most
+successful instance known of a king, who had been used to be obeyed by
+armies and by nations, willingly giving up his power when he found his
+bodily strength no longer equal to it. Ptolemy Soter had the happiness
+of having a son willing to follow in the track which he had laid down
+for him, and of living to see the wisdom of his own laws proved by the
+well-being of the kingdom under his son and successor.
+
+But while we are watching the success of Ptolemy’s plans, and the rise
+of this Greek monarchy at Alexandria, we cannot help being pained with
+the thought that the Kopts of Upper Egypt are forgotten, and asking
+whether it would not have been still better to have raised Thebes to
+the place which it once held, and to have recalled the days of Ramses,
+instead of trying what might seem the hopeless task of planting Greek
+arts in Africa. But a review of this history will show that, as far as
+human forethought can judge, this could not have been done. A people
+whose religious opinions were fixed against all change, like the pillars
+upon which they were carved, and whose philosophy had not noticed that
+men’s minds were made to move forward, had no choice but to be left
+behind and trampled on, as their more active neighbours marched onwards
+in the path of improvement. If Thebes had fallen only on the conquest by
+Cambyses, if the rebellions against the Persians had been those of Kopts
+throwing off their chains and struggling for freedom, we might have
+hoped to have seen Egypt, on the fall of Darius, again rise under kings
+of the blood and language of the people; and we should have thought the
+gilded and half-hid chains of the Ptolemies were little better than the
+heavy yoke of the Persians. This, however, is very far from having been
+the case. We first see the kings of Lower Egypt guarding their thrones
+at Saïs by Greek soldiers; and then, that every struggle of Inarus, of
+Nectanebo, and of Tachos, against the Persians, was only made by the
+courage and arms of Greeks hired in the Delta by Egyptian gold. During
+the three hundred years before Alexander was hailed by Egypt as its
+deliverer, scarcely once had the Kopts, trusting to their own courage,
+stood up in arms against either Persians or Greeks; and the country was
+only then con-quered without a battle because the power and arms were
+already in the hands of the Greeks; because in the mixed races of
+the Delta the Greeks were so far the strongest, though not the most
+numerous, that a Greek kingdom rose there with the same ease, and for
+the same reasons, that an Arab kingdom rose in the same place nine
+centuries 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 of
+clanship are the chief grounds upon which a great people can be raised.
+These feelings are closely allied to self-denial, or a willingness on
+the part of each man to give up much for the good of the whole. By this,
+chiefly, public monuments are built, and citizens stand by one another
+in battle; and these feelings were certainly strong in Upper Egypt
+in the days of its greatness. But, when the throne was moved to Lower
+Egypt, when the kingdom was governed by the kings of Saïs, and even
+afterwards, when it was struggling against the Persians, these virtues
+were wanting, and they trusted to foreign hirelings in their struggle
+for freedom. The Delta was peopled by three races of men, Kopts, Greeks,
+and Phoenicians, or Arabs; and even before the sceptre was given to the
+Greeks by Alexander’s conquests, we have seen that the Kopts had lost
+the 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 fair
+prospects before them as the second Ptolemy. He was born in Cos, an
+island on the coast of Caria, which the Ptolemies kept as a family
+fortress, safe from Egyptian rebellion and Alexandrian rudeness, and,
+while their fleets were masters of the sea, safe from foreign armies. He
+had been brought up with great care, and, being a younger son, was not
+spoilt by that flattery which in all courts is so freely offered to the
+heir. He first studied letters and philosophy under Philetas of Cos,
+an author of some elegies and epigrams now lost; and as he grew up, he
+found himself surrounded by all the philosophers and writers with whom
+his father mixed on the easiest terms of friendship. During the
+long reign of Ptolemy Soter the people had been made happy by wise
+regulations and good laws, trade had been flourishing, the cities had
+greatly 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 the
+Egyptians were enrolled in a phalanx, armed and disciplined like
+the Macedonians. The population of the country was counted at seven
+millions. Alexandria, the capital of the kingdom, was not only the
+largest trading city in the world, but was one of the most favoured
+seats of learning. It surely must have been easy to foresee that the
+prince, then mounting the throne, even if but slightly gifted with
+virtues, would give his name to a reign which could not be otherwise
+than remarkable in the history of Egypt. But Philadelphus, though like
+his father he was not free from the vices of his times and of his rank,
+had more of wisdom than is usually the lot of kings; and, though we
+cannot but see that he was only watering the plants and gathering
+the fruit where his father had planted, yet we must at the same time
+acknowledge that Philadelphus was a successor worthy of Ptolemy Soter.
+He may have been in the twenty-third year of his age when his father
+gave up to him the cares and honours of royalty.
+
+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 to
+the troops and people. All that was dazzling, all that was costly or
+curious, all that the wealth of Egypt could buy or the gratitude of the
+provinces could give, was brought forth to grace this religious show,
+which, as we learn from the sculptures in the old tombs, was copied
+rather from the triumphs of Ramses and Thûtmosis than from anything that
+had been seen in Greece.
+
+The procession began with the pomp of Osiris, at the head of which were
+the Sileni in scarlet and purple cloaks, who opened the way through the
+crowd. Twenty satyrs followed on each side of the road, bearing torches;
+and then Victories with golden wings, clothed in skins, each with
+a golden staff six cubits long, twined round with ivy. An altar was
+carried next, covered with golden ivy-leaves, with a garland of golden
+vine-leaves tied with white ribands; and this was followed by a hundred
+and twenty boys in scarlet frocks, carrying bowls of crocus, myrrh,
+and frankincense, which made the air fragrant with the scent. Then came
+forty dancing satyrs crowned with golden ivy-leaves, with their naked
+bodies stained with gay colours, each carrying a crown of vine leaves
+and gold; then two Sileni in scarlet cloaks and white boots, one having
+the hat and wand of Mercury and the other a trumpet; and between them
+walked a man, six feet high, in tragic dress and mask, meant for the
+Year, carrying a golden cornucopia. He was followed by a tall and
+beautiful woman, meant for the Lustrum of five years, carrying in one
+hand a crown and in the other a palm-branch. Then came an altar, and a
+troop of satyrs in gold and scarlet, carrying golden drinking-cups.
+
+Then came Philiscus the poet, the priest of Osiris, with all the
+servants of the god; then the Delphic tripods, the prizes which were
+to be given in the wrestling matches; that for the boys was nine cubits
+high, and that for the men twelve cubits high. Next came a four-wheeled
+car, fourteen cubits long and eight wide, drawn along by one hundred
+and eighty men, on which was the statue of Osiris, fifteen feet high,
+pouring wine out of a golden vase, and having a scarlet frock down to
+his feet, with a yellow transparent robe over it, and over all a scarlet
+cloak. Before the statue was a large golden bowl, and a tripod with
+bowls of incense on it. Over the whole was an awning of ivy and vine
+leaves; and in the same chariot were the priests and priestesses of the
+god.
+
+This was followed by a smaller chariot drawn by sixty men, in which was
+the statue of Isis in a robe of yellow and gold. Then came a chariot
+full of grapes, and another with a large cask of wine, which was poured
+out on the road, as the procession moved on, and at which the eager
+crowd filled their jugs and drinking-cups. Then came another band of
+satyrs and Sileni, and more chariots of wine; then eighty Delphic vases
+of silver, and Panathenaic and other vases; and sixteen hundred dancing
+boys in white frocks and golden crowns: then a number of beautiful
+pictures; and a chariot carrying a grove of trees, out of which flew
+pigeons and doves, so tied that they might be easily caught by the
+crowd.
+
+On another chariot, drawn by an elephant, came Osiris, as he returned
+from his Indian conquests. He was followed by twenty-four chariots drawn
+by elephants, sixty drawn by goats, twelve by some kind of stags,
+seven by gazelles, four by wild asses, fifteen by buffaloes, eight by
+ostriches, and seven by stags of some other kind. Then came chariots
+loaded with the tributes of the conquered nations; men of Ethiopia
+carrying six hundred elephants’ teeth; sixty huntsmen leading two
+thousand four hundred dogs; and one hundred and fifty men carrying
+trees, in the branches of which were tied parrots and other beautiful
+birds. Next walked the foreign animals, Ethiopian and Arabian sheep,
+Brahmin bulls, a white bear, leopards, panthers, bears, a camelopard,
+and a rhinoceros; proving to the wondering crowd the variety and
+strangeness of the countries that owned their monarch’s sway.
+
+In another chariot was seen Bacchus running away from Juno, and flying
+to the altar of Rhea. After that came the statues of Alexander and
+Ptolemy Soter crowned with gold and ivy: by the side of Ptolemy stood
+the statues of Virtue, of the god Chem, and of the city of Corinth;
+and he was followed by female statues of the conquered cities of Ionia,
+Greece, Asia Minor, and Persia; and the statues of other gods. Then came
+crowds of singers and cymbal-players, and two thousand bulls with gilt
+horns, crowns, and breast-plates. Then came Amon-Ra and other gods;
+and the statue of Alexander between Victory and the goddess Neith, in a
+chariot 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 the
+throne of Ptolemy Soter was a crown worth ten thousand _aurei_, or
+nearly thirty thousand dollars; then three thousand two hundred golden
+crowns, twenty golden shields, sixty-four suits of golden armour; and
+the whole was closed with forty waggons of silver vessels, twenty
+of golden vessels, eighty of costly Eastern scents, and fifty-seven
+thousand six hundred foot soldiers, and twenty-three thousand two
+hundred horse. The procession began moving by torchlight before day
+broke in the morning, and the sun set in the evening before it had all
+passed on its way.
+
+[Illustration: 106.jpg BRONZE COSMETIC HOLDER]
+
+It went through the streets of Alexandria to the royal tents on the
+outside of the city, where, as in the procession, everything that was
+costly in art, or scarce in nature, was brought together in honour of
+the day. At the public games, as a kind of tax or coronation money,
+twenty golden crowns were given to Ptolemy Soter, twenty-three to
+Berenice, and twenty to their son, the new king, beside other costly
+gifts; and two thousand two hundred and thirty-nine talents, or one
+million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, were spent on the
+amusements of the day. For the account of this curious procession we are
+indebted to Callixenes of Rhodes, who was then travelling in Egypt, and
+who wrote a history of Alexandria.
+
+Ptolemy Soter lived two years after he had withdrawn himself from the
+cares of government; and the weight of his name was not without its
+use in adding steadiness to the throne of his successor. Instead of
+parcelling out his wide provinces among his sons as so many kingdoms, he
+had given them all to one son, and that not the eldest; and on his death
+the jealousy of those who had been disinherited and disappointed broke
+out in rebellion.
+
+It is with peculiar interest that we hear in this reign for the
+first time that the bravery and rising power of the Romans had forced
+themselves into the notice of Philadelphus. Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus,
+had been beaten by the Romans, and driven out of Italy; and the King of
+Egypt thought it not beneath him to send an ambassador to the senate, to
+wish them joy of their success, and to make a treaty of peace with the
+republic. The embassy, as we might suppose, was received in Rome with
+great joy; and three ambassadors, two of the proud name of Fabius, with
+Quintus Ogulnius, were sent back to seal the treaty. Philadelphus gave
+them some costly gifts, probably those usually given to ambassadors;
+but Rome was then young, her citizens had not yet made gold the end for
+which they lived, and the ambassadors returned the gifts, for they could
+receive nothing beyond the thanks of the senate for having done their
+duty. This treaty was never broken; and in the war which broke out in
+the middle of this reign between Rome and Carthage, usually called the
+first Punic war, when the Carthaginians sent to Alexandria to beg for
+a loan of two thousand talents, Philadelphus refused it, saying that he
+would help them against his enemies, but not against his friends.
+
+From that time forward we find Egypt in alliance with Rome. But we also
+find that they were day by day changing place with one another: Egypt
+soon began to sink, while Rome was rising in power; Egypt soon received
+help from her stronger ally, and at last became a province of the Roman
+empire.
+
+At the time of this embassy, when Greek arts were nearly unknown to the
+Romans, the ambassadors must have seen much that was new to them, and
+much that was worth copying; and three years afterwards, when one of
+them, Quintus Ogulnius, together with Caius Fabius Pictor, were chosen
+consuls, they coined silver for the first time in Rome. With them begins
+the series of consular denarii, which throws such light on Roman life
+and history.
+
+About the middle of this reign, Berenicê, the mother of the king, died,
+and it was most likely then that Philadelphus began to date from the
+beginning of his own reign: he had before gone on like his father,
+dating from the beginning of his father’s reign. In the year after her
+death, the great feast of Osiris, in the month of Mesore, was celebrated
+at Alexandria with more than usual pomp by the Queen Arsinoë. Venus, or
+Isis, had just raised Berenice to heaven; and Arsinoë, in return, showed
+her gratitude by the sums of money spent on the feast of Osiris, or
+Adonis as he was sometimes called by the Greeks. Theocritus, who was
+there, wrote a poem on the day, and tells us of the crowds in the
+streets, of the queen’s gifts to the temple, and of the beautiful
+tapestries, on which were woven the figures of the god and goddess
+breathing as if alive; and he has given a free translation of the
+Maneros, the national poem in which the priests each year consoled the
+goddess Isis for the death of Osiris, which was sung through the streets
+of Alexandria by a Greek girl in the procession. One of the chief
+troubles in the reign of Philadelphus was the revolt of Cyrene. The
+government of that part of Africa had been entrusted to Magas, the
+half-brother of the king, a son of Berenice by her former husband.
+Berenice, who had been successful in setting aside Ceraunus to make room
+for her son Philadelphus on the throne of Egypt, has even been said to
+have favoured the rebellious and ungrateful efforts of her elder son
+Magas to make himself King of Cyrene. Magas, without waiting till the
+large armies of Egypt were drawn together to crush his little state,
+marched hastily towards Alexandria, in the hopes of being joined by
+some of the restless thousands of that crowded city. But he was quickly
+recalled to Cyrene by the news of the rising of the Marmaridas, the race
+of Libyan herdsmen that had been driven back from the coast by the Greek
+settlers who founded Cyrene. Philadelphus then led his army along the
+coast against the rebels; but he was, in the same way, stopped by the
+fear of treachery among his own Gallic mercenaries. With a measured
+cruelty which the use of foreign mercenaries could alone have taught
+him, he led back his army to the marshes of the Delta, and, entrapping
+the four thousand distrusted Gauls* on one of the small islands, he
+hemmed them in between the water and the spears of the phalanx, and they
+all 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-Syria
+and Palestine, to call off the army of Philadelphus from Cyrene. But
+Philadelphus did not wait for this attack: his armies moved before
+Antiochus was ready, and, by a successful inroad upon Syria, he
+prevented any relief being sent to Magas.
+
+After the war between the brothers had lasted some years, Magas made
+an offer of peace, which was to be sealed by betrothing his only
+child, Berenicê, to the son of Philadelphus. To this offer Philadelphus
+yielded; as by the death of Magas, who was already worn out by luxury
+and disease, Cyrene would then fall to his own son. Magas, indeed, died
+before the marriage took place; but, notwithstanding the efforts made
+by his widow to break the agreement, the treaty was kept, and on this
+marriage Cyrene again formed part of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt.
+
+The black spot upon the character of Philadelphus, which all the blaze
+of science and letters by which he was surrounded can not make us
+overlook, is the death of two of his brothers: a son of Eurydice, who
+might, perhaps, have thought that he was robbed of the throne of Egypt
+by his younger brother, and who was unsuccessful in raising the island
+of Cyprus in rebellion; and a younger brother, Argasus, who was also
+charged with joining in a plot; both lost their lives by his orders.
+
+It was only in the beginning of this reign, after Egypt had been for
+more than fifty years under the rule of the Macedonians, that the evils
+which often follow conquest were brought to an end. Before this reign
+no Greek was ever known to have reached Elephantine and Syênê or Aswan
+since Herodotus made his hasty tour in the Thebaid; and during much of
+the last reign no part of Upper Egypt was safe for a Greek traveller,
+if he were alone, or if he quitted the highroad. The peasants, whose
+feelings of hatred we can hardly wonder at, waylaid the stragglers, and
+Egyptian-like as the Greeks said, or slave-like as it would be wiser to
+say, often put them to death in cold blood. But a long course of good
+government had at last quieted the whole country, and left room for
+further improvements by Philadelphus.
+
+Among other buildings, Philadelphus raised a temple in Alexandria to the
+honour of his father and mother, and placed in it their statues, made of
+ivory and gold, and ordered that they should be worshipped like the
+gods and other kings of the country. He also built a temple to Ceres and
+Proserpine, and then the Eleusinian mysteries were taught in Alexandria
+to the few who were willing and worthy to be admitted. The southeast
+quarter of the city in which this temple stood was called the Eleusinis;
+and here the troop of maidens were to be seen carrying the sacred basket
+through the streets, and singing hymns in honour of the goddess; while
+they charged all profane persons, who met the procession, to keep
+their eyes upon the ground, lest they should see the basket and the
+priestesses, who were too pure for them to look upon.
+
+In this reign was finished the lighthouse on the island of Pharos, as
+a guide to ships when entering the harbour of Alexandria by night. The
+navigation of the waters of the Red Sea, along which the wind blows hard
+from the north for nine months in the year, was found so dangerous by
+the little vessels from the south of Arabia, that they always chose the
+most southerly port in which they could meet the Egyptian buyers. The
+merchants with their bales of goods found a journey on camels through
+the desert, where the path is marked only by the skeletons of the
+animals that have died upon the route, less costly than a coasting
+voyage. Hence, when Philadelphus had made the whole of Upper Egypt to
+the cataracts at Aswan (Syênê) as quiet and safe as the Delta, he made a
+new port on the rocky coast of the Red Sea, nearly two hundred miles to
+the south of Cosseir, and named it Berenicê after his mother. He also
+built four public inns, or watering-houses, where the caravans might
+find water for the camels, and shelter from the noonday sun, on their
+twelve days’ journey through the desert from Koptos on the Nile to this
+new port. He rebuilt, and at the same time renamed, the old port of
+Cosseir, or Ænnum as it was before called, and named it Philotera after
+his younger sister. The trade which thus passed down the Nile from
+Syênê, from Berenicê, and from Philotera, paid a toll or duty at the
+custom-house station of Phylake a little below Lycopolis on the west
+bank of the river, where a guard of soldiers was encamped; and this
+station gradually grew into a town.
+
+[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; and
+he again opened the canal which Necho II. and Darius had begun, by which
+ships were to pass from the Nile to this city on the Red Sea. This canal
+began in the Pelusiac branch of the river, a little above Bubastis,
+and was carried to the Lower Bitter Lakes in the reign of Darius. From
+thence Philadelphus wished to carry it forward to the Red Sea, near
+the town of Arsinoë, and moreover cleared it from the sands which
+soon overwhelmed it and choked it up whenever it was neglected by the
+government. But his undertaking was stopped by the engineers finding the
+waters 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 could
+neither water the fields nor give drink to the cities in the valley. He
+also built a second city of the name of Berenicê, called the Berenicê
+Epidires, at the very mouth of the Red Sea on a point of land where
+Abyssinia is hardly more than fifteen miles from the opposite coast of
+Arabia. This naming of cities after his mother and sisters was no idle
+compliment; they probably received the crown revenues of those cities
+for their personal maintenance.
+
+With a view further to increase the trade with the East, Philadelphus
+sent Dionysius on an expedition overland to India, to gain a knowledge
+of the country and of its means and wants. He went by the way of the
+Caspian Sea through Bactria, in the line of Alexander’s march. He
+dwelt there, at the court of the sovereign, soon after the time that
+Megasthenes was there; and he wrote a report of what he saw and learned.
+But it is sad to find, in our search for what is valuable in the history
+of past times, that the information gained on this interesting journey
+of discovery is wholly lost.
+
+In the number of ports which were then growing into the rank of cities,
+we see full proof of the great trade of Egypt at that time; and we may
+form some opinion of the profit which was gained from the trade of the
+Red Sea from the report of Clitarchus to Alexander, that the people of
+one of the islands would give a talent of gold for a horse, so plentiful
+with them was gold, and so scarce the useful animals of Europe; and one
+of the three towns named after the late queen, on that coast, was known
+by the name of the Nubian or Golden Berenicê, from the large supply of
+gold 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 a
+post from which the hunting parties went out to catch elephants for
+the armies of Egypt. Philadelphus tried to command, to persuade, and to
+bribe the neighbouring tribes not to kill these elephants for food, but
+they refused all treaty with him; these zealous huntsmen answered that,
+if he offered them the kingdom of Egypt with all its wealth, they would
+not give up the pleasure of catching and eating elephants. The Ethiopian
+forests, however, were able to supply the Egyptian armies with about one
+elephant for every thousand men, which was the number then thought best
+in the Greek military tactics. Asia had been the only country from which
+the armies had been supplied with elephants before Philadelphus brought
+them from Ethiopia.
+
+The temple of Isis among the palm groves in Philæ, a rocky island in the
+Nile near the cataracts of Syênê, was begun in this reign, though not
+finished till some reigns later. It is still the wonder of travellers,
+and by its size and style proves the wealth and good taste of the
+priests. But its ornaments are not so simple as those of the older
+temples; and the capitals of its columns are varied by the full-blown
+papyrus 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 the
+site 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 bend
+of the river just above the cataracts forms a quiet lake surrounded on
+all sides by fantastic cliffs of red granite. Its name is a corruption
+from Abu-lakh, the city of the frontier. This temple was one of the
+places in which Osiris was said to be buried. None but priests ever set
+foot on this sacred island, and no oath was so binding as that sworn in
+the name of Him that lies buried in Philæ. The statues of the goddess
+in the temple were all meant for portraits of the queen Arsinoë. The
+priests who dwelt in the cells within the courtyards of the temples of
+which we see the remains in this temple at Philæ, were there confined
+for life to the service of the altar by the double force of religion and
+the stone walls. They showed their zeal for their gods by the amount of
+want which they were able to endure, and they thought that sitting upon
+the ground in idleness, with the knees up to the chin, was one of the
+first of religious duties.
+
+[Illustration: 116.jpg TEMPLE OF PHILAE]
+
+The Museum of Alexandria held at this time the highest rank among the
+Greek schools, whether for poetry, mathematics, astronomy, or medicine,
+the four branches into which it was divided. Its library soon held two
+hundred thousand rolls of papyrus; which, however, could hardly have
+been equal to ten thousand printed volumes. Many of these were bought by
+Philadelphus in Athens and Rhodes; and his copy of Aristotle’s works was
+bought of the philosopher Nileus, who had been a hearer of that great
+man, and afterwards inherited his books through Theophrastus, to whom
+they had been left by Aristotle. The books in the museum were of course
+all Greek; the Greeks did not study foreign languages, and thought the
+Egyptian writings barbarous.
+
+At the head of this library had been Demetrius Phalereus, who, after
+ruling Athens with great praise, was banished from his country, and fled
+to Ptolemy Soter, under whom he consoled himself for the loss of power
+in the enjoyment of literary leisure. He was at the same time the most
+learned and the most polished of orators. He brought learning from the
+closet into the forum; and, by the soft turn which he gave to public
+speaking, made that sweet and lovely which had before been grave and
+severe. Cicero thought him the great master in the art of speaking, and
+seems to have taken him as the model upon which he wished to form his
+own style. He wrote upon philosophy, history, government, and poetry;
+but the only one of his works which has reached our time is his treatise
+on elocution; and the careful thought which he there gives to the
+choice of words and to the form of a sentence, and even the parts of a
+sentence, shows the value then set upon style. Indeed he seems rather
+to have charmed his hearers by the softness of his words than to have
+roused them to noble deeds by the strength of his thoughts. He not only
+advised Ptolemy Soter what books he should buy, but which he should
+read, and he chiefly recommended those on government and policy; and
+it is alike to the credit of the king and of the librarian, that he
+put before him books which, from their praise of freedom and hatred of
+tyrants, few persons would even speak of in the presence of a king.
+But Demetrius had also been consulted by Soter about the choice of a
+successor, and had given his opinion that the crown ought to be left
+to his eldest son, and that wars would arise between his children if
+it were not so left; hence we can hardly wonder that, on the death of
+Soter, Demetrius should have lost his place at the head of the museum,
+and been ordered to leave Alexandria. He died, as courtiers say, in
+disgrace; and he was buried near Diospolis in the Busirite nome of the
+Delta. According to one account he was put to death by the bite of
+an asp, in obedience to the new king’s orders, but this story is not
+generally credited; although this was not an uncommon way of inflicting
+death.
+
+[Illustration: 118.jpg ANUBIS, GOD OF THE LOWER WORLD]
+
+Soon after this we find Zenodotus of Ephesus filling the office of
+librarian to the museum. He was a poet, who, with others, had been
+employed by Soter in the education of his children. He is also known as
+the first of those Alexandrian critics who turned their thoughts towards
+mending the text of Homer, and to whom we are indebted for the tolerably
+correct state of the great poet’s works, which had become faulty through
+the carelessness of the copiers. Zenodotus was soon followed by other
+critics in this task of editing Homer. But their labours were not
+approved of by all; and when Aratus asked Timon which he thought the
+best edition of the poet, the philosopher shrewdly answered, “That which
+has been least corrected.”
+
+At the head of the mathematical school was Euclid; who is, however,
+less known to us by what his pupils have said of him than by his own
+invaluable work on geometry. This is one of the few of the scientific
+writings of the ancients that are still in use. The discoveries of the
+man of science are made use of by his successor, and the discoverer
+perhaps loses part of his reward when his writings are passed by, after
+they have served us as a stepping-stone to mount by. If he wishes his
+works to live with those of the poet and orator, he must, like them,
+cultivate those beauties of style which are fitted to his matter. Euclid
+did so; and his Elements have been for more than two thousand years the
+model for all writers on geometry. He begins at the beginning, and
+leads the learner, step by step, from the simplest propositions, called
+axioms, which rest upon metaphysical rather than mathematical proof, to
+high geometrical truths. The mind is indeed sometimes wearied by being
+made to stop at every single step in the path, and wishes, with Ptolemy
+Soter, for a shorter road; but, upon the whole, Euclid’s clearness has
+never been equalled.
+
+Ctesibus wrote on the theory of hydrostatics, and was the inventor of
+several water-engines; an application of mathematics which was much
+called for by the artificial irrigation of Egypt. He also invented that
+useful 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 to
+enjoy the patronage of Philadelphus was Theocritus. Many of his poems
+are lost; but his pastoral poems, though too rough for the polished
+taste of Quintilian, and perhaps more like nature than we wish any works
+of imitative art to be, have always been looked upon as the model of
+that kind of poetry. If his shepherds do not speak the language of
+courtiers, they have at least a rustic propriety which makes us admire
+the manners and thoughts of the peasant. He repaid the bounty of the
+king in the way most agreeable to him; he speaks of him as one
+
+                              to freemen kind,
+     Wise, fond of books and love, of generous mind;
+     Knows well his friend, but better knows his foe;
+     Scatters his wealth; when asked he ne’er says No,
+     But gives as kings should give.
+     Idyll, xiv. 60.
+
+Theocritus boasted that he would in an undying poem place him in the
+rank of the demigods; and, writing with the pyramids and the Memnonium
+before his eyes, assured him that generosity towards the poets would
+do more to make his name live for ever than any building that he could
+raise.
+
+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 could
+not long dwell so near the court of Philadelphus unknown and unhonoured.
+He was made professor of poetry in the museum, and even now repays
+the king and patron for what he then received. He was a man of great
+industry, and wrote in prose and in all kinds of verse; but of these
+only a few hymns and epigrams have come down to our time. Egypt seems to
+have been the birthplace of the mournful elegy, and Callimachus was the
+chief of the elegiac poets. He was born at Cyrene; and though, from the
+language in which he wrote, his thoughts are mostly Greek, yet he did
+not forget the place of his birth. He calls upon Apollo by the name of
+Carneus, because, after Sparta and Thera, Cyrene was his chosen seat.
+He paints Latona, weary and in pain in the island of Delos, as leaning
+against a palm-tree, by the side of the river Inopus, which, sinking
+into the ground, was to rise again in Egypt, near the cataracts of
+Syênê; and, prettily pointing to Philadelphus, he makes Apollo, yet
+unborn, ask his mother not to give birth to him in the island of Cos,
+because that island was already chosen as the birthplace of another god,
+the child of the gods Soteres, who would be the copy of his father,
+and under whose diadem both Egypt and the islands would be proud to be
+governed by a Macedonian.
+
+[Illustration: 123.jpg THE CARARACT ON THE ASWAN]
+
+The poet Philastas, who had been the first tutor of Philadelphus, was
+in elegy second only to Callimachus; but Quintilian (while advising us
+about books, to read much but not many) does not rank him among the
+few first-rate poets by whom the student should form his taste; and his
+works are now lost. He was small and thin in person, and it was jokingly
+said of him that he wore leaden soles to his shoes lest he should be
+blown away by the wind. But in losing his poetry, we have perhaps lost
+the point of the joke. While these three, Theocritus, Callimachus, and
+Philastas, were writing in Alexandria, the museum was certainly the
+chief seat of the muses. Athens itself could boast of no such poet
+but Menander, with whom Attic literature ended; and him Philadelphus
+earnestly invited to his court. He sent a ship to Greece on purpose to
+fetch him; but neither this honour nor the promised salary could make
+him quit his mother country and the schools of Athens; and, in the time
+of Pausanias, his tomb was still visited by the scholar on the road to
+the Pmeus, and his statue was still seen in the theatre.
+
+Strato, the pupil of Theophrastus, though chiefly known for his writings
+on physics, was also a writer on many branches of knowledge. He was
+one of the men of learning who had taken part in the education of
+Phil-adelphus; and the king showed his gratitude to his teacher by
+making him a present of eighty talents, or sixty thousand dollars. He
+was for eighteen years at the head of one of the Alexandrian schools.
+
+Timocharis, the astronomer, made some of his observations at Alexandria
+in the last reign, and continued them through half of this reign. He
+began a catalogue of the fixed stars, with their latitudes and their
+longitudes measured from the equinoctial point; by the help of which
+Hipparchus, one hundred and fifty years afterwards, made the great
+discovery that the equinoctial point had moved. He has left an
+observation of the place of Venus, on the seventeenth day of the month
+of Mesore, in the thirteenth year of this reign, which by the modern
+tables of the planets is known to have been on the eighth day
+of October, B.C. 272; from which we learn that the first year of
+Philadelphus ended in October, B.C. 284, and the first year of Ptolemy
+Soter ended in October, B.C. 322; thus fixing the chronology of
+these reigns with a certainty which leaves nothing to be wished for.
+Aris-tillus also made some observations of the same kind at Alexandria.
+Few of them have been handed down to us, but they were made use of by
+Hipparchus.
+
+Aristarchus, the astronomer of Samos, most likely came to Alexandria
+in the last reign, as some of his observations were made in the very
+beginning of the reign of Philadelphus. He is the first astronomer who
+is known to have taken the true view of the solar system. He said that
+the sun was the centre round which the earth moved in a circle; and, as
+if he had foreseen that even in after ages we should hardly be able to
+measure the distance of the fixed stars, he said that the earth’s yearly
+path bore no greater proportion to the hollow globe of the heavens in
+which the stars were set, than the point without size in the centre of a
+circle does to its circumference. But the work in which he proved these
+great truths, or perhaps threw out these happy guesses, is lost; and the
+astronomers who followed him clung to the old belief that the earth was
+the centre round which the sun moved. The only writings of Aristarchus
+which now remain are his short work on the distances and magnitude of
+the sun and moon, in which the error in his results arises from the want
+of good observations, rather than from any mistake in his mathematical
+principles.
+
+Aratus, who was born in Cilicia, is sometimes counted among the
+pléiades, or seven stars of Alexandria. His _Phenomena_ is a short
+astronomical poem, without life or feeling, which scarcely aims at
+any of the grace or flow of poetry. It describes the planets and the
+constellations 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 the
+stars seen at night at each time of the year. When maps were little
+known, it must have been of great use, to learners; and its being in
+verse made it the more easy to remember. The value which the
+ancients set upon this poem is curiously shown by the number of Latin
+translations which were made from it. Cicero in his early youth, before
+he was known as an orator or philosopher, perhaps before he himself knew
+in which path of letters he was soon to take the lead, translated this
+poem. The next translation is by Germanicus Cæsar, whose early death
+and 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 Greek
+comedies, his Latin orations, and his poem on Augustus are lost, while
+his translation of Aratus is all that is left to prove that this high
+name in literature was not given to him for his political virtues alone.
+Lastly Avienus, a writer in the reign of Diocletian, or perhaps
+of Theodosius, has left a rugged, unpolished translation of this
+much-valued poem. Aratus, the poet of the heavens, will be read, said
+Ovid, as long as the sun and moon shall shine.
+
+Sosibius was one of the rhetoricians of the museum who lived upon the
+bounty of Philadelphus. The king, wishing to laugh at his habit of
+verbal criticism, once told his treasurer to refuse his salary, and say
+that it had been already paid. Sosibius complained to the king, and the
+book of receipts was sent for, in which Philadelphus found the names of
+Soter, Sosigines, Bion, and Apollonius, and showing to the critic one
+syllable of his name in each of those words, said that putting them
+together, they must be taken as the receipt for his salary. Other
+authors wrote on lighter matters. Apollodorus Gelous, the physician,
+addressed to Philadelphus a volume of advice as to which Greek wines
+were best fitted for his royal palate. The Italian and Sicilian were
+then unknown in Egypt, and those of the Thebaid were wholly beneath
+his notice, while the vine had as yet hardly been planted in the
+neighbourhood of Alexandria. He particularly praised the Naspercenite
+wine from the southern banks of the Black Sea, the Oretic from the
+island of Euboea; the OEneatic from Locris; the Leuca-dian from the
+island 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 of
+Peparethus, a wine which of course did not please the many, as this
+experienced taster acknowledges that nobody is likely to have a true
+relish for it till after six years’ acquaintance. Such were the Greek
+authors who basked in the sunshine of royal favour at Alexandria; who
+could have told us, if they had thought it worth their while, all that
+we now wish to know of the trade, religion, language, and early history
+of Egypt. But they thought that the barbarians were not worth the
+notice of men who called themselves Macedonians. Philadelphus, however,
+thought otherwise; and by his command Manetho, an Egyptian, wrote in
+Greek a history of Egypt, copied from the hieroglyphical writing on
+the temples, and he dedicated it to the king. We know it only in the
+quotations of Josephus and Julius Africanus, and what we have is little
+more than a list of kings’ names. He was a priest of Heliopolis, the
+great seat of Egyptian learning. The general correctness of Manetho’s
+history, which runs back for nearly two thousand years, is shown by our
+finding the kings’ names agree with many Egyptian inscriptions. Manetho
+owes his reputation to the merit of being the first who distinguished
+himself as a writer and critic upon religion and philosophy, as well
+as chronology and history, using the Greek language, but drawing his
+materials from native sources, especially the Sacred Books. That he was
+“skilled in Greek letters”: we learn from Josephus, who also declares
+that he contradicted many of Herodotus’ erroneous statements. Manetho
+was better suited for the task of writing a history of Egypt than any of
+his contemporaries.
+
+As an Egyptian he could search out and make use of all the native
+Egyptian sources, and, thanks to his knowledge of Greek, he could
+present them in a form intelligible to the Hellenes. It must be
+confessed that he has occasionally fallen into the error of allowing
+Greek thoughts and traditions to slip into his work. The great worth
+in Manetho’s work lies in the fact that he relates the history of Egypt
+based 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 not
+mention; but above all, Manetho gives us a list of Egyptian rulers
+arranged according to a regular system. But however important in
+this respect Manetho’s work may be, it must not be forgotten what
+difficulties he had to contend with in the writing of it, and what
+unreliable sources lay in these difficulties. He could not use the
+sources in the form in which he found them. He was obliged to re-write
+them, and he added to them synchronisms and relations to other peoples
+which necessarily exposed him to the dangers of colouring his report
+correspondingly.
+
+But a much greater difficulty consisted in the fact that the
+chronological reports of the earlier history were all arranged according
+to the reigning years of the rulers, so that Manetho was obliged to
+construct an era for his work. Boeckh was the first to discover
+with certainty the existence and form of this era. According to his
+researches, the whole work of Manetho is based upon Sothicycles of 1460
+Julianic years. The Egyptian year was movable, and did not need the
+extra day every few years, but the consequence was that every year
+remained 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 to
+a whole year, and so the movable year and the fixed year fell together
+again. It is this Sothic period which Manetho has employed in his
+account of Egyptian history. Besides his history, Manetho has left us a
+work on astrology, called _Apotelesmatica_, or Events, a work of which
+there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness.
+
+It is a poem in hexameter verse, in good Greek, addressed to King
+Ptolemy, in which he calls, not only upon Apollo and the Muse, but, like
+a true Egyptian, upon Hermes, from whose darkly worded writings he had
+gained his knowledge. He says that the king’s greatness might have been
+foretold from the places of Mars and the Sun at the time of his birth,
+and that his marriage with his sister Arsinoë arose from the places of
+Venus and Saturn at the same time. But while we smile at this being said
+as the result of astronomical calculations, we must remember that for
+centuries afterwards, almost in our own time, the science of judicial
+astrology was made a branch of astronomy, and that the fault lay rather
+in the age than in the man; and we have the pain of thinking that,
+while many of the valuable writings by Manetho are lost, the copiers and
+readers of manuscripts have carefully saved for us this nearly worthless
+poem on astrology.
+
+Petosiris was another writer on astrology and astronomy who was highly
+praised by his friend Manetho; and his calculations on the distances
+of the sun and planets are quoted by Pliny. His works are lost; but his
+name calls for our notice, as he must have been a native Egyptian, and
+a priest. Like Manetho, he also wrote on the calculation of nativities;
+and the later Greek astrologers, when what they had foretold did not
+come to pass, were wont to lay the blame on Petosiris. The priests were
+believed to possess these and other supernatural powers; and to help
+their claims to be believed many of them practised ventriloquism.
+
+Timosthenes, the admiral under Philadelphus, must not be forgotten in
+this list of authors; for though his verses to Apollo were little worth
+notice, his voyages of discovery, and his work in ten books on harbours,
+placed him in the first rank among geographers. Colotes, a pupil and
+follower of Epicurus, dedicated to Philadelphus a work of which the very
+title proves the nature of his philosophy, and how soon the rules of his
+master had fitted themselves to the habits of the sensualist. Its
+title was “That it is impossible even to support life according to the
+philosophical rules of any but the Epicureans.” It was a good deal read
+and talked about; and three hundred years afterwards Plutarch thought it
+not a waste of time to write against it at some length.
+
+At a time when books were few, and far too dear to be within reach of
+the many, and indeed when the number of those who could read must have
+been small, other means were of course taken to meet the thirst after
+knowledge; and the chief of these were the public readings in the
+theatre. This was not overlooked by Phila-delphus, who employed
+Hegesias to read Herodotus, and Hermophantus to read Homer, the earliest
+historian and the earliest poet, the two authors who had taken deepest
+root in the minds of the Greeks. These public readings, which were
+common throughout Greece and its colonies, had not a little effect on
+the authors. They then wrote for the ear rather than the eye, to be
+listened to rather than to be read, which was one among the causes of
+Greek elegance and simplicity of style.
+
+Among others who were brought to Alexandria by the fame of Philadelphus’
+bounty was Zoilus, the grammarian, whose ill-natured criticism on
+Homer’s poems had earned for him the name of Homeromastix, or the
+scourge of Homer. He read his criticisms to Philadelphus, who was so
+much 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 beauties
+of the Iliad and Odyssey in their public readings, surely one person who
+was so much wiser might be able to live by pointing out the faults.
+
+Timon, a tragic poet, was also one of the visitors to this court; but,
+as he was more fond of eating and drinking than of philosophy, we need
+not wonder at our knowing nothing of his tragedies, or at his not
+being made a professor by Philadelphus. But he took his revenge on the
+better-fed philosophers of the court, in a poem in which he calls them
+literary fighting-cocks, who were being fattened by the king, and were
+always quarrelling in the coops of the museum.
+
+The Alexandrian men of science and letters maintained themselves, some
+few by fees received from their pupils, others as professors holding
+salaries in the museum, and others by civil employments under the
+government. There was little to encourage in them the feelings of noble
+pride or independence. The first rank in Alexandria was held by the
+civil and military servants of the crown, who enjoyed the lucrative
+employments of receiving the taxes, hearing the lawsuits by appeal, and
+repressing rebellions. With these men the philosophers mixed, not as
+equals, but partaking of their wealth and luxuries, and paying their
+score with wit and conversation. There were no landholders in the city,
+as the soil of the country was owned by Egyptians; and the wealthy
+trading classes, of all nations and languages, could bestow little
+patronage on Greek learning, and therefore little independence on its
+professors.
+
+Philadelphus was not less fond of paintings and statues than of books;
+and he seems to have joined the Achaian league as much for the sake of
+the pictures which Aratus, its general, was in the habit of sending
+to him, as for political reasons. Aratus, the chief of Sicyon, was an
+acknowledged judge of paintings, and Sicyon was then the first school
+of Greece. The pieces which he sent to Philadelphus were mostly those of
+Pamphilus, the master, and of Melanthius, the fellow-pupil, of Apelles.
+Pamphilus was famed for his perspective; and he is said to have received
+from every pupil the large sum of ten talents, or seven thousand five
+hundred dollars, a year. His best known pieces were, Ulysses in his
+ship, and the victory of the Athenians near the town of Phlius. It was
+through Pamphilus that, at first in Sicyon, and afterwards throughout
+all Greece, drawing was taught to boys as part of a liberal education.
+Neacles also painted for Aratus; and we might almost suppose that it was
+as a gift to the King of Egypt that he painted his Sea-fight between the
+Egyptians and the Persians, in which the painter shows us that it was
+fought within the mouth of the Nile by making a crocodile bite at an ass
+drinking 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 the
+Battle of Issus, which three hundred years afterwards was hung up by
+Vespasian in the Temple of Peace at Rome. We must wonder at a woman
+choosing to paint the horrors and pains of a battle-piece; but, as we
+are not told what point of time was chosen, we may hope that it was
+after the battle, when Alexander, in his tent, raised up from their
+knees the wife and lovely daughter of Darius, who had been found among
+the prisoners. As for the Egyptians, they showed no taste in painting.
+
+[Illustration: 137.jpg METHOD OF EGYPTIAN DRAFTSMANSHIP]
+
+Their method of drawing the human figure mathematically by means of
+squares, which was not unsuitable in working a statue sixty feet high,
+checked all flights of genius; and it afterwards destroyed Greek art,
+when the Greek painters were idle enough to use it. We hear but little
+of the statues and sculptures made for Philadelphus; but we cannot help
+remarking that, while the public places of Athens were filled with
+the statues of the great and good men who had deserved well of their
+country, the statues which were most common in Alexandria were those of
+Cline, a favourite damsel, who filled the office of cup-bearer to the
+king of Egypt.
+
+The favour shown to the Jews by Ptolemy Soter was not withdrawn by his
+son. He even bought from his own soldiers and freed from slavery one
+hundred and twenty thousand men of that nation, who were scattered over
+Egypt. He paid for each, out of the royal treasury, one hundred and
+twenty drachmas, or about fifteen dollars, to those of his subjects who
+held them either by right of war or by purchase. In fixing the amount
+of the ransom, the king would seem to have been guided by his Jewish
+advisers, as this is exactly equal to thirty shekels, the sum fixed
+by the Jewish law as the price of a slave. The Jews who lived in Lower
+Egypt, in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, looked upon that
+country as their home. They had already a Greek translation of either
+the whole or some part of their sacred writings, which had been made for
+those whose families had been for so many generations in Egypt that they
+could not read the language of their forefathers. But they now hoped,
+by means of the king’s friendship and the weight which his wishes must
+carry with them, to have a Greek translation of the Bible which should
+bear the stamp of official authority.
+
+Accordingly, to please them, Philadelphus sent Aris-taaus, a man whose
+wisdom had gained his friendship, and Andrseus, a captain of the guard,
+both of them Greek Jews, with costly gifts to Eleazer, the high priest
+of Jerusalem; and asked him to employ learned and fit men to make a
+Greek translation of the Bible for the library at Alexandria. Eleazer,
+so runs the tradition, named seventy elders to undertake the task, who
+held their first sitting on the business at the king’s dinner-table;
+when Menedemus, the Socratic philosopher, the pupil of Plato, was also
+present, who had been sent to Philadelphus as ambassador from Eubcea.
+The translators then divided the work among themselves; and when each
+had finished his task it wras laid before a meeting of the seventy, and
+then published by authority. Thus was said to have been made the
+Greek translation of the Old Testament, which, from the number of the
+translators, we now call the Septuagint; but a doubt is thrown upon
+the whole story by the fables which have been mingled with it to give
+authority to the translation. By this translation the Bible became known
+for the first time to the Greek philosophers. We do not indeed hear that
+they immediately read it or noticed it, we do not find it quoted till
+after the spread of Christianity; but it had a silent effect on
+their opinions, which we trace in the new school of Platonists soon
+afterwards rising in Alexandria.
+
+When Aratus of Sicyon first laid a plot to free his country from its
+tyrant, who reigned by the help of the King of Macedonia, he sent to
+Philadelphus to beg for money. He naturally looked to the King of Egypt
+for help when entering upon a struggle against their common rival; but
+the king seems to have thought the plans of this young man too wild to
+be countenanced. Aratus, however, soon raised Sicyon to a level with the
+first states of Greece, and made himself leader of the Achaian league,
+under which band and name the Greeks were then struggling for freedom
+against Macedonia; and when, by his courage and success, he had shown
+himself worthy of the proud name which was afterwards given him, of the
+“Last of the Greeks,” Philadelphus, like other patrons, gave him
+the help which he less needed. Aratus, as we have seen, bought his
+friendship with pictures, the gifts of all others the most welcome;
+and, when he went to Egypt, Philadelphus gave him one hundred and fifty
+talents, or forty-five thousand dollars, and joined the Achaian league,
+on the agreement that in carrying on the war by sea and land they should
+obey the orders from Alexandria.
+
+The friendship of Philadelphus, indeed, was courted by all the
+neighbouring states; the little island of Delos set up its statue to
+him; and the cities of Greece vied with one another in doing him honour.
+The Athenians named one of the tribes of their city and also one
+of their public lecture-rooms by his name; and two hundred years
+afterwards, when Cicero and his friend Atticus were learning wisdom and
+eloquence from the lips of Antiochus in Athens, it was in the gymnasium
+of Ptolemy.
+
+Philadelphus, when young, had married Arsinoë, the daughter of
+Lysimachus of Thrace, by whom he had three children, Ptolemy, who
+succeeded him, Lysimachus, and Berenicê; but, having found that his
+wife was intriguing with Amyntas, and with his physician Chrysippus
+of Rhodes, he put these two to death and banished the Queen Arsinoë to
+Koptos in the Thebaid.
+
+He then took Arsinoë, his own sister, as the partner of his throne. She
+had married first the old Lysimachus, King of Thrace, and then Ceraunus,
+her half-brother, when he was King of Macedonia. As they were not
+children of the same mother, this second marriage was neither illegal
+nor improper in Macedonia; but her third marriage with Philadelphus
+could only be justified by the laws of Egypt, their adopted country.
+They were both past the middle age, and whether Philadelphus looked
+upon her as his wife or not, at any rate they had no children. Her
+own children by Lysimachus had been put to death by Ceraunus, and she
+readily adopted those of her brother with all the kindness of a mother.
+She was a woman of an enlarged mind; her husband and her stepchildren
+alike valued her; and Eratosthenes showed his opinion of her learning
+and 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 and
+Arsinoë]
+
+This seeming marriage, however, between brother and sister did not
+escape blame with the Greeks of Alexandria. The poet Sotades, whose
+verses were as licentious as his life, wrote some coarse lines against
+the queen, for which he was forced to fly from Egypt, and, being
+overtaken at sea, he was wrapped up in lead and thrown overboard.
+
+In the Egyptian inscriptions Ptolemy and Arsinoë are always called the
+brother-gods; on the coins they are called Adelphi, the brothers; and
+afterwards the king took the name of Philadelphus, or sister-loving,
+by which he is now usually known. In the first half of his reign
+Philadelphus dated his coins from the year that his father came to the
+throne; and it was not till the nineteenth year of his reign, soon after
+the death of his mother, that he made an era of his own, and dated his
+coins by the year of his own reign. The wealth of the country is well
+shown by the great size of those most in use, which were, in gold the
+tetra-stater or piece of eight drachms, and in silver the tetra-drachma,
+or piece of four drachms, while Greece had hardly seen a piece of gold
+larger than the single stater. In Alexandrian accounts also the unit
+of money was the silver didrachm, and thus double that in use among the
+merchants of Greece.
+
+[Illustration: 142.jpg COIN WITH THE HEADS OF SOTER, PHILADELPHUS AND
+BERENICE]
+
+Among the coins is one with the heads of Soter and Philadelphus on the
+one side, and the head of Berenicê, the wife of the one and mother of
+the other, on the other side. This we may suppose to have been struck
+during the first two years of his reign, in the lifetime of his father.
+Another bears on one side the heads of Ptolemy Soter and Berenicê, with
+the title of “the gods,” and on the other side the heads of Philadelphus
+and his wife Arsinoë, with the title of “the brothers.” This was struck
+after the death of his parents. A third was struck by the king in honour
+of his queen and sister. On the one side is the head of the queen, and
+on the other is the name of “Arsinoë, the brother-loving,” with the
+cornucopia, or horn of Amalthea, an emblem borrowed by the queens of
+Egypt from the goddess Amalthea, the wife of the Libyan Anion. This was
+struck after his second marriage.
+
+On the death of Arsinoë, Philadelphus built a tomb for her in
+Alexandria, called the Arsinoëum, and set up in it an obelisk eighty
+cubits high, which had been made by King Nectanebo, but had been left
+plain, 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 to
+it as it lay upon the ground, and moved two heavily laden barges under
+it. The burdens were then taken out of the barges, and as they floated
+higher they raised the obelisk off the ground. He then found it a task
+as great or greater to set it up in its place; and this Greek engineer
+must surely have looked back with wonder on the labour and knowledge of
+mechanics which must have been used in setting up the obelisks, colossal
+statues, and pyramids, which he saw scattered over the country. This
+obelisk now ornaments the cathedral of the Popes on the Vatican hill at
+Rome. Satyrus wrote a treatise on precious stones, and he also carved
+on them with great skill; but his works are known only in the following
+lines, which were written by Diodorus on his portrait of Arsinoë cut in
+crystal:
+
+     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 of
+Philadelphus and his first wife, Arsinoe, and the other with the heads
+of the same king and his second wife, Arsinoë. It is not impossible that
+one or both of them may be the work of Satyrus.
+
+Philadelphus is also said to have listened to the whimsical proposal
+of Dinochares, the architect, to build a room of loadstone in Arsinoë’s
+tomb, so that an iron statue of the queen should hang in the air between
+the floor and the roof. But the death of the king and of the architect
+took place before this was tried. He set up there, however, her statue
+six feet high, carved out of a most remarkable block of topaz, which had
+been presented to his mother by Philemon, the prefect of the Troglodytic
+coast in the last reign.
+
+Philadelphus lived in peace with Ergamenes, King of Meroë or Upper
+Ethiopia, who, while seeking for a knowledge of philosophy and the arts
+of life from his Greek neighbours, seems also to have gained a love
+of despotism, and a dislike of that control with which the priests of
+Ethiopia and Egypt had always limited the power of their kings. The King
+of Meroë had hitherto reigned like Amenôthes or Thutmosis of old, as
+the head of the priesthood, supported and controlled by the priestly
+aristocracy by which he was surrounded. But he longed for the absolute
+power of Philadelphus. Accordingly he surrounded the golden temple with
+a chosen body of troops, and put the whole of the priests to death; and
+from that time he governed Ethiopia as an autocrat. But, with the loss
+of their liberties, the Ethiopians lost the wish to guard the throne; by
+grasping at more power, their sovereign lost what he already possessed;
+and in the next reign their country was conquered by Egypt.
+
+The wars between Philadelphus and his great neighbour, Antiochus Theos,
+seem not to have been carried on very actively, though they did not
+wholly cease till Philadelphus offered as a bribe his daughter Berenicê,
+with a large sum of money under the name of a dower. Antiochus was
+already married to Laodice, whom he loved dearly, and by whom he had two
+children, Seleucus and Antiochus; but political ambition had deadened
+the feelings of his heart, and he agreed to declare this first marriage
+void and his two sons illegitimate, and that his children, if any should
+be born to him by Berenicê, should inherit the throne of Babylon and the
+East. Philadelphus, with an equal want of feeling, and disregarding the
+consequences of such a marriage, led his daughter to Pelusium on her
+journey to her betrothed husband, and sent with her so large a sum of
+gold and silver that he was nicknamed the “dower-giver.”
+
+The peace between the two countries lasted as long as Philadelphus
+lived, and was strengthened by kindnesses which each did to the other.
+Ptolemy, when in Syria, was much struck by the beauty of a statue of
+Diana, and begged it of Antiochus as an ornament for Alexandria. But as
+soon as the statue reached Egypt, Arsinoë fell dangerously ill, and she
+dreamed that the goddess came by night, and told her that the illness
+was sent to her for the wrong done to the statue by her husband; and
+accordingly it was sent back with many gifts to the temple from which it
+had been brought.
+
+While Berenicê and her husband lived at Antioch, Philadelphus kindly
+sent there from time to time water from the sacred Nile for her use, as
+the Egyptians believed that none other was so wholesome. Antiochus,
+when ill, sent to Alexandria for a physician; and Cleombrotus of Cos
+accordingly went, by command of Ptolemy, to Syria. He was successful
+in curing the king, and on his return he received from Philadelphus a
+present of one hundred talents, or seventy-five thousand dollars, as a
+fee for his journey.
+
+Philadelphus was a weak frame of body, and had delicate health; and,
+though a lover of learning beyond other kings of his time, he also
+surpassed them in his unmeasured luxury and love of pleasure. He had
+many mistresses, Egyptian as well as Greek, and the names of some of
+them have been handed down to us. He often boasted that he had found out
+the way to live for ever; but, like other free-livers, he was sometimes,
+by the gout in his feet, made to acknowledge that he was only a man, and
+indeed to wish that he could change places with the beggar whom he saw
+from his palace windows, eating the garbage on the banks of the Nile
+with an appetite which he had long wanted. It was during illness that
+he found most time for reading, and his mind most open to the truths of
+philosophy; and he chiefly wooed the Muses when ill health left him at
+leisure from his other courtships. He had a fleet of eight hundred state
+barges with gilt prows and poops and scarlet awnings upon the decks,
+which were used in the royal processions and religious shows, and which
+usually lay in dock at Schedia, on the Canopic River, five and twenty
+miles from Alexandria. He was no doubt in part withheld from war by this
+luxurious love of ease; but his reign taught the world the new lesson,
+that an ambitious monarch may gratify his wish for praise and gain the
+admiration of surrounding nations, as much by cultivating the blessed
+arts of peace as by plunging his people into the miseries of war.
+
+He reigned over Egypt, with the neighbouring parts of Arabia; also over
+Libya, Phoenicia, Cole-Syria, part of Ethiopia, Pamphylia, Cilicia,
+Lycia, Caria, Cyprus, and the isles of the Cyclades. The island of
+Rhodes and many of the cities of Greece were bound to him by the closest
+ties of friendship, for past help and for the hope of future. The
+wealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon did homage to him, as before to his
+father, by putting his crowned head upon their coins. The forces of
+Egypt reached the very large number of two hundred thousand foot and
+twenty thousand horse, two thousand chariots, four hundred Ethiopian
+elephants, fifteen hundred ships of war and one thousand transports. Of
+this large force, it is not likely that even one-fourth should have been
+Greeks; the rest must have been Egyptians and Syrians, with some Gauls.
+The body of chariots, though still forming part of the force furnished
+for military service by the Theban tenants of the crown, was of no
+use against modern science; and the other Egyptian troops, though now
+chiefly armed and disciplined like Greeks, were very much below the
+Macedonian phalanx in real strength. The galleys also, though no doubt
+under the guidance and skill of Greeks and Phoenicians, were in part
+manned by Egyptians, whose inland habits wholly unfitted them for the
+sea, and whose religious prejudices made them feel the conscription for
+the navy as a heavy grievance.
+
+These large forces were maintained by a yearly income equally large, of
+fourteen thousand eight hundred talents, or twelve million two hundred
+and fifty thousand dollars, beside the tax on grain, which was taken
+in kind, of a million and a half of artabas, or about five millions of
+bushels. To this we may add a mass of gold, silver, and other valuable
+stores in the treasury, which were boastfully reckoned at the unheard-of
+sum of seven hundred and forty thousand talents, or above five hundred
+million dollars.
+
+[Illustration: 149.jpg A TYPICAL NILE PILOT]
+
+The trade down the Nile was larger than it had ever been before; the
+coasting trade on the Mediterranean was new; the people were rich and
+happy; justice was administered to the Egyptians according to their own
+laws, 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 plans
+of Ptolemy Soter; in every point of view Alexandria was the chief city
+in the world. Athens had no poets or other writers during this century
+equal in merit to those who ennobled the museum. Philadelphus, by
+joining to the greatness and good government of his father the costly
+splendour and pomp of an eastern monarch, so drew the eyes of after ages
+upon his reign that his name passed into a proverb: if any work of
+art was remarkable for its good taste or costliness, it was called
+Philadelphian; even history and chronology were set at nought, and we
+sometimes find poets of a century later counted among the Pleiades of
+Alexandria in the reign of Philadelphus. It is true that many of these
+advantages were forced in the hotbed of royal patronage; that the navy
+was built in the harbours of Phoenicia and Asia Minor; and that the men
+of letters who then drew upon themselves the eyes of the world were
+only Greek settlers, whose writings could have done little to raise
+the character of the native Kopts. But the Ptolemies, in raising this
+building of their own, were not at the same time crushing another. Their
+splendid monarchy had not been built on the ruins of freedom; and even
+if the Greek settlers in the Delta had formed themselves into a free
+state, we can hardly believe that the Egyptians would have been so well
+treated as they were by this military despotism. From the temples
+which were built or enlarged in Upper Egypt, and from the beauty of the
+hieroglyphical inscriptions, we find that even the native arts were
+more flourishing than they had ever been since the fall of the kings of
+Thebes; and we may almost look upon the Greek conquest as a blessing to
+Upper Egypt.
+
+Philadelphus, though weak in body, was well suited by his
+keen-sightedness and intelligence for the tasks which the state of
+affairs at that time demanded from an Egyptian king. He was a diplomat
+rather than a warrior, and that was exactly what Egypt needed.
+
+A curious anecdote about Ptolemy Philadelphus is related by Niebuhr. He
+had reached the zenith of his glory, when suddenly he was attacked by
+a species of insanity, consisting of an indescribable fear of death.
+Chemical artifices were practised in Egypt from the earliest times; and
+hence Ptolemy took every 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 the
+seacoast, and seriously meditated upon the subject of his longing; it
+must have been in winter-time, when the sand, exposed to the rays of the
+sun, becomes very warm. He saw some poor boys burying themselves in the
+warm sand and screaming with delight, and the aged king began bitterly
+to cry, seeing the ragged urchins enjoying their life without any
+apprehension of losing it; for he felt that with all his riches he could
+not purchase that happiness, and that his end was very near at hand. He
+died in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, and perhaps the sixty-first
+of his age. He left the kingdom as powerful and more wealthy than when
+it came to him from his father; and he had the happiness of having a son
+who would carry on, even for the third generation, the wise plans of the
+first Ptolemy.
+
+[Illustration: 153.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--PTOLEMY EUERGETES, PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR, AND PTOLEMY
+EPIPHANES.
+
+
+_The struggle for Syria--Decline of the dynasty--Advent of Roman
+control._
+
+
+Ptolemy, the eldest son of Philadelphus, succeeded his father on
+the throne of Egypt, and after a short time was accorded the name of
+Euergetes. The new reign was clouded by dark occurrences, which again
+involved Egypt and Syria in war. It has been already related that when
+peace was concluded between Antiochus and Philadelphus, the latter gave
+to the former his daughter Berenicê in marriage, stipulating that the
+offspring of that union should succeed to the Syrian throne, though
+Antiochus had, by his wife Laodice, a son, already arrived at the age of
+manhood. The repudiated queen murdered her husband, and placed Seleucus
+on the vacant throne; who, in order to remove all competition on the
+part of Berenicê and her child, made no scruple to deprive them both
+of life. Euergetes could not behold such proceedings unmoved. Advancing
+into Syria at the head of a powerful army, he took possession of the
+greater part of the country, which seems not to have been defended,
+the majority of the cities opening their gates at his approach. The
+important town of Seleucia Pieria, the seaport of the capital, fell into
+his hands, in the neighbourhood of which he was still further gratified
+with the apprehension of the cruel Laodice, at whose instigation his
+sister and nephew lost their lives. The punishment of this unprincipled
+woman seems, however, to have completely satiated his resentment; for,
+instead of securing his conquests in Syria, and achieving the entire
+humiliation of Seleucus, he led his army on a plundering expedition into
+the remote provinces of Asia, whence, on the news of domestic troubles,
+he returned to the shores of Africa in triumph, laden with an immense
+booty, comprising among other objects all the statues of the Egyptian
+deities which had been carried off by Cambyses to Persia or Babylon.
+These he restored to their respective temples, an act by which he earned
+the greatest popularity among his native Egyptian subjects, who bestowed
+upon him, in consequence, the title of Euergetes (Benefactor), by which
+he is generally known. He brought back also from this expedition a vast
+number of other works of art, for the museums were a passion with the
+Ptolemies. The Asiatics might, indeed, have got over these things, but
+he levied, in addition, immense contributions from the Asiatics, and is
+said to have raised over forty thousand talents. On his march homeward,
+he laid his gifts upon the altar in the Temple of Jerusalem, and there
+returned thanks to Heaven for his victories. He had been taught to bow
+the knee to the crowds of Greek and Egyptian gods; and, as Palestine was
+part of his kingdom, it seemed quite natural to add the God of the Jews
+to the list.
+
+Of the insurrection in Egypt, which obliged him to return, we know no
+particulars, but Euergetes seems to have become convinced that Egypt was
+too small a basis for such an empire. “If he had wished to retain all
+his conquests” relates the chronicler, “he would have been obliged to
+make Antioch his residence, and this would weaken the ground of his
+strength. He, moreover, appears to have been well aware that the
+conquests had been made too quickly.” He accordingly divided them,
+retaining for himself Syria as far as Euphrates, and the coast districts
+of Asia Minor and Thrace, so that he had a complete maritime empire. The
+remaining territories he divided into two states: the country beyond the
+Euphrates was given, according to St. Jerome, to one Xantippus, who
+is otherwise unknown, and Western Asia was left to Antiochus Hierax. It
+would seem that after this he never visited those countries again.
+
+One of the notable incidents of the war against Syria was an offer
+of help to Egypt from the Romans. From the middle of the reign of
+Philadelphus till the fifth year of this reign, for twenty-two years,
+the Romans had been struggling with the Carthaginians for their very
+being, in the first Punic war, which they had just brought to a close,
+and on hearing of Ptolemy’s war in Syria, they sent to Egypt with
+friendly offers of help. But their ambassadors did not reach Alexandria
+before peace was made, and they were sent home with many thanks. The
+event serves to show the trend of the aspirations of this now important
+nation, which was afterwards destined to engulf the kingdoms of Egypt
+and Syria alike.
+
+After Euergetes had, as he thought, established his authority in Asia,
+a party hostile to him came forward to oppose him. The Rhodians, with
+their wise policy, who had hitherto given no decided support to either
+empire, now stepped forward, setting to other maritime cities the
+example of joining that hostile party. The confederates formed a fleet,
+with the assistance of which, and supported by a general insurrection of
+the Asiatics, who were exasperated against the Egyptians on account of
+their rapacity, Seleucus Callinicus rallied again.
+
+[Illustration: 157.jpg AN ABYSSINIAN SLAVE]
+
+He recovered the whole of upper Asia, and for a time he was united with
+his brother, Antiochus Hierax. The insurrection in Egypt must have
+been of a very serious nature, and Ptolemy, being pressed on all
+sides, concluded a truce of ten years with Seleucus on basis of _uti
+possidetis_. Both parties seem to have retained the places which they
+possessed at the time, so that all the disadvantage was on the side of
+the Seleucidæ, for the fortified town of Seleucia, for example, remained
+in the hands of the Egyptians, whereby the capital was placed in a
+dangerous position. A part of Cilicia, the whole of Caria, the Ionian
+cities, the Thracian Chersonesus, and several Macedonian towns likewise
+continued to belong to Egypt. Soon after his re-appearance in Egypt,
+Euergetes was solicited by Cleomenes, the King of Sparta, to grant the
+assistance of his arms in the struggle which that republic was then
+supporting with Antigonus, the ruler of Macedon, and with the members
+of the Achaian league. But the battle of Sellasia proved that the aid
+offered was inadequate. Cleomenes fled to the banks of the Nile, where
+he found his august ally reposing under the successful banners of a
+numerous army, which he had just led home from the savage mountains of
+Ethiopia, whither his love of romantic conquest had conducted them. He
+appears to have penetrated into the interior provinces of Abyssinia,
+and to have subdued the rude tribes which dwelt on the shores of the
+Red Sea, levying on the unfortunate natives the most oppressive
+contributions in cattle, gold, perfumes, and other articles belonging
+to that valuable merchandise which the Ethiopians and Arabs had long
+carried on with their Egyptian neighbours. At Adule, the principal
+seaport of Abyssinia, he collected his victorious troops, and made them
+a speech on the wonderful exploits which they had achieved under his
+auspices, and on the numerous benefits which they had thereby secured
+to their native country. The throne on which he sat, composed of white
+marble and supported by a slab of porphyry, was consecrated to the god
+of war, whom he chose to claim for his father and patron, and that the
+descendants of the vanquished Ethiopians might not be ignorant of their
+obligations to Ptolemy Euergetes, King of Egypt, he gave orders that his
+name and principal triumphs should be inscribed on the votive chair. But
+not content with his real conquests, which reached from the Hellespont
+to the Euphrates, he added, like Ramsesr that he had conquered
+Thrace, Persia, Media, and Bactria. He thus teaches us that monumental
+inscriptions, though read with difficulty, do not always tell the truth.
+This was the most southerly spot to which the kings of Egypt ever sent
+an army. But they kept no hold on the country. Distance had placed it
+not only beyond their power, but almost beyond their knowledge; and
+two hundred years afterwards, when the geographer Strabo was making
+inquiries about that part of Arabia, as it was called, he was told of
+this monument as set up by the hero Sesostris, to whom it was usual to
+give the credit of so many wonderful works. These inscriptions, it
+is worthy of remark, are still preserved, and constitute the only
+historical account that has reached these times of the Ethiopian warfare
+of this Egyptian monarch. About seven hundred years after the reign
+of Euergetes, they were first published in the _Topography_ of Cosmas
+Indicopleustes, a Grecian monk, by whom they were copied on the spot.
+The traveller Bruce, moreover, informs us that the stone containing the
+name of Ptolemy Euergetes serves as a footstool to the throne on which
+the 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 title
+of the same Egyptian sovereign. This empty fame, however, is the only
+return that ever recompensed the toils of Euergetes among the fierce
+barbarians of the south.
+
+Euergetes, as part of his general policy of conciliating the Egyptians,
+enlarged the great temple at Thebes, which is now called the temple
+of Karnak, on the walls of which we see him handing an offering to
+his father and mother, the brother-gods. In one place he is in a Greek
+dress, which is not common on the Ptolemaic buildings, as most of the
+Greek kings are carved upon the walls in the dress of the country. The
+early kings had often shown their piety to a temple by enlarging the
+sacred area and adding a new wall and gateway in front of the former;
+and this custom Euergetes followed at Karnak. As these grand stone
+sculptured gateways belonged to a wall of unbaked bricks which has long
+since crumbled to pieces, they now stand apart like so many triumphal
+arches. He also added to the temple at Hibe in the Great Oasis, and
+began a small temple at Esne, or Latopolis, where he is drawn upon the
+walls in the act of striking down the chiefs of the conquered nations,
+and is followed by a tame lion.
+
+[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 settled
+there, the ancient religion was not yet driven out of the Delta; and he
+dedicated it to the god in a Greek inscription on a plate of gold, in
+the names of himself and Berenicê, whom he called his wife and sister.
+She is also called the king’s sister in many of the hieroglyphical
+inscriptions, as are many of the other queens of the Ptolemies who were
+not so related to their husbands. This custom, though it took its rise
+in the Egyptian mythology, must have been strengthened by the marriages
+of Philadelphus and some of his successors with their sisters. In the
+hieroglyphical inscriptions he is usually called “beloved by Phtah,”
+ the god of Memphis, an addition to his name which was used by most of
+his successors.
+
+During this century the Greek artists in Egypt, as indeed elsewhere,
+adopted in their style an affectation of antiquity, which, unless seen
+through, would make us think their statues older than they really are.
+They sometimes set a stiff beard upon a face without expression, or
+arranged the hair of the head in an old-fashioned manner, and, while
+making the drapery fly out in a direction opposed to that of the figure,
+gave to it formal zigzag lines, which could only be proper if it were
+hanging down in quiet. At other times, while they gave to the human
+figure all the truth to which their art had then reached, they yet gave
+to the drapery these stiff zigzag forms.
+
+[Illustration: 163.jpg RUINS OF SAIS]
+
+No habit of mind would have been more improving to the Alexandrian
+character than a respect for antiquity; but this respect ought to be
+shown in a noble rivalry, in trying to surpass those who have gone
+before them, and not as in this manner by copying their faults.
+Hieroglyphics seem to have flourished in their more ancient style and
+forms under the generous patronage of the Ptolemies. In the time of the
+Egyptian kings of Lower Egypt, we find new grammatical endings to the
+nouns, and more letters used to spell each word than under the kings of
+Thebes; but, on comparing the hieroglyphics of the Ptolemies with the
+others, we find that in these and some other points they are more like
+the older writings, under the kings of Thebes, than the newer, under the
+kings of Saïs.
+
+But, while the Egyptians were flattered, and no doubt raised in moral
+worth, by their monarch’s taking up the religious feelings of the
+country, and throwing aside some of the Greek habits of his father and
+grandfather, Euergetes was sowing the seeds of a greater change than he
+could himself have been aware of. It was by Greek arms and arts of war
+that Egypt then held its place among nations, and we shall see in
+the coming reigns that, while the court became more Asiatic and
+less European, the army and government did not retain their former
+characteristics.
+
+Since Coele-Syria and Judæa were by the first Ptolemy made a province of
+Egypt, the Jews had lived in unbroken tranquillity, and with very
+little loss of freedom. The kings of Egypt had allowed them to govern
+themselves, to live under their own laws, and choose their own high
+priest; but they required of them the payment to Alexandria of a yearly
+tribute. Part of this was the sacred poll-tax of half a shekel, or
+about sixteen cents for every male above the age of twenty, which by the
+Mosaic law they had previously paid for the service of the Temple.
+This is called in the Gospels the Didrachms; though the Alexandrian
+translators of the Bible, altering the sum, either through mistake or on
+purpose, have made it in the Greek Pentateuch only half a didrachm, or
+about eight cents. This yearly tribute from the Temple the high priest
+of Jerusalem had been usually allowed to collect and farm; but in the
+latter end of this reign, the high priest Onias, a weak and covetous
+old man, refused to send to Alexandria the twenty talents, or fifteen
+thousand dollars, at which it was then valued. When Euergetes sent
+Athenion as ambassador to claim it, and even threatened to send a body
+of troops to fetch it, still the tribute was not paid; notwithstanding
+the fright of the Jews, the priest would not part with his money. On
+this, Joseph, the nephew of Onias, set out for Egypt, to try and turn
+away the king’s anger. He went to Memphis, and met Euergetes riding in
+his chariot with the queen and Athenion, the ambassador. The king, when
+he knew him, begged him to get into the chariot and sit with him; and
+Joseph made himself so agreeable that he was lodged in the palace
+at Memphis, and dined every day at the royal table. While he was at
+Memphis, the revenues of the provinces for the coming year were put up
+to auction; and the farmers bid eight thousand talents, or six million
+dollars, for the taxes of Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Samaria. Joseph
+then bid double that sum, and, when he was asked what security he could
+give, he playfully said that he was sure that Euergetes and the queen
+would willingly become bound for his honesty; and the king was so much
+pleased with him that the office was at once given to him, and he held
+it for twenty-two years.
+
+Among the men of letters who at this time taught in the Alexandrian
+schools was Aristophanes, the grammarian, who afterwards held the office
+of head of the museum. At one of the public sittings at which the king
+was to hear the poems and other writings of the pupils read, and, by
+the help of seven men of letters who sat with him as judges, was to
+give away honours and rewards to the best authors, one of the chairs was
+empty, one of the judges happened not to be there. The king asked who
+should be called up to fill his place; and, after thinking over the
+matter, the six judges fixed upon Aristophanes, who had made himself
+known to them by being seen daily studying in the public library. When
+the reading was over, the king, the public, and the six other judges
+were agreed upon which was the best piece of writing; but Aristophanes
+was bold enough to think otherwise, and he was able, by means of his
+great reading, to find the book in the library from which the pupil had
+copied the greater part of his work. The king was much struck with
+this proof of his learning, and soon afterwards made him keeper of
+the library which he had already so well used. Aristophanes followed
+Zenodotus in his critical efforts to mend the text of Homer’s poems. He
+also invented the several marks by which grammarians now distinguish the
+length and tone of a syllable and the breathing of a vowel, that is, the
+marks for long and short, and the accents and aspirate. The last two,
+after his time, were always placed over Greek words, and are still used
+in printed books.
+
+Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the inventor of astronomical geography, was at
+this time the head of the mathematical school. He has the credit for
+being the first to calculate the circumference of the earth by means
+of his Theory of Shadows. As a poet he wrote a description of the
+constellations. He also wrote a history of Egypt, to correct the errors
+of Manetho. What most strikes us with wonder and regret is, that of
+these two writers, Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote in Greek,
+Eratosthenes, a Greek who understood something of Egyptian, neither of
+them took the trouble to lay open to their readers the peculiarities of
+the hieroglyphics. Through all these reigns, the titles and praises of
+the Ptolemies were carved upon the temples in the sacred characters.
+These two histories were translated from the same inscriptions. We even
+now read the names of the kings which they mention carved on the statues
+and temples; and yet the language of the hieroglyphics still remained
+unknown beyond the class of priests; such was the want of curiosity on
+the part of the Greek grammarians of Alexandria. Such, we may add, was
+their want of respect for the philosophy of the Egyptians; and we
+need no stronger proof that the philosophers of the museum had hitherto
+borrowed none of the doctrines of the priests.
+
+[Illustration: 169.jpg GATEWAY OF PTOLEMY EUERGETES AT KARNAK]
+
+Lycon of Troas was another settler in Alexandria. He followed Strato at
+the head of one of the schools in the museum. He was very successful in
+bringing up the young men, who needed, he used to say, modesty and the
+love of praise, as a horse needs bridle and spur. His eloquence was so
+pleasing that he was wittily called Glycon, or the sweet. Carneades of
+Cyrene at the same time held a high place among philosophers; but as
+he had removed to Athens, where he was at the head of a school, and was
+even sent to Rome as the ambassador of the Athenians, we must not claim
+the whole honour of him for the Ptolemies under whom he was born. It is
+therefore enough to say of him that, though a follower of Plato, he made
+such changes in the opinions of the Academy, by not wholly throwing off
+the evidence of the senses, that his school was called the New Academy.
+
+Apollonius, who was born at Alexandria, but is commonly called
+Apollonius Rhodius because he passed many years of his life at Rhodes,
+had been, like Eratosthenes, a hearer of Callimachus. His only work
+which we now know is his _Argonautics_, a poem on the voyage of Jason
+to Colchis in search of the golden fleece. It is a regular epic poem,
+in imitation of Homer; and, like other imitations, it wants the interest
+which hangs upon reality of manners and story in the Iliad.
+
+Callimachus showed his dislike of his young rival by hurling against him
+a reproachful poem, in which he speaks of him under the name of an Ibis.
+This is now lost, but it was copied by Ovid in his poem of the same
+name; and from the Roman we can gather something of the dark and learned
+style in which Callimachus threw out his biting reproaches. We do not
+know from what this quarrel arose, but it seems to have been the cause
+of Apollonius leaving Alexandria. He removed to Rhodes, where he taught
+in the schools during all the reign of Philopator, till he was recalled
+by Epiphanes, and made librarian of the museum in his old age, on the
+death of Eratosthenes.
+
+Lycophron, the tragic writer, lived about this time at Alexandria, and
+was one of the seven men of letters sometimes called the Alexandrian
+Pleiades, though writers are not agreed upon the names which fill up the
+list. His tragedies are all lost, and the only work of his which we now
+have is the dark and muddy poem of Alcandra, or Cassandra, of which the
+lines most striking to the historian are those in which the prophetess
+foretells the coming greatness of Rome; that the children of Æneas will
+raise the crown upon their spears, and seize the sceptres of sea and
+land. Lycophron was the friend of Menedemus and Aratus; and it is not
+easy to believe that these lines were written before the overthrow of
+Hannibal in Italy, and of the Greek phalanx at Cynocéphale, or that
+one who was a man in the reign of Philadelphus should have foreseen the
+triumph of the Roman arms. These words must have been a later addition
+to the poem, to improve the prophecy.
+
+Conon, one of the greatest of the Alexandrian astronomers, has left no
+writings for us to judge of his merits, though they were thought highly
+of, and made great use of, by his successors. He worked both as an
+observer and an inquirer, mapping out the heavens by his observations,
+and collecting the accounts of the eclipses which had been before
+observed in Egypt. He was the friend of Archimedes of Syracuse, to
+whom he sent his problems, and from whom he received that great
+geometrician’s writings in return.
+
+Apollonius of Perga came to Alexandria in this reign, to study
+mathematics under the pupils of Euclid. He is well known for his work
+on conic sections, and he may be called the founder of this study.
+The Greek mathematicians sought after knowledge for its own sake, and
+followed up those branches of their studies which led to no end that
+could in the narrow sense be called useful, with the same zeal that they
+did other branches out of which sprung the great practical truths of
+mechanics, astronomy, and geography. They found reward enough in the
+enlargement of their minds and in the beauty of the truth learnt.
+Alexandrian science gained in loftiness of tone what its poetry and
+philosophy wanted. Thus the properties of the ellipse, the hyperbola,
+and the parabola, continued to be studied by after mathematicians; but
+no use was made of this knowledge till nearly two thousand years later,
+when Kepler crowned the labours of Apollonius with the great discovery
+that the paths of the planets round the sun were conic sections.
+The Egyptians, however, made great use of mathematical knowledge,
+particularly in the irrigation of their fields; and Archimedes of
+Syracuse, who came to Alexandria about this time to study under Conon,
+did the country a real service by his invention of the cochlea, or
+screw-pump. The more distant fields of the valley of the Nile, rising
+above the level of the inundation, have to be watered artificially by
+pumping out of the canals into ditches at a higher level. For this work
+Archimedes proposed a spiral tube, twisting round an axis, which was to
+be put in motion either by the hand or by the force of the stream out
+of which it was to pump; and this was found so convenient that it soon
+became the machine most in use throughout Egypt for irrigation.
+
+But while we are dazzled by the brilliancy of these clusters of men of
+letters and science who graced the court of Alexandria, we must not shut
+our eyes to those faults which are always found in works called forth
+rather by the fostering warmth of royal pensions than by a love of
+knowledge in the people. The well-fed and well-paid philosophers of the
+museum were not likely to overtake the mighty men of Athens in its
+best days, who had studied and taught without any pension from the
+government, without taking any fee from their pupils; who were urged
+forward towards excellence by the love of knowledge and of honour; who
+had no other aim than that of being useful to their hearers, and looked
+for no reward beyond their love and esteem.
+
+In oratory Alexandria made no attempts whatever; it is a branch of
+literature not likely to flourish under a despotic monarchy. In Athens
+it fell with the loss of liberty, and Demetrius Phalereus was the
+last of the real Athenian orators. After his time the orations were
+declamations written carefully in the study, and coldly spoken in the
+school for the instruction of the pupils, and wholly wanting in fire and
+genius; and the Alexandrian men of letters forbore to copy Greece in
+its lifeless harangues. For the same reasons the Alexandrians were not
+successful in history. A species of writing, which a despot requires
+to be false and flattering, is little likely to flourish; and hence
+the only historians of the museum were chronologists, antiquaries, and
+writers of travels. The coins of Euergetes bear the name of “Ptolemy the
+king,” round the head on the one side, with no title by which they can
+be known from the other kings of the same name.
+
+[Illustration: 175.jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY III.]
+
+But his portrait is known from his Phoenician coins. In the same way the
+coins of his queen have only the name of “Berenicê the queen,” but
+they are known from those of the later queens by the beauty of the
+workmanship, which soon fell far below that of the first Ptolemies.
+
+Euergetes had married his cousin Berenicê, who like the other queens of
+Egypt is sometimes called Cleopatra; by her he left two sons, Ptolemy
+and Magas, to the eldest of whom he left his kingdom, after a reign of
+twenty-five years of unclouded prosperity. Egypt was during this reign
+at the very height of its power and wealth. It had seen three kings,
+who, though not equally great men, not equally fit to found a monarchy
+or to raise the literature of a people, were equally successful in the
+parts which they had undertaken. Euergetes left to his son a kingdom
+perhaps as large as the world had ever seen under one sceptre; and
+though many of his boasted victories were like letters written in
+the sand, of which the traces were soon lost, yet he was by far the
+greatest, and possibly the wisest, monarch of his day.
+
+We may be sure that in these prosperous reigns life and property were
+safe, and justice was administered fairly by judges who were independent
+of the crown; as even centuries afterwards we find that it was part of
+a judge’s oath on taking office, that, if he were ordered by the king to
+do what was wrong, he would not obey him. But here the bright pages in
+the history of the Ptolemies end.
+
+[Illustration: 176.jpg COIN OF BERENICE, WIFE OF PTOLEMY III.]
+
+Though trade and agriculture still enriched the country, though arts and
+letters did not quit Alexandria, we have from this time forward to mark
+the growth only of vice and luxury, and to measure the wisdom of Ptolemy
+Soter by the length of time that his laws and institutions were able to
+bear up against the misrule and folly of his descendants.
+
+Ptolemy, the eldest son of Euergetes, inherited the crown of his
+forefathers, but none of the great qualities by which they had won and
+guarded it. He was then about thirty-four years old. His first act was
+to call together his council, and to ask their advice about putting to
+death his mother Berenicê and his brother Magas. Their crime was the
+being too much liked by the army; and the council was called upon to say
+whether it would be safe to have them killed. Cleomenes, the banished
+King of Sparta, who was one of the council, alone raised his voice
+against their murder, and wisely said that the throne would be still
+safer if there were more brothers to stand between the king and the
+daring hopes of a traitor. The minister Sosibius, on the other hand,
+said that the mercenaries could not be trusted while Magas was alive;
+but Cleomenes remarked to him, that more than three thousand of them
+were Peloponnesians, and that they would follow him sooner than they
+would follow Magas.
+
+Berenicê and Magas were, however, put to death, but the speech of
+Cleomenes was not forgotten. If his popularity with the mercenaries
+could secure their allegiance, he could, when he chose, make them rebel;
+from that time he was treated rather as a prisoner than as a friend,
+and by his well-meaning but incautious observation he lost all chance
+of being helped to regain his kingdom. Nothing is known of the death of
+Euergetes, the late king, and there is no proof that it was by unfair
+means. But when his son began a cruel and wicked reign by putting to
+death his mother and brother, and by taking the name of Philopator, or
+father-loving, the world seems to have thought that he was the murderer
+of his father, and had taken this name to throw a cloak over the deed.
+By this murder of his brother, and by the minority both of Antiochus,
+King of Syria, and of Philip, King of Macedonia, Philopator found
+himself safe from enemies either at home or abroad, and he gave himself
+up to a life of thoughtlessness and pleasure. The army and fleet were
+left to go to ruin, and the foreign provinces, which had hitherto been
+looked upon as the bulwarks of Egypt, were only half-guarded; but the
+throne rested on the virtues of his forefathers, and it was not till his
+death that it was found to have been undermined by his own follies and
+vice.
+
+Egypt had been governed by kings of more than usual wisdom for above one
+hundred years, and was at the very height of its power when Philopator
+came to the throne. He found himself master of Ethiopia, Cy-rene,
+Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, part of Upper Syria, Cyprus, Rhodes, the cities
+along the coast of Asia Minor from Pamphilia to Lysimachia, and the
+cities of Ænos and Maronea in Thrace. The unwilling obedience of
+distant provinces usually costs more than it is worth; but many of these
+possessions across the Mediterranean had put themselves willingly into
+the power of his predecessors for the sake of their protection, and
+they cost little more than a message to warn off invaders. Egypt was the
+greatest naval power in the world, having the command of the sea and the
+whole of the coast at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
+
+On the death of Euergetes, the happiness of the people came to an end.
+The first trouble arose from the loose and vicious habits of the new
+king, and was an attempt made upon his life by Cleomenes, who found the
+palace in Alexandria had now become a prison. The Spartan took advantage
+of the king’s being at Canopus to escape from his guards, and to raise
+a riot in Alexandria; but not being able to gain the citadel, and seeing
+that disgrace and death must follow upon his failure, he stabbed himself
+with his own dagger.
+
+The kingdom of Syria, after being humbled by Ptolemy Euergetes,
+had risen lately under the able rule of Antiochus, son of Seleucus
+Callinicus. He was a man possessed of abilities of a high order. His
+energy and courage soon recovered from Egypt the provinces that Syria
+had before lost, and afterwards gained for him the name of Antiochus the
+Great. He made himself master of the city of Damascus by a stratagem.
+Soon after this, Seleucia, the capital, which had been taken by
+Euergetes, was retaken by Antiochus, or rather given up to him by
+treachery. Theodotus also, the Alexandrian governor of Coele-Syria,
+delivered up to him that province; and Antiochus marched southward, and
+had taken Tyre and Ptolemaïs before the Egyptian army could be brought
+into the field. There he gained forty ships of war, of which twenty were
+decked vessels with four banks of oars, and the others smaller. He
+then marched towards Egypt, and on his way learned that Ptolemy was at
+Memphis. On his arrival at Pelusium he found that the place was strongly
+guarded, and that the garrison had opened the flood-gates from the
+neighbouring lake, and thereby spoiled the fresh water of all the
+neighbourhood; he therefore did not lay siege to that city, but seized
+many of the open towns on the east side of the Nile.
+
+On this, Philopator roused himself from his idleness, and got together
+his forces against the coming danger. His troops consisted of Greeks,
+Egyptians, and mercenaries to the total of seventy-three thousand men
+and seventy-three elephants, or one elephant to every thousand men,
+which was the number usually allowed to the armies about this time. But
+before this army reached Pelusium, Antiochus had led back his forces
+to winter in Seleucia. The next spring Antiochus again marched towards
+Egypt with an army of seventy-two thousand foot, six thousand horse, and
+one hundred and two elephants. Philopator led his whole forces to the
+frontier to oppose his march, and met the Syrian army near the village
+of Raphia, the border town between Egypt and Palestine. Arsinoë, his
+queen and sister, rode with him on horseback through the ranks, and
+called upon the soldiers to fight for their wives and children. At first
+the Egyptians seemed in danger of being beaten. As the armies approached
+one another, the Ethiopian elephants trembled at the very smell of the
+Indian elephants, and shrunk from engaging with beasts so much larger
+than themselves. On the charge, the left wing of each army was routed,
+as was often the case among the Greeks, when, from too great a trust in
+the shield, every soldier kept moving to the right, and thus left the
+left wing uncovered. But before the end of the day the invading army was
+defeated; and, though some of the Egyptian officers treacherously left
+their posts, and carried their troops over to Antiochus, yet the Syrian
+army was wholly routed, and Arsinoë enjoyed the knowledge and the praise
+of having been the chief cause of her husband’s success. The king in
+gratitude sacrificed to the gods the unusual offering of four elephants.
+
+By this victory Philopator regained Coele-Syria, and there he spent
+three months; he then made a hasty, and, if we judge his reasons
+rightly, we must add, a disgraceful treaty with the enemy, that he might
+the sooner get back to his life of ease. Before going home he passed
+through Jerusalem, where he gave thanks and sacrificed to the Hebrew
+god in the temple of the Jews; and, being struck with the beauty of the
+building, asked to be shown into the inner room, in which were kept
+the ark of the covenant, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the golden pot of
+manna, with the tables of the covenant. The priests told him of their
+law, by which every stranger, every Jew, and every priest but the high
+priest, was forbidden to pass beyond the second veil; but Philopator
+roughly answered that he was not bound by the Jewish laws, and ordered
+them to lead him into the holy of holies.
+
+The city was thrown into alarm by this unheard-of wickedness; the
+streets were filled with men and women in despair; the air was rent
+with shrieks and cries, and the priests prayed to Javeh to guard his own
+temple from the stain. The king’s mind, however, was not to be changed;
+the refusal of the priests only strengthened his wish, and all struggle
+was useless while the court of the temple was filled with Greek
+soldiers. But, says the Jewish historian, the prayer of the priests was
+heard; the king fell to the ground in a fit, like a reed broken by the
+wind, and was carried out speechless by his friends and generals.
+
+On his return to Egypt, he showed his hatred of the nation by his
+treatment of the Jews in Alexandria. He made a law that they should lose
+the rank of Macedonians, and be enrolled among the class of Egyptians.
+He ordered them to have their bodies marked with pricks, in the form of
+an ivy leaf, in honour of Bacchus; and those who refused to have this
+done were outlawed, or forbidden to enter the courts of justice. The
+king himself had an ivy leaf marked with pricks upon his forehead, from
+which he received the nickname of Gallus. This custom of marking the
+body had been forbidden in the Levitical law: it was not known among the
+Kopts, but must always have been in use among the Lower Egyptians. It
+was used by the Arab prisoners of Ramses, and is still practiced among
+the Egyptian Arabs of the present day.
+
+He also ordered the Jews to sacrifice on the pagan altars, and many of
+them were sent up to Alexandria to be punished for rebelling against
+his decree. Their resolution, however, or, as their historian asserts,
+a miracle from heaven changed the king’s mind. They expected to be
+trampled to death in the hippodrome by furious elephants; but after some
+delay they were released unhurt. The history of their escape, however,
+is more melancholy than the history of their danger. No sooner did the
+persecution cease than they turned with Pharisaical cruelty against
+their weaker brethren who had yielded to the storm; and they put to
+death three hundred of their countrymen, who in the hour of danger had
+yielded to the threats of punishment, and complied with the ceremonies
+required of them.
+
+The Egyptians, who, when the Persians were conquered by Alexander, could
+neither help nor hinder the Greek army, and who, when they formed part
+of the troops under the first Ptolemy, were uncounted and unvalued, had
+by this time been armed and disciplined like Greeks; and in the battle
+of Raphia the Egyptian phalanx had shown itself not an unworthy rival
+of the Macedonians. By this success in war, and by their hatred of
+their vicious and cruel king, the Egyptians were now for the first
+time encouraged to take arms against the Greek government. The Egyptian
+phalanx murmured against their Greek officers, and claimed their right
+to be under an Egyptian general. But history has told us nothing more
+of the rebellion than that it was successfully put down. The Greeks
+were still the better soldiers. The ships built by Philopator were
+more remarkable for their unwieldy size, their luxurious and costly
+furniture, than for their fitness for war. One was four hundred and
+twenty feet long and fifty-seven feet wide, with forty banks of oars.
+The longest oars were fifty-seven feet long, and weighted with lead at
+the handles that they might be the more easily moved. This huge ship
+was to be rowed by four thousand rowers, its sails were to be shifted by
+four hundred sailors, and three thousand soldiers were to stand in ranks
+upon deck. There were seven beaks in front, by which it was to strike
+and sink the ships of the enemy. The royal barge, in which the king and
+court moved on the quiet waters of the Nile, was nearly as large as this
+ship of war. It was three hundred and thirty feet long, and forty-five
+feet wide; it was fitted up with staterooms and private rooms, and was
+nearly sixty feet high to the top of the royal awning. A third ship,
+which even surpassed these in its fittings and ornaments, was given to
+Philopator by Hiero, King of Syracuse. It was built under the care
+of Archimedes, and its timbers would have made sixty triremes. Beside
+baths, and rooms for pleasures of all kinds, it had a library, and
+astronomical instruments, not only for navigation, as in modern ships,
+but for study, as in an observatory. It was a ship of war, and had eight
+towers, from each of which stone’s were to be thrown at the enemy by
+six men. Its machines, like modern cannons, could throw stones of three
+hundred pounds weight, and arrows of eighteen feet in length. It had
+four anchors of wood, and eight of iron. It was called the ship of
+Syracuse, but after it had been given to Philopator it was known by the
+name of the ship of Alexandria.
+
+In the second year of Philopator’s reign the Romans began that long
+and doubtful war with Hannibal, called the second Punic war, and in the
+twelfth year of this reign they sent ambassadors to renew their treaty
+of peace with Egypt. They sent as their gifts robes of purple for
+Philopator and Arsinoë, and for Philopator a chair of ivory and
+gold, which was the usual gift of the republic to friendly kings.
+The Alexandrians kept upon good terms both with the Romans and the
+Carthaginians during the whole of the Punic wars.
+
+When the city of Rhodes, which had long been joined in close friendship
+with Egypt, was shaken by an earthquake, that threw down the colossal
+statue of Apollo, together with a large part of the city walls and
+docks, Philopator was not behind the other friendly kings and states in
+his gifts and help. He sent to his brave allies a large sum of money,
+with grain, timber, and hemp.
+
+On the birth of his son and heir, in B.C. 209, ambassadors crowded to
+Alexandria with gifts and messages of joy. But they were all thrown into
+the shade by Hyrcanus, the son of Joseph, who was sent from Jerusalem by
+his father, and who brought to the king one hundred boys and one hundred
+girls, each carrying a talent of silver.
+
+Philopator, soon after the birth of this his only child, employed
+Philammon, at the bidding of his mistress, to put to death his queen and
+sister Arsinoë, or Eurydice, as she is sometimes called. He had already
+forgotten his rank, and his name ennobled by the virtues of three
+generations, and had given up his days and nights to vice and riot.
+He kept in his pay several fools, or laughing-stocks as they were then
+called, who were the chosen companions of his meals; and he was the
+first who brought eunuchs into the court of Alexandria. His mistress
+Agathoclea, her brother Agathocles, and their mother OEnanthe, held him
+bound by those chains which clever, worthless, and selfish favourites
+throw around the mind of a weak and debauched king. Agathocles, who
+never left his side, was his adviser in matters of business or pleasure,
+and governed alike the army, the courts of justice, and the women. Thus
+was spent a reign of seventeen years, during which the king had never
+but once, when he met Antiochus in battle, roused himself from his life
+of sloth.
+
+The misconduct and vices of Agathocles raised such an outcry against
+him, that Philopator, without giving up the pleasure of his favourite’s
+company, was forced to take away from him the charge of receiving the
+taxes. That high post was then given to Tlepolemus, a young man, whose
+strength of body and warlike courage had made him the darling of the
+soldiers. Another charge given to Tlepolemus was that of watching over
+the supply and price of corn in Alexandria. The wisest statesmen of old
+thought it part of a king’s duty to take care that the people were fed,
+and seem never to have found out that it would be better done if the
+people were left to take care of themselves. They thought it moreover a
+piece of wise policy, or at any rate of clever kingcraft, to keep down
+the price of food in the capital at the cost of the rest of the kingdom,
+and even sometimes to give a monthly fixed measure of corn to each
+citizen. By such means as these the crowd of poor and restless citizens,
+who swell the mob of every capital, was larger in Alexandria than it
+otherwise would have been; and the danger of riot, which it was meant to
+lessen, was every year increased.
+
+Sosibius had made himself more hated than Agathocles; he had been the
+king’s ready tool in all his murders. He had been stained, or at least
+reproached, with the murder of Lysimachus, the son of Philadelphus; then
+of Magas, the son of Euergetes, and Berenicê, the widow of Euergetes; of
+Cleomenes, the Spartan; and lastly, of Arsinoë, the wife of Philopator.
+For these crimes Sosibius was forced by the soldiers to give up to
+Tlepolemus the king’s ring, or what in modern language would be called
+the great seal of the kingdom, the badge of office by which Egypt was
+governed; but the world soon saw that a body of luxurious mercenaries
+were 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 letters
+which has thrown so bright a light around the whole of the family; and
+to his other luxuries he sometimes added that of the society of the
+learned men of the museum. When one of the professorships was empty he
+wrote to Athens, and invited to Alexandria, Sphærus, who had been the
+pupil of Zeno. One day when Sphærus was dining with the king, he
+said that a wise man should never guess, but only say what he knows.
+Philopator, wishing to tease him, ordered some waxen pomegranates to be
+handed to him, and when Sphærus bit one of them he laughed at him for
+guessing that it was real fruit. But the stoic answered that there are
+many cases in which our actions must be guided by what seems probable.
+None of the works of Sphærus have come down to us. Eratosthenes, of
+whom we have before spoken, was librarian of the museum during this
+reign; and Ptolemy, the son of Agesarchus, then wrote his history of
+Alexandria, a work now lost.
+
+[Illustration: 188jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY PHILOPATER]
+
+The want of moral feeling in Alexandria was poorly supplied by the
+respect for talent. Philopator built there a shrine or temple to Homer,
+in which he placed a sitting figure of the poet, and round it seven
+worshippers, meant for the seven cities which claimed the honour of
+giving him birth. Had Homer himself worshipped in such temples, and had
+his thoughts been raised by no more lofty views, he would not have left
+us an Iliad or an Odyssey. In Upper Egypt there was no such want of
+religious earnestness; there the priests placed the name of Philopator
+upon a small temple near Medinet-Habu, dedicated to Amon-Ra and the
+goddess Hâthor; his name is also seen upon the temple at Karnak, and
+on the additions to the sculptures on the temple of Thot at Pselcis in
+Ethiopia.
+
+Some of this king’s coins bear the name of “Ptolemy Philopator,” while
+those of the queen have her name, “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 monument
+to him in the temple of Venus.
+
+The first three Ptolemies had been loved by their subjects and feared by
+their enemies; but Philopator, though his power was still acknowledged
+abroad, had by his vices and cruelty made himself hated at home, and had
+undermined the foundations of the government. He began his reign like an
+Eastern despot; instead of looking to his brother as a friend for help
+and strength, he distrusted him as a rival, and had him put to death. He
+employed the ministers of his vicious pleasures in the high offices of
+government; and instead of philosophers and men of learning, he brought
+eunuchs into the palace as the companions of his son. In B.C. 204 he
+died, worn out with disease, in the seventeenth year of his reign and
+about the fifty-first of his age; and very few lamented his decease.
+
+On the death of Philopator his son was only five years old. The minister
+Agathocles, who had ruled over the country with unbounded power,
+endeavoured, by the help of his sister Agathoclea and the other
+mistresses of the late king, to keep his death secret; so that while the
+women seized the money and jewels of the palace, he might have time to
+take such steps as would secure his own power over the kingdom.
+
+[Illustration: 189.jpg COIN OF ARSINOE PHILOPATE]
+
+But the secret could not be long kept, and Agathocles called together
+the citizens of Alexandria to tell them of the death of Philopator, and
+to show them their young king.
+
+He went to the meeting, followed by his sister Agathoclea and the young
+Ptolemy, afterwards called Epiphanes. He began his speech, “Ye men of
+Macedonia,” as this mixed body of Greeks and Jews was always called. He
+wiped his eyes in well-feigned grief, and showed them the new king,
+who had been trusted, he said, by his father, to the motherly care of
+Agathoclea and to their loyalty. He then accused Tlepolemus of aiming at
+the throne, and brought forward a creature of his own to prove the truth
+of the charge. But his voice was soon drowned in the loud murmurs of the
+citizens; they had smarted too long under his tyranny, and were too well
+acquainted with his falsehoods, to listen to anything that he could
+say against his rival. Besides, Tlepolemus had the charge of supplying
+Alexandria with corn, a duty which was more likely to gain friends than
+the pandering to the vices of their hated tyrant. Agathocles soon saw
+that his life was in danger, and he left the meeting and returned to the
+palace, in doubt whether he should seek for safety in flight, or boldly
+seize the power which he was craftily aiming at, and rid himself of his
+enemies by their murder.
+
+While he was wasting these precious minutes in doubt, the streets were
+filled with groups of men, and of boys, who always formed a part of the
+mobs of Alexandria. They sullenly but loudly gave vent to their hatred
+of the minister; and if they had but found a leader they would have been
+in rebellion. In a little while the crowd moved off to the tents of
+the Macedonians, to learn their feelings on the matter, and then to the
+quarters of the mercenaries, both of which were close to the palace, and
+the mixed mob of armed and unarmed men soon told the fatal news, that
+the soldiers were as angry as the citizens. But they were still without
+a 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 knew
+what to do than his guilty rival.
+
+Agathocles, in his doubt, did nothing; he sat down to supper with
+his friends, perhaps hoping that the storm might blow over of itself,
+perhaps trusting to chance and to the strong walls of the palace. His
+mother, OEnanthe, ran to the temple of Ceres and Proserpine, and sat
+down before the altar in tears, believing that the sanctuary of the
+temple would be her best safeguard; as if the laws of heaven, which had
+never bound her, would bind her enemies. It was a festal day, and the
+women in the temple, who knew nothing of the storm which had risen in
+the forum within these few hours, came forward to comfort her; but she
+answered them with curses; she knew that she was hated and would soon be
+despised, and she added the savage prayer, that they might have to eat
+their own children. The riot did not lessen at sunset. Men, women, and
+boys were moving through the streets all night with torches. The crowds
+were greatest in the stadium and in the theatre of Bacchus, but most
+noisy in front of the palace. Agathocles was awakened by the noise, and
+in his fright ran to the bedroom of the young Ptolemy; and, distrusting
+the palace walls, hid himself, with his own family, the king, and two
+or three guards, in the underground passage which led from the palace to
+the theatre.
+
+The night, however, passed off without any violence; but at daybreak the
+murmurs became louder, and the thousands in the palace yard called for
+the young king. By that time the Greek soldiers joined the mob, and then
+the guards within were no longer to be feared. The gates were soon burst
+open, and the palace searched. The mob rushed through the halls
+and lobbies, and, learning where the king had fled, hastened to the
+underground passage. It was guarded by three doors of iron grating; but,
+when the first was beaten in, Aristomenes was sent out to offer terms of
+surrender. Agathocles was willing to give up the young king, his misused
+power, his ill-gotten wealth and estates; he asked only for his life.
+But this was sternly refused, and a shout was raised to kill the
+messenger; and Aristomenes, the best of the ministers, whose only fault
+was the being a friend of Agathocles, and the having named his little
+daughter Agathoclea, would certainly have been killed upon the spot if
+somebody had not reminded them that they wanted to send back an answer.
+
+Agathocles, seeing that he could hold out no longer, then gave up the
+little king, who was set upon a horse, and led away to the stadium amid
+the shouts of the crowd. There they seated him on the throne, and,
+while he was crying at being surrounded by strange faces, the mob loudly
+called for revenge on the guilty ministers. Sosibius, the somatophylax,
+the son of the former general of that name, seeing no other way of
+stopping the fury of the mob and the child’s sobs, asked him if the
+enemies of his mother and of his throne should be given up to the
+people. The child of course answered “yes,” without understanding what
+was meant; and on that they let Sosibius take him to his own house to be
+out of the uproar. Agathocles was soon led out bound, and was stabbed by
+those who two days before would have felt honoured by a look from him.
+Agathoclea and her sister were then brought out, and lastly 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 mob
+sometimes driven.
+
+In the meanwhile some of the women called to mind that Philammon, who
+had been employed in the murder of Arsinoë, had within those three days
+come to Alexandria, and they made a rush at his house. The doors quickly
+gave way before their blows, and he was killed upon the spot by clubs
+and stones; his little son was strangled by these raging mothers, and
+his wife dragged naked into the street, and there torn to pieces. Thus
+died Agathocles and all his family; and the care of the young king then
+fell to Sosibius, and to Aristomenes, who had already gained a high
+character for wisdom and firmness.
+
+While Egypt was thus without a government, Philip of Macedonia and
+Antiochus of Syria agreed to divide the foreign provinces between them;
+and Antiochus marched against Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. The guardians
+of the young Ptolemy sent against him an army under Scopas, the Ætolian,
+who was at first successful, but was afterwards beaten by Antiochus at
+Paneas in the valley of the Jordan, three and twenty miles above the
+Lake of Tiberias, and driven back into Egypt. In these battles the Jews,
+who had not forgotten the ill treatment that they had received from
+Philopator, joined Antiochus, after having been under the government of
+Egypt for exactly one hundred years; and in return Antiochus released
+Jerusalem from all taxes for three years, and afterwards from one-third
+of the taxes. He also sent a large sum of money for the service of the
+temple, and released the elders, priests, scribes, and singing men from
+all taxes for the future.
+
+The Alexandrian statesmen had latterly shown themselves in their foreign
+policy very unworthy pupils of Ptolemy Soter and Philadelphus, who had
+both ably trimmed the balance of power between the several successors of
+Alexander. But even had they been wiser, they could hardly, before the
+end of the second Punic war, have foreseen that the Romans would soon be
+their most dangerous enemies. The overthrow of Hannibal, however, might
+perhaps have opened their eyes; but it was then too late; Egypt was too
+weak to form an alliance with Macedonia or Syria against the Romans.
+About this time, also, the Romans sent to Alexandria, to inform the
+king that they had conquered Hannibal, and brought to a close the second
+Punic war, and to thank him for the friendship of the Egyptians during
+that long and doubtful struggle of eighteen years, when so many of their
+nearer neighbours had joined the enemy. They begged that if the senate
+felt called upon to undertake a war against Philip, who, though no
+friend to the Egyptians, had not yet taken arms against them, it might
+cause no breach in the friendship between the King of Egypt and the
+Romans. In answer to this embassy, the Alexandrians, rushing to their
+own destruction, sent to Rome a message, which was meant to place
+the kingdom wholly in the hands of the senate. It was to beg them to
+undertake the guardianship of the young Ptolemy, and the defence of the
+kingdom against Philip and Antiochus during his childhood.
+
+The Romans, in return, gave the wished-for answer; they sent ambassadors
+to Antiochus and Philip, to order them to make no attack upon Egypt,
+on pain of falling under the displeasure of the senate; and they sent
+Marcus Lepidus to Alexandria, to accept the offered prize, and to govern
+the foreign affairs of the kingdom, under the modest name of tutor to
+the young king. This high honour was afterwards mentioned by Lepidus,
+with pride, upon the coins struck when he was consul, in the eighteenth
+year of this reign. They have the city of Alexandria on the one side,
+and on the other the title of “Tutor to the king,” with the figure
+of the Roman in his toga, putting the diadem on the head of the young
+Ptolemy.
+
+The haughty orders of the senate at first had very little weight with
+the two kings. Antiochus conquered Phoenicia and Coele-Syria; and he was
+then met by a second message from the senate, who no longer spoke in the
+name of their ward, the young King of Egypt, but ordered him to give up
+to the Roman people the states which he had seized, and which belonged,
+they said, to the Romans by the right of war.
+
+[Illustration: 196.jpg ROMAN COIN, ISSUED UNDER PTOLEMY V.]
+
+On this, Antiochus made peace with Egypt by a treaty, in which he
+betrothed his daughter Cleopatra to the young Ptolemy, and added the
+disputed provinces of Phoenicia and Ccele-Syria as a dower, which were
+to 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 had
+heretofore 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 senate
+that they sent to Rome to ask whether they should help their old
+friends, the Athenians, against Philip, the common enemy, or whether
+they should leave it to the Romans to help them. And these haughty
+republicans, who wished all their allies to forget the use of arms, who
+valued their friends not for their strength but for their obedience,
+sent them word that the senate did not wish them to help the Athenians,
+and that the Roman people would take care of their own allies. The
+Alexandrians looked upon the proud but unlettered Romans only as
+friends, as allies, who asked for no pay, who took no reward, who fought
+only for ambition and for the glory of their country.
+
+Soon after this, the battle of Cynocephake in Thessaly was fought
+between Philip and the Romans, in which the Romans lost only seven
+hundred men, while as many as eight thousand Macedonians were left dead
+upon the field. This battle, though only between Rome and Macedonia,
+must not be passed unnoticed in the history of Egypt, where the troops
+were armed and disciplined like Macedonians; as it was the first time
+that the world had seen the Macedonian phalanx routed and in flight
+before any troops not so armed.
+
+The phalanx was a body of spearsmen, in such close array that each man
+filled a space of only one square yard. The spear was seven yards long,
+and, when held in both hands, its point was five yards in front of the
+soldier’s breast. There were sixteen ranks of these men, and, when the
+first five ranks lowered their spears, the point of the fifth spear was
+one yard in front of the foremost rank. The Romans, on the other hand,
+fought in open ranks, with one yard between each, or each man filled
+a space of four square yards, and in a charge would have to meet ten
+Macedonian spears. But then the Roman soldiers went into battle with
+much higher feelings than those of the Greeks. In Rome, arms were
+trusted only to the citizens, to those who had a country to love, a
+home to guard, and who had some share in making the laws which they were
+called upon to obey. But the Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria
+were made up either of natives who bowed their necks in slavery, or of
+mercenaries who made war their trade and rioted in its lawlessness; both
+of whom felt that they had little to gain from victory, and nothing to
+lose by a change of masters. Moreover, the warlike skill of the Romans
+was far greater than any that had yet been brought against the Greeks.
+It had lately been improved in their wars with Hannibal, the great
+master of that science. They saw that the phalanx could use its whole
+strength only on a plain; that a wood, a bog, a hill, or a river were
+difficulties which this close body of men could not always overcome. A
+charge or a retreat equally lessened its force; the phalanx was meant to
+stand the charge of others. The Romans, therefore, chose their own time
+and their own ground; they loosened their ranks and widened their front,
+avoided the charge, and attacked the Greeks at the side and in the rear;
+and the fatal discovery was at last made that the Macedonian phalanx
+was not unconquerable, and that closed ranks were only strong against
+barbarians. This news must have been heard by every statesman of Egypt
+and the East with alarm; the ‘Romans were now their equals, and were
+soon to be their masters.
+
+But to return to Egypt. It was, as we have seen, a country governed by
+men of a foreign race. Neither the poor who tilled the land, nor the
+rich who owned the estates, had any share in the government. They had no
+public duty except to pay taxes to their Greek masters, who walked among
+them as superior beings, marked out for fitness to rule by greater skill
+in the arts both of war and peace. The Greeks by their arms, or rather
+by their military discipline, had enforced obedience for one hundred and
+fifty years; and as they had at the same time checked lawless violence,
+made life and property safe, and left industry to enjoy a large share of
+its own earnings, this obedience had been for the most part granted to
+them willingly. They had even trusted the Egyptians with arms. But none
+are able to command unless they are at the same time able to obey. The
+Alexandrians were now almost in rebellion against their young king
+and his ministers; and the Greek government no longer gave the usual
+advantages in return for the obedience which it tyrannically enforced.
+Confusion increased each year during the childhood of the fifth Ptolemy,
+to whom Alexandrian flattery gave the title of Epiphanes, or The
+Illustrious. The Egyptian phalanx had in the last reign shown signs
+of disobedience, and at length it broke out in open rebellion. The
+discontented party strengthened themselves in the Busirite nome, in the
+middle of the Delta, and fortified the city of Lycopolis against the
+government; and a large supply of arms and warlike stores which
+they there got together proved the length of time that they had been
+preparing for resistance. The royal troops laid siege to the city in due
+form; they surrounded it with mounds and ditches; they dammed up the
+bed of the river on each side of it, and, being helped by a rise in the
+Nile, which was that year greater than usual, they forced the rebels to
+surrender, on the king’s promise that they should be spared. But Ptolemy
+was not bound by promises; he was as false and cruel as he was weak; the
+rebels were punished; and many of the troubles in his reign arose from
+his discontented subjects not being able to rely upon his word.
+
+The rich island of Cyprus also, which had been left by Philopator under
+the command of Polyerates, showed some signs of wishing to throw off
+the Egyptian yoke. But Polyerates was true to his trust; and, though
+the king’s ministers were almost too weak either to help the faithful or
+punish the treacherous, he not only saved the island for the minor, but,
+when he gave up his government to Ptolemy of Megalopolis, he brought to
+the royal treasury at Alexandria a large sum from the revenues of
+his province. By this faithful conduct he gained great weight in the
+Alexandrian councils, till, corrupted by the poisonous habits of the
+place, he gave way to luxury and vice.
+
+About the same time Scopas, who had lately led back to Alexandria his
+Ætolian mercenaries, so far showed signs of discontent and disobedience
+that the minister, Aristomenes, began to suspect him of planning
+resistance to the government. Scopas was greedy of money; nothing would
+satisfy his avarice.
+
+[Illustration: 201.jpg THE ROSETTA STONE (BRITISH MUSEUM)]
+
+The other Greek generals of his rank received while in the Egyptian
+service a mina, or ten dollars a day, under the name of mess-money,
+beyond the usual military pay; and Scopas claimed and received for his
+services the large sum of ten minas, or one hundred and twenty-five
+dollars, a day for mess-money. But even this did not content him.
+Aristomenes observed that he was collecting his friends for some secret
+purpose, and in frequent consultation with them. He therefore summoned
+him to the king’s presence, and, being prepared for his refusal, he sent
+a large force to fetch him. Fearing that the mercenaries might support
+their general, Aristomenes had even ordered out the elephants and
+prepared 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 the
+mercenaries to his trial, and, as they made no objection, he then had
+him poisoned in prison.
+
+No sooner was this rebellion crushed than the council took into
+consideration the propriety of declaring the king’s minority at an
+end, as the best means of re-establishing the royal authority; and they
+thereupon determined shortly to celebrate his Anacleteria, or the grand
+ceremony of exhibiting him to the people as their monarch, though he
+wanted some years of the legal age; and accordingly, in the ninth year
+of his reign, the young king was crowned with great pomp at Memphis, the
+ancient capital of the kingdom.
+
+On this occasion he came to Memphis by barge, in grand state, where
+he was met by the priests of Upper and Lower Egypt, and crowned in the
+temple of Phtah with the double crown, called Pschent, the crown of the
+two provinces. After the ceremony, the priests made the Decree in honour
+of the king, which is carved on the stone known by the name of the
+Rosetta Stone, in the British Museum. Ptolemy is there styled King of
+Upper 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, Ptolemy
+immortal, beloved by Phtah, god Epiphanes most gracious. In the date
+of the decree we are told the names of the priests of Alexander, of the
+gods Soteres, of the gods Adelphi, of the gods Euergetae, of the gods
+Philopatores, of the god Epiphanes himself, of Berenicê Euergetis, of
+Arsinoë Philadelphus, and of Arsinoë Philopator. The preamble mentions
+with gratitude the services of the king, or rather of his wise minister,
+Aristomenes; and the enactment orders that the statue of the king
+shall be worshipped in every temple of Egypt, and be carried out in the
+processions with those of the gods of the country; and lastly, that
+the decree is to be carved at the foot of every statue of the king, in
+sacred, in common, and in Greek writing. It is to this stone, with its
+three kinds of letters, and to the skill and industry of Dr. Thomas
+Young, and of the French scholar, Champollion, that we now owe our
+knowledge of hieroglyphics. The Greeks of Alexandria, and after them the
+Romans, who might have learned how to read this kind of writing if they
+had wished, seem never to have taken the trouble: it fell into disuse on
+the rise of Christianity in Egypt; and it was left for an Englishman
+to unravel the hidden meaning after it had been forgotten for nearly
+thirteen centuries.
+
+The preamble of this decree tells us also that during the minority of
+the king the taxes were lessened; the crown debtors were forgiven; those
+who were found in prison charged with crimes against the state were
+released; the allowance from government for upholding the splendour of
+the temples was continued, as was the rent from land belonging to the
+priests; the first-fruits, or rather the coronation money, a tax paid by
+the priests to the king on the year of his coming to the throne, which
+was by custom allowed to be less than what the law ordered, was not
+increased; the priests were relieved from the heavy burden of making a
+yearly voyage to do homage at Alexandria; there was a stop put to the
+impressing men for the navy, which had been felt as a great cruelty by
+an inland people, whose habits and religion alike made them hate the
+sea, and this was a boon which was the more easily granted, as the
+navy of Alexandria, which was built in foreign dockyards and steered by
+foreign pilots, had very much fallen off in the reign of Philopator. The
+duties on linen cloth, which was the chief manufacture of the kingdom,
+and, after grain, the chief article exported, were lessened; the
+priests, who manufactured linen for the king’s own use, probably for the
+clothing of the army, and the sails for the navy, were not called upon
+for so large a part of what they made as before; and the royalties on
+the other linen manufactories and the duties on the samples or patterns,
+both of which seem to have been unpaid for the whole of the eight years
+of the minority, were wisely forgiven. All the temples of Egypt, and
+that of Apis at Memphis in particular, were enriched by his gifts; in
+which pious actions, in grateful remembrance of their former benefactor,
+and with a marked slight to Philopator, they said that he was following
+the wishes of his grandfather, the god Euergetes. From this decree we
+gain some little insight into the means by which the taxes were raised
+under the Ptolemies; and we also learn that they were so new and foreign
+that they had no Egyptian word by which they could speak of them, and
+therefore borrowed the Greek word _syntaxes_.
+
+History gives us many examples of kings who, like Epiphanes, gained
+great praise for the mildness and weakness of the government during
+their minorities. Aristomenes, the minister, who had governed Egypt for
+Epiphanes, fully deserved that trust. While the young king looked up to
+him as a father, the country was well governed, and his orders obeyed;
+but, as he grew older, his good feelings were weakened by the pleasures
+which usually beset youth and royalty. The companions of his vices
+gained that power over his mind which Aristomenes lost, and it was not
+long before this wise tutor and counsellor was got rid of. The king,
+weary perhaps with last night’s debauchery, had one day fallen
+asleep when he should have been listening to the speech of a foreign
+ambassador. Aristomenes gently shook him and awoke him. His flatterers,
+when alone with him, urged him to take this as an affront. If, said
+they, it was right to blame the king for falling asleep when worn
+out with business and the cares of state, it should have been done in
+private, and not in the face of the whole court. So Aristomenes was put
+to death by being ordered to drink poison. Epiphanes then lost that love
+of his people which the wisdom of the minister had gained for him; and
+he governed the kingdom with the cruelty of a tyrant, rather than with
+the legal power of a king.
+
+[Illustration: 207.jpg OUTSIDE ROSETTA]
+
+Even Aristonicus, his favourite eunuch, who was of the same age as
+himself, and had been brought up as his playfellow, passed him in the
+manly virtues of his age, and earned the praise of the country for
+setting him a good example, and checking him in his career of vice.
+
+In the thirteenth year of his reign (B.C. 192), when the young king
+reached the age of eighteen, Antiochus the Great sent his daughter
+Cleopatra into Egypt, and the marriage, which had been agreed upon
+six years before, was then carried into effect; and the provinces of
+Coele-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; and
+Antiochus hoped that, by means of the power which she would have over
+the weaker mind of Epiphanes, he should gain more than he lost by giving
+up Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. But she acted the part of a wife and
+a queen, and, instead of betraying her husband into the hands of her
+father, she was throughout the reign his wisest and best counsellor.
+
+Antiochus seems never to have given up his hold upon the provinces which
+had been promised as the dower; and the peace between the two countries,
+which had been kept during the six years after Cleopatra had been
+betrothed, was broken as soon as she was married. The war was still
+going on between Antiochus and the Romans; and Epiphanes soon sent to
+Rome a thousand pounds weight of gold and twenty thousand pounds of
+silver, to help the republic against their common enemy. But the Romans
+neither hired mercenaries nor fought as such, the thirst for gold had
+not yet become the strongest feeling in the senate, and they sent back
+the money to Alexandria with many thanks.
+
+In the twentieth year of his reign Epiphanes was troubled by a second
+serious rebellion of the Egyptians. Polycrates marched against them at
+the head of the Greek troops; and, as he brought with him a superior
+force, and the king’s promise of a free pardon to all who should return
+to their obedience, the rebels yielded to necessity and laid down their
+arms. The leaders of the rebellion, Athinis, Pausiras, Chesuphus, and
+Irobashtus, whose Koptic names prove that this was a struggle on the
+part of the Egyptians to throw off the Greek yoke, were brought before
+the king at Saïs. Epiphanes, in whose youthful heart were joined the
+cruelty and cowardice of a tyrant, who had not even shown himself to the
+army during the danger, was now eager to act the conqueror; and in spite
+of the promises of safety on which these brave Kopts had laid down their
+arms, he had them tied to his chariot wheels, and copying the vices
+of men whose virtues he could not even understand, like Achilles and
+Alexander, he dragged them living round the city walls, and then ordered
+them to be put to death. He then led the army to Naucratis, which was
+the port of Saïs, and there he embarked on the Nile for Alexandria, and
+taking with him a further body of mercenaries, which Aristonicus had
+just brought from Greece, he entered the city in triumph.
+
+Ptolemy of Megalopolis, the new governor of Cyprus, copied his
+predecessor, Polycrates, in his wise and careful management. His chief
+aim was to keep the province quiet, and his next to collect the taxes.
+He was at first distrusted by the Alexandrian council for the large sum
+of money which he had got together and kept within his own power;
+but when he sent it all home to the empty treasury, they were as much
+pleased as they were surprised.
+
+Apollonius, whom we have spoken of in the reign of Euergetes, and who
+had been teaching at Rhodes during the reign of Philopator, was recalled
+to Alexandria in the beginning of this reign, and made librarian of
+the museum on the death of Eratosthenes. But he did not long enjoy that
+honour. He was already old, and shortly afterwards died at the age of
+ninety.
+
+[Illustration: 210.jpg A DESERT ROAD BETWEEN EGYPT AND SYRIA.]
+
+The coins of this king are known by the glory or rays of sun which
+surround his head, and which agrees with his name, Epiphanes,
+illustrious, or as it is written in the hieroglyphics, “light bearing.”
+ On the other side is the cornucopia between two stars, with the name of
+“King Ptolemy.” No temples, and few additions to temples, seem to have
+been built in Upper Egypt during this reign, which began and ended in
+rebellion. We find, however, a Greek inscription at Philas, of “King
+Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra, gods Epiphanes, and Ptolemy their son, to
+Asclepius,” a god whom the Egyptians called Imothph the son of Pthah.
+
+Cyprus and Cyrene were nearly all that were left to Egypt of its
+foreign provinces. The cities of Greece, which had of their own wish
+put themselves under Egypt for help against their nearer neighbours, now
+looked 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 been
+given up to Epiphanes, had been again soon lost; and the Jews, who in
+all former wars had sided with the Kings of Egypt, as being not only the
+stronger but the milder rulers, now joined Seleucus. The ease with which
+the wide-spreading provinces of this once mighty empire fell off from
+their allegiance, showed how the whole had been upheld by the warlike
+skill of its kings, rather than by a deep-rooted hold in the habits
+of the people. Instead of wondering that the handful of Greeks in
+Alexandria, on whom the power rested, lost those wide provinces, we
+should rather wonder that they were ever able to hold them.
+
+After the death of Antiochus the Great, Ptolemy again proposed to
+enforce his rights over Ccele-Syria, which he had given up only in the
+weakness of his minority; and he is said to have been asked by one of
+his generals, how he should be able to pay for the large forces which
+he’ was getting together for that purpose; and he playfully answered,
+that his treasure was in the number of his friends. But his joke was
+taken in earnest; they were afraid of new taxes and fresh levies on
+their estates; and means were easily taken to poison him. He died in
+the twenty-ninth year of his age, after a reign of twenty-four years;
+leaving the navy unmanned, the army in disobedience, the treasury empty,
+and the whole framework of government out of order.
+
+Just before his death he had sent to the Achaians to offer to send ten
+galleys to join their fleet; and Polybius, the historian, to whom we
+owe so much of our knowledge of these reigns, although he had not yet
+reached the age called for by the Greek law, was sent by the Achaians
+as one of the ambassadors, with his father, to return thanks; but before
+they had quitted their own country they were stopped by the news of the
+death of Epiphanes.
+
+Those who took away the life of the king seem to have had no thoughts of
+mending the form of government, nor any plan by which they might lessen
+the power of his successor. It was only one of those outbreaks of
+private vengeance which have often happened in unmixed monarchies, where
+men are taught that the only way to check the king’s tyranny is by his
+murder; and the little notice that was taken of it by the people proves
+their want of public virtue as 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 the
+want of a natural guardian to the young king, and they were now glad to
+copy the customs of the conquered Egyptians. Epiphanes had left behind
+him two sons, each named Ptolemy, and a daughter named Cleopatra; and
+the elder son, though still a child, mounted the throne under the able
+guardianship of his mother, Cleopatra, and took the very suitable name
+of Philometor, or _mother-loving_. The mother governed the kingdom for
+seven years as regent during the minority of her son. “When Philometor
+reached his fourteenth year, the age at which his minority ceased, his
+coronation was celebrated with great pomp. Ambassadors from several
+foreign states were sent to Egypt to wish the king joy, to do honour to
+the day, and to renew the treaties of peace with him: Caius Valerius and
+four others were sent from Rome; Apollonius, the son of Mnestheus, was
+sent from Judæa; and we may regret with Polybius that he himself was not
+able to form part of the embassy then sent from the Achaians, that he
+might have seen the costly and curious ceremony, and given us an account
+of it.
+
+While Cleopatra lived, she had been able to keep her son at peace with
+her brother, Antiochus Epiphanes, but upon her death, Leneus and the
+eunuch Eulaius, who then had the care of the young king, sought to
+reconquer Coele-Syria; and they embroiled the country in a war, at a
+time when weakness and decay might have been seen in every part of
+the army and navy, and when there was the greatest need of peace.
+Coele-Syria and Phoenicia had been given to Ptolemy Epiphanes as his
+wife’s dower; but, when Philometor seemed too weak to grasp them,
+Antiochus denied that his father had ever made such a treaty, and got
+ready to march against Egypt, as the easiest way to guard Coele-Syria.
+
+By this time the statesmen of Egypt ought to have learned the mistake
+in their foreign policy. By widening their frontier they always weakened
+it. They should have fortified the passes between the Red Sea and the
+Mediterranean, not cities in Asia. When Antiochus entered Egypt he was
+met at Pelusium by the army of Philometor, which he at once routed in
+a pitched battle. The whole of Egypt was then in his power; he marched
+upon Memphis with a small force, and seized it without having to strike
+a blow, helped perhaps by the plea that he was acting on behalf of his
+nephew, Ptolemy Philometor, who then fell into his hands.
+
+On this, the younger Ptolemy, the brother of Philometor, who was with
+his sister Cleopatra in Alexandria, and was about fifteen years old,
+declared himself king, and sent ambassadors to Rome to ask for help
+against Antiochus; and taking the name of the most popular of his
+forefathers, he called himself Euergetes. He is, however, better known
+in history as Ptolemy Physcon, or _bloated_, a nickname which was
+afterwards given to him when he had grown fat and unwieldy from the
+diseases of luxury.
+
+Comanus and Cineas were the chief advisers of the young Euergetes; and
+in their alarm they proposed to send the foreign ambassadors to meet the
+invader on his march from Memphis, and to plead for peace. This task
+the ambassadors kindly undertook. There were then in Alexandria two
+embassies from the Achaians, one to renew the treaty of peace, and one
+to settle the terms of the coming wrestling match. There were there
+three embassies from Athens, one with gifts from the city, one about the
+Panathenaic games, and one about the celebration of the mysteries. There
+was also an embassy from Miletus, and one from Clazomenæ. On the day of
+their arrival at Memphis, Antiochus feasted these numerous ambassadors
+in grand state, and on the next day gave them an audience. But their
+arguments for peace carried no weight with him; and he denied that his
+father, Antiochus the Great, had ever given Coele-Syria as a dower
+with his daughter Cleopatra to Epiphanes. To gain time he promised
+the ambassadors that he would give them an answer as soon as his own
+ambassadors returned from Alexandria; and in the meanwhile he carried
+his army down the Nile to Naucratis, and thence marched to the capital
+to begin the siege.
+
+Antiochus, however, was defeated in his first assault upon Alexandria,
+and finding that he should not soon be able to bring the siege to an
+end, he sent off an embassy to Rome with a hundred and fifty talents of
+gold, fifty as a present to the senate, and the rest to be divided among
+the states of Greece, whose help he might need. At the same time, also,
+an embassy from the Rhodians arrived in the port of Alexandria, to
+attempt to restore peace to the country of their old allies. Antiochus
+received the Rhodian ambassadors in his tent, but would not listen to
+the long speech with which they threatened him, and shortly told them
+that he came as the friend of his elder nephew, the young Philometor,
+and if the Alexandrians wished for peace they should open the gates
+to their rightful king. Antiochus was, however, defeated in all his
+assaults on the city, and he at last withdrew his army and returned
+to Syria. He left Euergetes, King of the Greeks, at Alexandria, and
+Philometor at Memphis, King of the rest of Egypt. But he kept Pelusium,
+where he placed a strong garrison that he might be able easily to
+re-enter Egypt whenever he chose.
+
+Ptolemy Macron, the Alexandrian governor of Cyprus, added to the
+troubles of the country by giving up his island to Antiochus. But he
+met with the usual fate of traitors, he was badly rewarded; and when he
+complained of his treatment, he was called a traitor by the very men who
+had gained by his treachery, and he poisoned himself in the bitterness
+of his grief. Antiochus, like most invaders, carried off whatever
+treasure fell into his hands. Egypt was a sponge which had not lately
+been squeezed, and his court and even his own dinner-table then shone
+with a blaze of silver and gold unknown in Syria before this inroad into
+Egypt.
+
+By these acts, and by the garrison left in Pelusium, the eyes of
+Philometor were opened, and he saw that his uncle had not entered Egypt
+for his sake, but to make it a province of Syria, after it had been
+weakened by civil war. He therefore wisely forgave his rebellious
+brother and sister in Alexandria, and sent offers of peace to them; and
+it was agreed that the two Ptolemies should reign together, and turn
+their forces against the common enemy. It was most likely at this
+time, and as a part of this treaty, that Philometor married his sister
+Cleopatra. It was mainly by her advice and persuasion that the quarrel
+between the two brothers was for the time healed. On this treaty between
+the brothers the year was called the twelfth of Ptolemy Philometor and
+the first of Ptolemy Euergetes, and the public deeds of the kingdom were
+so dated.
+
+The next year Antiochus Epiphanes again entered Egypt, claiming the
+island of Cyprus and the country round Pelusium as the price of his
+forbearance; and, on his marching forward, Memphis a second time opened
+its gates to him without a battle. He came down by slow marches towards
+Alexandria, and crossed the canal at Leucine, four miles from the city.
+There he was met by the Roman ambassadors, who ordered him to quit the
+country. On his hesitating, Popilius, who was one of them, drew a circle
+round him on the sand with his stick, and told him that, if he crossed
+that line without promising to leave Egypt at once, it should be taken
+as a declaration of war against Rome. On this threat Antiochus again
+quitted Egypt, and the brothers sent ambassadors to Rome to thank the
+senate for their help, and to acknowledge that they owed more to the
+Roman people than they did to the gods or to their forefathers.
+
+The treaty made on this occasion between Philometor and Antiochus
+was written by Heraclides Lembus, the son of Serapion, a native of
+Oxyrynchus, who wrote on the succession of the philosophers in the
+several Greek schools, and other works on philosophy, but whose chief
+work was a history named the Lembeutic History.
+
+Four years afterwards, in B. c. 164, Antiochus Epiphanes died; and the
+Jews of Judæa, who had been for some time struggling for liberty, then
+gained a short rest for their unhappy country. Judas Maccabæus had
+raised his countrymen in rebellion against the foreigners; he had
+defeated the Syrian forces in several battles; and was at last able
+to purify the temple and re-establish the service there as of old. He
+therefore sent to the Jews of Egypt to ask them to join their Hebrew
+brethren in celebrating the feast of tabernacles on that great occasion.
+
+[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 driven
+from his kingdom, and he fled to Rome for safety and for help. He
+entered the city privately, and took up his lodgings in the house of
+one of his own subjects, a painter of Alexandria. His pride led him
+to refuse the offers of better entertainment which were made to him by
+Demetrius, the nephew of Antiochus, who, like himself, was hoping to
+regain his kingdom by the help of the Romans. The Kings of Egypt and
+Syria, the two greatest kingdoms in the world, were at the same time
+asking to be heard at the bar of the Roman senate, and were claiming the
+thrones of their fathers at the hands of men who could make and unmake
+kings at their pleasure.
+
+As soon as the senate heard that Philometor was in Rome, they lodged him
+at the cost of the state in a manner becoming his high rank, and soon
+sent him back to Egypt, with orders that Euergetes should reign in
+Cyrene, and that the rest of the kingdom should belong to Philometor.
+This happened in the seventeenth year of Philometor and the sixth of
+Euergetes, which was the last year that was named after the two kings.
+Cassius Longinus, who was next year consul at Rome, was most likely
+among the ambassadors who replaced Philometor on the throne; for he put
+the Ptolemaic eagle and thunderbolt on his coins, as though to claim the
+sovereignty of Egypt for the senate.
+
+To these orders Euergetes was forced to yield; but the next year he
+went himself to Rome to complain to the senate that they had made a
+very unfair division of the kingdom, and to beg that they would add
+the island of Cyprus to his share. After hearing the ambassadors from
+Philometor, who were sent to plead on the other side, the senate granted
+the prayer of Euergetes, and sent ambassadors to Cyprus, with orders to
+hand that island over to Euergetes, and to make use of the fleets and
+armies of the republic if these orders were disobeyed.
+
+Euergetes, during his stay in Rome, if we may believe Plutarch, made an
+offer of marriage to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but this offer
+of a throne could not make the high-minded matron quit her children and
+her country. He left Italy with the Roman ambassadors, and, in passing
+through Greece, he raised a large body of mercenaries to help him to
+wrest Cyprus from his brother, as it would seem that the governor,
+faithful to his charge, would not listen to the commands of Rome. But
+the ambassadors had been told to conquer Cyprus, if necessary, with the
+arms of the republic only, and they therefore made Euergetes disband
+his levies. They sailed for Alexandria to enforce their orders upon
+Philometor, and sent Euergetes home to Cyrene. Philometor received the
+Roman ambassadors with all due honours; he sometimes gave them fair
+promises, and sometimes put them off till another day; and tried to spin
+out the time without saying either yes or no to the message from the
+senate. Euergetes sent to Alexandria to ask if they had gained their
+point; but though they threatened to return to Rome if they were not at
+once obeyed, Philometor, by his kind treatment and still kinder words,
+kept them more than forty days longer at Alexandria.
+
+At last the Roman ambassadors left Egypt, and on their way home they
+went to Cyrene, to let Euergetes know that his brother had disobeyed the
+orders of the senate, and would not give up Cyprus; and Euergetes then
+sent two ambassadors to Rome to beg them to revenge their affronted
+dignity and to enforce their orders by arms. The senate of course
+declared the peace with Egypt at an end, and ordered the ambassadors
+from Philometor to quit Rome within five days, and sent their own
+ambassadors to Cyrene to tell Euergetes of their decree.
+
+But while this was going on, the state of Cyrene had risen in arms
+against Euergetes; his vices and cruelty had made him hated, they had
+gained for him the nicknames of Kakergetes, or _mischief-maker_, and
+Physcon, or _bloated_; and while wishing to gain Cyprus he was in danger
+of losing his own kingdom. When he marched against the rebels, he was
+beaten and wounded, either in the battle or by an attack upon his life
+afterwards, and his success was for some time doubtful. When he had at
+last put down this rising, he sailed for Rome, to urge his complaints
+against Philometor, upon whom he laid the blame of the late rebellion,
+and to ask for help. The senate, after hearing both sides, sent a small
+fleet with Euergetes, not large enough to put him on the throne of
+Cyprus, but gave him, what they had before refused, leave to levy
+an army of his own, and to enlist their allies in Greece and Asia as
+mercenaries under his standard.
+
+The Roman troops seem not to have helped Euergetes; but he landed in
+Cyprus with his own mercenaries, and was there met by Philometor, who
+had brought over the Egyptian army in person. Euergetes, however, was
+beaten in several battles, he was soon forced to shut himself up in
+the city of Lapitho, and at last to lay down his arms before his elder
+brother.
+
+If Philometor had upon this put his brother to death, the deed would
+have seemed almost blameless after the family murders already related
+in this history. But, with a goodness of heart, he a second time forgave
+his brother all that had passed, replaced him on the throne of Cyrene,
+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 of
+Philometor had turned the Roman senate in his favour, but their troops
+seemed wanted in other quarters; at any rate they left off trying to
+enforce their decree; Philometor kept Cyprus, and sent Euergetes a
+yearly gift of grain from Alexandria.
+
+During the wars in Syria between Philometor and Antiochus Epiphanes, at
+the beginning of this reign, the Jews were divided into two parties, one
+favouring the Egyptians and one the Syrians. At last the Syrian party
+drove their enemies out of Jerusalem; and Onias, the high priest, with
+a large body of Jews, fled to Egypt. There they were well received
+by Philometor, who allowed them to dwell in the neighbourhood of
+Heliopolis; and he gave them leave to build a temple and ordain priests
+for themselves. Onias built his temple at On or Onion, a city about
+twenty-three miles from Memphis, once the capital of the district of
+Heliopolis. It was on the site of an old Egyptian temple of the goddess
+Pasht, which had fallen into disuse and decay, and was built after the
+model of the temple of Jerusalem. Though by the Jewish law there was to
+be no second temple, yet Onias defended himself by quoting, as if meant
+for his own times, the words of Isaiah, who says that in that day there
+shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt. The
+building of this temple, and the celebrating the Jewish feasts there,
+as in rivalry to the temple of Jerusalem, were a never-failing cause
+of quarrel between the Hebrew and the Greek Jews. They each altered the
+words of the Bible to make it speak their own opinions. The Hebrew Bible
+now says that the new temple was in the City of Destruction, and the
+Greek Bible says that it was in the City of Righteousness; whereas, from
+the Arabic version and some early commentaries, it seems that Isaiah was
+speaking of the city of Heliopolis, where there had been of old an altar
+to the Lord. The leaders of the Greek party wished the Jews to throw
+aside the character of strangers and foreign traders; to be at home and
+to become owners of the soil. “Hate not laborious work,” says the son of
+Sirach; “neither husbandry, which the Most High hath ordained.”
+
+About the same time the Jews brought before Ptolemy, as a judge, their
+quarrel with the Samaritans, as to whether, according to the law of
+Moses, the temple ought to have been built at Jerusalem, or on the green
+and fertile Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans built their temple, or
+on the barren white crags of Mount Ebal, where the Hebrew Bible says
+that it should be built; and as to which nation had altered their copies
+of the Bible in the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy and eighth
+chapter of Joshua. This dispute had lately been the cause of riots and
+rebellion. Ptolemy seems to have decided the question for political
+reasons, and to please his own subjects, the Alexandrian Jews; and
+without listening to the arguments as to what the law ordered, he was
+content with the proof that the temple had stood at Jerusalem for about
+eight hundred years, and he put to death the two Samaritan pleaders, who
+had probably been guilty of some outrage against the Jews in zeal for
+Mount Gerizim, and for which they might then have been on their trial.
+
+Onias, the high priest, was much esteemed by Philometor, and bore high
+offices in the government; as also did Dositheus, another Jew, who had
+been very useful in helping the king to crush a rebellion. Dositheus
+called himself a priest and a Levite, though his title to that honour
+seems to have been doubted by his countrymen. He had brought with him
+into Egypt the book of Esther, written in Greek, which he said had been
+translated out of the Hebrew in Jerusalem by Lysimachus. It contained
+some additions for which the Hebrew has never been brought forward, and
+which are now placed among the uncanonical books in the Apocrypha.
+
+Since the Ptolemies had found themselves too weak to hold Ethiopia, they
+had placed a body of soldiers on the border of the two countries, to
+guard Egypt from the inroads of the enemy. This station, twelve miles
+to the south of Syênê, had by degrees grown into a city, and was called
+Parembole, or _The Camp_; and, as most of the soldiers were Greek
+mercenaries, it was natural that the temple which Philometor built there
+should be dedicated in the Greek language. Of the temples hitherto built
+by the Ptolemies, in the Egyptian cities, every one seems to have had
+the king’s name and titles, and its dedication to the gods, carved on
+its massive portico in hieroglyphics; but this was in a Greek city, and
+it was dedicated to Isis and Serapis, on behalf of Philometor and his
+queen, in a Greek inscription.
+
+[Illustration: 227.jpg TEMPLE OF APOLLONOPOLIS]
+
+Philometor also built a temple at Antseopolis to Antaeus, a god of whom
+we know little, but that he gave his name to the city; and another to
+Aroëris at Ombos; and in the same way he carved the dedications on the
+porticoes in the Greek language. This custom became common after that
+time, and proves both the lessened weight which the native Egyptians
+bore in the state, and that the kings had forgotten the wise rules of
+Ptolemy Soter, in regard to the religious feelings of the people. They
+must have been greatly shocked by this use of foreign writing in the
+place of the old characters of the country, which, from having been used
+in the temples, even for ages beyond the reach of history, had at last
+been called sacred. In the temple at Antoopolis we note a marked change
+in the style of building. The screen in front of the great portico is
+almost removed by having a doorway made in it between every pair of
+columns.
+
+It is to this reign, also, that we seem to owe the great temple at
+Apollinopolis Magna, although it was not finished till one or two
+reigns later. It is one of the largest and least ruined of the Egyptian
+temples. Its front is formed of two huge square towers, with sloping
+sides, between which is the narrow doorway, the only opening in its
+massive walls. Through this the worshipper entered a spacious courtyard
+or cloister, where he found shade from the sun under a covered walk on
+either side. In front is the lofty portico with six large columns, the
+entrance to the body of the building. This last is flat-roofed, and far
+lower than the grand portico which hid it from the eyes of the crowd in
+the courtyard. The staircases in the towers are narrow. The sacred rooms
+within were small and dark, with only a glimmering flame here and there
+before an altar, except when lighted up with a blaze of lamps on a
+feast-day. As a castle it must have had great strength; from the top
+and loopholes of the two towers, stones and darts might be hurled at the
+enemy; and as it was in the hands of the Egyptians, it is the strongest
+proof that they were either not distrusted or not feared by their Greek
+rulers. The city of Apollinopolis stands on a grand and lofty situation,
+overlooking the river and the valley; and this proud temple, rising
+over all, can only have been planned by military skill as a fortress to
+command the whole.
+
+At this time the Greeks in Egypt were beginning to follow the custom of
+their Egyptian brethren, to take upon themselves monastic vows, and
+to shut themselves up in the temples in religious idleness. But these
+foreigners were looked upon with jealousy by the Egyptian monks as
+intruders on their endowments, and we meet with a petition addressed
+to Philometor by Ptolemy, the son of Glaucias, a monk in the temple of
+Serapis at Memphis, who styles himself a Macedonian, complaining that
+his cell had been violently entered and himself ill-treated because
+he was a Greek; and reminding the king that last year, when the king
+visited the Serapium, he had addressed the same petition to him through
+the bars of his window. The priests in temples of Egypt were maintained,
+partly by their own estates, and partly by the offerings of the pious;
+and we still possess a deed of sale made in this reign by the Theban
+priests, of one-half of a third of their collections for the dead who
+had been buried in Thynabunum, the Libyan suburb of Thebes. This sixth
+share of the collections consisted of seven or eight families of slaves;
+the price of it was four hundred pieces of brass; the bargain was made
+in the presence of sixteen witnesses, whose names are given; and the
+deed 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 dead
+would seem to have been a cause of some wealth to the temples. It was
+one among the many Egyptian customs forbidden by the law of Moses.
+
+From this deed of sale we also gain some knowledge of the state of
+slavery in Egypt. The names of the slaves and of their fathers are
+Koptic, and in some cases borrowed from the names of the gods; hence
+the slaves were probably of the same religion, and spoke nearly the same
+language as their masters. They sunk into that low state rather by their
+own want of mind than by their masters’ power. In each case the slave
+was joined in the same lot with his children; and the low price of four
+hundred pieces of brass, perhaps about thirty-eight dollars for eight
+families, or even if it be meant for the half of eight families, proves
+that they were of the nature of serfs, and that the master, either by
+law or custom, could have had no power of cruelly overworking them. On
+the other hand, in the reign of Philadelphus, the prisoners taken in
+battle, who might be treated with greater severity, were ransomed at
+fifteen dollars each. We see by the monuments that there were also a
+few negroes in the same unhappy state of slavery. They were probably not
+treated much worse than the lowest class of those born on the soil,
+but they were much more valuable. Other slaves of the Berber race were
+brought in coasting vessels from Opone on the incense coast, near to the
+island of Dioscorides.
+
+Aristarchus, who had been the tutor of Euergetes II., and of a son of
+Philometor, was one of the ornaments of this reign. He had been a pupil
+of Aristophanes, the grammarian, and had then studied under Crates at
+Pergamus, the rival school to Alexandria. He died at Cyprus, whither he
+probably withdrew on the death of Philometor. He was chiefly known for
+his critical writings, in which his opinions of poetry were thought
+so just that few dared to disagree with them; and his name soon became
+proverbial for a critic. Aristarchus had also the good fortune to be
+listened to in his lecture-room by one whose name is far more known than
+those of his two royal pupils. Moschus of Syracuse, the pastoral poet,
+was one of his hearers; but his fame must not be claimed for Alexandria;
+he can hardly have learned from the critic that just taste by which he
+joined softness and sweetness to the rude plainness of the Doric muse.
+Indeed in this he only followed his young friend Bion, whose death he
+so beautifully bewails, and from whose poems he generously owns that he
+learned so much. It may be as well to add that the lines in which he
+says that Theocritus, who had been dead above one hundred years, joined
+with him in his sorrow for the death of Bion are later additions not
+found in the early manuscripts of his poems.
+
+From our slight acquaintance with Bion’s life, we are left in doubt
+whether he accompanied his friend Moschus to the court of Alexandria;
+but it is probable that he did. In his beautiful lamentation for the
+death of Adonis, we have an imitation of the melancholy chant of the
+Egyptians, named _maneros_, which they sang through the streets in the
+procession on the feast of Isis, when the crowd joined in the chorus,
+“Ah, hapless Isis, Osiris is no more.” The tale has been a good deal
+changed by the Sicilian muse of Bion, but in the boar which killed
+Adonis, we have the wicked Typhon as carved on the monuments; we have
+also the wound in the thigh, and the consolations of the priests,
+who every year ended their mournful song with advising the goddess to
+reserve her sorrow for another year, when on the return of the festival
+the same lament would be again celebrated. The whole poem has a depth
+and earnestness of feeling which is truly Egyptian, but which was very
+little known in Alexandria.
+
+To the Alexandrian grammarians, and more particularly to Aristophanes,
+Aristarchus, and their pupil, Ammonius, we are indebted for our
+present copies of Homer. These critics acted like modern editors, each
+publishing an edition, or rather writing out a copy, which was then
+re-copied in the museum as often as called for by the demands of the
+purchasers of books. Aristophanes left perhaps only one such copy or
+edition, while Aristarchus, in his efforts to correct the text of the
+great epic poet, made several such copies. These were in the hands of
+the later scholiasts, who appealed to them as their authority, and
+ventured to make no further alterations; we therefore now read the Iliad
+and Odyssey nearly as left by these Alexandrian critics. They no doubt
+took some liberties in altering the spelling and smoothing the lines;
+and, though we should value most highly a copy in the rougher form in
+which it came into their hands, yet, on the whole, we must be great
+gainers by their labours. They divided the Iliad and Odyssey into
+twenty-four books each, and corrected the faulty metres; but one of
+their chief tasks was to set aside, or put a mark against, those more
+modern lines which had crept into the ancient poems. It had been
+usual to call every old verse Homer’s or Homeric, and these it was the
+business of the critic to mark as not genuine. Aristarchus was jocosely
+said to have called every line spurious which he did not like; but
+everything that we can learn of him leads us to believe that he executed
+his task with judgment. From these men sprang the school of Alexandrian
+grammarians, who for several centuries continued their minute and often
+unprofitable studies in verbal criticism.
+
+[Illustration: 234.jpg THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER]
+
+These were the palmy days of criticism. Never before or since have
+critics held so high a place in literature. The world was called upon to
+worship and do honour to the poet, but chiefly that it might admire the
+skill of the critic who could name the several sources of his beauties.
+The critic now ranked higher than a priest at the foot of Mount
+Parnassus. Homer was lifted to the skies that the critic might stand on
+a raised pedestal among the Muses. Such seems to be the meaning of
+the figures on the upper part of the well-known sculpture called the
+Apotheosis of Homer. It was made in this reign; and at the foot Ptolemy
+and his mother, in the characters of Time and the World, are crowning
+the statue of the poet, in the presence of ten worshippers who represent
+the literary excellences which shine forth in his poems. The figures
+of the Iliad and Odyssey kneel beside his seat, and the Frogs and Mice
+creep under his footstool, showing that the latter mock-heroic poem was
+already written and called the work of Homer.
+
+Other celebrities who flourished under the fifth Ptolemy were
+Pamphilius, an Alexandrian physician who wrote on medical plants;
+Meander, a poet and physician who studied poisons, and the great
+Hipparchus, the founder of mathematical astronomy. Hero, also, in this
+reign, 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 their
+scientific observations in the form of poetry, but it was verse without
+earnestness and feeling, and such of it as survives is valued not for
+its literary qualities or charms of diction, but for the side-lights it
+throws upon the manners and education of the age.
+
+The portrait of the king is known from those coins which bear the name
+of “_King Ptolemy the mother-loving god_.” The eagle on the other side
+of the coins has a phoenix or 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 of
+the Ptolemies; but, as every one of them had been so named in the
+hieroglyphical inscriptions, it can scarcely be called new.
+
+When Philometor quitted the island of Cyprus after beating his brother
+in battle, he left Archias as governor, who entered into a plot to give
+it up to Demetrius, King of Syria, for the sum of five hundred talents.
+But the plot was found out, and the traitor then put an end to his own
+life, to escape from punishment and self-reproach. By this treachery of
+Demetrius, Philometor was made his enemy, and he joined Attalus, King
+of Pergamus, and Ariarathes, King of Cappadocia, in setting up Alexander
+Balas as a pretender to the throne of Syria, who beat Demetrius in
+battle, and put him to death. Philometor two years afterwards gave his
+elder daughter, Cleopatra, in marriage to Alexander, and led her himself
+to Ptolemaïs, or Acre, where the marriage was celebrated with great
+pomp.
+
+But even in Ptolemaïs, the city in which Alexander had been so covered
+with favours, Philometor was near falling under the treachery of his new
+son-in-law. He learned that a plot had been formed against his life by
+Ammonius, and he wrote to Alexander to beg that the traitor might be
+given up to justice. But Alexander acknowledged the plot as his own,
+and refused to give up his servant. On this, Philometor recalled his
+daughter, and turned against Alexander the forces which he had led into
+Syria to uphold him. He then sent to the young Demetrius, afterwards
+called Nicator, the son of his late enemy, to offer him the throne and
+wife which he had lately given to Alexander Balas. Demetrius was equally
+pleased with the two offers. Philometor then entered Antioch at the head
+of his army, and there he was proclaimed by the citizens King of Asia
+and Egypt; but with a forbearance then very uncommon, he called together
+the council of the people, and refused the crown, and persuaded them to
+receive Demetrius as their king.
+
+[Illustration: 237.jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY V.]
+
+It is interesting to note that Alexander Balas and Demetrius Nicator
+each in his turn acknowledged his debt to the King of Egypt by putting
+the Ptolemaic eagle on his coins, and adjusting them to the Egyptian
+standard of weight: and in this they were afterwards followed by
+Antiochus, the son of Demetrius. The Romans, on the other hand,
+sometimes used the same eagle in boast of their power over Egypt; but we
+cannot be mistaken in what was meant by these Syrian kings, who none of
+them, when their coins were struck, were seated safely on the throne.
+With them, as with some of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the use of
+the Egyptian eagle on the coins was an act of homage.
+
+Philometor and Demetrius, as soon as the latter was acknowledged king at
+Antioch, then marched against Alexander, routed his army, and drove him
+into Arabia. But in this battle Philometor’s horse was frightened by the
+braying of an elephant, and threw the king into the ranks of the enemy,
+and he was taken up covered with wounds. He lay speechless for five
+days, and the surgeons then endeavoured to cut out a piece of the broken
+bone from his skull. He died under the operation: but not before the
+head of Alexander had been brought to him as the proof of his victory.
+
+Thus fell Ptolemy Philometor in the forty-second year of his age. His
+reign began in trouble; before he reached the years of manhood the
+country had been overrun by foreigners, and torn to pieces by civil war;
+but he left the kingdom stronger than he found it, a praise which he
+alone can share with Ptolemy Soter. He was alike brave and mild; he
+was the only one of the race who fell in battle, and the only one whose
+hands were unstained with civil blood. At an age and in a country when
+poison and the dagger were too often the means by which the king’s
+authority was upheld, when goodness was little valued, and when
+conquests were thought the only measure of greatness, he spared the life
+of a brother taken in battle, he refused the crown of Syria when offered
+to him; and not only no one of his friends or kinsmen, but no citizen
+of Alexandria, was put to death during the whole of his reign. We find
+grateful inscriptions to his honour at the city of Citium in Cyprus, in
+the island of Therse, and at Methone in Argolis.
+
+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 in
+Cyrene. He married his sister Cleopatra, and left her a widow, with two
+daughters, each named Cleopatra. The elder daughter we have seen offered
+to Euergetes, then married to Alexander Balas, and lastly to Demetrius.
+The younger daughter, afterwards known by the name of Cleopatra Cocce,
+was 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 his
+father; as the little elegy by Antipator of Sidon, which is addressed to
+the dead child, on the grief of his father and mother, would seem to be
+meant for a son of Philometor. A second son was murdered, and a third
+lived in Syria.
+
+On the death of Philometor, his widow, Cleopatra, and some of the chief
+men of Alexandria proclaimed his young son king, most likely under the
+name of Ptolemy Eupator; but Euergetes, whose claim was favoured by
+the mob, marched from Cyrene to Alexandria to seize the crown of Egypt.
+Onias the Jew defended the city for Cleopatra; but a peace was soon made
+by the help of Thermus, the Roman ambassador, and on this the gates of
+Alexandria were opened. It was agreed that Euergetes should be king, and
+marry Cleopatra, his sister and his brother’s widow. We may take it for
+granted that one article of the treaty was that her son should reign on
+the death of his uncle; but Euergetes, forgetting that he owed his own
+life to Philometor, and also disregarding the Romans who were a party to
+the treaty, had the boy put to death on the day of the marriage.
+
+The Alexandrians, after the vices and murders of former kings, could not
+have been much struck by the behaviour of Euergetes towards his family;
+but he was not less cruel towards his people. Alexandria, which he
+had entered peaceably, was handed over to the unbridled cruelty of the
+mercenaries, and blood flowed in every street. The anger of Euergetes
+fell more particularly on the Jews for the help which they had given to
+Cleopatra, and he threatened them with utter destruction. The threat
+was not carried into execution; but such was the Jews’ alarm, that they
+celebrated a yearly festival in Alexandria for several hundred years, in
+thankfulness for their escape from it. The population of the city, who
+looked upon it less as a home than as a place of trade in which they
+could follow their callings with the greatest gain, seemed to quit
+Alexandria as easily as they had come there under Ptolemy Soter; and
+Euergetes, who was afraid that he should soon be left to reign over a
+wilderness, made new laws in favour of trade and of strangers who would
+settle there.
+
+In the lifetime of Philometor he had never laid aside his claim to the
+throne of Egypt, but had only yielded to the commands of Rome and to his
+brother’s forces, and he now numbered the years of his reign from his
+former seizing of Alexandria. He had reigned six years with his brother,
+and then eighteen years in Cyrene, and he therefore called the first
+year of his real reign the twenty-fifth.
+
+In the next year he went to Memphis to be crowned; and, while the pomps
+and rites were there being performed, his queen and sister bore him a
+son, whom, from the place and to please the people, he named Memphites.
+But his queen was already in disgrace; and some of those very friends
+who on his brother’s death had marched with him against Alexandria were
+publicly put to death for speaking ill of his mistress Irene. He soon
+afterwards put away his wife and married her younger daughter, his
+niece, Cleopatra Cocce. The divorced Cleopatra was allowed to keep her
+title; and, as she was the widow of the late king, she held a rank in
+the state before the wife of the reigning king. Thus, the small temple
+of Hâthor in the island of Philæ was dedicated to the goddess in the
+name of King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra his sister, and Queen Cleopatra
+his wife, designated as the gods Euergetæ.
+
+[Illustration: 241.jpg TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT PHILAE]
+
+The Roman senate, however, felt its authority slighted by this murder
+of the young Eupator, and divorce of Cleopatra, both of whom were living
+under its protection. The late ambassador, Thermus, by whose treachery
+or folly Euergetes had been enabled to crush his rivals and gain the
+sovereign power, was on his return to Rome called to account for his
+conduct. Cato the Censor, in one of his great speeches, accused him of
+having been seduced from his duty by the love of Egyptian gold, and of
+having betrayed the queen to the bribes of Euergetes. In the meanwhile
+Scipio Africanus the younger and two other Roman ambassadors were
+sent by the senate to see that the kingdom of their ally was peaceably
+settled. Euergetes went to meet him with great pomp, and received him
+with all the honours due to his rank; and the whole city followed him in
+crowds through the streets, eager to catch a sight of the conqueror of
+Carthage, of the greatest man who had been seen in Alexandria, of one
+who by his virtues and his triumphs had added a new glory even to the
+name of Scipio. He brought with him, as his friend and companion (in
+the case of a modern ambassador we should say, as his chaplain), the
+philosopher, Pansetius, the chief of the Stoics, who had gained a great
+name for his three books on the “Duty of Man,” which were afterwards
+copied by Cicero.
+
+[Illustration: 242b.jpg]
+
+Euergetes showed them over the palace and the treasury; but, though the
+Romans had already begun to run the down-hill race of luxury, in which
+the Egyptians were so far ahead of them, yet Scipio, who held to the old
+fashions and plain manners of the republic, was not dazzled by mere gold
+and purple. But the trade of Alexandria, the natural harbour, the forest
+of masts, and the lighthouse, the only one in the world, surpassed
+anything that his well-stored mind had looked for. He went by boat to
+Memphis, and saw the rich crops on either bank, and the easy navigation
+of the Nile, in which the boats were sailing up the river by the force
+of the wind and floating down by the force of the stream. The villages
+on the river side were large and thickly set, each in the bosom of its
+own grove of palm-trees; and the crowded population was well fed and
+well clothed. The Roman statesman saw that nothing was wanting but a
+good government to make Egypt what it used to be, the greatest kingdom
+in the world.
+
+Scipio went no higher than Memphis; the buildings of Upper Egypt, the
+oldest and the largest in the world, could not draw him to Thebes, a
+city whose trade had fallen off, where the deposits of bullion in the
+temples had lessened, and whose linen manufacture had moved towards the
+Delta. Had this great statesman been a Greek he would perhaps have gone
+on to this city, famous alike in history and in poetry; but, as it was,
+Scipio and his friends then sailed for Cyprus, Syria, and the other
+provinces or kingdoms under the power of Rome, to finish this tour of
+inspection.
+
+For some time past, the Jews, taking advantage of the weakness of Egypt
+and Syria, had been struggling to make themselves free; and, at the
+beginning of this reign Simon Maccabæus, the high priest, sent an
+embassy to Rome, with a shield of gold weighing one thousand _minae_, as
+a present, to get their independence acknowledged by the Romans. On this
+the senate made a treaty of alliance with the family of the Maccabees,
+and, using the high tone of command to which they had for some time past
+been accustomed, they wrote to Euergetes and the King of Syria, ordering
+them not to make war upon their friends, the Jews. But in an after
+decree the Romans recognise the close friendship and the trading
+intercourse between Egypt and Judæa; and when they declared that they
+would protect the Jews in their right to levy custom-house duties, they
+made an exception in favour of the Egyptian trade. The people of Judæa
+in these struggles were glad to forget the jealousy which had separated
+them from their brethren in Egypt, and the old quarrel between the
+Hebrews and the Hellenists; the Sanhedrim of Jerusalem wrote to the
+Sanhedrim of Alexandria, telling them that they were going to keep the
+Feast of the Tabernacles in solemn thanksgiving to the Almighty for
+their deliverance, and begging for the benefit of their prayers.
+
+The Jews, however, of Judæa, on their gaining their former place as a
+nation, did not, as before, carry forward the chain of history in their
+sacred books. While they had been under the yoke of the Babylonians, the
+Persians, and the Syrians, their language had undergone some changes;
+and when the Hebrew of the Old Testament was no longer the spoken
+language, they perhaps thought it unworthy of them to write in any
+other. At any rate, it is to their Greek brethren in Egypt that we
+are indebted for the history of the bravery of the Maccabees. Jason
+of Cyrene wrote the history of the Maccabees, and of the Jewish wars
+against Antiochus Epiphanes and his son, Antiochus Eupator. This work,
+which was in five books, is lost, and we now read only the short history
+which was drawn from it by some unknown Greek writer, which, with the
+letter from the Jews of Judaaa to their brethren of Egypt, forms the
+second 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 translated
+into Greek the Hebrew work of his grandfather Jesus, which is named the
+Book of Wisdom, or Ecclesiasticus. It is written in imitation of the
+Proverbs of Solomon; and though its pithy sayings fall far short of the
+deep wisdom and lofty thoughts which crowd every line of that wonderful
+work, yet it will always be read with profit and pleasure. In this
+book we see the earliest example that we now possess of a Jewish writer
+borrowing from the Greek philosophers; though how far the Greek thoughts
+were part of the original Hebrew may be doubted, because the work
+was left unfinished by Jesus the grandfather, and completed by the
+Alexandrian translator, his grandson. Hereafter we shall see the
+Alexandrian Jews engrafting on the Jewish theology more and more of the
+Platonic philosophy, which very well suited the serious earnestness of
+their character, and which had a most remarkable effect in making their
+writings and opinions more fitted to spread into the ancient schools.
+
+This and other writings of the Alexandrian Jews were by them added to
+the list of sacred books which together made their Greek Bible; but they
+were never acknowledged at Jerusalem. The Hebrew books of the law and
+the prophets were first gathered together by Nehemiah after the return
+of the Hebrews from Babylon; but his library had been broken up during
+the Syrian wars. These Hebrew books, with some few which had since been
+written, were again got together by Judas Maccabaeus; and after his time
+nothing more seems to have been added to them, though the Alexandrian
+Jews continued to add new books to their Greek Bible, while cultivating
+the Platonic philosophy with a success which made a change in their
+religious opinions. It was in Alexandria, and very much by the help
+of the Jews, that Eastern and Western opinions now met. Each made some
+change in the other, and, on the union of the two, Alexandria gave to
+the world a new form of philosophy. The vices and cruelty of Euergetes
+called for more than usual skill in the minister to keep down the angry
+feelings of the people. This skill was found in the 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 times
+of trouble. On him rested the whole weight of the government; his wise
+measures in part made up for the vices of his master; and, when the
+treasure of the state had been turned to the king’s pleasures, and the
+soldiers were murmuring for want of pay, Hierax brought forward his own
+money to quiet the rebellion. But at last the people could bear their
+grievances no longer; the soldiers without pay, instead of guarding the
+throne, were its greatest enemies, and the mob rose in Alexandria,
+set fire to the palace, and Euergetes was forced to leave the city and
+withdraw to Cyprus.
+
+The Alexandrians, when free from their tyrant, sent for Cleopatra,
+his sister and divorced queen, and set her upon the throne. Her son by
+Philometor, in whose name she had before claimed the throne, had been
+put to death by Euergetes; Memphites, one of her sons by Euergetes, was
+with his father in the island of Cyprus; and Euergetes, fearing that his
+first wife Cleopatra and her advisers might make use of his son’s
+name 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 in
+Alexandria with the usual pomp; and Euergetes, putting the head, hands,
+and feet of his son Memphites into a box, sent it to Alexandria by a
+messenger, who had orders to deliver it to Cleopatra in the midst of
+the feast, when the nobles and ambassadors were making their accustomed
+gifts. The grief of Cleopatra was only equalled by the anger of the
+Alexandrians, who the more readily armed themselves under Marsyas to
+defend the queen against the invasion for which Euergetes was then
+making preparations.
+
+The queen’s forces shortly marched against the army of Euergetes that
+was entering Egypt under the command of Hegelochus; but the Egyptian
+army was beaten on the Syrian frontier. Marsyas was sent prisoner to
+Euergetes; and the king then showed the only act of mercy which can
+be mentioned to his praise, and spared the life of a prisoner whom
+he thought he could make use of. Cleopatra then sent to Syria, to
+her son-in-law Demetrius, to ask for help, which was at first readily
+granted, but Demetrius was soon called home again by a rising in
+Antioch. But great indeed must be the cruelty which a people will not
+bear from their own king rather than call in a foreign master to relieve
+them.
+
+[Illustration: 249.jpg OBELISK AT HELIOPOLIS]
+
+The return of the hated and revengeful Euergetes was not dreaded so much
+by the Alexandrians as the being made a province of Syria. Cleopatra
+received no help from Demetrius, but she lost the love of her people by
+asking for it, and she was soon forced to fly from Alexandria. She
+put her treasures on board a ship, and joined her son Ptolemy and her
+son-in-law Demetrius in Syria, while Euergetes regained his throne.
+As soon as Euergetes was again master of Egypt, it was his turn to
+be revenged upon Demetrius; and he brought forward Zabbineus, a young
+Egyptian, the son of Protarchus, a merchant, and sent him into Syria
+with an army to claim the throne under the name of Alexander, the
+adopted son of Antiochus. Alexander easily conquered and then put to
+death Demetrius, but, when he found that he really was King of Syria, he
+would no longer receive orders from Egypt; and Euergetes found that the
+same plots and forces were then wanted to put down this puppet, which he
+had before used to set him up. He began by making peace with his sister
+Cleopatra, who was again allowed to return to Egypt; and we find her
+name joined with those of Euergetes and his second queen in one of
+the public acts of the priests. He then sent an army and his daughter
+Tryphaena in marriage to Antiochus Grypus, one of the sons of Demetrius,
+who gladly received his help, and conquered Alexander and gained the
+throne of his father.
+
+We possess a curious inscription upon an obelisk that once stood in the
+island of Philæ, recording, as one of the grievances that the villagers
+smarted under, the necessity of finding supplies for the troops on their
+marches, and also for all the government messengers and public servants,
+or those who claimed to travel as such. The cost of this grievance was
+probably greater at Philæ than in other places, because the traveller
+was there stopped in his voyage by the cataracts on the Nile, and he had
+to be supplied with labourers to carry his luggage where the navigation
+was interrupted. Accordingly the priests at Philæ petitioned the king
+that their temple might be relieved from this heavy and vexatious
+charge, which they said lessened their power of rightly performing their
+appointed sacrifices; and they further begged to be allowed to set up a
+monument to record the grant which they hoped for. Euergetes granted the
+priests’ prayer, and accordingly they set up a small obelisk; and the
+petition and the king’s answer were carved on the base of this monument.
+
+The gold mines near the Nubian or Golden Berenicê, though not so rich
+as they used to be, were worked with full activity by the unhappy
+prisoners, criminals, and slaves, who were there condemned to labour in
+gangs under the lash of their taskmasters. Men and women alike, even old
+men and children, each at such work as his overstretched strength was
+equal to, were imprisoned in these caverns tunnelled under the sea or
+into the side of the mountain; and there by torchlight they suffered
+the cruel tortures of their overseers without having power to make their
+groans heard above ground. No lot upon earth could be more wretched than
+that of these unhappy men; to all of them death would have been thought
+a boon.
+
+The survey of the coast of the Red Sea, which was undertaken in this or
+the last reign, did not reach beyond the northern half of that sea. It
+was made by Agatharcides, who, when the philosopher Heracleides Lembus
+filled the office of secretary to the government under Philometor, had
+been his scribe and reader. Agatharcides gives a curious account of the
+half-savage people on these coasts, and of the more remarkable animals
+and products of the country. He was a most judicious historian, and gave
+a better guess than many at the true cause of why there was most water
+in the Nile in the dry est season of the year; which was a subject of
+never-ceasing inquiry with the travellers and writers on physics. Thaïes
+said that its waters were held back at its mouths by the Etesian winds,
+which blow from the north during the summer months; and Democritus of
+Abdera said that these winds carried heavy rain-clouds to Ethiopia;
+whereas the north winds do not begin to blow till the Nile has risen,
+and the river has returned to its usual size before the winds cease.
+Anaxagoras, who was followed by Euripides, the poet, thought that the
+large supply of water came from the melting of snow in Ethiopia. Ephorus
+thought that there were deep springs in the river’s bed, which gushed
+forth with greater force in summer than in winter. Herodotus and
+OEnopides both thought that the river was in its natural state when
+the country was overflowed; and the former said that its waters were
+lessened in winter by the attraction of the sun, then over Southern
+Ethiopia; and the latter said that, as the earth grew cool, the waters
+were sucked into its pores. The sources of the Nile were hidden by the
+barbarism of the tribes on its banks; but by this time travellers had
+reached the region of tropical rains; and Agatharcides said that the
+overflow in Egypt arose from the rains in Upper Ethiopia. But the
+Abyssinian rains begin to fall at midsummer, too late to cause the
+inundation in Egypt; and therefore the truth seemed after all to lie
+with the priests of Memphis, who said the Nile rises on the other side
+of the equator, and the rain falling in what was winter on that side of
+the globe made the Nile overflow in the Egyptian summer.
+
+From the very earliest times, says Ebers, the Pharaohs had understood
+the necessity of measuring exactly the amount or deficiency of the
+inundations of the Nile, and Nilometers are preserved which were erected
+high up the river in Nubia by kings of the Old Empire, by princes, that
+is to say, who reigned before the invasion of the Hyksos. Herodotus
+tells us that the river must rise sixteen ells for the inundation to be
+considered a favourable one. If it remained below this mark, the higher
+fields failed in obtaining a due supply of water, and a dearth was the
+result. If it greatly exceeded it, it broke down the dykes, damaged the
+villages, and had not retired into its bed by the time for sowing the
+seed. Thus the peasant, who could expect no rain, and was threatened
+neither by frosts nor storms, could have his prospects of a good or bad
+harvest read off by the priests with perfect certainty by the scale of
+the Nilometer, and not by the servants of the divinities only, but by
+the officers of the realm, who calculated the amount of taxes to be paid
+to them in proportion to the rising of the river.
+
+[Illustration: 254.jpg NILOMETER AT RHODHA]
+
+The standard was protected by the magic power of unapproachable
+sanctity, and the husbandman has been strictly interdicted from the
+earliest time to this very day from casting a glance at it during the
+time when the river is rising; for what sovereign could bear to disclose
+without reserve the decrees of Providence as to the most important of
+his rights, that of estimating the amount of taxes to be imposed? In the
+time of the Pharaohs it was the priesthood that declared to the king and
+to the people their estimate of the inundations, and at the present day,
+the sheik, who is sworn to secrecy, is under the control of the police
+of Cairo, and has his own Nilometer, the zero point of which is said
+to be somewhat below that of the ancient standard. The engineers of
+the French expedition first detected the fraud, by means of which the
+government endeavoured every year to secure the full amount of taxes.
+
+When the Nile has reached a height of a little over fifteen old Arabic
+ells, it exceeds its lowest level by more than eight ells, and has
+reached the height requisite to enable it to irrigate the highest
+fields. This happy event is announced to the people, who await it with
+breathless anxiety, and the opening of the dykes may be proceeded with.
+A festival to celebrate this occasion has been held from the remotest
+times. At the present time customs prevail which can, it is alleged, be
+traced by direct descent to the times of the Pharaohs, and yet during
+the dominion of Christianity in Egypt, and later again under sovereigns
+governing a nation wholly converted to Islam, the old worship of the
+Nile, with all its splendour, its display, and its strange ceremonies,
+was extirpated with the utmost rigour. But some portion of every
+discarded religion becomes merged in the new one that has supplanted it
+as a fresh form of superstition, and thus we discover from a Christian
+document dating from the sixth century, that the rising of the Nile “in
+its time” was no longer attributed to Osiris, but to a certain Saint
+Orion, and, as the priest of antiquity taught that a tear of Isis led to
+the overflowing of the Nile, so we hear the Egyptians of the present
+day say that “a divine tear” has fallen into the stream and caused the
+flood.
+
+The trade of the Egyptians had given them very little knowledge of
+geography. Indeed the whole trade of the ancients was carried on by
+buying goods from their nearest neighbours on one side, and selling
+them to those on the other side of them. Long voyages were unknown; and,
+though the trading wealth of Egypt had mainly arisen from carrying the
+merchandise of India and Arabia Felix from the ports on the Red Sea to
+the ports on the Mediterranean, the Egyptians seem to have gained no
+knowledge of the countries from which these goods came.
+
+[Illustration: 256b.jpg SUK EL SALEH, CAIRO]
+
+They bought them of the Arab traders, who came to Cosseir and the
+Troglodytic Berenicê from the opposite coast; the Arabs had probably
+bought them from the caravans that had carried them across the desert
+from the Persian Gulf; and that these land journeys across the desert
+were both easier and cheaper than a coasting voyage, we have before
+learned, from Phila-delphus thinking it worth while to build watering
+and resting-houses in the desert between Koptos and Berenicê, to save
+the voyage between Berenicê and Cosseir. India seems to have been only
+known to the Greeks as a country that by sea was to be reached by the
+way of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; and though Scylax had, by
+the orders of Darius, dropped down the river Indus, coasted Arabia,
+and thence reached the Red Sea, this voyage was either forgotten or
+disbelieved, and in the time of the Ptolemies it seems probable that
+nobody thought that India could be reached by sea from Egypt. Arrian
+indeed thought that the difficulty of carrying water in their small
+ships, with large crews of rowers, was alone great enough to stop a
+voyage of such a length along a desert coast that could not supply them
+with fresh water.
+
+The long voyages of Solomon and Necho had been limited to coasting
+Africa; the voyage of Alexander the Great had been from the Indus to the
+Persian Gulf; hence it was that the court of Euergetes was startled by
+the strange news that the Arabian guards on the coast of the Red Sea had
+found a man in a boat by himself, who could not speak Koptic, but who
+they afterwards found was an Indian, who had sailed straight from India,
+and had lost his shipmates. He was willing to show any one the route
+by which he had sailed; and Eudoxus of Cyzicus in Asia Minor came to
+Alexandria to persuade Euergetes to give him the command of a vessel for
+this voyage of discovery. A vessel was given him; and, though he was but
+badly fitted out, he reached a country, which he called India, by sea,
+and brought back a cargo of spices and precious stones. He wrote an
+account of the coasts which he visited, and it was made use of by Pliny.
+But it is more than probable the unknown country called India, which
+Eudoxus visited, was on the west coast of Africa. Abyssinia was often
+called India by the ancients.
+
+In these attempts at maritime discovery, and efforts after a cheaper
+means of obtaining the Indian products, the Greek sailors of Euergetes
+made a settlement in the island of Dioscorides, now called Socotara,
+in the Indian Ocean, forty leagues eastward of the coast of Africa; and
+there they met the trading vessels from India and Ceylon. This little
+island continued a Greek colony for upwards of seven centuries, and
+Greek was the only language spoken there till it fell under the Arabs
+in the twilight of history, when all the European possessions in Africa
+were overthrown. But the art of navigation was so far unknown that but
+little use was made of this voyage; the goods of India, which were all
+costly and of small weight, were still for the most part carried across
+the desert on camels’ backs, and we may remark that at a later period
+hardly more than twenty small vessels ever went to India in one year
+during the reigns of the Ptolemies, and that it was not till Egypt was a
+province of Rome that the trade-winds across the Arabian Sea were found
+out by Hippalus, a pilot in the Indian trade. The voyage was little
+known in the time of Pliny; even the learned Propertius seems to have
+thought that silk was a product of Arabia; and Palmyra and Petra, the
+two chief cities in the desert, whose whole wealth rested and whose very
+being hung upon their being watering-places for these caravans, were
+still wealthy cities in the second century of our era, when the voyage
+by the Arabian Sea became for the first time easier and cheaper than the
+journeys across the desert.
+
+Euergetes had been a pupil of Aristobolus, a learned Jew, a writer of
+the peripatetic sect of philosophers, one who had made his learning
+respected by the pagans from his success in cultivating their
+philosophy; and also of Aristarchus, the grammarian, the editor
+of Homer; and, though the king had given himself up to the lowest
+pleasures, yet he held with his crown that love of letters and of
+learning which had ennobled his forefathers. He was himself an author,
+and wrote, like Ptolemy Soter, his Memorabilia, or an account of what
+he had seen most remarkable in his lifetime. We may suppose that his
+writings were not of a very high order; they were quoted by Athengeus,
+who wrote in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; but we learn little else from
+them than the names of the mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and that
+a flock of pheasants was kept in the palace of Alexandria. He also
+wrote a commentary on Homer, of which we know nothing. When busy
+upon literature, he would allow his companions to argue with him till
+midnight on a point of history or a verse of poetry; but not one of them
+ever uttered a word against his tyranny, or argued in favour of a less
+cruel treatment of his enemies.
+
+In this reign the schools of Alexandria, though not holding the rank
+which they had gained under 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 very
+large sum of twelve talents, or ten thousand dollars a year. Sositheus
+and his rival, the younger Homer, the tragic poets of this reign, have
+even been called two of the Pleiades of Alexandria; but that was a
+title given to many authors of very different times, and to some of
+very little merit. Such indeed was the want of merit among the poets of
+Alexandria that many of their names would have been unknown to posterity
+had they not been saved in the pages of the critics and grammarians, and
+pieced together by the skill of nineteenth century investigators.
+
+[Illustration: 260.jpg TEMPLE OF KOM OMBO.]
+
+But, unfortunately, the larger number of the men of letters had in the
+late wars taken part with Philome-tor against the cruel and luxurious
+Euergetes. Hence, when the streets of Alexandria were flowing with the
+blood of those whom he called his enemies, crowds of learned men left
+Egypt, and were driven to earn a livelihood by teaching in the cities
+to which they then fled. They were all Greeks, and few of them had been
+born in Alexandria. They had been brought there by the wealth of the
+country and the favour of the sovereign; and they now withdrew when
+these advantages were taken away from them. The isles and coasts of the
+Mediterranean were so filled with grammarians, philosophers, geometers,
+musicians, schoolmasters, painters, and physicians from Alexandria that
+the cruelty of Euergetes II., like the taking of Constantinople by the
+Turks, may be said to have spread learning by the ill-treatment of its
+professors.
+
+The city which was then rising highest in arts and letters was Pergamus
+in Asia Minor, which, under Eumenes and Attalus, was almost taking the
+place which Alexandria had before held. Its library already held
+two hundred thousand volumes, and raised a jealousy in the mind of
+Euergetes. Not content with buying books and adding to the size of
+his own library, he wished to lessen the libraries of his rivals; and,
+nettled at the number of volumes which Eumenes had got together at
+Pergamus, he made a law, forbidding the export of the Egyptian papyrus
+on which they were written. On this the copiers employed by Eumenes
+wrote their books upon sheepskins, which were called _charta pergamena_,
+or parchment, from the name of the city in which they were written. Thus
+our own two words, parchment from _Pergamus_, and paper from _papyrus_,
+remain as monuments of the rivalry in book-collecting between the two
+kings.
+
+Euergetes was so bloated with disease that his body was nearly six feet
+round, and he was made weak and slothful by this weight of flesh.
+He walked with a crutch, and wore a loose robe like a woman’s, which
+reached to his feet and hands. He gave himself up very much to eating
+and drinking, and on the year that he was chosen priest of Apollo by
+the Cyrenians, he showed his pleasure at the honour by a memorable feast
+which he gave in a costly manner to all those who had before filled that
+office. He had reigned six years with his brother, then eighteen years
+in Cyrene, and lastly twenty-nine years after the death of his brother,
+and he died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign, and perhaps the
+sixty-ninth of his age. He left a widow, Cleopatra Cocce; two sons,
+Ptolemy and Ptolemy Alexander; and three daughters, Cleopatra, married
+to her elder brother; Tryphsena, married to Antiochus Grypus; and Selene
+unmarried; and also a natural son, Ptolemy Apion, to whom by will he
+left the kingdom of Cyrene; while he left the kingdom of Egypt to his
+widow and one of his sons, giving her the power of choosing which should
+be her colleague. The first Euergetes earned and deserved the name,
+which was sadly disgraced by the second; but such was the fame of
+Egypt’s greatness that the titles of its kings were copied in nearly
+every Greek kingdom. We meet with the flattering names of Soter,
+Philadelphus, Euergetes, and the rest, on the coins of Syria, Parthia,
+Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Pon-tus, Bactria, and Bithynia; while that
+of Euergetes, _the benefactor_, was at last used as another name for a
+tyrant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT
+
+
+_The weakness of the Ptolemies: Egypt bequeathed to Rome: Pompey, Cæsar,
+and Antony befriend Egypt._
+
+
+On the death of Ptolemy Euergetes II., his widow, Cleopatra Cocce, would
+have chosen her younger son, Ptolemy Alexander, then a child, for her
+partner on the throne, most likely because it would have been longer in
+the course of years before he would have claimed his share of power; but
+she was forced, by a threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her
+elder son king. Before, however, she would do this she made a treaty
+with him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting,
+the vice and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, although
+married to his sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should put
+her away, and marry his younger sister Selene; because the mother hoped
+that Selene would be false to her husband’s cause, and weaken his party
+in the state by her treachery.
+
+Ptolemy took the name of Soter II., though he is more often called
+Lathyrus, from a stain upon his face in the form of an ivy-leaf, pricked
+into his skin in honour of Osiris. He was also called Philometor; and we
+learn from an inscription on a temple at Apollinopolis Parva, that both
+these names formed part of the style in which the public acts ran in
+this reign; it is dedicated by “the Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy,
+gods Philometores, Soteres, and his children,” without mentioning his
+wife. Here, as in Persia and Judaaa, the king’s mother often held rank
+above his wife. The name of Philometor was given to him by his mother,
+because, though he had reached the years of manhood, she wished to
+act as his guardian; but her unkindness to him was so remarkable that
+historians have thought that it was a nickname. The mother and the son
+were jointly styled sovereigns of Egypt; but they lived apart, and in
+distrust of one another, each surrounded by personal friends; while
+Cleopatra’s stronger mind and greater skill in kingcraft gained for her
+the larger share of power, and the effective control of Egypt.
+
+Cleopatra, the daughter, put away by her husband at the command of her
+mother, soon made a treaty of marriage with Antiochus Cyzicenus, the
+friend of her late husband, who was struggling for the throne of Syria
+with his brother, Antiochus Grypus, the husband of her sister Tryphaana;
+and on her way to Syria she stopped at Cyprus, where she raised a large
+army and took it with her as her dower, to help her new husband against
+his brother and her sister.
+
+With this addition to his army Cyzicenus thought his forces equal to
+those of his brother; he marched against him and gave him battle. But
+he was beaten, and he fled with his wife Cleopatra; and they shut
+themselves up in the city of Antioch. Grypus and Tryphaana then laid
+siege to the city, and the astute Tryphaana soon took her revenge on
+her sister for coming into Syria to marry the brother and rival of her
+husband. The city was taken; and Tryphaana ordered her sister to be torn
+from the temple into which she had fled, and to be put to death. In vain
+Grypus urged that he did not wish his victory to be stained by the death
+of a sister; that Cleopatra was by marriage his sister as well as hers;
+that she was the aunt of their children; and that the gods would punish
+them if they dragged her from the altar. But Tryphaana was merciless
+and unmoved; she gave her own orders to the soldiers, and Cleopatra was
+killed as she clung with her arms to the statue of the goddess. This
+cruelty, however, was soon overtaken by punishment: in the next battle
+Cyzicenus was the conqueror, and he put Tryphaana to death, to quiet, as
+was said, the ghost of her murdered sister.
+
+In the third year of her reign Cleopatra Cocce gave the island of Cyprus
+to her younger son, Alexander, as an independent kingdom, thinking that
+he would be of more use to her there, in upholding her power against his
+brother Lathyrus, than he could be at Alexandria.
+
+In the last reign Eudoxus had been entrusted by Euergetes with a vessel
+and a cargo for a trading voyage of discovery towards India; and in this
+reign he was again sent by Cleopatra down the Red Sea to trade with the
+unknown countries in the east. How far he went may be doubted, but
+he brought back with him from the coast of Africa the prow of a ship
+ornamented with a horse’s head, the usual figurehead of the Carthaginian
+ships. This he showed to the Alexandrian pilots, who knew it as
+belonging to one of the Phoenician ships of Cadiz or Gibraltar. Eudoxus
+justly argued that this prow proved that it was possible to sail round
+Africa and to reach India by sea from Alexandria. The government,
+however, would not fit him out for a third voyage; but his reasons were
+strong enough to lead many to join him, and others to help him with
+money, and he thereby fitted out three vessels on this attempt to sail
+round Africa by the westward voyage. He passed the Pillars of Hercules,
+or Straits of Gibraltar, and then turned southward. He even reached that
+part of Africa where the coast turns eastward. Here he was stopped by
+his ships wanting repair. The only knowledge that he brought back for us
+is, that the natives of that western coast were of nearly the same race
+as the Ethiopians on the eastern coast. He was able to sail only part
+of the way back, and he reached Mauritania with difficulty by land. He
+thence returned home, where he met with the fate not unusual to early
+travellers. His whole story was doubted; and the geographers at home did
+not believe that he had ever visited the countries that he attempted to
+describe.
+
+The people of Lower Egypt were, as we have seen, of several races; and,
+as each of the surrounding nations was in its turn powerful, that race
+of men was uppermost in Lower Egypt. Before the fall of Thebes the Kopts
+ruled in the Delta; when the free states of Greece held the first rank
+in the world, even before the time of Alexander’s conquests, the Greeks
+of Lower Egypt were masters of their fellow-countrymen; and now that
+Judæa, under the bravery of the Maccabees, had gained among nations a
+rank far higher than what its size entitled it to, the Egyptian Jews
+found that they had in the same way gained weight in Alexandria.
+Cleopatra had given the command of her army to two Jews, Chelcias and
+Ananias, the sons of Onias, the priest of Heliopolis; and hence, when
+the civil war broke out between the Jews and Samaritans, Cleopatra
+helped the Jews, and perhaps for that reason Lathyrus helped the
+Samaritans. He sent six thousand men to his friend, Antiochus Cyzicenus,
+to be led against the Jews, but this force was beaten by the two sons of
+Hyrcanus, the high priest.
+
+By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will of the Jews of Lower
+Egypt, and hence Cleopatra again ventured to choose her own partner on
+the throne. She raised a riot in Alexandria against him, in the tenth
+year of their reign, on his putting to death some of her friends, or
+more likely, as Pausanias says, by showing to the people some of her
+eunuchs covered with blood, who she said were wounded by him; and she
+forced him to fly from Egypt. She took from him his wife, Selene, whom
+she had before thrust upon him, and who had borne him two children; and
+she allowed him to withdraw to the kingdom of Cyprus, from which place
+she 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 beautiful
+temple at the city, afterwards named by the Romans Contra-Latopolis, on
+the other side of the Nile from Latopolis or Esne. Little now remains
+of it but its massive portico, upheld by two rows of four columns each,
+having the globe with outstretched wings carved on the overhanging
+eaves. The earliest names found among the hieroglyphics with which its
+walls are covered are those of Cleopatra Cocce and her son, Ptolemy
+Soter, while the latest name is that of the Emperor Commodus. Even under
+Cleopatra Cocce, who was nearly the worst of the family, the building of
+these great temples did not cease.
+
+The two sons were so far puppets in the hands of their clever mother,
+that on the recall of Alexander no change was seen in the government
+beyond that of the names which were placed at the head of the public
+acts. The former year was called the tenth of Cleopatra and Ptolemy
+Soter, and this year was called the eleventh of Cleopatra and eighth of
+Ptolemy Alexander; as Alexander counted his years from the time when he
+was sent with the title of king to Cyprus. As he was, like his brother,
+under the guidance of his mother, he was like him in the hieroglyphical
+inscriptions called _mother-loving_.
+
+While the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria were alike weakened by civil wars
+and by the vices of their kings, Judæa, as we have seen, had risen
+under the wise government of the Maccabees to the rank of an independent
+state; and latterly Aristobulus, the eldest son of Hyr-canus, and
+afterwards Alexander Jannseus, his second son, had made themselves
+kings. But Gaza, Ptolemaïs, and some other cities, bravely refused to
+part with their liberty, and sent to Lathyrus, then King of Cyprus, for
+help. This was not, however, done without many misgivings; for some were
+wise enough to see that, if Lathyrus helped them, Cleopatra would, on
+the other hand, help their king, Jannasus; and when Lathyrus landed at
+Sicaminos with thirty thousand men, the citizens of Ptolemaïs refused
+even to listen to a message from him.
+
+The city of Gaza then eagerly sent for the help which the city of
+Ptolemaïs refused. Lathyrus drove back Jannasus, and marched upon
+Asochis, a city of Galilee, where he scaled the walls on the Sabbath
+Day, and took ten thousand prisoners and a large booty. He then sat down
+before the city of Saphoris, but left it on hearing that Jannasus was
+marching against him on the other side of the Jordan, at the head of a
+force larger than his own. He crossed the river in face of the Jewish
+army, and routed it with great slaughter. The Jewish historian adds,
+that between thirty and fifty thousand men were slain upon the field
+of battle, and that the women and children of the neighbouring villages
+were cruelly put to death.
+
+Cleopatra now began to fear that her son Lathyrus would soon make
+himself too powerful, if not checked in his career of success, and that
+he might be able to march upon Egypt. She therefore mustered her forces,
+and put them under the command of Chelcias and Ananias, her Jewish
+generals. She sent her treasure, her will, and the children of
+Alexander, to the island of Cos, as a place of safety, and then marched
+with the army into Palestine, having sent forward her son Alexander with
+the fleet. By this movement Lathyrus was unable to keep his ground in
+Coele-Syria, and he took the bold step of marching towards Egypt. But
+he was quickly followed by Chelcias, and his army was routed, though
+Chelcias lost his life in the battle. Cleopatra, after taking Ptolemaïs,
+sent part of her army to help that which had been led by Chelcias; and
+Lathyrus was forced to shut himself up in Gaza. Soon after this the
+campaign ended, by Lathyrus returning to Cyprus, and Cleopatra to Egypt.
+
+On this success, Cleopatra was advised to seize upon the throne of
+Jannseus, and again to add to Egypt the provinces of Palestine
+and Coele-Syria, which had so long made part of the kingdom of her
+forefathers. She yielded, however, to the reasons of her general
+Ananias, for the Jews of Lower Egypt were too strong to be treated with
+slight. It was by the help of the Jews that Cleopatra had driven her son
+Lathyrus out of Egypt; they formed a large part of the Egyptian armies,
+which were no longer even commanded by Greeks; and it must have been by
+these clear and unanswerable reasons that Ananias was able to turn
+the queen from the thoughts of this conquest, and to renew the league
+between Egypt and Judæa.
+
+Cleopatra, however, was still afraid that Lathyrus would be helped by
+his friend Antiochus Cyzicenus to conquer Egypt, and she therefore kept
+up the quarrel between the brothers by again sending troops to help
+Antiochus Grypus; and lastly, she gave him in marriage her daughter
+Selene, whom she had before forced upon Lathyrus. She then sent an
+army against Cyprus; and Lathyrus was beaten and forced to fly from the
+island.
+
+In the middle of this reign died Ptolemy Apion, King of Cyrene. He was
+the half-brother of Lathyrus and Alexander, and, having been made King
+of Cyrene by his father Euergetes II., he had there reigned quietly for
+twenty years. Being between Egypt and Carthage, then called the Roman
+province of Africa, and having no army which he could lead against the
+Roman legions, he had placed himself under the guardianship of Rome; he
+had bought a truce during his lifetime, by making the Roman people his
+heirs in his will, so that on his death they were to have his kingdom.
+Cyrene had been part of Egypt for above two hundred years, and was
+usually governed by a younger son or brother of the king. But on the
+death of Ptolemy Apion, the Roman senate, who had latterly been
+grasping at everything within their reach, claimed his kingdom as their
+inheritance, and in the flattering language of their decree by which the
+country was enslaved, they declared Cyrene free. From that time forward
+it was practically a province of Rome.
+
+Ptolemy Alexander, who had been a mere tool in the hands of his mother,
+was at last tired of his gilded chains; but he saw no means of throwing
+them off, or of gaining that power in the state which his birth and
+title, and the age which he had then reached, ought to have given him.
+The army was in favour of his mother, and an unsuccessful effort would
+certainly have been punished with death; so he took perhaps the only
+path open to him: he left Egypt by stealth, and chose rather to quit his
+throne and palace than to live surrounded by the creatures of his mother
+and in daily fear for his life. Cleopatra might well doubt whether she
+could keep her throne against both her sons, and she therefore sent
+messengers with fair promises to Alexander, to ask him to return to
+Egypt. But he knew his mother too well ever again to trust himself in
+her hands; and while she was taking steps to have him put to death on
+his return, he formed a plot against her life by letters. In this double
+game Alexander had the advantage of his mother; her character was so
+well known that he needed not to be told of what was going on; while she
+perhaps thought that the son whom she had so long ruled as a child would
+not dare to act as a man. Alexander’s plot was of the two the best laid,
+and on his reaching Egypt his mother was put to death.
+
+But Alexander did not long enjoy the fruits of his murder. The next year
+the Alexandrians rose against him in a fury. He was hated not so much
+perhaps for the murder of his mother as for the cruelties which he had
+been guilty of, or at least had to bear the blame of, while he reigned
+with her. His own soldiers turned against him, and he was forced to seek
+his safety by flying on board a vessel in the harbour, and he left Egypt
+with his wife and daughter. He was followed by a fleet under the command
+of Tyrrhus, but he reached Myrse, a city of Lycia, in safety; and
+afterwards, in crossing over to Cyprus, he was met by an Egyptian fleet
+under Chaereas, and killed in battle.
+
+Though others may have been guilty of more crimes, Alexander had perhaps
+the fewest good qualities of any of the family of the Lagidaa. During
+his idle reign of twenty years, in which the crimes ought in fairness to
+be laid chiefly to his mother, he was wholly given up to the lowest and
+worst of pleasures, by which his mind and body were alike ruined. He was
+so bloated with vice and disease that he seldom walked without crutches;
+but at his feasts he could leap from his raised couch and dance with
+naked feet upon the floor with the companions of his vices. He was
+blinded by flattery, ruined by debauchery, and hated by the people.
+
+His coins are not easily known from those of the other kings, which also
+bore the name of “Ptolemy the king” round the eagle. Some of the coins
+of his mother have the same words round the eagle on the one side,
+while on the other is her head, with a helmet formed like the head of an
+elephant, or her head with the name of “Queen Cleopatra” There are other
+coins with the usual head of Jupiter, and with two eagles to point out
+the joint sovereignty of herself and son.
+
+Few buildings or parts of buildings mark the reign of Ptolemy Alexander;
+but his name is not wholly unknown among the sculptures of Upper Egypt.
+On the walls of the temple of Apollinopolis Magna he is represented
+as making an offering to the god Horus. There the Egyptian artist has
+carved a portrait of this Greek king, whom he perhaps had never seen,
+clothed in a dress which he never wore, and worshipping a god whom he
+may have hardly known by name.
+
+History has not told us who was the first wife of Alexander, but he left
+a son by her named after himself Ptolemy Alexander, whom we have seen
+sent by his grandmother for safety to the island of Cos, the fortress
+of the family, and a daughter whom he carried with him in his flight
+to Lycia. His second wife was Cleopatra Berenicê, the daughter of his
+brother Lathyrus, by whom he had no children, and who is called in the
+hieroglyphics his queen and sister.
+
+[Illustration: 274.jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ALEXANDER]
+
+On the flight of Alexander, the Alexandrians sent an embassy to Cyprus
+to bring back Soter II., or Lathyrus, as he is called; and he entered
+Egypt without any opposition. He had reigned ten years with his mother,
+and then eighteen years by himself in Cyprus; and during those years of
+banishment had shown a wisdom and good behaviour which must have won
+the esteem of the Alexandrians, when compared with his younger brother
+Alexander. He had held his ground against the fleets and armies of his
+mother, but either through weakness or good feeling had never invaded
+Egypt.
+
+His reign is remarkable for the rebellion and ruin of the once powerful
+city of Thebes. It had long been falling in trade and in wealth, and had
+lost its superiority in arms; but its temples, like so many citadels,
+its obelisks, its colossal statues, and the tombs of its great kings
+still remained, and with them the memory of its glory then gone by.
+
+[Illustration: 275.jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ALEXANDER, WITH EAGLES]
+
+The hieroglyphics on the walls still recounted to its fallen priests
+and nobles the provinces in Europe, Asia, and Africa which they once
+governed, and the weight of gold, silver, and corn which these provinces
+sent as a yearly tribute. The paintings and sculptures showed the men of
+all nations and of all colours, from the Tatar of the north to the Negro
+of the south, who had graced the triumphs of their kings: and with these
+proud trophies before their eyes they had been bending under the yoke
+of Euergetes II. and Cleopatra Cocce for about fifty years. So small a
+measure of justice has usually been given to a conquered people by their
+rulers, that their highest hopes have risen to nothing more than
+an escape from excess of tyranny. If life, property, female honour,
+national and religious feelings have not been constantly and wantonly
+outraged, lesser evils have been patiently endured.
+
+[Illustration: 276.jpg THE MEMNONIUM AT THEBES]
+
+Political servitude, heavy taxes, daily ill-treatment, and occasional
+cruelty the Thebans had borne for two centuries and a half under their
+Greek masters, as no less the lot of humanity than poverty, disease, and
+death. But under the government of Cleopatra Cocce the measure of
+their injuries overflowed, and taking advantage of the revolutions in
+Alexandria, a large part of Upper Egypt rose in rebellion.
+
+We can therefore hardly wonder that when Lathyrus landed in Egypt, and
+tried to recall the troubled cities to quiet government and good order,
+Thebes should have refused to obey. The spirit of the warriors who
+followed Ramses to the shores of the Black Sea was not quite dead. For
+three years the brave Kopts, entrenched within their temples, every one
+of which was a castle, withstood his armies; but the bows, the hatchets,
+and the chariots could do little against Greek arms; while the overthrow
+of the massive temple walls, and the utter ruin of the city, prove
+how slowly they yielded to greater skill and numbers, and mark the
+conqueror’s distrust lest the temples should be again so made use of.
+Perhaps the only time before when Thebes had been stormed after a long
+siege was when it first fell under the Persians; and the ruin which
+marked the footsteps of Cambyses had never been wholly repaired. But the
+wanton cruelty of the foreigners did little mischief, when compared with
+the unpitying and unforgiving distrust of the native conquerors. The
+temples of Tentyra, Apollinopolis, Latopolis, and Philæ show that the
+massive Egyptian buildings, when let alone, can withstand the wear
+of time for thousands of years; but the harder hand of man works much
+faster, and the wide acres of Theban ruins prove alike the greatness
+of the city and the force with which it was overthrown; and this is the
+last time that Egyptian Thebes is met with in the pages of history.
+
+The traveller, whose means and leisure have allowed him to reach the
+spot, now counts the Arab villages which have been built within the
+city’s bounds, and perhaps pitches his tent in the open space in the
+middle of them. But the ruined temples still stand to call forth his
+wonder. They have seen the whole portion of time of which history keeps
+the reckoning roll before them; they have seen kingdoms and nations rise
+and fall: Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Persians, Greeks, and Romans.
+They have seen the childhood of all that we call ancient; and they still
+seem likely to stand, to tell their tale to those who will hereafter
+call us ancients. After this rebellion, Lathyrus reigned in quiet, and
+was even able to be of use to his Greek allies; and the Athenians, in
+gratitude, set up statues of bronze to him and 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 head
+of the republic, sent Lucullus, the soldier, the scholar, and the
+philosopher, as ambassador to Alexandria, to ask for help against the
+enemy. The Egyptian fleet moved out of harbour to meet him, a pomp
+which the kings of Egypt had before kept for themselves alone. Lathyrus
+received him on shore with the greatest respect, lodged him in the
+palace, and invited him to his own table, an honour which no foreigner
+had enjoyed since the kings of Egypt had thrown aside the plain manners
+of the first Ptolemies. Lucullus had brought with him the philosopher
+Antiochus of Athens, who had been the pupil of Philo, and they found
+time to enjoy the society of Dion, the academic philosopher, who was
+then teaching at Alexandria; and there they might have been seen with
+Heraclitus of Tyre, talking together about the changes which were
+creeping into the Platonic philosophy, and about the two newest works of
+Philo, which had just come to Alexandria. Antiochus could not read them
+without showing his anger: such sceptical opinions had never before been
+heard of in the Academy; but they knew the handwriting of Philo, they
+were certainly his. Selius and Tetrilius, who were there, had heard him
+teach the same opinions at Rome, whither he had fled, and where he was
+then teaching Cicero. The next day, the matter was again talked over
+with Lucullus, Heraclitus, Aristus of Athens, Ariston, and Dion; and it
+ended in Antiochus writing a book, which he named Sosus, against those
+new opinions of his old master, against the new Academy, and in behalf
+of the old Academy.
+
+Lathyrus understood the principles of the balance of power and his own
+interest too well to help the Romans to crush Mithridates, and he wisely
+wished not to quarrel with either. He therefore at once made up his mind
+not to grant the fleet which Lucullus had been sent to ask for. It
+had been usual for the kings of Egypt to pay the expenses of the Roman
+ambassadors while living in Alexandria; and Lathyrus offered four
+times the usual allowance to Lucullus, beside eighty talents of silver.
+Lucullus, however, would take nothing beyond his expenses, and returned
+the gifts, which were meant as a civil refusal of the fleet; and, having
+failed in his embassy, he sailed hastily for Cyprus, leaving the wonders
+of Egypt unvisited. Lathyrus sent a fleet of honour to accompany him on
+his voyage, and gave him his portrait cut in an emerald. Mithridates
+was soon afterwards conquered by the Romans; and it was only by skilful
+embassies and well-timed bribes that Lathyrus was able to keep off
+the punishment which seemed to await him for having thus disobeyed the
+orders of Sulla. Egypt was then the only kingdom, to the west of Persia,
+that had not yet bowed its neck under the Roman yoke.
+
+The coins of Lathyrus are not easily or certainly known from those of
+the other Ptolemies; but those of his second wife bear her head on the
+one side, with the name of “Queen Selene,” and on the other side the
+eagle, with the name of “King Ptolemy.”
+
+[Illustration: 280.jpg COIN OF Ptolemy Lathyrus AND SELENE.]
+
+He had before reigned ten years with his mother, and after his brother’s
+death he reigned six years and a half more, but, as he counted the years
+that he had reigned in Cyprus, he died in the thirty-seventh year of
+his reign. He left a daughter named Berenicê, and two natural sons, each
+named Ptolemy, one of whom reigned in Cyprus, and the other, nicknamed
+Auletes, _the piper_, afterwards gained the throne of Egypt.
+
+On the death of Lathyrus, or Ptolemy Soter II., his daughter Cleopatra
+Berenicê, the widow of Ptolemy Alexander, mounted the throne of Egypt
+in 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 of
+Cos, as a place of safety, when his grandmother Cleopatra Cocce followed
+her army into Coele-Syria. But, as the Egyptians had lost the command of
+the sea, the royal treasure in Cos was no longer out of danger, and the
+island was soon afterwards taken by Mithridates, King of Pontus, who
+had conquered Asia Minor. Among the treasures in that island the
+Alexandrians lost one of the sacred relics of the kingdom, the chlamys
+or war-cloak which had belonged to Alexander the Great, and which they
+had kept with religious care as the safeguard of the empire. It then
+fell into the hands of Mithridates, and on his overthrow it became
+the prize of Pompey, who wore it in his triumph at the end of the
+Mithridatic war. With this chlamys, as had always been foretold by the
+believers in wonders, Egypt lost its rank among nations, and the command
+of the world passed to the Romans, who now possessed this time-worn
+symbol of sovereignty.
+
+Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of Mithridates; but he
+afterwards escaped, and reached the army of Sulla, under whose care he
+lived for some time in Rome. The Alexandrian prince hoped to gain the
+throne of his father by means of the friendship of one who could make
+and unmake kings at his pleasure; and Sulla might have thought that the
+wealth of Egypt would be at his command by means of his young friend. To
+these reasons Alexander added the bribe which was then becoming common
+with the princes who held their thrones by the help of Rome, he made a
+will, in which he named the Roman people as his heirs; and the senate
+then took care that the kingdom of Egypt should be a part of the wealth
+which was afterwards to be theirs by inheritance. After Berenicê,
+his stepmother, had been queen about six months, they sent him to
+Alexandria, with orders that he should be received as king; and, to
+soften the harshness of this command, he was told to marry Berenicê, and
+reign jointly with her.
+
+The orders of Sulla, the Roman dictator, were of course obeyed; and the
+young Alexander landed at Alexandria, as King of Egypt and the friend of
+Rome. He married Berenicê; and on the nineteenth day of his reign, with
+a cruelty unfortunately too common in this history, he put her to death.
+The marriage had been forced upon him by the Romans, who ordered all the
+political affairs of the kingdom; but, as they took no part in the civil
+or criminal affairs, he seems to have been at liberty to murder his
+wife. But Alexander was hated by the people as a king thrust upon them
+by foreign arms; and Berenicê, whatever they might have before thought
+of her, was regretted as the queen of their choice. Hence his crime met
+with its reward. His own guards immediately rose upon him; they dragged
+him from the palace to the gymnasium, and there put him to death.
+
+Though the Romans had already seized the smaller kingdom of Cyrene under
+the will of Ptolemy Apion, they could not agree among themselves upon
+the wholesale robbery of taking Egypt under the will which Alexander had
+made in their favour. They seized, however, a paltry sum of money which
+he had left at Tyre as a place of safety; and it was a matter of debate
+for many years afterwards in Rome, whether they should not claim the
+kingdom of Egypt. But the nobles of Rome, who sold their patronage to
+kings for sums equal to the revenues of provinces, would have lost much
+by handing the kingdom over to the senate. Hence the Egyptian monarchy
+was left standing for two reigns longer.
+
+On the death of Ptolemy Alexander, the Alexandrians might easily have
+changed their weak and wicked rulers, and formed a government for
+themselves, if they had known how. The legitimate male line of the
+Ptolemies came to an end on the death of the young Alexander II. The
+two natural sons of Soter II. were then the next in succession; and, as
+there 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 been
+wholly overlooked at the death of his father; for though by the Egyptian
+law every son was held to be equally legitimate, it was not so by the
+Macedonian law. He took the name of Neus Dionysus, or the young Osiris,
+as we find it written in the hieroglyphics, though he is usually called
+Auletes, _the piper_; a name afterwards given him because he was more
+proud of his skill in playing on the flute than of his very slender
+knowledge of the art of governing.
+
+It was in this reign that the historian Diodorus Siculus travelled in
+Egypt, and wrote his account of the manners and religion of the people.
+What he tells us of the early Egyptian history is of little value when
+compared with the history by Manetho, who was a native of the country
+and could read the hieroglyphic records, or even with that by Herodotus;
+but nevertheless he deserves great praise, and our warmest thanks, for
+being nearly the first Greek writer when Egyptian learning could no
+longer be thought valuable; when the religion, though looked down upon,
+might at any rate be studied with ease--for being nearly the first
+writer who thought the manners of this ancient people, after they
+had almost passed off the page of history, worth the notice of a
+philosopher.
+
+Diodorus never quotes Manetho, but follows Herodotus in making one
+great hero for the chief actions of antiquity, whom he calls Sesoosis or
+Sesonchosis. To him he assigns every great work of which the author was
+unknown, the canals in the Delta, the statue of Amenhôthes III., the
+obelisks of Ramses II., the distant navigation under Necho, the mounds
+and trenches dug against Assyrian and Persian invasion, and even the
+great ship of Ptolemy Philopator; and not knowing that Southern Arabia
+and even Ethiopia had by the Alexandrians been sometimes called India,
+he says that this hero conquered even India beyond the Ganges. On the
+other hand, the fabulous conquest of the great serpent, the enemy of the
+human race, which we see sculptured on the sarcophagus of Oimenepthah,
+he describes as an historic fact of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
+He tells us how this huge beast, forty-five feet long, was beaten down
+by troops of archers, slingers, and cavalry, and brought alive in a
+net to Alexandria, where Eve’s old enemy was shown in a cage for the
+amusement of the curious citizens.
+
+Memphis was then a great city; in its crowded streets, its palaces and
+temples, it was second only to Alexandria. A little to the west stood
+the pyramids, which were thought one of the seven wonders of the world.
+Their broad bases, sloping sides, and solid masonry had withstood the
+weather for ages; and their huge unwieldy stones were a less easy quarry
+for after builders than the live rock when nearer to the river’s side.
+The priests of Memphis knew the names of the kings who, one after the
+other, had built a new portico to their great temple of Phtah; but as to
+when or by whom the pyramids were built, they had perhaps less knowledge
+than the present day historian. The modern Egyptologist, with his
+patient investigation, assigns the largest of these three pyramids to
+Khûfûi or Kheops, a famous ruler of the fourth dynasty, and the others
+were erected by his immediate successors. The temple of Phtah, and every
+other building of Memphis, is now gone, and near the spot stands the
+great city of Cairo, whose mosques and minarets have been quarried of
+its ruins, but the pyramids still stand, after fifty-six centuries of
+broken and changing history, unbroken and unchanged. They have outlived
+any portion of time that their builders could have dreamed of, but their
+worn surface no longer declares to us their builders’ names and history.
+Their sloping sides, formed to withstand attacks, have not saved the
+inscriptions which they once held; and the builders, in thus overlooking
+the reed which was growing in their marshes, the papyrus, to which the
+great minds of Greece afterwards trusted their undying names, have only
+taught us how much safer it would have been, in their wish to be
+thought of and talked of in after ages, to have leaned upon the poet and
+historian.
+
+The beautiful temples of Dendera and Latopolis, which were raised by the
+untiring industry of ages and finished, under the Roman emperors, were
+begun about this reign. Though some of the temples of Lower Egypt had
+fallen into decay; and though the throne was then tottering to its fall,
+the priests in Upper Egypt were still building for immortality. The
+religion of the Kopts was still flourishing.
+
+The Egyptian’s opinion of the creation was the growth of his own river’s
+bank. The thoughtful man, who saw the Nile every year lay a body of
+solid manure upon his field, was able to measure against the walls of
+the old temples that the ground was slowly but certainly rising. An
+increase of the earth was being brought about by the river. Hence he
+readily believed that the world itself had of old been formed out of
+water, and by means of water. The philosophers were nearly of the same
+opinion. They held that matter was itself eternal, like the other gods,
+and that our world, in the beginning, before it took any shape upon
+itself, was like thin mud, or a mass of water containing all things that
+were afterwards to be brought forth out of it. When the water had by its
+divine will separated itself from the earth, then the great Ra, the sun,
+sent down his quickening heat, and plants and animals came forth out of
+the wet-land, as the insects are spawned out of the fields, before
+the eyes of the husbandman, every autumn after the Nile’s overflow
+has retreated. The crafty priests of the Nile declared that they had
+themselves visited and dwelt in the caverns beneath the river, where
+these treasures, while yet unshaped, were kept in store and waiting to
+come into being.
+
+[Illustration: 287.jpg HORUS ON THE CROCODILES. BULAK MUSEUM.]
+
+And on the days sacred to the Nile, boys, the children of priestly
+families, were every year dedicated to the blue river-god that they
+might spend their youth in monastic retirement, and as it was said in
+these caverns beneath his waves. These early Egyptian myths seem to have
+influenced the compilers of the Hebrew Scriptures. The author of the
+book of Genesis tells us that the Hebrew God formed the earth and its
+inhabitants by dividing the land from the water, and then commanding
+them both to bring forth living creatures; and again one of the
+Psalmists says that his substance, while yet imperfect, was by the
+Creator curiously wrought in the lowest depths of the earth. The Hebrew
+writer, however, never thinks that any part of the creation was its own
+creator. But in the Egyptian philosophy sunshine and the river Nile are
+themselves the divine agents; and hence fire and water received divine
+honours, as the two purest of the elements; and every day when the
+temple of Serapis in Alexandria was opened, the singer standing on the
+steps of the portico sprinkled water over the marble floor while he held
+forth the fire to the people; and though he and most of his hearers were
+Greeks, he called upon the god in the 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 were
+veiled with rich curtains. The costliness was often in striking contrast
+with the chief inmate, much to the surprise of the Greek traveller,
+who, having leave to examine a temple, had entered the sacred rooms, and
+asked to be shown the image of the god for whose sake it was built. One
+of the priests in waiting then approached with a solemn look, chanting
+a hymn, and pulling aside the veil allowed him to peep in at a snake,
+a crocodile, or a cat, or some other beast, fitter to inhabit a bog or
+cavern than to lie on a purple cushion in a stately palace. The funerals
+of the sacred animals were celebrated with great pomp, particularly that
+of the bull Apis; and at a cost, 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 brought
+it to Memphis in a boat under a golden awning, and lodged it safely in
+the temple.
+
+[Illustration: 289.jpg RELIGIOUS PROCESSION ON THE NILE]
+
+The religious feelings of the Egyptians were much warmer and stronger
+than those of the Greeks or Romans; they have often been accused of
+eating one another, but never of eating a sacred animal. Once a year the
+people of Memphis celebrated the birthday of Apis with great pomp
+and expense, and one of the chief ceremonies on the occasion was
+the throwing a golden dish into the Nile. During the week that these
+rejoicings lasted, while the sacred river was appeased by gifts, the
+crocodile was thought to lose its fierceness, its teeth were harmless,
+and it never attempted to bite; and it was not till six o’clock on the
+eighth day that this animal again became an object of fear to those
+whose occupations brought them to the banks of the Nile. Once a year
+also the statues of the gods were removed from their pedestals and
+placed in barges, and thus carried in solemn procession along the Nile,
+and only brought back to the temples after some days. It was supposed
+that the gods were passing these days on a visit to the righteous
+Ethiopians.
+
+The cat was at all times one of the animals held most sacred by the
+Egyptians. In the earliest and latest times we find the statues of their
+goddesses with cats’ heads. The cats of Alexandria were looked upon as
+so many images of Neith or the Minerva of Saïs, a goddess worshipped
+both by Greeks and Egyptians; and it passed into a proverb with the
+Greeks, when they spoke of any two things being unlike, to say that
+they were as much like one another as a cat was to Minerva. It is to
+Alexandria also that we trace the story of a cat turned into a lady to
+please a prince who had fallen in love with it. The lady, however, when
+dressed in her bridal robes, could not help scampering about the room
+after a mouse seen upon the floor; and when Plutarch was in Egypt it had
+already become a proverb, that any one in too much finery was as awkward
+as a cat in a crocus-coloured robe.
+
+So deeply rooted in the minds of the Egyptians was the worship of these
+animals that, when a Roman soldier had killed a cat unawares, though
+the Romans were masters of the country, the people rose against him in a
+fury. In vain the king sent a message to quiet the mob, to let them know
+that the cat was killed by accident; and, though the fear of Rome would
+most likely have saved a Roman soldier unharmed whatever other crime he
+might have been guilty of, in this case nothing would quiet the people
+but his death, and he was killed before the eyes of Diodorus, the
+historian. One nation rises above another not so much from its greater
+strength or skill in arms as from its higher aim and stronger wish for
+power. The Egyptians, we see, had not lost their courage, and when the
+occasion called them out they showed a fearlessness not unworthy of
+their Theban forefathers; on seeing a dead cat in the streets they rose
+against the king’s orders and the power of Rome; had they thought their
+own 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 the
+Romans took good care not to meddle with. Had the Romans made war upon
+the priests and temples, as the Persians had done, they would perhaps in
+the same way have been driven out of Egypt: but they never shocked the
+religious feelings of the people, and even after Egypt had become a
+Roman province, when the beautiful temples of Esne, Dendera, and other
+cities, were dedicated in the names of the Roman emperors, they seldom
+copied the example of Philometor, and put Greek, much less Roman,
+writing on the portico, but continued to let the walls be covered with
+hieroglyphical inscriptions.
+
+The Egyptians, when rich enough to pay for it, still had the bodies of
+their friends embalmed at their death, and made into mummies; though
+the priests, to save part of the cost, often put the mummy of a man just
+dead into a mummy-case which had been made and used in the reign of a
+Thûtmosis or an Amenhôthes. They thought that every man at his death
+took upon himself the character of Osiris, that the nurses who laid out
+the dead body represented the goddesses Isis and Nepthys, while the man
+who made the mummy was supposed to be the god Anubis. When the embalming
+was finished, it was part of the funeral to bring the dead man to trial
+for what he had done when living, and thus to determine whether he was
+entitled to an honourable burial. The mummy was ferried across the lake
+belonging to the temple, and taken before the judge Osiris. A pair of
+scales was brought forth by the dog-headed Anubis and the hawk-headed
+Horus; and with this they weighed the past life of the deceased. The
+judge, with the advice of a jury of forty-two, then pronounced the
+solemn verdict, which was written down by the ibis-headed Thot. But
+human nature is the same in all ages and in all countries, and, whatever
+might have been the past life of the dead, the judge, not to hurt the
+feelings of the friends, always declared that he was “a righteous and
+a good man:” and, notwithstanding the show of truth in the trial, it
+passed into a proverb to say of a wicked man, that he was too bad to be
+praised even at his funeral. This custom of embalming was thought right
+by all; but from examining the mummies that have come down to us, it
+would seem to have been very much confined to the priestly families, and
+seldom used in the case of children. The mummies, however, were highly
+valued by the survivors of the family, and when from poverty any man was
+driven to borrow money, the mummies were thought good security by the
+lender, 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 of
+wood they were covered with painting, and sometimes in part gilt, and
+often three in number, one enclosing the other. The stone mummy-cases
+were yet more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster or
+hard black basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved with
+hieroglyphics, and modelled to the shape of the body like the inner
+wooden cases.
+
+It is interesting to note here that the pigment known to modern art
+by the name of mummy is, in many cases, actually prepared from the
+bituminous substances preserved within the wrappings of the ancient
+mummies. The grinding up of mummies imported from Thebes or Memphis
+for the purpose of enabling the twentieth century painter to paint the
+golden tresses of contemporary belles is of course not very extensively
+carried on, for one mummy will make several thousand tubes of paint,
+but the practice exists, and of late has been protested against both in
+England and France.
+
+Though the old laws of Egypt must very much have fallen into disuse
+during the reigns of the latter Ptolemies, they had at least been left
+unchanged; and they teach us that the shadow of freedom may be seen, as
+in Rome under the Cæsars, and in Florence under the Medici, long after
+the substance has been lost. In quarrels between man and man, the thirty
+judges, from the cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, were still
+guided by the eight books of the law. The king, the priests, and the
+soldiers were the only landholders in the country, while the herdsmen,
+husbandmen, and handicraftsmen were thought of lower caste. Though the
+armies of Egypt were for the most part filled with Greek mercenaries,
+and the landholders of the order of soldiers could then have had as
+little to do with arms as knights and esquires have in our days, yet
+they still boasted of the wisdom of their laws, by which arms were only
+to be trusted to men who had a stake in the country worth fighting for.
+The old manners had long since passed away. The priests alone obeyed the
+old marriage law, that a man should have only one wife. Other men, when
+rich enough, married several. All children were held equally legitimate,
+whatever woman was the mother.
+
+[Illustration: 295.jpg DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTIAN CARICATURE]
+
+It is to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was
+sadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art were
+alike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in
+Egypt. We find drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation used
+to hold sacred. The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in
+little; and cats, dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of
+the gods and kings of old. In one picture we have the mice attacking a
+castle defended by the cats, copied from a battle-scene of Ramses II.
+fighting against the Ethiopians. In another the king on his throne as
+a dog, with a second dog behind him as a fan-bearer, is receiving the
+sacred offerings from a cat. In a third the king and queen are seen
+playing at chess or checkers in the form of a lion playing with a
+unicorn or horned ass.
+
+We may form some opinion of the wealth of Egypt in its more prosperous
+times when we learn from Cicero that in this reign, when the Romans had
+good means of knowing, the revenues of the country amounted to twelve
+thousand five hundred talents, or ten million dollars; just one-half of
+which wras paid by the port of Alexandria. This was at a time when the
+foreign trade had, through the faults of the government, sunk down to
+its lowest ebb; when not more than twenty ships sailed each year from
+the Red Sea to India; when the free population of the kingdom had so far
+fallen off that it was not more than three millions, which was only half
+of what it had been in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, though Alexandria
+alone still held three hundred thousand persons.
+
+But, though much of the trade of the country was lost, though many of
+the royal works had ceased, though the manufacture of the finer linen
+had left the country, the digging in the gold mines, the favourite
+source of wealth to a despot, never ceased. Night and day in the mines
+near the Golden Berenicê did slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war
+work without pause, chained together in gangs, and guarded by soldiers,
+who were carefully chosen for their not being able to speak the language
+of these unhappy workmen.
+
+[Illustration: 297.jpg THE MINES OF MAGHARA]
+
+The rock which held the gold was broken up into small pieces; when hard
+it was first made brittle in the fire; the broken stone was then washed
+to separate the waste from the heavier grains which held the gold; and,
+lastly, the valuable parts when separated were kept heated in a furnace
+for five days, at the end of which time the pure gold was found melted
+into a button at the bottom. But the mines were nearly worn out; and
+the value of the gold was a very small part of the thirty-five million
+dollars which they are said to have yielded every year in the reign of
+Ramses II.
+
+As Auletes felt himself hardly safe upon the throne, his first wish was
+to get himself acknowledged as king by the Roman senate. For this end he
+sent to Rome a large sum of money to buy the votes of the senators,
+and he borrowed a further sum of Rabirius Posthumus, one of the richest
+farmers of the Roman taxes, which he spent on the same object. But
+though the Romans never tried to turn him out of his kingdom, he did not
+get the wished-for decree before he went to Rome in the twenty-fourth
+year of his reign. But we know nothing of the first years of his reign.
+A nation must be in a very demoralised state when its history disproves
+the 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 than
+during this dull, un-warlike, and vicious time. The king gave himself up
+to his natural bent for pleasure and debauchery. At times when virtue is
+uncopied and unrewarded it is usually praised and let alone; but in this
+reign sobriety was a crime in the eyes of the king, a quiet behaviour
+was thought a reproach against his irregularities. The Platonic
+philosopher Demetrius was in danger of being put to death because it
+was told to the king that he never drank wine, and had been seen at the
+feast of Bacchus in his usual dress, while every other man was in the
+dress of a woman. But the philosopher was allowed to disprove the charge
+of sobriety, or at least to make amends for his fault; and, on the king
+sending for him the next day, he made himself drunk publicly in the
+sight of all the court, and danced with cymbals in a loose dress of
+Tarentine gauze. But so few are the deeds worth mentioning in the
+falling state that we are pleased even to be told that, in the one
+hundred and seventy-eighth Olympiad, Strato of Alexandria conquered in
+the Olympic games and was crowned in the same day for wrestling, and
+for _pancratium_, or wrestling and boxing joined, these sports being
+considered among the most honourable in which athletes could contend.
+
+In the thirteenth year of this reign (B.C. 68), when the war against the
+pirates called for the whole naval force of Rome, Pompey sent a fleet
+under Lentulus Marcellinus to clear the coast and creeks of Egypt from
+these robbers. The Egyptian government was too weak to guard its own
+trade; and Lentulus in his consulship put the Ptolemaic eagle and
+thunderbolt on his coins, to show that he had exercised an act of
+sovereignty. Three years later, we again meet with the eagle and
+thunderbolt on the consular coins of Aurelius Cotta; and we learn from
+Cicero that in that year it was found necessary to send a fleet to
+Alexandria to enforce the orders of the senate.
+
+We next find the Roman senate debating whether they should not seize the
+kingdom as their inheritance under the wall of Ptolemy Alexander II.,
+but, moved by the bribes of Auletes, and perhaps by other reasons which
+we are not told, they forbore to grasp the prize. In this difficulty
+Auletes was helped by the great Pompey, to whom he had sent an embassy
+with a golden crown wrorth four thousand pieces of gold, which met him
+at Damascus on his Syrian campaign. He then formed a secret treaty with
+Mithridates, King of Pontus, who was engaged in warfare with the Romans,
+their common enemy. Auletes was now a widower with six young children,
+and Mithridates had two daughters; and accordingly it was agreed that
+one daughter should be married to Auletes, and the other to his brother,
+the King of Cyprus. But the ruin and death of Mithridates broke off the
+marriages; and Auletes was able to conceal from the Romans that he had
+ever formed an alliance with their enemy.
+
+In the year which was made famous by the consulship of Cicero, Jerusalem
+was taken by the Roman army under Pompey; and Judæa, which had enjoyed
+a shortlived freedom of less than one hundred years under the Maccabees,
+was then put under a Roman governor. The fortifications of the temple
+were destroyed. This was felt by the Jews of Lower Egypt as a heavy
+blow, and from this time their sufferings in that country began. While
+their brethren had been lords of Judæa, they had held up their heads
+with the Greeks in Alexandria, but upon the fall of Jerusalem they sunk
+down to the rank of the Egyptians. They thought worse of themselves,
+and they were thought worse of by others. The Egyptian Jews were very
+closely allied to the people of the Delta. Though they had been again
+and again warned by their prophets not to mix with the Egyptians, they
+seem not to have listened to the warning. They were in many religious
+points less strict than their brethren in Judæa. The living in Egypt,
+the building a second temple, and the using a Greek Bible, were all
+breaches, if not of the law, at least of the tradition. They surrounded
+their synagogues with sacred groves, which were clearly forbidden by
+Moses. Though they were not guilty of worshipping images, yet they did
+not think it wrong to have portraits and statues of themselves. In their
+dislike of pork, in their washings, and in other Eastern customs, they
+were like the Egyptians; and hence the Greeks, who thought them both
+barbarians, very grudgingly yielded to them the privileges of choosing
+their own magistrates, of having their own courts of justice, and
+the other rights of citizenship which the policy of the Ptolemies
+had granted. The Jews, on the other hand, in whose eyes religion was
+everything, saw the Greeks and Egyptians worshipping the same gods and
+the same sacred animals, and felt themselves as far above the Greeks in
+those branches of philosophy which arise out of religion as they were
+below them in that rank which is gained by success in war. Hence it was
+with many heartburnings, and not without struggles which shed blood
+in the streets of Alexandria, that they found themselves, in the years
+which ushered in the Christian era, sinking down to the level of the
+Egyptians, and losing one by one the rights of Macedonian citizenship.
+
+During these years Auletes had been losing his friends and weakening
+his government, and, at last, when he refused to quarrel with the senate
+about the island of Cyprus, the Egyptians rose against him in arms, and
+he was forced to fly from Alexandria. He took ship for Rome, and in his
+way there he met Cato, who was at Rhodes on his voyage to Cyprus. He
+sent to Cato to let him know that he was in the city, and that he wished
+to see him. But the Roman sent word back that he was unwell, and that
+if the king wanted to speak to him he must come himself. This was not
+a time for Auletes to quarrel with a senator, when he was on his way
+to Rome to beg for help against his subjects; so he was forced to go
+to Cato’s lodgings, who did not even rise from his seat when the king
+entered the room. But this treatment was not quite new to Auletes; in
+his flight from Alexandria, in disguise and without a servant, he had
+had to eat brown bread in the cottage of a peasant; and he now learned
+how much more irksome it was to wait upon the pleasure of a Roman
+senator. Cato gave him the best advice; that, instead of going to Rome,
+where he would find that all the wealth of Egypt would be thought
+a bribe too small for the greediness of the senators whose votes he
+wanted, he would do better to return to Alexandria, and make peace with
+his rebellious subjects. Auletes, however, went on to Italy, and he
+arrived at Rome in the twenty-fourth year of his reign; and in the
+three years that he spent there in courting and bribing the senators, he
+learned the truth of Cato’s statements, and the value of his advice.
+
+His brother Ptolemy, who was reigning in Cyprus, was not even so well
+treated. The Romans passed a law making that wealthy island a Roman
+province, no doubt upon the plea of the will of Alexander II. and the
+king’s illegitimacy; and they sent Cato, rather against his will, to
+turn Ptolemy out of his kingdom. Ptolemy gave up the island without Cato
+being called upon to use force, and in return the Romans made him high
+priest in the temple of the Paphian Venus; but he soon put himself to
+death by poison. Canidius Crassus, who had been employed by Cato in
+this affair, may have had some fighting at sea with the Egyptians, as
+on one of his coins we see on one side a crocodile, and on the other the
+prow of a ship, as if he had beaten the Egyptian fleet in the mouth of
+the Nile.
+
+On the flight of their king, the rebellious Alexandrians set on
+the throne the two eldest of his daughters, Cleopatra Tryphaena and
+Berenicê, and sent an embassy, at the head of which was Dion, the
+academic philosopher, to plead their cause at Rome against the king. But
+the gold of Auletes had already gained the senate; and Cicero spoke, on
+his behalf, one of his great speeches, now unfortunately lost, in which
+he rebutted the charge that Auletes was at all to be blamed for the
+death of Alexander, whom he thought justly killed by his guards for the
+murder of his queen and kinswoman. Cæsar, whose year of consulship was
+then drawing to an end, took his part warmly; and Auletes became in debt
+to him in the sum of seventeen million drachmas, or nearly two and a
+half million dollars, either for money lent to bribe the senators, or
+for bonds then given to Cæsar instead of money. By these means Auletes
+got his title acknowledged; the door of the senate was shut against
+the Alexandrian ambassadors; and the philosopher Dion, the head of the
+embassy, was poisoned in Rome by the slaves of his friend Lucceius, in
+whose house he was dwelling. But nevertheless, Auletes was not able to
+get an army sent to help him against his rebellious subjects and his
+daughters; nor was Cæsar able to get from the senate, for the employment
+of his proconsular year, the task of replacing Auletes on the throne.
+
+This high employment was then sought for both by Lentulus and by Pompey.
+The senate at first leaned in favour of the former; and he would perhaps
+have gained it if the Roman creditors of Auletes, who were already
+trembling for their money, had not bribed openly in favour of Pompey,
+as the more powerful of the two. On Pompey, therefore, the choice of
+the senate at last fell. Pompey then took Auletes into his house, as his
+friend and guest, and would have got orders to lead him back into his
+kingdom at the head of a Roman army had not the tribunes of the people,
+fearing any addition to Pompey’s great power, had recourse to their
+usual state-engine, the Sibylline books; and the pontifex, at their
+bidding, publicly declared that it was written in those sacred pages
+that the King of Egypt should have the friendship of Rome, but should
+not be helped with an army.
+
+But though Lentulus and Pompey were each strong enough to stop the other
+from having this high command, Auletes was not without hopes that some
+Roman general would be led, by the promise of money, and by the honour,
+to undertake his cause, though it would be against the laws of Rome to
+do so without orders from the senate. Cicero then took him under his
+protection, and carried him in a litter of state to his villa at Baiæ,
+and wrote to Lentulus, the proconsul of Cilicia and Cyprus, strongly
+urging him to snatch the glory of replacing Auletes on the throne, and
+of being the patron of the King of Egypt. But Lentulus seems not to have
+chosen to run the risk of so far breaking the laws of his country.
+
+Auletes then went, with pressing letters from Pompey, to Gabinius, the
+proconsul of Syria, and offered him the large bribe of ten thousand
+talents, or seven and a half million dollars, if he would lead the Roman
+army into Egypt, and replace him on the throne. Most of the officers
+were against this undertaking; but the letters of Pompey, the advice of
+Mark Antony, the master of the horse, and perhaps the greatness of the
+bribe, outweighed those cautious opinions.
+
+While Auletes had been thus pleading his cause at Rome and with the
+army, Cleopatra Tryphæna, the elder of the two queens, had died; and, as
+no one of the other children of Auletes was old enough to be joined with
+Berenicê on the throne, the Alexandrians sent to Syria for Seleucus, the
+son of Antiochus Grypus and of Selene, the sister of Lathyrus, to come
+to Egypt and marry Berenicê. He was low-minded in all his pleasures and
+tastes, and got the nickname of _Cybiosactes_, the scullion. He was
+even said to have stolen the golden sarcophagus in which the body of
+Alexander was buried; and was so much disliked by his young wife that
+she had him strangled on the fifth day after their marriage. Berenicê
+then married Archelaus, a son of Mithridates Eupator, King of Pontus;
+and she had reigned one year with her sister and two years with her
+husbands when the Roman army brought back her father, Ptolemy Auletes,
+into Egypt.
+
+Gabinius, on marching, gave out as an excuse for quitting the province
+entrusted to him by the senate, that it was in self-defence; and that
+Syria was in danger from the Egyptian fleet commanded by Archelaus. He
+was accompanied by a Jewish army under the command of Antipator, sent by
+Hyrcanus, whom the Romans had just made governor of Judæa. Mark Antony
+was sent forward with the horse, and routed the Egyptian army near
+Pelusium, and then entered the city with Auletes. The king, in the
+cruelty of his revenge, wished to put the citizens to the sword, and was
+only stopped by Antony’s forbidding it. The Egyptian army was at this
+time in the lowest state of discipline; it was the only place where the
+sovereign was not despotic. The soldiers, who prized the lawlessness of
+their trade even more than its pay, were a cause of fear only to their
+fellow-citizens. When Archelaus led them out against the Romans, and
+ordered them to throw up a trench around their camp, they refused to
+obey; they said that ditch-making was not work for soldiers, but that
+it ought to be done at the cost of the state. Hence, when on this first
+success Gabinius followed with the body of the army, he easily conquered
+the rest of the country and put to death Berenicê and Archelaus. He then
+led back the army into his province of Syria, but left behind him a body
+of troops under Lucius Septimius to guard the throne of Auletes and to
+check the risings of the Alexandrians.
+
+Gabinius had refused to undertake this affair, which was the more
+dangerous because against the laws of Rome, unless the large bribe were
+first paid down in money. He would take no promises; and Auletes, who in
+his banishment had no money at his command, had to borrow it of some one
+who would listen to his large promises of after payment. He found this
+person in Rabirius Posthumus, who had before lent him money, and who saw
+that it would be all lost unless Auletes regained the throne. Rabirius
+therefore lent him all he was worth, and borrowed the rest from his
+friends; and as soon as Auletes was on the throne, he went to Alexandria
+to claim his money and his reward.
+
+[Illustration: 309.jpg VOCAL STATUE OF MEMNON]
+
+While Auletes still stood in need of Roman help, and saw the advantage
+of keeping faith with his foreign creditors, Rabirius was allowed to
+hold the office of royal _dioecetes_, or paymaster-general, which was
+one of great state and profit, and one by which he could in time have
+repaid himself his loan. He wore a royal robe; the taxes of Alexandria
+went through his hands; he was indeed master of the city. But when the
+king felt safe on his throne, he sent away his troublesome creditor,
+who returned to Rome with the loss of his money, to stand his trial as
+a state criminal for having lent it. Rabirius had been for a time
+mortgagee in possession of the revenues of Egypt; and Auletes had felt
+more indebted for his crown to a Roman citizen than to the senate. But
+in the dealings of Rome with foreign kings, these evils had often before
+arisen, and at last been made criminal; and while Gabinius was tried
+for treason, _de majestate_, for leading his army out of his province,
+Rabirius was tried, under the _Lex Julia de pecuniis repetundis_, for
+lending money and taking office under Auletes.
+
+One of the last acts of Gabinius in Syria was to change the form of
+the Jewish government into an aristocracy, leaving Hyrcanus as the high
+priest. The Jews thereon began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, that
+had been thrown down by Pompey. Among the prisoners sent to Rome by
+Gabinius was Timagenes, the son of the king’s banker, who probably lost
+his liberty as a hostage on Ptolemy’s failure to repay the loan. But he
+was afterwards ransomed from slavery by a son of Sulla, and he remained
+at Rome teaching Greek eloquence in the schools, and writing his
+numerous works.
+
+The climate of Egypt is hardly suited to Europeans, and perhaps at no
+time did the births in the Greek families equal the deaths. That part
+of the population was kept up by newcomers; and latterly the Romans had
+been coming over to share in the plunder that was there scattered among
+the ruling class. For some time past Alexandria had been a favourite
+place of settlement for such Romans as either through their fault or
+their 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 from
+trial, all runaway slaves, all ruined debtors, found a place of safety
+in Alexandria; and by enrolling themselves in the Egyptian army they
+joined in bonds of fellowship with thousands like themselves, who made
+it a point of honour to screen one another from being overtaken by
+justice or reclaimed by their masters. With such men as these, together
+with some bands of robbers from Syria and Cilicia, had the ranks of the
+Egyptian army latterly been recruited. These were now joined by a
+number of soldiers and officers from the army of Gabinius, who liked the
+Egyptian high pay and lawlessness better than the strict discipline of
+the Romans. As, in this mixed body of men, the more regular courage
+and greater skill in war was found among the Romans, they were chiefly
+chosen as officers, and the whole had something of the form of a Roman
+army. These soldiers in Alexandria were above all law and discipline.
+
+The laws were everywhere badly enforced, crimes passed unpunished, and
+property became unsafe. Robberies were carried on openly, and the only
+hope of recovering what was stolen was by buying it back from the thief.
+In many cases, whole villages lived upon plunder, and for that purpose
+formed themselves into a society, and put themselves under the orders of
+a chief; and, when any merchant or husbandman was robbed, he applied to
+this chief, who usually restored to him the stolen property on payment
+of one-fourth of its value.
+
+As the country fell off in wealth, power, and population, the schools
+of Alexandria fell off in learning, and we meet with few authors whose
+names 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 is
+still remaining in manuscript.
+
+[Illustration: 314.jpg]
+
+[Illustration: 314b.jpg BEARERS OF EVIL TIDINGS]
+
+Beside his name of Neus Dionysus, the king is in the hieroglyphics
+sometimes called Philopator and Philadelphus; and in a Greek inscription
+on a statue at Philae he is called by the three names, Neus Dionysus,
+Philopator, Philadelphus. The coins which are usually thought to be his
+are in a worse style of art than those of the kings before him. He
+died in B.C. 51, in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, leaving four
+children, namely, Cleopatra, Arsinoë, and two Ptolemies.
+
+[Illustration: 315.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS
+
+
+_Pompey, Cæsar, and Antony in Egypt--Cleopatra’s extravagance and
+intrigues--Octavianus annexes Egypt--Retrospect._
+
+
+Ptolemy Neus Dionysus had by his will left his kingdom to Cleopatra and
+Ptolemy, his elder daughter and elder son, who, agreeably to the custom
+of the country, were to marry one another and reign with equal power.
+He had sent one copy of his will to Rome, to be lodged in the public
+treasury, and in it he called upon the Roman people, by all the gods and
+by the treaties by which they were bound, to see that it was obeyed.
+He had also begged them to undertake the guardianship of his son. The
+senate voted Pompey tutor to the young king, or governor of Egypt; and
+the Alexandrians in the third year of his reign sent sixty ships of war
+to help the great Pompey in his struggle against Julius Cæsar for the
+chief power in Rome. But Pompey’s power was by that time drawing to an
+end, and the votes of the senate could give no strength to the weak:
+hence the eunuch Pothinus, who had the care of the elder Ptolemy, was
+governor of Egypt, and his first act was to declare his young pupil
+king, and to set at nought the will of Auletes, by which Cleopatra was
+joined with him on the throne.
+
+Cleopatra fled into Syria, and, with a manly spirit which showed what
+she was afterwards to be, raised an army and marched back to the borders
+of Egypt, to claim her rights by force of arms. It was in the fourth
+year of her reign, when the Egyptian troops were moved to Pelusium to
+meet her, and the two armies were within a few leagues of one another,
+that Pompey, who had been the friend of Auletes when the king wanted a
+friend, landed on the shores of Egypt in distress, and almost alone. His
+army had just been beaten at Pharsalia, and he was flying from Cæsar,
+and he hoped to receive from the son the kindness which he had shown
+to the father. But gratitude is a virtue little known in palaces, and
+Ptolemy had been cradled in princely selfishness. In this civil war
+between Pompey and Cæsar, the Alexandrians would have been glad to be
+the friends of both, but that was now out of the question; Pompey’s
+coming made it necessary for them to choose which they should join, and
+Ptolemy’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 the
+men by whom the fate of this great Roman was decided. “By putting him to
+death,” said Theodotus, “you will oblige Cæsar, and have nothing to
+fear from Pompey;” and he added with a smile, “Dead men do not bite.”
+ So Achilles and Lucius Septimius, the head of the Roman troops in the
+Egyptian army, were sent down to the seaside to welcome him, to receive
+him as a friend, and to murder him. They handed him out of his galley
+into their boat, and put him to death on his landing. They then cut off
+from his lifeless trunk the head which had been three times crowned with
+laurels in the capitol; and in that disfigured state the young Ptolemy
+saw for the first time, and without regret, the face of his father’s
+best friend.
+
+When Cæsar, following the track of Pompey, arrived in the roadstead of
+Alexandria, all was already over. With deep agitation he turned away
+when the murderer brought to his ship the head of the man who had been
+his son-in-law and for long years his colleague in rule, and to get
+whom alive into his power he had come to Egypt. The dagger of the rash
+assassin precluded an answer to the question, how Cæsar would have dealt
+with the captive Pompey; but, while the human sympathy which still found
+a place in the great soul of Cæsar, side by side with ambition, enjoined
+that he should spare his former friend, his interest also required that
+he should annihilate Pompey otherwise than by the executioner. Pompey
+had been for twenty years the acknowledged ruler of Rome; a dominion so
+deeply rooted does not end with the ruler’s death. The death of Pompey
+did not break up the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an aged,
+incapable, and worn-out chief, in his sons Gnacus and Sextus, two
+leaders, both of whom were young and active, and the second of them of
+decided capacity. To the newly founded hereditary monarchy, hereditary
+pretendership attached itself at once like a parasite, and it was very
+doubtful whether by this change of persons Cæsar did not lose more than
+he gained.
+
+Meanwhile in Egypt Cæsar had now nothing further to do, and the Romans
+and Egyptians expected that he would immediately set sail and
+apply himself to the subjugation of Africa, and to the huge task of
+organisation which awaited him after the victory. But Cæsar, faithful
+to his custom--wherever he found himself in the wide Empire--of finally
+regulating matters at once and in person, and firmly convinced that no
+resistance was to be expected either from the Roman garrison or from
+the court; being, moreover, in urgent pecuniary embarrassment, landed
+in Alexandria with the two amalgamated legions accompanying him to the
+number of thirty-two hundred men and eight hundred Celtic and German
+cavalry, took up his quarters in the royal palace, and proceeded
+to collect the necessary sums of money and to regulate the Egyptian
+succession, without allowing himself to be disturbed by the saucy remark
+of Pothinus that Cæsar should not for such petty matters neglect his own
+so important affairs. In his dealings with the Egyptians he was just
+and even indulgent. Although the aid which they had given to Pompey
+justified the imposing of a war contribution, the exhausted land was
+spared from this; and, while the arrears of the sums stipulated for in
+B.C. 59, and since then only about half paid, were remitted, there was
+required merely a final payment of ten million denarii (two million
+dollars). The belligerent brother and sister were enjoined immediately
+to suspend hostilities, and were invited to have their dispute
+investigated and decided before the arbiter. They submitted; the royal
+boy was already in the palace and Cleopatra also presented herself
+there. Cæsar adjudged the kingdom of Egypt, agreeably to the testament
+of Auletes, to the intermarried brother and sister Cleopatra and
+Ptolomoreus Dionysus, and further gave unasked the kingdom of
+Cyprus--cancelling the earlier act of annexation--as the appanage of
+the second-born of Egypt to the younger children of Auletes, Arsinoë and
+Ptolemy the younger. But a storm was secretly preparing. Alexandria
+was a cosmopolitan city as well as Rome, hardly inferior to the Italian
+capital in the number of its inhabitants, far superior to it in stirring
+commercial spirit, in skill of handicraft, in taste for science and
+art: in the citizens there was a lively sense of their own national
+importance, and, if there was no political sentiment, there was at any
+rate a turbulent spirit, which induced them to indulge in their street
+riots regularly and heartily. We may conceive their feeling when they
+saw the Roman general ruling in the palace of the Lagids, and their
+kings accepting the award of his tribunal. Pothinus and the boy-king,
+both, as may be conceived, very dissatisfied at once with the peremptory
+requisition of all debts and with the intervention in the throne-dispute
+which could only issue, as it did, in the favour of Cleopatra, sent--in
+order to pacify the Roman demands--the treasures of the temple and the
+gold plate of the king with intentional ostentation to be melted at the
+mint; with increasing indignation the Egyptians--who were pious even
+to superstition, and who rejoiced in the world-renowned magnificence
+of their court as if it were a possession of their own--beheld the bare
+walls of their temples and the wooden cups on the table of their
+king. The Roman army of occupation also, which had been essentially
+denationalised by its long abode in Egypt and the many intermarriages
+between the soldiers and Egyptian women, and which moreover numbered a
+multitude of the old soldiers of Pompey and runaway Italian criminals
+and slaves in its ranks, was indignant at Cæsar, by whose orders it had
+been obliged to suspend its action on the Syrian frontier, and at his
+handful of haughty legionaries. The tumult even at the landing, when
+the multitude saw the Roman axes carried into the old palace, and the
+numerous instances in which his soldiers were assassinated in the city,
+had taught Cæsar the immense danger in which he was placed with his
+small force in presence of the exasperated multitude. But it was
+difficult to return on account of the northwest winds prevailing at this
+season of#the year, and the attempt of embarkation might easily become
+a signal for the outbreak of the insurrection; besides, it was not the
+nature of Cæsar to take his departure without having accomplished his
+work. He accordingly ordered up at once reinforcements from Asia,
+and meanwhile, till these arrived, made a show of the utmost
+self-possession. Never was there greater gaiety in his camp than during
+this rest at Alexandria, and while the beautiful and clever Cleopatra
+was not sparing of her charms in general and least of all towards her
+judge, Cæsar also appeared among all his victories to value most those
+won over beautiful women. It was a merry prelude to graver scenes. Under
+the leadership of Achilles and, as was afterwards proved, by the secret
+orders of the king and his guardian, the Roman army of occupation
+stationed in Egypt appeared unexpectedly in Alexandria, and, as soon
+as the citizens saw that it had come to attack Cæsar, they made common
+cause with the soldiers.
+
+With a presence of mind, which in some measure justifies his
+foolhardiness, Cæsar hastily collected his scattered men; seized the
+persons of the king and his ministers; entrenched himself in the royal
+residence and adjoining theatre; and gave orders, as there was no time
+to place in safety the war-fleet stationed in the principal harbour
+immediately in front of the theatre, that it should be set on fire and
+that Pharos, the island with the light-tower commanding the harbour,
+should be occupied by means of boats. Thus at least a restricted
+position for defence was secured, and the way was kept open to procure
+supplies and reinforcements. At the same time orders were issued to the
+commandant of Asia Minor as well as to the nearest subject countries,
+the Syrians and the Nabatæans, the Cretans and the Rhodians, to send
+men and ships in all haste to Egypt. The insurrection, at the head of
+which the Princess Arsinoë and her confidant, the eunuch Ganymedes, had
+placed themselves, meanwhile had free course in all Egypt and in the
+greater part of the capital. In the streets of the latter there was
+daily fighting, but without success either on the part of Cæsar in
+gaining freer scope and breaking through to the fresh water lake of
+Mariut which lay behind the town, where he could have provided himself
+with water and forage; or on the part of the Alexandrians in acquiring
+superiority in besieging and depriving them of all drinking water; for,
+when the Nile canals in Cæsar’s part of the town had been spoiled by the
+introduction of salt water, drinkable water was unexpectedly found in
+wells dug on the beach.
+
+As Cæsar was not to be overcome from the landward side, the exertions
+of the besiegers were directed to destroy his fleet and cut him off from
+the sea, by which supplies reached him. The island with the lighthouse
+and the mole by which this was connected with the mainland divided the
+harbour into a western and an eastern half, which were in communication
+with each other through two arch-openings in the mole. Cæsar commanded
+the island and the east harbour, while the mole and the west harbour
+were in possession of the citizens; and, as the Alexandrian fleet
+was burnt, his vessels sailed in and out without hindrance. The
+Alexandrians, after having vainly attempted to introduce fire-ships from
+the western into the eastern harbour, equipped with the remnant of their
+arsenal a small squadron, and with this blocked up the way of Cæsar’s
+vessels, when these were towing in a fleet of transports with a legion
+that had arrived from Asia Minor; but the excellent Rhodian mariners
+of Cæsar mastered the enemy. Not long afterwards, however, the citizens
+captured the lighthouse-island, and from that point totally closed the
+narrow and rocky mouth of the east harbour for larger ships; so that
+Cæsar’s fleet was compelled to take its station in the open roads before
+the east harbour, and his communication with the sea hung only on a
+weak thread. Cæsar’s fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeatedly by
+the superior naval force of the enemy, could neither shun the unequal
+strife, since the loss of the lighthouse-island closed the inner harbour
+against it, nor yet withdraw, for the loss of the roadstead would
+have debarred Cæsar wholly from the sea. Though the brave legionaries,
+supported by the dexterity of the Rhodian sailors, had always hitherto
+decided these conflicts in favour of the Romans, the Alexandrians
+renewed and augmented their naval armaments with unwearied perseverance;
+the besieged had to fight as often as it pleased the besiegers, and,
+if the former should be on a signal occasion vanquished, Cæsar would be
+totally hemmed in and probably lost.
+
+It was absolutely necessary to make an attempt to recover the
+lighthouse-island. The double attack, which was made by boats from the
+side of the harbour and by the war-vessels from the seaboard, in reality
+brought not only the island but also the lower part of the mole into
+his power; it was only at the second arch-opening of the mole that
+Cæsar ordered the attack to be stopped, and the mole to be there closed
+towards the city by a transverse wall. But while a violent conflict
+arose here round the entrenchers, the Roman troops left the lower
+part of the mole adjoining the island bare of defenders; a division
+of Egyptians landed there unexpectedly, attacked in the rear the Roman
+soldiers and sailors crowded together on the mole of the transverse
+wall, and drove the whole mass in wild confusion into the sea. A part
+were taken on board by the Roman ships; but more were drowned. Some
+four hundred soldiers and a still greater number of men belonging to the
+fleet were sacrificed on this day; the general himself, who had shared
+the fate of his men, had been obliged to seek refuge in his ship, and,
+when this sank from having been overloaded with men, he had to save
+himself by swimming to another. But, severe as was the loss suffered,
+it was amply compensated by the recovery of the lighthouse-island, which
+along with the mole as far as the first arch-opening remained in the
+hands of Cæsar.
+
+At length the longed-for relief arrived, Mithridates of Pergamus, an
+able warrior of the school of Mithridates Eupator, whose natural son
+he claimed to be, brought up by land from Syria a motley army,--the
+Ituræans of the prince of the Libanus, the Bedouins of Jamblichus,
+son of Sampsiceramus, the Jews under the minister Antipater, and the
+contingents generally of the petty chiefs and communities of Cilicia and
+Syria. From Pelusium, which Mithridates had the fortune to occupy on
+the day of his arrival, he took the great road towards Memphis, with the
+view of avoiding the intersected ground of the Delta and crossing the
+Nile before its division; during which movement his troops received
+manifold support from the Jewish peasants who were settled in this part
+of Egypt. The Egyptians, with the young king Ptolemy now at their head,
+whom Cæsar had released to his people in the vain hope of allaying the
+insurrection by his means, despatched an army to the Nile, to detain
+Mithridates on its farther bank. The army fell in with the enemy
+even beyond Memphis at the so-called Jews’ camp, between Onion and
+Heliopolis; nevertheless Mithridates, trained in the Roman fashion
+of manoeuvring and encamping, amidst successful conflicts gained the
+opposite bank at Memphis. Cæsar, on the other hand, as soon as he
+obtained news of the arrival of the relieving army, conveyed a part
+of his troops in ships to the end of the lake of Morea to the west
+of Alexandria, and marched round this lake and down the Nile to meet
+Mithridates advancing up the river.
+
+The junction took place without the enemy attempting to hinder it. Cæsar
+then marched into the Delta, whither the king had retreated, overthrew,
+notwithstanding the deeply cut canal in their front, the Egyptian
+vanguard at the first onset, and immediately stormed the Egyptian camp
+itself. It lay at the foot of a rising ground between the Nile--from
+which only a narrow path separated it--and marshes difficult of access.
+Cæsar caused the camp to be assailed simultaneously from the front
+and from the flank on the path along the Nile; and during this assault
+ordered a third detachment to ascend unseen the heights of the camp. The
+victory was complete; the camp was taken, and those of the Egyptians who
+did not fall beneath the sword of the enemy were drowned in the attempt
+to escape to the fleet on the Nile. With one of the boats, which sank
+overladen with men, the young king also disappeared in the waters of his
+native stream. Immediately after the battle Cæsar advanced at the head
+of his cavalry from the land side straight into the portion of the
+capital occupied by the Egyptians. In mourning attire, with the images
+of their gods in their hands, the enemy received him and sued for
+peace; and his troops, when they saw him return as victor from the side
+opposite to that by which he had set forth, welcomed him with boundless
+joy. The fate of the town, which had ventured to thwart the plans of
+the master of the world and had brought him within a hair’s-breadth of
+destruction, lay in Cæsar’s hands; but he was too much of a ruler to
+be sensitive, and dealt with the Alexandrians as with the Massiliots.
+Cæsar--pointing to their city severely devastated and deprived of its
+granaries, of its world-renowned library, and of other important public
+buildings on the occasion of the burning of the fleet--exhorted the
+inhabitants in future earnestly to cultivate the arts of peace alone,
+and to heal the wounds inflicted on themselves; for the rest, he
+contented himself with granting to the Jews settled in Alexandria the
+same rights which the Greek population of the city enjoyed, and
+with placing in Alexandria instead of the previous Roman army of
+occupation--which nominally at least obeyed the kings of Egypt, a
+Roman garrison--two of the legions besieged there, and a third which
+afterwards arrived from Syria--under a commander nominated by himself.
+For this position of trust a man was purposely selected whose birth made
+it impossible for him to abuse it--Rufio, an able soldier, but the son
+of a freed man. Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy obtained the
+sovereignty of Egypt under the supremacy of Rome; the Princess Arsinoë
+was carried off to Italy, that she might not serve once more as a
+pretext for insurrections to the Egyptians, who were after the Oriental
+fashion quite as much devoted to their dynasty as they were indifferent
+towards the individual dynasts; and Cyprus became again a part of the
+Roman province of Cilicia. Cæsar’s love for Cleopatra, who had just
+borne 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 the
+kingdom in her own name, but on his behalf; and sailed for Italy, taking
+with him the sixth legion. While engaged in this warfare in Alexandria,
+Cæsar had been appointed dictator in Rome, where his power was exercised
+by Mark Antony, his master of the horse; and for above six months he
+had not written one letter home, as though ashamed to write about the
+foolish difficulty he had entangled himself in, until he had got out of
+it.
+
+On reaching Rome Cæsar amused the people and himself with a grand
+triumphal show, in which, among the other prisoners of war, the Princess
+Arsinoë followed his car in chains; and, among the works of art
+and nature which were got together to prove to the gazing crowd the
+greatness of his conquests, was that remarkable African animal the
+camelopard, then for the first time seen in Rome. In one chariot was a
+statue of the Nile god; and in another the Pharos lighthouse on fire,
+with painted flames. Nor was this the last of Cæsar’s triumphs, for soon
+afterwards Cleopatra, and her brother Ptolemy, then twelve years old,
+who was called her husband, came to Rome as his guests, and dwelt for
+some time with him in his house.
+
+The history of Egypt, at this time, is almost lost in that of Rome.
+Within five years of Cæsar’s landing in Alexandria, and finding that by
+the death of Pompey he was master of the world, he paid his own life as
+the forfeit for crushing his country’s liberty. The Queen of Egypt, with
+her infant son Cæsarion about four years old, was then in Rome, living
+with Cæsar in his villa on the farther side of the Tiber. On Cæsar’s
+death her first wish was to get the child acknowledged by the Roman
+senate as her colleague on the throne of Egypt, and as a friend of the
+Roman people. With this view she applied to Cicero for help, making
+him an offer of some books or works of art; but he was offended at
+her haughtiness and refused her gifts. Besides, she was more likely
+to thwart than to help the cause for which he was struggling. He was
+alarmed at hearing that she was soon to give birth to another child. He
+did not want any more Cæsars. He hoped she would miscarry, as he wished
+she had before miscarried. So he bluntly refused to undertake her cause.
+On this she thought herself unsafe in Rome, she fled privately, and
+reached Egypt in safety with Cæsarion; but we hear of no second child
+by Julius. The Romans were now the masters of Egypt, and Cleopatra could
+hardly hope to reign but by the help of one of the great generals who
+were struggling for the sovereignty of the republic. Among these was the
+young Sextus Pompeius, whose large fleet made him for a time master
+of Sicily and of the sea; and he was said to have been admitted by the
+Queen of Egypt as a lover. But he was able to be of but little use
+to her in return for her favours, as his fleet was soon defeated by
+Octavianus.
+
+Cæsar had left behind him, in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, a large
+body of Roman troops, in the pay and nominally under the orders of
+Cleopatra, but in reality to keep Egypt in obedience. There they lived
+as if above all Egyptian law or Roman discipline, indulging in the vices
+of that luxurious capital. When some of them in a riot, in the year 45
+B.C., killed two sons of Bibulus the consul, Cleopatra was either afraid
+or unable to punish the murderers; the most she could do was to get
+them sent in chains into Syria to the grieving father, who with true
+greatness of mind sent them back to the Egyptian legions, saying that it
+was for the senate to punish them, not for him.
+
+While Ptolemy her second husband was a boy and could claim no share
+of the government, he was allowed to live with all the outward show of
+royalty, but as soon as he reached the age of fifteen, in B.C. 44, at
+which he might call himself her equal and would soon be her master,
+Cleopatra had him put to death. She had then reigned four years with
+her elder brother and four years with her younger brother, and from that
+time forward she reigned alone, calling her child by Cæsar her colleague
+on the throne.
+
+At a time when vice and luxury claimed the thoughts of all who were not
+busy in the civil wars, we cannot hope to find the fruits of genius in
+Alexandria; but the mathematics are plants of a hardy growth, and are
+not choked so easily as poetry and history. Sosigenes was then the
+first astronomer in Egypt, and Julius Cæsar was guided by his advice
+in setting right the Roman Calendar. He was a careful and painstaking
+mathematician, and, after fixing the length of the year at three hundred
+and sixty-five days and a quarter, he three times changed the beginning
+of the year, in his doubts as to the day on which the equinox fell; for
+the astronomer could then only make two observations in a year with a
+view to learn the time of the equinox, by seeing when the sun shone
+in the plane of the equator. Photinus the mathematician wrote both
+on arithmetic and geometry, and was usually thought the author of a
+mathematical work published in the name of the queen, called the Canon
+of Cleopatra.
+
+Didymus was another of the writers that we hear of at that time. He was
+a man of great industry, both in reading and writing; but when we are
+told that he wrote three thousand five hundred volumes, or rolls, it
+rather teaches us that a great many rolls of papyrus would be wanted to
+make a modern book, than what number of books he wrote. These writings
+were mostly on verbal criticism, and all have long since perished except
+some notes or scholia on the Hiad and Odyssey which bear his name, and
+are still printed in some editions of Homer.
+
+Dioscorides, the physician of Cleopatra, has left a work on herbs and
+minerals, and on their uses in medicine; also on poisons and poisonous
+bites. To these he has added a list of prescriptions. His works
+have been much read in all ages, and have only been set aside by the
+discoveries of the last few centuries. Serapion, another physician, was
+perhaps of this reign.
+
+[Illustration: 333.jpg RUINS OF HERMONTHIS]
+
+He followed medicine rather than surgery; and, while trusting chiefly to
+his experience gained in clinical or bedside practice, was laughed at by
+the surgeons as an empiric.
+
+The small temple at Hermonthis, near Thebes, seems to have been built
+in this reign, and it is dedicated to Mandoo, or the sun, in the name
+of Cleopatra and Cassation. It is unlike the older Egyptian temples in
+being much less of a fortress; for what in them is a strongly walled
+courtyard, with towers to guard the narrow doorway, is here a small
+space between two double rows of columns, wholly open, without walls,
+while the roofed building is the same as in the older temples. Near it
+is a small pool, seventy feet square, with stone sides, which was used
+in the funerals and other religious rites.
+
+The murder of Cæsar did not raise the character of the Romans, or make
+them more fit for self-government. It was followed by the well-known
+civil war; and when, by the battle of Philippi and the death of Brutus
+and Cassius, his party was again uppermost, the Romans willingly bowed
+their necks to his adopted son Octavianus, and his friend Mark Antony.
+
+It is not easy to determine which side Cleopatra meant to take in
+the war between Antony and the murderers of Cæsar; she did not openly
+declare herself, and she probably waited to join that which fortune
+favoured. Allienus had been sent to her by Dolobella to ask for such
+troops as she could spare to help Antony, and he led a little army of
+four Roman legions out of Egypt into Syria; but when there he added
+them to the force which Cassius had assembled against Antony. Whether he
+acted through treachery to the queen or by her orders is doubtful, for
+Cassius felt more gratitude to Allienus than to Cleopatra. Serapion
+also, the Egyptian governor of Cyprus, joined what was then the stronger
+side, and sent all the ships that he had in his ports to the assistance
+of Cassius. Cleopatra herself was getting ready another large fleet, but
+since the war was over, and Brutus and Cassius dead before it sailed,
+she said it was meant to help Octavianus and Antony. Thus, by the acts
+of her generals and her own hesitation, Cleopatra fairly laid herself
+open to the reproach of ingratitude to her late friend Cæsar, or at
+least of thinking that the interests of his son Cæsarion were opposed to
+those of his nephew Octavianus; and accordingly, as Antony was passing
+through Cilicia with his army, he sent orders to her to come from Egypt
+and meet him at Tarsus, to answer the charge of having helped Brutus and
+Cassius in the late military campaign.
+
+Dellius, the bearer of the message, showed that he understood the
+meaning of it, by beginning himself to pay court to her as his queen. He
+advised her to go, like Juno in the Iliad, “tricked in her best attire,”
+ and told her that she had nothing to fear from the kind and gallant
+Antony. On this she sailed for Cilicia laden with money and treasures
+for presents, full of trust in her beauty and power of pleasing. She had
+won the heart of Cæsar when, though younger, she was less skilled in
+the arts of love, and she was still only twenty-five years old; and,
+carrying with her such gifts and treasures as became her rank, she
+entered the river Cydnus with the Egyptian fleet in a magnificent
+galley. The stern was covered with gold; the sails were of scarlet
+cloth: and the silver oars beat time to the music of flutes and harps.
+The queen, dressed like Venus, lay under an awning embroidered with
+gold, while pretty dimpled boys, like Cupids, stood on each side of
+the sofa fanning her. Her maidens, dressed like sea-nymphs and graces,
+handled the silken tackle and steered the vessel. As she approached
+the town of Tarsus the winds wafted the perfumes and the scent of the
+burning incense to the shores, which were lined with crowds who had come
+out to see her land; and Antony, who was seated on the tribunal waiting
+to receive her, found himself left alone.
+
+Tarsus on the river Cydnus was situated at the foot of the wooded slopes
+of Mount Taurus, and it guarded the great pass in that range between the
+Phrygian tribes and the Phoenician tribes. It was a city half-Greek
+and half-Asiatic, and had from the earliest days been famed for
+ship-building and commerce. Mount Taurus supplied it with timber, and
+around the mouth of its river, as it widens into a quiet lake, were the
+ancient dockyards which had made the ships of Tarshish proverbial with
+the Hebrew writers. Its merchants, enriched by industry and enlightened
+by foreign trade, had ornamented their city with public buildings, and
+established a school of Greek learning. Its philosophers, however, were
+more known as travelling teachers than as scholars. No learned men came
+to Tarsus; but it sent forth its rhetoricians in its own ships, who
+spread themselves as teachers over the neighbouring coasts. In Rome
+there were more professors of rhetoric, oratory, and poetry from Tarsus
+than from Alexandria or Athens. Athenodorus Cordylion, the stoic, taught
+Cato; Athenodorus, the son of Sandon, taught Cæsar; Nestor a little
+later taught the young Marcellus; while Demetrius was one of the first
+men of learning who sailed to the distant island of Britain. This
+school, in the next generation, sent forth the apostle Paul, who taught
+Christianity throughout the same coasts.
+
+Tarsus was now to be amused by the costly follies and extravagances of
+Cleopatra. As an initial display, soon after landing, she invited Antony
+and his generals to a dinner, at which the whole of the dishes placed
+before them were of gold, set with precious stones, and the room and the
+twelve couches were ornamented with purple and gold. On his praising the
+splendour of the sight, as passing anything he had before seen, she said
+it was a trifle, and begged that he would take the whole of it as a gift
+from her. The next day he again dined with her, and brought a larger
+number of his friends and generals, and was of course startled to see a
+costliness which made that of the day before seem nothing; and she again
+gave him the whole of the gold upon the table, and gave to each of his
+friends the couch upon which he sat.
+
+These costly and delicate dinners were continued every day; and one
+evening, when Antony playfully blamed her wastefulness, and said that it
+was not possible to fare in a more costly manner, she told him that the
+dinner of the next day should cost ten thousand ses-tertia, or three
+hundred thousand dollars. This he would not believe, and laid her a
+wager that she would fail in her promise. When the day came the dinner
+was as grand and dainty as those of the former days; but when Antony
+called upon her to count up the cost of the meats and wines, she said
+that she did not reckon them, but that she should herself soon eat and
+drink the ten thousand sestertia. She wore in her ears two pearls, the
+largest known in the world, which, like the diamonds of European kings,
+had come to her with her crown and kingdom, and were together valued at
+that large sum.
+
+[Illustration: 338.jpg EGYPTIAN PICTURE OF CLEOPATRA]
+
+On the servants removing the meats, they set before her a glass of
+vinegar, and she took one of these earrings from her ear and dropped
+it into the glass, and when dissolved drank it off. Plancus, one of the
+guests, who had been made judge of the wager, snatched the other from
+the queen’s ear, and saved it from being drunk up like the first, and
+then declared that Antony had lost his bet. The pearl which was saved
+was afterwards cut in two and made into a pair of earrings for the
+statue of Venus in the Pantheon at Rome; and the fame of the wager may
+be said to have made the two half pearls at least as valuable as the two
+whole ones.
+
+The beauty, sweetness, and gaiety of this young queen, joined to her
+great powers of mind, which were all turned to the art of pleasing, had
+quite overcome Antony; he had sent for her as her master, but he was
+now her slave. Her playful wit was delightful; her voice was as an
+instrument of many strings; she spoke readily to every ambassador in his
+own language; and was said to be the only sovereign of Egypt who could
+understand the languages of all her subjects: Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopie,
+Troglodytic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. With these charms, at the age
+of five-and-twenty, the luxurious Antony could deny her nothing. The
+first favour which she asked of her lover equals any cruelty that we
+have met with in this history: it was, that he would have her sister
+Arsinoë put to death. Cæsar had spared her life, after his triumph,
+through love of Cleopatra; but he was mistaken in the heart of his
+mistress; she would have been then better pleased at Arsinoe’s death;
+and Antony, at her bidding, had her murdered in the temple of Diana, at
+Ephesus.
+
+Though Fulvia, the faithful wife of Antony, could scarcely keep together
+his party at Rome against the power of Octavianus, his colleague in the
+triumvirate, and though Labienus, with the Parthian legions, was ready
+to march into Syria against him, yet he was so entangled in the artful
+nets of Cleopatra, that she led him captive to Alexandria; and there the
+old warrior fell into every idle amusement, and offered up at the shrine
+of pleasure one of the greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of his
+time. The lovers visited each other every day, and the waste of their
+entertainments passed belief. Philotas, a physician who was following
+his studies at Alexandria, told Plutarch’s grandfather that he was once
+invited to see Antony’s dinner cooked, and among other meats were eight
+wild boars roasting whole; and the cook explained to him that, though
+there were only twelve guests, yet as each dish had to be roasted to a
+single turn of the spit, and Antony did not know at what hour he should
+dine, it was necessary to cook at least eight dinners. But the most
+costly of the luxuries then used in Egypt were the scents and the
+ointments. Gold, silver, and jewels, as Pliny remarks, will pass to a
+man’s heirs, even clothes will last a few months or weeks, but scents
+fly off and are lost at the first moment that they are admired; and
+yet ointments, like the attar of roses, which melted and gave out their
+scent, and passed into air when placed upon the back of the hand, as the
+coolest part of the body, were sold for four hundred denarii the pound.
+But the ointment was not meant to be used quite so wastefully. It was
+usually sealed up in small alabaster jars, which were made in the town
+of Alabastron, on the east of the Nile, and thence received their name.
+These were long in shape, without a foot, and had a narrow mouth. They
+were meant never to be opened, but to let the scent escape slowly and
+sparingly through the porous stone. In these Egyptian jars scented
+ointment was carried by trade to the banks of the Tigris and to the
+shores of the Mediterranean.
+
+The tenth and eleventh years of the queen’s reign were marked by
+a famine through the land, caused by the Nile’s not rising to the
+wished-for height and by the want of the usual overflow; and an
+inscription which was written both in the Greek and Egyptian languages
+declares the gratitude of the Theban priests and elders and citizens to
+Callimachus, the prefect of the Theban taxes, who did what he could to
+lessen the sufferings in that city. The citizens of Alexandria on those
+years received from the government a smaller gift of corn than usual,
+and the Jews then felt their altered rank in the state. They were
+told that they were not citizens, and accordingly received no portion
+whatever out of the public granaries, but were left like the Egyptians
+to take care of themselves. From this time forward there was an
+unceasing quarrel between Greeks and Jews in the city of Alexandria.
+
+Cleopatra, who held her power at the pleasure of the Roman legions,
+spared no pains to please Antony. She had borne him first a son named
+Ptolemy, and then a son and daughter, twins, Alexander Helius and
+Cleopatra Selene, or _Sun_ and _Moon_. She gamed, she drank, she hunted,
+she reviewed the troops with him, and, to humour his coarser tastes, she
+followed him, in his midnight rambles through the city, in the dress of
+a servant; and nothing that youth, beauty, wealth, and elegance could do
+to throw a cloak over the grossness of vice and crime was forgotten by
+her. The biographer thought it waste of time to mention all Cleopatra’s
+arts and Antony’s follies, but the story of his fishing was not to be
+forgotten. One day, when sitting in the boat with her, he caught but
+little, and was vexed at her seeing his want of success. So he ordered
+one of his men to dive into the water and put upon his hook a fish which
+had been before taken. Cleopatra, however, saw what was being done, and
+quietly took the hint for a joke of her own. The next day she brought a
+larger number of friends to see the fishing, and, when Antony let down
+his line, she ordered one of her divers to put on the hook a salted
+fish. The line was then drawn up and the fish landed amid no little
+mirth of their friends; and Cleopatra playfully consoled him, saying:
+“Well, general, you may leave fishing to us petty princes of Pharos and
+Canopus; your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms.”
+
+Antony’s eldest son by Fulvia came to Alexandria at this time, and lived
+in the same princely style with his father. Philotas the physician lived
+in his service, and one day at supper when Philotas silenced a tiresome
+talker with a foolish sophism the young Antony gave him as a reward the
+whole sideboard of plate. But in the middle of this gaiety and feasting
+Antony was recalled to Europe by letters which told him that his wife
+and brother had been driven out of Rome by Octavianus. Before, however,
+he reached Rome his wife Fulvia was dead; and, wishing to strengthen his
+party, he at once married Octavia, the sister of Octavianus and widow of
+Marcellus.
+
+In that year Herod passed through Egypt on his way to Rome to claim
+Judæa as his kingdom. He came through Arabia to Pelusium, and thence
+he sailed to Alexandria. Cleopatra, who wanted his services, gave him
+honourable entertainment in her capital, and made him great offers in
+order to persuade him to take the command of her army. But the Jewish
+prince saw that a kingdom was to be gained by offering his services
+to Antony and Octavianus; and he went on to Rome. There through the
+friendship of Antony he was declared King of Judæa by the senate. He
+then returned to Syria to collect an army and to win the kingdom which
+had been granted to him; and by the help of Sosius, Antony’s lieutenant,
+he had conquered Jerusalem when the war broke out between Antony and
+Octavianus.
+
+In the next year (B.C. 38) Antony was himself in Syria, carrying on the
+war which ended with the battle of Actium; and he sent to Alexandria to
+beg Cleopatra to join him there. On her coming, he made her perhaps the
+largest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress: he gave her the wide
+provinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part of
+Judæa, and part of Arabia Nabataea. These large gifts only made her ask
+for more, and she begged him to put to death Herod, King of Judæa, and
+Malichus, King of Arabia Nabataea, the former of whom had advised Antony
+to break through the disgraceful ties which bound him to Cleopatra, as
+the only means of saving himself from being crushed by the rising power
+of Octavianus. She asked to have the whole of Arabia and Judæa given to
+her. But Antony had not so far forgotten himself as to yield to these
+commands; and he only gave her the balsam country around Jericho, and
+a rent-charge of two hundred talents, or one hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars, a year, on the revenues of Judæa. On receiving this large
+addition to her kingdom, and perhaps in honour of Antony, who had then
+lost all power in Italy but was the real king of Egypt and its Greek
+provinces, Cleopatra began to count the years of her reign afresh: what
+was really the sixteenth of her reign, and had been called the sixteenth
+of Ptolemy, her elder brother, she called the first of her own reign,
+and she reckoned them in the same way till her death. Cleopatra had
+accompanied Antony on his expedition against Armenia, as far as the
+river Euphrates, and returned through Damascus to Judæa. There she was
+politely received by her enemy Herod, who was too much in fear of Antony
+to take his revenge on her. She farmed out to him the revenues of her
+parts of Arabia and Judæa, and was accompanied by him on her way towards
+Egypt. But after wondering at the wasteful feasts and gifts, in which
+pearls and provinces were alike trifled with, we are reminded that even
+Cleopatra was of the family of the Lagido, and that she was well aware
+how 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 amends
+for this, Antony gave her the large library of the city of Pergamus, by
+which Eumenes and Attalus had hoped to raise a school that should equal
+the museum of Alexandria. Cleopatra placed these two hundred thousand
+volumes in the temple of Serapis; and Alexandria again held the largest
+library in the world; while Pergamus ceased to be a place of learning.
+By the help of this new library, the city still kept its trade in books
+and its high rank as a school of letters; and, when the once proud
+kingdom of Egypt was a province of Rome, and when almost every trace of
+the monarchy was lost, and half a century afterwards Philo, the Jewish
+philosopher of Alexandria, asked, “Where are now the Ptolemies?” the
+historian could have found an answer by pointing to the mathematical
+schools and the library of the Serapeum.
+
+But to return to our history. When Antony left Cleopatra, he marched
+against the Parthians, and on his return he again entered Alexandria in
+triumph, leading Artavasdes, King of Armenia, chained behind his chariot
+as he rode in procession through the city. He soon afterwards made
+known his plans for the government of Egypt and the provinces. He called
+together the Alexandrians in the Gymnasium, and, seating himself and
+Cleopatra on two golden thrones, he declared her son Cæsarion her
+colleague, and that they should hold Egypt, Cyprus, Africa, and
+Coele-Syria. To her sons by himself he gave the title of kings the
+children of kings; and to Alexander, though still a child, he gave
+Armenia and Media, with Parthia when it should be conquered; and to
+Ptolemy he gave Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Cleopatra wore the
+sacred robe of Isis, and took the title of the New Isis, while the young
+Alexander wore a Median dress with turban and tiara, and the little
+Ptolemy a long cloak and slippers, with a bonnet encircled by a diadem,
+like the successors of Alexander. Antony himself wore an Eastern
+scimetar by his side, and a royal diadem round Ins head, as being not
+less a sovereign than Cleopatra. To Cleopatra he then gave the whole of
+his Parthian booty, and his prisoner Tigranes.
+
+[Illustration: 346.jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTHONY]
+
+But notwithstanding Antony’s love for Cleopatra, her falsehood and
+cruelty were such that when his power in Rome fell he could no longer
+trust her. He even feared that she might have him poisoned, and would
+not eat or drink in her palace without having the food first tasted
+herself. But she had no such thoughts, and only laughed at him for his
+distrust. One day to prove her power, and at the same time her good
+faith, she had the flowers with which he was to be crowned, as he
+reclined at her dinner-table, dipped in deadly poison. Antony dined with
+these round his head, while she wore a crown of fresh flowers. During
+the dinner Cleopatra playfully took off her garland and dipped it in
+her cup to flavour the wine, and Antony did the same with his poisoned
+flowers, steeping them in his own cup of wine. He even raised it to his
+lips to drink, when she hastily caught hold of his hand. “Now,” said
+she, “I am the enemy against whom you have latterly been so careful. If
+I could have endured to live without you, that draught would have given
+me the opportunity.” She then ordered the wine to be taken to one of
+the condemned criminals, and sent Antony out to see that the man died on
+drinking it.
+
+On the early coins of Cleopatra we see her head on the one side and
+the eagle or the cornucopia on the other side, with the name of “_Queen
+Cleopatra_.” After she had borne Antony children, we find the words
+round their heads, “_Of Antony, on the conquest of Armenia;” “Of
+Cleopatra the queen, and of the kings the children of kings_.” On the
+later coins we find the head of Antony joined with hers, as king and
+queen, and he is styled “_the emperor_” and she “_the young goddess_.”
+ Cleopatra was perhaps the last Greek sovereign that bore the title of
+god. Nor did it seem unsuitable to her, so common had the Greeks of Asia
+and Egypt made that epithet, by giving it to their kings, and even to
+their kings’ families and favourites. But the use of the word made no
+change in their religious opinions; they never for a moment supposed
+that the persons whom they so styled had any share in the creation and
+government of the world.
+
+[Illustration: 347.jpg LATER COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY.]
+
+The death of Julius Cæsar and afterwards of Brutus and Cassius had left
+Antony with the chief sway in the Roman world; but his life of pleasure
+in Egypt had done much to forfeit it; and Octavianus, afterwards called
+Augustus, had been for some time rising in power against him. His party,
+however, was still strong enough in Rome to choose for consul his friend
+Soslus, who put the head of Antony on one side of his coins, and the
+Egyptian eagle and thunderbolt on the other. Soon afterwards Antony was
+himself chosen as consul elect for the coming year, and he then struck
+his last coins in Egypt. The rude copper coins have on one side the name
+of “_The queen, the young goddess_,” and on the other side of “_Antony,
+Consul a third time_.” But he never was consul for the third time;
+before the day of entering on the office he was made an enemy of Rome by
+the senate. Octavianus, however, would not declare war against him, but
+declared war against Cleopatra, or rather, as he said, against Mardion
+her slave, Iris her waiting-woman, and Charmion, another favourite
+woman; for these had the chief management of Antony’s affairs.
+
+At the beginning of the year B.C. 31, which was to end with the battle
+of Actium, Octavianus held Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Carthage, with an
+army of eighty thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and a fleet of two
+hundred and fifty ships: Antony held Egypt, Ethiopia, and Cyrene, with
+one hundred thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and five hundred
+ships; he was followed by the kings of Africa, Upper Cilicia,
+Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Commagene, and Thrace; and he received help
+from 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. Cleopatra
+was confident of success and as boastful as she was confident. Her most
+solemn manner of promising was: “As surely as I shall issue my decrees
+from the Roman Capitol.” But the mind of Antony was ruined by his life
+of pleasure. He carried her with him into battle, at once his strength
+and his weakness, and he was beaten at sea by Octavianus, on the coast
+of Epirus, near Actium. This battle, which sealed the fate of Antony, of
+Egypt, and of Rome, would never have been spoken of in history if he had
+then had the courage to join his land forces; but he sailed away in a
+fright with Cleopatra, leaving an army larger than that of Octavianus,
+which would not believe that he was gone. They landed at Parastonium in
+Libya, where he remained in the desert with Aristocrates the rhetorician
+and one or two other friends, and sent Cleopatra forward to Alexandria.
+There she talked of carrying her ships across the isthmus to the head
+of the Red Sea, along the canal from Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, and
+thence flying to some unknown land from the power of the conqueror.
+Antony soon however followed her, but not to join in society. He
+locked himself up in his despair in a small fortress by the side of
+the harbour, which he named his Timonium, after Timon, the Athenian
+philosopher who forsook the society of men. When the news, however,
+arrived that his land forces had joined Octavianus, and his allies had
+deserted him, he came out of his Timonium and joined the queen.
+
+In Alexandria, Antony and Cleopatra only so far regained their courage
+as to forget their losses, and to plunge into the same round of costly
+feasts and shows that they had amused themselves with before their fall;
+but, while they were wasting these few weeks in pleasure, Octavianus was
+moving his fleet and army upon Egypt.
+
+When he landed on the coast, Egypt held three millions of people; he
+might have been met by three hundred thousand men able to bear arms.
+As for money, which has sometimes been called the sinews of war, though
+there might have been none in the treasury, yet it could not have been
+wanting in Alexandria. But the Egyptians, like the ass in the fable, had
+nothing to fear from a change of masters; they could hardly be kicked
+and cuffed worse than they had been; and, though they themselves
+were the prize struggled for, they looked on with the idle stare of a
+bystander. Some few of the garrisons made a show of holding out; but, as
+Antony had left the whole of his army in Greece when he fled away after
+the battle of Actium, he had lost all chance of safety.
+
+When Pelusium was taken, it was said by some that Seleucus the commander
+had given it up by Cleopatra’s orders; but the queen, to justify
+herself, put the wife and children of Seleucus into the hands of Antony
+to be punished if he thought fit. When Octavianus arrived in front of
+Alexandria he encamped not far from the hippodrome, a few miles from the
+Canopic or eastern gate. On this Antony made a brisk sally, and, routing
+the Roman cavalry, returned to the city in triumph. On his way to
+the palace he met Cleopatra, whom he kissed, armed as he was, and
+recommended to her favour a brave soldier who had done good service in
+the battle. She gave the man a cuirass and helmet of gold; but he
+saw that Antony’s cause was ruined; his new-gotten treasure made him
+selfish, and he went over to the enemy’s camp that very night. The next
+morning Antony ordered out his forces, both on land and sea, to engage
+with those of Octavianus; but he was betrayed by his generals: his fleet
+and cavalry deserted him without a 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 wheat
+distributed out of the public granaries to the citizens of Alexandria.
+The Jews in return showed no loyalty to Cleopatra, nor regret at her
+enemy’s success; and on this defeat of her troops her rage fell upon
+them. She made a boast of her cruelty towards them, and thought if she
+could have killed all the Jews with her own hand she should have been
+repaid for the loss of the city. On the other hand, Antony thought that
+he had been betrayed by Cleopatra, as she had received many messengers
+from Octavianus. To avoid his anger, therefore, she fled to a monument
+which she had built near the temple of Isis, and in which she had before
+placed her treasure, her gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory,
+and cinnamon, together with a large quantity of flax and a number of
+torches, as though to burn herself and her wealth in one flame. Here she
+retired with two of her women, and secured herself with bars and bolts,
+and sent word to Antony that she was dead. Antony, when he heard it,
+believing that she had killed herself, and wishing not to be outdone in
+courage by a woman, plunged his sword into his breast. But the wound was
+not fatal, and when Cleopatra heard of it she sent to beg that he would
+come to her. Accordingly his servants carried him to the door of her
+monument. But the queen, in fear of treachery, would not suffer the door
+to be opened; but she let a cord down from the window, and she with her
+two women drew him up. Nothing could be more affecting than the sight to
+all who were near; Antony covered with blood, in the agonies of death,
+stretching out his hands to Cleopatra, and she straining every nerve and
+every feature of her face with the effort she was making. He was at last
+lifted in at the window, but died soon afterwards. By this time the city
+was in the power of Octavianus; he had not found it necessary to storm
+the walls, for Antony’s troops had all joined him, and he sent in Gallus
+to endeavour to take Cleopatra alive. This he succeeded in doing by
+drawing her into conversation at the door of her monument, while three
+men scaled the window and snatched out of her hand the dagger with which
+she would have stabbed herself.
+
+Octavianus, henceforth called Augustus, began by promising his soldiers
+two hundred and fifty drachmas each as prize money, for not being
+allowed to plunder Alexandria. He soon afterwards entered the city, not
+on horseback armed at the head of his victorious legions, but on foot,
+leaning on the arm of the philosopher Arius; and, as he wished to be
+thought as great a lover of learning as of mercy, he gave out that he
+spared the place to the prayers of his Alexandrian friend. He called the
+Greek citizens together in the gymnasium, and, mounting the tribunal,
+promised that they should not be hurt. Cleopatra’s three children by
+Antony, who had not the misfortune to be of the same blood with the
+conqueror, were kindly treated and taken care of; while Cæsarion, her
+son by Julius Cæsar, who was betrayed by his tutor Rhodon while flying
+towards Ethiopia, was put to death as a rival. The flatterers of the
+conqueror would of course say that Cæsarion was not the son of
+Julius, but of Ptolemy, the elder of the two boys who had been called
+Cleopatra’s husbands. The feelings of humanity might have answered
+that, if he was not the only son of the uncle to whom Octavianus owed
+everything, he was at least helpless and friendless, and that he never
+could trouble the undisputed master of the world; but Augustus, with
+the heartless cruelty which murdered Cicero, and the cold caution which
+marked his character through life, listening to the remark of Arius,
+that there ought not to be two Cæsars, had him at once put to death.
+
+Augustus gave orders that Cleopatra should be carefully guarded lest she
+should put an end to her own life; he wished to carry her with him to
+Rome as the ornament of his triumph. He paid her a visit of condolence
+and consolation. He promised her she should receive honourable
+treatment. He allowed her to bury Antony. He threatened that her
+children should be punished if she hurt herself; but she deceived her
+guards and put herself to death, either by poison, or, as was more
+commonly thought, by the bite of an asp brought to her in a basket
+of fruit. She was thirty-nine years of age, having reigned twenty-two
+years, of which the last seven were in conjunction with Antony; and she
+was buried in his tomb with all regal splendour.
+
+The death of Cleopatra was hailed at Rome as a relief from a sad
+disgrace by others besides the flatterers of the conqueror. When
+governed by Julius Cæsar, and afterwards by Antony, the Romans sometimes
+fancied they were receiving orders from the barbarian queen to
+whom their master was a slave. When Antony was in arms against his
+countrymen, they were not without alarm at Cleopatra’s boast that she
+would yet make her power felt in the Capitol; and many feared that even
+when Antony was overthrown the conqueror might himself be willing to
+wear her chains. But the prudent Augustus was in no danger of being
+dazzled by beauty. He saw clearly all that was within his reach; he did
+not want her help to the sovereignty of Egypt; and from the day that he
+entered the empty palace in Alexandria, his reign began as sole master
+of Rome and its dependent provinces.
+
+While we have in this history been looking at the Romans from afar, and
+only seen their dealings with foreign kings, we have been able to note
+some of the changes in their manners nearly as well as if we had stood
+in the Forum. When Epiphanes, Philometor, and Euergetes II. owed their
+crowns to Roman help, Rome gained nothing but thanks, and that weight in
+their councils which is fairly due to usefulness: the senate asked for
+no tribute, and the citizens took no bribes. But with the growth
+of power came the love of conquest and of its spoils. Macedonia
+was conquered in what might be called self-defence; in the reign of
+Cleopatra Cocce, Cyrene was won by fraud, and Cyprus was then seized
+without a plea. The senators were even more eager for bribes than the
+senate for provinces. The nobles who governed these wide provinces
+grew too powerful for the senate, and found that they could heap up
+ill-gotten wealth faster by patronising kings than by conquering them;
+and the Egyptian monarchy was left to stand in the reigns of Auletes
+and Cleopatra, because the Romans were still more greedy than when they
+seized Cyrene and Cyprus. And, lastly, when the Romans were worn out by
+quarrels and the want of a steady government, and were ready to obey
+any master who could put a stop to civil bloodshed, they made Octavianus
+autocrat of Rome; he then gained for himself whatever he seized in
+the name of the republic, and he at once put an end to the Egyptian
+monarchy.
+
+Thus fell the family of the Ptolemies, a family that had perhaps done
+more for arts and letters than any that can be pointed out in history.
+Like other kings who have bought the praises of poets, orators, and
+historians, they may have misled the talents which they wished to
+guide, and have smothered the fire which they seemed to foster; but,
+in rewarding the industry of the mathematicians and anatomists, of the
+critics, commentators, and compilers, they seem to have been highly
+successful. It is true that Alexandria never sent forth works with the
+high tone of philosophy, the lofty moral aim and the pure taste which
+mark the writings of Greece in its best ages, and which ennoble the mind
+and mend the heart; but it was the school to which the world long looked
+for knowledge in all those sciences which help the body and improve the
+arts of life, and which are sometimes called useful knowledge. Though
+great and good actions may not have been unknown in Alexandria, so few
+valued them that none took the trouble to record them. The well-paid
+writers never wrote the lives of the Ptolemies. The muse of history
+had no seat in the museum, but it was almost the birthplace of anatomy,
+geometry, conic sections, geography, astronomy, and hydrostatics.
+
+[Illustration: 357.jpg GRAND COLUMN AT KARNAK]
+
+If we retrace the steps by which this Græco-Egyptian monarchy rose and
+fell, we shall see that virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, care and
+thoughtlessness, were for the most part followed by the rewards which to
+us seem natural. The Egyptian gold which first tempted the Greeks into
+the country, and then helped their energies to raise the monarchy,
+afterwards undermined those same energies, and became one of the
+principal causes of its final overthrow.
+
+In Ptolemy Soter we see plain manners, careful plans, untiring activity,
+and a wise choice of friends. By him talents were highly paid wherever
+they were found; no service left unrewarded; the people trusted and
+taught the use of arms; their love gained by wise laws and even-handed
+justice; docks, harbours, and fortresses built, schools opened; and
+by these means a great monarchy founded. Ptolemy was eager to fill
+the ranks of his armies with soldiers, and his new city with traders.
+Instead of trying to govern against the will of the people, to thwart
+or overlook their wishes and feelings, his utmost aim was to guide them,
+and to make Alexandria a more agreeable place of settlement than the
+cities of Asia Minor and Syria, for the thousands who were then
+pouring out of Greece on the check given to its trading industry by the
+overthrow of its freedom. Though every thinking man might have seen
+that the new government, when it gained shape and strength, would be a
+military despotism; yet his Greek subjects must have felt, while it was
+weak and resting on their good-will rather than on their habits, that
+they were enjoying many of the blessings of freedom. Had they then
+claimed a share in the government, they would most likely have gained
+it, and thereby they would have handed down those blessings to their
+children.
+
+Before the death of Ptolemy Soter, the habits of the people had so
+closely entwined themselves round the throne, that Philadelphus was able
+to take the kingdom and the whole of its wide provinces at the hands of
+his father as a family estate. He did nothing to mar his father’s wise
+plans, which then ripened into fruit-bearing. Trade crowded the harbours
+and markets, learning filled the schools, conquests rewarded the
+discipline of the fleets and armies; power, wealth, and splendour
+followed in due order. The blaze thus cast around the throne would by
+many kings have been made to stand in the place of justice and mildness,
+but under Philadelphus it only threw a light upon his good government.
+He was acknowledged both at home and abroad to be the first king of
+his age; Greece and its philosophers looked up to him as a friend and
+patron; and though as a man he must take rank far below his father, by
+whose wisdom the eminence on which he stood was raised, yet in all the
+gold and glitter of a king Philadelphus was the greatest of his family.
+
+The Egyptians had been treated with kindness by both of these Greek
+kings. As far as they had been able or willing to copy the arts of
+Greece they had been raised to a level with the Macedonians. The
+Egyptian worship and temples had been upheld, as if in obedience to
+the oft-repeated answer of the Delphic oracle, that the gods should
+everywhere be worshipped according to the laws of the country. But
+Euergetes was much more of an Egyptian, and while he was bringing back
+the ancient splendour to the temples, the priests must have regained
+something of their former rank. But they had no hold on the minds of the
+soldiers. Had the mercenaries, upon whom the power of the king rested,
+been worshippers in the Egyptian temples, the priests might, as in the
+earlier times, like a body of nobles, have checked his power when too
+great, and at other times upheld it. But it was not so; and upon the
+whole, little seems to have been gained by the court becoming more
+Egyptian, while the army must have lost something of its Greek
+discipline and plainness of manners.
+
+But in the next reign the fruits of this change were seen to be most
+unfortunate. Philopator was an Eastern despot, surrounded by eunuchs,
+and drowned in pleasures. The country was governed by his women and
+vicious favourites. The army, which at the beginning of his reign
+amounted to seventy-three thousand men, beside the garrisons, was at
+first weakened by rebellion, and before the end of his reign it fell to
+pieces. Nothing, however, happened to prove his weakness to surrounding
+nations; Egypt was still the greatest of kingdoms, though Rome on the
+conquest of Carthage, and Syria under Antiochus the Great, were fast
+gaining ground upon it; but he left to his infant son a throne shaken to
+the very foundations.
+
+The ministers of Epiphanes, the infant autocrat, found the government
+without a head and without an army, the treasury without money, and the
+people without virtue or courage; and they placed the kingdom under the
+hands of the Romans to save it from being shared between the kings of
+Syria and Macedonia. Thus passed the first five reigns, the first one
+hundred and fifty years, the first half of the three centuries that the
+kingdom of the Ptolemies lasted. It was then rotten at the core with
+vice and luxury. Its population was lessening, its trade falling off,
+its treasury empty, its revenue too small for the wasteful expenses of
+the government; but, nevertheless, in the eyes of surrounding nations,
+its trade and wealth seemed boundless.
+
+[Illustration: 362.jpg Cleopatra’s needle.]
+
+Taste, genius, and poetry had passed away; but mathematics, surgery, and
+grammar still graced the museum. The decline of art is shown upon the
+coins, and even in the shape of the letters upon the coins. On those
+of Cleopatra the engraver followed the fashion of the penman; the S is
+written like our C, the E has a round back, and the long O is formed
+like an M reversed.
+
+During the reigns of the later Ptolemies the kingdom was under the
+shield, but also under the sceptre of Rome. Its kings sent to Rome
+for help, sometimes against their enemies, and sometimes against their
+subjects; sometimes they humbly asked the senate for advice, and at
+other times were able respectfully to disobey the Roman orders. One
+by one the senate seized the provinces; Coele-Syria, the coast of
+Asia Minor, Cyrene, and the island of Cyprus; and lastly, though the
+Ptolemies still reigned, they were counted among the clients of the
+Roman patrician, to whom they looked up for patronage. From this low
+state Egypt could scarcely be said to fall when it became a part of the
+great empire of Augustus.
+
+During the reigns of the Ptolemies, the sculpture, the style of
+building, the religion, the writing, and the language of the Kopts in
+the Thebaid were nearly the same as when their own kings were reigning
+in Thebes, with even fewer changes than usually creep in through time.
+They had all become less simple; and though it would be difficult, and
+would want a volume by itself to trace these changes, and to show when
+they came into use, yet a few of them may be pointed out. The change of
+fashion must needs be slower in buildings which are only raised by the
+untiring labour of years, and which when built stand for ages; but in
+the later temples we find less strength as fortresses, few obelisks or
+sphinxes, and no colossal statues; we no longer meet with vast caves
+or pyramids. The columns in a temple have several new patterns. The
+capitals which used to be copied from the papyrus plant are now formed
+of lotus flowers, or palm branches. In some cases, with a sad want of
+taste, the weight of the roof rests on the weak head of a woman.
+The buildings, however, of the Ptolemies are such that, before the
+hieroglyphics on them had been read by Doctor Young, nobody had ever
+guessed that they were later than the time of Cambyses, while three or
+four pillars at Alexandria were almost the only proof that the country
+had ever been held by Greeks.
+
+In the religion we find many new gods or old gods in new dresses.
+Hapimou, the Nile, now pours water out of a jar like a Greek river god.
+The moon, which before ornamented the heads of gods, is now a goddess
+under the name of Ioh. The favourite Isis had appeared in so many
+characters 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 the
+chief place. Strange change had also taken place in the names of men
+and cities. In the place of Petisis, Petamun, Psammo, and Serapion,
+we find men named Eudoxus, Hermophantus, and Poly crates; while of the
+cities, 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 the
+hieroglyphics, as the camelopard, the mummy lying on a couch, the ships
+with sails, and the chariot with horses; there were more words spelled
+with letters, the groups were more crowded, and the titles of the kings
+within the ovals became much longer.
+
+With the papyrus, which was becoming common about the time of the
+Persian invasion, we find the running hand, the enchorial or common
+writing, as it was called, coming into use, in which there were few
+symbols, and most of the words were spelt with letters. Each letter was
+of the easy sloping form, which came from its being made with a reed or
+pen, instead of the stiff form of the hieroglyphics, which were mostly
+cut in stone. But there is a want of neatness, which has thrown a
+difficulty over them, and has made these writings less easy to read than
+the hieroglyphics.
+
+When the country fell into the hands of Augustus, the Kopts were in
+a much lower state than when conquered by Alexander. Of the old moral
+worth and purity of manners very little remained. All respect for women
+was lost; and, when men degrade those who should be their helps towards
+excellence, they degrade themselves also. Not a small part of the
+nation was sunk in vice. They had been slaves for three hundred years,
+sometimes trusted and well-treated, but more often trampled on and
+ground down with taxes and cruelty. They had never held up their heads
+as freemen, or felt themselves lords of their own soil; they had fallen
+off in numbers, in wealth, and in knowledge; nothing was left to them
+but their religion, their temples, their hieroglyphics, and the painful
+remembrance of their faded glories.
+
+END OF VOL. X.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The
+Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12), by S. Rappoport
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+      History of Egypt, by S. Rappoport, Volume 10
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The
+Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12), by S. Rappoport
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)
+
+Author: S. Rappoport
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2005 [EBook #17330]
+Last Updated: September 8, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF EGYPT FROM 330 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+Character set: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+</pre>
+
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+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="100%" alt="Titlepage " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      HISTORY OF EGYPT
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      From 330 B.C. to the Present Time
+    </h3>
+    <h2>
+      By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      Member of the Ecole Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German, <br />
+      French Orientalist and Philologist
+    </h4>
+    <h2>
+      VOL. X.
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      THE GROLIER SOCIETY <br /> PUBLISHERS, LONDON
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> PUBLISHER&rsquo;S NOTE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> <i>EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIES</i> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> INTRODUCTORY ESSAY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I&mdash;EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II&mdash;EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkB2HCH0001"> CHAPTER III.&mdash;PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS. B.C.
+        284-246 </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkB2HCH0002"> CHAPTER IV&mdash;PTOLEMY EUERGETES, PTOLEMY
+        PHILOPATOR, AND PTOLEMY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkC2HCH0001"> CHAPTER V&mdash;PTOLEMY PHILOMETOR AND PTOLEMY
+        EUERGETES II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkC2HCH0002"> CHAPTER VI&mdash;THE GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE
+        IN EGYPT </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkC2HCH0003"> CHAPTER VII&mdash;CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <br />
+      </p>
+      <hr />
+      <p>
+        <br /> <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>List of Illustrations</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0001"> Spines </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0002"> Cover </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0003"> Frontispiece </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0004"> Titlepage </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0005"> 001.jpg Page Image </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0006"> 002.jpg Page Image </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0007"> 015.jpg Page Image&mdash;alexandria </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0008"> 019.jpg Transporting Grain on the Nile </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0009"> 021.jpg Phtah the God of Memphis </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0010"> 027.jpg Lighthouse at Alexandria </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0011"> 031.jpg Page Image </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0012"> 036.jpg the DÔm Palm. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0013"> 040.jpg a Silhouette on the Nile </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0014"> 044.jpg Crocodiles Basking in the Sun </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0015"> 049.jpg a Theban Belle </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0016"> 049b.jpg Prayer to Isis </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0017"> 052.jpg Tombs of the Sacred Bulls </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0018"> 055.jpg the God Serapis </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0019"> 056.jpb Manuscript on Papyrus; Hieroglyphics,
+        Thebes </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0020"> 057.jpg Alexander Adoring Horus </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0021"> 062.jpg on the Coast of The Red Sea </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0022"> 081.jpg Alexandrian Lady, Attired in Bombyx
+        Silk </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0023"> 082.jpg Egyptian Coinage </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0024"> 083.jpg Coin of Soter, With Jupiter </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0025"> 092.jpg the Chariot of Antiphilus </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0026"> 095.jpg Berenice Soter </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0027"> 098.jpg Nit, Goddess of Sais. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0028"> 099.jpg a Cat Mummy </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkimage-0029"> 100.jpg Tailpiece </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0005"> 101.jpg Page Image </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0006"> 102.jpg Pharos in Old Alexandria </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0007"> 106.jpg Bronze Cosmetic Holder </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0008"> 112.jpg Rosetta Branch of the Nile </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0009"> 116.jpg Temple of Philae </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0010"> 118.jpg Anubis, God of the Lower World </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0011"> 120.jpg at the Head of The Red Sea </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0012"> 123.jpg the Cararact on The Aswan </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0013"> 128.jpg an Athlete Disporting on a Crocodile
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0014"> 131.jpg Modern Sphinx-like Face </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0015"> 137.jpg Method of Egyptian Draftsmanship
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0016"> 141.jpg Coin With the Heads of Soter and
+        Philadelphus And Arsinoë </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0017"> 142.jpg Coin With the Heads of Soter,
+        Philadelphus And Berenice </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0018"> 143.jpg Coin of ArsinoË, Sister Of Ptolemy
+        II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0019"> 149.jpg a Typical Nile Pilot </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0020"> 153.jpg Page Image </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0021"> 157.jpg an Abyssinian Slave </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0022"> 160b.jpg Signs, Arms and Instruments from
+        the Fifth Tomb </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0023"> 161.jpg Gate at Karnak </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0024"> 163.jpg Ruins of Sais </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0025"> 169.jpg Gateway of Ptolemy Euergetes at
+        Karnak </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0026"> 175.jpg Coin of Ptolemy III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0027"> 176.jpg Coin of Berenice, Wife Of Ptolemy
+        III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0028"> 187.jpg Temple of Hathor. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0029"> 188jpg Coin of Ptolemy Philopater </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0030"> 189.jpg Coin of Arsinoe Philopate </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0031"> 196.jpg Roman Coin, Issued Under Ptolemy V.
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0032"> 201.jpg the Rosetta Stone (british Museum)
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0033"> 207.jpg Outside Rosetta </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0034"> 210.jpg a Desert Road Between Egypt and
+        Syria. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkBimage-0035"> 212.jpg Tailpiece </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0004"> 215.jpg Page Image </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0005"> 219.jpg Temple of Hermonthis. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0006"> 223.jpg Garden Near Heliopolis </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0007"> 227.jpg Temple of Apollonopolis </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0008"> 234.jpg the Apotheosis of Homer </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0009"> 235.jpg Hero&rsquo;s Rotating Steam Engine </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0010"> 237.jpg Coin of Ptolemy V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0011"> 241.jpg Temple of Hathor at Philae </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0012"> 242b.jpg Color Plate </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0013"> 249.jpg Obelisk at Heliopolis </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0014"> 254.jpg Nilometer at Rhodha </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0015"> 256b.jpg Suk El Saleh, Cairo </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0016"> 260.jpg Temple of Kom Ombo. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0017"> 268.jpg Temple Portico at Contra-latopoli
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0018"> 274.jpg Coin of Cleopatra and Alexander </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0019"> 275.jpg Coin of Cleopatra and Alexander,
+        With Eagles </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0020"> 276.jpg the Memnonium at Thebes </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0021"> 280.jpg Coin of Ptolemy Lathyrus and Selene.
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0022"> 287.jpg Horus on the Crocodiles. Bulak
+        Museum. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0023"> 289.jpg Religious Procession on the Nile
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0024"> 291.jpg Egyptian Funeral Ceremonies </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0025"> 293.jpg Mummy, Mummy-cases, and Casket </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0026"> 295.jpg Development of Egyptian Caricature
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0027"> 297.jpg the Mines of Maghara </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0028"> 309.jpg Vocal Statue of Memnon </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0029"> 312.jpg the Sphinx </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0030"> 314.jpg </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0031"> 314b.jpg Bearers of Evil Tidings </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0032"> 315.jpg Page Image </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0033"> 317.jpg Pillar of Pompey at Alexandria </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0034"> 333.jpg Ruins of Hermonthis </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0035"> 338.jpg Egyptian Picture of Cleopatra </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0036"> 346.jpg Coin of Cleopatra and Anthony </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0037"> 347.jpg Later Coin of Cleopatra and Antony.
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0038"> 351.jpg Greek Picture of Cleopatra </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0039"> 357.jpg Grand Column at Karnak </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0040"> 362.jpg Cleopatra&rsquo;s Needle. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#linkCimage-0041"> 364.jpg Graeco-egyptian Column </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Professor Maspero closes his History of Egypt with the conquest of
+      Alexander the Great. There is a sense of dramatic fitness in this
+      selection, for, with the coming of the Macedonians, the sceptre of
+      authority passed for ever out of the hand of the Egyptian. For several
+      centuries the power of the race had been declining, and foreign nations
+      had contended for the vast treasure-house of Egypt. Alexander found the
+      Persians virtually rulers of the land. The ancient people whose fame has
+      come down to us through centuries untarnished had been forced to bow
+      beneath the yoke of foreign masters, and nations of alien blood were
+      henceforth to dominate its history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first Ptolemy founded a Macedonian or Greek dynasty that maintained
+      supremacy in Egypt until the year 30 B.C. His successors were his lineal
+      descendants, and to the very last they prided themselves on their Greek
+      origin; but the government which they established was essentially Oriental
+      in character. The names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra convey an Egyptian rather
+      than a Greek significance; and the later rulers of the dynasty were true
+      Egyptians, since their ancestors had lived in Alexandria for three full
+      centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the year 30 B.C. Augustus Cæsar conquered the last of the Ptolemies,
+      the famous Cleopatra. Augustus made Egypt virtually his private province,
+      and drew from it resources that were among the chief elements of his
+      power. After Augustus, the Romans continued in control until the coming of
+      the Saracens under Amr, in the seventh century. Various dynasties of
+      Mohammedans, covering a period of several centuries, maintained control
+      until the Mamluks, in 1250, overthrew the legitimate rulers, to be
+      themselves overthrown three centuries later by the Turks under Selim I.
+      Turkish rule was maintained until near the close of the eighteenth
+      century, when the French, under Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded Egypt. In
+      1806, after the expulsion of the French by the English, the famous Mehemet
+      Ali destroyed the last vestiges of Mamluk power, and set up a
+      quasi-independent sovereignty which was not disturbed until toward the
+      close of the nineteenth century. The events of the last twenty-five years,
+      comprising a short period of joint control of Egypt by the French and
+      English, followed by the British occupation, are fresh in the mind of the
+      reader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What may be termed the modern history of Egypt covers a period of more
+      than twenty-two centuries. During this time the native Egyptian can
+      scarcely be said to have a national history, but the land of Egypt, and
+      the races who have become acclimated there, have passed through many
+      interesting phases. Professor Maspero completes the history of antiquity
+      in that dramatic scene in which the ancient Egyptian makes his last futile
+      struggle for independence. But the Nile Valley has remained the scene of
+      the most important events where the strongest nations of the earth
+      contended for supremacy. It is most interesting to note that the invaders
+      of Egypt, while impressing their military stamp upon the natives, have
+      been mastered in a very real sense by the spell of Egypt&rsquo;s greatness; but
+      the language, the key to ancient learning and civilisation, still remained
+      a well-guarded secret. Here and there one of the Ptolemies or Greeks
+      thought it worth his while to master the hieroglyphic writing.
+      Occasionally a Roman of the later period may have done the same, but such
+      an accomplishment was no doubt very unusual from the first. The
+      subordinated Egyptians therefore had no resource but to learn the language
+      of their conquerors, and presently it came to pass that not even the
+      native Egyptian remembered the elusive secrets of his own written
+      language. Egyptian, as a spoken tongue, remained, in a modified form, as
+      Koptic, but at about the beginning of our era the classical Egyptian had
+      become a dead language. No one any longer wrote in the hieroglyphic,
+      hieratic, or demotic scripts; in a word, the hieroglyphic writing was
+      forgotten. The reader of Professor Maspero&rsquo;s pages has had opportunity to
+      learn how this secret was discovered in the nineteenth century. This
+      information is further amplified in the present volumes, and we see how in
+      our own time the native Egyptian has regained something of his former
+      grandeur through the careful and scientific study of monuments,
+      inscriptions, and works of art. Thus it will appear in the curious
+      rounding out of the enigmatic story that the most ancient history of
+      civilisation becomes also the newest and most modern human history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PUBLISHER&rsquo;S NOTE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It should be explained that Doctor Rappoport, in preparing these volumes,
+      has drawn very largely upon the authorities who have previously laboured
+      in the same field, and in particular upon the works of Creasy, Duruy,
+      Ebers, Lavisse, Marcel, Michaud, Neibuhr, Paton, Ram-baud, Sharp, and
+      Weil. The results of investigations by Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie and
+      other prominent Egyptologists have been fully set forth and profusely
+      illustrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/001.jpg" width="100%" alt="001.jpg Page Image " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/002.jpg" width="100%" alt="002.jpg Page Image " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      <i>EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIES</i>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT&mdash;THE REIGNS OP THE
+      PTOLEMIES&mdash;GRADUAL GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE&mdash;INTRIGUES OF
+      CLEOPATRA WITH POMPEY, CAESAR, AND ANTONY</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Alexander the Great in Egypt&mdash;Alexandria founded&mdash;The Greeks
+      favour the Jews&mdash;Ptolemy Soter establishes himself in Egypt and
+      overcomes Perdiccas&mdash;Struggles for Syria&mdash;Beginning of Egyptian
+      coinage&mdash;Art and Scholarship&mdash;Ptolemy resigns in favour of his
+      son Philadelphus &mdash;First treaty with Rome&mdash;Building of the
+      Pharos&mdash;Growth of Commerce&mdash;Encouragement of Learning&mdash;The
+      library of Alexandria&mdash;Euclid the geometer&mdash;Poets, astronomers,
+      historians, and critics&mdash;The Septuagint&mdash;Marriage of
+      Philadelphus to his sister Arsinoë&mdash;Ptolemy Euergetes plunders Asia&mdash;Egyptian
+      temples enlarged&mdash;Religious tolerance&mdash;Annual tribute of the
+      Jews&mdash;Eratosthenes the astronomer&mdash;Philosophy and Science&mdash;Culmination
+      of Ptolemaic rule&mdash;The dynasty declines under Philopator&mdash;Syrians
+      invade Egypt; Philopator retaliates; visits Jerusalem&mdash;The Jews
+      persecuted&mdash;The king&rsquo;s follies&mdash;Riots at Alexandria&mdash;Inglorious
+      end of Philopator&mdash;The young Ptolemy Epiphanes protected by Rome&mdash;Military
+      revolt suppressed&mdash;Coronation of Epiphanes&mdash;The Rosetta Stone&mdash;Marriage
+      of Epiphanes and Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus the Cheat&mdash;A second
+      rebellion repressed&mdash;Accession of Ptolemy Philometer under the
+      guardianship of Cleopatra&mdash;Antiochus Epiphanes defeats Philometer&mdash;Euergetes
+      seizes the throne and appeals to Rome&mdash;Antiochus supports Philometor
+      against his brother Euergetes&mdash;The brothers combine against Antiochus&mdash;Fraternal
+      rivalry&mdash;Philometer appeals to the Romans who adjust the quarrel&mdash;Philometer
+      arbitrates in a dispute between the Jews and the Samaritans&mdash;New
+      temples built&mdash;Egyptian asceticism&mdash;Philometer&rsquo;s death;
+      Euergetes reigns alone, and divorces his queen Cleopatra&mdash;Popular
+      tumult in Alexandria&mdash;Euergetes flees&mdash;Cleopatra in power&mdash;Euergetes
+      regains the throne; conquers Syria and makes peace with Cleopatra&mdash;The
+      reign of Cleopatra Cocce with Lathyrus (Ptolemy Soter II.)&mdash;Cleopatra
+      in the ascendent&mdash;She helps the Jews, while Lathyrus helps the
+      Samaritans&mdash;Lathyrus flees to Cyprus&mdash;Ptolemy Alexander I rules
+      with Cleopatra&mdash;Death of Alexander and restoration of Lathyrus&mdash;Accession
+      of Cleopatra Berenicê&mdash;Ptolemy Alexander II. bequeaths Egypt to Rome,
+      murders Berenicê, and is slain by his guards&mdash;Auletes succeeds&mdash;The
+      Romans claim Egypt&mdash;Pompey assists Auletes who is expelled by the
+      Egyptians&mdash;Cleopatra Tryphama and Berenicê placed on the throne&mdash;Grabinius
+      and Mark Antony march into Egypt and restore Auletes&mdash;The reign of
+      Cleopatra&mdash;Pompey made governor&mdash;The Egyptian fleet aids Pompey&mdash;Pompey
+      is slain&mdash;Cæsar besieged by the Alexandrians&mdash;He overcomes
+      opposition, is captivated by Cleopatra and establishes her authority&mdash;The
+      Queen&rsquo;s extravagance&mdash;Defeat of Antony&mdash;Death of Cleopatra&mdash;Octavianus
+      annexes Egypt.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      HELLENISM AND HEBRÆISM IN EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIES I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Alexander the Great bridged the gulf dividing Occident and Orient,
+      the Greeks had attained to a state of maturity in the development of their
+      national art and literature. Greek culture and civilisation, passing
+      beyond the boundaries of their national domain, crossed this bridge and
+      spread over the Asiatic world. To perpetuate his name, the great
+      Macedonian king founded a city, and selected for this purpose, with
+      extraordinary prescience, a spot on the banks of the Nile, which, on
+      account of its geographical position, was destined to become a centre, not
+      only of international commerce and an entrepôt between Asia and Europe,
+      but also a centre of intellectual culture. The policy of Alexander 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, was continued by the
+      Lagidæ dynasty in Egypt. With her independence and native dynasties, Egypt
+      had also lost her political strength and unity; she retained, however, her
+      ancient institutions, her customs, and religious system. The sway of
+      Persian dominion had passed over her without overthrowing this huge rock
+      of sacerdotal power which, deeply rooted with many ramifications, seemed
+      to mock the wave of time. Out of the ruins of political independence still
+      towered the monuments of civilisation of a mighty past which gave to this
+      country moral independence, and prevented the obliteration of nationality.
+      It would have mattered very little in the vast empire of Alexander if one
+      province had a special physiognomy. It was different, however, with the
+      Lagidæ: their power was concentrated in Egypt, and they were therefore
+      compelled to obliterate the separation existing between the conquering and
+      the conquered races, and fuse them, if possible, into one. A great
+      obstacle which confronted the Macedonian rulers in Egypt was the religion
+      of the country. The interest and the policy of the Lagidæ demanded the
+      removal of this obstacle, not by force but by diplomacy. Greek gods were
+      therefore identified with Egyptian; Phtah became Hephæstos; Thot, Hermes;
+      Ra, Helios; Amon, Zeus; and, in consequence of a dream which commanded him
+      to offer adoration to a foreign god, Ptolemy Soter created a new Greek god
+      who was of Egyptian origin. Osiris at that period was the great god of
+      Egypt; Memphis was the religious centre of the cult of Apis, the
+      representative of Osiris, and who, when living, was called Apis-Osiris,
+      and when dead Osiris-Apis. Cambyses had killed the god or his
+      representative: it was a bad move. Alexander made sacrifices to him:
+      Ptolemy Soter did more. He endeavoured to persuade the Egyptians that
+      Osirapi or Osiris-Apis was also sacred to the Greeks, and to identify him
+      with some Greek divinity. There was a Greek deity known as Serapis,
+      identified with Pluton, the god of Hades. Serapis, by a clever manouvre, a
+      <i>coup de religion</i>, was identified with Osiris-Apis. The lingual
+      similarity and the fact that Osirapi was the god of the Egyptian Hades
+      made the identification acceptable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like true Greek princes, the Ptolemies had broad views and were very
+      tolerant. Keeping the Greek religion themselves, they were favourably
+      disposed towards the creeds of other nationalities under their dominion.
+      Thanks to this broad-mindedness and tolerance which had become traditional
+      in the Lagidas family, and which has only rarely been imitated&mdash;to
+      the detriment of civilisation&mdash;in the history of European dynasties,
+      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 the world; and it might
+      truly be said to have been the Paris of antiquity. At the courts of the
+      Ptolemies, the Medicis of Egypt, the greatest men of the age lived and
+      taught. Demetrius Phalerius, one of the most learned and cultured men of
+      an age of learning and knowledge, when driven from his luxurious palace at
+      Athens, found hospitality at the court of Ptolemy Soter. The foundation of
+      the famous Museion and library of Alexandria was most probably due to his
+      influence. He advised the first Ptolemy to found a building where poets,
+      scholars, and philosophers would have facilities for study, research, and
+      speculation. The Museion was similar in some respects to the Academy of
+      Plato. It was an edifice where scholars lived and worked together. Mental
+      qualification was the only requirement for admission. Nationality and
+      creed were no obstacles to those whose learning rendered them worthy of
+      becoming members of this ideal academy and of being received among the
+      immortals of antiquity. The Museion was in no sense a university, but an
+      academy for the cultivation of the higher branches of learning. It might
+      be compared in some respects to the College de France, or regarded as a
+      development of the system under which scholars had already lived and
+      worked together in the Ramesseum under Ramses II. The generosity of the
+      Lagidas provided amply for this new centre of learning and study. Free
+      from worldly cares, the scholars could leisurely gather information and
+      hand down to posterity the fruits of their researches. From all parts of
+      the world men flocked to this centre of fashionable learning, the
+      birthplace of modern science. All that was brilliant and cultured, all the
+      coryphées in the domain of intellect, were attracted by that splendid
+      court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the shade of the Museion a brilliant assembly&mdash;Ptolemy, Euclid,
+      Hipparchus, Apollonius, and Eratosthenes&mdash;made great discoveries and
+      added materially to the sum of human knowledge. Here Euclid wrote his
+      immortal &ldquo;Elements;&rdquo; and Herophilos, the father of surgery, added valuable
+      information to the knowledge of anatomy. The art and process of embalming,
+      in such vogue among the Egyptians, naturally fostered the advance of this
+      science. Whilst Alexandria in abstract speculation could not rival Greece,
+      yet it became the home of the pioneers of positive science, who left a
+      great and priceless legacy to modern civilisation. The importance of this
+      event (the foundation of the Museion), says Draper, in his <i>Intellectual
+      Development of Europe</i>, though hitherto little understood, admits of no
+      exaggeration so far as the intellectual progress of Europe is concerned.
+      The Museum made an impression upon the intellectual career of Europe so
+      powerful and enduring that we still enjoy its results. If the purely
+      literary productions of that age have sometimes been looked upon with
+      contempt, European intellectual culture is still greatly indebted to
+      Alexandria, and especially for the patronage she accorded to the works of
+      Aristotle. Whilst the speculative mind was in later centuries allured by
+      the supernatural, and the discussion of the criterion of truth and the
+      principles of morality ended in the mystic doctrines of Neo-Platonism, the
+      practical tendencies of the great Alexandrine scholars were instrumental
+      in laying the foundations of science. To the Museion were attached the
+      libraries: one in the Museion itself, and another in the quarter Rhacotis
+      in the temple of Serapis, which contained about 700,000 volumes. New books
+      were continually acquired. The librarians had orders to pay any sum for
+      the original of the works of great masters. The Ptolemies were not only
+      patrons of learning but were themselves highly educated. Ptolemy Soter was
+      an historian of no mean talent, and his son Philadelphus, as a pupil of
+      the poet Philetas and the philosopher Strabo, was a man of great learning.
+      Ptolemy III. was a mathematician, and Ptolemy Philopator, who had erected
+      and dedicated a temple to Homer, was the writer of a tragedy. The efforts
+      of the Ptolemies to bring the two nationalities, Hellenic and Egyptian,
+      nearer to each other, to mould and weld them into one if possible, to mix
+      and mingle the two civilisations and thus strengthen their own power, was
+      greatly aided by the national character of the Greeks and the political
+      position of the Egyptians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Greeks found in Egypt a national culture and especially a religious
+      system. The pliant Hellenic genius could not remain insensible to that
+      ancient and marvellous civilisation with its sphinxes and hieroglyphics,
+      its pyramids and temples, its learning and thought, so strangely
+      perplexing and interesting to the Greek mind. Not only the magnificence of
+      Egyptian art, the majesty of her temples and palaces, but the wisdom of
+      her social and political institutions impressed the conquerors. They made
+      themselves acquainted with the institutions of the country; they studied
+      its history and took an interest in its religion and mythology. Similarly,
+      the conquered Egyptians, who had preferred the Macedonian ruler to their
+      Persian oppressors, exhibited a natural desire to learn the languages and
+      habits of their rulers, to make themselves acquainted with their knowledge
+      and phases of thought, and art and science. The interest of the Greeks was
+      strengthened by this, and the Egyptians were made to see their history in
+      its proper light. To this endeavour we owe the history of Manetho. But, in
+      spite of the policy of the Ptolemies, the impressionable nature of the
+      Hellenic character and the interest of the Egyptians,&mdash;in spite of
+      all that tended to a fusion of Hellenism and Orientalism, it never came to
+      a proper amalgamation. The contradiction between the free-thought
+      philosophy of Greece, which was fast outgrowing its polytheism and
+      Olympian worship, and the deeply rooted sacerdotal system of the
+      Pharaonian institutions, was too great and too flagrant. Thus there never
+      was an Egypto-Hellenic phase of thought. But there was another
+      civilisation of great antiquity, possessing peculiar features, not less
+      interesting for the Greek mind than that of Egypt itself, with which
+      Hellenism found itself face to face in the ancient land of the Pharaohs.
+      It was the civilisation of Judæa, between which and Greek thought a
+      greater fusion was effected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time immemorial the Hebrew race, with all its conservative tendencies
+      in religious matters, has been amenable to the influence of foreign
+      culture and civilian. Egypt and Phoenicia, Babylonia and Assyria, Hellas
+      and Rome have exercised an immense influence over it. It still is and
+      always has been endeavouring to bring into harmony the exclusiveness of
+      its national religion, with a desire to adopt the habits culture,
+      language, and manners of its neighbours; an attempt in which it may be
+      apparently successful, for a certain period at least, but which must
+      always have a tragic end. It is impossible to be conservative and
+      progressive at the same time, to be both national and cosmopolitan. The
+      attempts to reconcile religious formalism and free reasoning have never
+      succeeded in the history of human thought. It soon led to the conviction
+      that one factor must be sacrificed, and, as soon as this was perceived,
+      the party of zealots was quickly at hand to preach reaction. In the times
+      of the successors of Alexander, the Diadochæ and Epigones, the Seleucidæ
+      and the Lagidæ, who had divided the vast dominion among them, Greek
+      influence had spread all over Palestine. Greek towns were founded,
+      theatres and gymnasia established; Greek art was admired and her
+      philosophy studied. The Hellenic movement was paramount, and the
+      aristocratic families did their best to further it. Even the high priests,
+      like Jason and Menelaos, who were supposed to be the guardians of the
+      national exclusive movement, favoured Greek culture and institutions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mother country, however, the germ of reaction was always very
+      strong. A constant opposition was directed against the influx of foreign
+      modes of life and thought, which effaced and obliterated the intellectual
+      movement. It was different, however, in the other countries of Macedonian
+      dominion, and especially in Egypt. Alexander the Great, who seems to have
+      been favourably inclined towards the Jews, settled a number of them in
+      Alexandria. His policy was kept up by the descendants of Lagos, that great
+      general of Alexander, who made himself king of the province which was
+      entrusted to the care of his administration. Egypt became the resort of
+      many refugees from Judæa, who gradually came under the influence of the
+      dazzling Greek thought and culture, so new and therefore so attractive to
+      the Semitic mind. Hellenism and Hebraism had known each other for some
+      time, for Phoenician merchants and seafarers had carried the seed of
+      Oriental wisdom to the distant west. The acquaintance, however, was a
+      slight one. At the court of the Ptolemies, on the threshold of Europe and
+      Asia, they met at last. On the shores of the Mediterranean, on the soil
+      where lay the traces of the ancient Egyptian civilisation, in the silent
+      avenues of mysterious sphinxes, amongst hieroglyphic-covered obelisks,
+      Greek and Hebrew thought stood face to face. The two civilisations
+      embodied the principles of the Beautiful and the Sublime, of Morality and
+      Æstheticism, of religious and philosophic speculation. The result of this
+      meeting marks a glorious page in the annals of human thought. Among the
+      monuments of a great historic past, the speculative spirit of the East
+      made love to the plastic beauty of the West, until, at last, they were
+      united in happy union. Hellenic taste and sense of beauty and Semitic
+      speculation not only evolved side by side in Egypt but mixed and
+      commingled; their thoughts were intertwined and interwoven, giving rise to
+      a new intellectual movement, a new philosophy of thought: the
+      Judæo-Hellenic. Alexandrian culture, during the reign of the Ptolemies, is
+      the offspring of a mixed marriage between two parents belonging to two
+      widely different 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ptolemies encouraged the movement towards fusion. The result was that
+      the Jews in Egypt, not being hampered by reactionary endeavours from the
+      side of conservative parties, and with an adaptability peculiar to their
+      race, soon acquired the language of the people in whose midst they dwelt.
+      They conversed and wrote in Greek; they moulded and shaped their own
+      thoughts into Greek form; they clothed the Semitic mode of thinking in
+      Hellenic garb. The immediate result was the translation of the Pentateuch
+      into Greek. Vanity, of which no individual or race is free, had
+      embellished this literary production, which has acquired a high degree of
+      importance alike among Jews and Christians, with many legends. This
+      translation, known as the Septuaginta (LXX), was followed by independent
+      histories relating to Biblical events. One of the best known authors is
+      the chronographer Demetrius, who lived in the second half of the third
+      century, and whose work Flavius Josephus is supposed to have utilised. Not
+      to speak of the Greek authors in Judæa and Syria, we may mention
+      Artapanos, who, following the fashion of the day, wrote history in the
+      form of a romance, and showed traces of an apologetic character. He
+      endeavoured to attribute all that was great in Egyptian civilisation to
+      Moses. This was due to the fact that Manetho, the Egyptian historian, and
+      others following his example, had spread fables and venomous tales about
+      the ancient sojourn and exodus of the Hebrews and their leader. To
+      counterbalance these accusations, fables had to be interwoven into
+      history, and history became romance. Moses was thus identified with
+      Hermes, and made out to be the father of Egyptian wisdom. But, if the
+      close acquaintanceship of Hebraism and Hellenism began with a mere
+      flirtation, encouraged by the rulers of the land and kept up by the Jews,
+      who wished to gain the favour of the conquering race and to show
+      themselves and their history in as favourable a light as possible, it soon
+      ended in a serious attachment. The Hebrews made themselves acquainted with
+      Hellenic life and thought. They studied Homer and Hesiod, Empedocles and
+      Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, and they were startled by the discovery
+      that in Greek thought there were many elements, moral and religious,
+      familiar to them: this enhanced the attraction. The narrowness and
+      exclusiveness to which strict nationality always gives rise, engendering
+      contempt and hatred for everything foreign&mdash;which made even the
+      Greeks, with all their intellectual culture, draw a line of demarcation
+      between Greek and barbarian&mdash;gave way to a spirit of cosmopolitan
+      breadth of view which has only very rarely been equalled in history.
+      Hellenic and Hebrew forms of thought were brought into friendly union, and
+      gave birth to ideas and aspirations of which humanity may always be proud.
+      Greek æsthetic judgment and Semitic mysticism, different phases of thought
+      in themselves, were welded into one. The religious conceptions of Moses
+      and the Prophets were expressed in the language of the philosophical
+      schools; an attempt was made to bring into harmony the dogmas of
+      supernatural revelation and the fruits of human speculative thought. Such
+      an attempt is a great undertaking, for, if sincerely and relentlessly
+      pursued, it must end in breaking down the barriers of separation, in the
+      establishment of a common truth, and in the sacrifice of cherished ideals
+      and convictions which prove to be wrong. If carried to its logical
+      conclusion, such a cosmopolitan broad-mindedness, such a
+      cross-fertilisation of intellectual products, must give rise to the
+      ennobling idea that there is only one truth, and that the external forms
+      are only fleeting waves upon the vast ocean of human ideals. The attempt
+      was made in Alexandria by the Judæo-Hellenic philosophers. Unfortunately,
+      however, the Hebrews, with all their adaptability, have not yet carried
+      this attempt to its logical conclusion. The spirit of reaction has ever
+      and anon been ready to crush in its infancy the endeavour of truth and
+      sincerity, of broad-mindedness and tolerance. When placed before the
+      question to be or not to be, to be logical or illogical, 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 Hebraism in Egypt had a tragic end. The
+      union was dissolved, not, however, without having produced its issue: the
+      Alexandrian culture, which was carried to Rome by Philo Judæus, and thus
+      influenced later European thought and humanity at large.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/015.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="015.jpg Page Image--Alexandria " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I&mdash;EGYPT CONQUERED BY THE GREEKS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Alexander the Great.&mdash;Cleomenes.&mdash;B.C. 332-323</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The way for the Grecian conquest of Egypt had been preparing for many
+      years. Ever since the memorable march of Xenophon, who led, in the face of
+      unknown difficulties, ten thousand Greeks across Asia Minor, the Greek
+      statesman had suspected that the Hellenic soldier was capable of undreamed
+      possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the young Alexander, succeeding his father Philip on the throne of
+      Macedonia, got himself appointed general by the chief of the Greek states,
+      and marched against Darius Codomanus, King of Persia, at the head of the
+      allied armies, it was not difficult to foresee the result. The Greeks had
+      learned the weakness of the Persians by having been so often hired to
+      fight for them. For a century past, every Persian army had had a body of
+      ten or twenty thousand Greeks in the van, and without this guard the
+      Persians were like a flock of sheep without the shepherd&rsquo;s dog. Those
+      countries which had trusted to Greek mercenaries to defend them could
+      hardly help falling when the Greek states united for their conquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexander defeated the Persians under Darius in a great and memorable
+      battle near the town of Issus at the foot of the Taurus, at the pass which
+      divides Syria from Asia Minor, and then, instead of marching upon Persia,
+      he turned aside to the easier conquest of Egypt. On his way there he spent
+      seven months in the siege of the wealthy city of Tyre, and he there
+      punished with death every man capable of carrying arms, and made slaves of
+      the rest. He was then stopped for some time before the little town of
+      Gaza, where Batis, the brave governor, had the courage to close the gates
+      against the Greek army. His angry fretfulness at being checked by so small
+      a force was only equalled by his cruelty when he had overcome it; he tied
+      Batis by the heels to his chariot, and dragged him round the walls of the
+      city, as Achilles had dragged the body of Hector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the seventh day after leaving Gaza he reached Pelusium, the most
+      easterly town in Egypt, after a march of one hundred and seventy miles
+      along the coast of the Mediterranean, through a parched, glaring desert
+      which forms the natural boundary of the country; while the fleet kept
+      close to the shore to carry the stores for the army, as no fresh water is
+      to be met with on the line of march. The Egyptians did not even try to
+      hide their joy at his approach; they were bending very unwillingly under
+      the heavy and hated yoke of Persia. The Persians had long been looked upon
+      as their natural enemies, and in the pride of their success had added
+      insults to the other evils of being governed by the satrap of a conqueror.
+      They had not even gained the respect of the conquered by their warlike
+      courage, for Egypt had in a great part been conquered and held by Greek
+      mercenaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Persian forces had been mostly withdrawn from the country by Sabaces,
+      the satrap of Egypt, to be led against Alexander in Asia Minor, and had
+      formed part of the army of Darius when he was beaten near the town of
+      Issus on the coast of Cilicia. The garrisons were not strong enough to
+      guard the towns left in their charge; the Greek fleet easily overpowered
+      the Egyptian fleet in the harbour of Pelusium, and the town opened its
+      gates to Alexander. Here he left a garrison, and, ordering his fleet to
+      meet him at Memphis, he marched along the river&rsquo;s bank to Heliopolis. All
+      the towns, on his approach, opened their gates to him. Mazakes, who had
+      been left without an army, as satrap of Egypt, when Sabaces led the troops
+      into Asia Minor, and who had heard of the death of Sabaces, and that
+      Alexander was master of Phoenicia, Syria, and the north of Arabia, had no
+      choice but to yield. The Macedonian army crossed the Nile near Heliopolis,
+      and then entered Memphis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/019.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="019.jpg Transporting Grain on the Nile " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Memphis had long been the chief city of all Egypt, even when not the seat
+      of government. In earlier ages, when the warlike virtues of the Thebans
+      had made Egypt the greatest kingdom in the world, Memphis and the lowland
+      corn-fields of the Delta paid tribute to Thebes; but, with the
+      improvements in navigation, the cities on the coast rose in importance;
+      the navigation of the Red Sea, though always dangerous, became less
+      dreaded, and Thebes lost the toll on the carrying trade of the Nile.
+      Wealth alone, however, would not have given the sovereignty to Lower
+      Egypt, had not the Greek mercenaries been at hand to fight for those who
+      would pay them. The kings of Saïs had guarded their thrones with Greek
+      shields; and it was on the rash but praiseworthy attempt of Amasis to
+      lessen the power of these mercenaries that they joined Cambyses, and Egypt
+      became a Persian province. In the struggles of the Egyptians to throw off
+      the Persian yoke, we see little more than the Athenians and Spartans
+      carrying on their old quarrels on the coasts and plains of the Delta; and
+      the Athenians, who counted their losses by ships, not by men, said that in
+      their victories and defeats together Egypt had cost them two hundred
+      triremes. Hence, when Alexander, by his successes in Greece, had put a
+      stop to the feuds at home, the mercenaries of both parties flocked to his
+      conquering standard, and he found himself on the throne of Upper and Lower
+      Egypt without any struggle being made against him by the Egyptians. The
+      Greek part of the population, who had been living in Egypt as foreigners,
+      now found themselves masters. Egypt became at once a Greek kingdom, as
+      though the blood and language of the people were changed at the
+      conqueror&rsquo;s bidding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexander&rsquo;s character as a triumphant general gains little from this easy
+      conquest of an unwarlike country, and the overthrow of a crumbling
+      monarchy. But as the founder of a new Macedonian state, and for reuniting
+      the scattered elements of society in Lower Egypt after the Persian
+      conquest, in the only form in which a government could be made to stand,
+      he deserves to be placed among the least mischievous of conquerors. We
+      trace his march, not by the ruin, misery, and anarchy which usually follow
+      in the rear of an army, but by the building of new cities, the more
+      certain administration of justice, the revival of trade, and the growth of
+      learning. On reaching Memphis, his first care was to prove to the
+      Egyptians that he was come to re-establish their ancient monarchy. He went
+      in state to the temple of Apis, and sacrificed to 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 by skilful Greeks for their amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:25%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/021.jpg"
+       alt="021.jpg Phtah the God of Memphis " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      But though the temple of Phtah at Memphis, in which the state ceremonies
+      were performed, had risen in beauty and importance by the repeated
+      additions of the later kings, who had fixed the seat of government in
+      Lower Egypt, yet the Sun, or Amon-Ra, or Kneph-Ra, the god of Thebes, or
+      Jupiter-Amnion, as he was called by the Greeks, was the god under whose
+      spreading wings Egypt had seen its proudest days. Every Egyptian king had
+      called himself &ldquo;the son of the Sun;&rdquo; those who had reigned at Thebes had
+      boasted that they were &ldquo;beloved by Amon-Ra;&rdquo; and when Alexander ordered
+      the ancient titles to be used towards himself, he wished to lay his
+      offerings in the temple of this god, and to be acknowledged by the priests
+      as his son. As a reader of Homer, and the pupil of Aristotle, he must have
+      wished to see the wonders of &ldquo;Egyptian Thebes,&rdquo; the proper place for this
+      ceremony; and it could only have been because, as a general, he had not
+      time for a march of five hundred miles, that he chose the nearer and less
+      known temple of Kneph-Ra, in the oasis of Ammon, one hundred and eighty
+      miles from the coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, he floated down the river from Memphis to the sea, taking
+      with him the light-armed troops and the royal band of knights-companions.
+      When he reached Canopus, he sailed westward along the coast, and landed at
+      Rhacotis, a small village on the spot where Alexandria now stands. Here he
+      made no stay; but, as he passed through it, he must have seen at a glance,
+      for he was never there a second time, that the place was formed by nature
+      to be a great harbour, and that with a little help from art it would be
+      the port of all Egypt. The mouths of the Nile were too shallow for the
+      ever increasing size of the merchant vessels which were then being built;
+      and the engineers found the deeper water which was wanted, between the
+      village of Rhacotis and the little island of pharos. It was all that he
+      had seen and admired at Tyre, but it was on a larger scale and with deeper
+      water. It was the very spot that he was in search of; in every way
+      suitable for the Greek colony which he proposed to found as the best means
+      of keeping Egypt in obedience. Even before the time of Homer, the island
+      of Pharos had given shelter to the Greek traders on that coast. He gave
+      his orders to Hinocrates the architect to improve the harbour, and to lay
+      down the plan of his new city; and the success of the undertaking proved
+      the wisdom both of the statesman and of the builder, for the city of
+      Alexandria subsequently became the most famous of all the commercial and
+      intellectual centres of antiquity. From Rhacotis Alexander marched along
+      the coast to Parastonium, a distance of about two hundred miles through
+      the desert; and there, or on his way there, he was met by the ambassadors
+      from Cyrene, who were sent with gifts to beg for peace, and to ask him to
+      honour their city with a visit. Alexander graciously received the gifts of
+      the Cyrenæans, and promised them his friendship, but could not spare time
+      to visit their city; and, without stopping, he turned southward to the
+      oasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Memphis Alexander received the ambassadors that came from Greece to
+      wish him joy of his success; he reviewed his troops, and gave out his
+      plans for the government of the kingdom. He threw bridges of boats over
+      the Nile at the ford below Memphis, and also over the several branches of
+      the river. He divided the country into two nomarchies or judgeships, and
+      to fill these two offices of nomarchs or chief judges, the highest civil
+      offices in the kingdom, he chose Doloaspis and Petisis, two Egyptians.
+      Their duty was to watch over the due administration of justice, one in
+      Upper and the other in Lower Egypt, and perhaps to hear appeals from the
+      lower judges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He left the garrisons in the command of his own Greek generals; Pantaleon
+      commanded the counts, or knights-companions, who garrisoned Memphis, and
+      Pole-mon was governor of Pelusium. These were the chief fortresses in the
+      kingdom: Memphis overlooked the Delta, the navigation of the river, and
+      the pass to Upper Egypt; Pelusium was the harbour for the ships of war,
+      and the frontier town on the only side on which Egypt could be attacked.
+      The other cities were given to other governors; Licidas commanded the
+      mercenaries, Peucestes and Balacrus the other troops, Eugnostus was
+      secretary, while Æschylus and Ephippus were left as overlookers, or
+      perhaps, in the language of modern governments, as civil commissioners.
+      Apollonius was made prefect of Libya, of which district Parætonium was the
+      capital, and Cleomenes prefect of Arabia at Heroopolis, in guard of that
+      frontier. Orders were given to all these generals that justice was to be
+      administered by the Egyptian nomarchs according to the common law or
+      ancient customs of the land. Petisis, however, either never entered upon
+      his office or soon quitted it, and Doloaspis was left nomarch of all
+      Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 had gone out of
+      cultivation with the gradual decline of Upper Egypt; and he employed them
+      to guard the province against invasion or rebellion. He did not stay in
+      Egypt longer than was necessary to give these orders, but hastened towards
+      the Euphrates to meet Darius. In his absence Egypt remained quiet and
+      happy. Peucestes soon followed him to Babylon with some of the troops that
+      had been left in Egypt; and Cleomenes, the governor of Heroopolis, was
+      then made collector of the taxes and prefect of Egypt. Cleomenes was a bad
+      man; he disobeyed the orders sent from Alexander on the Indus, and he
+      seems to have forgotten the mild feelings which guided his master; yet,
+      upon the whole, after the galling yoke of the Persians, the Egyptians must
+      have felt grateful for the blessings of justice and good government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At one time, when passing through the Thebaid in his barge on the Nile,
+      Cleomenes was wrecked, and one of his children bitten by a crocodile. On
+      this plea, he called together the priests, probably of Crocodilopolis,
+      where this animal was held sacred, and told them that he intended to
+      revenge himself upon the crocodiles by having them all caught and killed;
+      and he was only bought off from carrying his threat into execution by the
+      priests giving him all the treasure that they could get together.
+      Alexander had left orders that the great market should be moved from
+      Canopus to his new city of Alexandria, as soon as it should be ready to
+      receive it. As the building went forward, the priests and rich traders of
+      Canopus, in alarm at losing the advantages of their port, gave Cleomenes a
+      large sum of money for leave to keep their market open. This sum he took,
+      and, when the building at Alexandria was finished, he again came to
+      Canopus, and because the traders would not or could not raise a second and
+      larger sum, he carried Alexander&rsquo;s orders into execution, and closed the
+      market of their city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But instances such as these, of a public officer making use of dishonest
+      means to increase the amount of the revenue which it was his duty to
+      collect, might unfortunately be found even in countries which were for the
+      most part enjoying the blessings of wise laws and good government; and it
+      is not probable that, while Alexander was with the army in Persia, the
+      acts of fraud and wrong should have been fewer in his own kingdom of
+      Macedonia. The dishonesty of Cleomenes was indeed equally shown toward the
+      Macedonians, by his wish to cheat the troops out of part of their pay. The
+      pay of the soldiers was due on the first day of each month, but on that
+      day he took care to be out of the way, and the soldiers were paid a few
+      days later; and by doing the same on each following month, he at length
+      changed the pay-day to the last day of the month, and cheated the army out
+      of a whole month&rsquo;s pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another act for which Cleomenes was blamed was not so certainly wrong. One
+      summer, when the harvest had been less plentiful than usual, he forbade
+      the export of grain, which was a large part of the trade of Egypt, thereby
+      lowering the price to the poor so far as they could afford to purchase
+      such costly food, but injuring the landowners. On this, the heads of the
+      provinces sent to him in alarm, to say that they should not be able to get
+      in the usual amount of tribute; he therefore allowed the export as usual,
+      but raised the duty; and he was reproached for receiving a larger revenue
+      while the landowners were suffering from a smaller crop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/027.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="027.jpg Lighthouse at Alexandria " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      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 at
+      the temple of Kneph in the oasis of Ammon, what honours he might pay to
+      the deceased. The messengers brought him an answer, that he might declare
+      Hephæstion a demigod, and order that he should be worshipped. Accordingly,
+      Alexander then sent an express command to Cleomenes that he should build a
+      temple to his lost favourite in his new city of Alexandria, and that the
+      lighthouse which was to be built on the island of Pharos should be named
+      after him; and as modern insurances against risks by sea usually begin
+      with the words &ldquo;In the name of God; Amen;&rdquo; so all contracts between
+      merchants in the port of Alexandria were to be written solemnly &ldquo;In the
+      name of Hephæstion.&rdquo; Feeling diffident of enforcing obedience at the mouth
+      of the Nile, while he was himself writing from the sources of the Indus,
+      he added that if, when he came to Egypt he found his wish carried into
+      effect, he would pardon Cleomenes for those acts of misgovernment of which
+      he had been accused, and for any others which might then come to his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A somatophylax in the Macedonian army was no doubt at first, as the word
+      means, one of the officers who had to answer for the king&rsquo;s safety;
+      perhaps in modern language a colonel in the body-guards or household
+      troops; but as, in unmixed monarchies, the faithful officer who was
+      nearest the king&rsquo;s person, to whose watchfulness he trusted in the hour of
+      danger, often found himself the adviser in matters of state, so, in the
+      time of Alexander, the title of somatophylax was given to those generals
+      on whose wisdom the king chiefly leaned, and by whose advice he was
+      usually guided. Among these, and foremost in Alexander&rsquo;s love and esteem,
+      was Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. Philip, the father of Alexander, had given
+      Arsinoë, one of his relations, in marriage to Lagus; and her eldest son
+      Ptolemy, born soon after the marriage, was always thought to be the king&rsquo;s
+      son, though never so acknowledged. As he grew up, he was put into the
+      highest offices by Philip, without raising in the young Alexander&rsquo;s mind
+      the distrust which might have been felt if Ptolemy could have boasted that
+      he was the elder brother. He earned the good opinion of Alexander by his
+      military successes in Asia, and gained his gratitude by saving his life
+      when he was in danger among the Oxydracæ, near the river Indus; and
+      moreover, Alexander looked up to him as the historian whose literary
+      powers and knowledge of military tactics were to hand down to the wonder
+      of future ages those conquests which he witnessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexander&rsquo;s victories over Darius, and march to the river Indus, are no
+      part of this history: it is enough to say that he died at Babylon eight
+      years after he had entered Egypt; and his half-brother Philip Arridæus, a
+      weak-minded, unambitious young man, was declared by the generals assembled
+      at Babylon to be his successor. His royal blood united more voices in the
+      army in his favour than the warlike and statesmanlike character of any one
+      of the rival generals. They were forced to be content with sharing the
+      provinces between them as his lieutenants; some hoping to govern by their
+      power over the weak mind of Arridæus, and others secretly meaning to make
+      themselves independent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this weighty matter, Ptolemy showed the wisdom and judgment which had
+      already gained him his high character. Though his military rank and skill
+      were equal to those of any one of Alexander&rsquo;s generals, and his claim by
+      birth perhaps equal to that of Arridæous, he was not one of those who
+      aimed at the throne; nor did he even aim at the second place, but left to
+      Perdiccas the regency, with the care of the king&rsquo;s person, in whose name
+      that ambitious general vainly hoped to govern the whole of Alexander&rsquo;s
+      conquests. But Ptolemy, more wisely measuring his strength with 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 others the easiest to
+      be held as an independent kingdom against the power of Perdiccas. When
+      Egypt was given to Ptolemy by the council of generals, Cleomenes was at
+      the same time and by the same power made second in command, and he
+      governed Egypt for one year before Ptolemy&rsquo;s arrival, that being in name
+      the first year of the reign of Philip Arridæus, or, according to the
+      chronologer&rsquo;s mode of dating, the first year after Alexander&rsquo;s death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/031.jpg" width="100%" alt="031.jpg Page Image " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II&mdash;EGYPT UNDER PTOLEMY SOTER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Ptolemy governs Egypt, overcomes Perdiccas, and founds a dynasty</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy Lagus was one of those who, at the death of Alexander, had raised
+      their voices against giving the whole of the conquered countries to one
+      king; he wished that they should have been shared equally among the
+      generals as independent kingdoms. In this he was overruled, and he
+      accepted his government as the lieutenant of the youthful Philip Arridæus,
+      though no doubt with the fixed purpose of making Egypt an independent
+      kingdom. On reaching Memphis, the seat of his government, his whole
+      thoughts were turned towards strengthening himself against Perdiccas, who
+      hoped to be obeyed, in the name of his young and weak-minded king, by all
+      his fellow generals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Greek and foreign mercenaries of which the army of Alexander was made
+      up, and who were faithful to his memory and to his family, had little to
+      guide them in the choice of which leader they should follow to his distant
+      province, beside the thought of where they should be best treated; and
+      Ptolemy&rsquo;s high character for wisdom, generosity, and warlike skill had
+      gained many friends for him among the officers; they saw that the wealth
+      of Egypt would put it in his power to reward those whose services were
+      valuable to him; and hence crowds flocked to his standard. On reaching
+      their provinces, the Greek soldiers, whether Spartans or Athenians,
+      forgetting the glories of Thermopylæ and Marathon, and proud of their
+      wider conquests under the late king, always called themselves Macedonians.
+      They pleased themselves with the thought that the whole of the conquered
+      countries were still governed by the brother of Alexander; and no one of
+      his generals, in his wildest thoughts of ambition, whether aiming, like
+      Ptolemy, at founding a kingdom, or, like Perdiccas, at the government of
+      the world, was unwise enough to throw off the title of lieutenant to
+      Philip Arridæus, and to forfeit the love of the Macedonian soldiers and
+      his surest hold on their loyalty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first act of Ptolemy was to put to death Cleomenes, who had been made
+      sub-governor of Egypt by the same council of generals which had made
+      Ptolemy governor. This act may have been called for by the dishonesty and
+      crooked dealing which Cleomenes had been guilty of in collecting taxes;
+      but, though the whole tenor of Ptolemy&rsquo;s life would seem to disprove the
+      charge, we cannot but fear that he was in part led to this deed because he
+      looked upon Cleomenes as the friend of Perdiccas, or because he could not
+      trust him in his plans for making himself king of Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the very commencement of his government, Ptolemy prepared for the war
+      which he knew must follow a declaration of his designs. Perhaps better
+      than any other general of Alexander, he knew how to win the favour of the
+      people under his rule. The condition of the country quickly improved under
+      his mild administration. The growing seaport of Alexandria was a good
+      market for a country rich in natural produce, and, above all, Egypt&rsquo;s
+      marvellously good geographical position stood her in good stead in time of
+      war. Surrounded nearly on all sides by desert land, the few inhabitants,
+      roving Bedouins, offered no danger. The land of the Nile was accessible to
+      an enemy in one direction only, along the coast of Syria. This even teemed
+      with difficulties. Transports there could only be managed with the
+      greatest ingenuity, and, in case of defeat, retreat was almost impossible.
+      On the other hand, the Egyptian army, helped by all the advantages of a
+      land irrigated on the canal system, and which could be flooded at will,
+      had only to act on the defensive to be certain of victory. The country is
+      perhaps more open to an attack from the sea, but, by a moderately
+      well-conducted defensive movement, the enemy could be kept to the coast.
+      Even the landing there is scarcely possible, on account of the natural
+      difficulties at the mouth of the Nile. The one easy spot&mdash;Alexandria&mdash;was
+      so well fortified that an invader had but little chance of success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the time of Alexander&rsquo;s death (and to some extent brought about by
+      this event), civil war broke out in Cyrenaica, in consequence of which the
+      followers of one party were forced out of the town of Cyrene. These joined
+      themselves with the exiles of the town of Barca, and together sought help
+      of foreigners. They placed themselves under the leadership of the Spartan
+      Thibron, formerly Alexander&rsquo;s chancellor of the exchequer. Begged by the
+      exiled Cyrenians to help them, he now directed his forces against Libya,
+      fought a fierce battle, and took possession of the harbour of Apollonia,
+      two miles distant from the town. He then besieged the town of Cyrene, and
+      forced the Cyrenians at last to sue for peace. They were obliged to make a
+      payment of five hundred talents and to take back the exiles. Messengers
+      were sent by Thibron to incite the other towns in Cyrenaica to join him
+      and to help him conquer their neighbour, Libya. Thibron&rsquo;s followers were
+      allowed to plunder, and this led to quarrels, desertions, treacherous
+      acts, and the recruiting of his army from the Peloponnesus. After varying
+      fortunes of war, in the spring of 322 B. C., some of the Cyrenians fled to
+      Egypt, and related to Ptolemy what had occurred in Cyrenaica, begging him
+      to help them back to their homes. The suggestion was welcome to him, for
+      victory would be easy over these struggling factions. He sent a strong
+      military and naval force, under Ophelas, the Macedonian, to Cyrenaica in
+      the summer. When these were seen approaching, those exiles who had found
+      refuge with Thibron decided to join them. Their plan, however, was
+      discovered, and they were put to death. The leader of the rabble in Cyrene
+      (fearful for his own safety, now that the exiles who had fled to Egypt
+      were returning) made overtures of peace to Thibron, and joined with him to
+      repulse Ophelas. The latter worked with the utmost caution, sent an army
+      under Epicides of Olynth against Tancheira, whilst he himself marched
+      against Cyrene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/035.jpg" width="100%" alt="035.jpg the DÔm Palm. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      He met Thibron in a fierce fight. The latter was completely defeated and
+      fled towards Tancheira, where he hoped to find help, but instead fell into
+      Epicides&rsquo; hands. Thibron was given over to the people of Tancheira for
+      punishment. He was cruelly scourged, and then dragged to Apollonia, where
+      he was crucified. Ophelas, however, was not able to conquer the Cyrenians
+      until Ptolemy himself arrived with fresh troops, overpowered the town and
+      joined the province to his own satrapy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conquest of this Greek province was a gain equally for himself and for
+      the Greeks. He put an end to the horrible anarchy that prevailed there,
+      and proved himself their saviour as well as their conqueror. His name was
+      now an honoured one among all the Greeks. When it was rumoured that war
+      was likely to break out between Ptolemy and the royal party, the
+      Macedonians flocked to Alexandria, &ldquo;every man ready to give all and to
+      sacrifice himself in order to help his friend.&rdquo; A popular belief of the
+      day was that, although Ptolemy was known as the son of Lagos, he was in
+      reality the son of Philip, and indeed much in his manner resembled the
+      great founder of the Macedonian power. Amongst the successors of
+      Alexander, not one understood as well as he how to retain and increase the
+      power which he had won. He recognised, also, from the first, the tendency
+      of the age: the tendency to split up the kingdom into different states;
+      and he had made this the basis of his policy. It was under him that the
+      first state (in the new sense of the word) was founded. He was the leader
+      of the new movement that soon generated disunity, and to this end he made
+      a secret contract with Antipatros against the regent Perdiccas. About this
+      time also misunderstandings between the regent and the rulers in the West
+      began to take a serious aspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a great meeting in Babylon in the summer of the year 323, it was
+      decided that the body of Alexander was to be taken with great solemnity to
+      the Temple of Amon, and that the equipping and guidance of the funeral
+      procession should be entrusted to Arridæus. At the end of the year 323,
+      the necessary preparations were finished. The gigantic funeral car that
+      was to carry the kingly bier had been decorated with unparalleled
+      magnificence. Without waiting for orders from the regent, Arridæus started
+      with the funeral procession from Babylon. Crowds from far and near filled
+      the streets, some curious to see the magnificent sight, others eager to
+      show this last token of respect to the dead king. It was firmly believed
+      amongst the Macedonians that the country in which Alexander&rsquo;s body had its
+      last resting-place would become happy and powerful above all countries.
+      This prophecy was uttered by the old seer Telmissus soon after the king&rsquo;s
+      death. Did Ptolemy have this belief, or did he wish to make use of it?
+      There were probably other reasons which had caused him to enter into an
+      understanding with Arridæus, and to arrange with him that he was to start
+      without orders from the regent. He was afraid that Perdiccas, in order to
+      add to the solemnity of the procession, would himself accompany the body
+      with the imperial army to Egypt. Ptolemy felt that his position in the
+      lands entrusted to his care would be greatly weakened if a higher
+      authority than himself could appear there with a military force. Arridæus
+      led the funeral train to Damascus, as had been arranged before with
+      Ptolemy. It was in vain that Pole-mon (one of Perdiccas&rsquo; generals), who
+      was in the neighbourhood, went to meet him. He was able to obtain no
+      aspect for the express order of the regent. The funeral procession passed
+      Damascus on its way to Egypt. Ptolemy accompanied the body with his army
+      as far as Syria. It was then taken on to Memphis to rest there until it
+      could be sheltered by that beautiful sepulchre of the kings at Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arridæus&rsquo; action, in starting without permission, and the defiance of
+      Polemon&rsquo;s order, were acts of open revolt against the higher authority of
+      the kingdom. Perdiccas called all loyal followers to the council of war.
+      Ptolemy, he said, had defied the order of the kings in his behaviour
+      concerning the funeral procession; and he had also given shelter to the
+      exiled satraps of Phrygia. He was prepared for war, which he hoped to
+      bring about. It was for them (the loyal ones) to uphold the dignity of the
+      kingdom. They must try to take him unawares, and to overcome them
+      individually. The question was, if the Egyptians or the Macedonians ought
+      to be first attacked. In the end, plans were carefully concerted for an
+      attack on Egypt and the protection of Europe. In the early spring of B.C.
+      321, Perdiccas and his colleagues set out for Egypt with the imperial
+      army, ordering the fleet to follow, and leaving Eumenes with skilled
+      officers and troops in general command of Asia Minor for the purpose of
+      guarding the Hellespont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Egyptian frontier, Perdiccas summoned the army together, that the
+      men themselves should give judgment in the case of the satrap of Egypt, in
+      the same way as in the preceding autumn they had given judgment in the
+      case of Antigones. He expected a decision which would enable him to finish
+      what he had already begun. The accusations were that he had refused
+      obedience to the kings, that he had fought against and overcome the Greeks
+      of Cyrenaica (who had received freedom from Alexander), and that he had
+      taken possession of the king&rsquo;s body, and carried it to Memphis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to the single account, which tells us of these proceedings,
+      Ptolemy himself appeared to conduct his own defence before the assembled
+      warriors. He had good reason for reckoning on the impression his
+      confidence in them would make upon them, and on the love that he knew the
+      Macedonians bore towards him. He knew, too, of the increasing dislike of
+      the imperial regent. His defence was heard with growing approval, and the
+      army&rsquo;s judgment was &ldquo;freedom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of this the regent kept to the war. The decision of the troops
+      alienated him still more from them. The war with Egypt was contrary to
+      their wishes, and they murmured openly. Perdiccas sought to put down the
+      refractory spirit with a stern military hand, but the remonstrances of his
+      officers were in vain. He treated the first in the land in an
+      inconsiderate and despotic manner, removed the most deserving from their
+      command, and trusted himself alone. This same man, who had climbed the
+      path to greatness with so much foresight, self-command, energy, and
+      statesmanship, seemed now, the nearer he grew to the summit of his
+      ambition, to lose all clearness of sight and moderation, which traits
+      alone could help him to take this last and dangerous step. He had the
+      advantage of tried troops, the elephants of Alexander, and the fleet under
+      the command of his brother-in-law was near the mouth of the Nile; but he
+      had overstepped the mark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just at this time, the news reached him from Asia Minor that Eumenes had
+      conquered Neoptolemas, the governor of Armenia, who had taken the side of
+      Ptolemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all the more hope, Perdiccas went to meet the enemy. He reached
+      Pelusium undisturbed. It was highly necessary that the army should cross
+      to the Pelusaic side of the Nile, for there were several secure places
+      there, which, if allowed to remain in the hands of the enemy, would
+      endanger the forward movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/040.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="040.jpg a Silhouette on the Nile " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      There were also plentiful supplies of provisions within the Delta, whilst
+      the way through the so-called Arabia was sparsely inhabited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he did not find the Egyptians there, Perdiccas would install himself
+      within one of the fortresses on that side, and thence conduct operations
+      against them, and, at the same time, remain in connection with his fleet,
+      on which he could fall back in case of need. To enable the crossing to be
+      accomplished as easily as possible, Perdiccas ordered the cleaning out of
+      an old and filled-in canal, that led up from the Nile. The work was
+      evidently begun without much thought, for the fact had not been considered
+      that, at the rising of the Nile, the canal would want a much deeper bed
+      than the present stream required. The canal had only just been opened up,
+      when the water rose with unusual force and rapidity; the dam was
+      completely destroyed, and many workers lost their lives. During the
+      disturbance, many officers and men left the camp and hurried to Ptolemy.
+      This was the beginning of the Egyptian war. The desertion of so many
+      important men made Perdiccas think seriously. He summoned the officers of
+      the army, spoke to them with much condescension, gave presents to some,
+      honoured others with promotion, and begged them, for the sake of their
+      honour and for the cause of their kings, to fight their hardest against
+      this rebel, and with the order to hold their men in-readiness, he left
+      them. The army was only told in the evening, at the signal for starting,
+      where they were to march. Perdiccas feared, on account of the desertion
+      that was taking place in his army, that his march might be discovered by
+      the enemy. They marched with great speed through the night, and camped at
+      last on the side of the river. At daybreak, after the troops had rested,
+      Perdiccas gave the order to cross. First came the elephants, then the
+      light infantry, next the storming party with ladders, and lastly, the pick
+      of the cavalry, who, if the enemy should burst out during the storming,
+      could easily drive them back. Perdiccas hoped, if he could only get a firm
+      footing on that side of the river, to annihilate the Egyptian army easily
+      with his superior force. He was right in feeling that his Macedonian
+      troops, when face to face with the enemy, would forget their antipathy to
+      him, and think only of their military honour. When about half the army had
+      crossed, and just as the elephants were moving towards the fortress, the
+      enemy were seen hurrying thither with great speed; their trumpet-calls and
+      war-cries even were heard. They reached the fort before the Macedonians,
+      and withdrew into the shelter of its walls. Not discouraged by this, the
+      infantry stormed the fort. Ladders were placed against the walls, the
+      elephants driven forward, and palisades taken from their backs to attack
+      the ramparts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy, in the dress of a Macedonian soldier, stood on the wall
+      surrounded by a few selected men. He was first in the fight. From where he
+      stood he pierced with his lance the eyes of the leading elephant, and
+      stabbed the Indian on its back, and he wounded many and killed numbers of
+      the storming party. His officers and men fought with the greatest spirit;
+      the driver of the second elephant was killed and the infantry were driven
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perdiccas led new troops to the attack, wishing to take the fortress at
+      all costs. By word and deed, Ptolemy urged on his men, who fought with
+      marvellous endurance. The dreadful battle waged the whole day; many were
+      killed and wounded; evening came on and nothing was decided. Perdiccas
+      ordered a retreat and returned to his camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of the night he again started with his army, hoping that
+      Ptolemy would stay in the fort with his troops, and that, after a trying
+      march of some miles up-stream, he (Perdiccas) would be able to cross the
+      river more easily. At daybreak he found himself opposite one of the many
+      islands of the Nile; it was large enough for the camp of a great army. In
+      spite of the difficulties of crossing, he decided to encamp his army
+      there. The water reached up to the soldiers&rsquo; knees, and it was with the
+      greatest difficulty that they kept their footing against the force of the
+      current. In order to break this current, Perdiccas ordered the elephants
+      into the river to stand up-stream to the left of the fording party; he
+      ordered the horsemen to stand at the other end to help those across that
+      were driven down by the current. Some had, with great difficulty, managed
+      to get across; others were still in the stream when it was noticed that
+      the water was becoming deeper; the heavily armed men sank, and the
+      elephants and horses stood deeper and deeper in the water. A fearful panic
+      seized the army. They called out that the enemy had closed in the canals
+      up-stream, and that the gods had destined bad weather in the upper
+      provinces, on account of which the river was swollen. Those who understood
+      saw that the bed of the river had become deepened by the crossing of so
+      great a cavalcade. It was impossible for the remainder to cross or for
+      those on the island to return. They were completely cut off and were at
+      the mercy of the enemy, who were already seen approaching. There was
+      nothing left but to order them to get back as well as they could; lucky
+      indeed were those who could swim, and had sufficient strength to bring
+      them across the broad expanse of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/044.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="044.jpg Crocodiles Basking in the Sun " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Many saved themselves in this way. They came without weapons, worn out and
+      desperate, to the shore; others were drowned or eaten by crocodiles. Some
+      were carried down-stream, and reached the shore where the enemy stood. Two
+      thousand men were missing, many officers among them. The camp of the
+      Egyptians was situated on the other side, and they could be seen helping
+      the men in the water and burning logs of wood to show honour to the dead.
+      On this side of the river there was sad silence; each man sought his
+      comrade, or officer, and sought in vain. Food was scarce, and there was no
+      means of overcoming this dreadful state of affairs; night came on, and
+      curses and complaints were heard on all sides. The lives of so many brave
+      men had been sacrificed for nothing; it was bad enough to lose the &ldquo;honour
+      of their arms,&rdquo; but now, through the stupidity of their leader, their
+      lives had been lost, and to be swallowed by crocodiles was now the
+      distinguished death of Macedonian warriors. Many of the officers went to
+      the tent of the regent, and told him openly that he was the cause of this
+      calamity. Outside the tent the Macedonians yelled, beside themselves with
+      rage. About a hundred of the officers, headed by the satrap Python,
+      refused to share further responsibility, resigned their commissions, and
+      left the tent. The excitement grew intense. The troops, in ungovernable
+      rage, entered the regent&rsquo;s tent and threw themselves upon him. Antigonus
+      struck the first blow, others followed, and, after a desperate but short
+      struggle, Perdiccas fell to the ground covered with wounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus died Perdiccas, in the third year of his regency. His great idea, the
+      unity of the kingdom entrusted to his care, should have made him worthy of
+      more success had he given himself up to this idea with more
+      conscientiousness. Unfortunately, with growing power, he became despotic
+      and unjust. He was not great enough to become the successor of Alexander,
+      to be another &ldquo;ruler of the world.&rdquo; This last step, the one which was to
+      lead him to his long-coveted goal, led him instead to his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy soon heard the news, and the next morning he crossed the river and
+      came to the camp. He asked to be taken to the kings, presented them and
+      some of the nobles with gifts; was kind and considerate to all, and was
+      greeted with great joy. Then he called the troops together and spoke to
+      them. He told the Macedonians that it was only stern necessity that caused
+      him to take up arms against his old comrades. No man regretted more than
+      he the untimely death of so many heroes. Perdiccas was the cause of this
+      calamity; he had but received his just punishment. Now all enmity was to
+      be ended. He had saved as many as he could from death in the water, and
+      the corpses which the river had brought to the shore he had buried with
+      all honour; and finally he told them that he had given orders for the
+      immediate alleviation of the want which he knew was being felt in the
+      camp. His speech was received with loud cheers. He stood there unhurt and
+      admired before the Macedonians, who but a few hours earlier had been his
+      bitterest foes. Now they looked upon him as their saviour; they all
+      acknowledged him as the conqueror, and for the moment he stood in
+      unequivocal possession of that power for which Perdiccas had worked so
+      hard, and which he had so much abused. Who was now to be Perdiccas&rsquo;
+      successor, and to manage the kingdom in the name of the kings? With one
+      voice the people begged Ptolemy to undertake this task. The foresight and
+      presence of mind of the son of Lagus were not clouded by the allurement of
+      such an offer gained by his sudden change of fortune. At this supreme
+      moment he acted with consummate sagacity. He divined that a refusal of the
+      proffered honour would make him in reality more powerful, although, at the
+      moment, he would seem to be acting in an unselfish manner. He recommended
+      to the army, as a favour which he had to bestow, those he thought worthy
+      of his thanks; they were Python, the Median strategist, who had taken the
+      first decisive step against Perdiccas; and Arridæus, who, in spite of
+      Perdiccas&rsquo; orders, had taken the body of the king to Egypt. These two were
+      nominated regents with loud cheers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Macedonian army, accordingly, chose Python and Arridæus as guardians,
+      and as rulers with unlimited power over the whole of Alexander&rsquo;s
+      conquests; but, though none of the Greek generals who now held Asia Minor,
+      Syria, Babylonia, Thrace, or Egypt dared to acknowledge it to the
+      soldiers, yet in reality the power of the guardians was limited to the
+      little kingdom of Macedonia. With the death of Perdiccas, and the
+      withdrawal of his army, Phoenicia and Coele-Syria were left unguarded, and
+      almost without a master. In order that Egypt might take an important part
+      in the universal policy, Ptolemy felt he must possess Syria, which would
+      open up the way for him to the countries along the Euphrates and the
+      Tigris, and also the island of Cyprus, where he would be near the coast of
+      Asia Minor. He could not yet think of conquering Cyprus, which had an
+      important fleet. He felt that, if he annexed Syria, either by diplomacy or
+      by force, the organisation of the kingdom and the territorial division of
+      power would be changed in a tangible manner. The Egyptian satraps already
+      possessed some measure of authority, and he could also depend upon the
+      satrap of Syria joining him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perdiccas had bestowed this satrapy upon Laomedon, the Amphysolite, who
+      had taken no part in the great fight between Perdiccas and Ptolemy.
+      Ptolemy now informed him that he wished to possess his satrapy, but was
+      ready to compensate him with a sum of money. Laomedon refused this offer
+      with scorn. Thereupon, an army under Nicanor, one of the &ldquo;friends&rdquo; of
+      Ptolemy, marched into Palestine. Jerusalem was the only place that held
+      out against the Egyptian army; but Nicanor, says the historian
+      Agathareides, seeing that on every seventh day the garrison withdrew from
+      the walls, chose that day for the assault, and thus gained the city.
+      Without further opposition the Egyptians marched onwards. At last he met
+      Laomedon, took him prisoner, and brought him back to Egypt. Egyptian
+      sentries now guarded the strongholds of the country; Egyptian ships took
+      the towns along the coast. A great number of the Jews were transported to
+      Alexandria; they received the rights of citizenship there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/049.jpg" width="100%" alt="049.jpg a Theban Belle " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Without altering local conditions, Syria gradually came under the sway of
+      the Egyptian satraps. Laomedon found means of escaping from Egypt; he fled
+      to Alcetas in Caria, who had just withdrawn himself to the mountainous
+      regions of Pisida, thence to begin the decisive war against Antigonus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/050.jpg" width="100%" alt="050.jpg Prayer to Isis " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="050-text (4K)" src="images/050-text.jpg" width="100%" />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      In the earlier times of Egyptian history, when navigation was less easy,
+      and when seas separated kingdoms instead of joining them, the Thebaid
+      enjoyed, under the Koptic kings, the trading wealth which followed the
+      stream of its great river, the longest piece of inland navigation then
+      known; but, with the improvement in navigation and ship-building,
+      countries began to feel their strength in the timber of their forests and
+      the number of their harbours; and, as timber and sea-coast were equally
+      unknown in the Thebaid, that country fell as Lower Egypt rose; the wealth
+      which before centred in Thebes was then found in the ports of the Delta,
+      where the barges of the Nile met the ships of the Mediterranean. What used
+      to be Egypt was an inland kingdom, surrounded by the desert; but Egypt
+      under Ptolemy was country on the sea-coast; and, on the conquest of
+      Phoenicia and Coele-Syria, he was master of the forests of Lebanon and
+      Antilibanus, and stretched his coast from Cyrene to Antioch, a distance of
+      twelve hundred miles. The wise and mild plans which were laid down by
+      Alexander for the government of Egypt when a province were easily followed
+      by Ptolemy when it became his own kingdom. The Greek soldiers lived in
+      their garrisons or in Alexandria under the Macedonian laws, while the
+      Egyptian laws were administered by their own priests, who were upheld in
+      all the rights of their order and in their freedom from land-tax. The
+      temples of Phtah, of Amon-Ra, and the other gods of the country were not
+      only kept open, but were repaired and even built at the cost of the king;
+      the religion of the people, and not that of their rulers, was made the
+      established religion of the state. On the death of the god Apis, the
+      sacred bull of Memphis, the chief of the animals which were kept and fed
+      at the cost of the several cities, and who had died of old age soon after
+      Ptolemy came to Egypt, he spent the sum of fifty talents, or $42,500, on
+      its funeral; and the priests, who had not forgotten that Cambyses, their
+      former conqueror, had wounded the Apis of his day with his own sword, must
+      have been highly pleased with this mark of his care for them. The
+      burial-place for the bulls is an arched gallery tunnelled into the hill
+      behind Memphis for more than two thousand feet, with a row of cells on
+      each side of it. In every cell is a huge granite sarcophagus, within which
+      were placed the remains of a bull that had once been the Apis of its day,
+      which, after having for perhaps twenty years received the honours of a
+      god, was there buried with more than kingly state. The cell was then
+      walled up, and ornamented on the outside with various tablets in honour of
+      the deceased animal, which were placed in these dark passages by the piety
+      of his worshippers. The priests of Thebes were now at liberty to cut out
+      from their monuments the names of usurping gods, and to restore those that
+      had been before cut out. They also rebuilt the inner room, or the holy of
+      holies, in the great temple of Karnak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been overthrown by the Persians in wantonness, or in hatred of the
+      Egyptian religion; and the priests now put upon it the name of Philip
+      Arridæus, for whom Ptolemy was nominally governing Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:33%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/052.jpg"
+       alt="052.jpg Tombs of the Sacred Bulls " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptians, who during the last two centuries had sometimes seen their
+      temples plundered and their trade crushed by the grasping tyranny of the
+      Persian satraps, and had at other times been almost as much hurt by their
+      own vain struggles for freedom, now found themselves in the quiet
+      enjoyment of good laws, with a prosperity which promised soon to equal
+      that of the reigns of Necho or Amasis. It is true that they had not
+      regained their independence and political liberty; that, as compared with
+      the Greeks, they felt themselves an inferior race, and that they only
+      enjoyed their civil rights during the pleasure of a Greek autocrat; but
+      then it is to be remembered that the native rulers with whom Ptolemy was
+      compared were the kings of Lower Egypt, who, like himself, were surrounded
+      by Greek mercenaries, and who never rested their power on the broad base
+      of national pride and love of country; and that nobody could have hoped to
+      see a Theban king arise to bring back the days of Thûtmosis and Ramses.
+      Thebes was every day sinking in wealth and strength; and its race of
+      hereditary soldiers, proud in the recollection of former glory, who had,
+      after centuries of struggles, been forced to receive laws from Memphis,
+      perhaps yielded obedience to a Greek conqueror with less pain than they
+      did formerly to their own vassals of Lower Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy&rsquo;s government was in form nearly the same in Alexandria as in the
+      rest of Egypt, but in reality it was wholly different. His sway over the
+      Egyptians was supported by Greek force, but over the Greeks it rested on
+      the broad base of public opinion. Every Greek had the privilege of bearing
+      arms, and of meeting in the gymnasium in public assembly, to explain a
+      grievance, and petition for its redress. The citizens and the soldiers
+      were the same body of men; they at the same time held the force, and had
+      the spirit to use it. But they had no senate, no body of nobles, no
+      political constitution which might save their freedom in after generations
+      from the ambitious grasp of the sovereign, or from their own degeneracy.
+      While claiming to be equal among themselves they were making themselves
+      slaves; and though at present the government so entirely bore the stamp of
+      their own will that they might fancy they enjoyed a democracy, yet history
+      teaches us that the simple paternal form of government never fails to
+      become sooner or later a cruel tyranny. The building of Alexandria must be
+      held the master-stroke of policy by which Egypt was kept in obedience.
+      Here, and afterwards in a few other cities, such as Ptolemais in the
+      Thebaid and Parembole in Nubia, the Greeks lived without insulting or
+      troubling the Egyptians, and by their numbers held the country like so
+      many troops in garrison. It was a wise policy to make no greater change
+      than necessary in the kingdom, and to leave the Egyptians under their own
+      laws and magistrates, and in the enjoyment of their own religion; and yet
+      it was necessary to have the country garrisoned with Greeks, whose
+      presence in the old cities could not but be extremely galling to the
+      Egyptians. This was done by means of these new Greek cities, where the
+      power by which Egypt was governed was stronger by being united, and less
+      hateful by being out of sight. Seldom or never was so great a monarchy
+      founded with so little force and so little crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:21%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/055.jpg" alt="055.jpg the God Serapis " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy, however, did not attempt the difficult task of uniting the two
+      races, and of treating the conquered and the conquerors as entitled to the
+      same privileges. From the time of Necho and Psammetichus, many of the
+      Greeks who settled in Egypt intermarried with the natives, and very much
+      laid aside their own habits; and sometimes their offspring, after a
+      generation or two, became wholly Egyptian. By the Greek laws the children
+      of these mixed marriages were declared to be barbarians; not Greeks but
+      Egyptians, and were brought up accordingly. They left the worship of
+      Jupiter and Juno for that of Isis and Osiris, and perhaps the more readily
+      for the greater earnestness with which the Egyptian gods were worshipped.
+      We now trace their descendants by the form of their skulls, even into the
+      priestly families; and of one hundred mummies covered with hieroglyphics,
+      taken up from the catacombs near Thebes, about twenty show a European
+      origin, while of those from the tombs near Memphis, seventy out of every
+      hundred have lost their Koptic peculiarities. It is easy to foresee that
+      an important change would have been wrought in the character of the people
+      and in their political institutions, if the Greek laws had been humane and
+      wise enough to grant to the children of mixed marriages the privileges,
+      the education, and thereby the moral feelings of the more favoured parent;
+      and it is not too much to suppose, if the Greek law of marriage had been
+      altered by Ptolemy, that within three centuries above half the nation
+      would have spoken the Greek language, and boasted of its Greek origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stimulus given by Ptolemy Soter to the culture of the age has been
+      already mentioned. The founding of the famous museum and library of
+      Alexandria may be, perhaps, regarded as the rounding-off of his political
+      plans for the consolidation of his kingdom. Alexandria became, in fact,
+      not only a centre of commerce and government, but also the intellectual
+      capital of the Greeks. But for this supreme importance of the city, it is
+      doubtful whether the descendants of Ptolemy Lagus could have continued to
+      rule the Valley of the Nile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In return for the literature which Greece then gave to Egypt, she gained
+      the knowledge of papyrus, a tall rush which grows wild near the sources of
+      the Nile, and was then cultivated in the Egyptian marshes. Before that
+      time books had been written on linen, wax, bark, or the leaves of trees;
+      and public records on stone, brass, or lead: but the knowledge of papyrus
+      was felt by all men of letters like the invention of printing in modern
+      Europe. Books were then known by many for the first time, and very little
+      else was afterwards used in Greece or Rome; for, when parchment was made
+      about two centuries later, it was too costly to be used as long as papyrus
+      was within reach. Copies were multiplied on frail strips of this plant,
+      and it was found that mere thoughts, when worth preserving, were less
+      liable to be destroyed by time than temples and palaces of the hardest
+      stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019">
+      <!-- IMG --></a> <a href="images/056b.jpg">ENLARGE TO FULL SIZE</a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="056bth (69K) Manuscript on Papyrus; Hieroglyphics, Thebes"
+       src="images/056bth.jpg" width="100%" />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Egypt, under Ptolemy, was thus enjoying the advantages of its
+      insulated position, and cultivating the arts of peace, the other provinces
+      were being harassed by the unceasing wars of Alexander&rsquo;s generals, who
+      were aiming, like Ptolemy, at raising their own power. Many changes had
+      taken place among them in the short space of eight years which had passed
+      since the death of 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 though not so easily guarded as Egypt;
+      Cassander held Macedonia, and had the care of the young Alexander Ægus,
+      who was then called the heir to the whole of his father&rsquo;s wide conquests,
+      and whose life, like that of Arridæus, was soon to end with his minority;
+      Lysimachus was trying to form a kingdom in Thrace; and Seleucus had for a
+      brief period held Babylonia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy bore no part in the wars which brought about these changes, beyond
+      being once or twice called upon to send troops to guard his province of
+      Cole-Syria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:33%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/057.jpg"
+       alt="057.jpg Alexander Adoring Horus " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      But Antigonus, in his ambitious efforts to stretch his power over all the
+      provinces, had by force or by treachery driven Seleucus out of Babylon,
+      and forced him to seek Egypt for safety, where Ptolemy received him with
+      the kindness and good policy which had before gained so many friends. No
+      arguments of Seleucus were wanting to persuade Ptolemy that Antigonus was
+      dreaming of universal conquest, and that his next attack would be upon
+      Egypt. He therefore sent ambassadors to make treaties of alliance with
+      Cassander and Lysimachus, who readily joined him against the common enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The large fleet and army which Antigonus got together for the invasion of
+      Egypt proved his opinion of the strength and skill of Ptolemy. All Syria,
+      except one or two cities, laid down its arms before him on his approach.
+      But he found that the whole of the fleet had been already removed to the
+      ports of Egypt, and he ordered Phoenicia to furnish him with eight
+      thousand shipbuilders and carpenters, to build galleys from the forests of
+      Lebanon and Antilibanus, and ordered Syria to send four hundred and fifty
+      thousand medimni, or nearly three millions of bushels of wheat, for the
+      use of his army within the year. By these means he raised his fleet to two
+      hundred and forty-three long galleys or ships of war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy was for a short time called off from the war in Syria by a rising
+      in Cyrene. The Cyrenians, who clung to their Doric love of freedom, and
+      were latterly smarting at its loss, had taken arms and were besieging the
+      Egyptian, or, as they would have called themselves, the Macedonian
+      garrison, who had shut themselves up in the citadel. He at first sent
+      messengers to order the Cyrenians to return to their duty; but his orders
+      were not listened to; the rebels no doubt thought themselves safe, as his
+      armies seemed more wanted on the eastern frontier; his messengers were put
+      to death, and the siege of the citadel pushed forward with all possible
+      speed. On this he sent a large land force, followed by a fleet, in order
+      to crush the revolt at a single blow; and the ringleaders were brought to
+      Alexandria in chains. Magas, a son of Queen Berenicê and stepson of
+      Ptolemy, was then made governor of Cyrene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this trouble at home was put an end to, Ptolemy crossed over to
+      Cyprus to punish the kings of the little states on that island for having
+      joined Antigonus. For now that the fate of empires was to be settled by
+      naval battles the friendship of Cyprus became very important to the
+      neighbouring states. The large and safe harbours gave to this island a
+      great value in the naval warfare between Egypt, Phoenicia, and Asia Minor.
+      Alexander had given it as his opinion that the command of the sea went
+      with the island of Cyprus. When he held Asia Minor he called Cyprus the
+      key to Egypt; and with still greater reason might Ptolemy, looking from
+      Egypt, think that island the key to Phoenicia. Accordingly he landed there
+      with so large a force that he met with no resistance. He added Cyprus to
+      the rest of his dominions: he banished the kings, and made Nicocreon
+      governor of the whole island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Cyprus, Ptolemy landed with his army in Upper Syria, as the northern
+      part of that country was called, while the part nearer to Palestine was
+      called Coele-Syria. Here he took the towns of Posideion and Potami-Caron,
+      and then marching hastily into Asia Minor he took Malms, a city of
+      Cilicia. Having rewarded his soldiers with the booty there seized, he
+      again embarked and returned to Alexandria. This inroad seems to have been
+      meant to draw off the enemy from Coele-Syria; and it had the wished-for
+      effect, for Demetrius, who commanded the forces of his father Antigonus in
+      that quarter, marched northward to the relief of Cilicia, but he did not
+      arrive there till Ptolemy&rsquo;s fleet was already under sail for its return
+      journey to Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy, on reaching Alexandria, set his army in motion towards Pelusium,
+      on its way to Palestine. His forces were eighteen thousand foot and four
+      thousand horse, part Macedonians, as the Greeks living in Egypt were
+      always called, and part mercenaries, followed by a crowd of Egyptians, of
+      whom some were armed for battle, and some were to take care of the
+      baggage. He had twenty-two thousand Greeks, and was met at Gaza by the
+      young Demetrius with an army of eleven thousand foot and twenty-three
+      hundred horse, followed by forty-three elephants and a body of light-armed
+      barbarians, who, like the Egyptians in the army of Ptolemy, were not
+      counted. But the youthful courage of Demetrius was no match for the cool
+      skill and larger army of Ptolemy; the elephants were easily stopped by
+      iron hurdles, and the Egyptian army, after gaining a complete victory,
+      entered Gaza, while Demetrius fled to Azotus. Ptolemy, in his victory,
+      showed a generosity unknown in modern warfare; he not only gave leave to
+      the conquered army to bury their dead, but sent back the whole of the
+      royal baggage which had fallen into his hands, and also those personal
+      friends of Demetrius who were found among the prisoners; that is to say,
+      all those who wished to depart, as the larger part of these Greek armies
+      were equally ready to fight on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this victory the whole of Phoenicia was again joined to Egypt, and
+      Seleucus regained Babylonia. There, by following the example of Ptolemy in
+      his good treatment of the people, and in leaving them their own laws and
+      religion, he founded a monarchy, and gave his name to a race of kings
+      which rivalled even the Lagidæ. He raised up again for a short time the
+      throne of Nebuchadnezzar. But it was only for a short time. The Chal-dees
+      and Assyrians now yielded the first rank to the Greeks who had settled
+      among them; and the Greeks were more numerous in the Syrian portion of his
+      empire. Accordingly Seleucus built a new capital on the river Orontes, and
+      named it Antioch after his father. Babylon then yielded the same obedience
+      to this new Greek city that Memphis paid to Alexandria. Assyria and
+      Babylonia became subject provinces; and the successors of Seleucus, who
+      came to be known as Selucids, styled themselves not kings of Babylon but
+      of Syria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Antigonus, who was in Phrygia on the other side of his kingdom, heard
+      that his son Demetrius had been beaten at Gaza, he marched with all his
+      forces to give battle to Ptolemy. He soon crossed Mount Taurus, the lofty
+      range which divides Asia Minor from Syria and Mesopotamia, and joined his
+      camp to that of his son in Upper Syria. But Ptolemy had gone through life
+      without ever making a hazardous move; not indeed without ever suffering a
+      loss, but without ever fighting a battle when its loss would have ruined
+      him, and he did not choose to risk his kingdom against the far larger
+      forces of Antigonus. Therefore, with the advice of his council 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Antigonus could not safely attempt to march through the desert in the face
+      of Ptolemy&rsquo;s army. He had, therefore, first, either to conquer or gain the
+      friendship of the Nabatæans, a warlike race of Arabs, who held the north
+      of Arabia; and then he might march by Petra, Mount Sinai, and the coast of
+      the Red Sea, without being in want of water for his army. The Nabatæans
+      were the tribe at an earlier time called Edomites. But they lost that name
+      when they carried it to the southern portion of Judæa, then called Idumæa;
+      for when the Jews regained Idumæa, they called these Edomites of the
+      desert Nebaoth or Nabatæans. The Nabatæns professed neutrality between
+      Antigonus and Ptolemy, the two contending powers; but the mild temper of
+      Ptolemy had so far gained their friendship that the haughty Antigonus,
+      though he did not refuse their pledges of peace, secretly made up his mind
+      to conquer them. Petra, the city of the Nabatæans, is in a narrow valley
+      between steep overhanging rocks, so difficult of approach that a handful
+      of men could guard it against the largest army. Not more than two horsemen
+      can ride abreast through the chasm in the rock by which it is entered from
+      the east, while the other entrance from the west is down a hillside too
+      steep for a loaded camel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/063.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="063.jpg on the Coast of The Red Sea " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Eastern proverb reminds us that &ldquo;Water is the chief thing;&rdquo; and a
+      large stream within the valley, in addition to the strength of the
+      fortress, made it a favourite resting-place for caravans, which, whether
+      they were coming from Tyre or Jerusalem, were forced to pass by this city
+      in their way to the Incense Country of Arabia Felix, or to the Elanitic
+      Gulf of the Red Sea, and for other caravans from Egypt to Dedam on the
+      Persian Gulf. These warlike Arabs seem to have received a toll from the
+      caravans, and they held their rocky fastness unconquered by the great
+      nations which surrounded them. Their temples and tombs were cut out of the
+      live rock, and hence the city was by the Jews named Selah, (the rock), and
+      by the Greeks named Petra, from which last the country was sometimes
+      called Arabia Petræa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Antigonus heard that the Nabatæans had left Petra less guarded than usual,
+      and had gone to a neighbouring fair, probably to meet a caravan from the
+      south, and to receive spices in exchange for the woollen goods from Tyre.
+      He therefore sent forward four thousand light-armed foot and six hundred
+      horse, who overpowered the guard and seized the city. The Arabs, when they
+      heard of what had happened, returned in the night, surrounded the place,
+      came upon the Greeks from above, by paths known only to themselves, and
+      overcame them with such slaughter that, out of the four thousand six
+      hundred men, only fifty returned to Antigonus to tell the tale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Nabatæans then sent to Antigonus to complain of this crafty attack
+      being made upon Petra after they had received from him a promise of
+      friendship. He endeavoured to put them off their guard by disowning the
+      acts of his general; he sent them home with promises of peace, but at the
+      same time sent forward his son Demetrius, with four thousand horse and
+      four thousand foot, to take revenge upon them, and again seize their city.
+      But the Arabs were this time upon their guard; the nature of the place was
+      as unfavourable to the Greek arms and warfare as it was favourable to the
+      Arabs; and these eight thousand men, the flower of the army, under brave
+      Demetrius, were unable to force their way through the narrow pass into
+      this remarkable city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Antigonus been master of the sea, he might perhaps have marched
+      through the desert along the coast of the Mediterranean to Pelusium, with
+      his fleet to wait upon his army, as Perdiccas had done. But without this,
+      the only way that he could enter Egypt was through the neighbourhood of
+      Petra, and then along the same path which the Jews are supposed to have
+      followed; and the stop thus put upon the invasion of Egypt by this little
+      city shows us the strength of Ptolemy&rsquo;s eastern frontier. Antigonus then
+      led his army northward, leaving the kingdom of Egypt unattacked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 then held;
+      that Cassan-der should govern Macedonia until Alexander Ægus, the son of
+      Alexander the Great, should be of age; that Lysimachus should keep Thrace,
+      Ptolemy Egypt, and Antigonus Asia Minor and Palestine; and each wishing to
+      be looked upon as the friend of the soldiers by whom his power was upheld,
+      and the whole of these wide conquests kept in awe, added the very
+      unnecessary article, that the Greeks living in each of these countries
+      should be governed according to their own laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the provinces held by these generals became more or less Greek
+      kingdoms, yet in no one did so many Greeks settle as in Lower Egypt.
+      Though the rest of Egypt was governed by Egyptian laws and judges, the
+      city of Alexandria was under Macedonian law. It did not form part of the
+      nome of Hermopolites in which it was built. It scarcely formed a part of
+      Egypt, but was a Greek state in its neighbourhood, holding the Egyptians
+      in a state of slavery. In that city no Egyptian could live without feeling
+      himself of a conquered race. He was not admitted to the privileges of
+      Macedonian citizenship, while they were at once granted to every Greek,
+      and soon to every Jew, who would settle there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the treaty just spoken of, Ptolemy, in the thirteenth year after the
+      death of Alexander, was left undisputed master of Egypt. During these
+      years he had not only gained the love of the Egyptians and Alexandrians by
+      his wise and just government, but had won their respect as a general by
+      the skill with which he had kept the war at a distance. He had lost and
+      won battles in Syria, in Asia Minor, in the island of Cyprus, and at sea;
+      but since Perdiccas marched against him, before he had a force to defend
+      himself with, no foreign army had drunk the sacred waters of the Nile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was under the government of Ptolemy that the wonders of Upper Egypt
+      were first seen by any Greeks who had leisure, a love of knowledge, and
+      enough of literature, to examine carefully and to describe what they saw.
+      Loose and highly coloured accounts of the wealth of Thebes had reached
+      Greece even before the time of Homer, and again through Herodotus and
+      other travellers in the Delta; but nothing was certainly known of it till
+      it was visited by Hecatæus of Abdera, who, among other works, wrote a
+      history of the Hyperborean or northern nations, and also a history, or
+      rather a description of Egypt, part of which we now read in the pages of
+      Dio-dorus Siculus. When he travelled in Upper Egypt, Thebes, though still
+      a populous city, was more thought of by the antiquary than by the
+      statesman. Its wealth, however, was still great; and when, under the just
+      government of Ptolemy, it was no longer necessary for the priests to hide
+      their treasures, it was found that the temples still held the very large
+      sum of three hundred talents of gold, and two thousand three hundred
+      talents of silver, or above five million dollars, which had escaped the
+      plundering hands of the Persian satraps. Many of the Theban tombs, which
+      are sets of rooms tunnelled into the hills on the Libyan side of the Nile,
+      had even then been opened to gratify the curiosity of the learned or the
+      greediness of the conqueror. Forty-seven royal tombs were mentioned in the
+      records of the priests, of which the entrances had been covered up with
+      earth, and hidden in the sloping sides of the hills, in the hope that they
+      might remain undisturbed and unplundered, and might keep safe the embalmed
+      bodies of the kings till they should rise again at the end of the world;
+      and seventeen of these had already been found out and broken open.
+      Hecatæus was told that the other tombs had been before destroyed; and we
+      owe it, perhaps, to this mistake that they remained unopened for more than
+      two thousand years longer, to reward the searches of modern travellers,
+      and to unfold to us the history of their builders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Memnonium, the great palace of Ramses II., was then standing; and
+      though it had been plundered by the Persians, the building itself was
+      unhurt. Its massive walls had scarcely felt the wear of the centuries
+      which had rolled over them. Hecataaus measured its rooms, its courtyards,
+      and its avenue of sphinxes; and by his measurements we can now distinguish
+      its ruins from those of the other palaces of Thebes. One of its rooms,
+      perhaps after the days of its builder, had been fitted up as a library,
+      and held the histories and records of the priests; but the golden zodiac,
+      or circle, on which were engraved the days of the year, with the celestial
+      bodies seen to rise at sunrise and set at sunset, by which each day was
+      known, had been taken away by Cambyses. Hecataaus also saw the three other
+      palace-temples of Thebes, which we now call by the names of the villages
+      in which they stand, namely, of Luxor, of Karnak, and of Medinet-Habu. But
+      the Greeks, in their accounts of Egypt, have sadly puzzled us by their
+      careless alteration of names from similarity of sound. To Miamun Ramses,
+      they gave the common Greek name Memnon; and the city of Hahiroth they
+      called Heroopolis, as if it meant the <i>city of heroes</i>. The capital
+      of Upper Egypt, which was called The City, as a capital is often called,
+      or in Koptic, <i>Tape or Thabou</i>, they named Thebes, and in their
+      mythology they confounded it with Thebes in Bootia. The city of the god
+      Kneph they called Canopus, and said it was so named after the pilot of
+      Menelaus. The hill of Toorah opposite Memphis they called the Trojan
+      mountain. One of the oldest cities in Egypt, This, or with the prefix for
+      city, Abouthis, they called Abydos, and then said that it was colonised by
+      Milesians from Abydos in Asia. In the same careless way have the Greeks
+      given us an account of the Egyptian gods. They thought them the same as
+      their own, though with new faces; and, instead of describing their
+      qualities, they have in the main contented themselves with translating
+      their names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Ptolemy did not make his government as much feared by the half-armed
+      Ethiopians as it was by the well-disciplined Europeans, it must have been
+      because the Thebans wished to guard their own frontier rather than because
+      his troops were always wanted against a more powerful enemy; but the
+      inroads of the Ethiopians were so far from being checked that the country
+      to the south of Thebes was unsafe for travellers, and no Greek was able to
+      reach Syênê and the lower cataracts during his reign. The trade through
+      Ethiopia was wholly stopped, and the caravans went from Thebes to Cosseir
+      to meet the ships which brought the goods of Arabia and India from the
+      opposite coast of the Red Sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the wars between Egypt and Asia Minor, in which Palestine had the
+      misfortune to be the prize struggled for and the debatable land on which
+      the battles were fought, the Jews were often made to smart under the stern
+      pride of Antigonus, and to rejoice at the milder temper of Ptolemy. The
+      Egyptians of the Delta and the Jews had always been friends; and hence,
+      when Ptolemy promised to treat the Jews with the same kindness as the
+      Greeks, and more than the Egyptians, and held out all the rights of
+      Macedonian citizenship to those who would settle in his rising city of
+      Alexandria, he was followed by crowds of industrious traders,
+      manufacturers, and men of letters. They chose to live in Egypt in peace
+      and wealth, rather than to stay in Palestine in the daily fear of having
+      their houses sacked and burnt at every fresh quarrel between Ptolemy and
+      Antigonus. In Alexandria, a suburb by the sea, on the east side of the
+      city, was allotted for their use, which was afterwards included within the
+      fortifications, and thus made a fifth ward of the Lagid metropolis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner was the peace agreed upon between the four generals, who were
+      the most powerful kings in the known world, than Cassander, who held
+      Macedonia, put to death both the Queen Roxana and her son, the young
+      Alexander Ægus, then thirteen years old, in whose name these generals had
+      each governed his kingdom with unlimited sway, and who was then of an age
+      that the soldiers, the givers of all power, were already planning to make
+      him the real King of Macedonia and of his father&rsquo;s wide conquests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Macedonian phalanx, which formed the pride and sinews of every army,
+      were equally held by their deep-rooted loyalty to the memory of Alexander,
+      whether they were fighting for Ptolemy or for Antigonus, and equally
+      thought that they were guarding a province for his heir; and it was
+      through fear of loosening their hold upon the faithfulness of these their
+      best troops that Ptolemy and his rivals alike chose to govern their
+      kingdoms under the unpretending title of lieutenants of the King of
+      Macedonia. Hence, upon the death of Alexander Ægus, there was a throne, or
+      at least a state prison, left empty for a new claimant. Polysperchon, an
+      old general of Alexander&rsquo;s army, then thought that he saw a way to turn
+      Cassander out of Macedonia, by the help of Hercules, the natural son of
+      Alexander by Barce; and, having proclaimed him king, he led him with a
+      strong army against Cassander. But Polysperchon wanted either courage or
+      means for what he had undertaken, and he soon yielded to the bribes of
+      Cassander and put Hercules to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cities on the southern coast of Asia Minor yielded to Antigonus
+      obedience as slight as the ties which held them to one another. The cities
+      of Pamphylia and Cilicia, in their habits as in their situation, were
+      nearer the Syrians, and famous for their shipping. They all enjoyed a full
+      share of the trade and piracy of those seas, and were a tempting prize to
+      Ptolemy. The treaty of peace between the generals never lessened their
+      jealousy nor wholly stopped the warfare, and the next year Ptolemy,
+      finding that his troops could hardly keep their possessions in Cilicia,
+      carried over an army in person to attack the forces of Antigonus in Lycia.
+      He landed at Phaselis, the frontier town of Pamphylia, and, having carried
+      that by storm, he moved westward along the coast of Lycia. He made himself
+      master of Xanthus, the capital, which was garrisoned by the troops of
+      Antigonus; and then of Caunus, a strong place on the coast of Caria, with
+      two citadels, one of which he gained by force and the other by surrender.
+      He then sailed to the island of Cos, which he gained by the treachery of
+      Ptolemy, the nephew of Antigonus, who held it for his uncle, but who went
+      over to the Egyptian king with all his forces. By this success he gained
+      the whole southern coast of Asia Minor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brother and two children of Alexander having been in their turns, as
+      we have seen, murdered by their guardians, Cleopatra, his sister, and
+      Thessalonica, his niece, were alone left alive of the royal family of
+      Macedonia. Almost every one of the generals had already courted a marriage
+      with Cleopatra, which had either been refused by herself or hindered by
+      his rivals; and lastly Ptolemy, now that by the death of her nephews she
+      brought kingdoms, or the love of the Macedonian mercenaries, which was
+      worth more than kingdoms, as her dower, sent to ask her hand in marriage.
+      This offer was accepted by Cleopatra; but, on her journey from Sardis, the
+      capital of Lydia, to Egypt, on her way to join her future husband, she was
+      put to death by Antigonus. The niece was put to death a few years later.
+      Thus every one who was of the family of Alexander paid the forfeit of life
+      for that honour, and these two deaths ended the Macedonian dynasty with a
+      double tragedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Ptolemy was busy in helping the Greek cities of Asia to gain their
+      liberty, Menelaus, his brother and admiral, was almost driven out of
+      Cyprus by Demetrius. On this Ptolemy got together his fleet, to the number
+      of one hundred and forty long galleys and two hundred transports, manned
+      with not less than ten thousand men, and sailed with them to the help of
+      his brother. This fleet, under the command of Menelaus, was met by
+      Demetrius with the fleet of Antigonus, consisting of one hundred and
+      twelve long galleys and a number of transports; and the Egyptian fleet,
+      which had hitherto been master of the sea, was beaten near the city of
+      Salamis in Cyprus by the smaller fleet of Demetrius. This was the heaviest
+      loss that had ever befallen Ptolemy. Eighty long galleys were sunk, and
+      forty long galleys, with one hundred transports and eight thousand men,
+      were taken prisoners. He could no longer hope to keep Cyprus, and he
+      sailed hastily back to Egypt, leaving to Demetrius the garrisons of the
+      island as his prisoners, all of whom were enrolled in the army of
+      Antigonus, to the number of sixteen thousand foot and six hundred horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This naval victory gave Demetrius the means of unburdening his proud mind
+      of a debt of gratitude to his enemy; and accordingly, remembering what
+      Ptolemy had done after the battle of Gaza, he sent back to Egypt, unasked
+      for and unransomed, those prisoners who were of high rank, that is to say,
+      all those who had any choice about which side they fought for; and among
+      them were Leontiscus, the son, and Menelaus, the brother, of Ptolemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Antigonus was overjoyed with the news of his son&rsquo;s victory. By lessening
+      the power of Ptolemy, it had done much to smooth his own path to the
+      sovereignty of Alexander&rsquo;s empire, which was then left without an heir;
+      and he immediately took the title of king, and gave the same title to his
+      son Demetrius. In this he was followed by Ptolemy and the other generals,
+      but with this difference, that while Antigonus called himself king of all
+      the provinces, Ptolemy called himself King of Egypt; and while Antigonus
+      gained Syria and Cyprus, Ptolemy gained the friendship of every other
+      kingdom and of every free city in Greece; they all looked upon him as
+      their best ally against Antigonus, the common enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next year Antigonus mustered his forces in Coele-Syria, and got ready
+      for a second attack upon Egypt. He had more than eighty thousand foot,
+      accompanied with what was then the usual proportion of cavalry, namely,
+      eight thousand horse and eighty-three elephants. Demetrius brought with
+      him from Cyprus the fleet of one hundred and fifty long galleys, and one
+      hundred transports laden with stores and engines of war. With this fleet,
+      to which Ptolemy, after his late loss, had no ships that he could oppose,
+      Antigonus had no need to ask leave of the Arabs of the little city of
+      Petra to march through their passes; but he led his army straight through
+      the desert to Pelusium, while the ships of burden kept close to the shore
+      with the stores. The pride of Antigonus would not let him follow the
+      advice of the sailors, and wait eight days till the north winds of the
+      spring equinox had passed; and by this haste many of his ships were
+      wrecked on the coast, while others were driven into the Nile and fell into
+      the hands of Ptolemy. Antigonus himself, marching with the land forces,
+      found all the strong places well guarded by the Egyptian army; and, being
+      driven back at every point, discouraged by the loss of his ships and by
+      seeing whole bodies of his troops go over to Ptolemy, he at last took the
+      advice of his officers and led back his army to Syria, while Ptolemy
+      returned to Alexandria, to employ those powers of mind in the works of
+      peace which he had so successfully used in his various wars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Antigonus then turned the weight of his mighty kingdom against the little
+      island of Rhodes, which, though in sight of the coast of Asia Minor, held
+      itself independent of him, and in close friendship with Ptolemy. The
+      Dorian island of Rhodes had from the earliest dawn of history held a high
+      place among the states of Greece; and in all the arts of civilised life,
+      in painting, sculpture, letters, and commerce, it had been lately rising
+      in rank while the other free states had been falling. Its maritime laws
+      were so highly thought of that they were copied by most other states, and,
+      being afterwards adopted into the Pandects of Justinian, they have in part
+      become the law of modern Europe. It was the only state in which Greek
+      liberty then kept its ground against the great empires of Alexander&rsquo;s
+      successors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="075 (188K)" src="images/075.jpg" width="100%" />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Against this little state Demetrius led two hundred long galleys and one
+      hundred and seventy transports, with more than forty thousand men. The
+      Greek world looked on with deep interest while the veterans of Antigonus
+      were again and again driven back from the walls of the blockaded city by
+      its brave and virtuous citizens; who, while their houses were burning and
+      their walls crumbling under the battering-ram, left the statues of
+      Antigonus and Demetrius standing unhurt in the market-place, saved by
+      their love of art and the remembrance of former kindness, which, with a
+      true greatness of mind, they would not let the cruelties of the siege
+      outweigh. The galleys of Ptolemy, though unable to keep at sea against the
+      larger fleet of Demetrius, often forced their way into the harbour with
+      the welcome supplies of grain. Month after month every stratagem and
+      machine which the ingenuity of Demetrius could invent were tried and
+      failed; and, after the siege had lasted more than a year, he was glad to
+      find an excuse for withdrawing his troops; and the Rhodians in their joy
+      hailed Ptolemy with the title of Soter or <i>saviour</i>. This name he
+      ever afterwards kept, though by the Greek writers he is more often called
+      Ptolemy the son of Lagus. If we search the history of the world for a
+      second instance of so small a state daring to withstand the armies of so
+      mighty an empire, we shall perhaps not find any one more remarkable than
+      that of the same island, when, seventeen hundred years afterwards, it
+      again drew upon itself the eyes of the world, while it beat off the forces
+      of the Ottoman empire under Mahomet II.; and, standing like a rock in
+      front of Christendom, it rolled back for years the tide of war, till its
+      walls were at last crumbled to a heap of ruins by Suleiman the Great,
+      after a siege of many months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:26%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/081.jpg"
+       alt="081.jpg Alexandrian Lady, Attired in Bombyx Silk " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The next of Ptolemy&rsquo;s conquests was Coele-Syria; and soon after this the
+      wars between these successors of Alexander were put an end to by the death
+      of Antigonus, whose overtowering ambition was among the chief causes of
+      quarrel. This happened at the great battle of Ipsus in Phrygia, where they
+      all met, with more than eighty thousand men in each army. Antigonus, King
+      of Asia Minor, was accompanied by his son Demetrius, and by Pyrrhus, King
+      of Epirus; and he was defeated by Ptolemy, King of Egypt, Seleucus, King
+      of Babylon, Lysimachus, King of Thrace, and Cassander, King of Macedonia;
+      and the old man lost his life fighting bravely. After the battle Demetrius
+      fled to Cyprus, and yielded to the terms of peace which were imposed on
+      him by the four allied sovereigns. He sent his friend Pyrrhus as a hostage
+      to Alexandria; and there this young King of Epirus soon gained the
+      friendship of Ptolemy and afterwards his stepdaughter in marriage. Ptolemy
+      was thus left master of the whole of the southern coast of Asia Minor and
+      Syria, indeed of the whole coast of the eastern end of the Mediterranean,
+      from the island of Cos on the north to Cyrene on the south.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During these formidable wars with Antigonus, Ptolemy had never been
+      troubled with any serious rising of the conquered Egyptians; and perhaps
+      the wars may not have been without their use in strengthening his throne.
+      The first danger to a successful conqueror is from the avarice and
+      disappointment of his followers, who usually claim the kingdom as their
+      booty, and who think themselves wronged and their past services forgotten
+      if any limit is placed to their tyranny over the conquered. But these
+      foreign wars may have taught the Alexandrians that Ptolemy was not strong
+      enough to ill-treat the Egyptians, and may thus have saved him from the
+      indiscretion of his friends and from their reproaches for ingratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the late war, the little Dorian island of Cos on the coast of Asia
+      Minor fell, as we have seen, under the power of Ptolemy. This island was
+      remarkable as being the first spot in Europe into which the manufacture of
+      silk was introduced, which it probably gained when under the power of
+      Persia before the overthrow of Darius. The luxury of the Egyptian ladies,
+      who affected to be overheated by any clothing that could conceal their
+      limbs, had long ago introduced a tight, thin dress which neither our
+      climate nor notions of modesty would allow, and for this dress, silk, when
+      it could be obtained, was much valued; and Pamphila of Cos had the glory
+      of having woven webs so transparent that the Egyptian women were enabled
+      to display their fair forms yet more openly by means of this clothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cos continued always in the power of the Ptolemies, who used it as a royal
+      fortress, occasionally sending their treasures and their children there as
+      to a place of safety from Alexandrian rebellion; and there the silk
+      manufacture flourished in secret for two or three centuries. When it
+      ceased is unknown, as it was part of the merchants&rsquo; craft to endeavour to
+      keep each branch of trade to themselves, by concealing the channel through
+      which they obtained their supply of goods, and many of the dresses which
+      were sold in Rome under the emperors by the name of Coan robes may have
+      been brought from the East through Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the most valuable gifts which Egypt owed to Ptolemy was its
+      coinage. Even Thebes, &ldquo;where treasures were largest in the houses&rdquo; never
+      was able to pass gold and silver from hand to hand without the trouble of
+      weighing, and the doubt as to the fineness of the metal. The Greek
+      merchants who crowded the markets of Canopus and Alexandria must have
+      filled Lower Egypt with the coins of the cities from whence they came, all
+      unlike one another in stamp and weight; but, while every little city or
+      even colony of Greece had its own coinage, Egypt had as yet very few coins
+      of its own. We are even doubtful whether we know by sight those coined by
+      the Persians In the early years of Ptolemy&rsquo;s government Ptolemy had issued
+      a very few coins bearing the names of the young kings in whose name he
+      held the country, but he seems not to have coined any quantity of money
+      till after he had himself taken the title of king. His coins are of gold,
+      silver, and bronze, and are in a fine style of Greek workmanship. Those of
+      gold and silver bear on one side the portrait of the king, without a
+      beard, having the head bound with the royal diadem, which, unlike the high
+      priestly crown of the native Egyptian kings, or the modern crown of gold
+      and precious stones, is a plain riband tied in a bow behind. On the other
+      side they have the name of Ptolemy Soter, or King Ptolemy, with an eagle
+      standing upon a thunderbolt, which was only another way of drawing the
+      eagle and sun, the hieroglyphical characters for the title Pharaoh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:35%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/082.jpg" alt="082.jpg Egyptian Coinage " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The gold coins of Egypt were probably made in Alexandria. The coins are
+      not of the same weight as those of Greece; but Ptolemy followed the
+      Egyptian standard of weight, which was that to which the Jewish shekel was
+      adjusted, and which was in use in the wealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon and
+      Beryttus. The drachma weighs fifty-five grains, making the talent of
+      silver worth about seven hundred and fifty dollars. Ptolemy&rsquo;s bronze coins
+      have the head of Serapis or Jupiter in the place of that of the king, as
+      is also the case with those of his successors; but few of these bronze
+      pieces bear any marks from which we can learn the reign in which they were
+      coined. They are of better metal than those of other countries, as the
+      bronze is free from lead and has more tin in it. The historian, in his
+      very agreeable labours, should never lose sight of the coins. They teach
+      us by their workmanship the state of the arts, and by their weight,
+      number, and purity of metal, the wealth of the country. They also teach
+      dates, titles, and the places where they were struck; and even in those
+      cases where they seem to add little to what we learn from other sources,
+      they are still the living witnesses to which we appeal, to prove the truth
+      of the authors who have told us more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:44%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/083.jpg"
+       alt="083.jpg Coin of Soter, With Jupiter " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The art of engraving coins did not flourish alone in Alexandria; painters
+      and sculptors flocked to Egypt to enjoy the favours of Ptolemy. Apelles,
+      indeed, whose paintings were thought by those who had seen them to surpass
+      any that had been before painted, or were likely to be painted, had
+      quarrelled with Ptolemy, who had known him well when he was the friend and
+      painter of Alexander. Once when he was at Alexandria, somebody wickedly
+      told him that he was invited to dine at the royal table, and when Ptolemy
+      asked who it was that had sent his unwelcome guest, Apelles drew the face
+      of the mischief-maker on the wall, and he was known to all the court by
+      the likeness. It was, perhaps, at one of these dinners, at which Ptolemy
+      enjoyed the society of the men of letters, or perhaps when visiting the
+      philosophers in their schools, that he asked Euclid if he could not show
+      him a shorter and easier way to the higher truths of mathematics than that
+      by which he led the pupils in the Museum; and Euclid, as if to remind him
+      of the royal roads of Persia, which ran by the side of the highroads, but
+      were kept clear and free for the king&rsquo;s own use, made him the well-known
+      answer, that there was no royal road to geometry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy lived in easy familiarity with the learned men of Alexandria; and
+      at another of these literary dinners, when Diodorus, the rhetorician, who
+      was thought to have been the inventor of the Dilemma, was puzzled by a
+      question put to him by Stilpo, the king in joke said that his name should
+      be Cronus, a god who had been laughed at in the comedies. Indeed, he was
+      so teased by Ptolemy for not being able to answer it, that he got up and
+      left the room. He afterwards wrote a book upon the subject; but the
+      ridicule was said to have embittered the rest of his life. This was the
+      person against whom Callimachus, some years later, wrote a bitter epigram,
+      beginning &ldquo;Cronus is a wise man.&rdquo; Diodorus was of the sceptical school of
+      philosophy, which, though not far removed from the Cyrenaic school, was
+      never popular in Alexandria. Among other paradoxes he used to deny the
+      existence of motion. He argued that the motion was not in the place where
+      the body moved from, nor in the place that the body moved to, and that
+      accordingly it did not exist at all. Once he met with a violent fall which
+      put his shoulder out of joint, and he applied to Herophilus, the surgeon,
+      to set it. Herophilus began by asking him where the fall took place,
+      whether in the place where the shoulder was, or in the place where it fell
+      to; but the smarting philosopher begged him to begin by setting his limb,
+      and they would talk about the existence of motion after the operation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stilpo was at this time only on a visit to Ptolemy, for he had refused his
+      offer of money and a professorship in the Museum, and had chosen to remain
+      at Megara where he was the ornament of his birthplace. He had been
+      banished from Athens for speaking against their gods, and for saying that
+      the colossal Minerva was not the daughter of Jupiter, but of Phidias, the
+      sculptor. His name as a philosopher stood so high that when Demetrius, in
+      his late wars with Ptolemy, took the city of Megara by storm, the
+      conqueror bid spare the house of Stilpo, when temple and tower went to the
+      ground; and when Demetrius gave orders that Stilpo should be repaid for
+      what he had lost in the siege, the philosopher proudly answered that he
+      had lost nothing, and that he had no wealth but his learning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The historian Theopompus of Chios then came to Alexandria, and wrote an
+      account of the wars between the Egyptians and the Persians. It is now
+      lost, but it contained at least the events from the successful invasion by
+      Artaxerxes Longimanus till the unsuccessful invasion by Artaxerxes Mnemon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No men of learning in Alexandria were more famous than the physicians.
+      Erasistratus of Cos had the credit of having once cured Antiochus,
+      afterwards King of Syria. He was the grandson of Aristotle, and may be
+      called the father of the science of anatomy: his writings are often quoted
+      by Dioscorides. Antiochus in his youth had fallen deeply in love with his
+      young stepmother, and was pining away in silence and despair. Erasistratus
+      found out the cause of his illness, which was straightway cured by
+      Seleucus giving up his wife to his own son. This act strongly points out
+      the changed opinions of the world as to the matrimonial relation; for it
+      was then thought the father&rsquo;s best title to the name of Nicator; he had
+      before conquered his enemies, but he then conquered himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Erasistratus was the first who thought that a knowledge of anatomy should
+      be made a part of the healing art. Before his time surgery and medicine
+      had been deemed one and the same; they had both been studied by the slow
+      and uncertain steps of experience, unguided by theory. Many a man who had
+      been ill, whether through disease or wound, and had regained his health,
+      thought it his duty to Esculapius and to his neighbours to write up in the
+      temple of the god the nature of his ailings, and the simples to which he
+      fancied that he owed his cure. By copying these loose but well-meant
+      inscriptions of medical cases, Hippocrates had, a century earlier, laid
+      the foundations of the science; but nothing further was added to it till
+      Erasistratus, setting at nought the prejudices in which he was born, began
+      dissecting the human body in the schools of Alexandria. There the mixing
+      together of Greeks and Egyptians had weakened those religious feelings of
+      respect for the dead which are usually shocked by anatomy; and this study
+      flourished from the low tone of the morality as much as from the
+      encouragement which good sense should grant to every search for knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Herophilus lived about the same time with Erasistratus, and was, like him,
+      famous for his knowledge of the anatomy of man. But so hateful was this
+      study in the eyes of many, that these anatomists were charged by writers
+      who ought to have known better, with the cruelty of cutting men open when
+      alive. They had few followers in the hated use of the dissecting-knife. It
+      was from their writings that Galen borrowed the anatomical parts of his
+      work; and thus it was to the dissections of these two great men, helped
+      indeed by opening the bodies of animals, that the world owed almost the
+      whole of its knowledge of the anatomy of man, till the fifteenth century,
+      when surgeons were again bold enough to face the outcry of the mob, and to
+      study the human body with the knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hegesias of Cyrene was an early lecturer on philosophy at Alexandria. His
+      short and broken sentences are laughed at by Cicero, yet he was so much
+      listened to, when lecturing against the fear of death, and showing that in
+      quitting life we leave behind us more pains than pleasures, that he was
+      stopped by Ptolemy Soter through fear of his causing self-murder among his
+      hearers. He then wrote a book upon the same subject, for though the state
+      watched over the public teaching, it took no notice of books; writing had
+      not yet become the mightiest power on earth. The miseries, however, of
+      this world, which he so eloquently and feelingly described in his lectures
+      and writings, did not drive him to put an end to his own life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philostephanus of Cyrene, the friend of Callimachus, was a naturalist who
+      wrote upon fishes, and is the first investigator that we hear of who
+      thought it desirable to limit his studies to one branch of the science of
+      natural history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Cyrene did not send all its great men to Alexandria. Plato had studied
+      mathematics there under Theodorus, and it had a school of its own which
+      gave its name to the Cyrenaic sect. The founder of this sect was
+      Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates who had missed the high honour of being
+      present at his death. He was the first philosopher who took money from his
+      pupils, and used to say that they valued their lessons more for having to
+      pay for them; but he was blamed by his brethren for thus lowering the
+      dignity of the teacher. He died several years before Ptolemy Soter came
+      into Egypt. The Cyrenaic sect thought happiness, not goodness, was the end
+      to be aimed at through life, and selfishness, rather than kindness to
+      others, the right spring of men&rsquo;s actions. It would hardly be fair to take
+      their opinions from the mouths of their enemies; and the dialogues of
+      Socrates, with their founder, as told to us by Xeno-phon, would prove a
+      lower tone of morality than he is likely to have held. The wish for
+      happiness and the philosophical love of self, which should lead to
+      goodness, though a far worse rule of life than the love of goodness for
+      its own sake, which is the groundwork of religion, was certainly far
+      better than unguided passion and the love of to-day&rsquo;s pleasure. But often
+      as this unsafe rule has been set up for our guidance, there have always
+      been found many to make use of it in a way not meant by the teacher. The
+      Cyrenaic sect soon fell into the disrepute to which these principles were
+      likely to lead it, and wholly ceased when Epicurus taught the same
+      opinions more philosophically, Anniceris of Cyrene, though a follower of
+      Aristippus, somewhat improved upon the low-toned philosophy of his master.
+      He granted that there were many things worth our aim, which could not be
+      brought within the narrow bounds of what is useful. He did not overlook
+      friendship, kindness, honouring our parents, and serving our country; and
+      he thought that a wise man would undertake many labours which would bring
+      him no return in the things which were alone thought happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chair of philosophy at Cyrene was afterwards filled by Arete, the
+      daughter of Aristippus; for such were the hindrances in the way of gaining
+      knowledge, that few could be so well qualified to teach as the
+      philosopher&rsquo;s daughter. Books were costly, and reading by no means a cheap
+      amusement. She was followed, after her death, by her son Aristippus, who,
+      having been brought up in his mother&rsquo;s lecture-room, was called, in order
+      to distinguish him from his grandfather of the same name, Metrodidactus,
+      or <i>mother-taught</i>. History has not told us whether he took the name
+      himself in gratitude for the debt which he owed to this learned lady, or
+      whether it was given him by his pupils; but in either case it was a sure
+      way of giving to the mother the fame which was due to her for the
+      education of her son; for no one could fail to ask who was the mother of
+      Metrodidactus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Theodorus, one of the pupils of Metrodidactus, though at one time banished
+      from Cyrene, rose to honour under Soter, and was sent by him as ambassador
+      to Lysimachus, He was called the Atheist by his enemies, and the Divine by
+      his friends, but we cannot now determine which title he best deserved. It
+      was then usual to call those atheists who questioned the existence of the
+      pagan gods; and we must not suppose that all who suffered under that
+      reproach denied that the world was governed by a ruling providence. The
+      disbeliever in the false religion of the many is often the only real
+      believer in a God. Theodorus was of the cold school of philosophy, which
+      was chiefly followed in Alexandria. It was earthly, lifeless, and
+      unpoetical, arising from the successful cultivation of the physical
+      sciences, not enough counteracted by the more ennobling pursuits of poetry
+      and the fine arts. Hence, while commerce and the arts of production were
+      carried to higher perfection than at any former time, and science was made
+      greatly to assist in the supply of our bodily wants, the arts of
+      civilisation, though by no means neglected, were cultivated without any
+      lofty aim, or any true knowledge of their dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/092.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="092.jpg the Chariot of Antiphilus " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Antiphilus, who was born in Egypt and had studied painting under
+      Ctesidemus, rose to high rank as a painter in Alexandria. Among his
+      best-known pictures were the bearded Bacchus, the young Alexander, and
+      Hip-polytus, or rather his chariot-horses, frightened by the bull. His
+      boy, blowing up a fire with his mouth, was much praised for the mouth of
+      the boy, and for the light and shade of the room. His Ptolemy hunting was
+      also highly thought of. Antiphilus showed a mean jealousy of Apelles, and
+      accused him of joining in a plot against the king, for which the painter
+      narrowly escaped punishment; but Ptolemy, finding that the charge was not
+      true, sent Apelles a gift of one hundred talents to make amends. The angry
+      feelings of Apelles were by no means cooled by this gift, but they boiled
+      over in his great picture of Calumny. On the right of the picture sat
+      Ptolemy, holding out his hand to Calumny, who was coming up to him. On
+      each side of the king stood a woman who seemed meant for Ignorance and
+      Suspicion. Calumny was a beautiful maiden, but with angry and deep-rooted
+      malice in her face: in her left hand was a lighted torch, and with her
+      right she was dragging along by the hair a young man, who was stretching
+      forth his hands to heaven, and calling upon the gods to bear witness that
+      he was guiltless. Before her walked Envy, a pale, hollow-eyed, diseased
+      man, perhaps a portrait of the accuser; and behind were two women, Craft
+      and Deceit, who were encouraging and supporting her. At a distance stood
+      Repentance, in the ragged, black garb of mourning, who was turning away
+      her face for shame as Truth came up to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy Soter was plain in his manners, and scarcely surpassed his own
+      generals in the costliness of his way of life. He often dined and slept at
+      the houses of his friends; and his own house had so little of the palace,
+      that he borrowed dishes and tables of his friends when he asked any number
+      of them to dine with him in return, saying that it was the part of a king
+      to enrich others rather than to be rich himself. Before he took the title
+      of king, he styled himself, and was styled by friendly states, by the
+      simple name of Ptolemy the Macedonian; and during the whole of his reign
+      he was as far from being overbearing in his behaviour as from being
+      kinglike in his dress and household. Once when he wished to laugh at a
+      boasting antiquary, he asked him, what he knew could not be answered, who
+      was the father of Peleus; and the other let his wit so far get the better
+      of his prudence as in return to ask the king, who had perhaps never heard
+      the name of his own grandfather, if he knew who was the father of Lagus.
+      But Ptolemy took no further notice of this than to remark that if a king
+      cannot bear rude answers he ought not to ask rude questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An answer which Ptolemy once made to a soothsayer might almost be taken as
+      the proverb which had guided him through life. When his soldiers met with
+      an anchor in one of their marches, and were disheartened on being told by
+      the soothsayer that it was a proof that they ought to stop where they then
+      were, the king restored their courage by remarking, that an anchor was an
+      omen of safety, not of delay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:31%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/095.jpg" alt="095.jpg Berenice Soter " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy&rsquo;s first children were by Thais, the noted courtesan, but they were
+      not thought legitimate. Leontiscus, the eldest, we afterwards hear of
+      fighting bravely against Demetrius; of the second, named Lagus after his
+      grandfather, we hear nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then married Eurydice, the daughter of Antipater, by whom he had
+      several children. The eldest son, Ptolemy, was named Ceraunus, <i>the
+      Thunderer</i>, and was banished by his father from Alexandria. In his
+      distress he fled to Seleucus, by whom he was kindly received; but after
+      the death of Ptolemy Soter he basely plotted against Seleucus and put him
+      to death. He then defeated in battle Antigonus, the son of Demetrius, and
+      got possession of Macedonia for a short time. He married his half-sister
+      Arsinoë, and put her children to death; and was soon afterwards put to
+      death himself by the Gauls, who were either fighting against him or were
+      mercenaries in his own army. Another son of Ptolemy and Eurydice was put
+      to death by Ptolemy Philadelphus, for plotting against his throne, to
+      which, as the elder brother, he might have thought himself the best
+      entitled. Their daughter Lysander married Agathocles, the son of
+      Lysimachus; but when Agathocles was put to death by his father, she fled
+      to Egypt with her children, and put herself under Ptolemy&rsquo;s care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 lady who
+      had come into Egypt with Eurydice, and had formed part of her household.
+      She was the widow of a man named Philip; and she had by her first husband
+      a son named Magas, whom Ptolemy made governor of Cyrene, and a daughter,
+      Antigone, whom Ptolemy gave in marriage to Pyrrhus when that young king
+      was living in Alexandria as hostage for Demetrius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Berenicê&rsquo;s mildness and goodness of heart were useful in softening her
+      husband&rsquo;s severity. Once, when Ptolemy was unbending his mind at a game of
+      dice with her, one of his officers came up to his side, and began to read
+      over to him a list of criminals who had been condemned to death, with
+      their crimes, and to ask his pleasure on each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy continued playing, and gave very little attention to the unhappy
+      tale; but Berenice&rsquo;s feelings overcame the softness of her character, and
+      she took the paper out of the officer&rsquo;s hand, and would not let him finish
+      reading it; saying it was very unbecoming in the king to treat the matter
+      so lightly, as if he thought no more of the loss of a life than the loss
+      of a throw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Berenicê Ptolemy spent the rest of his years without anything to
+      trouble the happiness of his family. He saw their elder son, Ptolemy, whom
+      we must call by the name which he took late in life, Philadelphus, grow up
+      everything that he could wish him to be; and, moved alike by his love for
+      the mother and by the good qualities of the son, he chose him as his
+      successor on the throne, instead of his eldest son, Ptolemy Ceraunus, who
+      had shown, by every act in his life, his unfitness for the royal position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His daughter Arsinoë married Lysimachus in his old age, and urged him
+      against his son, Agathocles, the husband of her own sister. She afterwards
+      married her half-brother, Ptolemy Ceraunus; and lastly became the wife of
+      her brother Philadelphus. Argzeus, the youngest son of Ptolemy, was put to
+      death by Philadelphus on a charge of treason. Of his youngest daughter
+      Philotera we know nothing, except that her brother Philadelphus afterwards
+      named a city on the coast of the Red Sea after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:25%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/098.jpg" alt="098.jpg Nit, Goddess of Sais. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:21%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/099.jpg" alt="099.jpg a Cat Mummy " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      After the last battle with Demetrius, Ptolemy had regained the island of
+      Cyprus and Cole-Syria, including Judæa; and his throne became stronger as
+      his life drew to an end. With a wisdom rare in kings and conquerors, he
+      had never let his ambition pass his means; he never aimed at universal
+      power; and he was led, both by his kind feelings and wise policy, to
+      befriend all those states which, like his own, were threatened by that mad
+      ambition in others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His history of Alexander&rsquo;s wars is lost, and we therefore cannot judge of
+      his merits as an author; but we may still point out with pleasure how much
+      his people gained from his love of letters; though indeed we do not need
+      the example of Ptolemy to show that learning and philosophy are as much in
+      place, and find as wide a field of usefulness, in governing a kingdom as
+      in the employments of the teacher, the lawyer, or the physician, who so
+      often claim them as their own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His last public act, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, was ordered
+      by the same forbearance which had governed every part of his life. Feeling
+      the weight of years press heavily upon him, that he was less able than
+      formerly to bear the duties of his office, and wishing to see his son
+      firmly seated on the throne, he laid aside his diadem and his title, and,
+      without consulting either the army or the capital, proclaimed Ptolemy, his
+      son by Berenicê, king, and contented himself with the modest rank of
+      somatophylax, or satrap, to his successor. He had used his power so justly
+      that he was not afraid to lay it down; and he has taught us how little of
+      true greatness there is in rank by showing how much more there is in
+      resigning it. This is perhaps the most successful instance known of a
+      king, who had been used to be obeyed by armies and by nations, willingly
+      giving up his power when he found his bodily strength no longer equal to
+      it. Ptolemy Soter had the happiness of having a son willing to follow in
+      the track which he had laid down for him, and of living to see the wisdom
+      of his own laws proved by the well-being of the kingdom under his son and
+      successor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while we are watching the success of Ptolemy&rsquo;s plans, and the rise of
+      this Greek monarchy at Alexandria, we cannot help being pained with the
+      thought that the Kopts of Upper Egypt are forgotten, and asking whether it
+      would not have been still better to have raised Thebes to the place which
+      it once held, and to have recalled the days of Ramses, instead of trying
+      what might seem the hopeless task of planting Greek arts in Africa. But a
+      review of this history will show that, as far as human forethought can
+      judge, this could not have been done. A people whose religious opinions
+      were fixed against all change, like the pillars upon which they were
+      carved, and whose philosophy had not noticed that men&rsquo;s minds were made to
+      move forward, had no choice but to be left behind and trampled on, as
+      their more active neighbours marched onwards in the path of improvement.
+      If Thebes had fallen only on the conquest by Cambyses, if the rebellions
+      against the Persians had been those of Kopts throwing off their chains and
+      struggling for freedom, we might have hoped to have seen Egypt, on the
+      fall of Darius, again rise under kings of the blood and language of the
+      people; and we should have thought the gilded and half-hid chains of the
+      Ptolemies were little better than the heavy yoke of the Persians. This,
+      however, is very far from having been the case. We first see the kings of
+      Lower Egypt guarding their thrones at Saïs by Greek soldiers; and then,
+      that every struggle of Inarus, of Nectanebo, and of Tachos, against the
+      Persians, was only made by the courage and arms of Greeks hired in the
+      Delta by Egyptian gold. During the three hundred years before Alexander
+      was hailed by Egypt as its deliverer, scarcely once had the Kopts,
+      trusting to their own courage, stood up in arms against either Persians or
+      Greeks; and the country was only then con-quered without a battle because
+      the power and arms were already in the hands of the Greeks; because in the
+      mixed races of the Delta the Greeks were so far the strongest, though not
+      the most numerous, that a Greek kingdom rose there with the same ease, and
+      for the same reasons, that an Arab kingdom rose in the same place nine
+      centuries later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moral worth, national pride, love of country, and the better feelings of
+      clanship are the chief grounds upon which a great people can be raised.
+      These feelings are closely allied to self-denial, or a willingness on the
+      part of each man to give up much for the good of the whole. By this,
+      chiefly, public monuments are built, and citizens stand by one another in
+      battle; and these feelings were certainly strong in Upper Egypt in the
+      days of its greatness. But, when the throne was moved to Lower Egypt, when
+      the kingdom was governed by the kings of Saïs, and even afterwards, when
+      it was struggling against the Persians, these virtues were wanting, and
+      they trusted to foreign hirelings in their struggle for freedom. The Delta
+      was peopled by three races of men, Kopts, Greeks, and Phoenicians, or
+      Arabs; and even before the sceptre was given to the Greeks by Alexander&rsquo;s
+      conquests, we have seen that the Kopts had lost the virtues needed to hold
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/100.jpg" width="100%" alt="100.jpg Tailpiece " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="linkB2HCH0001" id="linkB2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <a name="linkBimage-0005"
+       id="linkBimage-0005">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/101.jpg" width="100%" alt="101.jpg Page Image " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.&mdash;PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS. B.C. 284-246
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We know of few princes who ever mounted a throne with such fair prospects
+      before them as the second Ptolemy. He was born in Cos, an island on the
+      coast of Caria, which the Ptolemies kept as a family fortress, safe from
+      Egyptian rebellion and Alexandrian rudeness, and, while their fleets were
+      masters of the sea, safe from foreign armies. He had been brought up with
+      great care, and, being a younger son, was not spoilt by that flattery
+      which in all courts is so freely offered to the heir. He first studied
+      letters and philosophy under Philetas of Cos, an author of some elegies
+      and epigrams now lost; and as he grew up, he found himself surrounded by
+      all the philosophers and writers with whom his father mixed on the easiest
+      terms of friendship. During the long reign of Ptolemy Soter the people had
+      been made happy by wise regulations and good laws, trade had been
+      flourishing, the cities had greatly prospered, and the fortresses had been
+      everywhere strengthened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0006" id="linkBimage-0006">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:27%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/102.jpg"
+       alt="102.jpg Pharos in Old Alexandria " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Grecian troops were well trained, their loyalty undoubted, and the
+      Egyptians were enrolled in a phalanx, armed and disciplined like the
+      Macedonians. The population of the country was counted at seven millions.
+      Alexandria, the capital of the kingdom, was not only the largest trading
+      city in the world, but was one of the most favoured seats of learning. It
+      surely must have been easy to foresee that the prince, then mounting the
+      throne, even if but slightly gifted with virtues, would give his name to a
+      reign which could not be otherwise than remarkable in the history of
+      Egypt. But Philadelphus, though like his father he was not free from the
+      vices of his times and of his rank, had more of wisdom than is usually the
+      lot of kings; and, though we cannot but see that he was only watering the
+      plants and gathering the fruit where his father had planted, yet we must
+      at the same time acknowledge that Philadelphus was a successor worthy of
+      Ptolemy Soter. He may have been in the twenty-third year of his age when
+      his father gave up to him the cares and honours of royalty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first act of his reign, or rather the last of his father&rsquo;s reign, was
+      the proclamation, or the ceremony, of showing the new king to the troops
+      and people. All that was dazzling, all that was costly or curious, all
+      that the wealth of Egypt could buy or the gratitude of the provinces could
+      give, was brought forth to grace this religious show, which, as we learn
+      from the sculptures in the old tombs, was copied rather from the triumphs
+      of Ramses and Thûtmosis than from anything that had been seen in Greece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession began with the pomp of Osiris, at the head of which were
+      the Sileni in scarlet and purple cloaks, who opened the way through the
+      crowd. Twenty satyrs followed on each side of the road, bearing torches;
+      and then Victories with golden wings, clothed in skins, each with a golden
+      staff six cubits long, twined round with ivy. An altar was carried next,
+      covered with golden ivy-leaves, with a garland of golden vine-leaves tied
+      with white ribands; and this was followed by a hundred and twenty boys in
+      scarlet frocks, carrying bowls of crocus, myrrh, and frankincense, which
+      made the air fragrant with the scent. Then came forty dancing satyrs
+      crowned with golden ivy-leaves, with their naked bodies stained with gay
+      colours, each carrying a crown of vine leaves and gold; then two Sileni in
+      scarlet cloaks and white boots, one having the hat and wand of Mercury and
+      the other a trumpet; and between them walked a man, six feet high, in
+      tragic dress and mask, meant for the Year, carrying a golden cornucopia.
+      He was followed by a tall and beautiful woman, meant for the Lustrum of
+      five years, carrying in one hand a crown and in the other a palm-branch.
+      Then came an altar, and a troop of satyrs in gold and scarlet, carrying
+      golden drinking-cups.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came Philiscus the poet, the priest of Osiris, with all the servants
+      of the god; then the Delphic tripods, the prizes which were to be given in
+      the wrestling matches; that for the boys was nine cubits high, and that
+      for the men twelve cubits high. Next came a four-wheeled car, fourteen
+      cubits long and eight wide, drawn along by one hundred and eighty men, on
+      which was the statue of Osiris, fifteen feet high, pouring wine out of a
+      golden vase, and having a scarlet frock down to his feet, with a yellow
+      transparent robe over it, and over all a scarlet cloak. Before the statue
+      was a large golden bowl, and a tripod with bowls of incense on it. Over
+      the whole was an awning of ivy and vine leaves; and in the same chariot
+      were the priests and priestesses of the god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was followed by a smaller chariot drawn by sixty men, in which was
+      the statue of Isis in a robe of yellow and gold. Then came a chariot full
+      of grapes, and another with a large cask of wine, which was poured out on
+      the road, as the procession moved on, and at which the eager crowd filled
+      their jugs and drinking-cups. Then came another band of satyrs and Sileni,
+      and more chariots of wine; then eighty Delphic vases of silver, and
+      Panathenaic and other vases; and sixteen hundred dancing boys in white
+      frocks and golden crowns: then a number of beautiful pictures; and a
+      chariot carrying a grove of trees, out of which flew pigeons and doves, so
+      tied that they might be easily caught by the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On another chariot, drawn by an elephant, came Osiris, as he returned from
+      his Indian conquests. He was followed by twenty-four chariots drawn by
+      elephants, sixty drawn by goats, twelve by some kind of stags, seven by
+      gazelles, four by wild asses, fifteen by buffaloes, eight by ostriches,
+      and seven by stags of some other kind. Then came chariots loaded with the
+      tributes of the conquered nations; men of Ethiopia carrying six hundred
+      elephants&rsquo; teeth; sixty huntsmen leading two thousand four hundred dogs;
+      and one hundred and fifty men carrying trees, in the branches of which
+      were tied parrots and other beautiful birds. Next walked the foreign
+      animals, Ethiopian and Arabian sheep, Brahmin bulls, a white bear,
+      leopards, panthers, bears, a camelopard, and a rhinoceros; proving to the
+      wondering crowd the variety and strangeness of the countries that owned
+      their monarch&rsquo;s sway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another chariot was seen Bacchus running away from Juno, and flying to
+      the altar of Rhea. After that came the statues of Alexander and Ptolemy
+      Soter crowned with gold and ivy: by the side of Ptolemy stood the statues
+      of Virtue, of the god Chem, and of the city of Corinth; and he was
+      followed by female statues of the conquered cities of Ionia, Greece, Asia
+      Minor, and Persia; and the statues of other gods. Then came crowds of
+      singers and cymbal-players, and two thousand bulls with gilt horns,
+      crowns, and breast-plates. Then came Amon-Ra and other gods; and the
+      statue of Alexander between Victory and the goddess Neith, in a chariot
+      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 the throne of
+      Ptolemy Soter was a crown worth ten thousand <i>aurei</i>, or nearly
+      thirty thousand dollars; then three thousand two hundred golden crowns,
+      twenty golden shields, sixty-four suits of golden armour; and the whole
+      was closed with forty waggons of silver vessels, twenty of golden vessels,
+      eighty of costly Eastern scents, and fifty-seven thousand six hundred foot
+      soldiers, and twenty-three thousand two hundred horse. The procession
+      began moving by torchlight before day broke in the morning, and the sun
+      set in the evening before it had all passed on its way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0007" id="linkBimage-0007">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/106.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="106.jpg Bronze Cosmetic Holder " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      It went through the streets of Alexandria to the royal tents on the
+      outside of the city, where, as in the procession, everything that was
+      costly in art, or scarce in nature, was brought together in honour of the
+      day. At the public games, as a kind of tax or coronation money, twenty
+      golden crowns were given to Ptolemy Soter, twenty-three to Berenice, and
+      twenty to their son, the new king, beside other costly gifts; and two
+      thousand two hundred and thirty-nine talents, or one million seven hundred
+      and fifty thousand dollars, were spent on the amusements of the day. For
+      the account of this curious procession we are indebted to Callixenes of
+      Rhodes, who was then travelling in Egypt, and who wrote a history of
+      Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy Soter lived two years after he had withdrawn himself from the
+      cares of government; and the weight of his name was not without its use in
+      adding steadiness to the throne of his successor. Instead of parcelling
+      out his wide provinces among his sons as so many kingdoms, he had given
+      them all to one son, and that not the eldest; and on his death the
+      jealousy of those who had been disinherited and disappointed broke out in
+      rebellion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is with peculiar interest that we hear in this reign for the first time
+      that the bravery and rising power of the Romans had forced themselves into
+      the notice of Philadelphus. Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus, had been beaten
+      by the Romans, and driven out of Italy; and the King of Egypt thought it
+      not beneath him to send an ambassador to the senate, to wish them joy of
+      their success, and to make a treaty of peace with the republic. The
+      embassy, as we might suppose, was received in Rome with great joy; and
+      three ambassadors, two of the proud name of Fabius, with Quintus Ogulnius,
+      were sent back to seal the treaty. Philadelphus gave them some costly
+      gifts, probably those usually given to ambassadors; but Rome was then
+      young, her citizens had not yet made gold the end for which they lived,
+      and the ambassadors returned the gifts, for they could receive nothing
+      beyond the thanks of the senate for having done their duty. This treaty
+      was never broken; and in the war which broke out in the middle of this
+      reign between Rome and Carthage, usually called the first Punic war, when
+      the Carthaginians sent to Alexandria to beg for a loan of two thousand
+      talents, Philadelphus refused it, saying that he would help them against
+      his enemies, but not against his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time forward we find Egypt in alliance with Rome. But we also
+      find that they were day by day changing place with one another: Egypt soon
+      began to sink, while Rome was rising in power; Egypt soon received help
+      from her stronger ally, and at last became a province of the Roman empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time of this embassy, when Greek arts were nearly unknown to the
+      Romans, the ambassadors must have seen much that was new to them, and much
+      that was worth copying; and three years afterwards, when one of them,
+      Quintus Ogulnius, together with Caius Fabius Pictor, were chosen consuls,
+      they coined silver for the first time in Rome. With them begins the series
+      of consular denarii, which throws such light on Roman life and history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 the
+      beginning of his own reign: he had before gone on like his father, dating
+      from the beginning of his father&rsquo;s reign. In the year after her death, the
+      great feast of Osiris, in the month of Mesore, was celebrated at
+      Alexandria with more than usual pomp by the Queen Arsinoë. Venus, or Isis,
+      had just raised Berenice to heaven; and Arsinoë, in return, showed her
+      gratitude by the sums of money spent on the feast of Osiris, or Adonis as
+      he was sometimes called by the Greeks. Theocritus, who was there, wrote a
+      poem on the day, and tells us of the crowds in the streets, of the queen&rsquo;s
+      gifts to the temple, and of the beautiful tapestries, on which were woven
+      the figures of the god and goddess breathing as if alive; and he has given
+      a free translation of the Maneros, the national poem in which the priests
+      each year consoled the goddess Isis for the death of Osiris, which was
+      sung through the streets of Alexandria by a Greek girl in the procession.
+      One of the chief troubles in the reign of Philadelphus was the revolt of
+      Cyrene. The government of that part of Africa had been entrusted to Magas,
+      the half-brother of the king, a son of Berenice by her former husband.
+      Berenice, who had been successful in setting aside Ceraunus to make room
+      for her son Philadelphus on the throne of Egypt, has even been said to
+      have favoured the rebellious and ungrateful efforts of her elder son Magas
+      to make himself King of Cyrene. Magas, without waiting till the large
+      armies of Egypt were drawn together to crush his little state, marched
+      hastily towards Alexandria, in the hopes of being joined by some of the
+      restless thousands of that crowded city. But he was quickly recalled to
+      Cyrene by the news of the rising of the Marmaridas, the race of Libyan
+      herdsmen that had been driven back from the coast by the Greek settlers
+      who founded Cyrene. Philadelphus then led his army along the coast against
+      the rebels; but he was, in the same way, stopped by the fear of treachery
+      among his own Gallic mercenaries. With a measured cruelty which the use of
+      foreign mercenaries could alone have taught him, he led back his army to
+      the marshes of the Delta, and, entrapping the four thousand distrusted
+      Gauls* on one of the small islands, he hemmed them in between the water
+      and the spears of the phalanx, and they all died miserably, by famine, by
+      drowning, or by the sword.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * 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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Magas had married Apime, the daughter of Antiochus Soter, King of Syria;
+      and he sent to his father-in-law to beg him to march upon Coele-Syria and
+      Palestine, to call off the army of Philadelphus from Cyrene. But
+      Philadelphus did not wait for this attack: his armies moved before
+      Antiochus was ready, and, by a successful inroad upon Syria, he prevented
+      any relief being sent to Magas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the war between the brothers had lasted some years, Magas made an
+      offer of peace, which was to be sealed by betrothing his only child,
+      Berenicê, to the son of Philadelphus. To this offer Philadelphus yielded;
+      as by the death of Magas, who was already worn out by luxury and disease,
+      Cyrene would then fall to his own son. Magas, indeed, died before the
+      marriage took place; but, notwithstanding the efforts made by his widow to
+      break the agreement, the treaty was kept, and on this marriage Cyrene
+      again formed part of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The black spot upon the character of Philadelphus, which all the blaze of
+      science and letters by which he was surrounded can not make us overlook,
+      is the death of two of his brothers: a son of Eurydice, who might,
+      perhaps, have thought that he was robbed of the throne of Egypt by his
+      younger brother, and who was unsuccessful in raising the island of Cyprus
+      in rebellion; and a younger brother, Argasus, who was also charged with
+      joining in a plot; both lost their lives by his orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only in the beginning of this reign, after Egypt had been for more
+      than fifty years under the rule of the Macedonians, that the evils which
+      often follow conquest were brought to an end. Before this reign no Greek
+      was ever known to have reached Elephantine and Syênê or Aswan since
+      Herodotus made his hasty tour in the Thebaid; and during much of the last
+      reign no part of Upper Egypt was safe for a Greek traveller, if he were
+      alone, or if he quitted the highroad. The peasants, whose feelings of
+      hatred we can hardly wonder at, waylaid the stragglers, and Egyptian-like
+      as the Greeks said, or slave-like as it would be wiser to say, often put
+      them to death in cold blood. But a long course of good government had at
+      last quieted the whole country, and left room for further improvements by
+      Philadelphus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among other buildings, Philadelphus raised a temple in Alexandria to the
+      honour of his father and mother, and placed in it their statues, made of
+      ivory and gold, and ordered that they should be worshipped like the gods
+      and other kings of the country. He also built a temple to Ceres and
+      Proserpine, and then the Eleusinian mysteries were taught in Alexandria to
+      the few who were willing and worthy to be admitted. The southeast quarter
+      of the city in which this temple stood was called the Eleusinis; and here
+      the troop of maidens were to be seen carrying the sacred basket through
+      the streets, and singing hymns in honour of the goddess; while they
+      charged all profane persons, who met the procession, to keep their eyes
+      upon the ground, lest they should see the basket and the priestesses, who
+      were too pure for them to look upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this reign was finished the lighthouse on the island of Pharos, as a
+      guide to ships when entering the harbour of Alexandria by night. The
+      navigation of the waters of the Red Sea, along which the wind blows hard
+      from the north for nine months in the year, was found so dangerous by the
+      little vessels from the south of Arabia, that they always chose the most
+      southerly port in which they could meet the Egyptian buyers. The merchants
+      with their bales of goods found a journey on camels through the desert,
+      where the path is marked only by the skeletons of the animals that have
+      died upon the route, less costly than a coasting voyage. Hence, when
+      Philadelphus had made the whole of Upper Egypt to the cataracts at Aswan
+      (Syênê) as quiet and safe as the Delta, he made a new port on the rocky
+      coast of the Red Sea, nearly two hundred miles to the south of Cosseir,
+      and named it Berenicê after his mother. He also built four public inns, or
+      watering-houses, where the caravans might find water for the camels, and
+      shelter from the noonday sun, on their twelve days&rsquo; journey through the
+      desert from Koptos on the Nile to this new port. He rebuilt, and at the
+      same time renamed, the old port of Cosseir, or Ænnum as it was before
+      called, and named it Philotera after his younger sister. The trade which
+      thus passed down the Nile from Syênê, from Berenicê, and from Philotera,
+      paid a toll or duty at the custom-house station of Phylake a little below
+      Lycopolis on the west bank of the river, where a guard of soldiers was
+      encamped; and this station gradually grew into a town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0008" id="linkBimage-0008">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:39%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/112.jpg"
+       alt="112.jpg Rosetta Branch of the Nile " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      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; and he
+      again opened the canal which Necho II. and Darius had begun, by which
+      ships were to pass from the Nile to this city on the Red Sea. This canal
+      began in the Pelusiac branch of the river, a little above Bubastis, and
+      was carried to the Lower Bitter Lakes in the reign of Darius. From thence
+      Philadelphus wished to carry it forward to the Red Sea, near the town of
+      Arsinoë, and moreover cleared it from the sands which soon overwhelmed it
+      and choked it up whenever it was neglected by the government. But his
+      undertaking was stopped by the engineers finding the waters 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 could neither water the fields
+      nor give drink to the cities in the valley. He also built a second city of
+      the name of Berenicê, called the Berenicê Epidires, at the very mouth of
+      the Red Sea on a point of land where Abyssinia is hardly more than fifteen
+      miles from the opposite coast of Arabia. This naming of cities after his
+      mother and sisters was no idle compliment; they probably received the
+      crown revenues of those cities for their personal maintenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a view further to increase the trade with the East, Philadelphus sent
+      Dionysius on an expedition overland to India, to gain a knowledge of the
+      country and of its means and wants. He went by the way of the Caspian Sea
+      through Bactria, in the line of Alexander&rsquo;s march. He dwelt there, at the
+      court of the sovereign, soon after the time that Megasthenes was there;
+      and he wrote a report of what he saw and learned. But it is sad to find,
+      in our search for what is valuable in the history of past times, that the
+      information gained on this interesting journey of discovery is wholly
+      lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the number of ports which were then growing into the rank of cities, we
+      see full proof of the great trade of Egypt at that time; and we may form
+      some opinion of the profit which was gained from the trade of the Red Sea
+      from the report of Clitarchus to Alexander, that the people of one of the
+      islands would give a talent of gold for a horse, so plentiful with them
+      was gold, and so scarce the useful animals of Europe; and one of the three
+      towns named after the late queen, on that coast, was known by the name of
+      the Nubian or Golden Berenicê, from the large supply of gold 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 a post from which the
+      hunting parties went out to catch elephants for the armies of Egypt.
+      Philadelphus tried to command, to persuade, and to bribe the neighbouring
+      tribes not to kill these elephants for food, but they refused all treaty
+      with him; these zealous huntsmen answered that, if he offered them the
+      kingdom of Egypt with all its wealth, they would not give up the pleasure
+      of catching and eating elephants. The Ethiopian forests, however, were
+      able to supply the Egyptian armies with about one elephant for every
+      thousand men, which was the number then thought best in the Greek military
+      tactics. Asia had been the only country from which the armies had been
+      supplied with elephants before Philadelphus brought them from Ethiopia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The temple of Isis among the palm groves in Philæ, a rocky island in the
+      Nile near the cataracts of Syênê, was begun in this reign, though not
+      finished till some reigns later. It is still the wonder of travellers, and
+      by its size and style proves the wealth and good taste of the priests. But
+      its ornaments are not so simple as those of the older temples; and the
+      capitals of its columns are varied by the full-blown papyrus 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 the site of an older
+      temple which may have &lsquo;been overthrown by the Persians. This island of
+      Philo is the most beautiful spot in Egypt; where the bend of the river
+      just above the cataracts forms a quiet lake surrounded on all sides by
+      fantastic cliffs of red granite. Its name is a corruption from Abu-lakh,
+      the city of the frontier. This temple was one of the places in which
+      Osiris was said to be buried. None but priests ever set foot on this
+      sacred island, and no oath was so binding as that sworn in the name of Him
+      that lies buried in Philæ. The statues of the goddess in the temple were
+      all meant for portraits of the queen Arsinoë. The priests who dwelt in the
+      cells within the courtyards of the temples of which we see the remains in
+      this temple at Philæ, were there confined for life to the service of the
+      altar by the double force of religion and the stone walls. They showed
+      their zeal for their gods by the amount of want which they were able to
+      endure, and they thought that sitting upon the ground in idleness, with
+      the knees up to the chin, was one of the first of religious duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0009" id="linkBimage-0009">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/116.jpg" width="100%" alt="116.jpg Temple of Philae " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0010" id="linkBimage-0010">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:27%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/118.jpg"
+       alt="118.jpg Anubis, God of the Lower World " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Museum of Alexandria held at this time the highest rank among the
+      Greek schools, whether for poetry, mathematics, astronomy, or medicine,
+      the four branches into which it was divided. Its library soon held two
+      hundred thousand rolls of papyrus; which, however, could hardly have been
+      equal to ten thousand printed volumes. Many of these were bought by
+      Philadelphus in Athens and Rhodes; and his copy of Aristotle&rsquo;s works was
+      bought of the philosopher Nileus, who had been a hearer of that great man,
+      and afterwards inherited his books through Theophrastus, to whom they had
+      been left by Aristotle. The books in the museum were of course all Greek;
+      the Greeks did not study foreign languages, and thought the Egyptian
+      writings barbarous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of this library had been Demetrius Phalereus, who, after
+      ruling Athens with great praise, was banished from his country, and fled
+      to Ptolemy Soter, under whom he consoled himself for the loss of power in
+      the enjoyment of literary leisure. He was at the same time the most
+      learned and the most polished of orators. He brought learning from the
+      closet into the forum; and, by the soft turn which he gave to public
+      speaking, made that sweet and lovely which had before been grave and
+      severe. Cicero thought him the great master in the art of speaking, and
+      seems to have taken him as the model upon which he wished to form his own
+      style. He wrote upon philosophy, history, government, and poetry; but the
+      only one of his works which has reached our time is his treatise on
+      elocution; and the careful thought which he there gives to the choice of
+      words and to the form of a sentence, and even the parts of a sentence,
+      shows the value then set upon style. Indeed he seems rather to have
+      charmed his hearers by the softness of his words than to have roused them
+      to noble deeds by the strength of his thoughts. He not only advised
+      Ptolemy Soter what books he should buy, but which he should read, and he
+      chiefly recommended those on government and policy; and it is alike to the
+      credit of the king and of the librarian, that he put before him books
+      which, from their praise of freedom and hatred of tyrants, few persons
+      would even speak of in the presence of a king. But Demetrius had also been
+      consulted by Soter about the choice of a successor, and had given his
+      opinion that the crown ought to be left to his eldest son, and that wars
+      would arise between his children if it were not so left; hence we can
+      hardly wonder that, on the death of Soter, Demetrius should have lost his
+      place at the head of the museum, and been ordered to leave Alexandria. He
+      died, as courtiers say, in disgrace; and he was buried near Diospolis in
+      the Busirite nome of the Delta. According to one account he was put to
+      death by the bite of an asp, in obedience to the new king&rsquo;s orders, but
+      this story is not generally credited; although this was not an uncommon
+      way of inflicting death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after this we find Zenodotus of Ephesus filling the office of
+      librarian to the museum. He was a poet, who, with others, had been
+      employed by Soter in the education of his children. He is also known as
+      the first of those Alexandrian critics who turned their thoughts towards
+      mending the text of Homer, and to whom we are indebted for the tolerably
+      correct state of the great poet&rsquo;s works, which had become faulty through
+      the carelessness of the copiers. Zenodotus was soon followed by other
+      critics in this task of editing Homer. But their labours were not approved
+      of by all; and when Aratus asked Timon which he thought the best edition
+      of the poet, the philosopher shrewdly answered, &ldquo;That which has been least
+      corrected.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of the mathematical school was Euclid; who is, however, less
+      known to us by what his pupils have said of him than by his own invaluable
+      work on geometry. This is one of the few of the scientific writings of the
+      ancients that are still in use. The discoveries of the man of science are
+      made use of by his successor, and the discoverer perhaps loses part of his
+      reward when his writings are passed by, after they have served us as a
+      stepping-stone to mount by. If he wishes his works to live with those of
+      the poet and orator, he must, like them, cultivate those beauties of style
+      which are fitted to his matter. Euclid did so; and his Elements have been
+      for more than two thousand years the model for all writers on geometry. He
+      begins at the beginning, and leads the learner, step by step, from the
+      simplest propositions, called axioms, which rest upon metaphysical rather
+      than mathematical proof, to high geometrical truths. The mind is indeed
+      sometimes wearied by being made to stop at every single step in the path,
+      and wishes, with Ptolemy Soter, for a shorter road; but, upon the whole,
+      Euclid&rsquo;s clearness has never been equalled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ctesibus wrote on the theory of hydrostatics, and was the inventor of
+      several water-engines; an application of mathematics which was much called
+      for by the artificial irrigation of Egypt. He also invented that useful
+      instrument, the water-clock, to tell the time after sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0011" id="linkBimage-0011">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/120.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="120.jpg at the Head of The Red Sea " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Among the best known of the men of letters who came to Alexandria to enjoy
+      the patronage of Philadelphus was Theocritus. Many of his poems are lost;
+      but his pastoral poems, though too rough for the polished taste of
+      Quintilian, and perhaps more like nature than we wish any works of
+      imitative art to be, have always been looked upon as the model of that
+      kind of poetry. If his shepherds do not speak the language of courtiers,
+      they have at least a rustic propriety which makes us admire the manners
+      and thoughts of the peasant. He repaid the bounty of the king in the way
+      most agreeable to him; he speaks of him as one
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              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&rsquo;er says No,
+     But gives as kings should give.
+     Idyll, xiv. 60.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Theocritus boasted that he would in an undying poem place him in the rank
+      of the demigods; and, writing with the pyramids and the Memnonium before
+      his eyes, assured him that generosity towards the poets would do more to
+      make his name live for ever than any building that he could raise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 could not
+      long dwell so near the court of Philadelphus unknown and unhonoured. He
+      was made professor of poetry in the museum, and even now repays the king
+      and patron for what he then received. He was a man of great industry, and
+      wrote in prose and in all kinds of verse; but of these only a few hymns
+      and epigrams have come down to our time. Egypt seems to have been the
+      birthplace of the mournful elegy, and Callimachus was the chief of the
+      elegiac poets. He was born at Cyrene; and though, from the language in
+      which he wrote, his thoughts are mostly Greek, yet he did not forget the
+      place of his birth. He calls upon Apollo by the name of Carneus, because,
+      after Sparta and Thera, Cyrene was his chosen seat. He paints Latona,
+      weary and in pain in the island of Delos, as leaning against a palm-tree,
+      by the side of the river Inopus, which, sinking into the ground, was to
+      rise again in Egypt, near the cataracts of Syênê; and, prettily pointing
+      to Philadelphus, he makes Apollo, yet unborn, ask his mother not to give
+      birth to him in the island of Cos, because that island was already chosen
+      as the birthplace of another god, the child of the gods Soteres, who would
+      be the copy of his father, and under whose diadem both Egypt and the
+      islands would be proud to be governed by a Macedonian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0012" id="linkBimage-0012">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/123.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="123.jpg the Cararact on The Aswan " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The poet Philastas, who had been the first tutor of Philadelphus, was in
+      elegy second only to Callimachus; but Quintilian (while advising us about
+      books, to read much but not many) does not rank him among the few
+      first-rate poets by whom the student should form his taste; and his works
+      are now lost. He was small and thin in person, and it was jokingly said of
+      him that he wore leaden soles to his shoes lest he should be blown away by
+      the wind. But in losing his poetry, we have perhaps lost the point of the
+      joke. While these three, Theocritus, Callimachus, and Philastas, were
+      writing in Alexandria, the museum was certainly the chief seat of the
+      muses. Athens itself could boast of no such poet but Menander, with whom
+      Attic literature ended; and him Philadelphus earnestly invited to his
+      court. He sent a ship to Greece on purpose to fetch him; but neither this
+      honour nor the promised salary could make him quit his mother country and
+      the schools of Athens; and, in the time of Pausanias, his tomb was still
+      visited by the scholar on the road to the Pmeus, and his statue was still
+      seen in the theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strato, the pupil of Theophrastus, though chiefly known for his writings
+      on physics, was also a writer on many branches of knowledge. He was one of
+      the men of learning who had taken part in the education of Phil-adelphus;
+      and the king showed his gratitude to his teacher by making him a present
+      of eighty talents, or sixty thousand dollars. He was for eighteen years at
+      the head of one of the Alexandrian schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Timocharis, the astronomer, made some of his observations at Alexandria in
+      the last reign, and continued them through half of this reign. He began a
+      catalogue of the fixed stars, with their latitudes and their longitudes
+      measured from the equinoctial point; by the help of which Hipparchus, one
+      hundred and fifty years afterwards, made the great discovery that the
+      equinoctial point had moved. He has left an observation of the place of
+      Venus, on the seventeenth day of the month of Mesore, in the thirteenth
+      year of this reign, which by the modern tables of the planets is known to
+      have been on the eighth day of October, B.C. 272; from which we learn that
+      the first year of Philadelphus ended in October, B.C. 284, and the first
+      year of Ptolemy Soter ended in October, B.C. 322; thus fixing the
+      chronology of these reigns with a certainty which leaves nothing to be
+      wished for. Aris-tillus also made some observations of the same kind at
+      Alexandria. Few of them have been handed down to us, but they were made
+      use of by Hipparchus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aristarchus, the astronomer of Samos, most likely came to Alexandria in
+      the last reign, as some of his observations were made in the very
+      beginning of the reign of Philadelphus. He is the first astronomer who is
+      known to have taken the true view of the solar system. He said that the
+      sun was the centre round which the earth moved in a circle; and, as if he
+      had foreseen that even in after ages we should hardly be able to measure
+      the distance of the fixed stars, he said that the earth&rsquo;s yearly path bore
+      no greater proportion to the hollow globe of the heavens in which the
+      stars were set, than the point without size in the centre of a circle does
+      to its circumference. But the work in which he proved these great truths,
+      or perhaps threw out these happy guesses, is lost; and the astronomers who
+      followed him clung to the old belief that the earth was the centre round
+      which the sun moved. The only writings of Aristarchus which now remain are
+      his short work on the distances and magnitude of the sun and moon, in
+      which the error in his results arises from the want of good observations,
+      rather than from any mistake in his mathematical principles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0013" id="linkBimage-0013">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:25%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/128.jpg"
+       alt="128.jpg an Athlete Disporting on a Crocodile " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Aratus, who was born in Cilicia, is sometimes counted among the pléiades,
+      or seven stars of Alexandria. His <i>Phenomena</i> is a short astronomical
+      poem, without life or feeling, which scarcely aims at any of the grace or
+      flow of poetry. It describes the planets and the constellations 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 the stars seen at night at each
+      time of the year. When maps were little known, it must have been of great
+      use, to learners; and its being in verse made it the more easy to
+      remember. The value which the ancients set upon this poem is curiously
+      shown by the number of Latin translations which were made from it. Cicero
+      in his early youth, before he was known as an orator or philosopher,
+      perhaps before he himself knew in which path of letters he was soon to
+      take the lead, translated this poem. The next translation is by Germanicus
+      Cæsar, whose early death and 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 Greek comedies, his Latin orations, and his poem on
+      Augustus are lost, while his translation of Aratus is all that is left to
+      prove that this high name in literature was not given to him for his
+      political virtues alone. Lastly Avienus, a writer in the reign of
+      Diocletian, or perhaps of Theodosius, has left a rugged, unpolished
+      translation of this much-valued poem. Aratus, the poet of the heavens,
+      will be read, said Ovid, as long as the sun and moon shall shine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sosibius was one of the rhetoricians of the museum who lived upon the
+      bounty of Philadelphus. The king, wishing to laugh at his habit of verbal
+      criticism, once told his treasurer to refuse his salary, and say that it
+      had been already paid. Sosibius complained to the king, and the book of
+      receipts was sent for, in which Philadelphus found the names of Soter,
+      Sosigines, Bion, and Apollonius, and showing to the critic one syllable of
+      his name in each of those words, said that putting them together, they
+      must be taken as the receipt for his salary. Other authors wrote on
+      lighter matters. Apollodorus Gelous, the physician, addressed to
+      Philadelphus a volume of advice as to which Greek wines were best fitted
+      for his royal palate. The Italian and Sicilian were then unknown in Egypt,
+      and those of the Thebaid were wholly beneath his notice, while the vine
+      had as yet hardly been planted in the neighbourhood of Alexandria. He
+      particularly praised the Naspercenite wine from the southern banks of the
+      Black Sea, the Oretic from the island of Euboea; the OEneatic from Locris;
+      the Leuca-dian from the island of Leucas; and the Ambraciote from the
+      kingdom of Epirus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But above all these he placed the Peparethian wine from the island of
+      Peparethus, a wine which of course did not please the many, as this
+      experienced taster acknowledges that nobody is likely to have a true
+      relish for it till after six years&rsquo; acquaintance. Such were the Greek
+      authors who basked in the sunshine of royal favour at Alexandria; who
+      could have told us, if they had thought it worth their while, all that we
+      now wish to know of the trade, religion, language, and early history of
+      Egypt. But they thought that the barbarians were not worth the notice of
+      men who called themselves Macedonians. Philadelphus, however, thought
+      otherwise; and by his command Manetho, an Egyptian, wrote in Greek a
+      history of Egypt, copied from the hieroglyphical writing on the temples,
+      and he dedicated it to the king. We know it only in the quotations of
+      Josephus and Julius Africanus, and what we have is little more than a list
+      of kings&rsquo; names. He was a priest of Heliopolis, the great seat of Egyptian
+      learning. The general correctness of Manetho&rsquo;s history, which runs back
+      for nearly two thousand years, is shown by our finding the kings&rsquo; names
+      agree with many Egyptian inscriptions. Manetho owes his reputation to the
+      merit of being the first who distinguished himself as a writer and critic
+      upon religion and philosophy, as well as chronology and history, using the
+      Greek language, but drawing his materials from native sources, especially
+      the Sacred Books. That he was &ldquo;skilled in Greek letters&rdquo;: we learn from
+      Josephus, who also declares that he contradicted many of Herodotus&rsquo;
+      erroneous statements. Manetho was better suited for the task of writing a
+      history of Egypt than any of his contemporaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As an Egyptian he could search out and make use of all the native Egyptian
+      sources, and, thanks to his knowledge of Greek, he could present them in a
+      form intelligible to the Hellenes. It must be confessed that he has
+      occasionally fallen into the error of allowing Greek thoughts and
+      traditions to slip into his work. The great worth in Manetho&rsquo;s work lies
+      in the fact that he relates the history of Egypt based 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 not mention; but above all,
+      Manetho gives us a list of Egyptian rulers arranged according to a regular
+      system. But however important in this respect Manetho&rsquo;s work may be, it
+      must not be forgotten what difficulties he had to contend with in the
+      writing of it, and what unreliable sources lay in these difficulties. He
+      could not use the sources in the form in which he found them. He was
+      obliged to re-write them, and he added to them synchronisms and relations
+      to other peoples which necessarily exposed him to the dangers of colouring
+      his report correspondingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a much greater difficulty consisted in the fact that the chronological
+      reports of the earlier history were all arranged according to the reigning
+      years of the rulers, so that Manetho was obliged to construct an era for
+      his work. Boeckh was the first to discover with certainty the existence
+      and form of this era. According to his researches, the whole work of
+      Manetho is based upon Sothicycles of 1460 Julianic years. The Egyptian
+      year was movable, and did not need the extra day every few years, but the
+      consequence was that every year remained a quarter of a day behind the
+      real year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0014" id="linkBimage-0014">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/131.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="131.jpg Modern Sphinx-like Face " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      When 1460-1 years had elapsed this chronological error had mounted to a
+      whole year, and so the movable year and the fixed year fell together
+      again. It is this Sothic period which Manetho has employed in his account
+      of Egyptian history. Besides his history, Manetho has left us a work on
+      astrology, called <i>Apotelesmatica</i>, or Events, a work of which there
+      seems no reason to doubt the genuineness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a poem in hexameter verse, in good Greek, addressed to King Ptolemy,
+      in which he calls, not only upon Apollo and the Muse, but, like a true
+      Egyptian, upon Hermes, from whose darkly worded writings he had gained his
+      knowledge. He says that the king&rsquo;s greatness might have been foretold from
+      the places of Mars and the Sun at the time of his birth, and that his
+      marriage with his sister Arsinoë arose from the places of Venus and Saturn
+      at the same time. But while we smile at this being said as the result of
+      astronomical calculations, we must remember that for centuries afterwards,
+      almost in our own time, the science of judicial astrology was made a
+      branch of astronomy, and that the fault lay rather in the age than in the
+      man; and we have the pain of thinking that, while many of the valuable
+      writings by Manetho are lost, the copiers and readers of manuscripts have
+      carefully saved for us this nearly worthless poem on astrology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Petosiris was another writer on astrology and astronomy who was highly
+      praised by his friend Manetho; and his calculations on the distances of
+      the sun and planets are quoted by Pliny. His works are lost; but his name
+      calls for our notice, as he must have been a native Egyptian, and a
+      priest. Like Manetho, he also wrote on the calculation of nativities; and
+      the later Greek astrologers, when what they had foretold did not come to
+      pass, were wont to lay the blame on Petosiris. The priests were believed
+      to possess these and other supernatural powers; and to help their claims
+      to be believed many of them practised ventriloquism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Timosthenes, the admiral under Philadelphus, must not be forgotten in this
+      list of authors; for though his verses to Apollo were little worth notice,
+      his voyages of discovery, and his work in ten books on harbours, placed
+      him in the first rank among geographers. Colotes, a pupil and follower of
+      Epicurus, dedicated to Philadelphus a work of which the very title proves
+      the nature of his philosophy, and how soon the rules of his master had
+      fitted themselves to the habits of the sensualist. Its title was &ldquo;That it
+      is impossible even to support life according to the philosophical rules of
+      any but the Epicureans.&rdquo; It was a good deal read and talked about; and
+      three hundred years afterwards Plutarch thought it not a waste of time to
+      write against it at some length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a time when books were few, and far too dear to be within reach of the
+      many, and indeed when the number of those who could read must have been
+      small, other means were of course taken to meet the thirst after
+      knowledge; and the chief of these were the public readings in the theatre.
+      This was not overlooked by Phila-delphus, who employed Hegesias to read
+      Herodotus, and Hermophantus to read Homer, the earliest historian and the
+      earliest poet, the two authors who had taken deepest root in the minds of
+      the Greeks. These public readings, which were common throughout Greece and
+      its colonies, had not a little effect on the authors. They then wrote for
+      the ear rather than the eye, to be listened to rather than to be read,
+      which was one among the causes of Greek elegance and simplicity of style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among others who were brought to Alexandria by the fame of Philadelphus&rsquo;
+      bounty was Zoilus, the grammarian, whose ill-natured criticism on Homer&rsquo;s
+      poems had earned for him the name of Homeromastix, or the scourge of
+      Homer. He read his criticisms to Philadelphus, who was so much 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 beauties of the Iliad and
+      Odyssey in their public readings, surely one person who was so much wiser
+      might be able to live by pointing out the faults.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 need not
+      wonder at our knowing nothing of his tragedies, or at his not being made a
+      professor by Philadelphus. But he took his revenge on the better-fed
+      philosophers of the court, in a poem in which he calls them literary
+      fighting-cocks, who were being fattened by the king, and were always
+      quarrelling in the coops of the museum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Alexandrian men of science and letters maintained themselves, some few
+      by fees received from their pupils, others as professors holding salaries
+      in the museum, and others by civil employments under the government. There
+      was little to encourage in them the feelings of noble pride or
+      independence. The first rank in Alexandria was held by the civil and
+      military servants of the crown, who enjoyed the lucrative employments of
+      receiving the taxes, hearing the lawsuits by appeal, and repressing
+      rebellions. With these men the philosophers mixed, not as equals, but
+      partaking of their wealth and luxuries, and paying their score with wit
+      and conversation. There were no landholders in the city, as the soil of
+      the country was owned by Egyptians; and the wealthy trading classes, of
+      all nations and languages, could bestow little patronage on Greek
+      learning, and therefore little independence on its professors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphus was not less fond of paintings and statues than of books; and
+      he seems to have joined the Achaian league as much for the sake of the
+      pictures which Aratus, its general, was in the habit of sending to him, as
+      for political reasons. Aratus, the chief of Sicyon, was an acknowledged
+      judge of paintings, and Sicyon was then the first school of Greece. The
+      pieces which he sent to Philadelphus were mostly those of Pamphilus, the
+      master, and of Melanthius, the fellow-pupil, of Apelles. Pamphilus was
+      famed for his perspective; and he is said to have received from every
+      pupil the large sum of ten talents, or seven thousand five hundred
+      dollars, a year. His best known pieces were, Ulysses in his ship, and the
+      victory of the Athenians near the town of Phlius. It was through Pamphilus
+      that, at first in Sicyon, and afterwards throughout all Greece, drawing
+      was taught to boys as part of a liberal education. Neacles also painted
+      for Aratus; and we might almost suppose that it was as a gift to the King
+      of Egypt that he painted his Sea-fight between the Egyptians and the
+      Persians, in which the painter shows us that it was fought within the
+      mouth of the Nile by making a crocodile bite at an ass drinking on the
+      shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 the Battle
+      of Issus, which three hundred years afterwards was hung up by Vespasian in
+      the Temple of Peace at Rome. We must wonder at a woman choosing to paint
+      the horrors and pains of a battle-piece; but, as we are not told what
+      point of time was chosen, we may hope that it was after the battle, when
+      Alexander, in his tent, raised up from their knees the wife and lovely
+      daughter of Darius, who had been found among the prisoners. As for the
+      Egyptians, they showed no taste in painting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0015" id="linkBimage-0015">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/137.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="137.jpg Method of Egyptian Draftsmanship " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Their method of drawing the human figure mathematically by means of
+      squares, which was not unsuitable in working a statue sixty feet high,
+      checked all flights of genius; and it afterwards destroyed Greek art, when
+      the Greek painters were idle enough to use it. We hear but little of the
+      statues and sculptures made for Philadelphus; but we cannot help remarking
+      that, while the public places of Athens were filled with the statues of
+      the great and good men who had deserved well of their country, the statues
+      which were most common in Alexandria were those of Cline, a favourite
+      damsel, who filled the office of cup-bearer to the king of Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The favour shown to the Jews by Ptolemy Soter was not withdrawn by his
+      son. He even bought from his own soldiers and freed from slavery one
+      hundred and twenty thousand men of that nation, who were scattered over
+      Egypt. He paid for each, out of the royal treasury, one hundred and twenty
+      drachmas, or about fifteen dollars, to those of his subjects who held them
+      either by right of war or by purchase. In fixing the amount of the ransom,
+      the king would seem to have been guided by his Jewish advisers, as this is
+      exactly equal to thirty shekels, the sum fixed by the Jewish law as the
+      price of a slave. The Jews who lived in Lower Egypt, in the enjoyment of
+      civil and religious liberty, looked upon that country as their home. They
+      had already a Greek translation of either the whole or some part of their
+      sacred writings, which had been made for those whose families had been for
+      so many generations in Egypt that they could not read the language of
+      their forefathers. But they now hoped, by means of the king&rsquo;s friendship
+      and the weight which his wishes must carry with them, to have a Greek
+      translation of the Bible which should bear the stamp of official
+      authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, to please them, Philadelphus sent Aris-taaus, a man whose
+      wisdom had gained his friendship, and Andrseus, a captain of the guard,
+      both of them Greek Jews, with costly gifts to Eleazer, the high priest of
+      Jerusalem; and asked him to employ learned and fit men to make a Greek
+      translation of the Bible for the library at Alexandria. Eleazer, so runs
+      the tradition, named seventy elders to undertake the task, who held their
+      first sitting on the business at the king&rsquo;s dinner-table; when Menedemus,
+      the Socratic philosopher, the pupil of Plato, was also present, who had
+      been sent to Philadelphus as ambassador from Eubcea. The translators then
+      divided the work among themselves; and when each had finished his task it
+      wras laid before a meeting of the seventy, and then published by
+      authority. Thus was said to have been made the Greek translation of the
+      Old Testament, which, from the number of the translators, we now call the
+      Septuagint; but a doubt is thrown upon the whole story by the fables which
+      have been mingled with it to give authority to the translation. By this
+      translation the Bible became known for the first time to the Greek
+      philosophers. We do not indeed hear that they immediately read it or
+      noticed it, we do not find it quoted till after the spread of
+      Christianity; but it had a silent effect on their opinions, which we trace
+      in the new school of Platonists soon afterwards rising in Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Aratus of Sicyon first laid a plot to free his country from its
+      tyrant, who reigned by the help of the King of Macedonia, he sent to
+      Philadelphus to beg for money. He naturally looked to the King of Egypt
+      for help when entering upon a struggle against their common rival; but the
+      king seems to have thought the plans of this young man too wild to be
+      countenanced. Aratus, however, soon raised Sicyon to a level with the
+      first states of Greece, and made himself leader of the Achaian league,
+      under which band and name the Greeks were then struggling for freedom
+      against Macedonia; and when, by his courage and success, he had shown
+      himself worthy of the proud name which was afterwards given him, of the
+      &ldquo;Last of the Greeks,&rdquo; Philadelphus, like other patrons, gave him the help
+      which he less needed. Aratus, as we have seen, bought his friendship with
+      pictures, the gifts of all others the most welcome; and, when he went to
+      Egypt, Philadelphus gave him one hundred and fifty talents, or forty-five
+      thousand dollars, and joined the Achaian league, on the agreement that in
+      carrying on the war by sea and land they should obey the orders from
+      Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0016" id="linkBimage-0016">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:46%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/141.jpg"
+       alt="141.jpg Coin With the Heads of Soter and Philadelphus And Arsinoë " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The friendship of Philadelphus, indeed, was courted by all the
+      neighbouring states; the little island of Delos set up its statue to him;
+      and the cities of Greece vied with one another in doing him honour. The
+      Athenians named one of the tribes of their city and also one of their
+      public lecture-rooms by his name; and two hundred years afterwards, when
+      Cicero and his friend Atticus were learning wisdom and eloquence from the
+      lips of Antiochus in Athens, it was in the gymnasium of Ptolemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphus, when young, had married Arsinoë, the daughter of Lysimachus
+      of Thrace, by whom he had three children, Ptolemy, who succeeded him,
+      Lysimachus, and Berenicê; but, having found that his wife was intriguing
+      with Amyntas, and with his physician Chrysippus of Rhodes, he put these
+      two to death and banished the Queen Arsinoë to Koptos in the Thebaid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then took Arsinoë, his own sister, as the partner of his throne. She
+      had married first the old Lysimachus, King of Thrace, and then Ceraunus,
+      her half-brother, when he was King of Macedonia. As they were not children
+      of the same mother, this second marriage was neither illegal nor improper
+      in Macedonia; but her third marriage with Philadelphus could only be
+      justified by the laws of Egypt, their adopted country. They were both past
+      the middle age, and whether Philadelphus looked upon her as his wife or
+      not, at any rate they had no children. Her own children by Lysimachus had
+      been put to death by Ceraunus, and she readily adopted those of her
+      brother with all the kindness of a mother. She was a woman of an enlarged
+      mind; her husband and her stepchildren alike valued her; and Eratosthenes
+      showed his opinion of her learning and strong sense by giving the name of
+      Arsinoë to one of his works, which perhaps a modern writer would have
+      named Table-talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0017" id="linkBimage-0017">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:36%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/142.jpg"
+       alt="142.jpg Coin With the Heads of Soter, Philadelphus And Berenice " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      This seeming marriage, however, between brother and sister did not escape
+      blame with the Greeks of Alexandria. The poet Sotades, whose verses were
+      as licentious as his life, wrote some coarse lines against the queen, for
+      which he was forced to fly from Egypt, and, being overtaken at sea, he was
+      wrapped up in lead and thrown overboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Egyptian inscriptions Ptolemy and Arsinoë are always called the
+      brother-gods; on the coins they are called Adelphi, the brothers; and
+      afterwards the king took the name of Philadelphus, or sister-loving, by
+      which he is now usually known. In the first half of his reign Philadelphus
+      dated his coins from the year that his father came to the throne; and it
+      was not till the nineteenth year of his reign, soon after the death of his
+      mother, that he made an era of his own, and dated his coins by the year of
+      his own reign. The wealth of the country is well shown by the great size
+      of those most in use, which were, in gold the tetra-stater or piece of
+      eight drachms, and in silver the tetra-drachma, or piece of four drachms,
+      while Greece had hardly seen a piece of gold larger than the single
+      stater. In Alexandrian accounts also the unit of money was the silver
+      didrachm, and thus double that in use among the merchants of Greece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0018" id="linkBimage-0018">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:46%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/143.jpg"
+       alt="143.jpg Coin of ArsinoË, Sister Of Ptolemy Ii. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Among the coins is one with the heads of Soter and Philadelphus on the one
+      side, and the head of Berenicê, the wife of the one and mother of the
+      other, on the other side. This we may suppose to have been struck during
+      the first two years of his reign, in the lifetime of his father. Another
+      bears on one side the heads of Ptolemy Soter and Berenicê, with the title
+      of &ldquo;the gods,&rdquo; and on the other side the heads of Philadelphus and his
+      wife Arsinoë, with the title of &ldquo;the brothers.&rdquo; This was struck after the
+      death of his parents. A third was struck by the king in honour of his
+      queen and sister. On the one side is the head of the queen, and on the
+      other is the name of &ldquo;Arsinoë, the brother-loving,&rdquo; with the cornucopia,
+      or horn of Amalthea, an emblem borrowed by the queens of Egypt from the
+      goddess Amalthea, the wife of the Libyan Anion. This was struck after his
+      second marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the death of Arsinoë, Philadelphus built a tomb for her in Alexandria,
+      called the Arsinoëum, and set up in it an obelisk eighty cubits high,
+      which had been made by King Nectanebo, but had been left plain, without
+      carving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Satyrus, the architect, had the charge of moving it. He dug a canal to it
+      as it lay upon the ground, and moved two heavily laden barges under it.
+      The burdens were then taken out of the barges, and as they floated higher
+      they raised the obelisk off the ground. He then found it a task as great
+      or greater to set it up in its place; and this Greek engineer must surely
+      have looked back with wonder on the labour and knowledge of mechanics
+      which must have been used in setting up the obelisks, colossal statues,
+      and pyramids, which he saw scattered over the country. This obelisk now
+      ornaments the cathedral of the Popes on the Vatican hill at Rome. Satyrus
+      wrote a treatise on precious stones, and he also carved on them with great
+      skill; but his works are known only in the following lines, which were
+      written by Diodorus on his portrait of Arsinoë cut in crystal:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     E&rsquo;en Zeuxis had been proud to trace
+     The lines within this pebble seen;
+     Satyrus here hath carved the face
+     Of fair Arsinoë, Egypt&rsquo;s queen;
+     But such her beauty, sweetness, grace,
+     The copy falls far short, I ween.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Two beautiful cameos cut on sardonyx are extant, one with the heads of
+      Philadelphus and his first wife, Arsinoe, and the other with the heads of
+      the same king and his second wife, Arsinoë. It is not impossible that one
+      or both of them may be the work of Satyrus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphus is also said to have listened to the whimsical proposal of
+      Dinochares, the architect, to build a room of loadstone in Arsinoë&rsquo;s tomb,
+      so that an iron statue of the queen should hang in the air between the
+      floor and the roof. But the death of the king and of the architect took
+      place before this was tried. He set up there, however, her statue six feet
+      high, carved out of a most remarkable block of topaz, which had been
+      presented to his mother by Philemon, the prefect of the Troglodytic coast
+      in the last reign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphus lived in peace with Ergamenes, King of Meroë or Upper
+      Ethiopia, who, while seeking for a knowledge of philosophy and the arts of
+      life from his Greek neighbours, seems also to have gained a love of
+      despotism, and a dislike of that control with which the priests of
+      Ethiopia and Egypt had always limited the power of their kings. The King
+      of Meroë had hitherto reigned like Amenôthes or Thutmosis of old, as the
+      head of the priesthood, supported and controlled by the priestly
+      aristocracy by which he was surrounded. But he longed for the absolute
+      power of Philadelphus. Accordingly he surrounded the golden temple with a
+      chosen body of troops, and put the whole of the priests to death; and from
+      that time he governed Ethiopia as an autocrat. But, with the loss of their
+      liberties, the Ethiopians lost the wish to guard the throne; by grasping
+      at more power, their sovereign lost what he already possessed; and in the
+      next reign their country was conquered by Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wars between Philadelphus and his great neighbour, Antiochus Theos,
+      seem not to have been carried on very actively, though they did not wholly
+      cease till Philadelphus offered as a bribe his daughter Berenicê, with a
+      large sum of money under the name of a dower. Antiochus was already
+      married to Laodice, whom he loved dearly, and by whom he had two children,
+      Seleucus and Antiochus; but political ambition had deadened the feelings
+      of his heart, and he agreed to declare this first marriage void and his
+      two sons illegitimate, and that his children, if any should be born to him
+      by Berenicê, should inherit the throne of Babylon and the East.
+      Philadelphus, with an equal want of feeling, and disregarding the
+      consequences of such a marriage, led his daughter to Pelusium on her
+      journey to her betrothed husband, and sent with her so large a sum of gold
+      and silver that he was nicknamed the &ldquo;dower-giver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The peace between the two countries lasted as long as Philadelphus lived,
+      and was strengthened by kindnesses which each did to the other. Ptolemy,
+      when in Syria, was much struck by the beauty of a statue of Diana, and
+      begged it of Antiochus as an ornament for Alexandria. But as soon as the
+      statue reached Egypt, Arsinoë fell dangerously ill, and she dreamed that
+      the goddess came by night, and told her that the illness was sent to her
+      for the wrong done to the statue by her husband; and accordingly it was
+      sent back with many gifts to the temple from which it had been brought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Berenicê and her husband lived at Antioch, Philadelphus kindly sent
+      there from time to time water from the sacred Nile for her use, as the
+      Egyptians believed that none other was so wholesome. Antiochus, when ill,
+      sent to Alexandria for a physician; and Cleombrotus of Cos accordingly
+      went, by command of Ptolemy, to Syria. He was successful in curing the
+      king, and on his return he received from Philadelphus a present of one
+      hundred talents, or seventy-five thousand dollars, as a fee for his
+      journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphus was a weak frame of body, and had delicate health; and,
+      though a lover of learning beyond other kings of his time, he also
+      surpassed them in his unmeasured luxury and love of pleasure. He had many
+      mistresses, Egyptian as well as Greek, and the names of some of them have
+      been handed down to us. He often boasted that he had found out the way to
+      live for ever; but, like other free-livers, he was sometimes, by the gout
+      in his feet, made to acknowledge that he was only a man, and indeed to
+      wish that he could change places with the beggar whom he saw from his
+      palace windows, eating the garbage on the banks of the Nile with an
+      appetite which he had long wanted. It was during illness that he found
+      most time for reading, and his mind most open to the truths of philosophy;
+      and he chiefly wooed the Muses when ill health left him at leisure from
+      his other courtships. He had a fleet of eight hundred state barges with
+      gilt prows and poops and scarlet awnings upon the decks, which were used
+      in the royal processions and religious shows, and which usually lay in
+      dock at Schedia, on the Canopic River, five and twenty miles from
+      Alexandria. He was no doubt in part withheld from war by this luxurious
+      love of ease; but his reign taught the world the new lesson, that an
+      ambitious monarch may gratify his wish for praise and gain the admiration
+      of surrounding nations, as much by cultivating the blessed arts of peace
+      as by plunging his people into the miseries of war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reigned over Egypt, with the neighbouring parts of Arabia; also over
+      Libya, Phoenicia, Cole-Syria, part of Ethiopia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, Lycia,
+      Caria, Cyprus, and the isles of the Cyclades. The island of Rhodes and
+      many of the cities of Greece were bound to him by the closest ties of
+      friendship, for past help and for the hope of future. The wealthy cities
+      of Tyre and Sidon did homage to him, as before to his father, by putting
+      his crowned head upon their coins. The forces of Egypt reached the very
+      large number of two hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse, two
+      thousand chariots, four hundred Ethiopian elephants, fifteen hundred ships
+      of war and one thousand transports. Of this large force, it is not likely
+      that even one-fourth should have been Greeks; the rest must have been
+      Egyptians and Syrians, with some Gauls. The body of chariots, though still
+      forming part of the force furnished for military service by the Theban
+      tenants of the crown, was of no use against modern science; and the other
+      Egyptian troops, though now chiefly armed and disciplined like Greeks,
+      were very much below the Macedonian phalanx in real strength. The galleys
+      also, though no doubt under the guidance and skill of Greeks and
+      Phoenicians, were in part manned by Egyptians, whose inland habits wholly
+      unfitted them for the sea, and whose religious prejudices made them feel
+      the conscription for the navy as a heavy grievance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These large forces were maintained by a yearly income equally large, of
+      fourteen thousand eight hundred talents, or twelve million two hundred and
+      fifty thousand dollars, beside the tax on grain, which was taken in kind,
+      of a million and a half of artabas, or about five millions of bushels. To
+      this we may add a mass of gold, silver, and other valuable stores in the
+      treasury, which were boastfully reckoned at the unheard-of sum of seven
+      hundred and forty thousand talents, or above five hundred million dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0019" id="linkBimage-0019">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/149.jpg" width="100%" alt="149.jpg a Typical Nile Pilot " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The trade down the Nile was larger than it had ever been before; the
+      coasting trade on the Mediterranean was new; the people were rich and
+      happy; justice was administered to the Egyptians according to their own
+      laws, 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 plans of
+      Ptolemy Soter; in every point of view Alexandria was the chief city in the
+      world. Athens had no poets or other writers during this century equal in
+      merit to those who ennobled the museum. Philadelphus, by joining to the
+      greatness and good government of his father the costly splendour and pomp
+      of an eastern monarch, so drew the eyes of after ages upon his reign that
+      his name passed into a proverb: if any work of art was remarkable for its
+      good taste or costliness, it was called Philadelphian; even history and
+      chronology were set at nought, and we sometimes find poets of a century
+      later counted among the Pleiades of Alexandria in the reign of
+      Philadelphus. It is true that many of these advantages were forced in the
+      hotbed of royal patronage; that the navy was built in the harbours of
+      Phoenicia and Asia Minor; and that the men of letters who then drew upon
+      themselves the eyes of the world were only Greek settlers, whose writings
+      could have done little to raise the character of the native Kopts. But the
+      Ptolemies, in raising this building of their own, were not at the same
+      time crushing another. Their splendid monarchy had not been built on the
+      ruins of freedom; and even if the Greek settlers in the Delta had formed
+      themselves into a free state, we can hardly believe that the Egyptians
+      would have been so well treated as they were by this military despotism.
+      From the temples which were built or enlarged in Upper Egypt, and from the
+      beauty of the hieroglyphical inscriptions, we find that even the native
+      arts were more flourishing than they had ever been since the fall of the
+      kings of Thebes; and we may almost look upon the Greek conquest as a
+      blessing to Upper Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philadelphus, though weak in body, was well suited by his keen-sightedness
+      and intelligence for the tasks which the state of affairs at that time
+      demanded from an Egyptian king. He was a diplomat rather than a warrior,
+      and that was exactly what Egypt needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A curious anecdote about Ptolemy Philadelphus is related by Niebuhr. He
+      had reached the zenith of his glory, when suddenly he was attacked by a
+      species of insanity, consisting of an indescribable fear of death.
+      Chemical artifices were practised in Egypt from the earliest times; and
+      hence Ptolemy took every 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 the seacoast,
+      and seriously meditated upon the subject of his longing; it must have been
+      in winter-time, when the sand, exposed to the rays of the sun, becomes
+      very warm. He saw some poor boys burying themselves in the warm sand and
+      screaming with delight, and the aged king began bitterly to cry, seeing
+      the ragged urchins enjoying their life without any apprehension of losing
+      it; for he felt that with all his riches he could not purchase that
+      happiness, and that his end was very near at hand. He died in the
+      thirty-eighth year of his reign, and perhaps the sixty-first of his age.
+      He left the kingdom as powerful and more wealthy than when it came to him
+      from his father; and he had the happiness of having a son who would carry
+      on, even for the third generation, the wise plans of the first Ptolemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0020" id="linkBimage-0020">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/153.jpg" width="100%" alt="153.jpg Page Image " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkB2HCH0002" id="linkB2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV&mdash;PTOLEMY EUERGETES, PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR, AND PTOLEMY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      EPIPHANES.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The struggle for Syria&mdash;Decline of the dynasty&mdash;Advent of
+      Roman control.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy, the eldest son of Philadelphus, succeeded his father on the
+      throne of Egypt, and after a short time was accorded the name of
+      Euergetes. The new reign was clouded by dark occurrences, which again
+      involved Egypt and Syria in war. It has been already related that when
+      peace was concluded between Antiochus and Philadelphus, the latter gave to
+      the former his daughter Berenicê in marriage, stipulating that the
+      offspring of that union should succeed to the Syrian throne, though
+      Antiochus had, by his wife Laodice, a son, already arrived at the age of
+      manhood. The repudiated queen murdered her husband, and placed Seleucus on
+      the vacant throne; who, in order to remove all competition on the part of
+      Berenicê and her child, made no scruple to deprive them both of life.
+      Euergetes could not behold such proceedings unmoved. Advancing into Syria
+      at the head of a powerful army, he took possession of the greater part of
+      the country, which seems not to have been defended, the majority of the
+      cities opening their gates at his approach. The important town of Seleucia
+      Pieria, the seaport of the capital, fell into his hands, in the
+      neighbourhood of which he was still further gratified with the
+      apprehension of the cruel Laodice, at whose instigation his sister and
+      nephew lost their lives. The punishment of this unprincipled woman seems,
+      however, to have completely satiated his resentment; for, instead of
+      securing his conquests in Syria, and achieving the entire humiliation of
+      Seleucus, he led his army on a plundering expedition into the remote
+      provinces of Asia, whence, on the news of domestic troubles, he returned
+      to the shores of Africa in triumph, laden with an immense booty,
+      comprising among other objects all the statues of the Egyptian deities
+      which had been carried off by Cambyses to Persia or Babylon. These he
+      restored to their respective temples, an act by which he earned the
+      greatest popularity among his native Egyptian subjects, who bestowed upon
+      him, in consequence, the title of Euergetes (Benefactor), by which he is
+      generally known. He brought back also from this expedition a vast number
+      of other works of art, for the museums were a passion with the Ptolemies.
+      The Asiatics might, indeed, have got over these things, but he levied, in
+      addition, immense contributions from the Asiatics, and is said to have
+      raised over forty thousand talents. On his march homeward, he laid his
+      gifts upon the altar in the Temple of Jerusalem, and there returned thanks
+      to Heaven for his victories. He had been taught to bow the knee to the
+      crowds of Greek and Egyptian gods; and, as Palestine was part of his
+      kingdom, it seemed quite natural to add the God of the Jews to the list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the insurrection in Egypt, which obliged him to return, we know no
+      particulars, but Euergetes seems to have become convinced that Egypt was
+      too small a basis for such an empire. &ldquo;If he had wished to retain all his
+      conquests&rdquo; relates the chronicler, &ldquo;he would have been obliged to make
+      Antioch his residence, and this would weaken the ground of his strength.
+      He, moreover, appears to have been well aware that the conquests had been
+      made too quickly.&rdquo; He accordingly divided them, retaining for himself
+      Syria as far as Euphrates, and the coast districts of Asia Minor and
+      Thrace, so that he had a complete maritime empire. The remaining
+      territories he divided into two states: the country beyond the Euphrates
+      was given, according to St. Jerome, to one Xantippus, who is otherwise
+      unknown, and Western Asia was left to Antiochus Hierax. It would seem that
+      after this he never visited those countries again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the notable incidents of the war against Syria was an offer of help
+      to Egypt from the Romans. From the middle of the reign of Philadelphus
+      till the fifth year of this reign, for twenty-two years, the Romans had
+      been struggling with the Carthaginians for their very being, in the first
+      Punic war, which they had just brought to a close, and on hearing of
+      Ptolemy&rsquo;s war in Syria, they sent to Egypt with friendly offers of help.
+      But their ambassadors did not reach Alexandria before peace was made, and
+      they were sent home with many thanks. The event serves to show the trend
+      of the aspirations of this now important nation, which was afterwards
+      destined to engulf the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria alike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Euergetes had, as he thought, established his authority in Asia, a
+      party hostile to him came forward to oppose him. The Rhodians, with their
+      wise policy, who had hitherto given no decided support to either empire,
+      now stepped forward, setting to other maritime cities the example of
+      joining that hostile party. The confederates formed a fleet, with the
+      assistance of which, and supported by a general insurrection of the
+      Asiatics, who were exasperated against the Egyptians on account of their
+      rapacity, Seleucus Callinicus rallied again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0021" id="linkBimage-0021">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/157.jpg" width="100%" alt="157.jpg an Abyssinian Slave " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      He recovered the whole of upper Asia, and for a time he was united with
+      his brother, Antiochus Hierax. The insurrection in Egypt must have been of
+      a very serious nature, and Ptolemy, being pressed on all sides, concluded
+      a truce of ten years with Seleucus on basis of <i>uti possidetis</i>. Both
+      parties seem to have retained the places which they possessed at the time,
+      so that all the disadvantage was on the side of the Seleucidæ, for the
+      fortified town of Seleucia, for example, remained in the hands of the
+      Egyptians, whereby the capital was placed in a dangerous position. A part
+      of Cilicia, the whole of Caria, the Ionian cities, the Thracian
+      Chersonesus, and several Macedonian towns likewise continued to belong to
+      Egypt. Soon after his re-appearance in Egypt, Euergetes was solicited by
+      Cleomenes, the King of Sparta, to grant the assistance of his arms in the
+      struggle which that republic was then supporting with Antigonus, the ruler
+      of Macedon, and with the members of the Achaian league. But the battle of
+      Sellasia proved that the aid offered was inadequate. Cleomenes fled to the
+      banks of the Nile, where he found his august ally reposing under the
+      successful banners of a numerous army, which he had just led home from the
+      savage mountains of Ethiopia, whither his love of romantic conquest had
+      conducted them. He appears to have penetrated into the interior provinces
+      of Abyssinia, and to have subdued the rude tribes which dwelt on the
+      shores of the Red Sea, levying on the unfortunate natives the most
+      oppressive contributions in cattle, gold, perfumes, and other articles
+      belonging to that valuable merchandise which the Ethiopians and Arabs had
+      long carried on with their Egyptian neighbours. At Adule, the principal
+      seaport of Abyssinia, he collected his victorious troops, and made them a
+      speech on the wonderful exploits which they had achieved under his
+      auspices, and on the numerous benefits which they had thereby secured to
+      their native country. The throne on which he sat, composed of white marble
+      and supported by a slab of porphyry, was consecrated to the god of war,
+      whom he chose to claim for his father and patron, and that the descendants
+      of the vanquished Ethiopians might not be ignorant of their obligations to
+      Ptolemy Euergetes, King of Egypt, he gave orders that his name and
+      principal triumphs should be inscribed on the votive chair. But not
+      content with his real conquests, which reached from the Hellespont to the
+      Euphrates, he added, like Ramsesr that he had conquered Thrace, Persia,
+      Media, and Bactria. He thus teaches us that monumental inscriptions,
+      though read with difficulty, do not always tell the truth. This was the
+      most southerly spot to which the kings of Egypt ever sent an army. But
+      they kept no hold on the country. Distance had placed it not only beyond
+      their power, but almost beyond their knowledge; and two hundred years
+      afterwards, when the geographer Strabo was making inquiries about that
+      part of Arabia, as it was called, he was told of this monument as set up
+      by the hero Sesostris, to whom it was usual to give the credit of so many
+      wonderful works. These inscriptions, it is worthy of remark, are still
+      preserved, and constitute the only historical account that has reached
+      these times of the Ethiopian warfare of this Egyptian monarch. About seven
+      hundred years after the reign of Euergetes, they were first published in
+      the <i>Topography</i> of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Grecian monk, by whom
+      they were copied on the spot. The traveller Bruce, moreover, informs us
+      that the stone containing the name of Ptolemy Euergetes serves as a
+      footstool to the throne on which the kings of Abyssinia are crowned to
+      this day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0022" id="linkBimage-0022">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/160b.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="160b.jpg Signs, Arms and Instruments from the Fifth Tomb " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0023" id="linkBimage-0023">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:29%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/161.jpg" alt="161.jpg Gate at Karnak " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Amid the ruins of Ascum, also, the ancient capital of that country,
+      various fragments of marble have been found bearing the name and title of
+      the same Egyptian sovereign. This empty fame, however, is the only return
+      that ever recompensed the toils of Euergetes among the fierce barbarians
+      of the south.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euergetes, as part of his general policy of conciliating the Egyptians,
+      enlarged the great temple at Thebes, which is now called the temple of
+      Karnak, on the walls of which we see him handing an offering to his father
+      and mother, the brother-gods. In one place he is in a Greek dress, which
+      is not common on the Ptolemaic buildings, as most of the Greek kings are
+      carved upon the walls in the dress of the country. The early kings had
+      often shown their piety to a temple by enlarging the sacred area and
+      adding a new wall and gateway in front of the former; and this custom
+      Euergetes followed at Karnak. As these grand stone sculptured gateways
+      belonged to a wall of unbaked bricks which has long since crumbled to
+      pieces, they now stand apart like so many triumphal arches. He also added
+      to the temple at Hibe in the Great Oasis, and began a small temple at
+      Esne, or Latopolis, where he is drawn upon the walls in the act of
+      striking down the chiefs of the conquered nations, and is followed by a
+      tame lion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He built a temple to Osiris at Canopus, on the mouth of the Nile; for,
+      notwithstanding the large number of Greeks and strangers who had settled
+      there, the ancient religion was not yet driven out of the Delta; and he
+      dedicated it to the god in a Greek inscription on a plate of gold, in the
+      names of himself and Berenicê, whom he called his wife and sister. She is
+      also called the king&rsquo;s sister in many of the hieroglyphical inscriptions,
+      as are many of the other queens of the Ptolemies who were not so related
+      to their husbands. This custom, though it took its rise in the Egyptian
+      mythology, must have been strengthened by the marriages of Philadelphus
+      and some of his successors with their sisters. In the hieroglyphical
+      inscriptions he is usually called &ldquo;beloved by Phtah,&rdquo; the god of Memphis,
+      an addition to his name which was used by most of his successors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this century the Greek artists in Egypt, as indeed elsewhere,
+      adopted in their style an affectation of antiquity, which, unless seen
+      through, would make us think their statues older than they really are.
+      They sometimes set a stiff beard upon a face without expression, or
+      arranged the hair of the head in an old-fashioned manner, and, while
+      making the drapery fly out in a direction opposed to that of the figure,
+      gave to it formal zigzag lines, which could only be proper if it were
+      hanging down in quiet. At other times, while they gave to the human figure
+      all the truth to which their art had then reached, they yet gave to the
+      drapery these stiff zigzag forms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0024" id="linkBimage-0024">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/163.jpg" width="100%" alt="163.jpg Ruins of Sais " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      No habit of mind would have been more improving to the Alexandrian
+      character than a respect for antiquity; but this respect ought to be shown
+      in a noble rivalry, in trying to surpass those who have gone before them,
+      and not as in this manner by copying their faults. Hieroglyphics seem to
+      have flourished in their more ancient style and forms under the generous
+      patronage of the Ptolemies. In the time of the Egyptian kings of Lower
+      Egypt, we find new grammatical endings to the nouns, and more letters used
+      to spell each word than under the kings of Thebes; but, on comparing the
+      hieroglyphics of the Ptolemies with the others, we find that in these and
+      some other points they are more like the older writings, under the kings
+      of Thebes, than the newer, under the kings of Saïs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, while the Egyptians were flattered, and no doubt raised in moral
+      worth, by their monarch&rsquo;s taking up the religious feelings of the country,
+      and throwing aside some of the Greek habits of his father and grandfather,
+      Euergetes was sowing the seeds of a greater change than he could himself
+      have been aware of. It was by Greek arms and arts of war that Egypt then
+      held its place among nations, and we shall see in the coming reigns that,
+      while the court became more Asiatic and less European, the army and
+      government did not retain their former characteristics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since Coele-Syria and Judæa were by the first Ptolemy made a province of
+      Egypt, the Jews had lived in unbroken tranquillity, and with very little
+      loss of freedom. The kings of Egypt had allowed them to govern themselves,
+      to live under their own laws, and choose their own high priest; but they
+      required of them the payment to Alexandria of a yearly tribute. Part of
+      this was the sacred poll-tax of half a shekel, or about sixteen cents for
+      every male above the age of twenty, which by the Mosaic law they had
+      previously paid for the service of the Temple. This is called in the
+      Gospels the Didrachms; though the Alexandrian translators of the Bible,
+      altering the sum, either through mistake or on purpose, have made it in
+      the Greek Pentateuch only half a didrachm, or about eight cents. This
+      yearly tribute from the Temple the high priest of Jerusalem had been
+      usually allowed to collect and farm; but in the latter end of this reign,
+      the high priest Onias, a weak and covetous old man, refused to send to
+      Alexandria the twenty talents, or fifteen thousand dollars, at which it
+      was then valued. When Euergetes sent Athenion as ambassador to claim it,
+      and even threatened to send a body of troops to fetch it, still the
+      tribute was not paid; notwithstanding the fright of the Jews, the priest
+      would not part with his money. On this, Joseph, the nephew of Onias, set
+      out for Egypt, to try and turn away the king&rsquo;s anger. He went to Memphis,
+      and met Euergetes riding in his chariot with the queen and Athenion, the
+      ambassador. The king, when he knew him, begged him to get into the chariot
+      and sit with him; and Joseph made himself so agreeable that he was lodged
+      in the palace at Memphis, and dined every day at the royal table. While he
+      was at Memphis, the revenues of the provinces for the coming year were put
+      up to auction; and the farmers bid eight thousand talents, or six million
+      dollars, for the taxes of Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Samaria. Joseph then
+      bid double that sum, and, when he was asked what security he could give,
+      he playfully said that he was sure that Euergetes and the queen would
+      willingly become bound for his honesty; and the king was so much pleased
+      with him that the office was at once given to him, and he held it for
+      twenty-two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the men of letters who at this time taught in the Alexandrian
+      schools was Aristophanes, the grammarian, who afterwards held the office
+      of head of the museum. At one of the public sittings at which the king was
+      to hear the poems and other writings of the pupils read, and, by the help
+      of seven men of letters who sat with him as judges, was to give away
+      honours and rewards to the best authors, one of the chairs was empty, one
+      of the judges happened not to be there. The king asked who should be
+      called up to fill his place; and, after thinking over the matter, the six
+      judges fixed upon Aristophanes, who had made himself known to them by
+      being seen daily studying in the public library. When the reading was
+      over, the king, the public, and the six other judges were agreed upon
+      which was the best piece of writing; but Aristophanes was bold enough to
+      think otherwise, and he was able, by means of his great reading, to find
+      the book in the library from which the pupil had copied the greater part
+      of his work. The king was much struck with this proof of his learning, and
+      soon afterwards made him keeper of the library which he had already so
+      well used. Aristophanes followed Zenodotus in his critical efforts to mend
+      the text of Homer&rsquo;s poems. He also invented the several marks by which
+      grammarians now distinguish the length and tone of a syllable and the
+      breathing of a vowel, that is, the marks for long and short, and the
+      accents and aspirate. The last two, after his time, were always placed
+      over Greek words, and are still used in printed books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the inventor of astronomical geography, was at
+      this time the head of the mathematical school. He has the credit for being
+      the first to calculate the circumference of the earth by means of his
+      Theory of Shadows. As a poet he wrote a description of the constellations.
+      He also wrote a history of Egypt, to correct the errors of Manetho. What
+      most strikes us with wonder and regret is, that of these two writers,
+      Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote in Greek, Eratosthenes, a Greek who
+      understood something of Egyptian, neither of them took the trouble to lay
+      open to their readers the peculiarities of the hieroglyphics. Through all
+      these reigns, the titles and praises of the Ptolemies were carved upon the
+      temples in the sacred characters. These two histories were translated from
+      the same inscriptions. We even now read the names of the kings which they
+      mention carved on the statues and temples; and yet the language of the
+      hieroglyphics still remained unknown beyond the class of priests; such was
+      the want of curiosity on the part of the Greek grammarians of Alexandria.
+      Such, we may add, was their want of respect for the philosophy of the
+      Egyptians; and we need no stronger proof that the philosophers of the
+      museum had hitherto borrowed none of the doctrines of the priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0025" id="linkBimage-0025">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/169.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="169.jpg Gateway of Ptolemy Euergetes at Karnak " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Lycon of Troas was another settler in Alexandria. He followed Strato at
+      the head of one of the schools in the museum. He was very successful in
+      bringing up the young men, who needed, he used to say, modesty and the
+      love of praise, as a horse needs bridle and spur. His eloquence was so
+      pleasing that he was wittily called Glycon, or the sweet. Carneades of
+      Cyrene at the same time held a high place among philosophers; but as he
+      had removed to Athens, where he was at the head of a school, and was even
+      sent to Rome as the ambassador of the Athenians, we must not claim the
+      whole honour of him for the Ptolemies under whom he was born. It is
+      therefore enough to say of him that, though a follower of Plato, he made
+      such changes in the opinions of the Academy, by not wholly throwing off
+      the evidence of the senses, that his school was called the New Academy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apollonius, who was born at Alexandria, but is commonly called Apollonius
+      Rhodius because he passed many years of his life at Rhodes, had been, like
+      Eratosthenes, a hearer of Callimachus. His only work which we now know is
+      his <i>Argonautics</i>, a poem on the voyage of Jason to Colchis in search
+      of the golden fleece. It is a regular epic poem, in imitation of Homer;
+      and, like other imitations, it wants the interest which hangs upon reality
+      of manners and story in the Iliad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Callimachus showed his dislike of his young rival by hurling against him a
+      reproachful poem, in which he speaks of him under the name of an Ibis.
+      This is now lost, but it was copied by Ovid in his poem of the same name;
+      and from the Roman we can gather something of the dark and learned style
+      in which Callimachus threw out his biting reproaches. We do not know from
+      what this quarrel arose, but it seems to have been the cause of Apollonius
+      leaving Alexandria. He removed to Rhodes, where he taught in the schools
+      during all the reign of Philopator, till he was recalled by Epiphanes, and
+      made librarian of the museum in his old age, on the death of Eratosthenes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lycophron, the tragic writer, lived about this time at Alexandria, and was
+      one of the seven men of letters sometimes called the Alexandrian Pleiades,
+      though writers are not agreed upon the names which fill up the list. His
+      tragedies are all lost, and the only work of his which we now have is the
+      dark and muddy poem of Alcandra, or Cassandra, of which the lines most
+      striking to the historian are those in which the prophetess foretells the
+      coming greatness of Rome; that the children of Æneas will raise the crown
+      upon their spears, and seize the sceptres of sea and land. Lycophron was
+      the friend of Menedemus and Aratus; and it is not easy to believe that
+      these lines were written before the overthrow of Hannibal in Italy, and of
+      the Greek phalanx at Cynocéphale, or that one who was a man in the reign
+      of Philadelphus should have foreseen the triumph of the Roman arms. These
+      words must have been a later addition to the poem, to improve the
+      prophecy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Conon, one of the greatest of the Alexandrian astronomers, has left no
+      writings for us to judge of his merits, though they were thought highly
+      of, and made great use of, by his successors. He worked both as an
+      observer and an inquirer, mapping out the heavens by his observations, and
+      collecting the accounts of the eclipses which had been before observed in
+      Egypt. He was the friend of Archimedes of Syracuse, to whom he sent his
+      problems, and from whom he received that great geometrician&rsquo;s writings in
+      return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apollonius of Perga came to Alexandria in this reign, to study mathematics
+      under the pupils of Euclid. He is well known for his work on conic
+      sections, and he may be called the founder of this study. The Greek
+      mathematicians sought after knowledge for its own sake, and followed up
+      those branches of their studies which led to no end that could in the
+      narrow sense be called useful, with the same zeal that they did other
+      branches out of which sprung the great practical truths of mechanics,
+      astronomy, and geography. They found reward enough in the enlargement of
+      their minds and in the beauty of the truth learnt. Alexandrian science
+      gained in loftiness of tone what its poetry and philosophy wanted. Thus
+      the properties of the ellipse, the hyperbola, and the parabola, continued
+      to be studied by after mathematicians; but no use was made of this
+      knowledge till nearly two thousand years later, when Kepler crowned the
+      labours of Apollonius with the great discovery that the paths of the
+      planets round the sun were conic sections. The Egyptians, however, made
+      great use of mathematical knowledge, particularly in the irrigation of
+      their fields; and Archimedes of Syracuse, who came to Alexandria about
+      this time to study under Conon, did the country a real service by his
+      invention of the cochlea, or screw-pump. The more distant fields of the
+      valley of the Nile, rising above the level of the inundation, have to be
+      watered artificially by pumping out of the canals into ditches at a higher
+      level. For this work Archimedes proposed a spiral tube, twisting round an
+      axis, which was to be put in motion either by the hand or by the force of
+      the stream out of which it was to pump; and this was found so convenient
+      that it soon became the machine most in use throughout Egypt for
+      irrigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0026" id="linkBimage-0026">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:48%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/175.jpg" alt="175.jpg Coin of Ptolemy III. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      But while we are dazzled by the brilliancy of these clusters of men of
+      letters and science who graced the court of Alexandria, we must not shut
+      our eyes to those faults which are always found in works called forth
+      rather by the fostering warmth of royal pensions than by a love of
+      knowledge in the people. The well-fed and well-paid philosophers of the
+      museum were not likely to overtake the mighty men of Athens in its best
+      days, who had studied and taught without any pension from the government,
+      without taking any fee from their pupils; who were urged forward towards
+      excellence by the love of knowledge and of honour; who had no other aim
+      than that of being useful to their hearers, and looked for no reward
+      beyond their love and esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In oratory Alexandria made no attempts whatever; it is a branch of
+      literature not likely to flourish under a despotic monarchy. In Athens it
+      fell with the loss of liberty, and Demetrius Phalereus was the last of the
+      real Athenian orators. After his time the orations were declamations
+      written carefully in the study, and coldly spoken in the school for the
+      instruction of the pupils, and wholly wanting in fire and genius; and the
+      Alexandrian men of letters forbore to copy Greece in its lifeless
+      harangues. For the same reasons the Alexandrians were not successful in
+      history. A species of writing, which a despot requires to be false and
+      flattering, is little likely to flourish; and hence the only historians of
+      the museum were chronologists, antiquaries, and writers of travels. The
+      coins of Euergetes bear the name of &ldquo;Ptolemy the king,&rdquo; round the head on
+      the one side, with no title by which they can be known from the other
+      kings of the same name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his portrait is known from his Phoenician coins. In the same way the
+      coins of his queen have only the name of &ldquo;Berenicê the queen,&rdquo; but they
+      are known from those of the later queens by the beauty of the workmanship,
+      which soon fell far below that of the first Ptolemies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0027" id="linkBimage-0027">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:48%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/176.jpg"
+       alt="176.jpg Coin of Berenice, Wife Of Ptolemy III. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Euergetes had married his cousin Berenicê, who like the other queens of
+      Egypt is sometimes called Cleopatra; by her he left two sons, Ptolemy and
+      Magas, to the eldest of whom he left his kingdom, after a reign of
+      twenty-five years of unclouded prosperity. Egypt was during this reign at
+      the very height of its power and wealth. It had seen three kings, who,
+      though not equally great men, not equally fit to found a monarchy or to
+      raise the literature of a people, were equally successful in the parts
+      which they had undertaken. Euergetes left to his son a kingdom perhaps as
+      large as the world had ever seen under one sceptre; and though many of his
+      boasted victories were like letters written in the sand, of which the
+      traces were soon lost, yet he was by far the greatest, and possibly the
+      wisest, monarch of his day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may be sure that in these prosperous reigns life and property were
+      safe, and justice was administered fairly by judges who were independent
+      of the crown; as even centuries afterwards we find that it was part of a
+      judge&rsquo;s oath on taking office, that, if he were ordered by the king to do
+      what was wrong, he would not obey him. But here the bright pages in the
+      history of the Ptolemies end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though trade and agriculture still enriched the country, though arts and
+      letters did not quit Alexandria, we have from this time forward to mark
+      the growth only of vice and luxury, and to measure the wisdom of Ptolemy
+      Soter by the length of time that his laws and institutions were able to
+      bear up against the misrule and folly of his descendants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy, the eldest son of Euergetes, inherited the crown of his
+      forefathers, but none of the great qualities by which they had won and
+      guarded it. He was then about thirty-four years old. His first act was to
+      call together his council, and to ask their advice about putting to death
+      his mother Berenicê and his brother Magas. Their crime was the being too
+      much liked by the army; and the council was called upon to say whether it
+      would be safe to have them killed. Cleomenes, the banished King of Sparta,
+      who was one of the council, alone raised his voice against their murder,
+      and wisely said that the throne would be still safer if there were more
+      brothers to stand between the king and the daring hopes of a traitor. The
+      minister Sosibius, on the other hand, said that the mercenaries could not
+      be trusted while Magas was alive; but Cleomenes remarked to him, that more
+      than three thousand of them were Peloponnesians, and that they would
+      follow him sooner than they would follow Magas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Berenicê and Magas were, however, put to death, but the speech of
+      Cleomenes was not forgotten. If his popularity with the mercenaries could
+      secure their allegiance, he could, when he chose, make them rebel; from
+      that time he was treated rather as a prisoner than as a friend, and by his
+      well-meaning but incautious observation he lost all chance of being helped
+      to regain his kingdom. Nothing is known of the death of Euergetes, the
+      late king, and there is no proof that it was by unfair means. But when his
+      son began a cruel and wicked reign by putting to death his mother and
+      brother, and by taking the name of Philopator, or father-loving, the world
+      seems to have thought that he was the murderer of his father, and had
+      taken this name to throw a cloak over the deed. By this murder of his
+      brother, and by the minority both of Antiochus, King of Syria, and of
+      Philip, King of Macedonia, Philopator found himself safe from enemies
+      either at home or abroad, and he gave himself up to a life of
+      thoughtlessness and pleasure. The army and fleet were left to go to ruin,
+      and the foreign provinces, which had hitherto been looked upon as the
+      bulwarks of Egypt, were only half-guarded; but the throne rested on the
+      virtues of his forefathers, and it was not till his death that it was
+      found to have been undermined by his own follies and vice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Egypt had been governed by kings of more than usual wisdom for above one
+      hundred years, and was at the very height of its power when Philopator
+      came to the throne. He found himself master of Ethiopia, Cy-rene,
+      Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, part of Upper Syria, Cyprus, Rhodes, the cities
+      along the coast of Asia Minor from Pamphilia to Lysimachia, and the cities
+      of Ænos and Maronea in Thrace. The unwilling obedience of distant
+      provinces usually costs more than it is worth; but many of these
+      possessions across the Mediterranean had put themselves willingly into the
+      power of his predecessors for the sake of their protection, and they cost
+      little more than a message to warn off invaders. Egypt was the greatest
+      naval power in the world, having the command of the sea and the whole of
+      the coast at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 new king, and
+      was an attempt made upon his life by Cleomenes, who found the palace in
+      Alexandria had now become a prison. The Spartan took advantage of the
+      king&rsquo;s being at Canopus to escape from his guards, and to raise a riot in
+      Alexandria; but not being able to gain the citadel, and seeing that
+      disgrace and death must follow upon his failure, he stabbed himself with
+      his own dagger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kingdom of Syria, after being humbled by Ptolemy Euergetes, had risen
+      lately under the able rule of Antiochus, son of Seleucus Callinicus. He
+      was a man possessed of abilities of a high order. His energy and courage
+      soon recovered from Egypt the provinces that Syria had before lost, and
+      afterwards gained for him the name of Antiochus the Great. He made himself
+      master of the city of Damascus by a stratagem. Soon after this, Seleucia,
+      the capital, which had been taken by Euergetes, was retaken by Antiochus,
+      or rather given up to him by treachery. Theodotus also, the Alexandrian
+      governor of Coele-Syria, delivered up to him that province; and Antiochus
+      marched southward, and had taken Tyre and Ptolemaïs before the Egyptian
+      army could be brought into the field. There he gained forty ships of war,
+      of which twenty were decked vessels with four banks of oars, and the
+      others smaller. He then marched towards Egypt, and on his way learned that
+      Ptolemy was at Memphis. On his arrival at Pelusium he found that the place
+      was strongly guarded, and that the garrison had opened the flood-gates
+      from the neighbouring lake, and thereby spoiled the fresh water of all the
+      neighbourhood; he therefore did not lay siege to that city, but seized
+      many of the open towns on the east side of the Nile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this, Philopator roused himself from his idleness, and got together his
+      forces against the coming danger. His troops consisted of Greeks,
+      Egyptians, and mercenaries to the total of seventy-three thousand men and
+      seventy-three elephants, or one elephant to every thousand men, which was
+      the number usually allowed to the armies about this time. But before this
+      army reached Pelusium, Antiochus had led back his forces to winter in
+      Seleucia. The next spring Antiochus again marched towards Egypt with an
+      army of seventy-two thousand foot, six thousand horse, and one hundred and
+      two elephants. Philopator led his whole forces to the frontier to oppose
+      his march, and met the Syrian army near the village of Raphia, the border
+      town between Egypt and Palestine. Arsinoë, his queen and sister, rode with
+      him on horseback through the ranks, and called upon the soldiers to fight
+      for their wives and children. At first the Egyptians seemed in danger of
+      being beaten. As the armies approached one another, the Ethiopian
+      elephants trembled at the very smell of the Indian elephants, and shrunk
+      from engaging with beasts so much larger than themselves. On the charge,
+      the left wing of each army was routed, as was often the case among the
+      Greeks, when, from too great a trust in the shield, every soldier kept
+      moving to the right, and thus left the left wing uncovered. But before the
+      end of the day the invading army was defeated; and, though some of the
+      Egyptian officers treacherously left their posts, and carried their troops
+      over to Antiochus, yet the Syrian army was wholly routed, and Arsinoë
+      enjoyed the knowledge and the praise of having been the chief cause of her
+      husband&rsquo;s success. The king in gratitude sacrificed to the gods the
+      unusual offering of four elephants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this victory Philopator regained Coele-Syria, and there he spent three
+      months; he then made a hasty, and, if we judge his reasons rightly, we
+      must add, a disgraceful treaty with the enemy, that he might the sooner
+      get back to his life of ease. Before going home he passed through
+      Jerusalem, where he gave thanks and sacrificed to the Hebrew god in the
+      temple of the Jews; and, being struck with the beauty of the building,
+      asked to be shown into the inner room, in which were kept the ark of the
+      covenant, Aaron&rsquo;s rod that budded, and the golden pot of manna, with the
+      tables of the covenant. The priests told him of their law, by which every
+      stranger, every Jew, and every priest but the high priest, was forbidden
+      to pass beyond the second veil; but Philopator roughly answered that he
+      was not bound by the Jewish laws, and ordered them to lead him into the
+      holy of holies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city was thrown into alarm by this unheard-of wickedness; the streets
+      were filled with men and women in despair; the air was rent with shrieks
+      and cries, and the priests prayed to Javeh to guard his own temple from
+      the stain. The king&rsquo;s mind, however, was not to be changed; the refusal of
+      the priests only strengthened his wish, and all struggle was useless while
+      the court of the temple was filled with Greek soldiers. But, says the
+      Jewish historian, the prayer of the priests was heard; the king fell to
+      the ground in a fit, like a reed broken by the wind, and was carried out
+      speechless by his friends and generals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his return to Egypt, he showed his hatred of the nation by his
+      treatment of the Jews in Alexandria. He made a law that they should lose
+      the rank of Macedonians, and be enrolled among the class of Egyptians. He
+      ordered them to have their bodies marked with pricks, in the form of an
+      ivy leaf, in honour of Bacchus; and those who refused to have this done
+      were outlawed, or forbidden to enter the courts of justice. The king
+      himself had an ivy leaf marked with pricks upon his forehead, from which
+      he received the nickname of Gallus. This custom of marking the body had
+      been forbidden in the Levitical law: it was not known among the Kopts, but
+      must always have been in use among the Lower Egyptians. It was used by the
+      Arab prisoners of Ramses, and is still practiced among the Egyptian Arabs
+      of the present day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He also ordered the Jews to sacrifice on the pagan altars, and many of
+      them were sent up to Alexandria to be punished for rebelling against his
+      decree. Their resolution, however, or, as their historian asserts, a
+      miracle from heaven changed the king&rsquo;s mind. They expected to be trampled
+      to death in the hippodrome by furious elephants; but after some delay they
+      were released unhurt. The history of their escape, however, is more
+      melancholy than the history of their danger. No sooner did the persecution
+      cease than they turned with Pharisaical cruelty against their weaker
+      brethren who had yielded to the storm; and they put to death three hundred
+      of their countrymen, who in the hour of danger had yielded to the threats
+      of punishment, and complied with the ceremonies required of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptians, who, when the Persians were conquered by Alexander, could
+      neither help nor hinder the Greek army, and who, when they formed part of
+      the troops under the first Ptolemy, were uncounted and unvalued, had by
+      this time been armed and disciplined like Greeks; and in the battle of
+      Raphia the Egyptian phalanx had shown itself not an unworthy rival of the
+      Macedonians. By this success in war, and by their hatred of their vicious
+      and cruel king, the Egyptians were now for the first time encouraged to
+      take arms against the Greek government. The Egyptian phalanx murmured
+      against their Greek officers, and claimed their right to be under an
+      Egyptian general. But history has told us nothing more of the rebellion
+      than that it was successfully put down. The Greeks were still the better
+      soldiers. The ships built by Philopator were more remarkable for their
+      unwieldy size, their luxurious and costly furniture, than for their
+      fitness for war. One was four hundred and twenty feet long and fifty-seven
+      feet wide, with forty banks of oars. The longest oars were fifty-seven
+      feet long, and weighted with lead at the handles that they might be the
+      more easily moved. This huge ship was to be rowed by four thousand rowers,
+      its sails were to be shifted by four hundred sailors, and three thousand
+      soldiers were to stand in ranks upon deck. There were seven beaks in
+      front, by which it was to strike and sink the ships of the enemy. The
+      royal barge, in which the king and court moved on the quiet waters of the
+      Nile, was nearly as large as this ship of war. It was three hundred and
+      thirty feet long, and forty-five feet wide; it was fitted up with
+      staterooms and private rooms, and was nearly sixty feet high to the top of
+      the royal awning. A third ship, which even surpassed these in its fittings
+      and ornaments, was given to Philopator by Hiero, King of Syracuse. It was
+      built under the care of Archimedes, and its timbers would have made sixty
+      triremes. Beside baths, and rooms for pleasures of all kinds, it had a
+      library, and astronomical instruments, not only for navigation, as in
+      modern ships, but for study, as in an observatory. It was a ship of war,
+      and had eight towers, from each of which stone&rsquo;s were to be thrown at the
+      enemy by six men. Its machines, like modern cannons, could throw stones of
+      three hundred pounds weight, and arrows of eighteen feet in length. It had
+      four anchors of wood, and eight of iron. It was called the ship of
+      Syracuse, but after it had been given to Philopator it was known by the
+      name of the ship of Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the second year of Philopator&rsquo;s reign the Romans began that long and
+      doubtful war with Hannibal, called the second Punic war, and in the
+      twelfth year of this reign they sent ambassadors to renew their treaty of
+      peace with Egypt. They sent as their gifts robes of purple for Philopator
+      and Arsinoë, and for Philopator a chair of ivory and gold, which was the
+      usual gift of the republic to friendly kings. The Alexandrians kept upon
+      good terms both with the Romans and the Carthaginians during the whole of
+      the Punic wars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the city of Rhodes, which had long been joined in close friendship
+      with Egypt, was shaken by an earthquake, that threw down the colossal
+      statue of Apollo, together with a large part of the city walls and docks,
+      Philopator was not behind the other friendly kings and states in his gifts
+      and help. He sent to his brave allies a large sum of money, with grain,
+      timber, and hemp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the birth of his son and heir, in B.C. 209, ambassadors crowded to
+      Alexandria with gifts and messages of joy. But they were all thrown into
+      the shade by Hyrcanus, the son of Joseph, who was sent from Jerusalem by
+      his father, and who brought to the king one hundred boys and one hundred
+      girls, each carrying a talent of silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philopator, soon after the birth of this his only child, employed
+      Philammon, at the bidding of his mistress, to put to death his queen and
+      sister Arsinoë, or Eurydice, as she is sometimes called. He had already
+      forgotten his rank, and his name ennobled by the virtues of three
+      generations, and had given up his days and nights to vice and riot. He
+      kept in his pay several fools, or laughing-stocks as they were then
+      called, who were the chosen companions of his meals; and he was the first
+      who brought eunuchs into the court of Alexandria. His mistress Agathoclea,
+      her brother Agathocles, and their mother OEnanthe, held him bound by those
+      chains which clever, worthless, and selfish favourites throw around the
+      mind of a weak and debauched king. Agathocles, who never left his side,
+      was his adviser in matters of business or pleasure, and governed alike the
+      army, the courts of justice, and the women. Thus was spent a reign of
+      seventeen years, during which the king had never but once, when he met
+      Antiochus in battle, roused himself from his life of sloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The misconduct and vices of Agathocles raised such an outcry against him,
+      that Philopator, without giving up the pleasure of his favourite&rsquo;s
+      company, was forced to take away from him the charge of receiving the
+      taxes. That high post was then given to Tlepolemus, a young man, whose
+      strength of body and warlike courage had made him the darling of the
+      soldiers. Another charge given to Tlepolemus was that of watching over the
+      supply and price of corn in Alexandria. The wisest statesmen of old
+      thought it part of a king&rsquo;s duty to take care that the people were fed,
+      and seem never to have found out that it would be better done if the
+      people were left to take care of themselves. They thought it moreover a
+      piece of wise policy, or at any rate of clever kingcraft, to keep down the
+      price of food in the capital at the cost of the rest of the kingdom, and
+      even sometimes to give a monthly fixed measure of corn to each citizen. By
+      such means as these the crowd of poor and restless citizens, who swell the
+      mob of every capital, was larger in Alexandria than it otherwise would
+      have been; and the danger of riot, which it was meant to lessen, was every
+      year increased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sosibius had made himself more hated than Agathocles; he had been the
+      king&rsquo;s ready tool in all his murders. He had been stained, or at least
+      reproached, with the murder of Lysimachus, the son of Philadelphus; then
+      of Magas, the son of Euergetes, and Berenicê, the widow of Euergetes; of
+      Cleomenes, the Spartan; and lastly, of Arsinoë, the wife of Philopator.
+      For these crimes Sosibius was forced by the soldiers to give up to
+      Tlepolemus the king&rsquo;s ring, or what in modern language would be called the
+      great seal of the kingdom, the badge of office by which Egypt was
+      governed; but the world soon saw that a body of luxurious mercenaries were
+      as little able to choose a wise statesman as the king had been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0028" id="linkBimage-0028">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/187.jpg" width="100%" alt="187.jpg Temple of Hathor. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      With all his vices, Philopator had yet inherited the love of letters which
+      has thrown so bright a light around the whole of the family; and to his
+      other luxuries he sometimes added that of the society of the learned men
+      of the museum. When one of the professorships was empty he wrote to
+      Athens, and invited to Alexandria, Sphærus, who had been the pupil of
+      Zeno. One day when Sphærus was dining with the king, he said that a wise
+      man should never guess, but only say what he knows. Philopator, wishing to
+      tease him, ordered some waxen pomegranates to be handed to him, and when
+      Sphærus bit one of them he laughed at him for guessing that it was real
+      fruit. But the stoic answered that there are many cases in which our
+      actions must be guided by what seems probable. None of the works of
+      Sphærus have come down to us. Eratosthenes, of whom we have before spoken,
+      was librarian of the museum during this reign; and Ptolemy, the son of
+      Agesarchus, then wrote his history of Alexandria, a work now lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0029" id="linkBimage-0029">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:46%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/188.jpg"
+       alt="188.jpg Coin of Ptolemy Philopater " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The want of moral feeling in Alexandria was poorly supplied by the respect
+      for talent. Philopator built there a shrine or temple to Homer, in which
+      he placed a sitting figure of the poet, and round it seven worshippers,
+      meant for the seven cities which claimed the honour of giving him birth.
+      Had Homer himself worshipped in such temples, and had his thoughts been
+      raised by no more lofty views, he would not have left us an Iliad or an
+      Odyssey. In Upper Egypt there was no such want of religious earnestness;
+      there the priests placed the name of Philopator upon a small temple near
+      Medinet-Habu, dedicated to Amon-Ra and the goddess Hâthor; his name is
+      also seen upon the temple at Karnak, and on the additions to the
+      sculptures on the temple of Thot at Pselcis in Ethiopia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of this king&rsquo;s coins bear the name of &ldquo;Ptolemy Philopator,&rdquo; while
+      those of the queen have her name, &ldquo;Arsinoë Philopator,&rdquo; 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 monument to him
+      in the temple of Venus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first three Ptolemies had been loved by their subjects and feared by
+      their enemies; but Philopator, though his power was still acknowledged
+      abroad, had by his vices and cruelty made himself hated at home, and had
+      undermined the foundations of the government. He began his reign like an
+      Eastern despot; instead of looking to his brother as a friend for help and
+      strength, he distrusted him as a rival, and had him put to death. He
+      employed the ministers of his vicious pleasures in the high offices of
+      government; and instead of philosophers and men of learning, he brought
+      eunuchs into the palace as the companions of his son. In B.C. 204 he died,
+      worn out with disease, in the seventeenth year of his reign and about the
+      fifty-first of his age; and very few lamented his decease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the death of Philopator his son was only five years old. The minister
+      Agathocles, who had ruled over the country with unbounded power,
+      endeavoured, by the help of his sister Agathoclea and the other mistresses
+      of the late king, to keep his death secret; so that while the women seized
+      the money and jewels of the palace, he might have time to take such steps
+      as would secure his own power over the kingdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0030" id="linkBimage-0030">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:47%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/189.jpg"
+       alt="189.jpg Coin of Arsinoe Philopate " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      But the secret could not be long kept, and Agathocles called together the
+      citizens of Alexandria to tell them of the death of Philopator, and to
+      show them their young king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the meeting, followed by his sister Agathoclea and the young
+      Ptolemy, afterwards called Epiphanes. He began his speech, &ldquo;Ye men of
+      Macedonia,&rdquo; as this mixed body of Greeks and Jews was always called. He
+      wiped his eyes in well-feigned grief, and showed them the new king, who
+      had been trusted, he said, by his father, to the motherly care of
+      Agathoclea and to their loyalty. He then accused Tlepolemus of aiming at
+      the throne, and brought forward a creature of his own to prove the truth
+      of the charge. But his voice was soon drowned in the loud murmurs of the
+      citizens; they had smarted too long under his tyranny, and were too well
+      acquainted with his falsehoods, to listen to anything that he could say
+      against his rival. Besides, Tlepolemus had the charge of supplying
+      Alexandria with corn, a duty which was more likely to gain friends than
+      the pandering to the vices of their hated tyrant. Agathocles soon saw that
+      his life was in danger, and he left the meeting and returned to the
+      palace, in doubt whether he should seek for safety in flight, or boldly
+      seize the power which he was craftily aiming at, and rid himself of his
+      enemies by their murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was wasting these precious minutes in doubt, the streets were
+      filled with groups of men, and of boys, who always formed a part of the
+      mobs of Alexandria. They sullenly but loudly gave vent to their hatred of
+      the minister; and if they had but found a leader they would have been in
+      rebellion. In a little while the crowd moved off to the tents of the
+      Macedonians, to learn their feelings on the matter, and then to the
+      quarters of the mercenaries, both of which were close to the palace, and
+      the mixed mob of armed and unarmed men soon told the fatal news, that the
+      soldiers were as angry as the citizens. But they were still without a
+      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 knew what
+      to do than his guilty rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agathocles, in his doubt, did nothing; he sat down to supper with his
+      friends, perhaps hoping that the storm might blow over of itself, perhaps
+      trusting to chance and to the strong walls of the palace. His mother,
+      OEnanthe, ran to the temple of Ceres and Proserpine, and sat down before
+      the altar in tears, believing that the sanctuary of the temple would be
+      her best safeguard; as if the laws of heaven, which had never bound her,
+      would bind her enemies. It was a festal day, and the women in the temple,
+      who knew nothing of the storm which had risen in the forum within these
+      few hours, came forward to comfort her; but she answered them with curses;
+      she knew that she was hated and would soon be despised, and she added the
+      savage prayer, that they might have to eat their own children. The riot
+      did not lessen at sunset. Men, women, and boys were moving through the
+      streets all night with torches. The crowds were greatest in the stadium
+      and in the theatre of Bacchus, but most noisy in front of the palace.
+      Agathocles was awakened by the noise, and in his fright ran to the bedroom
+      of the young Ptolemy; and, distrusting the palace walls, hid himself, with
+      his own family, the king, and two or three guards, in the underground
+      passage which led from the palace to the theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night, however, passed off without any violence; but at daybreak the
+      murmurs became louder, and the thousands in the palace yard called for the
+      young king. By that time the Greek soldiers joined the mob, and then the
+      guards within were no longer to be feared. The gates were soon burst open,
+      and the palace searched. The mob rushed through the halls and lobbies,
+      and, learning where the king had fled, hastened to the underground
+      passage. It was guarded by three doors of iron grating; but, when the
+      first was beaten in, Aristomenes was sent out to offer terms of surrender.
+      Agathocles was willing to give up the young king, his misused power, his
+      ill-gotten wealth and estates; he asked only for his life. But this was
+      sternly refused, and a shout was raised to kill the messenger; and
+      Aristomenes, the best of the ministers, whose only fault was the being a
+      friend of Agathocles, and the having named his little daughter Agathoclea,
+      would certainly have been killed upon the spot if somebody had not
+      reminded them that they wanted to send back an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agathocles, seeing that he could hold out no longer, then gave up the
+      little king, who was set upon a horse, and led away to the stadium amid
+      the shouts of the crowd. There they seated him on the throne, and, while
+      he was crying at being surrounded by strange faces, the mob loudly called
+      for revenge on the guilty ministers. Sosibius, the somatophylax, the son
+      of the former general of that name, seeing no other way of stopping the
+      fury of the mob and the child&rsquo;s sobs, asked him if the enemies of his
+      mother and of his throne should be given up to the people. The child of
+      course answered &ldquo;yes,&rdquo; without understanding what was meant; and on that
+      they let Sosibius take him to his own house to be out of the uproar.
+      Agathocles was soon led out bound, and was stabbed by those who two days
+      before would have felt honoured by a look from him. Agathoclea and her
+      sister were then brought out, and lastly 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 mob sometimes driven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meanwhile some of the women called to mind that Philammon, who had
+      been employed in the murder of Arsinoë, had within those three days come
+      to Alexandria, and they made a rush at his house. The doors quickly gave
+      way before their blows, and he was killed upon the spot by clubs and
+      stones; his little son was strangled by these raging mothers, and his wife
+      dragged naked into the street, and there torn to pieces. Thus died
+      Agathocles and all his family; and the care of the young king then fell to
+      Sosibius, and to Aristomenes, who had already gained a high character for
+      wisdom and firmness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Egypt was thus without a government, Philip of Macedonia and
+      Antiochus of Syria agreed to divide the foreign provinces between them;
+      and Antiochus marched against Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. The guardians of
+      the young Ptolemy sent against him an army under Scopas, the Ætolian, who
+      was at first successful, but was afterwards beaten by Antiochus at Paneas
+      in the valley of the Jordan, three and twenty miles above the Lake of
+      Tiberias, and driven back into Egypt. In these battles the Jews, who had
+      not forgotten the ill treatment that they had received from Philopator,
+      joined Antiochus, after having been under the government of Egypt for
+      exactly one hundred years; and in return Antiochus released Jerusalem from
+      all taxes for three years, and afterwards from one-third of the taxes. He
+      also sent a large sum of money for the service of the temple, and released
+      the elders, priests, scribes, and singing men from all taxes for the
+      future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Alexandrian statesmen had latterly shown themselves in their foreign
+      policy very unworthy pupils of Ptolemy Soter and Philadelphus, who had
+      both ably trimmed the balance of power between the several successors of
+      Alexander. But even had they been wiser, they could hardly, before the end
+      of the second Punic war, have foreseen that the Romans would soon be their
+      most dangerous enemies. The overthrow of Hannibal, however, might perhaps
+      have opened their eyes; but it was then too late; Egypt was too weak to
+      form an alliance with Macedonia or Syria against the Romans. About this
+      time, also, the Romans sent to Alexandria, to inform the king that they
+      had conquered Hannibal, and brought to a close the second Punic war, and
+      to thank him for the friendship of the Egyptians during that long and
+      doubtful struggle of eighteen years, when so many of their nearer
+      neighbours had joined the enemy. They begged that if the senate felt
+      called upon to undertake a war against Philip, who, though no friend to
+      the Egyptians, had not yet taken arms against them, it might cause no
+      breach in the friendship between the King of Egypt and the Romans. In
+      answer to this embassy, the Alexandrians, rushing to their own
+      destruction, sent to Rome a message, which was meant to place the kingdom
+      wholly in the hands of the senate. It was to beg them to undertake the
+      guardianship of the young Ptolemy, and the defence of the kingdom against
+      Philip and Antiochus during his childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Romans, in return, gave the wished-for answer; they sent ambassadors
+      to Antiochus and Philip, to order them to make no attack upon Egypt, on
+      pain of falling under the displeasure of the senate; and they sent Marcus
+      Lepidus to Alexandria, to accept the offered prize, and to govern the
+      foreign affairs of the kingdom, under the modest name of tutor to the
+      young king. This high honour was afterwards mentioned by Lepidus, with
+      pride, upon the coins struck when he was consul, in the eighteenth year of
+      this reign. They have the city of Alexandria on the one side, and on the
+      other the title of &ldquo;Tutor to the king,&rdquo; with the figure of the Roman in
+      his toga, putting the diadem on the head of the young Ptolemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The haughty orders of the senate at first had very little weight with the
+      two kings. Antiochus conquered Phoenicia and Coele-Syria; and he was then
+      met by a second message from the senate, who no longer spoke in the name
+      of their ward, the young King of Egypt, but ordered him to give up to the
+      Roman people the states which he had seized, and which belonged, they
+      said, to the Romans by the right of war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0031" id="linkBimage-0031">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:32%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/196.jpg"
+       alt="196.jpg Roman Coin, Issued Under Ptolemy V. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      On this, Antiochus made peace with Egypt by a treaty, in which he
+      betrothed his daughter Cleopatra to the young Ptolemy, and added the
+      disputed provinces of Phoenicia and Ccele-Syria as a dower, which were to
+      be given up to Egypt when the king was old enough to be married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip marched against Athens and the other states of Greece which had
+      heretofore held themselves independent and in alliance with Egypt; and,
+      when the Athenian embassy came to Alexandria to beg for the usual help,
+      Ptolemy&rsquo;s ministers felt themselves so much in the power of the senate
+      that they sent to Rome to ask whether they should help their old friends,
+      the Athenians, against Philip, the common enemy, or whether they should
+      leave it to the Romans to help them. And these haughty republicans, who
+      wished all their allies to forget the use of arms, who valued their
+      friends not for their strength but for their obedience, sent them word
+      that the senate did not wish them to help the Athenians, and that the
+      Roman people would take care of their own allies. The Alexandrians looked
+      upon the proud but unlettered Romans only as friends, as allies, who asked
+      for no pay, who took no reward, who fought only for ambition and for the
+      glory of their country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after this, the battle of Cynocephake in Thessaly was fought between
+      Philip and the Romans, in which the Romans lost only seven hundred men,
+      while as many as eight thousand Macedonians were left dead upon the field.
+      This battle, though only between Rome and Macedonia, must not be passed
+      unnoticed in the history of Egypt, where the troops were armed and
+      disciplined like Macedonians; as it was the first time that the world had
+      seen the Macedonian phalanx routed and in flight before any troops not so
+      armed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The phalanx was a body of spearsmen, in such close array that each man
+      filled a space of only one square yard. The spear was seven yards long,
+      and, when held in both hands, its point was five yards in front of the
+      soldier&rsquo;s breast. There were sixteen ranks of these men, and, when the
+      first five ranks lowered their spears, the point of the fifth spear was
+      one yard in front of the foremost rank. The Romans, on the other hand,
+      fought in open ranks, with one yard between each, or each man filled a
+      space of four square yards, and in a charge would have to meet ten
+      Macedonian spears. But then the Roman soldiers went into battle with much
+      higher feelings than those of the Greeks. In Rome, arms were trusted only
+      to the citizens, to those who had a country to love, a home to guard, and
+      who had some share in making the laws which they were called upon to obey.
+      But the Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria were made up either of
+      natives who bowed their necks in slavery, or of mercenaries who made war
+      their trade and rioted in its lawlessness; both of whom felt that they had
+      little to gain from victory, and nothing to lose by a change of masters.
+      Moreover, the warlike skill of the Romans was far greater than any that
+      had yet been brought against the Greeks. It had lately been improved in
+      their wars with Hannibal, the great master of that science. They saw that
+      the phalanx could use its whole strength only on a plain; that a wood, a
+      bog, a hill, or a river were difficulties which this close body of men
+      could not always overcome. A charge or a retreat equally lessened its
+      force; the phalanx was meant to stand the charge of others. The Romans,
+      therefore, chose their own time and their own ground; they loosened their
+      ranks and widened their front, avoided the charge, and attacked the Greeks
+      at the side and in the rear; and the fatal discovery was at last made that
+      the Macedonian phalanx was not unconquerable, and that closed ranks were
+      only strong against barbarians. This news must have been heard by every
+      statesman of Egypt and the East with alarm; the &lsquo;Romans were now their
+      equals, and were soon to be their masters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to return to Egypt. It was, as we have seen, a country governed by men
+      of a foreign race. Neither the poor who tilled the land, nor the rich who
+      owned the estates, had any share in the government. They had no public
+      duty except to pay taxes to their Greek masters, who walked among them as
+      superior beings, marked out for fitness to rule by greater skill in the
+      arts both of war and peace. The Greeks by their arms, or rather by their
+      military discipline, had enforced obedience for one hundred and fifty
+      years; and as they had at the same time checked lawless violence, made
+      life and property safe, and left industry to enjoy a large share of its
+      own earnings, this obedience had been for the most part granted to them
+      willingly. They had even trusted the Egyptians with arms. But none are
+      able to command unless they are at the same time able to obey. The
+      Alexandrians were now almost in rebellion against their young king and his
+      ministers; and the Greek government no longer gave the usual advantages in
+      return for the obedience which it tyrannically enforced. Confusion
+      increased each year during the childhood of the fifth Ptolemy, to whom
+      Alexandrian flattery gave the title of Epiphanes, or The Illustrious. The
+      Egyptian phalanx had in the last reign shown signs of disobedience, and at
+      length it broke out in open rebellion. The discontented party strengthened
+      themselves in the Busirite nome, in the middle of the Delta, and fortified
+      the city of Lycopolis against the government; and a large supply of arms
+      and warlike stores which they there got together proved the length of time
+      that they had been preparing for resistance. The royal troops laid siege
+      to the city in due form; they surrounded it with mounds and ditches; they
+      dammed up the bed of the river on each side of it, and, being helped by a
+      rise in the Nile, which was that year greater than usual, they forced the
+      rebels to surrender, on the king&rsquo;s promise that they should be spared. But
+      Ptolemy was not bound by promises; he was as false and cruel as he was
+      weak; the rebels were punished; and many of the troubles in his reign
+      arose from his discontented subjects not being able to rely upon his word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rich island of Cyprus also, which had been left by Philopator under
+      the command of Polyerates, showed some signs of wishing to throw off the
+      Egyptian yoke. But Polyerates was true to his trust; and, though the
+      king&rsquo;s ministers were almost too weak either to help the faithful or
+      punish the treacherous, he not only saved the island for the minor, but,
+      when he gave up his government to Ptolemy of Megalopolis, he brought to
+      the royal treasury at Alexandria a large sum from the revenues of his
+      province. By this faithful conduct he gained great weight in the
+      Alexandrian councils, till, corrupted by the poisonous habits of the
+      place, he gave way to luxury and vice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the same time Scopas, who had lately led back to Alexandria his
+      Ætolian mercenaries, so far showed signs of discontent and disobedience
+      that the minister, Aristomenes, began to suspect him of planning
+      resistance to the government. Scopas was greedy of money; nothing would
+      satisfy his avarice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0032" id="linkBimage-0032">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/201.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="201.jpg the Rosetta Stone (british Museum) " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The other Greek generals of his rank received while in the Egyptian
+      service a mina, or ten dollars a day, under the name of mess-money, beyond
+      the usual military pay; and Scopas claimed and received for his services
+      the large sum of ten minas, or one hundred and twenty-five dollars, a day
+      for mess-money. But even this did not content him. Aristomenes observed
+      that he was collecting his friends for some secret purpose, and in
+      frequent consultation with them. He therefore summoned him to the king&rsquo;s
+      presence, and, being prepared for his refusal, he sent a large force to
+      fetch him. Fearing that the mercenaries might support their general,
+      Aristomenes had even ordered out the elephants and prepared 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 the mercenaries to his trial, and, as they
+      made no objection, he then had him poisoned in prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner was this rebellion crushed than the council took into
+      consideration the propriety of declaring the king&rsquo;s minority at an end, as
+      the best means of re-establishing the royal authority; and they thereupon
+      determined shortly to celebrate his Anacleteria, or the grand ceremony of
+      exhibiting him to the people as their monarch, though he wanted some years
+      of the legal age; and accordingly, in the ninth year of his reign, the
+      young king was crowned with great pomp at Memphis, the ancient capital of
+      the kingdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this occasion he came to Memphis by barge, in grand state, where he was
+      met by the priests of Upper and Lower Egypt, and crowned in the temple of
+      Phtah with the double crown, called Pschent, the crown of the two
+      provinces. After the ceremony, the priests made the Decree in honour of
+      the king, which is carved on the stone known by the name of the Rosetta
+      Stone, in the British Museum. Ptolemy is there styled King of Upper 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, Ptolemy immortal,
+      beloved by Phtah, god Epiphanes most gracious. In the date of the decree
+      we are told the names of the priests of Alexander, of the gods Soteres, of
+      the gods Adelphi, of the gods Euergetae, of the gods Philopatores, of the
+      god Epiphanes himself, of Berenicê Euergetis, of Arsinoë Philadelphus, and
+      of Arsinoë Philopator. The preamble mentions with gratitude the services
+      of the king, or rather of his wise minister, Aristomenes; and the
+      enactment orders that the statue of the king shall be worshipped in every
+      temple of Egypt, and be carried out in the processions with those of the
+      gods of the country; and lastly, that the decree is to be carved at the
+      foot of every statue of the king, in sacred, in common, and in Greek
+      writing. It is to this stone, with its three kinds of letters, and to the
+      skill and industry of Dr. Thomas Young, and of the French scholar,
+      Champollion, that we now owe our knowledge of hieroglyphics. The Greeks of
+      Alexandria, and after them the Romans, who might have learned how to read
+      this kind of writing if they had wished, seem never to have taken the
+      trouble: it fell into disuse on the rise of Christianity in Egypt; and it
+      was left for an Englishman to unravel the hidden meaning after it had been
+      forgotten for nearly thirteen centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The preamble of this decree tells us also that during the minority of the
+      king the taxes were lessened; the crown debtors were forgiven; those who
+      were found in prison charged with crimes against the state were released;
+      the allowance from government for upholding the splendour of the temples
+      was continued, as was the rent from land belonging to the priests; the
+      first-fruits, or rather the coronation money, a tax paid by the priests to
+      the king on the year of his coming to the throne, which was by custom
+      allowed to be less than what the law ordered, was not increased; the
+      priests were relieved from the heavy burden of making a yearly voyage to
+      do homage at Alexandria; there was a stop put to the impressing men for
+      the navy, which had been felt as a great cruelty by an inland people,
+      whose habits and religion alike made them hate the sea, and this was a
+      boon which was the more easily granted, as the navy of Alexandria, which
+      was built in foreign dockyards and steered by foreign pilots, had very
+      much fallen off in the reign of Philopator. The duties on linen cloth,
+      which was the chief manufacture of the kingdom, and, after grain, the
+      chief article exported, were lessened; the priests, who manufactured linen
+      for the king&rsquo;s own use, probably for the clothing of the army, and the
+      sails for the navy, were not called upon for so large a part of what they
+      made as before; and the royalties on the other linen manufactories and the
+      duties on the samples or patterns, both of which seem to have been unpaid
+      for the whole of the eight years of the minority, were wisely forgiven.
+      All the temples of Egypt, and that of Apis at Memphis in particular, were
+      enriched by his gifts; in which pious actions, in grateful remembrance of
+      their former benefactor, and with a marked slight to Philopator, they said
+      that he was following the wishes of his grandfather, the god Euergetes.
+      From this decree we gain some little insight into the means by which the
+      taxes were raised under the Ptolemies; and we also learn that they were so
+      new and foreign that they had no Egyptian word by which they could speak
+      of them, and therefore borrowed the Greek word <i>syntaxes</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      History gives us many examples of kings who, like Epiphanes, gained great
+      praise for the mildness and weakness of the government during their
+      minorities. Aristomenes, the minister, who had governed Egypt for
+      Epiphanes, fully deserved that trust. While the young king looked up to
+      him as a father, the country was well governed, and his orders obeyed;
+      but, as he grew older, his good feelings were weakened by the pleasures
+      which usually beset youth and royalty. The companions of his vices gained
+      that power over his mind which Aristomenes lost, and it was not long
+      before this wise tutor and counsellor was got rid of. The king, weary
+      perhaps with last night&rsquo;s debauchery, had one day fallen asleep when he
+      should have been listening to the speech of a foreign ambassador.
+      Aristomenes gently shook him and awoke him. His flatterers, when alone
+      with him, urged him to take this as an affront. If, said they, it was
+      right to blame the king for falling asleep when worn out with business and
+      the cares of state, it should have been done in private, and not in the
+      face of the whole court. So Aristomenes was put to death by being ordered
+      to drink poison. Epiphanes then lost that love of his people which the
+      wisdom of the minister had gained for him; and he governed the kingdom
+      with the cruelty of a tyrant, rather than with the legal power of a king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0033" id="linkBimage-0033">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/207.jpg" width="100%" alt="207.jpg Outside Rosetta " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Even Aristonicus, his favourite eunuch, who was of the same age as
+      himself, and had been brought up as his playfellow, passed him in the
+      manly virtues of his age, and earned the praise of the country for setting
+      him a good example, and checking him in his career of vice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the thirteenth year of his reign (B.C. 192), when the young king
+      reached the age of eighteen, Antiochus the Great sent his daughter
+      Cleopatra into Egypt, and the marriage, which had been agreed upon six
+      years before, was then carried into effect; and the provinces of
+      Coele-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; and
+      Antiochus hoped that, by means of the power which she would have over the
+      weaker mind of Epiphanes, he should gain more than he lost by giving up
+      Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. But she acted the part of a wife and a queen,
+      and, instead of betraying her husband into the hands of her father, she
+      was throughout the reign his wisest and best counsellor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Antiochus seems never to have given up his hold upon the provinces which
+      had been promised as the dower; and the peace between the two countries,
+      which had been kept during the six years after Cleopatra had been
+      betrothed, was broken as soon as she was married. The war was still going
+      on between Antiochus and the Romans; and Epiphanes soon sent to Rome a
+      thousand pounds weight of gold and twenty thousand pounds of silver, to
+      help the republic against their common enemy. But the Romans neither hired
+      mercenaries nor fought as such, the thirst for gold had not yet become the
+      strongest feeling in the senate, and they sent back the money to
+      Alexandria with many thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the twentieth year of his reign Epiphanes was troubled by a second
+      serious rebellion of the Egyptians. Polycrates marched against them at the
+      head of the Greek troops; and, as he brought with him a superior force,
+      and the king&rsquo;s promise of a free pardon to all who should return to their
+      obedience, the rebels yielded to necessity and laid down their arms. The
+      leaders of the rebellion, Athinis, Pausiras, Chesuphus, and Irobashtus,
+      whose Koptic names prove that this was a struggle on the part of the
+      Egyptians to throw off the Greek yoke, were brought before the king at
+      Saïs. Epiphanes, in whose youthful heart were joined the cruelty and
+      cowardice of a tyrant, who had not even shown himself to the army during
+      the danger, was now eager to act the conqueror; and in spite of the
+      promises of safety on which these brave Kopts had laid down their arms, he
+      had them tied to his chariot wheels, and copying the vices of men whose
+      virtues he could not even understand, like Achilles and Alexander, he
+      dragged them living round the city walls, and then ordered them to be put
+      to death. He then led the army to Naucratis, which was the port of Saïs,
+      and there he embarked on the Nile for Alexandria, and taking with him a
+      further body of mercenaries, which Aristonicus had just brought from
+      Greece, he entered the city in triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy of Megalopolis, the new governor of Cyprus, copied his
+      predecessor, Polycrates, in his wise and careful management. His chief aim
+      was to keep the province quiet, and his next to collect the taxes. He was
+      at first distrusted by the Alexandrian council for the large sum of money
+      which he had got together and kept within his own power; but when he sent
+      it all home to the empty treasury, they were as much pleased as they were
+      surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apollonius, whom we have spoken of in the reign of Euergetes, and who had
+      been teaching at Rhodes during the reign of Philopator, was recalled to
+      Alexandria in the beginning of this reign, and made librarian of the
+      museum on the death of Eratosthenes. But he did not long enjoy that
+      honour. He was already old, and shortly afterwards died at the age of
+      ninety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0034" id="linkBimage-0034">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/210.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="210.jpg a Desert Road Between Egypt and Syria. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The coins of this king are known by the glory or rays of sun which
+      surround his head, and which agrees with his name, Epiphanes, illustrious,
+      or as it is written in the hieroglyphics, &ldquo;light bearing.&rdquo; On the other
+      side is the cornucopia between two stars, with the name of &ldquo;King Ptolemy.&rdquo;
+       No temples, and few additions to temples, seem to have been built in Upper
+      Egypt during this reign, which began and ended in rebellion. We find,
+      however, a Greek inscription at Philas, of &ldquo;King Ptolemy and Queen
+      Cleopatra, gods Epiphanes, and Ptolemy their son, to Asclepius,&rdquo; a god
+      whom the Egyptians called Imothph the son of Pthah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cyprus and Cyrene were nearly all that were left to Egypt of its foreign
+      provinces. The cities of Greece, which had of their own wish put
+      themselves under Egypt for help against their nearer neighbours, now
+      looked 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 been given
+      up to Epiphanes, had been again soon lost; and the Jews, who in all former
+      wars had sided with the Kings of Egypt, as being not only the stronger but
+      the milder rulers, now joined Seleucus. The ease with which the
+      wide-spreading provinces of this once mighty empire fell off from their
+      allegiance, showed how the whole had been upheld by the warlike skill of
+      its kings, rather than by a deep-rooted hold in the habits of the people.
+      Instead of wondering that the handful of Greeks in Alexandria, on whom the
+      power rested, lost those wide provinces, we should rather wonder that they
+      were ever able to hold them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the death of Antiochus the Great, Ptolemy again proposed to enforce
+      his rights over Ccele-Syria, which he had given up only in the weakness of
+      his minority; and he is said to have been asked by one of his generals,
+      how he should be able to pay for the large forces which he&rsquo; was getting
+      together for that purpose; and he playfully answered, that his treasure
+      was in the number of his friends. But his joke was taken in earnest; they
+      were afraid of new taxes and fresh levies on their estates; and means were
+      easily taken to poison him. He died in the twenty-ninth year of his age,
+      after a reign of twenty-four years; leaving the navy unmanned, the army in
+      disobedience, the treasury empty, and the whole framework of government
+      out of order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just before his death he had sent to the Achaians to offer to send ten
+      galleys to join their fleet; and Polybius, the historian, to whom we owe
+      so much of our knowledge of these reigns, although he had not yet reached
+      the age called for by the Greek law, was sent by the Achaians as one of
+      the ambassadors, with his father, to return thanks; but before they had
+      quitted their own country they were stopped by the news of the death of
+      Epiphanes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who took away the life of the king seem to have had no thoughts of
+      mending the form of government, nor any plan by which they might lessen
+      the power of his successor. It was only one of those outbreaks of private
+      vengeance which have often happened in unmixed monarchies, where men are
+      taught that the only way to check the king&rsquo;s tyranny is by his murder; and
+      the little notice that was taken of it by the people proves their want of
+      public virtue as well as of political wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkBimage-0035" id="linkBimage-0035">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/212.jpg" width="100%" alt="212.jpg Tailpiece " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="linkC2HCH0001" id="linkC2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br /> <a name="linkCimage-0004"
+       id="linkCimage-0004">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/213.jpg" width="100%" alt="213.jpg Page Image " />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V&mdash;PTOLEMY PHILOMETOR AND PTOLEMY EUERGETES II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Syrian Invasion: The Jews and the Bible: Relations with Rome:
+      Literature of the Age.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of the last reign the Alexandrians had sadly felt the
+      want of a natural guardian to the young king, and they were now glad to
+      copy the customs of the conquered Egyptians. Epiphanes had left behind him
+      two sons, each named Ptolemy, and a daughter named Cleopatra; and the
+      elder son, though still a child, mounted the throne under the able
+      guardianship of his mother, Cleopatra, and took the very suitable name of
+      Philometor, or <i>mother-loving</i>. The mother governed the kingdom for
+      seven years as regent during the minority of her son. &ldquo;When Philometor
+      reached his fourteenth year, the age at which his minority ceased, his
+      coronation was celebrated with great pomp. Ambassadors from several
+      foreign states were sent to Egypt to wish the king joy, to do honour to
+      the day, and to renew the treaties of peace with him: Caius Valerius and
+      four others were sent from Rome; Apollonius, the son of Mnestheus, was
+      sent from Judæa; and we may regret with Polybius that he himself was not
+      able to form part of the embassy then sent from the Achaians, that he
+      might have seen the costly and curious ceremony, and given us an account
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Cleopatra lived, she had been able to keep her son at peace with her
+      brother, Antiochus Epiphanes, but upon her death, Leneus and the eunuch
+      Eulaius, who then had the care of the young king, sought to reconquer
+      Coele-Syria; and they embroiled the country in a war, at a time when
+      weakness and decay might have been seen in every part of the army and
+      navy, and when there was the greatest need of peace. Coele-Syria and
+      Phoenicia had been given to Ptolemy Epiphanes as his wife&rsquo;s dower; but,
+      when Philometor seemed too weak to grasp them, Antiochus denied that his
+      father had ever made such a treaty, and got ready to march against Egypt,
+      as the easiest way to guard Coele-Syria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the statesmen of Egypt ought to have learned the mistake in
+      their foreign policy. By widening their frontier they always weakened it.
+      They should have fortified the passes between the Red Sea and the
+      Mediterranean, not cities in Asia. When Antiochus entered Egypt he was met
+      at Pelusium by the army of Philometor, which he at once routed in a
+      pitched battle. The whole of Egypt was then in his power; he marched upon
+      Memphis with a small force, and seized it without having to strike a blow,
+      helped perhaps by the plea that he was acting on behalf of his nephew,
+      Ptolemy Philometor, who then fell into his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this, the younger Ptolemy, the brother of Philometor, who was with his
+      sister Cleopatra in Alexandria, and was about fifteen years old, declared
+      himself king, and sent ambassadors to Rome to ask for help against
+      Antiochus; and taking the name of the most popular of his forefathers, he
+      called himself Euergetes. He is, however, better known in history as
+      Ptolemy Physcon, or <i>bloated</i>, a nickname which was afterwards given
+      to him when he had grown fat and unwieldy from the diseases of luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Comanus and Cineas were the chief advisers of the young Euergetes; and in
+      their alarm they proposed to send the foreign ambassadors to meet the
+      invader on his march from Memphis, and to plead for peace. This task the
+      ambassadors kindly undertook. There were then in Alexandria two embassies
+      from the Achaians, one to renew the treaty of peace, and one to settle the
+      terms of the coming wrestling match. There were there three embassies from
+      Athens, one with gifts from the city, one about the Panathenaic games, and
+      one about the celebration of the mysteries. There was also an embassy from
+      Miletus, and one from Clazomenæ. On the day of their arrival at Memphis,
+      Antiochus feasted these numerous ambassadors in grand state, and on the
+      next day gave them an audience. But their arguments for peace carried no
+      weight with him; and he denied that his father, Antiochus the Great, had
+      ever given Coele-Syria as a dower with his daughter Cleopatra to
+      Epiphanes. To gain time he promised the ambassadors that he would give
+      them an answer as soon as his own ambassadors returned from Alexandria;
+      and in the meanwhile he carried his army down the Nile to Naucratis, and
+      thence marched to the capital to begin the siege.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Antiochus, however, was defeated in his first assault upon Alexandria, and
+      finding that he should not soon be able to bring the siege to an end, he
+      sent off an embassy to Rome with a hundred and fifty talents of gold,
+      fifty as a present to the senate, and the rest to be divided among the
+      states of Greece, whose help he might need. At the same time, also, an
+      embassy from the Rhodians arrived in the port of Alexandria, to attempt to
+      restore peace to the country of their old allies. Antiochus received the
+      Rhodian ambassadors in his tent, but would not listen to the long speech
+      with which they threatened him, and shortly told them that he came as the
+      friend of his elder nephew, the young Philometor, and if the Alexandrians
+      wished for peace they should open the gates to their rightful king.
+      Antiochus was, however, defeated in all his assaults on the city, and he
+      at last withdrew his army and returned to Syria. He left Euergetes, King
+      of the Greeks, at Alexandria, and Philometor at Memphis, King of the rest
+      of Egypt. But he kept Pelusium, where he placed a strong garrison that he
+      might be able easily to re-enter Egypt whenever he chose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy Macron, the Alexandrian governor of Cyprus, added to the troubles
+      of the country by giving up his island to Antiochus. But he met with the
+      usual fate of traitors, he was badly rewarded; and when he complained of
+      his treatment, he was called a traitor by the very men who had gained by
+      his treachery, and he poisoned himself in the bitterness of his grief.
+      Antiochus, like most invaders, carried off whatever treasure fell into his
+      hands. Egypt was a sponge which had not lately been squeezed, and his
+      court and even his own dinner-table then shone with a blaze of silver and
+      gold unknown in Syria before this inroad into Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By these acts, and by the garrison left in Pelusium, the eyes of
+      Philometor were opened, and he saw that his uncle had not entered Egypt
+      for his sake, but to make it a province of Syria, after it had been
+      weakened by civil war. He therefore wisely forgave his rebellious brother
+      and sister in Alexandria, and sent offers of peace to them; and it was
+      agreed that the two Ptolemies should reign together, and turn their forces
+      against the common enemy. It was most likely at this time, and as a part
+      of this treaty, that Philometor married his sister Cleopatra. It was
+      mainly by her advice and persuasion that the quarrel between the two
+      brothers was for the time healed. On this treaty between the brothers the
+      year was called the twelfth of Ptolemy Philometor and the first of Ptolemy
+      Euergetes, and the public deeds of the kingdom were so dated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next year Antiochus Epiphanes again entered Egypt, claiming the island
+      of Cyprus and the country round Pelusium as the price of his forbearance;
+      and, on his marching forward, Memphis a second time opened its gates to
+      him without a battle. He came down by slow marches towards Alexandria, and
+      crossed the canal at Leucine, four miles from the city. There he was met
+      by the Roman ambassadors, who ordered him to quit the country. On his
+      hesitating, Popilius, who was one of them, drew a circle round him on the
+      sand with his stick, and told him that, if he crossed that line without
+      promising to leave Egypt at once, it should be taken as a declaration of
+      war against Rome. On this threat Antiochus again quitted Egypt, and the
+      brothers sent ambassadors to Rome to thank the senate for their help, and
+      to acknowledge that they owed more to the Roman people than they did to
+      the gods or to their forefathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The treaty made on this occasion between Philometor and Antiochus was
+      written by Heraclides Lembus, the son of Serapion, a native of Oxyrynchus,
+      who wrote on the succession of the philosophers in the several Greek
+      schools, and other works on philosophy, but whose chief work was a history
+      named the Lembeutic History.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four years afterwards, in B. c. 164, Antiochus Epiphanes died; and the
+      Jews of Judæa, who had been for some time struggling for liberty, then
+      gained a short rest for their unhappy country. Judas Maccabæus had raised
+      his countrymen in rebellion against the foreigners; he had defeated the
+      Syrian forces in several battles; and was at last able to purify the
+      temple and re-establish the service there as of old. He therefore sent to
+      the Jews of Egypt to ask them to join their Hebrew brethren in celebrating
+      the feast of tabernacles on that great occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0005" id="linkCimage-0005">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/219.jpg" width="100%" alt="219.jpg Temple of Hermonthis. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The unhappy quarrels between the Egyptian kings soon broke out again; and,
+      as the party of Euergetes was the stronger, Philometor was driven from his
+      kingdom, and he fled to Rome for safety and for help. He entered the city
+      privately, and took up his lodgings in the house of one of his own
+      subjects, a painter of Alexandria. His pride led him to refuse the offers
+      of better entertainment which were made to him by Demetrius, the nephew of
+      Antiochus, who, like himself, was hoping to regain his kingdom by the help
+      of the Romans. The Kings of Egypt and Syria, the two greatest kingdoms in
+      the world, were at the same time asking to be heard at the bar of the
+      Roman senate, and were claiming the thrones of their fathers at the hands
+      of men who could make and unmake kings at their pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the senate heard that Philometor was in Rome, they lodged him
+      at the cost of the state in a manner becoming his high rank, and soon sent
+      him back to Egypt, with orders that Euergetes should reign in Cyrene, and
+      that the rest of the kingdom should belong to Philometor. This happened in
+      the seventeenth year of Philometor and the sixth of Euergetes, which was
+      the last year that was named after the two kings. Cassius Longinus, who
+      was next year consul at Rome, was most likely among the ambassadors who
+      replaced Philometor on the throne; for he put the Ptolemaic eagle and
+      thunderbolt on his coins, as though to claim the sovereignty of Egypt for
+      the senate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To these orders Euergetes was forced to yield; but the next year he went
+      himself to Rome to complain to the senate that they had made a very unfair
+      division of the kingdom, and to beg that they would add the island of
+      Cyprus to his share. After hearing the ambassadors from Philometor, who
+      were sent to plead on the other side, the senate granted the prayer of
+      Euergetes, and sent ambassadors to Cyprus, with orders to hand that island
+      over to Euergetes, and to make use of the fleets and armies of the
+      republic if these orders were disobeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euergetes, during his stay in Rome, if we may believe Plutarch, made an
+      offer of marriage to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but this offer
+      of a throne could not make the high-minded matron quit her children and
+      her country. He left Italy with the Roman ambassadors, and, in passing
+      through Greece, he raised a large body of mercenaries to help him to wrest
+      Cyprus from his brother, as it would seem that the governor, faithful to
+      his charge, would not listen to the commands of Rome. But the ambassadors
+      had been told to conquer Cyprus, if necessary, with the arms of the
+      republic only, and they therefore made Euergetes disband his levies. They
+      sailed for Alexandria to enforce their orders upon Philometor, and sent
+      Euergetes home to Cyrene. Philometor received the Roman ambassadors with
+      all due honours; he sometimes gave them fair promises, and sometimes put
+      them off till another day; and tried to spin out the time without saying
+      either yes or no to the message from the senate. Euergetes sent to
+      Alexandria to ask if they had gained their point; but though they
+      threatened to return to Rome if they were not at once obeyed, Philometor,
+      by his kind treatment and still kinder words, kept them more than forty
+      days longer at Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the Roman ambassadors left Egypt, and on their way home they went
+      to Cyrene, to let Euergetes know that his brother had disobeyed the orders
+      of the senate, and would not give up Cyprus; and Euergetes then sent two
+      ambassadors to Rome to beg them to revenge their affronted dignity and to
+      enforce their orders by arms. The senate of course declared the peace with
+      Egypt at an end, and ordered the ambassadors from Philometor to quit Rome
+      within five days, and sent their own ambassadors to Cyrene to tell
+      Euergetes of their decree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while this was going on, the state of Cyrene had risen in arms against
+      Euergetes; his vices and cruelty had made him hated, they had gained for
+      him the nicknames of Kakergetes, or <i>mischief-maker</i>, and Physcon, or
+      <i>bloated</i>; and while wishing to gain Cyprus he was in danger of
+      losing his own kingdom. When he marched against the rebels, he was beaten
+      and wounded, either in the battle or by an attack upon his life
+      afterwards, and his success was for some time doubtful. When he had at
+      last put down this rising, he sailed for Rome, to urge his complaints
+      against Philometor, upon whom he laid the blame of the late rebellion, and
+      to ask for help. The senate, after hearing both sides, sent a small fleet
+      with Euergetes, not large enough to put him on the throne of Cyprus, but
+      gave him, what they had before refused, leave to levy an army of his own,
+      and to enlist their allies in Greece and Asia as mercenaries under his
+      standard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Roman troops seem not to have helped Euergetes; but he landed in
+      Cyprus with his own mercenaries, and was there met by Philometor, who had
+      brought over the Egyptian army in person. Euergetes, however, was beaten
+      in several battles, he was soon forced to shut himself up in the city of
+      Lapitho, and at last to lay down his arms before his elder brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Philometor had upon this put his brother to death, the deed would have
+      seemed almost blameless after the family murders already related in this
+      history. But, with a goodness of heart, he a second time forgave his
+      brother all that had passed, replaced him on the throne of Cyrene, and
+      promised to give him his daughter in marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0006" id="linkCimage-0006">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/223.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="223.jpg Garden Near Heliopolis " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      We are not told whether the firmness and forgiving mildness of Philometor
+      had turned the Roman senate in his favour, but their troops seemed wanted
+      in other quarters; at any rate they left off trying to enforce their
+      decree; Philometor kept Cyprus, and sent Euergetes a yearly gift of grain
+      from Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the wars in Syria between Philometor and Antiochus Epiphanes, at
+      the beginning of this reign, the Jews were divided into two parties, one
+      favouring the Egyptians and one the Syrians. At last the Syrian party
+      drove their enemies out of Jerusalem; and Onias, the high priest, with a
+      large body of Jews, fled to Egypt. There they were well received by
+      Philometor, who allowed them to dwell in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis;
+      and he gave them leave to build a temple and ordain priests for
+      themselves. Onias built his temple at On or Onion, a city about
+      twenty-three miles from Memphis, once the capital of the district of
+      Heliopolis. It was on the site of an old Egyptian temple of the goddess
+      Pasht, which had fallen into disuse and decay, and was built after the
+      model of the temple of Jerusalem. Though by the Jewish law there was to be
+      no second temple, yet Onias defended himself by quoting, as if meant for
+      his own times, the words of Isaiah, who says that in that day there shall
+      be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt. The building of
+      this temple, and the celebrating the Jewish feasts there, as in rivalry to
+      the temple of Jerusalem, were a never-failing cause of quarrel between the
+      Hebrew and the Greek Jews. They each altered the words of the Bible to
+      make it speak their own opinions. The Hebrew Bible now says that the new
+      temple was in the City of Destruction, and the Greek Bible says that it
+      was in the City of Righteousness; whereas, from the Arabic version and
+      some early commentaries, it seems that Isaiah was speaking of the city of
+      Heliopolis, where there had been of old an altar to the Lord. The leaders
+      of the Greek party wished the Jews to throw aside the character of
+      strangers and foreign traders; to be at home and to become owners of the
+      soil. &ldquo;Hate not laborious work,&rdquo; says the son of Sirach; &ldquo;neither
+      husbandry, which the Most High hath ordained.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      About the same time the Jews brought before Ptolemy, as a judge, their
+      quarrel with the Samaritans, as to whether, according to the law of Moses,
+      the temple ought to have been built at Jerusalem, or on the green and
+      fertile Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans built their temple, or on the
+      barren white crags of Mount Ebal, where the Hebrew Bible says that it
+      should be built; and as to which nation had altered their copies of the
+      Bible in the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy and eighth chapter of
+      Joshua. This dispute had lately been the cause of riots and rebellion.
+      Ptolemy seems to have decided the question for political reasons, and to
+      please his own subjects, the Alexandrian Jews; and without listening to
+      the arguments as to what the law ordered, he was content with the proof
+      that the temple had stood at Jerusalem for about eight hundred years, and
+      he put to death the two Samaritan pleaders, who had probably been guilty
+      of some outrage against the Jews in zeal for Mount Gerizim, and for which
+      they might then have been on their trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Onias, the high priest, was much esteemed by Philometor, and bore high
+      offices in the government; as also did Dositheus, another Jew, who had
+      been very useful in helping the king to crush a rebellion. Dositheus
+      called himself a priest and a Levite, though his title to that honour
+      seems to have been doubted by his countrymen. He had brought with him into
+      Egypt the book of Esther, written in Greek, which he said had been
+      translated out of the Hebrew in Jerusalem by Lysimachus. It contained some
+      additions for which the Hebrew has never been brought forward, and which
+      are now placed among the uncanonical books in the Apocrypha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the Ptolemies had found themselves too weak to hold Ethiopia, they
+      had placed a body of soldiers on the border of the two countries, to guard
+      Egypt from the inroads of the enemy. This station, twelve miles to the
+      south of Syênê, had by degrees grown into a city, and was called
+      Parembole, or <i>The Camp</i>; and, as most of the soldiers were Greek
+      mercenaries, it was natural that the temple which Philometor built there
+      should be dedicated in the Greek language. Of the temples hitherto built
+      by the Ptolemies, in the Egyptian cities, every one seems to have had the
+      king&rsquo;s name and titles, and its dedication to the gods, carved on its
+      massive portico in hieroglyphics; but this was in a Greek city, and it was
+      dedicated to Isis and Serapis, on behalf of Philometor and his queen, in a
+      Greek inscription.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0007" id="linkCimage-0007">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/227.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="227.jpg Temple of Apollonopolis " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Philometor also built a temple at Antseopolis to Antaeus, a god of whom we
+      know little, but that he gave his name to the city; and another to Aroëris
+      at Ombos; and in the same way he carved the dedications on the porticoes
+      in the Greek language. This custom became common after that time, and
+      proves both the lessened weight which the native Egyptians bore in the
+      state, and that the kings had forgotten the wise rules of Ptolemy Soter,
+      in regard to the religious feelings of the people. They must have been
+      greatly shocked by this use of foreign writing in the place of the old
+      characters of the country, which, from having been used in the temples,
+      even for ages beyond the reach of history, had at last been called sacred.
+      In the temple at Antoopolis we note a marked change in the style of
+      building. The screen in front of the great portico is almost removed by
+      having a doorway made in it between every pair of columns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to this reign, also, that we seem to owe the great temple at
+      Apollinopolis Magna, although it was not finished till one or two reigns
+      later. It is one of the largest and least ruined of the Egyptian temples.
+      Its front is formed of two huge square towers, with sloping sides, between
+      which is the narrow doorway, the only opening in its massive walls.
+      Through this the worshipper entered a spacious courtyard or cloister,
+      where he found shade from the sun under a covered walk on either side. In
+      front is the lofty portico with six large columns, the entrance to the
+      body of the building. This last is flat-roofed, and far lower than the
+      grand portico which hid it from the eyes of the crowd in the courtyard.
+      The staircases in the towers are narrow. The sacred rooms within were
+      small and dark, with only a glimmering flame here and there before an
+      altar, except when lighted up with a blaze of lamps on a feast-day. As a
+      castle it must have had great strength; from the top and loopholes of the
+      two towers, stones and darts might be hurled at the enemy; and as it was
+      in the hands of the Egyptians, it is the strongest proof that they were
+      either not distrusted or not feared by their Greek rulers. The city of
+      Apollinopolis stands on a grand and lofty situation, overlooking the river
+      and the valley; and this proud temple, rising over all, can only have been
+      planned by military skill as a fortress to command the whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time the Greeks in Egypt were beginning to follow the custom of
+      their Egyptian brethren, to take upon themselves monastic vows, and to
+      shut themselves up in the temples in religious idleness. But these
+      foreigners were looked upon with jealousy by the Egyptian monks as
+      intruders on their endowments, and we meet with a petition addressed to
+      Philometor by Ptolemy, the son of Glaucias, a monk in the temple of
+      Serapis at Memphis, who styles himself a Macedonian, complaining that his
+      cell had been violently entered and himself ill-treated because he was a
+      Greek; and reminding the king that last year, when the king visited the
+      Serapium, he had addressed the same petition to him through the bars of
+      his window. The priests in temples of Egypt were maintained, partly by
+      their own estates, and partly by the offerings of the pious; and we still
+      possess a deed of sale made in this reign by the Theban priests, of
+      one-half of a third of their collections for the dead who had been buried
+      in Thynabunum, the Libyan suburb of Thebes. This sixth share of the
+      collections consisted of seven or eight families of slaves; the price of
+      it was four hundred pieces of brass; the bargain was made in the presence
+      of sixteen witnesses, whose names are given; and the deed 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 dead would seem to have been
+      a cause of some wealth to the temples. It was one among the many Egyptian
+      customs forbidden by the law of Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this deed of sale we also gain some knowledge of the state of slavery
+      in Egypt. The names of the slaves and of their fathers are Koptic, and in
+      some cases borrowed from the names of the gods; hence the slaves were
+      probably of the same religion, and spoke nearly the same language as their
+      masters. They sunk into that low state rather by their own want of mind
+      than by their masters&rsquo; power. In each case the slave was joined in the
+      same lot with his children; and the low price of four hundred pieces of
+      brass, perhaps about thirty-eight dollars for eight families, or even if
+      it be meant for the half of eight families, proves that they were of the
+      nature of serfs, and that the master, either by law or custom, could have
+      had no power of cruelly overworking them. On the other hand, in the reign
+      of Philadelphus, the prisoners taken in battle, who might be treated with
+      greater severity, were ransomed at fifteen dollars each. We see by the
+      monuments that there were also a few negroes in the same unhappy state of
+      slavery. They were probably not treated much worse than the lowest class
+      of those born on the soil, but they were much more valuable. Other slaves
+      of the Berber race were brought in coasting vessels from Opone on the
+      incense coast, near to the island of Dioscorides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aristarchus, who had been the tutor of Euergetes II., and of a son of
+      Philometor, was one of the ornaments of this reign. He had been a pupil of
+      Aristophanes, the grammarian, and had then studied under Crates at
+      Pergamus, the rival school to Alexandria. He died at Cyprus, whither he
+      probably withdrew on the death of Philometor. He was chiefly known for his
+      critical writings, in which his opinions of poetry were thought so just
+      that few dared to disagree with them; and his name soon became proverbial
+      for a critic. Aristarchus had also the good fortune to be listened to in
+      his lecture-room by one whose name is far more known than those of his two
+      royal pupils. Moschus of Syracuse, the pastoral poet, was one of his
+      hearers; but his fame must not be claimed for Alexandria; he can hardly
+      have learned from the critic that just taste by which he joined softness
+      and sweetness to the rude plainness of the Doric muse. Indeed in this he
+      only followed his young friend Bion, whose death he so beautifully
+      bewails, and from whose poems he generously owns that he learned so much.
+      It may be as well to add that the lines in which he says that Theocritus,
+      who had been dead above one hundred years, joined with him in his sorrow
+      for the death of Bion are later additions not found in the early
+      manuscripts of his poems.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From our slight acquaintance with Bion&rsquo;s life, we are left in doubt
+      whether he accompanied his friend Moschus to the court of Alexandria; but
+      it is probable that he did. In his beautiful lamentation for the death of
+      Adonis, we have an imitation of the melancholy chant of the Egyptians,
+      named <i>maneros</i>, which they sang through the streets in the
+      procession on the feast of Isis, when the crowd joined in the chorus, &ldquo;Ah,
+      hapless Isis, Osiris is no more.&rdquo; The tale has been a good deal changed by
+      the Sicilian muse of Bion, but in the boar which killed Adonis, we have
+      the wicked Typhon as carved on the monuments; we have also the wound in
+      the thigh, and the consolations of the priests, who every year ended their
+      mournful song with advising the goddess to reserve her sorrow for another
+      year, when on the return of the festival the same lament would be again
+      celebrated. The whole poem has a depth and earnestness of feeling which is
+      truly Egyptian, but which was very little known in Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the Alexandrian grammarians, and more particularly to Aristophanes,
+      Aristarchus, and their pupil, Ammonius, we are indebted for our present
+      copies of Homer. These critics acted like modern editors, each publishing
+      an edition, or rather writing out a copy, which was then re-copied in the
+      museum as often as called for by the demands of the purchasers of books.
+      Aristophanes left perhaps only one such copy or edition, while
+      Aristarchus, in his efforts to correct the text of the great epic poet,
+      made several such copies. These were in the hands of the later scholiasts,
+      who appealed to them as their authority, and ventured to make no further
+      alterations; we therefore now read the Iliad and Odyssey nearly as left by
+      these Alexandrian critics. They no doubt took some liberties in altering
+      the spelling and smoothing the lines; and, though we should value most
+      highly a copy in the rougher form in which it came into their hands, yet,
+      on the whole, we must be great gainers by their labours. They divided the
+      Iliad and Odyssey into twenty-four books each, and corrected the faulty
+      metres; but one of their chief tasks was to set aside, or put a mark
+      against, those more modern lines which had crept into the ancient poems.
+      It had been usual to call every old verse Homer&rsquo;s or Homeric, and these it
+      was the business of the critic to mark as not genuine. Aristarchus was
+      jocosely said to have called every line spurious which he did not like;
+      but everything that we can learn of him leads us to believe that he
+      executed his task with judgment. From these men sprang the school of
+      Alexandrian grammarians, who for several centuries continued their minute
+      and often unprofitable studies in verbal criticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0008" id="linkCimage-0008">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/234.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="234.jpg the Apotheosis of Homer " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      These were the palmy days of criticism. Never before or since have critics
+      held so high a place in literature. The world was called upon to worship
+      and do honour to the poet, but chiefly that it might admire the skill of
+      the critic who could name the several sources of his beauties. The critic
+      now ranked higher than a priest at the foot of Mount Parnassus. Homer was
+      lifted to the skies that the critic might stand on a raised pedestal among
+      the Muses. Such seems to be the meaning of the figures on the upper part
+      of the well-known sculpture called the Apotheosis of Homer. It was made in
+      this reign; and at the foot Ptolemy and his mother, in the characters of
+      Time and the World, are crowning the statue of the poet, in the presence
+      of ten worshippers who represent the literary excellences which shine
+      forth in his poems. The figures of the Iliad and Odyssey kneel beside his
+      seat, and the Frogs and Mice creep under his footstool, showing that the
+      latter mock-heroic poem was already written and called the work of Homer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other celebrities who flourished under the fifth Ptolemy were Pamphilius,
+      an Alexandrian physician who wrote on medical plants; Meander, a poet and
+      physician who studied poisons, and the great Hipparchus, the founder of
+      mathematical astronomy. Hero, also, in this reign, invented a kind of
+      primitive steam-engine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0009" id="linkCimage-0009">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:20%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/235.jpg"
+       alt="235.jpg Hero&rsquo;s Rotating Steam Engine " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      These men and their contemporaries were in the habit of writing their
+      scientific observations in the form of poetry, but it was verse without
+      earnestness and feeling, and such of it as survives is valued not for its
+      literary qualities or charms of diction, but for the side-lights it throws
+      upon the manners and education of the age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The portrait of the king is known from those coins which bear the name of
+      &ldquo;<i>King Ptolemy the mother-loving god</i>.&rdquo; The eagle on the other side
+      of 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 &ldquo;god,&rdquo; on the coins of the Ptolemies;
+      but, as every one of them had been so named in the hieroglyphical
+      inscriptions, it can scarcely be called new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Philometor quitted the island of Cyprus after beating his brother in
+      battle, he left Archias as governor, who entered into a plot to give it up
+      to Demetrius, King of Syria, for the sum of five hundred talents. But the
+      plot was found out, and the traitor then put an end to his own life, to
+      escape from punishment and self-reproach. By this treachery of Demetrius,
+      Philometor was made his enemy, and he joined Attalus, King of Pergamus,
+      and Ariarathes, King of Cappadocia, in setting up Alexander Balas as a
+      pretender to the throne of Syria, who beat Demetrius in battle, and put
+      him to death. Philometor two years afterwards gave his elder daughter,
+      Cleopatra, in marriage to Alexander, and led her himself to Ptolemaïs, or
+      Acre, where the marriage was celebrated with great pomp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even in Ptolemaïs, the city in which Alexander had been so covered
+      with favours, Philometor was near falling under the treachery of his new
+      son-in-law. He learned that a plot had been formed against his life by
+      Ammonius, and he wrote to Alexander to beg that the traitor might be given
+      up to justice. But Alexander acknowledged the plot as his own, and refused
+      to give up his servant. On this, Philometor recalled his daughter, and
+      turned against Alexander the forces which he had led into Syria to uphold
+      him. He then sent to the young Demetrius, afterwards called Nicator, the
+      son of his late enemy, to offer him the throne and wife which he had
+      lately given to Alexander Balas. Demetrius was equally pleased with the
+      two offers. Philometor then entered Antioch at the head of his army, and
+      there he was proclaimed by the citizens King of Asia and Egypt; but with a
+      forbearance then very uncommon, he called together the council of the
+      people, and refused the crown, and persuaded them to receive Demetrius as
+      their king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0010" id="linkCimage-0010">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:47%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/237.jpg" alt="237.jpg Coin of Ptolemy V. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      It is interesting to note that Alexander Balas and Demetrius Nicator each
+      in his turn acknowledged his debt to the King of Egypt by putting the
+      Ptolemaic eagle on his coins, and adjusting them to the Egyptian standard
+      of weight: and in this they were afterwards followed by Antiochus, the son
+      of Demetrius. The Romans, on the other hand, sometimes used the same eagle
+      in boast of their power over Egypt; but we cannot be mistaken in what was
+      meant by these Syrian kings, who none of them, when their coins were
+      struck, were seated safely on the throne. With them, as with some of the
+      Greek cities of Asia Minor, the use of the Egyptian eagle on the coins was
+      an act of homage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philometor and Demetrius, as soon as the latter was acknowledged king at
+      Antioch, then marched against Alexander, routed his army, and drove him
+      into Arabia. But in this battle Philometor&rsquo;s horse was frightened by the
+      braying of an elephant, and threw the king into the ranks of the enemy,
+      and he was taken up covered with wounds. He lay speechless for five days,
+      and the surgeons then endeavoured to cut out a piece of the broken bone
+      from his skull. He died under the operation: but not before the head of
+      Alexander had been brought to him as the proof of his victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus fell Ptolemy Philometor in the forty-second year of his age. His
+      reign began in trouble; before he reached the years of manhood the country
+      had been overrun by foreigners, and torn to pieces by civil war; but he
+      left the kingdom stronger than he found it, a praise which he alone can
+      share with Ptolemy Soter. He was alike brave and mild; he was the only one
+      of the race who fell in battle, and the only one whose hands were
+      unstained with civil blood. At an age and in a country when poison and the
+      dagger were too often the means by which the king&rsquo;s authority was upheld,
+      when goodness was little valued, and when conquests were thought the only
+      measure of greatness, he spared the life of a brother taken in battle, he
+      refused the crown of Syria when offered to him; and not only no one of his
+      friends or kinsmen, but no citizen of Alexandria, was put to death during
+      the whole of his reign. We find grateful inscriptions to his honour at the
+      city of Citium in Cyprus, in the island of Therse, and at Methone in
+      Argolis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 in Cyrene. He
+      married his sister Cleopatra, and left her a widow, with two daughters,
+      each named Cleopatra. The elder daughter we have seen offered to
+      Euergetes, then married to Alexander Balas, and lastly to Demetrius. The
+      younger daughter, afterwards known by the name of Cleopatra Cocce, was
+      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 his father; as
+      the little elegy by Antipator of Sidon, which is addressed to the dead
+      child, on the grief of his father and mother, would seem to be meant for a
+      son of Philometor. A second son was murdered, and a third lived in Syria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the death of Philometor, his widow, Cleopatra, and some of the chief
+      men of Alexandria proclaimed his young son king, most likely under the
+      name of Ptolemy Eupator; but Euergetes, whose claim was favoured by the
+      mob, marched from Cyrene to Alexandria to seize the crown of Egypt. Onias
+      the Jew defended the city for Cleopatra; but a peace was soon made by the
+      help of Thermus, the Roman ambassador, and on this the gates of Alexandria
+      were opened. It was agreed that Euergetes should be king, and marry
+      Cleopatra, his sister and his brother&rsquo;s widow. We may take it for granted
+      that one article of the treaty was that her son should reign on the death
+      of his uncle; but Euergetes, forgetting that he owed his own life to
+      Philometor, and also disregarding the Romans who were a party to the
+      treaty, had the boy put to death on the day of the marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0011" id="linkCimage-0011">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:37%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/241.jpg"
+       alt="241.jpg Temple of Hathor at Philae " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Alexandrians, after the vices and murders of former kings, could not
+      have been much struck by the behaviour of Euergetes towards his family;
+      but he was not less cruel towards his people. Alexandria, which he had
+      entered peaceably, was handed over to the unbridled cruelty of the
+      mercenaries, and blood flowed in every street. The anger of Euergetes fell
+      more particularly on the Jews for the help which they had given to
+      Cleopatra, and he threatened them with utter destruction. The threat was
+      not carried into execution; but such was the Jews&rsquo; alarm, that they
+      celebrated a yearly festival in Alexandria for several hundred years, in
+      thankfulness for their escape from it. The population of the city, who
+      looked upon it less as a home than as a place of trade in which they could
+      follow their callings with the greatest gain, seemed to quit Alexandria as
+      easily as they had come there under Ptolemy Soter; and Euergetes, who was
+      afraid that he should soon be left to reign over a wilderness, made new
+      laws in favour of trade and of strangers who would settle there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the lifetime of Philometor he had never laid aside his claim to the
+      throne of Egypt, but had only yielded to the commands of Rome and to his
+      brother&rsquo;s forces, and he now numbered the years of his reign from his
+      former seizing of Alexandria. He had reigned six years with his brother,
+      and then eighteen years in Cyrene, and he therefore called the first year
+      of his real reign the twenty-fifth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the next year he went to Memphis to be crowned; and, while the pomps
+      and rites were there being performed, his queen and sister bore him a son,
+      whom, from the place and to please the people, he named Memphites. But his
+      queen was already in disgrace; and some of those very friends who on his
+      brother&rsquo;s death had marched with him against Alexandria were publicly put
+      to death for speaking ill of his mistress Irene. He soon afterwards put
+      away his wife and married her younger daughter, his niece, Cleopatra
+      Cocce. The divorced Cleopatra was allowed to keep her title; and, as she
+      was the widow of the late king, she held a rank in the state before the
+      wife of the reigning king. Thus, the small temple of Hâthor in the island
+      of Philæ was dedicated to the goddess in the name of King Ptolemy and
+      Queen Cleopatra his sister, and Queen Cleopatra his wife, designated as
+      the gods Euergetæ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Roman senate, however, felt its authority slighted by this murder of
+      the young Eupator, and divorce of Cleopatra, both of whom were living
+      under its protection. The late ambassador, Thermus, by whose treachery or
+      folly Euergetes had been enabled to crush his rivals and gain the
+      sovereign power, was on his return to Rome called to account for his
+      conduct. Cato the Censor, in one of his great speeches, accused him of
+      having been seduced from his duty by the love of Egyptian gold, and of
+      having betrayed the queen to the bribes of Euergetes. In the meanwhile
+      Scipio Africanus the younger and two other Roman ambassadors were sent by
+      the senate to see that the kingdom of their ally was peaceably settled.
+      Euergetes went to meet him with great pomp, and received him with all the
+      honours due to his rank; and the whole city followed him in crowds through
+      the streets, eager to catch a sight of the conqueror of Carthage, of the
+      greatest man who had been seen in Alexandria, of one who by his virtues
+      and his triumphs had added a new glory even to the name of Scipio. He
+      brought with him, as his friend and companion (in the case of a modern
+      ambassador we should say, as his chaplain), the philosopher, Pansetius,
+      the chief of the Stoics, who had gained a great name for his three books
+      on the &ldquo;Duty of Man,&rdquo; which were afterwards copied by Cicero.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0012" id="linkCimage-0012">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/242b.jpg" width="100%" alt="242b.jpg " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Euergetes showed them over the palace and the treasury; but, though the
+      Romans had already begun to run the down-hill race of luxury, in which the
+      Egyptians were so far ahead of them, yet Scipio, who held to the old
+      fashions and plain manners of the republic, was not dazzled by mere gold
+      and purple. But the trade of Alexandria, the natural harbour, the forest
+      of masts, and the lighthouse, the only one in the world, surpassed
+      anything that his well-stored mind had looked for. He went by boat to
+      Memphis, and saw the rich crops on either bank, and the easy navigation of
+      the Nile, in which the boats were sailing up the river by the force of the
+      wind and floating down by the force of the stream. The villages on the
+      river side were large and thickly set, each in the bosom of its own grove
+      of palm-trees; and the crowded population was well fed and well clothed.
+      The Roman statesman saw that nothing was wanting but a good government to
+      make Egypt what it used to be, the greatest kingdom in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Scipio went no higher than Memphis; the buildings of Upper Egypt, the
+      oldest and the largest in the world, could not draw him to Thebes, a city
+      whose trade had fallen off, where the deposits of bullion in the temples
+      had lessened, and whose linen manufacture had moved towards the Delta. Had
+      this great statesman been a Greek he would perhaps have gone on to this
+      city, famous alike in history and in poetry; but, as it was, Scipio and
+      his friends then sailed for Cyprus, Syria, and the other provinces or
+      kingdoms under the power of Rome, to finish this tour of inspection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some time past, the Jews, taking advantage of the weakness of Egypt
+      and Syria, had been struggling to make themselves free; and, at the
+      beginning of this reign Simon Maccabæus, the high priest, sent an embassy
+      to Rome, with a shield of gold weighing one thousand <i>minae</i>, as a
+      present, to get their independence acknowledged by the Romans. On this the
+      senate made a treaty of alliance with the family of the Maccabees, and,
+      using the high tone of command to which they had for some time past been
+      accustomed, they wrote to Euergetes and the King of Syria, ordering them
+      not to make war upon their friends, the Jews. But in an after decree the
+      Romans recognise the close friendship and the trading intercourse between
+      Egypt and Judæa; and when they declared that they would protect the Jews
+      in their right to levy custom-house duties, they made an exception in
+      favour of the Egyptian trade. The people of Judæa in these struggles were
+      glad to forget the jealousy which had separated them from their brethren
+      in Egypt, and the old quarrel between the Hebrews and the Hellenists; the
+      Sanhedrim of Jerusalem wrote to the Sanhedrim of Alexandria, telling them
+      that they were going to keep the Feast of the Tabernacles in solemn
+      thanksgiving to the Almighty for their deliverance, and begging for the
+      benefit of their prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jews, however, of Judæa, on their gaining their former place as a
+      nation, did not, as before, carry forward the chain of history in their
+      sacred books. While they had been under the yoke of the Babylonians, the
+      Persians, and the Syrians, their language had undergone some changes; and
+      when the Hebrew of the Old Testament was no longer the spoken language,
+      they perhaps thought it unworthy of them to write in any other. At any
+      rate, it is to their Greek brethren in Egypt that we are indebted for the
+      history of the bravery of the Maccabees. Jason of Cyrene wrote the history
+      of the Maccabees, and of the Jewish wars against Antiochus Epiphanes and
+      his son, Antiochus Eupator. This work, which was in five books, is lost,
+      and we now read only the short history which was drawn from it by some
+      unknown Greek writer, which, with the letter from the Jews of Judaaa to
+      their brethren of Egypt, forms the second book of Maccabees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 translated into
+      Greek the Hebrew work of his grandfather Jesus, which is named the Book of
+      Wisdom, or Ecclesiasticus. It is written in imitation of the Proverbs of
+      Solomon; and though its pithy sayings fall far short of the deep wisdom
+      and lofty thoughts which crowd every line of that wonderful work, yet it
+      will always be read with profit and pleasure. In this book we see the
+      earliest example that we now possess of a Jewish writer borrowing from the
+      Greek philosophers; though how far the Greek thoughts were part of the
+      original Hebrew may be doubted, because the work was left unfinished by
+      Jesus the grandfather, and completed by the Alexandrian translator, his
+      grandson. Hereafter we shall see the Alexandrian Jews engrafting on the
+      Jewish theology more and more of the Platonic philosophy, which very well
+      suited the serious earnestness of their character, and which had a most
+      remarkable effect in making their writings and opinions more fitted to
+      spread into the ancient schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This and other writings of the Alexandrian Jews were by them added to the
+      list of sacred books which together made their Greek Bible; but they were
+      never acknowledged at Jerusalem. The Hebrew books of the law and the
+      prophets were first gathered together by Nehemiah after the return of the
+      Hebrews from Babylon; but his library had been broken up during the Syrian
+      wars. These Hebrew books, with some few which had since been written, were
+      again got together by Judas Maccabaeus; and after his time nothing more
+      seems to have been added to them, though the Alexandrian Jews continued to
+      add new books to their Greek Bible, while cultivating the Platonic
+      philosophy with a success which made a change in their religious opinions.
+      It was in Alexandria, and very much by the help of the Jews, that Eastern
+      and Western opinions now met. Each made some change in the other, and, on
+      the union of the two, Alexandria gave to the world a new form of
+      philosophy. The vices and cruelty of Euergetes called for more than usual
+      skill in the minister to keep down the angry feelings of the people. This
+      skill was found in the 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 times of trouble. On him rested the whole weight
+      of the government; his wise measures in part made up for the vices of his
+      master; and, when the treasure of the state had been turned to the king&rsquo;s
+      pleasures, and the soldiers were murmuring for want of pay, Hierax brought
+      forward his own money to quiet the rebellion. But at last the people could
+      bear their grievances no longer; the soldiers without pay, instead of
+      guarding the throne, were its greatest enemies, and the mob rose in
+      Alexandria, set fire to the palace, and Euergetes was forced to leave the
+      city and withdraw to Cyprus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Alexandrians, when free from their tyrant, sent for Cleopatra, his
+      sister and divorced queen, and set her upon the throne. Her son by
+      Philometor, in whose name she had before claimed the throne, had been put
+      to death by Euergetes; Memphites, one of her sons by Euergetes, was with
+      his father in the island of Cyprus; and Euergetes, fearing that his first
+      wife Cleopatra and her advisers might make use of his son&rsquo;s name 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 in Alexandria with the
+      usual pomp; and Euergetes, putting the head, hands, and feet of his son
+      Memphites into a box, sent it to Alexandria by a messenger, who had orders
+      to deliver it to Cleopatra in the midst of the feast, when the nobles and
+      ambassadors were making their accustomed gifts. The grief of Cleopatra was
+      only equalled by the anger of the Alexandrians, who the more readily armed
+      themselves under Marsyas to defend the queen against the invasion for
+      which Euergetes was then making preparations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The queen&rsquo;s forces shortly marched against the army of Euergetes that was
+      entering Egypt under the command of Hegelochus; but the Egyptian army was
+      beaten on the Syrian frontier. Marsyas was sent prisoner to Euergetes; and
+      the king then showed the only act of mercy which can be mentioned to his
+      praise, and spared the life of a prisoner whom he thought he could make
+      use of. Cleopatra then sent to Syria, to her son-in-law Demetrius, to ask
+      for help, which was at first readily granted, but Demetrius was soon
+      called home again by a rising in Antioch. But great indeed must be the
+      cruelty which a people will not bear from their own king rather than call
+      in a foreign master to relieve them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0013" id="linkCimage-0013">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/249.jpg" width="100%" alt="249.jpg Obelisk at Heliopolis " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The return of the hated and revengeful Euergetes was not dreaded so much
+      by the Alexandrians as the being made a province of Syria. Cleopatra
+      received no help from Demetrius, but she lost the love of her people by
+      asking for it, and she was soon forced to fly from Alexandria. She put her
+      treasures on board a ship, and joined her son Ptolemy and her son-in-law
+      Demetrius in Syria, while Euergetes regained his throne. As soon as
+      Euergetes was again master of Egypt, it was his turn to be revenged upon
+      Demetrius; and he brought forward Zabbineus, a young Egyptian, the son of
+      Protarchus, a merchant, and sent him into Syria with an army to claim the
+      throne under the name of Alexander, the adopted son of Antiochus.
+      Alexander easily conquered and then put to death Demetrius, but, when he
+      found that he really was King of Syria, he would no longer receive orders
+      from Egypt; and Euergetes found that the same plots and forces were then
+      wanted to put down this puppet, which he had before used to set him up. He
+      began by making peace with his sister Cleopatra, who was again allowed to
+      return to Egypt; and we find her name joined with those of Euergetes and
+      his second queen in one of the public acts of the priests. He then sent an
+      army and his daughter Tryphaena in marriage to Antiochus Grypus, one of
+      the sons of Demetrius, who gladly received his help, and conquered
+      Alexander and gained the throne of his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We possess a curious inscription upon an obelisk that once stood in the
+      island of Philæ, recording, as one of the grievances that the villagers
+      smarted under, the necessity of finding supplies for the troops on their
+      marches, and also for all the government messengers and public servants,
+      or those who claimed to travel as such. The cost of this grievance was
+      probably greater at Philæ than in other places, because the traveller was
+      there stopped in his voyage by the cataracts on the Nile, and he had to be
+      supplied with labourers to carry his luggage where the navigation was
+      interrupted. Accordingly the priests at Philæ petitioned the king that
+      their temple might be relieved from this heavy and vexatious charge, which
+      they said lessened their power of rightly performing their appointed
+      sacrifices; and they further begged to be allowed to set up a monument to
+      record the grant which they hoped for. Euergetes granted the priests&rsquo;
+      prayer, and accordingly they set up a small obelisk; and the petition and
+      the king&rsquo;s answer were carved on the base of this monument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gold mines near the Nubian or Golden Berenicê, though not so rich as
+      they used to be, were worked with full activity by the unhappy prisoners,
+      criminals, and slaves, who were there condemned to labour in gangs under
+      the lash of their taskmasters. Men and women alike, even old men and
+      children, each at such work as his overstretched strength was equal to,
+      were imprisoned in these caverns tunnelled under the sea or into the side
+      of the mountain; and there by torchlight they suffered the cruel tortures
+      of their overseers without having power to make their groans heard above
+      ground. No lot upon earth could be more wretched than that of these
+      unhappy men; to all of them death would have been thought a boon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0014" id="linkCimage-0014">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:33%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/254.jpg" alt="254.jpg Nilometer at Rhodha " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The survey of the coast of the Red Sea, which was undertaken in this or
+      the last reign, did not reach beyond the northern half of that sea. It was
+      made by Agatharcides, who, when the philosopher Heracleides Lembus filled
+      the office of secretary to the government under Philometor, had been his
+      scribe and reader. Agatharcides gives a curious account of the half-savage
+      people on these coasts, and of the more remarkable animals and products of
+      the country. He was a most judicious historian, and gave a better guess
+      than many at the true cause of why there was most water in the Nile in the
+      dry est season of the year; which was a subject of never-ceasing inquiry
+      with the travellers and writers on physics. Thaïes said that its waters
+      were held back at its mouths by the Etesian winds, which blow from the
+      north during the summer months; and Democritus of Abdera said that these
+      winds carried heavy rain-clouds to Ethiopia; whereas the north winds do
+      not begin to blow till the Nile has risen, and the river has returned to
+      its usual size before the winds cease. Anaxagoras, who was followed by
+      Euripides, the poet, thought that the large supply of water came from the
+      melting of snow in Ethiopia. Ephorus thought that there were deep springs
+      in the river&rsquo;s bed, which gushed forth with greater force in summer than
+      in winter. Herodotus and OEnopides both thought that the river was in its
+      natural state when the country was overflowed; and the former said that
+      its waters were lessened in winter by the attraction of the sun, then over
+      Southern Ethiopia; and the latter said that, as the earth grew cool, the
+      waters were sucked into its pores. The sources of the Nile were hidden by
+      the barbarism of the tribes on its banks; but by this time travellers had
+      reached the region of tropical rains; and Agatharcides said that the
+      overflow in Egypt arose from the rains in Upper Ethiopia. But the
+      Abyssinian rains begin to fall at midsummer, too late to cause the
+      inundation in Egypt; and therefore the truth seemed after all to lie with
+      the priests of Memphis, who said the Nile rises on the other side of the
+      equator, and the rain falling in what was winter on that side of the globe
+      made the Nile overflow in the Egyptian summer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the very earliest times, says Ebers, the Pharaohs had understood the
+      necessity of measuring exactly the amount or deficiency of the inundations
+      of the Nile, and Nilometers are preserved which were erected high up the
+      river in Nubia by kings of the Old Empire, by princes, that is to say, who
+      reigned before the invasion of the Hyksos. Herodotus tells us that the
+      river must rise sixteen ells for the inundation to be considered a
+      favourable one. If it remained below this mark, the higher fields failed
+      in obtaining a due supply of water, and a dearth was the result. If it
+      greatly exceeded it, it broke down the dykes, damaged the villages, and
+      had not retired into its bed by the time for sowing the seed. Thus the
+      peasant, who could expect no rain, and was threatened neither by frosts
+      nor storms, could have his prospects of a good or bad harvest read off by
+      the priests with perfect certainty by the scale of the Nilometer, and not
+      by the servants of the divinities only, but by the officers of the realm,
+      who calculated the amount of taxes to be paid to them in proportion to the
+      rising of the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The standard was protected by the magic power of unapproachable sanctity,
+      and the husbandman has been strictly interdicted from the earliest time to
+      this very day from casting a glance at it during the time when the river
+      is rising; for what sovereign could bear to disclose without reserve the
+      decrees of Providence as to the most important of his rights, that of
+      estimating the amount of taxes to be imposed? In the time of the Pharaohs
+      it was the priesthood that declared to the king and to the people their
+      estimate of the inundations, and at the present day, the sheik, who is
+      sworn to secrecy, is under the control of the police of Cairo, and has his
+      own Nilometer, the zero point of which is said to be somewhat below that
+      of the ancient standard. The engineers of the French expedition first
+      detected the fraud, by means of which the government endeavoured every
+      year to secure the full amount of taxes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Nile has reached a height of a little over fifteen old Arabic
+      ells, it exceeds its lowest level by more than eight ells, and has reached
+      the height requisite to enable it to irrigate the highest fields. This
+      happy event is announced to the people, who await it with breathless
+      anxiety, and the opening of the dykes may be proceeded with. A festival to
+      celebrate this occasion has been held from the remotest times. At the
+      present time customs prevail which can, it is alleged, be traced by direct
+      descent to the times of the Pharaohs, and yet during the dominion of
+      Christianity in Egypt, and later again under sovereigns governing a nation
+      wholly converted to Islam, the old worship of the Nile, with all its
+      splendour, its display, and its strange ceremonies, was extirpated with
+      the utmost rigour. But some portion of every discarded religion becomes
+      merged in the new one that has supplanted it as a fresh form of
+      superstition, and thus we discover from a Christian document dating from
+      the sixth century, that the rising of the Nile &ldquo;in its time&rdquo; was no longer
+      attributed to Osiris, but to a certain Saint Orion, and, as the priest of
+      antiquity taught that a tear of Isis led to the overflowing of the Nile,
+      so we hear the Egyptians of the present day say that &ldquo;a divine tear&rdquo; has
+      fallen into the stream and caused the flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trade of the Egyptians had given them very little knowledge of
+      geography. Indeed the whole trade of the ancients was carried on by buying
+      goods from their nearest neighbours on one side, and selling them to those
+      on the other side of them. Long voyages were unknown; and, though the
+      trading wealth of Egypt had mainly arisen from carrying the merchandise of
+      India and Arabia Felix from the ports on the Red Sea to the ports on the
+      Mediterranean, the Egyptians seem to have gained no knowledge of the
+      countries from which these goods came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0015" id="linkCimage-0015">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/255.jpg" width="100%" alt="255.jpg Suk El Saleh, Cairo " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      They bought them of the Arab traders, who came to Cosseir and the
+      Troglodytic Berenicê from the opposite coast; the Arabs had probably
+      bought them from the caravans that had carried them across the desert from
+      the Persian Gulf; and that these land journeys across the desert were both
+      easier and cheaper than a coasting voyage, we have before learned, from
+      Phila-delphus thinking it worth while to build watering and resting-houses
+      in the desert between Koptos and Berenicê, to save the voyage between
+      Berenicê and Cosseir. India seems to have been only known to the Greeks as
+      a country that by sea was to be reached by the way of the Euphrates and
+      the Persian Gulf; and though Scylax had, by the orders of Darius, dropped
+      down the river Indus, coasted Arabia, and thence reached the Red Sea, this
+      voyage was either forgotten or disbelieved, and in the time of the
+      Ptolemies it seems probable that nobody thought that India could be
+      reached by sea from Egypt. Arrian indeed thought that the difficulty of
+      carrying water in their small ships, with large crews of rowers, was alone
+      great enough to stop a voyage of such a length along a desert coast that
+      could not supply them with fresh water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long voyages of Solomon and Necho had been limited to coasting Africa;
+      the voyage of Alexander the Great had been from the Indus to the Persian
+      Gulf; hence it was that the court of Euergetes was startled by the strange
+      news that the Arabian guards on the coast of the Red Sea had found a man
+      in a boat by himself, who could not speak Koptic, but who they afterwards
+      found was an Indian, who had sailed straight from India, and had lost his
+      shipmates. He was willing to show any one the route by which he had
+      sailed; and Eudoxus of Cyzicus in Asia Minor came to Alexandria to
+      persuade Euergetes to give him the command of a vessel for this voyage of
+      discovery. A vessel was given him; and, though he was but badly fitted
+      out, he reached a country, which he called India, by sea, and brought back
+      a cargo of spices and precious stones. He wrote an account of the coasts
+      which he visited, and it was made use of by Pliny. But it is more than
+      probable the unknown country called India, which Eudoxus visited, was on
+      the west coast of Africa. Abyssinia was often called India by the
+      ancients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these attempts at maritime discovery, and efforts after a cheaper means
+      of obtaining the Indian products, the Greek sailors of Euergetes made a
+      settlement in the island of Dioscorides, now called Socotara, in the
+      Indian Ocean, forty leagues eastward of the coast of Africa; and there
+      they met the trading vessels from India and Ceylon. This little island
+      continued a Greek colony for upwards of seven centuries, and Greek was the
+      only language spoken there till it fell under the Arabs in the twilight of
+      history, when all the European possessions in Africa were overthrown. But
+      the art of navigation was so far unknown that but little use was made of
+      this voyage; the goods of India, which were all costly and of small
+      weight, were still for the most part carried across the desert on camels&rsquo;
+      backs, and we may remark that at a later period hardly more than twenty
+      small vessels ever went to India in one year during the reigns of the
+      Ptolemies, and that it was not till Egypt was a province of Rome that the
+      trade-winds across the Arabian Sea were found out by Hippalus, a pilot in
+      the Indian trade. The voyage was little known in the time of Pliny; even
+      the learned Propertius seems to have thought that silk was a product of
+      Arabia; and Palmyra and Petra, the two chief cities in the desert, whose
+      whole wealth rested and whose very being hung upon their being
+      watering-places for these caravans, were still wealthy cities in the
+      second century of our era, when the voyage by the Arabian Sea became for
+      the first time easier and cheaper than the journeys across the desert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euergetes had been a pupil of Aristobolus, a learned Jew, a writer of the
+      peripatetic sect of philosophers, one who had made his learning respected
+      by the pagans from his success in cultivating their philosophy; and also
+      of Aristarchus, the grammarian, the editor of Homer; and, though the king
+      had given himself up to the lowest pleasures, yet he held with his crown
+      that love of letters and of learning which had ennobled his forefathers.
+      He was himself an author, and wrote, like Ptolemy Soter, his Memorabilia,
+      or an account of what he had seen most remarkable in his lifetime. We may
+      suppose that his writings were not of a very high order; they were quoted
+      by Athengeus, who wrote in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; but we learn
+      little else from them than the names of the mistresses of Ptolemy
+      Philadelphus, and that a flock of pheasants was kept in the palace of
+      Alexandria. He also wrote a commentary on Homer, of which we know nothing.
+      When busy upon literature, he would allow his companions to argue with him
+      till midnight on a point of history or a verse of poetry; but not one of
+      them ever uttered a word against his tyranny, or argued in favour of a
+      less cruel treatment of his enemies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this reign the schools of Alexandria, though not holding the rank which
+      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 very large sum of
+      twelve talents, or ten thousand dollars a year. Sositheus and his rival,
+      the younger Homer, the tragic poets of this reign, have even been called
+      two of the Pleiades of Alexandria; but that was a title given to many
+      authors of very different times, and to some of very little merit. Such
+      indeed was the want of merit among the poets of Alexandria that many of
+      their names would have been unknown to posterity had they not been saved
+      in the pages of the critics and grammarians, and pieced together by the
+      skill of nineteenth century investigators.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0016" id="linkCimage-0016">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/260.jpg" width="100%" alt="260.jpg Temple of Kom Ombo. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      But, unfortunately, the larger number of the men of letters had in the
+      late wars taken part with Philome-tor against the cruel and luxurious
+      Euergetes. Hence, when the streets of Alexandria were flowing with the
+      blood of those whom he called his enemies, crowds of learned men left
+      Egypt, and were driven to earn a livelihood by teaching in the cities to
+      which they then fled. They were all Greeks, and few of them had been born
+      in Alexandria. They had been brought there by the wealth of the country
+      and the favour of the sovereign; and they now withdrew when these
+      advantages were taken away from them. The isles and coasts of the
+      Mediterranean were so filled with grammarians, philosophers, geometers,
+      musicians, schoolmasters, painters, and physicians from Alexandria that
+      the cruelty of Euergetes II., like the taking of Constantinople by the
+      Turks, may be said to have spread learning by the ill-treatment of its
+      professors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city which was then rising highest in arts and letters was Pergamus in
+      Asia Minor, which, under Eumenes and Attalus, was almost taking the place
+      which Alexandria had before held. Its library already held two hundred
+      thousand volumes, and raised a jealousy in the mind of Euergetes. Not
+      content with buying books and adding to the size of his own library, he
+      wished to lessen the libraries of his rivals; and, nettled at the number
+      of volumes which Eumenes had got together at Pergamus, he made a law,
+      forbidding the export of the Egyptian papyrus on which they were written.
+      On this the copiers employed by Eumenes wrote their books upon sheepskins,
+      which were called <i>charta pergamena</i>, or parchment, from the name of
+      the city in which they were written. Thus our own two words, parchment
+      from <i>Pergamus</i>, and paper from <i>papyrus</i>, remain as monuments
+      of the rivalry in book-collecting between the two kings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euergetes was so bloated with disease that his body was nearly six feet
+      round, and he was made weak and slothful by this weight of flesh. He
+      walked with a crutch, and wore a loose robe like a woman&rsquo;s, which reached
+      to his feet and hands. He gave himself up very much to eating and
+      drinking, and on the year that he was chosen priest of Apollo by the
+      Cyrenians, he showed his pleasure at the honour by a memorable feast which
+      he gave in a costly manner to all those who had before filled that office.
+      He had reigned six years with his brother, then eighteen years in Cyrene,
+      and lastly twenty-nine years after the death of his brother, and he died
+      in the fifty-fourth year of his reign, and perhaps the sixty-ninth of his
+      age. He left a widow, Cleopatra Cocce; two sons, Ptolemy and Ptolemy
+      Alexander; and three daughters, Cleopatra, married to her elder brother;
+      Tryphsena, married to Antiochus Grypus; and Selene unmarried; and also a
+      natural son, Ptolemy Apion, to whom by will he left the kingdom of Cyrene;
+      while he left the kingdom of Egypt to his widow and one of his sons,
+      giving her the power of choosing which should be her colleague. The first
+      Euergetes earned and deserved the name, which was sadly disgraced by the
+      second; but such was the fame of Egypt&rsquo;s greatness that the titles of its
+      kings were copied in nearly every Greek kingdom. We meet with the
+      flattering names of Soter, Philadelphus, Euergetes, and the rest, on the
+      coins of Syria, Parthia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Pon-tus, Bactria, and
+      Bithynia; while that of Euergetes, <i>the benefactor</i>, was at last used
+      as another name for a tyrant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkC2HCH0002" id="linkC2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI&mdash;THE GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>The weakness of the Ptolemies: Egypt bequeathed to Rome: Pompey, Cæsar,
+      and Antony befriend Egypt.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the death of Ptolemy Euergetes II., his widow, Cleopatra Cocce, would
+      have chosen her younger son, Ptolemy Alexander, then a child, for her
+      partner on the throne, most likely because it would have been longer in
+      the course of years before he would have claimed his share of power; but
+      she was forced, by a threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her
+      elder son king. Before, however, she would do this she made a treaty with
+      him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting, the vice
+      and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, although married to his
+      sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should put her away, and
+      marry his younger sister Selene; because the mother hoped that Selene
+      would be false to her husband&rsquo;s cause, and weaken his party in the state
+      by her treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy took the name of Soter II., though he is more often called
+      Lathyrus, from a stain upon his face in the form of an ivy-leaf, pricked
+      into his skin in honour of Osiris. He was also called Philometor; and we
+      learn from an inscription on a temple at Apollinopolis Parva, that both
+      these names formed part of the style in which the public acts ran in this
+      reign; it is dedicated by &ldquo;the Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy, gods
+      Philometores, Soteres, and his children,&rdquo; without mentioning his wife.
+      Here, as in Persia and Judaaa, the king&rsquo;s mother often held rank above his
+      wife. The name of Philometor was given to him by his mother, because,
+      though he had reached the years of manhood, she wished to act as his
+      guardian; but her unkindness to him was so remarkable that historians have
+      thought that it was a nickname. The mother and the son were jointly styled
+      sovereigns of Egypt; but they lived apart, and in distrust of one another,
+      each surrounded by personal friends; while Cleopatra&rsquo;s stronger mind and
+      greater skill in kingcraft gained for her the larger share of power, and
+      the effective control of Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cleopatra, the daughter, put away by her husband at the command of her
+      mother, soon made a treaty of marriage with Antiochus Cyzicenus, the
+      friend of her late husband, who was struggling for the throne of Syria
+      with his brother, Antiochus Grypus, the husband of her sister Tryphaana;
+      and on her way to Syria she stopped at Cyprus, where she raised a large
+      army and took it with her as her dower, to help her new husband against
+      his brother and her sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this addition to his army Cyzicenus thought his forces equal to those
+      of his brother; he marched against him and gave him battle. But he was
+      beaten, and he fled with his wife Cleopatra; and they shut themselves up
+      in the city of Antioch. Grypus and Tryphaana then laid siege to the city,
+      and the astute Tryphaana soon took her revenge on her sister for coming
+      into Syria to marry the brother and rival of her husband. The city was
+      taken; and Tryphaana ordered her sister to be torn from the temple into
+      which she had fled, and to be put to death. In vain Grypus urged that he
+      did not wish his victory to be stained by the death of a sister; that
+      Cleopatra was by marriage his sister as well as hers; that she was the
+      aunt of their children; and that the gods would punish them if they
+      dragged her from the altar. But Tryphaana was merciless and unmoved; she
+      gave her own orders to the soldiers, and Cleopatra was killed as she clung
+      with her arms to the statue of the goddess. This cruelty, however, was
+      soon overtaken by punishment: in the next battle Cyzicenus was the
+      conqueror, and he put Tryphaana to death, to quiet, as was said, the ghost
+      of her murdered sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the third year of her reign Cleopatra Cocce gave the island of Cyprus
+      to her younger son, Alexander, as an independent kingdom, thinking that he
+      would be of more use to her there, in upholding her power against his
+      brother Lathyrus, than he could be at Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the last reign Eudoxus had been entrusted by Euergetes with a vessel
+      and a cargo for a trading voyage of discovery towards India; and in this
+      reign he was again sent by Cleopatra down the Red Sea to trade with the
+      unknown countries in the east. How far he went may be doubted, but he
+      brought back with him from the coast of Africa the prow of a ship
+      ornamented with a horse&rsquo;s head, the usual figurehead of the Carthaginian
+      ships. This he showed to the Alexandrian pilots, who knew it as belonging
+      to one of the Phoenician ships of Cadiz or Gibraltar. Eudoxus justly
+      argued that this prow proved that it was possible to sail round Africa and
+      to reach India by sea from Alexandria. The government, however, would not
+      fit him out for a third voyage; but his reasons were strong enough to lead
+      many to join him, and others to help him with money, and he thereby fitted
+      out three vessels on this attempt to sail round Africa by the westward
+      voyage. He passed the Pillars of Hercules, or Straits of Gibraltar, and
+      then turned southward. He even reached that part of Africa where the coast
+      turns eastward. Here he was stopped by his ships wanting repair. The only
+      knowledge that he brought back for us is, that the natives of that western
+      coast were of nearly the same race as the Ethiopians on the eastern coast.
+      He was able to sail only part of the way back, and he reached Mauritania
+      with difficulty by land. He thence returned home, where he met with the
+      fate not unusual to early travellers. His whole story was doubted; and the
+      geographers at home did not believe that he had ever visited the countries
+      that he attempted to describe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 race of men
+      was uppermost in Lower Egypt. Before the fall of Thebes the Kopts ruled in
+      the Delta; when the free states of Greece held the first rank in the
+      world, even before the time of Alexander&rsquo;s conquests, the Greeks of Lower
+      Egypt were masters of their fellow-countrymen; and now that Judæa, under
+      the bravery of the Maccabees, had gained among nations a rank far higher
+      than what its size entitled it to, the Egyptian Jews found that they had
+      in the same way gained weight in Alexandria. Cleopatra had given the
+      command of her army to two Jews, Chelcias and Ananias, the sons of Onias,
+      the priest of Heliopolis; and hence, when the civil war broke out between
+      the Jews and Samaritans, Cleopatra helped the Jews, and perhaps for that
+      reason Lathyrus helped the Samaritans. He sent six thousand men to his
+      friend, Antiochus Cyzicenus, to be led against the Jews, but this force
+      was beaten by the two sons of Hyrcanus, the high priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will of the Jews of Lower
+      Egypt, and hence Cleopatra again ventured to choose her own partner on the
+      throne. She raised a riot in Alexandria against him, in the tenth year of
+      their reign, on his putting to death some of her friends, or more likely,
+      as Pausanias says, by showing to the people some of her eunuchs covered
+      with blood, who she said were wounded by him; and she forced him to fly
+      from Egypt. She took from him his wife, Selene, whom she had before thrust
+      upon him, and who had borne him two children; and she allowed him to
+      withdraw to the kingdom of Cyprus, from which place she recalled her
+      favourite son, Alexander, to reign with her in Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0017" id="linkCimage-0017">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/268.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="268.jpg Temple Portico at Contra-latopoli " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      During these years the building was going forward of the beautiful temple
+      at the city, afterwards named by the Romans Contra-Latopolis, on the other
+      side of the Nile from Latopolis or Esne. Little now remains of it but its
+      massive portico, upheld by two rows of four columns each, having the globe
+      with outstretched wings carved on the overhanging eaves. The earliest
+      names found among the hieroglyphics with which its walls are covered are
+      those of Cleopatra Cocce and her son, Ptolemy Soter, while the latest name
+      is that of the Emperor Commodus. Even under Cleopatra Cocce, who was
+      nearly the worst of the family, the building of these great temples did
+      not cease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two sons were so far puppets in the hands of their clever mother, that
+      on the recall of Alexander no change was seen in the government beyond
+      that of the names which were placed at the head of the public acts. The
+      former year was called the tenth of Cleopatra and Ptolemy Soter, and this
+      year was called the eleventh of Cleopatra and eighth of Ptolemy Alexander;
+      as Alexander counted his years from the time when he was sent with the
+      title of king to Cyprus. As he was, like his brother, under the guidance
+      of his mother, he was like him in the hieroglyphical inscriptions called
+      <i>mother-loving</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria were alike weakened by civil wars
+      and by the vices of their kings, Judæa, as we have seen, had risen under
+      the wise government of the Maccabees to the rank of an independent state;
+      and latterly Aristobulus, the eldest son of Hyr-canus, and afterwards
+      Alexander Jannseus, his second son, had made themselves kings. But Gaza,
+      Ptolemaïs, and some other cities, bravely refused to part with their
+      liberty, and sent to Lathyrus, then King of Cyprus, for help. This was
+      not, however, done without many misgivings; for some were wise enough to
+      see that, if Lathyrus helped them, Cleopatra would, on the other hand,
+      help their king, Jannasus; and when Lathyrus landed at Sicaminos with
+      thirty thousand men, the citizens of Ptolemaïs refused even to listen to a
+      message from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city of Gaza then eagerly sent for the help which the city of
+      Ptolemaïs refused. Lathyrus drove back Jannasus, and marched upon Asochis,
+      a city of Galilee, where he scaled the walls on the Sabbath Day, and took
+      ten thousand prisoners and a large booty. He then sat down before the city
+      of Saphoris, but left it on hearing that Jannasus was marching against him
+      on the other side of the Jordan, at the head of a force larger than his
+      own. He crossed the river in face of the Jewish army, and routed it with
+      great slaughter. The Jewish historian adds, that between thirty and fifty
+      thousand men were slain upon the field of battle, and that the women and
+      children of the neighbouring villages were cruelly put to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cleopatra now began to fear that her son Lathyrus would soon make himself
+      too powerful, if not checked in his career of success, and that he might
+      be able to march upon Egypt. She therefore mustered her forces, and put
+      them under the command of Chelcias and Ananias, her Jewish generals. She
+      sent her treasure, her will, and the children of Alexander, to the island
+      of Cos, as a place of safety, and then marched with the army into
+      Palestine, having sent forward her son Alexander with the fleet. By this
+      movement Lathyrus was unable to keep his ground in Coele-Syria, and he
+      took the bold step of marching towards Egypt. But he was quickly followed
+      by Chelcias, and his army was routed, though Chelcias lost his life in the
+      battle. Cleopatra, after taking Ptolemaïs, sent part of her army to help
+      that which had been led by Chelcias; and Lathyrus was forced to shut
+      himself up in Gaza. Soon after this the campaign ended, by Lathyrus
+      returning to Cyprus, and Cleopatra to Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this success, Cleopatra was advised to seize upon the throne of
+      Jannseus, and again to add to Egypt the provinces of Palestine and
+      Coele-Syria, which had so long made part of the kingdom of her
+      forefathers. She yielded, however, to the reasons of her general Ananias,
+      for the Jews of Lower Egypt were too strong to be treated with slight. It
+      was by the help of the Jews that Cleopatra had driven her son Lathyrus out
+      of Egypt; they formed a large part of the Egyptian armies, which were no
+      longer even commanded by Greeks; and it must have been by these clear and
+      unanswerable reasons that Ananias was able to turn the queen from the
+      thoughts of this conquest, and to renew the league between Egypt and
+      Judæa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cleopatra, however, was still afraid that Lathyrus would be helped by his
+      friend Antiochus Cyzicenus to conquer Egypt, and she therefore kept up the
+      quarrel between the brothers by again sending troops to help Antiochus
+      Grypus; and lastly, she gave him in marriage her daughter Selene, whom she
+      had before forced upon Lathyrus. She then sent an army against Cyprus; and
+      Lathyrus was beaten and forced to fly from the island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of this reign died Ptolemy Apion, King of Cyrene. He was the
+      half-brother of Lathyrus and Alexander, and, having been made King of
+      Cyrene by his father Euergetes II., he had there reigned quietly for
+      twenty years. Being between Egypt and Carthage, then called the Roman
+      province of Africa, and having no army which he could lead against the
+      Roman legions, he had placed himself under the guardianship of Rome; he
+      had bought a truce during his lifetime, by making the Roman people his
+      heirs in his will, so that on his death they were to have his kingdom.
+      Cyrene had been part of Egypt for above two hundred years, and was usually
+      governed by a younger son or brother of the king. But on the death of
+      Ptolemy Apion, the Roman senate, who had latterly been grasping at
+      everything within their reach, claimed his kingdom as their inheritance,
+      and in the flattering language of their decree by which the country was
+      enslaved, they declared Cyrene free. From that time forward it was
+      practically a province of Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy Alexander, who had been a mere tool in the hands of his mother,
+      was at last tired of his gilded chains; but he saw no means of throwing
+      them off, or of gaining that power in the state which his birth and title,
+      and the age which he had then reached, ought to have given him. The army
+      was in favour of his mother, and an unsuccessful effort would certainly
+      have been punished with death; so he took perhaps the only path open to
+      him: he left Egypt by stealth, and chose rather to quit his throne and
+      palace than to live surrounded by the creatures of his mother and in daily
+      fear for his life. Cleopatra might well doubt whether she could keep her
+      throne against both her sons, and she therefore sent messengers with fair
+      promises to Alexander, to ask him to return to Egypt. But he knew his
+      mother too well ever again to trust himself in her hands; and while she
+      was taking steps to have him put to death on his return, he formed a plot
+      against her life by letters. In this double game Alexander had the
+      advantage of his mother; her character was so well known that he needed
+      not to be told of what was going on; while she perhaps thought that the
+      son whom she had so long ruled as a child would not dare to act as a man.
+      Alexander&rsquo;s plot was of the two the best laid, and on his reaching Egypt
+      his mother was put to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Alexander did not long enjoy the fruits of his murder. The next year
+      the Alexandrians rose against him in a fury. He was hated not so much
+      perhaps for the murder of his mother as for the cruelties which he had
+      been guilty of, or at least had to bear the blame of, while he reigned
+      with her. His own soldiers turned against him, and he was forced to seek
+      his safety by flying on board a vessel in the harbour, and he left Egypt
+      with his wife and daughter. He was followed by a fleet under the command
+      of Tyrrhus, but he reached Myrse, a city of Lycia, in safety; and
+      afterwards, in crossing over to Cyprus, he was met by an Egyptian fleet
+      under Chaereas, and killed in battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though others may have been guilty of more crimes, Alexander had perhaps
+      the fewest good qualities of any of the family of the Lagidaa. During his
+      idle reign of twenty years, in which the crimes ought in fairness to be
+      laid chiefly to his mother, he was wholly given up to the lowest and worst
+      of pleasures, by which his mind and body were alike ruined. He was so
+      bloated with vice and disease that he seldom walked without crutches; but
+      at his feasts he could leap from his raised couch and dance with naked
+      feet upon the floor with the companions of his vices. He was blinded by
+      flattery, ruined by debauchery, and hated by the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His coins are not easily known from those of the other kings, which also
+      bore the name of &ldquo;Ptolemy the king&rdquo; round the eagle. Some of the coins of
+      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 an elephant,
+      or her head with the name of &ldquo;Queen Cleopatra&rdquo; There are other coins with
+      the usual head of Jupiter, and with two eagles to point out the joint
+      sovereignty of herself and son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0018" id="linkCimage-0018">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:36%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/274.jpg"
+       alt="274.jpg Coin of Cleopatra and Alexander " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      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 represented as making
+      an offering to the god Horus. There the Egyptian artist has carved a
+      portrait of this Greek king, whom he perhaps had never seen, clothed in a
+      dress which he never wore, and worshipping a god whom he may have hardly
+      known by name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      History has not told us who was the first wife of Alexander, but he left a
+      son by her named after himself Ptolemy Alexander, whom we have seen sent
+      by his grandmother for safety to the island of Cos, the fortress of the
+      family, and a daughter whom he carried with him in his flight to Lycia.
+      His second wife was Cleopatra Berenicê, the daughter of his brother
+      Lathyrus, by whom he had no children, and who is called in the
+      hieroglyphics his queen and sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0019" id="linkCimage-0019">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:40%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/275.jpg"
+       alt="275.jpg Coin of Cleopatra and Alexander, With Eagles " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      On the flight of Alexander, the Alexandrians sent an embassy to Cyprus to
+      bring back Soter II., or Lathyrus, as he is called; and he entered Egypt
+      without any opposition. He had reigned ten years with his mother, and then
+      eighteen years by himself in Cyprus; and during those years of banishment
+      had shown a wisdom and good behaviour which must have won the esteem of
+      the Alexandrians, when compared with his younger brother Alexander. He had
+      held his ground against the fleets and armies of his mother, but either
+      through weakness or good feeling had never invaded Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His reign is remarkable for the rebellion and ruin of the once powerful
+      city of Thebes. It had long been falling in trade and in wealth, and had
+      lost its superiority in arms; but its temples, like so many citadels, its
+      obelisks, its colossal statues, and the tombs of its great kings still
+      remained, and with them the memory of its glory then gone by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hieroglyphics on the walls still recounted to its fallen priests and
+      nobles the provinces in Europe, Asia, and Africa which they once governed,
+      and the weight of gold, silver, and corn which these provinces sent as a
+      yearly tribute. The paintings and sculptures showed the men of all nations
+      and of all colours, from the Tatar of the north to the Negro of the south,
+      who had graced the triumphs of their kings: and with these proud trophies
+      before their eyes they had been bending under the yoke of Euergetes II.
+      and Cleopatra Cocce for about fifty years. So small a measure of justice
+      has usually been given to a conquered people by their rulers, that their
+      highest hopes have risen to nothing more than an escape from excess of
+      tyranny. If life, property, female honour, national and religious feelings
+      have not been constantly and wantonly outraged, lesser evils have been
+      patiently endured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0020" id="linkCimage-0020">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:53%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/276.jpg"
+       alt="276.jpg the Memnonium at Thebes " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Political servitude, heavy taxes, daily ill-treatment, and occasional
+      cruelty the Thebans had borne for two centuries and a half under their
+      Greek masters, as no less the lot of humanity than poverty, disease, and
+      death. But under the government of Cleopatra Cocce the measure of their
+      injuries overflowed, and taking advantage of the revolutions in
+      Alexandria, a large part of Upper Egypt rose in rebellion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can therefore hardly wonder that when Lathyrus landed in Egypt, and
+      tried to recall the troubled cities to quiet government and good order,
+      Thebes should have refused to obey. The spirit of the warriors who
+      followed Ramses to the shores of the Black Sea was not quite dead. For
+      three years the brave Kopts, entrenched within their temples, every one of
+      which was a castle, withstood his armies; but the bows, the hatchets, and
+      the chariots could do little against Greek arms; while the overthrow of
+      the massive temple walls, and the utter ruin of the city, prove how slowly
+      they yielded to greater skill and numbers, and mark the conqueror&rsquo;s
+      distrust lest the temples should be again so made use of. Perhaps the only
+      time before when Thebes had been stormed after a long siege was when it
+      first fell under the Persians; and the ruin which marked the footsteps of
+      Cambyses had never been wholly repaired. But the wanton cruelty of the
+      foreigners did little mischief, when compared with the unpitying and
+      unforgiving distrust of the native conquerors. The temples of Tentyra,
+      Apollinopolis, Latopolis, and Philæ show that the massive Egyptian
+      buildings, when let alone, can withstand the wear of time for thousands of
+      years; but the harder hand of man works much faster, and the wide acres of
+      Theban ruins prove alike the greatness of the city and the force with
+      which it was overthrown; and this is the last time that Egyptian Thebes is
+      met with in the pages of history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The traveller, whose means and leisure have allowed him to reach the spot,
+      now counts the Arab villages which have been built within the city&rsquo;s
+      bounds, and perhaps pitches his tent in the open space in the middle of
+      them. But the ruined temples still stand to call forth his wonder. They
+      have seen the whole portion of time of which history keeps the reckoning
+      roll before them; they have seen kingdoms and nations rise and fall:
+      Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. They have
+      seen the childhood of all that we call ancient; and they still seem likely
+      to stand, to tell their tale to those who will hereafter call us ancients.
+      After this rebellion, Lathyrus reigned in quiet, and was even able to be
+      of use to his Greek allies; and the Athenians, in gratitude, set up
+      statues of bronze to him and Berenicê, his daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this reign, the Romans were carrying on a war with Mithridates,
+      King of Pontus, in Asia Minor; and Sulla, who was then at the head of the
+      republic, sent Lucullus, the soldier, the scholar, and the philosopher, as
+      ambassador to Alexandria, to ask for help against the enemy. The Egyptian
+      fleet moved out of harbour to meet him, a pomp which the kings of Egypt
+      had before kept for themselves alone. Lathyrus received him on shore with
+      the greatest respect, lodged him in the palace, and invited him to his own
+      table, an honour which no foreigner had enjoyed since the kings of Egypt
+      had thrown aside the plain manners of the first Ptolemies. Lucullus had
+      brought with him the philosopher Antiochus of Athens, who had been the
+      pupil of Philo, and they found time to enjoy the society of Dion, the
+      academic philosopher, who was then teaching at Alexandria; and there they
+      might have been seen with Heraclitus of Tyre, talking together about the
+      changes which were creeping into the Platonic philosophy, and about the
+      two newest works of Philo, which had just come to Alexandria. Antiochus
+      could not read them without showing his anger: such sceptical opinions had
+      never before been heard of in the Academy; but they knew the handwriting
+      of Philo, they were certainly his. Selius and Tetrilius, who were there,
+      had heard him teach the same opinions at Rome, whither he had fled, and
+      where he was then teaching Cicero. The next day, the matter was again
+      talked over with Lucullus, Heraclitus, Aristus of Athens, Ariston, and
+      Dion; and it ended in Antiochus writing a book, which he named Sosus,
+      against those new opinions of his old master, against the new Academy, and
+      in behalf of the old Academy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lathyrus understood the principles of the balance of power and his own
+      interest too well to help the Romans to crush Mithridates, and he wisely
+      wished not to quarrel with either. He therefore at once made up his mind
+      not to grant the fleet which Lucullus had been sent to ask for. It had
+      been usual for the kings of Egypt to pay the expenses of the Roman
+      ambassadors while living in Alexandria; and Lathyrus offered four times
+      the usual allowance to Lucullus, beside eighty talents of silver.
+      Lucullus, however, would take nothing beyond his expenses, and returned
+      the gifts, which were meant as a civil refusal of the fleet; and, having
+      failed in his embassy, he sailed hastily for Cyprus, leaving the wonders
+      of Egypt unvisited. Lathyrus sent a fleet of honour to accompany him on
+      his voyage, and gave him his portrait cut in an emerald. Mithridates was
+      soon afterwards conquered by the Romans; and it was only by skilful
+      embassies and well-timed bribes that Lathyrus was able to keep off the
+      punishment which seemed to await him for having thus disobeyed the orders
+      of Sulla. Egypt was then the only kingdom, to the west of Persia, that had
+      not yet bowed its neck under the Roman yoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coins of Lathyrus are not easily or certainly known from those of the
+      other Ptolemies; but those of his second wife bear her head on the one
+      side, with the name of &ldquo;Queen Selene,&rdquo; and on the other side the eagle,
+      with the name of &ldquo;King Ptolemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0021" id="linkCimage-0021">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:36%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/280.jpg"
+       alt="280.jpg Coin of Ptolemy Lathyrus and Selene. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      He had before reigned ten years with his mother, and after his brother&rsquo;s
+      death he reigned six years and a half more, but, as he counted the years
+      that he had reigned in Cyprus, he died in the thirty-seventh year of his
+      reign. He left a daughter named Berenicê, and two natural sons, each named
+      Ptolemy, one of whom reigned in Cyprus, and the other, nicknamed Auletes,
+      <i>the piper</i>, afterwards gained the throne of Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the death of Lathyrus, or Ptolemy Soter II., his daughter Cleopatra
+      Berenicê, the widow of Ptolemy Alexander, mounted the throne of Egypt in
+      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 of Cos, as
+      a place of safety, when his grandmother Cleopatra Cocce followed her army
+      into Coele-Syria. But, as the Egyptians had lost the command of the sea,
+      the royal treasure in Cos was no longer out of danger, and the island was
+      soon afterwards taken by Mithridates, King of Pontus, who had conquered
+      Asia Minor. Among the treasures in that island the Alexandrians lost one
+      of the sacred relics of the kingdom, the chlamys or war-cloak which had
+      belonged to Alexander the Great, and which they had kept with religious
+      care as the safeguard of the empire. It then fell into the hands of
+      Mithridates, and on his overthrow it became the prize of Pompey, who wore
+      it in his triumph at the end of the Mithridatic war. With this chlamys, as
+      had always been foretold by the believers in wonders, Egypt lost its rank
+      among nations, and the command of the world passed to the Romans, who now
+      possessed this time-worn symbol of sovereignty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of Mithridates; but he
+      afterwards escaped, and reached the army of Sulla, under whose care he
+      lived for some time in Rome. The Alexandrian prince hoped to gain the
+      throne of his father by means of the friendship of one who could make and
+      unmake kings at his pleasure; and Sulla might have thought that the wealth
+      of Egypt would be at his command by means of his young friend. To these
+      reasons Alexander added the bribe which was then becoming common with the
+      princes who held their thrones by the help of Rome, he made a will, in
+      which he named the Roman people as his heirs; and the senate then took
+      care that the kingdom of Egypt should be a part of the wealth which was
+      afterwards to be theirs by inheritance. After Berenicê, his stepmother,
+      had been queen about six months, they sent him to Alexandria, with orders
+      that he should be received as king; and, to soften the harshness of this
+      command, he was told to marry Berenicê, and reign jointly with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orders of Sulla, the Roman dictator, were of course obeyed; and the
+      young Alexander landed at Alexandria, as King of Egypt and the friend of
+      Rome. He married Berenicê; and on the nineteenth day of his reign, with a
+      cruelty unfortunately too common in this history, he put her to death. The
+      marriage had been forced upon him by the Romans, who ordered all the
+      political affairs of the kingdom; but, as they took no part in the civil
+      or criminal affairs, he seems to have been at liberty to murder his wife.
+      But Alexander was hated by the people as a king thrust upon them by
+      foreign arms; and Berenicê, whatever they might have before thought of
+      her, was regretted as the queen of their choice. Hence his crime met with
+      its reward. His own guards immediately rose upon him; they dragged him
+      from the palace to the gymnasium, and there put him to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the Romans had already seized the smaller kingdom of Cyrene under
+      the will of Ptolemy Apion, they could not agree among themselves upon the
+      wholesale robbery of taking Egypt under the will which Alexander had made
+      in their favour. They seized, however, a paltry sum of money which he had
+      left at Tyre as a place of safety; and it was a matter of debate for many
+      years afterwards in Rome, whether they should not claim the kingdom of
+      Egypt. But the nobles of Rome, who sold their patronage to kings for sums
+      equal to the revenues of provinces, would have lost much by handing the
+      kingdom over to the senate. Hence the Egyptian monarchy was left standing
+      for two reigns longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the death of Ptolemy Alexander, the Alexandrians might easily have
+      changed their weak and wicked rulers, and formed a government for
+      themselves, if they had known how. The legitimate male line of the
+      Ptolemies came to an end on the death of the young Alexander II. The two
+      natural sons of Soter II. were then the next in succession; and, as there
+      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 been wholly
+      overlooked at the death of his father; for though by the Egyptian law
+      every son was held to be equally legitimate, it was not so by the
+      Macedonian law. He took the name of Neus Dionysus, or the young Osiris, as
+      we find it written in the hieroglyphics, though he is usually called
+      Auletes, <i>the piper</i>; a name afterwards given him because he was more
+      proud of his skill in playing on the flute than of his very slender
+      knowledge of the art of governing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in this reign that the historian Diodorus Siculus travelled in
+      Egypt, and wrote his account of the manners and religion of the people.
+      What he tells us of the early Egyptian history is of little value when
+      compared with the history by Manetho, who was a native of the country and
+      could read the hieroglyphic records, or even with that by Herodotus; but
+      nevertheless he deserves great praise, and our warmest thanks, for being
+      nearly the first Greek writer when Egyptian learning could no longer be
+      thought valuable; when the religion, though looked down upon, might at any
+      rate be studied with ease&mdash;for being nearly the first writer who
+      thought the manners of this ancient people, after they had almost passed
+      off the page of history, worth the notice of a philosopher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diodorus never quotes Manetho, but follows Herodotus in making one great
+      hero for the chief actions of antiquity, whom he calls Sesoosis or
+      Sesonchosis. To him he assigns every great work of which the author was
+      unknown, the canals in the Delta, the statue of Amenhôthes III., the
+      obelisks of Ramses II., the distant navigation under Necho, the mounds and
+      trenches dug against Assyrian and Persian invasion, and even the great
+      ship of Ptolemy Philopator; and not knowing that Southern Arabia and even
+      Ethiopia had by the Alexandrians been sometimes called India, he says that
+      this hero conquered even India beyond the Ganges. On the other hand, the
+      fabulous conquest of the great serpent, the enemy of the human race, which
+      we see sculptured on the sarcophagus of Oimenepthah, he describes as an
+      historic fact of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He tells us how this
+      huge beast, forty-five feet long, was beaten down by troops of archers,
+      slingers, and cavalry, and brought alive in a net to Alexandria, where
+      Eve&rsquo;s old enemy was shown in a cage for the amusement of the curious
+      citizens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0022" id="linkCimage-0022">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:46%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/287.jpg"
+       alt="287.jpg Horus on the Crocodiles. Bulak Museum. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Memphis was then a great city; in its crowded streets, its palaces and
+      temples, it was second only to Alexandria. A little to the west stood the
+      pyramids, which were thought one of the seven wonders of the world. Their
+      broad bases, sloping sides, and solid masonry had withstood the weather
+      for ages; and their huge unwieldy stones were a less easy quarry for after
+      builders than the live rock when nearer to the river&rsquo;s side. The priests
+      of Memphis knew the names of the kings who, one after the other, had built
+      a new portico to their great temple of Phtah; but as to when or by whom
+      the pyramids were built, they had perhaps less knowledge than the present
+      day historian. The modern Egyptologist, with his patient investigation,
+      assigns the largest of these three pyramids to Khûfûi or Kheops, a famous
+      ruler of the fourth dynasty, and the others were erected by his immediate
+      successors. The temple of Phtah, and every other building of Memphis, is
+      now gone, and near the spot stands the great city of Cairo, whose mosques
+      and minarets have been quarried of its ruins, but the pyramids still
+      stand, after fifty-six centuries of broken and changing history, unbroken
+      and unchanged. They have outlived any portion of time that their builders
+      could have dreamed of, but their worn surface no longer declares to us
+      their builders&rsquo; names and history. Their sloping sides, formed to
+      withstand attacks, have not saved the inscriptions which they once held;
+      and the builders, in thus overlooking the reed which was growing in their
+      marshes, the papyrus, to which the great minds of Greece afterwards
+      trusted their undying names, have only taught us how much safer it would
+      have been, in their wish to be thought of and talked of in after ages, to
+      have leaned upon the poet and historian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beautiful temples of Dendera and Latopolis, which were raised by the
+      untiring industry of ages and finished, under the Roman emperors, were
+      begun about this reign. Though some of the temples of Lower Egypt had
+      fallen into decay; and though the throne was then tottering to its fall,
+      the priests in Upper Egypt were still building for immortality. The
+      religion of the Kopts was still flourishing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptian&rsquo;s opinion of the creation was the growth of his own river&rsquo;s
+      bank. The thoughtful man, who saw the Nile every year lay a body of solid
+      manure upon his field, was able to measure against the walls of the old
+      temples that the ground was slowly but certainly rising. An increase of
+      the earth was being brought about by the river. Hence he readily believed
+      that the world itself had of old been formed out of water, and by means of
+      water. The philosophers were nearly of the same opinion. They held that
+      matter was itself eternal, like the other gods, and that our world, in the
+      beginning, before it took any shape upon itself, was like thin mud, or a
+      mass of water containing all things that were afterwards to be brought
+      forth out of it. When the water had by its divine will separated itself
+      from the earth, then the great Ra, the sun, sent down his quickening heat,
+      and plants and animals came forth out of the wet-land, as the insects are
+      spawned out of the fields, before the eyes of the husbandman, every autumn
+      after the Nile&rsquo;s overflow has retreated. The crafty priests of the Nile
+      declared that they had themselves visited and dwelt in the caverns beneath
+      the river, where these treasures, while yet unshaped, were kept in store
+      and waiting to come into being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And on the days sacred to the Nile, boys, the children of priestly
+      families, were every year dedicated to the blue river-god that they might
+      spend their youth in monastic retirement, and as it was said in these
+      caverns beneath his waves. These early Egyptian myths seem to have
+      influenced the compilers of the Hebrew Scriptures. The author of the book
+      of Genesis tells us that the Hebrew God formed the earth and its
+      inhabitants by dividing the land from the water, and then commanding them
+      both to bring forth living creatures; and again one of the Psalmists says
+      that his substance, while yet imperfect, was by the Creator curiously
+      wrought in the lowest depths of the earth. The Hebrew writer, however,
+      never thinks that any part of the creation was its own creator. But in the
+      Egyptian philosophy sunshine and the river Nile are themselves the divine
+      agents; and hence fire and water received divine honours, as the two
+      purest of the elements; and every day when the temple of Serapis in
+      Alexandria was opened, the singer standing on the steps of the portico
+      sprinkled water over the marble floor while he held forth the fire to the
+      people; and though he and most of his hearers were Greeks, he called upon
+      the god in the Egyptian language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inner walls of the temples glittered with gold and silver and amber,
+      and sparkled with gems from Ethiopia and India; and the recesses were
+      veiled with rich curtains. The costliness was often in striking contrast
+      with the chief inmate, much to the surprise of the Greek traveller, who,
+      having leave to examine a temple, had entered the sacred rooms, and asked
+      to be shown the image of the god for whose sake it was built. One of the
+      priests in waiting then approached with a solemn look, chanting a hymn,
+      and pulling aside the veil allowed him to peep in at a snake, a crocodile,
+      or a cat, or some other beast, fitter to inhabit a bog or cavern than to
+      lie on a purple cushion in a stately palace. The funerals of the sacred
+      animals were celebrated with great pomp, particularly that of the bull
+      Apis; and at a cost, 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 brought it to Memphis in a
+      boat under a golden awning, and lodged it safely in the temple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0023" id="linkCimage-0023">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/289.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="289.jpg Religious Procession on the Nile " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The religious feelings of the Egyptians were much warmer and stronger than
+      those of the Greeks or Romans; they have often been accused of eating one
+      another, but never of eating a sacred animal. Once a year the people of
+      Memphis celebrated the birthday of Apis with great pomp and expense, and
+      one of the chief ceremonies on the occasion was the throwing a golden dish
+      into the Nile. During the week that these rejoicings lasted, while the
+      sacred river was appeased by gifts, the crocodile was thought to lose its
+      fierceness, its teeth were harmless, and it never attempted to bite; and
+      it was not till six o&rsquo;clock on the eighth day that this animal again
+      became an object of fear to those whose occupations brought them to the
+      banks of the Nile. Once a year also the statues of the gods were removed
+      from their pedestals and placed in barges, and thus carried in solemn
+      procession along the Nile, and only brought back to the temples after some
+      days. It was supposed that the gods were passing these days on a visit to
+      the righteous Ethiopians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cat was at all times one of the animals held most sacred by the
+      Egyptians. In the earliest and latest times we find the statues of their
+      goddesses with cats&rsquo; heads. The cats of Alexandria were looked upon as so
+      many images of Neith or the Minerva of Saïs, a goddess worshipped both by
+      Greeks and Egyptians; and it passed into a proverb with the Greeks, when
+      they spoke of any two things being unlike, to say that they were as much
+      like one another as a cat was to Minerva. It is to Alexandria also that we
+      trace the story of a cat turned into a lady to please a prince who had
+      fallen in love with it. The lady, however, when dressed in her bridal
+      robes, could not help scampering about the room after a mouse seen upon
+      the floor; and when Plutarch was in Egypt it had already become a proverb,
+      that any one in too much finery was as awkward as a cat in a
+      crocus-coloured robe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So deeply rooted in the minds of the Egyptians was the worship of these
+      animals that, when a Roman soldier had killed a cat unawares, though the
+      Romans were masters of the country, the people rose against him in a fury.
+      In vain the king sent a message to quiet the mob, to let them know that
+      the cat was killed by accident; and, though the fear of Rome would most
+      likely have saved a Roman soldier unharmed whatever other crime he might
+      have been guilty of, in this case nothing would quiet the people but his
+      death, and he was killed before the eyes of Diodorus, the historian. One
+      nation rises above another not so much from its greater strength or skill
+      in arms as from its higher aim and stronger wish for power. The Egyptians,
+      we see, had not lost their courage, and when the occasion called them out
+      they showed a fearlessness not unworthy of their Theban forefathers; on
+      seeing a dead cat in the streets they rose against the king&rsquo;s orders and
+      the power of Rome; had they thought their own freedom or their country&rsquo;s
+      greatness as much worth fighting for, they could perhaps have gained them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0024" id="linkCimage-0024">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/291.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="291.jpg Egyptian Funeral Ceremonies " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      But the Egyptians had no civil laws or rights that they cared about; they
+      had nothing left that they valued but their religion, and this the Romans
+      took good care not to meddle with. Had the Romans made war upon the
+      priests and temples, as the Persians had done, they would perhaps in the
+      same way have been driven out of Egypt: but they never shocked the
+      religious feelings of the people, and even after Egypt had become a Roman
+      province, when the beautiful temples of Esne, Dendera, and other cities,
+      were dedicated in the names of the Roman emperors, they seldom copied the
+      example of Philometor, and put Greek, much less Roman, writing on the
+      portico, but continued to let the walls be covered with hieroglyphical
+      inscriptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptians, when rich enough to pay for it, still had the bodies of
+      their friends embalmed at their death, and made into mummies; though the
+      priests, to save part of the cost, often put the mummy of a man just dead
+      into a mummy-case which had been made and used in the reign of a Thûtmosis
+      or an Amenhôthes. They thought that every man at his death took upon
+      himself the character of Osiris, that the nurses who laid out the dead
+      body represented the goddesses Isis and Nepthys, while the man who made
+      the mummy was supposed to be the god Anubis. When the embalming was
+      finished, it was part of the funeral to bring the dead man to trial for
+      what he had done when living, and thus to determine whether he was
+      entitled to an honourable burial. The mummy was ferried across the lake
+      belonging to the temple, and taken before the judge Osiris. A pair of
+      scales was brought forth by the dog-headed Anubis and the hawk-headed
+      Horus; and with this they weighed the past life of the deceased. The
+      judge, with the advice of a jury of forty-two, then pronounced the solemn
+      verdict, which was written down by the ibis-headed Thot. But human nature
+      is the same in all ages and in all countries, and, whatever might have
+      been the past life of the dead, the judge, not to hurt the feelings of the
+      friends, always declared that he was &ldquo;a righteous and a good man:&rdquo; and,
+      notwithstanding the show of truth in the trial, it passed into a proverb
+      to say of a wicked man, that he was too bad to be praised even at his
+      funeral. This custom of embalming was thought right by all; but from
+      examining the mummies that have come down to us, it would seem to have
+      been very much confined to the priestly families, and seldom used in the
+      case of children. The mummies, however, were highly valued by the
+      survivors of the family, and when from poverty any man was driven to
+      borrow money, the mummies were thought good security by the lender, and
+      taken as such for the loan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0025" id="linkCimage-0025">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/293.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="293.jpg Mummy, Mummy-cases, and Casket " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The mummy-cases indeed could be sold for a large sum, as when made of wood
+      they were covered with painting, and sometimes in part gilt, and often
+      three in number, one enclosing the other. The stone mummy-cases were yet
+      more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster or hard black
+      basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved with hieroglyphics,
+      and modelled to the shape of the body like the inner wooden cases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is interesting to note here that the pigment known to modern art by the
+      name of mummy is, in many cases, actually prepared from the bituminous
+      substances preserved within the wrappings of the ancient mummies. The
+      grinding up of mummies imported from Thebes or Memphis for the purpose of
+      enabling the twentieth century painter to paint the golden tresses of
+      contemporary belles is of course not very extensively carried on, for one
+      mummy will make several thousand tubes of paint, but the practice exists,
+      and of late has been protested against both in England and France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the old laws of Egypt must very much have fallen into disuse during
+      the reigns of the latter Ptolemies, they had at least been left unchanged;
+      and they teach us that the shadow of freedom may be seen, as in Rome under
+      the Cæsars, and in Florence under the Medici, long after the substance has
+      been lost. In quarrels between man and man, the thirty judges, from the
+      cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, were still guided by the eight
+      books of the law. The king, the priests, and the soldiers were the only
+      landholders in the country, while the herdsmen, husbandmen, and
+      handicraftsmen were thought of lower caste. Though the armies of Egypt
+      were for the most part filled with Greek mercenaries, and the landholders
+      of the order of soldiers could then have had as little to do with arms as
+      knights and esquires have in our days, yet they still boasted of the
+      wisdom of their laws, by which arms were only to be trusted to men who had
+      a stake in the country worth fighting for. The old manners had long since
+      passed away. The priests alone obeyed the old marriage law, that a man
+      should have only one wife. Other men, when rich enough, married several.
+      All children were held equally legitimate, whatever woman was the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0026" id="linkCimage-0026">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/295.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="295.jpg Development of Egyptian Caricature " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      It is to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was sadly
+      wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art were alike in a
+      very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in Egypt. We find
+      drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation used to hold sacred.
+      The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in little; and cats,
+      dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of the gods and kings
+      of old. In one picture we have the mice attacking a castle defended by the
+      cats, copied from a battle-scene of Ramses II. fighting against the
+      Ethiopians. In another the king on his throne as a dog, with a second dog
+      behind him as a fan-bearer, is receiving the sacred offerings from a cat.
+      In a third the king and queen are seen playing at chess or checkers in the
+      form of a lion playing with a unicorn or horned ass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may form some opinion of the wealth of Egypt in its more prosperous
+      times when we learn from Cicero that in this reign, when the Romans had
+      good means of knowing, the revenues of the country amounted to twelve
+      thousand five hundred talents, or ten million dollars; just one-half of
+      which wras paid by the port of Alexandria. This was at a time when the
+      foreign trade had, through the faults of the government, sunk down to its
+      lowest ebb; when not more than twenty ships sailed each year from the Red
+      Sea to India; when the free population of the kingdom had so far fallen
+      off that it was not more than three millions, which was only half of what
+      it had been in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, though Alexandria alone still
+      held three hundred thousand persons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, though much of the trade of the country was lost, though many of the
+      royal works had ceased, though the manufacture of the finer linen had left
+      the country, the digging in the gold mines, the favourite source of wealth
+      to a despot, never ceased. Night and day in the mines near the Golden
+      Berenicê did slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war work without pause,
+      chained together in gangs, and guarded by soldiers, who were carefully
+      chosen for their not being able to speak the language of these unhappy
+      workmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0027" id="linkCimage-0027">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/297.jpg" width="100%" alt="297.jpg the Mines of Maghara " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The rock which held the gold was broken up into small pieces; when hard it
+      was first made brittle in the fire; the broken stone was then washed to
+      separate the waste from the heavier grains which held the gold; and,
+      lastly, the valuable parts when separated were kept heated in a furnace
+      for five days, at the end of which time the pure gold was found melted
+      into a button at the bottom. But the mines were nearly worn out; and the
+      value of the gold was a very small part of the thirty-five million dollars
+      which they are said to have yielded every year in the reign of Ramses II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Auletes felt himself hardly safe upon the throne, his first wish was to
+      get himself acknowledged as king by the Roman senate. For this end he sent
+      to Rome a large sum of money to buy the votes of the senators, and he
+      borrowed a further sum of Rabirius Posthumus, one of the richest farmers
+      of the Roman taxes, which he spent on the same object. But though the
+      Romans never tried to turn him out of his kingdom, he did not get the
+      wished-for decree before he went to Rome in the twenty-fourth year of his
+      reign. But we know nothing of the first years of his reign. A nation must
+      be in a very demoralised state when its history disproves the 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 than during this dull,
+      un-warlike, and vicious time. The king gave himself up to his natural bent
+      for pleasure and debauchery. At times when virtue is uncopied and
+      unrewarded it is usually praised and let alone; but in this reign sobriety
+      was a crime in the eyes of the king, a quiet behaviour was thought a
+      reproach against his irregularities. The Platonic philosopher Demetrius
+      was in danger of being put to death because it was told to the king that
+      he never drank wine, and had been seen at the feast of Bacchus in his
+      usual dress, while every other man was in the dress of a woman. But the
+      philosopher was allowed to disprove the charge of sobriety, or at least to
+      make amends for his fault; and, on the king sending for him the next day,
+      he made himself drunk publicly in the sight of all the court, and danced
+      with cymbals in a loose dress of Tarentine gauze. But so few are the deeds
+      worth mentioning in the falling state that we are pleased even to be told
+      that, in the one hundred and seventy-eighth Olympiad, Strato of Alexandria
+      conquered in the Olympic games and was crowned in the same day for
+      wrestling, and for <i>pancratium</i>, or wrestling and boxing joined,
+      these sports being considered among the most honourable in which athletes
+      could contend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the thirteenth year of this reign (B.C. 68), when the war against the
+      pirates called for the whole naval force of Rome, Pompey sent a fleet
+      under Lentulus Marcellinus to clear the coast and creeks of Egypt from
+      these robbers. The Egyptian government was too weak to guard its own
+      trade; and Lentulus in his consulship put the Ptolemaic eagle and
+      thunderbolt on his coins, to show that he had exercised an act of
+      sovereignty. Three years later, we again meet with the eagle and
+      thunderbolt on the consular coins of Aurelius Cotta; and we learn from
+      Cicero that in that year it was found necessary to send a fleet to
+      Alexandria to enforce the orders of the senate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We next find the Roman senate debating whether they should not seize the
+      kingdom as their inheritance under the wall of Ptolemy Alexander II., but,
+      moved by the bribes of Auletes, and perhaps by other reasons which we are
+      not told, they forbore to grasp the prize. In this difficulty Auletes was
+      helped by the great Pompey, to whom he had sent an embassy with a golden
+      crown wrorth four thousand pieces of gold, which met him at Damascus on
+      his Syrian campaign. He then formed a secret treaty with Mithridates, King
+      of Pontus, who was engaged in warfare with the Romans, their common enemy.
+      Auletes was now a widower with six young children, and Mithridates had two
+      daughters; and accordingly it was agreed that one daughter should be
+      married to Auletes, and the other to his brother, the King of Cyprus. But
+      the ruin and death of Mithridates broke off the marriages; and Auletes was
+      able to conceal from the Romans that he had ever formed an alliance with
+      their enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the year which was made famous by the consulship of Cicero, Jerusalem
+      was taken by the Roman army under Pompey; and Judæa, which had enjoyed a
+      shortlived freedom of less than one hundred years under the Maccabees, was
+      then put under a Roman governor. The fortifications of the temple were
+      destroyed. This was felt by the Jews of Lower Egypt as a heavy blow, and
+      from this time their sufferings in that country began. While their
+      brethren had been lords of Judæa, they had held up their heads with the
+      Greeks in Alexandria, but upon the fall of Jerusalem they sunk down to the
+      rank of the Egyptians. They thought worse of themselves, and they were
+      thought worse of by others. The Egyptian Jews were very closely allied to
+      the people of the Delta. Though they had been again and again warned by
+      their prophets not to mix with the Egyptians, they seem not to have
+      listened to the warning. They were in many religious points less strict
+      than their brethren in Judæa. The living in Egypt, the building a second
+      temple, and the using a Greek Bible, were all breaches, if not of the law,
+      at least of the tradition. They surrounded their synagogues with sacred
+      groves, which were clearly forbidden by Moses. Though they were not guilty
+      of worshipping images, yet they did not think it wrong to have portraits
+      and statues of themselves. In their dislike of pork, in their washings,
+      and in other Eastern customs, they were like the Egyptians; and hence the
+      Greeks, who thought them both barbarians, very grudgingly yielded to them
+      the privileges of choosing their own magistrates, of having their own
+      courts of justice, and the other rights of citizenship which the policy of
+      the Ptolemies had granted. The Jews, on the other hand, in whose eyes
+      religion was everything, saw the Greeks and Egyptians worshipping the same
+      gods and the same sacred animals, and felt themselves as far above the
+      Greeks in those branches of philosophy which arise out of religion as they
+      were below them in that rank which is gained by success in war. Hence it
+      was with many heartburnings, and not without struggles which shed blood in
+      the streets of Alexandria, that they found themselves, in the years which
+      ushered in the Christian era, sinking down to the level of the Egyptians,
+      and losing one by one the rights of Macedonian citizenship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During these years Auletes had been losing his friends and weakening his
+      government, and, at last, when he refused to quarrel with the senate about
+      the island of Cyprus, the Egyptians rose against him in arms, and he was
+      forced to fly from Alexandria. He took ship for Rome, and in his way there
+      he met Cato, who was at Rhodes on his voyage to Cyprus. He sent to Cato to
+      let him know that he was in the city, and that he wished to see him. But
+      the Roman sent word back that he was unwell, and that if the king wanted
+      to speak to him he must come himself. This was not a time for Auletes to
+      quarrel with a senator, when he was on his way to Rome to beg for help
+      against his subjects; so he was forced to go to Cato&rsquo;s lodgings, who did
+      not even rise from his seat when the king entered the room. But this
+      treatment was not quite new to Auletes; in his flight from Alexandria, in
+      disguise and without a servant, he had had to eat brown bread in the
+      cottage of a peasant; and he now learned how much more irksome it was to
+      wait upon the pleasure of a Roman senator. Cato gave him the best advice;
+      that, instead of going to Rome, where he would find that all the wealth of
+      Egypt would be thought a bribe too small for the greediness of the
+      senators whose votes he wanted, he would do better to return to
+      Alexandria, and make peace with his rebellious subjects. Auletes, however,
+      went on to Italy, and he arrived at Rome in the twenty-fourth year of his
+      reign; and in the three years that he spent there in courting and bribing
+      the senators, he learned the truth of Cato&rsquo;s statements, and the value of
+      his advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His brother Ptolemy, who was reigning in Cyprus, was not even so well
+      treated. The Romans passed a law making that wealthy island a Roman
+      province, no doubt upon the plea of the will of Alexander II. and the
+      king&rsquo;s illegitimacy; and they sent Cato, rather against his will, to turn
+      Ptolemy out of his kingdom. Ptolemy gave up the island without Cato being
+      called upon to use force, and in return the Romans made him high priest in
+      the temple of the Paphian Venus; but he soon put himself to death by
+      poison. Canidius Crassus, who had been employed by Cato in this affair,
+      may have had some fighting at sea with the Egyptians, as on one of his
+      coins we see on one side a crocodile, and on the other the prow of a ship,
+      as if he had beaten the Egyptian fleet in the mouth of the Nile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the flight of their king, the rebellious Alexandrians set on the throne
+      the two eldest of his daughters, Cleopatra Tryphaena and Berenicê, and
+      sent an embassy, at the head of which was Dion, the academic philosopher,
+      to plead their cause at Rome against the king. But the gold of Auletes had
+      already gained the senate; and Cicero spoke, on his behalf, one of his
+      great speeches, now unfortunately lost, in which he rebutted the charge
+      that Auletes was at all to be blamed for the death of Alexander, whom he
+      thought justly killed by his guards for the murder of his queen and
+      kinswoman. Cæsar, whose year of consulship was then drawing to an end,
+      took his part warmly; and Auletes became in debt to him in the sum of
+      seventeen million drachmas, or nearly two and a half million dollars,
+      either for money lent to bribe the senators, or for bonds then given to
+      Cæsar instead of money. By these means Auletes got his title acknowledged;
+      the door of the senate was shut against the Alexandrian ambassadors; and
+      the philosopher Dion, the head of the embassy, was poisoned in Rome by the
+      slaves of his friend Lucceius, in whose house he was dwelling. But
+      nevertheless, Auletes was not able to get an army sent to help him against
+      his rebellious subjects and his daughters; nor was Cæsar able to get from
+      the senate, for the employment of his proconsular year, the task of
+      replacing Auletes on the throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This high employment was then sought for both by Lentulus and by Pompey.
+      The senate at first leaned in favour of the former; and he would perhaps
+      have gained it if the Roman creditors of Auletes, who were already
+      trembling for their money, had not bribed openly in favour of Pompey, as
+      the more powerful of the two. On Pompey, therefore, the choice of the
+      senate at last fell. Pompey then took Auletes into his house, as his
+      friend and guest, and would have got orders to lead him back into his
+      kingdom at the head of a Roman army had not the tribunes of the people,
+      fearing any addition to Pompey&rsquo;s great power, had recourse to their usual
+      state-engine, the Sibylline books; and the pontifex, at their bidding,
+      publicly declared that it was written in those sacred pages that the King
+      of Egypt should have the friendship of Rome, but should not be helped with
+      an army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though Lentulus and Pompey were each strong enough to stop the other
+      from having this high command, Auletes was not without hopes that some
+      Roman general would be led, by the promise of money, and by the honour, to
+      undertake his cause, though it would be against the laws of Rome to do so
+      without orders from the senate. Cicero then took him under his protection,
+      and carried him in a litter of state to his villa at Baiæ, and wrote to
+      Lentulus, the proconsul of Cilicia and Cyprus, strongly urging him to
+      snatch the glory of replacing Auletes on the throne, and of being the
+      patron of the King of Egypt. But Lentulus seems not to have chosen to run
+      the risk of so far breaking the laws of his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Auletes then went, with pressing letters from Pompey, to Gabinius, the
+      proconsul of Syria, and offered him the large bribe of ten thousand
+      talents, or seven and a half million dollars, if he would lead the Roman
+      army into Egypt, and replace him on the throne. Most of the officers were
+      against this undertaking; but the letters of Pompey, the advice of Mark
+      Antony, the master of the horse, and perhaps the greatness of the bribe,
+      outweighed those cautious opinions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Auletes had been thus pleading his cause at Rome and with the army,
+      Cleopatra Tryphæna, the elder of the two queens, had died; and, as no one
+      of the other children of Auletes was old enough to be joined with Berenicê
+      on the throne, the Alexandrians sent to Syria for Seleucus, the son of
+      Antiochus Grypus and of Selene, the sister of Lathyrus, to come to Egypt
+      and marry Berenicê. He was low-minded in all his pleasures and tastes, and
+      got the nickname of <i>Cybiosactes</i>, the scullion. He was even said to
+      have stolen the golden sarcophagus in which the body of Alexander was
+      buried; and was so much disliked by his young wife that she had him
+      strangled on the fifth day after their marriage. Berenicê then married
+      Archelaus, a son of Mithridates Eupator, King of Pontus; and she had
+      reigned one year with her sister and two years with her husbands when the
+      Roman army brought back her father, Ptolemy Auletes, into Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gabinius, on marching, gave out as an excuse for quitting the province
+      entrusted to him by the senate, that it was in self-defence; and that
+      Syria was in danger from the Egyptian fleet commanded by Archelaus. He was
+      accompanied by a Jewish army under the command of Antipator, sent by
+      Hyrcanus, whom the Romans had just made governor of Judæa. Mark Antony was
+      sent forward with the horse, and routed the Egyptian army near Pelusium,
+      and then entered the city with Auletes. The king, in the cruelty of his
+      revenge, wished to put the citizens to the sword, and was only stopped by
+      Antony&rsquo;s forbidding it. The Egyptian army was at this time in the lowest
+      state of discipline; it was the only place where the sovereign was not
+      despotic. The soldiers, who prized the lawlessness of their trade even
+      more than its pay, were a cause of fear only to their fellow-citizens.
+      When Archelaus led them out against the Romans, and ordered them to throw
+      up a trench around their camp, they refused to obey; they said that
+      ditch-making was not work for soldiers, but that it ought to be done at
+      the cost of the state. Hence, when on this first success Gabinius followed
+      with the body of the army, he easily conquered the rest of the country and
+      put to death Berenicê and Archelaus. He then led back the army into his
+      province of Syria, but left behind him a body of troops under Lucius
+      Septimius to guard the throne of Auletes and to check the risings of the
+      Alexandrians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gabinius had refused to undertake this affair, which was the more
+      dangerous because against the laws of Rome, unless the large bribe were
+      first paid down in money. He would take no promises; and Auletes, who in
+      his banishment had no money at his command, had to borrow it of some one
+      who would listen to his large promises of after payment. He found this
+      person in Rabirius Posthumus, who had before lent him money, and who saw
+      that it would be all lost unless Auletes regained the throne. Rabirius
+      therefore lent him all he was worth, and borrowed the rest from his
+      friends; and as soon as Auletes was on the throne, he went to Alexandria
+      to claim his money and his reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0028" id="linkCimage-0028">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/309.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="309.jpg Vocal Statue of Memnon " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      While Auletes still stood in need of Roman help, and saw the advantage of
+      keeping faith with his foreign creditors, Rabirius was allowed to hold the
+      office of royal <i>dioecetes</i>, or paymaster-general, which was one of
+      great state and profit, and one by which he could in time have repaid
+      himself his loan. He wore a royal robe; the taxes of Alexandria went
+      through his hands; he was indeed master of the city. But when the king
+      felt safe on his throne, he sent away his troublesome creditor, who
+      returned to Rome with the loss of his money, to stand his trial as a state
+      criminal for having lent it. Rabirius had been for a time mortgagee in
+      possession of the revenues of Egypt; and Auletes had felt more indebted
+      for his crown to a Roman citizen than to the senate. But in the dealings
+      of Rome with foreign kings, these evils had often before arisen, and at
+      last been made criminal; and while Gabinius was tried for treason, <i>de
+      majestate</i>, for leading his army out of his province, Rabirius was
+      tried, under the <i>Lex Julia de pecuniis repetundis</i>, for lending
+      money and taking office under Auletes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the last acts of Gabinius in Syria was to change the form of the
+      Jewish government into an aristocracy, leaving Hyrcanus as the high
+      priest. The Jews thereon began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, that had
+      been thrown down by Pompey. Among the prisoners sent to Rome by Gabinius
+      was Timagenes, the son of the king&rsquo;s banker, who probably lost his liberty
+      as a hostage on Ptolemy&rsquo;s failure to repay the loan. But he was afterwards
+      ransomed from slavery by a son of Sulla, and he remained at Rome teaching
+      Greek eloquence in the schools, and writing his numerous works.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The climate of Egypt is hardly suited to Europeans, and perhaps at no time
+      did the births in the Greek families equal the deaths. That part of the
+      population was kept up by newcomers; and latterly the Romans had been
+      coming over to share in the plunder that was there scattered among the
+      ruling class. For some time past Alexandria had been a favourite place of
+      settlement for such Romans as either through their fault or their
+      misfortune were forced to leave their homes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0029" id="linkCimage-0029">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/312.jpg" width="100%" alt="312.jpg the Sphinx " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      All who were banished for their crimes or who went away to escape from
+      trial, all runaway slaves, all ruined debtors, found a place of safety in
+      Alexandria; and by enrolling themselves in the Egyptian army they joined
+      in bonds of fellowship with thousands like themselves, who made it a point
+      of honour to screen one another from being overtaken by justice or
+      reclaimed by their masters. With such men as these, together with some
+      bands of robbers from Syria and Cilicia, had the ranks of the Egyptian
+      army latterly been recruited. These were now joined by a number of
+      soldiers and officers from the army of Gabinius, who liked the Egyptian
+      high pay and lawlessness better than the strict discipline of the Romans.
+      As, in this mixed body of men, the more regular courage and greater skill
+      in war was found among the Romans, they were chiefly chosen as officers,
+      and the whole had something of the form of a Roman army. These soldiers in
+      Alexandria were above all law and discipline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The laws were everywhere badly enforced, crimes passed unpunished, and
+      property became unsafe. Robberies were carried on openly, and the only
+      hope of recovering what was stolen was by buying it back from the thief.
+      In many cases, whole villages lived upon plunder, and for that purpose
+      formed themselves into a society, and put themselves under the orders of a
+      chief; and, when any merchant or husbandman was robbed, he applied to this
+      chief, who usually restored to him the stolen property on payment of
+      one-fourth of its value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the country fell off in wealth, power, and population, the schools of
+      Alexandria fell off in learning, and we meet with few authors whose names
+      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 is still
+      remaining in manuscript.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0030" id="linkCimage-0030">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/314.jpg" width="100%" alt="314.jpg " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0031" id="linkCimage-0031">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/314b.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="314b.jpg Bearers of Evil Tidings " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Beside his name of Neus Dionysus, the king is in the hieroglyphics
+      sometimes called Philopator and Philadelphus; and in a Greek inscription
+      on a statue at Philae he is called by the three names, Neus Dionysus,
+      Philopator, Philadelphus. The coins which are usually thought to be his
+      are in a worse style of art than those of the kings before him. He died in
+      B.C. 51, in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, leaving four children,
+      namely, Cleopatra, Arsinoë, and two Ptolemies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0032" id="linkCimage-0032">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/315.jpg" width="100%" alt="315.jpg Page Image " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkC2HCH0003" id="linkC2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII&mdash;CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Pompey, Cæsar, and Antony in Egypt&mdash;Cleopatra&rsquo;s extravagance and
+      intrigues&mdash;Octavianus annexes Egypt&mdash;Retrospect.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ptolemy Neus Dionysus had by his will left his kingdom to Cleopatra and
+      Ptolemy, his elder daughter and elder son, who, agreeably to the custom of
+      the country, were to marry one another and reign with equal power. He had
+      sent one copy of his will to Rome, to be lodged in the public treasury,
+      and in it he called upon the Roman people, by all the gods and by the
+      treaties by which they were bound, to see that it was obeyed. He had also
+      begged them to undertake the guardianship of his son. The senate voted
+      Pompey tutor to the young king, or governor of Egypt; and the Alexandrians
+      in the third year of his reign sent sixty ships of war to help the great
+      Pompey in his struggle against Julius Cæsar for the chief power in Rome.
+      But Pompey&rsquo;s power was by that time drawing to an end, and the votes of
+      the senate could give no strength to the weak: hence the eunuch Pothinus,
+      who had the care of the elder Ptolemy, was governor of Egypt, and his
+      first act was to declare his young pupil king, and to set at nought the
+      will of Auletes, by which Cleopatra was joined with him on the throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cleopatra fled into Syria, and, with a manly spirit which showed what she
+      was afterwards to be, raised an army and marched back to the borders of
+      Egypt, to claim her rights by force of arms. It was in the fourth year of
+      her reign, when the Egyptian troops were moved to Pelusium to meet her,
+      and the two armies were within a few leagues of one another, that Pompey,
+      who had been the friend of Auletes when the king wanted a friend, landed
+      on the shores of Egypt in distress, and almost alone. His army had just
+      been beaten at Pharsalia, and he was flying from Cæsar, and he hoped to
+      receive from the son the kindness which he had shown to the father. But
+      gratitude is a virtue little known in palaces, and Ptolemy had been
+      cradled in princely selfishness. In this civil war between Pompey and
+      Cæsar, the Alexandrians would have been glad to be the friends of both,
+      but that was now out of the question; Pompey&rsquo;s coming made it necessary
+      for them to choose which they should join, and Ptolemy&rsquo;s council, like
+      cowards, only wished to side with the strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0033" id="linkCimage-0033">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/317.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="317.jpg Pillar of Pompey at Alexandria " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Pothinus the eunuch, Achilles the general, who was a native Egyptian, and
+      Theodotus of Chios, who was the prince&rsquo;s tutor in rhetoric, were the men
+      by whom the fate of this great Roman was decided. &ldquo;By putting him to
+      death,&rdquo; said Theodotus, &ldquo;you will oblige Cæsar, and have nothing to fear
+      from Pompey;&rdquo; and he added with a smile, &ldquo;Dead men do not bite.&rdquo; So
+      Achilles and Lucius Septimius, the head of the Roman troops in the
+      Egyptian army, were sent down to the seaside to welcome him, to receive
+      him as a friend, and to murder him. They handed him out of his galley into
+      their boat, and put him to death on his landing. They then cut off from
+      his lifeless trunk the head which had been three times crowned with
+      laurels in the capitol; and in that disfigured state the young Ptolemy saw
+      for the first time, and without regret, the face of his father&rsquo;s best
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Cæsar, following the track of Pompey, arrived in the roadstead of
+      Alexandria, all was already over. With deep agitation he turned away when
+      the murderer brought to his ship the head of the man who had been his
+      son-in-law and for long years his colleague in rule, and to get whom alive
+      into his power he had come to Egypt. The dagger of the rash assassin
+      precluded an answer to the question, how Cæsar would have dealt with the
+      captive Pompey; but, while the human sympathy which still found a place in
+      the great soul of Cæsar, side by side with ambition, enjoined that he
+      should spare his former friend, his interest also required that he should
+      annihilate Pompey otherwise than by the executioner. Pompey had been for
+      twenty years the acknowledged ruler of Rome; a dominion so deeply rooted
+      does not end with the ruler&rsquo;s death. The death of Pompey did not break up
+      the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an aged, incapable, and
+      worn-out chief, in his sons Gnacus and Sextus, two leaders, both of whom
+      were young and active, and the second of them of decided capacity. To the
+      newly founded hereditary monarchy, hereditary pretendership attached
+      itself at once like a parasite, and it was very doubtful whether by this
+      change of persons Cæsar did not lose more than he gained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile in Egypt Cæsar had now nothing further to do, and the Romans and
+      Egyptians expected that he would immediately set sail and apply himself to
+      the subjugation of Africa, and to the huge task of organisation which
+      awaited him after the victory. But Cæsar, faithful to his custom&mdash;wherever
+      he found himself in the wide Empire&mdash;of finally regulating matters at
+      once and in person, and firmly convinced that no resistance was to be
+      expected either from the Roman garrison or from the court; being,
+      moreover, in urgent pecuniary embarrassment, landed in Alexandria with the
+      two amalgamated legions accompanying him to the number of thirty-two
+      hundred men and eight hundred Celtic and German cavalry, took up his
+      quarters in the royal palace, and proceeded to collect the necessary sums
+      of money and to regulate the Egyptian succession, without allowing himself
+      to be disturbed by the saucy remark of Pothinus that Cæsar should not for
+      such petty matters neglect his own so important affairs. In his dealings
+      with the Egyptians he was just and even indulgent. Although the aid which
+      they had given to Pompey justified the imposing of a war contribution, the
+      exhausted land was spared from this; and, while the arrears of the sums
+      stipulated for in B.C. 59, and since then only about half paid, were
+      remitted, there was required merely a final payment of ten million denarii
+      (two million dollars). The belligerent brother and sister were enjoined
+      immediately to suspend hostilities, and were invited to have their dispute
+      investigated and decided before the arbiter. They submitted; the royal boy
+      was already in the palace and Cleopatra also presented herself there.
+      Cæsar adjudged the kingdom of Egypt, agreeably to the testament of
+      Auletes, to the intermarried brother and sister Cleopatra and Ptolomoreus
+      Dionysus, and further gave unasked the kingdom of Cyprus&mdash;cancelling
+      the earlier act of annexation&mdash;as the appanage of the second-born of
+      Egypt to the younger children of Auletes, Arsinoë and Ptolemy the younger.
+      But a storm was secretly preparing. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city as
+      well as Rome, hardly inferior to the Italian capital in the number of its
+      inhabitants, far superior to it in stirring commercial spirit, in skill of
+      handicraft, in taste for science and art: in the citizens there was a
+      lively sense of their own national importance, and, if there was no
+      political sentiment, there was at any rate a turbulent spirit, which
+      induced them to indulge in their street riots regularly and heartily. We
+      may conceive their feeling when they saw the Roman general ruling in the
+      palace of the Lagids, and their kings accepting the award of his tribunal.
+      Pothinus and the boy-king, both, as may be conceived, very dissatisfied at
+      once with the peremptory requisition of all debts and with the
+      intervention in the throne-dispute which could only issue, as it did, in
+      the favour of Cleopatra, sent&mdash;in order to pacify the Roman demands&mdash;the
+      treasures of the temple and the gold plate of the king with intentional
+      ostentation to be melted at the mint; with increasing indignation the
+      Egyptians&mdash;who were pious even to superstition, and who rejoiced in
+      the world-renowned magnificence of their court as if it were a possession
+      of their own&mdash;beheld the bare walls of their temples and the wooden
+      cups on the table of their king. The Roman army of occupation also, which
+      had been essentially denationalised by its long abode in Egypt and the
+      many intermarriages between the soldiers and Egyptian women, and which
+      moreover numbered a multitude of the old soldiers of Pompey and runaway
+      Italian criminals and slaves in its ranks, was indignant at Cæsar, by
+      whose orders it had been obliged to suspend its action on the Syrian
+      frontier, and at his handful of haughty legionaries. The tumult even at
+      the landing, when the multitude saw the Roman axes carried into the old
+      palace, and the numerous instances in which his soldiers were assassinated
+      in the city, had taught Cæsar the immense danger in which he was placed
+      with his small force in presence of the exasperated multitude. But it was
+      difficult to return on account of the northwest winds prevailing at this
+      season of#the year, and the attempt of embarkation might easily become a
+      signal for the outbreak of the insurrection; besides, it was not the
+      nature of Cæsar to take his departure without having accomplished his
+      work. He accordingly ordered up at once reinforcements from Asia, and
+      meanwhile, till these arrived, made a show of the utmost self-possession.
+      Never was there greater gaiety in his camp than during this rest at
+      Alexandria, and while the beautiful and clever Cleopatra was not sparing
+      of her charms in general and least of all towards her judge, Cæsar also
+      appeared among all his victories to value most those won over beautiful
+      women. It was a merry prelude to graver scenes. Under the leadership of
+      Achilles and, as was afterwards proved, by the secret orders of the king
+      and his guardian, the Roman army of occupation stationed in Egypt appeared
+      unexpectedly in Alexandria, and, as soon as the citizens saw that it had
+      come to attack Cæsar, they made common cause with the soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a presence of mind, which in some measure justifies his
+      foolhardiness, Cæsar hastily collected his scattered men; seized the
+      persons of the king and his ministers; entrenched himself in the royal
+      residence and adjoining theatre; and gave orders, as there was no time to
+      place in safety the war-fleet stationed in the principal harbour
+      immediately in front of the theatre, that it should be set on fire and
+      that Pharos, the island with the light-tower commanding the harbour,
+      should be occupied by means of boats. Thus at least a restricted position
+      for defence was secured, and the way was kept open to procure supplies and
+      reinforcements. At the same time orders were issued to the commandant of
+      Asia Minor as well as to the nearest subject countries, the Syrians and
+      the Nabatæans, the Cretans and the Rhodians, to send men and ships in all
+      haste to Egypt. The insurrection, at the head of which the Princess
+      Arsinoë and her confidant, the eunuch Ganymedes, had placed themselves,
+      meanwhile had free course in all Egypt and in the greater part of the
+      capital. In the streets of the latter there was daily fighting, but
+      without success either on the part of Cæsar in gaining freer scope and
+      breaking through to the fresh water lake of Mariut which lay behind the
+      town, where he could have provided himself with water and forage; or on
+      the part of the Alexandrians in acquiring superiority in besieging and
+      depriving them of all drinking water; for, when the Nile canals in Cæsar&rsquo;s
+      part of the town had been spoiled by the introduction of salt water,
+      drinkable water was unexpectedly found in wells dug on the beach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Cæsar was not to be overcome from the landward side, the exertions of
+      the besiegers were directed to destroy his fleet and cut him off from the
+      sea, by which supplies reached him. The island with the lighthouse and the
+      mole by which this was connected with the mainland divided the harbour
+      into a western and an eastern half, which were in communication with each
+      other through two arch-openings in the mole. Cæsar commanded the island
+      and the east harbour, while the mole and the west harbour were in
+      possession of the citizens; and, as the Alexandrian fleet was burnt, his
+      vessels sailed in and out without hindrance. The Alexandrians, after
+      having vainly attempted to introduce fire-ships from the western into the
+      eastern harbour, equipped with the remnant of their arsenal a small
+      squadron, and with this blocked up the way of Cæsar&rsquo;s vessels, when these
+      were towing in a fleet of transports with a legion that had arrived from
+      Asia Minor; but the excellent Rhodian mariners of Cæsar mastered the
+      enemy. Not long afterwards, however, the citizens captured the
+      lighthouse-island, and from that point totally closed the narrow and rocky
+      mouth of the east harbour for larger ships; so that Cæsar&rsquo;s fleet was
+      compelled to take its station in the open roads before the east harbour,
+      and his communication with the sea hung only on a weak thread. Cæsar&rsquo;s
+      fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeatedly by the superior naval force
+      of the enemy, could neither shun the unequal strife, since the loss of the
+      lighthouse-island closed the inner harbour against it, nor yet withdraw,
+      for the loss of the roadstead would have debarred Cæsar wholly from the
+      sea. Though the brave legionaries, supported by the dexterity of the
+      Rhodian sailors, had always hitherto decided these conflicts in favour of
+      the Romans, the Alexandrians renewed and augmented their naval armaments
+      with unwearied perseverance; the besieged had to fight as often as it
+      pleased the besiegers, and, if the former should be on a signal occasion
+      vanquished, Cæsar would be totally hemmed in and probably lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was absolutely necessary to make an attempt to recover the
+      lighthouse-island. The double attack, which was made by boats from the
+      side of the harbour and by the war-vessels from the seaboard, in reality
+      brought not only the island but also the lower part of the mole into his
+      power; it was only at the second arch-opening of the mole that Cæsar
+      ordered the attack to be stopped, and the mole to be there closed towards
+      the city by a transverse wall. But while a violent conflict arose here
+      round the entrenchers, the Roman troops left the lower part of the mole
+      adjoining the island bare of defenders; a division of Egyptians landed
+      there unexpectedly, attacked in the rear the Roman soldiers and sailors
+      crowded together on the mole of the transverse wall, and drove the whole
+      mass in wild confusion into the sea. A part were taken on board by the
+      Roman ships; but more were drowned. Some four hundred soldiers and a still
+      greater number of men belonging to the fleet were sacrificed on this day;
+      the general himself, who had shared the fate of his men, had been obliged
+      to seek refuge in his ship, and, when this sank from having been
+      overloaded with men, he had to save himself by swimming to another. But,
+      severe as was the loss suffered, it was amply compensated by the recovery
+      of the lighthouse-island, which along with the mole as far as the first
+      arch-opening remained in the hands of Cæsar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length the longed-for relief arrived, Mithridates of Pergamus, an able
+      warrior of the school of Mithridates Eupator, whose natural son he claimed
+      to be, brought up by land from Syria a motley army,&mdash;the Ituræans of
+      the prince of the Libanus, the Bedouins of Jamblichus, son of
+      Sampsiceramus, the Jews under the minister Antipater, and the contingents
+      generally of the petty chiefs and communities of Cilicia and Syria. From
+      Pelusium, which Mithridates had the fortune to occupy on the day of his
+      arrival, he took the great road towards Memphis, with the view of avoiding
+      the intersected ground of the Delta and crossing the Nile before its
+      division; during which movement his troops received manifold support from
+      the Jewish peasants who were settled in this part of Egypt. The Egyptians,
+      with the young king Ptolemy now at their head, whom Cæsar had released to
+      his people in the vain hope of allaying the insurrection by his means,
+      despatched an army to the Nile, to detain Mithridates on its farther bank.
+      The army fell in with the enemy even beyond Memphis at the so-called Jews&rsquo;
+      camp, between Onion and Heliopolis; nevertheless Mithridates, trained in
+      the Roman fashion of manoeuvring and encamping, amidst successful
+      conflicts gained the opposite bank at Memphis. Cæsar, on the other hand,
+      as soon as he obtained news of the arrival of the relieving army, conveyed
+      a part of his troops in ships to the end of the lake of Morea to the west
+      of Alexandria, and marched round this lake and down the Nile to meet
+      Mithridates advancing up the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The junction took place without the enemy attempting to hinder it. Cæsar
+      then marched into the Delta, whither the king had retreated, overthrew,
+      notwithstanding the deeply cut canal in their front, the Egyptian vanguard
+      at the first onset, and immediately stormed the Egyptian camp itself. It
+      lay at the foot of a rising ground between the Nile&mdash;from which only
+      a narrow path separated it&mdash;and marshes difficult of access. Cæsar
+      caused the camp to be assailed simultaneously from the front and from the
+      flank on the path along the Nile; and during this assault ordered a third
+      detachment to ascend unseen the heights of the camp. The victory was
+      complete; the camp was taken, and those of the Egyptians who did not fall
+      beneath the sword of the enemy were drowned in the attempt to escape to
+      the fleet on the Nile. With one of the boats, which sank overladen with
+      men, the young king also disappeared in the waters of his native stream.
+      Immediately after the battle Cæsar advanced at the head of his cavalry
+      from the land side straight into the portion of the capital occupied by
+      the Egyptians. In mourning attire, with the images of their gods in their
+      hands, the enemy received him and sued for peace; and his troops, when
+      they saw him return as victor from the side opposite to that by which he
+      had set forth, welcomed him with boundless joy. The fate of the town,
+      which had ventured to thwart the plans of the master of the world and had
+      brought him within a hair&rsquo;s-breadth of destruction, lay in Cæsar&rsquo;s hands;
+      but he was too much of a ruler to be sensitive, and dealt with the
+      Alexandrians as with the Massiliots. Cæsar&mdash;pointing to their city
+      severely devastated and deprived of its granaries, of its world-renowned
+      library, and of other important public buildings on the occasion of the
+      burning of the fleet&mdash;exhorted the inhabitants in future earnestly to
+      cultivate the arts of peace alone, and to heal the wounds inflicted on
+      themselves; for the rest, he contented himself with granting to the Jews
+      settled in Alexandria the same rights which the Greek population of the
+      city enjoyed, and with placing in Alexandria instead of the previous Roman
+      army of occupation&mdash;which nominally at least obeyed the kings of
+      Egypt, a Roman garrison&mdash;two of the legions besieged there, and a
+      third which afterwards arrived from Syria&mdash;under a commander
+      nominated by himself. For this position of trust a man was purposely
+      selected whose birth made it impossible for him to abuse it&mdash;Rufio,
+      an able soldier, but the son of a freed man. Cleopatra and her younger
+      brother Ptolemy obtained the sovereignty of Egypt under the supremacy of
+      Rome; the Princess Arsinoë was carried off to Italy, that she might not
+      serve once more as a pretext for insurrections to the Egyptians, who were
+      after the Oriental fashion quite as much devoted to their dynasty as they
+      were indifferent towards the individual dynasts; and Cyprus became again a
+      part of the Roman province of Cilicia. Cæsar&rsquo;s love for Cleopatra, who had
+      just borne 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 the
+      kingdom in her own name, but on his behalf; and sailed for Italy, taking
+      with him the sixth legion. While engaged in this warfare in Alexandria,
+      Cæsar had been appointed dictator in Rome, where his power was exercised
+      by Mark Antony, his master of the horse; and for above six months he had
+      not written one letter home, as though ashamed to write about the foolish
+      difficulty he had entangled himself in, until he had got out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On reaching Rome Cæsar amused the people and himself with a grand
+      triumphal show, in which, among the other prisoners of war, the Princess
+      Arsinoë followed his car in chains; and, among the works of art and nature
+      which were got together to prove to the gazing crowd the greatness of his
+      conquests, was that remarkable African animal the camelopard, then for the
+      first time seen in Rome. In one chariot was a statue of the Nile god; and
+      in another the Pharos lighthouse on fire, with painted flames. Nor was
+      this the last of Cæsar&rsquo;s triumphs, for soon afterwards Cleopatra, and her
+      brother Ptolemy, then twelve years old, who was called her husband, came
+      to Rome as his guests, and dwelt for some time with him in his house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The history of Egypt, at this time, is almost lost in that of Rome. Within
+      five years of Cæsar&rsquo;s landing in Alexandria, and finding that by the death
+      of Pompey he was master of the world, he paid his own life as the forfeit
+      for crushing his country&rsquo;s liberty. The Queen of Egypt, with her infant
+      son Cæsarion about four years old, was then in Rome, living with Cæsar in
+      his villa on the farther side of the Tiber. On Cæsar&rsquo;s death her first
+      wish was to get the child acknowledged by the Roman senate as her
+      colleague on the throne of Egypt, and as a friend of the Roman people.
+      With this view she applied to Cicero for help, making him an offer of some
+      books or works of art; but he was offended at her haughtiness and refused
+      her gifts. Besides, she was more likely to thwart than to help the cause
+      for which he was struggling. He was alarmed at hearing that she was soon
+      to give birth to another child. He did not want any more Cæsars. He hoped
+      she would miscarry, as he wished she had before miscarried. So he bluntly
+      refused to undertake her cause. On this she thought herself unsafe in
+      Rome, she fled privately, and reached Egypt in safety with Cæsarion; but
+      we hear of no second child by Julius. The Romans were now the masters of
+      Egypt, and Cleopatra could hardly hope to reign but by the help of one of
+      the great generals who were struggling for the sovereignty of the
+      republic. Among these was the young Sextus Pompeius, whose large fleet
+      made him for a time master of Sicily and of the sea; and he was said to
+      have been admitted by the Queen of Egypt as a lover. But he was able to be
+      of but little use to her in return for her favours, as his fleet was soon
+      defeated by Octavianus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cæsar had left behind him, in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, a large
+      body of Roman troops, in the pay and nominally under the orders of
+      Cleopatra, but in reality to keep Egypt in obedience. There they lived as
+      if above all Egyptian law or Roman discipline, indulging in the vices of
+      that luxurious capital. When some of them in a riot, in the year 45 B.C.,
+      killed two sons of Bibulus the consul, Cleopatra was either afraid or
+      unable to punish the murderers; the most she could do was to get them sent
+      in chains into Syria to the grieving father, who with true greatness of
+      mind sent them back to the Egyptian legions, saying that it was for the
+      senate to punish them, not for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Ptolemy her second husband was a boy and could claim no share of the
+      government, he was allowed to live with all the outward show of royalty,
+      but as soon as he reached the age of fifteen, in B.C. 44, at which he
+      might call himself her equal and would soon be her master, Cleopatra had
+      him put to death. She had then reigned four years with her elder brother
+      and four years with her younger brother, and from that time forward she
+      reigned alone, calling her child by Cæsar her colleague on the throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a time when vice and luxury claimed the thoughts of all who were not
+      busy in the civil wars, we cannot hope to find the fruits of genius in
+      Alexandria; but the mathematics are plants of a hardy growth, and are not
+      choked so easily as poetry and history. Sosigenes was then the first
+      astronomer in Egypt, and Julius Cæsar was guided by his advice in setting
+      right the Roman Calendar. He was a careful and painstaking mathematician,
+      and, after fixing the length of the year at three hundred and sixty-five
+      days and a quarter, he three times changed the beginning of the year, in
+      his doubts as to the day on which the equinox fell; for the astronomer
+      could then only make two observations in a year with a view to learn the
+      time of the equinox, by seeing when the sun shone in the plane of the
+      equator. Photinus the mathematician wrote both on arithmetic and geometry,
+      and was usually thought the author of a mathematical work published in the
+      name of the queen, called the Canon of Cleopatra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Didymus was another of the writers that we hear of at that time. He was a
+      man of great industry, both in reading and writing; but when we are told
+      that he wrote three thousand five hundred volumes, or rolls, it rather
+      teaches us that a great many rolls of papyrus would be wanted to make a
+      modern book, than what number of books he wrote. These writings were
+      mostly on verbal criticism, and all have long since perished except some
+      notes or scholia on the Hiad and Odyssey which bear his name, and are
+      still printed in some editions of Homer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dioscorides, the physician of Cleopatra, has left a work on herbs and
+      minerals, and on their uses in medicine; also on poisons and poisonous
+      bites. To these he has added a list of prescriptions. His works have been
+      much read in all ages, and have only been set aside by the discoveries of
+      the last few centuries. Serapion, another physician, was perhaps of this
+      reign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0034" id="linkCimage-0034">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/333.jpg" width="100%" alt="333.jpg Ruins of Hermonthis " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      He followed medicine rather than surgery; and, while trusting chiefly to
+      his experience gained in clinical or bedside practice, was laughed at by
+      the surgeons as an empiric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The small temple at Hermonthis, near Thebes, seems to have been built in
+      this reign, and it is dedicated to Mandoo, or the sun, in the name of
+      Cleopatra and Cassation. It is unlike the older Egyptian temples in being
+      much less of a fortress; for what in them is a strongly walled courtyard,
+      with towers to guard the narrow doorway, is here a small space between two
+      double rows of columns, wholly open, without walls, while the roofed
+      building is the same as in the older temples. Near it is a small pool,
+      seventy feet square, with stone sides, which was used in the funerals and
+      other religious rites.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The murder of Cæsar did not raise the character of the Romans, or make
+      them more fit for self-government. It was followed by the well-known civil
+      war; and when, by the battle of Philippi and the death of Brutus and
+      Cassius, his party was again uppermost, the Romans willingly bowed their
+      necks to his adopted son Octavianus, and his friend Mark Antony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not easy to determine which side Cleopatra meant to take in the war
+      between Antony and the murderers of Cæsar; she did not openly declare
+      herself, and she probably waited to join that which fortune favoured.
+      Allienus had been sent to her by Dolobella to ask for such troops as she
+      could spare to help Antony, and he led a little army of four Roman legions
+      out of Egypt into Syria; but when there he added them to the force which
+      Cassius had assembled against Antony. Whether he acted through treachery
+      to the queen or by her orders is doubtful, for Cassius felt more gratitude
+      to Allienus than to Cleopatra. Serapion also, the Egyptian governor of
+      Cyprus, joined what was then the stronger side, and sent all the ships
+      that he had in his ports to the assistance of Cassius. Cleopatra herself
+      was getting ready another large fleet, but since the war was over, and
+      Brutus and Cassius dead before it sailed, she said it was meant to help
+      Octavianus and Antony. Thus, by the acts of her generals and her own
+      hesitation, Cleopatra fairly laid herself open to the reproach of
+      ingratitude to her late friend Cæsar, or at least of thinking that the
+      interests of his son Cæsarion were opposed to those of his nephew
+      Octavianus; and accordingly, as Antony was passing through Cilicia with
+      his army, he sent orders to her to come from Egypt and meet him at Tarsus,
+      to answer the charge of having helped Brutus and Cassius in the late
+      military campaign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dellius, the bearer of the message, showed that he understood the meaning
+      of it, by beginning himself to pay court to her as his queen. He advised
+      her to go, like Juno in the Iliad, &ldquo;tricked in her best attire,&rdquo; and told
+      her that she had nothing to fear from the kind and gallant Antony. On this
+      she sailed for Cilicia laden with money and treasures for presents, full
+      of trust in her beauty and power of pleasing. She had won the heart of
+      Cæsar when, though younger, she was less skilled in the arts of love, and
+      she was still only twenty-five years old; and, carrying with her such
+      gifts and treasures as became her rank, she entered the river Cydnus with
+      the Egyptian fleet in a magnificent galley. The stern was covered with
+      gold; the sails were of scarlet cloth: and the silver oars beat time to
+      the music of flutes and harps. The queen, dressed like Venus, lay under an
+      awning embroidered with gold, while pretty dimpled boys, like Cupids,
+      stood on each side of the sofa fanning her. Her maidens, dressed like
+      sea-nymphs and graces, handled the silken tackle and steered the vessel.
+      As she approached the town of Tarsus the winds wafted the perfumes and the
+      scent of the burning incense to the shores, which were lined with crowds
+      who had come out to see her land; and Antony, who was seated on the
+      tribunal waiting to receive her, found himself left alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tarsus on the river Cydnus was situated at the foot of the wooded slopes
+      of Mount Taurus, and it guarded the great pass in that range between the
+      Phrygian tribes and the Phoenician tribes. It was a city half-Greek and
+      half-Asiatic, and had from the earliest days been famed for ship-building
+      and commerce. Mount Taurus supplied it with timber, and around the mouth
+      of its river, as it widens into a quiet lake, were the ancient dockyards
+      which had made the ships of Tarshish proverbial with the Hebrew writers.
+      Its merchants, enriched by industry and enlightened by foreign trade, had
+      ornamented their city with public buildings, and established a school of
+      Greek learning. Its philosophers, however, were more known as travelling
+      teachers than as scholars. No learned men came to Tarsus; but it sent
+      forth its rhetoricians in its own ships, who spread themselves as teachers
+      over the neighbouring coasts. In Rome there were more professors of
+      rhetoric, oratory, and poetry from Tarsus than from Alexandria or Athens.
+      Athenodorus Cordylion, the stoic, taught Cato; Athenodorus, the son of
+      Sandon, taught Cæsar; Nestor a little later taught the young Marcellus;
+      while Demetrius was one of the first men of learning who sailed to the
+      distant island of Britain. This school, in the next generation, sent forth
+      the apostle Paul, who taught Christianity throughout the same coasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tarsus was now to be amused by the costly follies and extravagances of
+      Cleopatra. As an initial display, soon after landing, she invited Antony
+      and his generals to a dinner, at which the whole of the dishes placed
+      before them were of gold, set with precious stones, and the room and the
+      twelve couches were ornamented with purple and gold. On his praising the
+      splendour of the sight, as passing anything he had before seen, she said
+      it was a trifle, and begged that he would take the whole of it as a gift
+      from her. The next day he again dined with her, and brought a larger
+      number of his friends and generals, and was of course startled to see a
+      costliness which made that of the day before seem nothing; and she again
+      gave him the whole of the gold upon the table, and gave to each of his
+      friends the couch upon which he sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These costly and delicate dinners were continued every day; and one
+      evening, when Antony playfully blamed her wastefulness, and said that it
+      was not possible to fare in a more costly manner, she told him that the
+      dinner of the next day should cost ten thousand ses-tertia, or three
+      hundred thousand dollars. This he would not believe, and laid her a wager
+      that she would fail in her promise. When the day came the dinner was as
+      grand and dainty as those of the former days; but when Antony called upon
+      her to count up the cost of the meats and wines, she said that she did not
+      reckon them, but that she should herself soon eat and drink the ten
+      thousand sestertia. She wore in her ears two pearls, the largest known in
+      the world, which, like the diamonds of European kings, had come to her
+      with her crown and kingdom, and were together valued at that large sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0035" id="linkCimage-0035">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:50%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/338.jpg"
+       alt="338.jpg Egyptian Picture of Cleopatra " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      On the servants removing the meats, they set before her a glass of
+      vinegar, and she took one of these earrings from her ear and dropped it
+      into the glass, and when dissolved drank it off. Plancus, one of the
+      guests, who had been made judge of the wager, snatched the other from the
+      queen&rsquo;s ear, and saved it from being drunk up like the first, and then
+      declared that Antony had lost his bet. The pearl which was saved was
+      afterwards cut in two and made into a pair of earrings for the statue of
+      Venus in the Pantheon at Rome; and the fame of the wager may be said to
+      have made the two half pearls at least as valuable as the two whole ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beauty, sweetness, and gaiety of this young queen, joined to her great
+      powers of mind, which were all turned to the art of pleasing, had quite
+      overcome Antony; he had sent for her as her master, but he was now her
+      slave. Her playful wit was delightful; her voice was as an instrument of
+      many strings; she spoke readily to every ambassador in his own language;
+      and was said to be the only sovereign of Egypt who could understand the
+      languages of all her subjects: Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopie, Troglodytic,
+      Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. With these charms, at the age of
+      five-and-twenty, the luxurious Antony could deny her nothing. The first
+      favour which she asked of her lover equals any cruelty that we have met
+      with in this history: it was, that he would have her sister Arsinoë put to
+      death. Cæsar had spared her life, after his triumph, through love of
+      Cleopatra; but he was mistaken in the heart of his mistress; she would
+      have been then better pleased at Arsinoe&rsquo;s death; and Antony, at her
+      bidding, had her murdered in the temple of Diana, at Ephesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Fulvia, the faithful wife of Antony, could scarcely keep together
+      his party at Rome against the power of Octavianus, his colleague in the
+      triumvirate, and though Labienus, with the Parthian legions, was ready to
+      march into Syria against him, yet he was so entangled in the artful nets
+      of Cleopatra, that she led him captive to Alexandria; and there the old
+      warrior fell into every idle amusement, and offered up at the shrine of
+      pleasure one of the greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of his time. The
+      lovers visited each other every day, and the waste of their entertainments
+      passed belief. Philotas, a physician who was following his studies at
+      Alexandria, told Plutarch&rsquo;s grandfather that he was once invited to see
+      Antony&rsquo;s dinner cooked, and among other meats were eight wild boars
+      roasting whole; and the cook explained to him that, though there were only
+      twelve guests, yet as each dish had to be roasted to a single turn of the
+      spit, and Antony did not know at what hour he should dine, it was
+      necessary to cook at least eight dinners. But the most costly of the
+      luxuries then used in Egypt were the scents and the ointments. Gold,
+      silver, and jewels, as Pliny remarks, will pass to a man&rsquo;s heirs, even
+      clothes will last a few months or weeks, but scents fly off and are lost
+      at the first moment that they are admired; and yet ointments, like the
+      attar of roses, which melted and gave out their scent, and passed into air
+      when placed upon the back of the hand, as the coolest part of the body,
+      were sold for four hundred denarii the pound. But the ointment was not
+      meant to be used quite so wastefully. It was usually sealed up in small
+      alabaster jars, which were made in the town of Alabastron, on the east of
+      the Nile, and thence received their name. These were long in shape,
+      without a foot, and had a narrow mouth. They were meant never to be
+      opened, but to let the scent escape slowly and sparingly through the
+      porous stone. In these Egyptian jars scented ointment was carried by trade
+      to the banks of the Tigris and to the shores of the Mediterranean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tenth and eleventh years of the queen&rsquo;s reign were marked by a famine
+      through the land, caused by the Nile&rsquo;s not rising to the wished-for height
+      and by the want of the usual overflow; and an inscription which was
+      written both in the Greek and Egyptian languages declares the gratitude of
+      the Theban priests and elders and citizens to Callimachus, the prefect of
+      the Theban taxes, who did what he could to lessen the sufferings in that
+      city. The citizens of Alexandria on those years received from the
+      government a smaller gift of corn than usual, and the Jews then felt their
+      altered rank in the state. They were told that they were not citizens, and
+      accordingly received no portion whatever out of the public granaries, but
+      were left like the Egyptians to take care of themselves. From this time
+      forward there was an unceasing quarrel between Greeks and Jews in the city
+      of Alexandria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cleopatra, who held her power at the pleasure of the Roman legions, spared
+      no pains to please Antony. She had borne him first a son named Ptolemy,
+      and then a son and daughter, twins, Alexander Helius and Cleopatra Selene,
+      or <i>Sun</i> and <i>Moon</i>. She gamed, she drank, she hunted, she
+      reviewed the troops with him, and, to humour his coarser tastes, she
+      followed him, in his midnight rambles through the city, in the dress of a
+      servant; and nothing that youth, beauty, wealth, and elegance could do to
+      throw a cloak over the grossness of vice and crime was forgotten by her.
+      The biographer thought it waste of time to mention all Cleopatra&rsquo;s arts
+      and Antony&rsquo;s follies, but the story of his fishing was not to be
+      forgotten. One day, when sitting in the boat with her, he caught but
+      little, and was vexed at her seeing his want of success. So he ordered one
+      of his men to dive into the water and put upon his hook a fish which had
+      been before taken. Cleopatra, however, saw what was being done, and
+      quietly took the hint for a joke of her own. The next day she brought a
+      larger number of friends to see the fishing, and, when Antony let down his
+      line, she ordered one of her divers to put on the hook a salted fish. The
+      line was then drawn up and the fish landed amid no little mirth of their
+      friends; and Cleopatra playfully consoled him, saying: &ldquo;Well, general, you
+      may leave fishing to us petty princes of Pharos and Canopus; your game is
+      cities, provinces, and kingdoms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Antony&rsquo;s eldest son by Fulvia came to Alexandria at this time, and lived
+      in the same princely style with his father. Philotas the physician lived
+      in his service, and one day at supper when Philotas silenced a tiresome
+      talker with a foolish sophism the young Antony gave him as a reward the
+      whole sideboard of plate. But in the middle of this gaiety and feasting
+      Antony was recalled to Europe by letters which told him that his wife and
+      brother had been driven out of Rome by Octavianus. Before, however, he
+      reached Rome his wife Fulvia was dead; and, wishing to strengthen his
+      party, he at once married Octavia, the sister of Octavianus and widow of
+      Marcellus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that year Herod passed through Egypt on his way to Rome to claim Judæa
+      as his kingdom. He came through Arabia to Pelusium, and thence he sailed
+      to Alexandria. Cleopatra, who wanted his services, gave him honourable
+      entertainment in her capital, and made him great offers in order to
+      persuade him to take the command of her army. But the Jewish prince saw
+      that a kingdom was to be gained by offering his services to Antony and
+      Octavianus; and he went on to Rome. There through the friendship of Antony
+      he was declared King of Judæa by the senate. He then returned to Syria to
+      collect an army and to win the kingdom which had been granted to him; and
+      by the help of Sosius, Antony&rsquo;s lieutenant, he had conquered Jerusalem
+      when the war broke out between Antony and Octavianus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the next year (B.C. 38) Antony was himself in Syria, carrying on the
+      war which ended with the battle of Actium; and he sent to Alexandria to
+      beg Cleopatra to join him there. On her coming, he made her perhaps the
+      largest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress: he gave her the wide
+      provinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part of
+      Judæa, and part of Arabia Nabataea. These large gifts only made her ask
+      for more, and she begged him to put to death Herod, King of Judæa, and
+      Malichus, King of Arabia Nabataea, the former of whom had advised Antony
+      to break through the disgraceful ties which bound him to Cleopatra, as the
+      only means of saving himself from being crushed by the rising power of
+      Octavianus. She asked to have the whole of Arabia and Judæa given to her.
+      But Antony had not so far forgotten himself as to yield to these commands;
+      and he only gave her the balsam country around Jericho, and a rent-charge
+      of two hundred talents, or one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a year,
+      on the revenues of Judæa. On receiving this large addition to her kingdom,
+      and perhaps in honour of Antony, who had then lost all power in Italy but
+      was the real king of Egypt and its Greek provinces, Cleopatra began to
+      count the years of her reign afresh: what was really the sixteenth of her
+      reign, and had been called the sixteenth of Ptolemy, her elder brother,
+      she called the first of her own reign, and she reckoned them in the same
+      way till her death. Cleopatra had accompanied Antony on his expedition
+      against Armenia, as far as the river Euphrates, and returned through
+      Damascus to Judæa. There she was politely received by her enemy Herod, who
+      was too much in fear of Antony to take his revenge on her. She farmed out
+      to him the revenues of her parts of Arabia and Judæa, and was accompanied
+      by him on her way towards Egypt. But after wondering at the wasteful
+      feasts and gifts, in which pearls and provinces were alike trifled with,
+      we are reminded that even Cleopatra was of the family of the Lagido, and
+      that she was well aware how 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 amends for this, Antony gave her the large library of
+      the city of Pergamus, by which Eumenes and Attalus had hoped to raise a
+      school that should equal the museum of Alexandria. Cleopatra placed these
+      two hundred thousand volumes in the temple of Serapis; and Alexandria
+      again held the largest library in the world; while Pergamus ceased to be a
+      place of learning. By the help of this new library, the city still kept
+      its trade in books and its high rank as a school of letters; and, when the
+      once proud kingdom of Egypt was a province of Rome, and when almost every
+      trace of the monarchy was lost, and half a century afterwards Philo, the
+      Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, asked, &ldquo;Where are now the Ptolemies?&rdquo;
+       the historian could have found an answer by pointing to the mathematical
+      schools and the library of the Serapeum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to return to our history. When Antony left Cleopatra, he marched
+      against the Parthians, and on his return he again entered Alexandria in
+      triumph, leading Artavasdes, King of Armenia, chained behind his chariot
+      as he rode in procession through the city. He soon afterwards made known
+      his plans for the government of Egypt and the provinces. He called
+      together the Alexandrians in the Gymnasium, and, seating himself and
+      Cleopatra on two golden thrones, he declared her son Cæsarion her
+      colleague, and that they should hold Egypt, Cyprus, Africa, and
+      Coele-Syria. To her sons by himself he gave the title of kings the
+      children of kings; and to Alexander, though still a child, he gave Armenia
+      and Media, with Parthia when it should be conquered; and to Ptolemy he
+      gave Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Cleopatra wore the sacred robe of
+      Isis, and took the title of the New Isis, while the young Alexander wore a
+      Median dress with turban and tiara, and the little Ptolemy a long cloak
+      and slippers, with a bonnet encircled by a diadem, like the successors of
+      Alexander. Antony himself wore an Eastern scimetar by his side, and a
+      royal diadem round Ins head, as being not less a sovereign than Cleopatra.
+      To Cleopatra he then gave the whole of his Parthian booty, and his
+      prisoner Tigranes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0036" id="linkCimage-0036">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/346.jpg"
+       alt="346.jpg Coin of Cleopatra and Anthony " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      But notwithstanding Antony&rsquo;s love for Cleopatra, her falsehood and cruelty
+      were such that when his power in Rome fell he could no longer trust her.
+      He even feared that she might have him poisoned, and would not eat or
+      drink in her palace without having the food first tasted herself. But she
+      had no such thoughts, and only laughed at him for his distrust. One day to
+      prove her power, and at the same time her good faith, she had the flowers
+      with which he was to be crowned, as he reclined at her dinner-table,
+      dipped in deadly poison. Antony dined with these round his head, while she
+      wore a crown of fresh flowers. During the dinner Cleopatra playfully took
+      off her garland and dipped it in her cup to flavour the wine, and Antony
+      did the same with his poisoned flowers, steeping them in his own cup of
+      wine. He even raised it to his lips to drink, when she hastily caught hold
+      of his hand. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I am the enemy against whom you have
+      latterly been so careful. If I could have endured to live without you,
+      that draught would have given me the opportunity.&rdquo; She then ordered the
+      wine to be taken to one of the condemned criminals, and sent Antony out to
+      see that the man died on drinking it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the early coins of Cleopatra we see her head on the one side and the
+      eagle or the cornucopia on the other side, with the name of &ldquo;<i>Queen
+      Cleopatra</i>.&rdquo; After she had borne Antony children, we find the words
+      round their heads, &ldquo;<i>Of Antony, on the conquest of Armenia;&rdquo; &ldquo;Of
+      Cleopatra the queen, and of the kings the children of kings</i>.&rdquo; On the
+      later coins we find the head of Antony joined with hers, as king and
+      queen, and he is styled &ldquo;<i>the emperor</i>&rdquo; and she &ldquo;<i>the young goddess</i>.&rdquo;
+       Cleopatra was perhaps the last Greek sovereign that bore the title of god.
+      Nor did it seem unsuitable to her, so common had the Greeks of Asia and
+      Egypt made that epithet, by giving it to their kings, and even to their
+      kings&rsquo; families and favourites. But the use of the word made no change in
+      their religious opinions; they never for a moment supposed that the
+      persons whom they so styled had any share in the creation and government
+      of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0037" id="linkCimage-0037">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/347.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="347.jpg Later Coin of Cleopatra and Antony. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img alt="348 (36K)" src="images/348.jpg" width="100%" />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The death of Julius Cæsar and afterwards of Brutus and Cassius had left
+      Antony with the chief sway in the Roman world; but his life of pleasure in
+      Egypt had done much to forfeit it; and Octavianus, afterwards called
+      Augustus, had been for some time rising in power against him. His party,
+      however, was still strong enough in Rome to choose for consul his friend
+      Soslus, who put the head of Antony on one side of his coins, and the
+      Egyptian eagle and thunderbolt on the other. Soon afterwards Antony was
+      himself chosen as consul elect for the coming year, and he then struck his
+      last coins in Egypt. The rude copper coins have on one side the name of &ldquo;<i>The
+      queen, the young goddess</i>,&rdquo; and on the other side of &ldquo;<i>Antony, Consul
+      a third time</i>.&rdquo; But he never was consul for the third time; before the
+      day of entering on the office he was made an enemy of Rome by the senate.
+      Octavianus, however, would not declare war against him, but declared war
+      against Cleopatra, or rather, as he said, against Mardion her slave, Iris
+      her waiting-woman, and Charmion, another favourite woman; for these had
+      the chief management of Antony&rsquo;s affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of the year B.C. 31, which was to end with the battle of
+      Actium, Octavianus held Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Carthage, with an army of
+      eighty thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and a fleet of two hundred
+      and fifty ships: Antony held Egypt, Ethiopia, and Cyrene, with one hundred
+      thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and five hundred ships; he was
+      followed by the kings of Africa, Upper Cilicia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia,
+      Commagene, and Thrace; and he received help from 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. Cleopatra was confident of success and
+      as boastful as she was confident. Her most solemn manner of promising was:
+      &ldquo;As surely as I shall issue my decrees from the Roman Capitol.&rdquo; But the
+      mind of Antony was ruined by his life of pleasure. He carried her with him
+      into battle, at once his strength and his weakness, and he was beaten at
+      sea by Octavianus, on the coast of Epirus, near Actium. This battle, which
+      sealed the fate of Antony, of Egypt, and of Rome, would never have been
+      spoken of in history if he had then had the courage to join his land
+      forces; but he sailed away in a fright with Cleopatra, leaving an army
+      larger than that of Octavianus, which would not believe that he was gone.
+      They landed at Parastonium in Libya, where he remained in the desert with
+      Aristocrates the rhetorician and one or two other friends, and sent
+      Cleopatra forward to Alexandria. There she talked of carrying her ships
+      across the isthmus to the head of the Red Sea, along the canal from
+      Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, and thence flying to some unknown land from
+      the power of the conqueror. Antony soon however followed her, but not to
+      join in society. He locked himself up in his despair in a small fortress
+      by the side of the harbour, which he named his Timonium, after Timon, the
+      Athenian philosopher who forsook the society of men. When the news,
+      however, arrived that his land forces had joined Octavianus, and his
+      allies had deserted him, he came out of his Timonium and joined the queen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Alexandria, Antony and Cleopatra only so far regained their courage as
+      to forget their losses, and to plunge into the same round of costly feasts
+      and shows that they had amused themselves with before their fall; but,
+      while they were wasting these few weeks in pleasure, Octavianus was moving
+      his fleet and army upon Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he landed on the coast, Egypt held three millions of people; he might
+      have been met by three hundred thousand men able to bear arms. As for
+      money, which has sometimes been called the sinews of war, though there
+      might have been none in the treasury, yet it could not have been wanting
+      in Alexandria. But the Egyptians, like the ass in the fable, had nothing
+      to fear from a change of masters; they could hardly be kicked and cuffed
+      worse than they had been; and, though they themselves were the prize
+      struggled for, they looked on with the idle stare of a bystander. Some few
+      of the garrisons made a show of holding out; but, as Antony had left the
+      whole of his army in Greece when he fled away after the battle of Actium,
+      he had lost all chance of safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Pelusium was taken, it was said by some that Seleucus the commander
+      had given it up by Cleopatra&rsquo;s orders; but the queen, to justify herself,
+      put the wife and children of Seleucus into the hands of Antony to be
+      punished if he thought fit. When Octavianus arrived in front of Alexandria
+      he encamped not far from the hippodrome, a few miles from the Canopic or
+      eastern gate. On this Antony made a brisk sally, and, routing the Roman
+      cavalry, returned to the city in triumph. On his way to the palace he met
+      Cleopatra, whom he kissed, armed as he was, and recommended to her favour
+      a brave soldier who had done good service in the battle. She gave the man
+      a cuirass and helmet of gold; but he saw that Antony&rsquo;s cause was ruined;
+      his new-gotten treasure made him selfish, and he went over to the enemy&rsquo;s
+      camp that very night. The next morning Antony ordered out his forces, both
+      on land and sea, to engage with those of Octavianus; but he was betrayed
+      by his generals: his fleet and cavalry deserted him without a blow being
+      struck; and his infantry, easily routed, retreated into the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0038" id="linkCimage-0038">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:44%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/351.jpg"
+       alt="351.jpg Greek Picture of Cleopatra " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      Cleopatra had never acted justly towards her Jewish subjects; and, during
+      a late famine, had denied to them their share of the wheat distributed out
+      of the public granaries to the citizens of Alexandria. The Jews in return
+      showed no loyalty to Cleopatra, nor regret at her enemy&rsquo;s success; and on
+      this defeat of her troops her rage fell upon them. She made a boast of her
+      cruelty towards them, and thought if she could have killed all the Jews
+      with her own hand she should have been repaid for the loss of the city. On
+      the other hand, Antony thought that he had been betrayed by Cleopatra, as
+      she had received many messengers from Octavianus. To avoid his anger,
+      therefore, she fled to a monument which she had built near the temple of
+      Isis, and in which she had before placed her treasure, her gold, silver,
+      emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory, and cinnamon, together with a large
+      quantity of flax and a number of torches, as though to burn herself and
+      her wealth in one flame. Here she retired with two of her women, and
+      secured herself with bars and bolts, and sent word to Antony that she was
+      dead. Antony, when he heard it, believing that she had killed herself, and
+      wishing not to be outdone in courage by a woman, plunged his sword into
+      his breast. But the wound was not fatal, and when Cleopatra heard of it
+      she sent to beg that he would come to her. Accordingly his servants
+      carried him to the door of her monument. But the queen, in fear of
+      treachery, would not suffer the door to be opened; but she let a cord down
+      from the window, and she with her two women drew him up. Nothing could be
+      more affecting than the sight to all who were near; Antony covered with
+      blood, in the agonies of death, stretching out his hands to Cleopatra, and
+      she straining every nerve and every feature of her face with the effort
+      she was making. He was at last lifted in at the window, but died soon
+      afterwards. By this time the city was in the power of Octavianus; he had
+      not found it necessary to storm the walls, for Antony&rsquo;s troops had all
+      joined him, and he sent in Gallus to endeavour to take Cleopatra alive.
+      This he succeeded in doing by drawing her into conversation at the door of
+      her monument, while three men scaled the window and snatched out of her
+      hand the dagger with which she would have stabbed herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Octavianus, henceforth called Augustus, began by promising his soldiers
+      two hundred and fifty drachmas each as prize money, for not being allowed
+      to plunder Alexandria. He soon afterwards entered the city, not on
+      horseback armed at the head of his victorious legions, but on foot,
+      leaning on the arm of the philosopher Arius; and, as he wished to be
+      thought as great a lover of learning as of mercy, he gave out that he
+      spared the place to the prayers of his Alexandrian friend. He called the
+      Greek citizens together in the gymnasium, and, mounting the tribunal,
+      promised that they should not be hurt. Cleopatra&rsquo;s three children by
+      Antony, who had not the misfortune to be of the same blood with the
+      conqueror, were kindly treated and taken care of; while Cæsarion, her son
+      by Julius Cæsar, who was betrayed by his tutor Rhodon while flying towards
+      Ethiopia, was put to death as a rival. The flatterers of the conqueror
+      would of course say that Cæsarion was not the son of Julius, but of
+      Ptolemy, the elder of the two boys who had been called Cleopatra&rsquo;s
+      husbands. The feelings of humanity might have answered that, if he was not
+      the only son of the uncle to whom Octavianus owed everything, he was at
+      least helpless and friendless, and that he never could trouble the
+      undisputed master of the world; but Augustus, with the heartless cruelty
+      which murdered Cicero, and the cold caution which marked his character
+      through life, listening to the remark of Arius, that there ought not to be
+      two Cæsars, had him at once put to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Augustus gave orders that Cleopatra should be carefully guarded lest she
+      should put an end to her own life; he wished to carry her with him to Rome
+      as the ornament of his triumph. He paid her a visit of condolence and
+      consolation. He promised her she should receive honourable treatment. He
+      allowed her to bury Antony. He threatened that her children should be
+      punished if she hurt herself; but she deceived her guards and put herself
+      to death, either by poison, or, as was more commonly thought, by the bite
+      of an asp brought to her in a basket of fruit. She was thirty-nine years
+      of age, having reigned twenty-two years, of which the last seven were in
+      conjunction with Antony; and she was buried in his tomb with all regal
+      splendour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The death of Cleopatra was hailed at Rome as a relief from a sad disgrace
+      by others besides the flatterers of the conqueror. When governed by Julius
+      Cæsar, and afterwards by Antony, the Romans sometimes fancied they were
+      receiving orders from the barbarian queen to whom their master was a
+      slave. When Antony was in arms against his countrymen, they were not
+      without alarm at Cleopatra&rsquo;s boast that she would yet make her power felt
+      in the Capitol; and many feared that even when Antony was overthrown the
+      conqueror might himself be willing to wear her chains. But the prudent
+      Augustus was in no danger of being dazzled by beauty. He saw clearly all
+      that was within his reach; he did not want her help to the sovereignty of
+      Egypt; and from the day that he entered the empty palace in Alexandria,
+      his reign began as sole master of Rome and its dependent provinces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While we have in this history been looking at the Romans from afar, and
+      only seen their dealings with foreign kings, we have been able to note
+      some of the changes in their manners nearly as well as if we had stood in
+      the Forum. When Epiphanes, Philometor, and Euergetes II. owed their crowns
+      to Roman help, Rome gained nothing but thanks, and that weight in their
+      councils which is fairly due to usefulness: the senate asked for no
+      tribute, and the citizens took no bribes. But with the growth of power
+      came the love of conquest and of its spoils. Macedonia was conquered in
+      what might be called self-defence; in the reign of Cleopatra Cocce, Cyrene
+      was won by fraud, and Cyprus was then seized without a plea. The senators
+      were even more eager for bribes than the senate for provinces. The nobles
+      who governed these wide provinces grew too powerful for the senate, and
+      found that they could heap up ill-gotten wealth faster by patronising
+      kings than by conquering them; and the Egyptian monarchy was left to stand
+      in the reigns of Auletes and Cleopatra, because the Romans were still more
+      greedy than when they seized Cyrene and Cyprus. And, lastly, when the
+      Romans were worn out by quarrels and the want of a steady government, and
+      were ready to obey any master who could put a stop to civil bloodshed,
+      they made Octavianus autocrat of Rome; he then gained for himself whatever
+      he seized in the name of the republic, and he at once put an end to the
+      Egyptian monarchy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus fell the family of the Ptolemies, a family that had perhaps done more
+      for arts and letters than any that can be pointed out in history. Like
+      other kings who have bought the praises of poets, orators, and historians,
+      they may have misled the talents which they wished to guide, and have
+      smothered the fire which they seemed to foster; but, in rewarding the
+      industry of the mathematicians and anatomists, of the critics,
+      commentators, and compilers, they seem to have been highly successful. It
+      is true that Alexandria never sent forth works with the high tone of
+      philosophy, the lofty moral aim and the pure taste which mark the writings
+      of Greece in its best ages, and which ennoble the mind and mend the heart;
+      but it was the school to which the world long looked for knowledge in all
+      those sciences which help the body and improve the arts of life, and which
+      are sometimes called useful knowledge. Though great and good actions may
+      not have been unknown in Alexandria, so few valued them that none took the
+      trouble to record them. The well-paid writers never wrote the lives of the
+      Ptolemies. The muse of history had no seat in the museum, but it was
+      almost the birthplace of anatomy, geometry, conic sections, geography,
+      astronomy, and hydrostatics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0039" id="linkCimage-0039">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
+      <img src="images/357.jpg" width="100%"
+       alt="357.jpg Grand Column at Karnak " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      If we retrace the steps by which this Græco-Egyptian monarchy rose and
+      fell, we shall see that virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, care and
+      thoughtlessness, were for the most part followed by the rewards which to
+      us seem natural. The Egyptian gold which first tempted the Greeks into the
+      country, and then helped their energies to raise the monarchy, afterwards
+      undermined those same energies, and became one of the principal causes of
+      its final overthrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Ptolemy Soter we see plain manners, careful plans, untiring activity,
+      and a wise choice of friends. By him talents were highly paid wherever
+      they were found; no service left unrewarded; the people trusted and taught
+      the use of arms; their love gained by wise laws and even-handed justice;
+      docks, harbours, and fortresses built, schools opened; and by these means
+      a great monarchy founded. Ptolemy was eager to fill the ranks of his
+      armies with soldiers, and his new city with traders. Instead of trying to
+      govern against the will of the people, to thwart or overlook their wishes
+      and feelings, his utmost aim was to guide them, and to make Alexandria a
+      more agreeable place of settlement than the cities of Asia Minor and
+      Syria, for the thousands who were then pouring out of Greece on the check
+      given to its trading industry by the overthrow of its freedom. Though
+      every thinking man might have seen that the new government, when it gained
+      shape and strength, would be a military despotism; yet his Greek subjects
+      must have felt, while it was weak and resting on their good-will rather
+      than on their habits, that they were enjoying many of the blessings of
+      freedom. Had they then claimed a share in the government, they would most
+      likely have gained it, and thereby they would have handed down those
+      blessings to their children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the death of Ptolemy Soter, the habits of the people had so closely
+      entwined themselves round the throne, that Philadelphus was able to take
+      the kingdom and the whole of its wide provinces at the hands of his father
+      as a family estate. He did nothing to mar his father&rsquo;s wise plans, which
+      then ripened into fruit-bearing. Trade crowded the harbours and markets,
+      learning filled the schools, conquests rewarded the discipline of the
+      fleets and armies; power, wealth, and splendour followed in due order. The
+      blaze thus cast around the throne would by many kings have been made to
+      stand in the place of justice and mildness, but under Philadelphus it only
+      threw a light upon his good government. He was acknowledged both at home
+      and abroad to be the first king of his age; Greece and its philosophers
+      looked up to him as a friend and patron; and though as a man he must take
+      rank far below his father, by whose wisdom the eminence on which he stood
+      was raised, yet in all the gold and glitter of a king Philadelphus was the
+      greatest of his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0040" id="linkCimage-0040">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figright" style="width:41%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/362.jpg" alt="362.jpg Cleopatra&rsquo;s Needle. " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Egyptians had been treated with kindness by both of these Greek kings.
+      As far as they had been able or willing to copy the arts of Greece they
+      had been raised to a level with the Macedonians. The Egyptian worship and
+      temples had been upheld, as if in obedience to the oft-repeated answer of
+      the Delphic oracle, that the gods should everywhere be worshipped
+      according to the laws of the country. But Euergetes was much more of an
+      Egyptian, and while he was bringing back the ancient splendour to the
+      temples, the priests must have regained something of their former rank.
+      But they had no hold on the minds of the soldiers. Had the mercenaries,
+      upon whom the power of the king rested, been worshippers in the Egyptian
+      temples, the priests might, as in the earlier times, like a body of
+      nobles, have checked his power when too great, and at other times upheld
+      it. But it was not so; and upon the whole, little seems to have been
+      gained by the court becoming more Egyptian, while the army must have lost
+      something of its Greek discipline and plainness of manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the next reign the fruits of this change were seen to be most
+      unfortunate. Philopator was an Eastern despot, surrounded by eunuchs, and
+      drowned in pleasures. The country was governed by his women and vicious
+      favourites. The army, which at the beginning of his reign amounted to
+      seventy-three thousand men, beside the garrisons, was at first weakened by
+      rebellion, and before the end of his reign it fell to pieces. Nothing,
+      however, happened to prove his weakness to surrounding nations; Egypt was
+      still the greatest of kingdoms, though Rome on the conquest of Carthage,
+      and Syria under Antiochus the Great, were fast gaining ground upon it; but
+      he left to his infant son a throne shaken to the very foundations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ministers of Epiphanes, the infant autocrat, found the government
+      without a head and without an army, the treasury without money, and the
+      people without virtue or courage; and they placed the kingdom under the
+      hands of the Romans to save it from being shared between the kings of
+      Syria and Macedonia. Thus passed the first five reigns, the first one
+      hundred and fifty years, the first half of the three centuries that the
+      kingdom of the Ptolemies lasted. It was then rotten at the core with vice
+      and luxury. Its population was lessening, its trade falling off, its
+      treasury empty, its revenue too small for the wasteful expenses of the
+      government; but, nevertheless, in the eyes of surrounding nations, its
+      trade and wealth seemed boundless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taste, genius, and poetry had passed away; but mathematics, surgery, and
+      grammar still graced the museum. The decline of art is shown upon the
+      coins, and even in the shape of the letters upon the coins. On those of
+      Cleopatra the engraver followed the fashion of the penman; the S is
+      written like our C, the E has a round back, and the long O is formed like
+      an M reversed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the reigns of the later Ptolemies the kingdom was under the shield,
+      but also under the sceptre of Rome. Its kings sent to Rome for help,
+      sometimes against their enemies, and sometimes against their subjects;
+      sometimes they humbly asked the senate for advice, and at other times were
+      able respectfully to disobey the Roman orders. One by one the senate
+      seized the provinces; Coele-Syria, the coast of Asia Minor, Cyrene, and
+      the island of Cyprus; and lastly, though the Ptolemies still reigned, they
+      were counted among the clients of the Roman patrician, to whom they looked
+      up for patronage. From this low state Egypt could scarcely be said to fall
+      when it became a part of the great empire of Augustus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkCimage-0041" id="linkCimage-0041">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+      <img width="100%" src="images/364.jpg"
+       alt="364.jpg Graeco-egyptian Column " />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      During the reigns of the Ptolemies, the sculpture, the style of building,
+      the religion, the writing, and the language of the Kopts in the Thebaid
+      were nearly the same as when their own kings were reigning in Thebes, with
+      even fewer changes than usually creep in through time. They had all become
+      less simple; and though it would be difficult, and would want a volume by
+      itself to trace these changes, and to show when they came into use, yet a
+      few of them may be pointed out. The change of fashion must needs be slower
+      in buildings which are only raised by the untiring labour of years, and
+      which when built stand for ages; but in the later temples we find less
+      strength as fortresses, few obelisks or sphinxes, and no colossal statues;
+      we no longer meet with vast caves or pyramids. The columns in a temple
+      have several new patterns. The capitals which used to be copied from the
+      papyrus plant are now formed of lotus flowers, or palm branches. In some
+      cases, with a sad want of taste, the weight of the roof rests on the weak
+      head of a woman. The buildings, however, of the Ptolemies are such that,
+      before the hieroglyphics on them had been read by Doctor Young, nobody had
+      ever guessed that they were later than the time of Cambyses, while three
+      or four pillars at Alexandria were almost the only proof that the country
+      had ever been held by Greeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the religion we find many new gods or old gods in new dresses. Hapimou,
+      the Nile, now pours water out of a jar like a Greek river god. The moon,
+      which before ornamented the heads of gods, is now a goddess under the name
+      of Ioh. The favourite Isis had appeared in so many characters that she is
+      called the goddess with ten thousand names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gods had also changed their rank; Phtah and Serapis now held the chief
+      place. Strange change had also taken place in the names of men and cities.
+      In the place of Petisis, Petamun, Psammo, and Serapion, we find men named
+      Eudoxus, Hermophantus, and Poly crates; while of the cities, 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 the hieroglyphics, as the
+      camelopard, the mummy lying on a couch, the ships with sails, and the
+      chariot with horses; there were more words spelled with letters, the
+      groups were more crowded, and the titles of the kings within the ovals
+      became much longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the papyrus, which was becoming common about the time of the Persian
+      invasion, we find the running hand, the enchorial or common writing, as it
+      was called, coming into use, in which there were few symbols, and most of
+      the words were spelt with letters. Each letter was of the easy sloping
+      form, which came from its being made with a reed or pen, instead of the
+      stiff form of the hieroglyphics, which were mostly cut in stone. But there
+      is a want of neatness, which has thrown a difficulty over them, and has
+      made these writings less easy to read than the hieroglyphics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the country fell into the hands of Augustus, the Kopts were in a much
+      lower state than when conquered by Alexander. Of the old moral worth and
+      purity of manners very little remained. All respect for women was lost;
+      and, when men degrade those who should be their helps towards excellence,
+      they degrade themselves also. Not a small part of the nation was sunk in
+      vice. They had been slaves for three hundred years, sometimes trusted and
+      well-treated, but more often trampled on and ground down with taxes and
+      cruelty. They had never held up their heads as freemen, or felt themselves
+      lords of their own soil; they had fallen off in numbers, in wealth, and in
+      knowledge; nothing was left to them but their religion, their temples,
+      their hieroglyphics, and the painful remembrance of their faded glories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      END OF VOL. X. <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The
+Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12), by S. Rappoport
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)
+
+Author: S. Rappoport
+
+Release Date: December 16, 2005 [EBook #17330]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF EGYPT FROM 330 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF EGYPT
+
+From 330 B.C. to the Present Time
+
+
+By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel; Member of the Ecole
+Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German, French Orientalist and
+Philologist
+
+VOL. X.
+
+Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations
+
+THE GROLIER SOCIETY
+
+PUBLISHERS, LONDON
+
+
+[Illustration: Spines]
+
+[Illustration: Cover]
+
+[Illustration: Frontispiece]
+
+OSIRIS AND ISIS AND THE FOUR CHILDREN OF HORUS WITHIN A SHRINE.
+
+[Illustration: Titlepage]
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+Professor Maspero closes his History of Egypt with the conquest of
+Alexander the Great. There is a sense of dramatic fitness in this
+selection, for, with the coming of the Macedonians, the sceptre of
+authority passed for ever out of the hand of the Egyptian. For several
+centuries the power of the race had been declining, and foreign nations
+had contended for the vast treasure-house of Egypt. Alexander found the
+Persians virtually rulers of the land. The ancient people whose fame
+has come down to us through centuries untarnished had been forced to
+bow beneath the yoke of foreign masters, and nations of alien blood were
+henceforth to dominate its history.
+
+The first Ptolemy founded a Macedonian or Greek dynasty that maintained
+supremacy in Egypt until the year 30 B.C. His successors were his lineal
+descendants, and to the very last they prided themselves on their
+Greek origin; but the government which they established was essentially
+Oriental in character. The names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra convey an
+Egyptian rather than a Greek significance; and the later rulers of
+the dynasty were true Egyptians, since their ancestors had lived in
+Alexandria for three full centuries.
+
+In the year 30 B.C. Augustus Caesar conquered the last of the Ptolemies,
+the famous Cleopatra. Augustus made Egypt virtually his private
+province, and drew from it resources that were among the chief elements
+of his power. After Augustus, the Romans continued in control until
+the coming of the Saracens under Amr, in the seventh century. Various
+dynasties of Mohammedans, covering a period of several centuries,
+maintained control until the Mamluks, in 1250, overthrew the legitimate
+rulers, to be themselves overthrown three centuries later by the Turks
+under Selim I. Turkish rule was maintained until near the close of the
+eighteenth century, when the French, under Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded
+Egypt. In 1806, after the expulsion of the French by the English, the
+famous Mehemet Ali destroyed the last vestiges of Mamluk power, and set
+up a quasi-independent sovereignty which was not disturbed until toward
+the close of the nineteenth century. The events of the last twenty-five
+years, comprising a short period of joint control of Egypt by the French
+and English, followed by the British occupation, are fresh in the mind
+of the reader.
+
+What may be termed the modern history of Egypt covers a period of more
+than twenty-two centuries. During this time the native Egyptian can
+scarcely be said to have a national history, but the land of Egypt, and
+the races who have become acclimated there, have passed through many
+interesting phases. Professor Maspero completes the history of antiquity
+in that dramatic scene in which the ancient Egyptian makes his last
+futile struggle for independence. But the Nile Valley has remained the
+scene of the most important events where the strongest nations of the
+earth contended for supremacy. It is most interesting to note that
+the invaders of Egypt, while impressing their military stamp upon the
+natives, have been mastered in a very real sense by the spell of
+Egypt's greatness; but the language, the key to ancient learning and
+civilisation, still remained a well-guarded secret. Here and there one
+of the Ptolemies or Greeks thought it worth his while to master the
+hieroglyphic writing. Occasionally a Roman of the later period may have
+done the same, but such an accomplishment was no doubt very unusual from
+the first. The subordinated Egyptians therefore had no resource but to
+learn the language of their conquerors, and presently it came to pass
+that not even the native Egyptian remembered the elusive secrets of
+his own written language. Egyptian, as a spoken tongue, remained, in
+a modified form, as Koptic, but at about the beginning of our era the
+classical Egyptian had become a dead language. No one any longer wrote
+in the hieroglyphic, hieratic, or demotic scripts; in a word, the
+hieroglyphic writing was forgotten. The reader of Professor Maspero's
+pages has had opportunity to learn how this secret was discovered in the
+nineteenth century. This information is further amplified in the present
+volumes, and we see how in our own time the native Egyptian has regained
+something of his former grandeur through the careful and scientific
+study of monuments, inscriptions, and works of art. Thus it will appear
+in the curious rounding out of the enigmatic story that the most ancient
+history of civilisation becomes also the newest and most modern human
+history.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S NOTE
+
+It should be explained that Doctor Rappoport, in preparing these
+volumes, has drawn very largely upon the authorities who have previously
+laboured in the same field, and in particular upon the works of Creasy,
+Duruy, Ebers, Lavisse, Marcel, Michaud, Neibuhr, Paton, Ram-baud, Sharp,
+and Weil. The results of investigations by Professor W. M. Flinders
+Petrie and other prominent Egyptologists have been fully set forth and
+profusely illustrated.
+
+[Illustration: 001.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
+
+[Illustration: 002.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
+
+
+
+
+
+_EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIES_
+
+_ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT--THE REIGNS OP THE
+PTOLEMIES--GRADUAL GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE--INTRIGUES OF CLEOPATRA
+WITH POMPEY, CAESAR, AND ANTONY_
+
+_Alexander the Great in Egypt--Alexandria founded--The Greeks favour
+the Jews--Ptolemy Soter establishes himself in Egypt and overcomes
+Perdiccas--Struggles for Syria--Beginning of Egyptian coinage--Art and
+Scholarship--Ptolemy resigns in favour of his son Philadelphus
+--First treaty with Rome--Building of the Pharos--Growth of
+Commerce--Encouragement of Learning--The library of Alexandria--Euclid
+the geometer--Poets, astronomers, historians, and critics--The
+Septuagint--Marriage of Philadelphus to his sister Arsinoe--Ptolemy
+Euergetes plunders Asia--Egyptian temples enlarged--Religious
+tolerance--Annual tribute of the Jews--Eratosthenes the
+astronomer--Philosophy and Science--Culmination of Ptolemaic rule--The
+dynasty declines under Philopator--Syrians invade Egypt; Philopator
+retaliates; visits Jerusalem--The Jews persecuted--The king's
+follies--Riots at Alexandria--Inglorious end of Philopator--The
+young Ptolemy Epiphanes protected by Rome--Military revolt
+suppressed--Coronation of Epiphanes--The Rosetta Stone--Marriage of
+Epiphanes and Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus the Cheat--A second
+rebellion repressed--Accession of Ptolemy Philometer under
+the guardianship of Cleopatra--Antiochus Epiphanes defeats
+Philometer--Euergetes seizes the throne and appeals to Rome--Antiochus
+supports Philometor against his brother Euergetes--The brothers combine
+against Antiochus--Fraternal rivalry--Philometer appeals to the Romans
+who adjust the quarrel--Philometer arbitrates in a dispute between
+the Jews and the Samaritans--New temples built--Egyptian
+asceticism--Philometer's death; Euergetes reigns alone, and divorces
+his queen Cleopatra--Popular tumult in Alexandria--Euergetes
+flees--Cleopatra in power--Euergetes regains the throne; conquers
+Syria and makes peace with Cleopatra--The reign of Cleopatra Cocce with
+Lathyrus (Ptolemy Soter II.)--Cleopatra in the ascendent--She helps
+the Jews, while Lathyrus helps the Samaritans--Lathyrus flees to
+Cyprus--Ptolemy Alexander I rules with Cleopatra--Death of Alexander
+and restoration of Lathyrus--Accession of Cleopatra Berenice--Ptolemy
+Alexander II. bequeaths Egypt to Rome, murders Berenice, and is slain
+by his guards--Auletes succeeds--The Romans claim Egypt--Pompey assists
+Auletes who is expelled by the Egyptians--Cleopatra Tryphama and
+Berenice placed on the throne--Grabinius and Mark Antony march
+into Egypt and restore Auletes--The reign of Cleopatra--Pompey made
+governor--The Egyptian fleet aids Pompey--Pompey is slain--Caesar
+besieged by the Alexandrians--He overcomes opposition, is captivated
+by Cleopatra and establishes her authority--The Queen's
+extravagance--Defeat of Antony--Death of Cleopatra--Octavianus annexes
+Egypt._
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
+
+
+HELLENISM AND HEBRAEISM 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 of
+their national art and literature. Greek culture and civilisation,
+passing beyond the boundaries of their national domain, crossed this
+bridge and spread over the Asiatic world. To perpetuate his name, the
+great Macedonian king founded a city, and selected for this purpose,
+with extraordinary prescience, a spot on the banks of the Nile, which,
+on account of its geographical position, was destined to become a
+centre, not only of international commerce and an entrepot between Asia
+and Europe, but also a centre of intellectual culture. The policy of
+Alexander 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, was
+continued by the Lagidae dynasty in Egypt. With her independence and
+native dynasties, Egypt had also lost her political strength and unity;
+she retained, however, her ancient institutions, her customs, and
+religious system. The sway of Persian dominion had passed over her
+without overthrowing this huge rock of sacerdotal power which, deeply
+rooted with many ramifications, seemed to mock the wave of time. Out
+of the ruins of political independence still towered the monuments
+of civilisation of a mighty past which gave to this country moral
+independence, and prevented the obliteration of nationality. It would
+have mattered very little in the vast empire of Alexander if one
+province had a special physiognomy. It was different, however, with the
+Lagidae: their power was concentrated in Egypt, and they were therefore
+compelled to obliterate the separation existing between the conquering
+and the conquered races, and fuse them, if possible, into one. A
+great obstacle which confronted the Macedonian rulers in Egypt was
+the religion of the country. The interest and the policy of the Lagidae
+demanded the removal of this obstacle, not by force but by diplomacy.
+Greek gods were therefore identified with Egyptian; Phtah became
+Hephaestos; Thot, Hermes; Ra, Helios; Amon, Zeus; and, in consequence of
+a dream which commanded him to offer adoration to a foreign god, Ptolemy
+Soter created a new Greek god who was of Egyptian origin. Osiris at that
+period was the great god of Egypt; Memphis was the religious centre of
+the cult of Apis, the representative of Osiris, and who, when living,
+was called Apis-Osiris, and when dead Osiris-Apis. Cambyses had killed
+the god or his representative: it was a bad move. Alexander made
+sacrifices to him: Ptolemy Soter did more. He endeavoured to persuade
+the Egyptians that Osirapi or Osiris-Apis was also sacred to the Greeks,
+and to identify him with some Greek divinity. There was a Greek deity
+known as Serapis, identified with Pluton, the god of Hades. Serapis,
+by a clever manouvre, a _coup de religion_, was identified with
+Osiris-Apis. The lingual similarity and the fact that Osirapi was the
+god of the Egyptian Hades made the identification acceptable.
+
+Like true Greek princes, the Ptolemies had broad views and were very
+tolerant. Keeping the Greek religion themselves, they were favourably
+disposed towards the creeds of other nationalities under their
+dominion. Thanks to this broad-mindedness and tolerance which had
+become traditional in the Lagidas family, and which has only rarely been
+imitated--to the detriment of civilisation--in the history of European
+dynasties, 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 the
+world; and it might truly be said to have been the Paris of antiquity.
+At the courts of the Ptolemies, the Medicis of Egypt, the greatest
+men of the age lived and taught. Demetrius Phalerius, one of the most
+learned and cultured men of an age of learning and knowledge, when
+driven from his luxurious palace at Athens, found hospitality at the
+court of Ptolemy Soter. The foundation of the famous Museion and
+library of Alexandria was most probably due to his influence. He
+advised the first Ptolemy to found a building where poets, scholars, and
+philosophers would have facilities for study, research, and speculation.
+The Museion was similar in some respects to the Academy of Plato. It
+was an edifice where scholars lived and worked together. Mental
+qualification was the only requirement for admission. Nationality and
+creed were no obstacles to those whose learning rendered them worthy of
+becoming members of this ideal academy and of being received among the
+immortals of antiquity. The Museion was in no sense a university, but an
+academy for the cultivation of the higher branches of learning. It might
+be compared in some respects to the College de France, or regarded as
+a development of the system under which scholars had already lived and
+worked together in the Ramesseum under Ramses II. The generosity of the
+Lagidas provided amply for this new centre of learning and study. Free
+from worldly cares, the scholars could leisurely gather information and
+hand down to posterity the fruits of their researches. From all parts
+of the world men flocked to this centre of fashionable learning, the
+birthplace of modern science. All that was brilliant and cultured,
+all the coryphees in the domain of intellect, were attracted by that
+splendid court.
+
+In the shade of the Museion a brilliant assembly--Ptolemy, Euclid,
+Hipparchus, Apollonius, and Eratosthenes--made great discoveries and
+added materially to the sum of human knowledge. Here Euclid wrote
+his immortal "Elements;" and Herophilos, the father of surgery, added
+valuable information to the knowledge of anatomy. The art and process
+of embalming, in such vogue among the Egyptians, naturally fostered the
+advance of this science. Whilst Alexandria in abstract speculation could
+not rival Greece, yet it became the home of the pioneers of positive
+science, who left a great and priceless legacy to modern civilisation.
+The importance of this event (the foundation of the Museion), says
+Draper, in his _Intellectual Development of Europe_, though hitherto
+little understood, admits of no exaggeration so far as the intellectual
+progress of Europe is concerned. The Museum made an impression upon the
+intellectual career of Europe so powerful and enduring that we still
+enjoy its results. If the purely literary productions of that age have
+sometimes been looked upon with contempt, European intellectual
+culture is still greatly indebted to Alexandria, and especially for the
+patronage she accorded to the works of Aristotle. Whilst the speculative
+mind was in later centuries allured by the supernatural, and the
+discussion of the criterion of truth and the principles of morality
+ended in the mystic doctrines of Neo-Platonism, the practical
+tendencies of the great Alexandrine scholars were instrumental in laying
+the foundations of science. To the Museion were attached the libraries:
+one in the Museion itself, and another in the quarter Rhacotis in the
+temple of Serapis, which contained about 700,000 volumes. New books were
+continually acquired. The librarians had orders to pay any sum for the
+original of the works of great masters. The Ptolemies were not only
+patrons of learning but were themselves highly educated. Ptolemy Soter
+was an historian of no mean talent, and his son Philadelphus, as a pupil
+of the poet Philetas and the philosopher Strabo, was a man of great
+learning. Ptolemy III. was a mathematician, and Ptolemy Philopator,
+who had erected and dedicated a temple to Homer, was the writer of a
+tragedy. The efforts of the Ptolemies to bring the two nationalities,
+Hellenic and Egyptian, nearer to each other, to mould and weld them
+into one if possible, to mix and mingle the two civilisations and thus
+strengthen their own power, was greatly aided by the national character
+of the Greeks and the political position of the Egyptians.
+
+The Greeks found in Egypt a national culture and especially a religious
+system. The pliant Hellenic genius could not remain insensible to that
+ancient and marvellous civilisation with its sphinxes and hieroglyphics,
+its pyramids and temples, its learning and thought, so strangely
+perplexing and interesting to the Greek mind. Not only the magnificence
+of Egyptian art, the majesty of her temples and palaces, but the wisdom
+of her social and political institutions impressed the conquerors. They
+made themselves acquainted with the institutions of the country; they
+studied its history and took an interest in its religion and mythology.
+Similarly, the conquered Egyptians, who had preferred the Macedonian
+ruler to their Persian oppressors, exhibited a natural desire to learn
+the languages and habits of their rulers, to make themselves acquainted
+with their knowledge and phases of thought, and art and science. The
+interest of the Greeks was strengthened by this, and the Egyptians were
+made to see their history in its proper light. To this endeavour we owe
+the history of Manetho. But, in spite of the policy of the Ptolemies,
+the impressionable nature of the Hellenic character and the interest of
+the Egyptians,--in spite of all that tended to a fusion of Hellenism and
+Orientalism, it never came to a proper amalgamation. The contradiction
+between the free-thought philosophy of Greece, which was fast outgrowing
+its polytheism and Olympian worship, and the deeply rooted sacerdotal
+system of the Pharaonian institutions, was too great and too flagrant.
+Thus there never was an Egypto-Hellenic phase of thought. But there was
+another civilisation of great antiquity, possessing peculiar features,
+not less interesting for the Greek mind than that of Egypt itself, with
+which Hellenism found itself face to face in the ancient land of the
+Pharaohs. It was the civilisation of Judaea, between which and Greek
+thought a greater fusion was effected.
+
+
+II.
+
+From time immemorial the Hebrew race, with all its conservative
+tendencies in religious matters, has been amenable to the influence
+of foreign culture and civilian. Egypt and Phoenicia, Babylonia and
+Assyria, Hellas and Rome have exercised an immense influence over it.
+It still is and always has been endeavouring to bring into harmony
+the exclusiveness of its national religion, with a desire to adopt the
+habits culture, language, and manners of its neighbours; an attempt in
+which it may be apparently successful, for a certain period at least,
+but which must always have a tragic end. It is impossible to be
+conservative and progressive at the same time, to be both national and
+cosmopolitan. The attempts to reconcile religious formalism and free
+reasoning have never succeeded in the history of human thought. It soon
+led to the conviction that one factor must be sacrificed, and, as soon
+as this was perceived, the party of zealots was quickly at hand to
+preach reaction. In the times of the successors of Alexander, the
+Diadochae and Epigones, the Seleucidae and the Lagidae, who had divided the
+vast dominion among them, Greek influence had spread all over Palestine.
+Greek towns were founded, theatres and gymnasia established; Greek
+art was admired and her philosophy studied. The Hellenic movement was
+paramount, and the aristocratic families did their best to further it.
+Even the high priests, like Jason and Menelaos, who were supposed to be
+the guardians of the national exclusive movement, favoured Greek culture
+and institutions.
+
+In the mother country, however, the germ of reaction was always very
+strong. A constant opposition was directed against the influx of
+foreign modes of life and thought, which effaced and obliterated the
+intellectual movement. It was different, however, in the other countries
+of Macedonian dominion, and especially in Egypt. Alexander the Great,
+who seems to have been favourably inclined towards the Jews, settled a
+number of them in Alexandria. His policy was kept up by the descendants
+of Lagos, that great general of Alexander, who made himself king of the
+province which was entrusted to the care of his administration. Egypt
+became the resort of many refugees from Judaea, who gradually came under
+the influence of the dazzling Greek thought and culture, so new and
+therefore so attractive to the Semitic mind. Hellenism and Hebraism had
+known each other for some time, for Phoenician merchants and seafarers
+had carried the seed of Oriental wisdom to the distant west. The
+acquaintance, however, was a slight one. At the court of the Ptolemies,
+on the threshold of Europe and Asia, they met at last. On the shores
+of the Mediterranean, on the soil where lay the traces of the ancient
+Egyptian civilisation, in the silent avenues of mysterious sphinxes,
+amongst hieroglyphic-covered obelisks, Greek and Hebrew thought stood
+face to face. The two civilisations embodied the principles of the
+Beautiful and the Sublime, of Morality and AEstheticism, of religious
+and philosophic speculation. The result of this meeting marks a glorious
+page in the annals of human thought. Among the monuments of a great
+historic past, the speculative spirit of the East made love to the
+plastic beauty of the West, until, at last, they were united in happy
+union. Hellenic taste and sense of beauty and Semitic speculation not
+only evolved side by side in Egypt but mixed and commingled; their
+thoughts were intertwined and interwoven, giving rise to a new
+intellectual movement, a new philosophy of thought: the Judaeo-Hellenic.
+Alexandrian culture, during the reign of the Ptolemies, is the offspring
+of a mixed marriage between two parents belonging to two widely
+different 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 was
+that the Jews in Egypt, not being hampered by reactionary endeavours
+from the side of conservative parties, and with an adaptability peculiar
+to their race, soon acquired the language of the people in whose midst
+they dwelt. They conversed and wrote in Greek; they moulded and shaped
+their own thoughts into Greek form; they clothed the Semitic mode of
+thinking in Hellenic garb. The immediate result was the translation of
+the Pentateuch into Greek. Vanity, of which no individual or race is
+free, had embellished this literary production, which has acquired a
+high degree of importance alike among Jews and Christians, with many
+legends. This translation, known as the Septuaginta (LXX), was followed
+by independent histories relating to Biblical events. One of the best
+known authors is the chronographer Demetrius, who lived in the second
+half of the third century, and whose work Flavius Josephus is supposed
+to have utilised. Not to speak of the Greek authors in Judaea and Syria,
+we may mention Artapanos, who, following the fashion of the day, wrote
+history in the form of a romance, and showed traces of an apologetic
+character. He endeavoured to attribute all that was great in Egyptian
+civilisation to Moses. This was due to the fact that Manetho, the
+Egyptian historian, and others following his example, had spread fables
+and venomous tales about the ancient sojourn and exodus of the Hebrews
+and their leader. To counterbalance these accusations, fables had to
+be interwoven into history, and history became romance. Moses was
+thus identified with Hermes, and made out to be the father of Egyptian
+wisdom. But, if the close acquaintanceship of Hebraism and Hellenism
+began with a mere flirtation, encouraged by the rulers of the land and
+kept up by the Jews, who wished to gain the favour of the conquering
+race and to show themselves and their history in as favourable a light
+as possible, it soon ended in a serious attachment. The Hebrews made
+themselves acquainted with Hellenic life and thought. They studied Homer
+and Hesiod, Empedocles and Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, and they
+were startled by the discovery that in Greek thought there were many
+elements, moral and religious, familiar to them: this enhanced the
+attraction. The narrowness and exclusiveness to which strict nationality
+always gives rise, engendering contempt and hatred for everything
+foreign--which made even the Greeks, with all their intellectual
+culture, draw a line of demarcation between Greek and barbarian--gave
+way to a spirit of cosmopolitan breadth of view which has only very
+rarely been equalled in history. Hellenic and Hebrew forms of
+thought were brought into friendly union, and gave birth to ideas
+and aspirations of which humanity may always be proud. Greek aesthetic
+judgment and Semitic mysticism, different phases of thought in
+themselves, were welded into one. The religious conceptions of Moses
+and the Prophets were expressed in the language of the philosophical
+schools; an attempt was made to bring into harmony the dogmas of
+supernatural revelation and the fruits of human speculative thought.
+Such an attempt is a great undertaking, for, if sincerely and
+relentlessly pursued, it must end in breaking down the barriers of
+separation, in the establishment of a common truth, and in the sacrifice
+of cherished ideals and convictions which prove to be wrong. If carried
+to its logical conclusion, such a cosmopolitan broad-mindedness, such
+a cross-fertilisation of intellectual products, must give rise to the
+ennobling idea that there is only one truth, and that the external forms
+are only fleeting waves upon the vast ocean of human ideals. The
+attempt was made in Alexandria by the Judaeo-Hellenic philosophers.
+Unfortunately, however, the Hebrews, with all their adaptability, have
+not yet carried this attempt to its logical conclusion. The spirit
+of reaction has ever and anon been ready to crush in its infancy the
+endeavour of truth and sincerity, of broad-mindedness and tolerance.
+When placed before the question to be or not to be, to be logical or
+illogical, 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 Hebraism
+in Egypt had a tragic end. The union was dissolved, not, however,
+without having produced its issue: the Alexandrian culture, which was
+carried to Rome by Philo Judaeus, and thus influenced later European
+thought and humanity at large.
+
+[Illustration: 015.jpg PAGE IMAGE--Alexandria]
+
+
+
+
+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 many
+years. Ever since the memorable march of Xenophon, who led, in the face
+of unknown difficulties, ten thousand Greeks across Asia Minor, the
+Greek statesman had suspected that the Hellenic soldier was capable of
+undreamed possibilities.
+
+When the young Alexander, succeeding his father Philip on the throne
+of Macedonia, got himself appointed general by the chief of the Greek
+states, and marched against Darius Codomanus, King of Persia, at the
+head of the allied armies, it was not difficult to foresee the result.
+The Greeks had learned the weakness of the Persians by having been so
+often hired to fight for them. For a century past, every Persian army
+had had a body of ten or twenty thousand Greeks in the van, and
+without this guard the Persians were like a flock of sheep without the
+shepherd's dog. Those countries which had trusted to Greek mercenaries
+to defend them could hardly help falling when the Greek states united
+for their conquest.
+
+Alexander defeated the Persians under Darius in a great and memorable
+battle near the town of Issus at the foot of the Taurus, at the pass
+which divides Syria from Asia Minor, and then, instead of marching upon
+Persia, he turned aside to the easier conquest of Egypt. On his way
+there he spent seven months in the siege of the wealthy city of Tyre,
+and he there punished with death every man capable of carrying arms, and
+made slaves of the rest. He was then stopped for some time before the
+little town of Gaza, where Batis, the brave governor, had the courage to
+close the gates against the Greek army. His angry fretfulness at being
+checked by so small a force was only equalled by his cruelty when he had
+overcome it; he tied Batis by the heels to his chariot, and dragged him
+round the walls of the city, as Achilles had dragged the body of Hector.
+
+On the seventh day after leaving Gaza he reached Pelusium, the most
+easterly town in Egypt, after a march of one hundred and seventy miles
+along the coast of the Mediterranean, through a parched, glaring desert
+which forms the natural boundary of the country; while the fleet kept
+close to the shore to carry the stores for the army, as no fresh water
+is to be met with on the line of march. The Egyptians did not even try
+to hide their joy at his approach; they were bending very unwillingly
+under the heavy and hated yoke of Persia. The Persians had long been
+looked upon as their natural enemies, and in the pride of their success
+had added insults to the other evils of being governed by the satrap of
+a conqueror. They had not even gained the respect of the conquered by
+their warlike courage, for Egypt had in a great part been conquered and
+held by Greek mercenaries.
+
+The Persian forces had been mostly withdrawn from the country by
+Sabaces, the satrap of Egypt, to be led against Alexander in Asia Minor,
+and had formed part of the army of Darius when he was beaten near the
+town of Issus on the coast of Cilicia. The garrisons were not strong
+enough to guard the towns left in their charge; the Greek fleet easily
+overpowered the Egyptian fleet in the harbour of Pelusium, and the town
+opened its gates to Alexander. Here he left a garrison, and, ordering
+his fleet to meet him at Memphis, he marched along the river's bank to
+Heliopolis. All the towns, on his approach, opened their gates to him.
+Mazakes, who had been left without an army, as satrap of Egypt, when
+Sabaces led the troops into Asia Minor, and who had heard of the death
+of Sabaces, and that Alexander was master of Phoenicia, Syria, and the
+north of Arabia, had no choice but to yield. The Macedonian army crossed
+the Nile near Heliopolis, and then entered Memphis.
+
+[Illustration: 019.jpg TRANSPORTING GRAIN ON THE NILE]
+
+Memphis had long been the chief city of all Egypt, even when not the
+seat of government. In earlier ages, when the warlike virtues of the
+Thebans had made Egypt the greatest kingdom in the world, Memphis and
+the lowland corn-fields of the Delta paid tribute to Thebes; but,
+with the improvements in navigation, the cities on the coast rose in
+importance; the navigation of the Red Sea, though always dangerous,
+became less dreaded, and Thebes lost the toll on the carrying trade of
+the Nile. Wealth alone, however, would not have given the sovereignty
+to Lower Egypt, had not the Greek mercenaries been at hand to fight for
+those who would pay them. The kings of Sais had guarded their thrones
+with Greek shields; and it was on the rash but praiseworthy attempt
+of Amasis to lessen the power of these mercenaries that they joined
+Cambyses, and Egypt became a Persian province. In the struggles of the
+Egyptians to throw off the Persian yoke, we see little more than the
+Athenians and Spartans carrying on their old quarrels on the coasts
+and plains of the Delta; and the Athenians, who counted their losses
+by ships, not by men, said that in their victories and defeats together
+Egypt had cost them two hundred triremes. Hence, when Alexander, by
+his successes in Greece, had put a stop to the feuds at home, the
+mercenaries of both parties flocked to his conquering standard, and
+he found himself on the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt without any
+struggle being made against him by the Egyptians. The Greek part of
+the population, who had been living in Egypt as foreigners, now found
+themselves masters. Egypt became at once a Greek kingdom, as though
+the blood and language of the people were changed at the conqueror's
+bidding.
+
+Alexander's character as a triumphant general gains little from this
+easy conquest of an unwarlike country, and the overthrow of a crumbling
+monarchy. But as the founder of a new Macedonian state, and for
+reuniting the scattered elements of society in Lower Egypt after the
+Persian conquest, in the only form in which a government could be
+made to stand, he deserves to be placed among the least mischievous of
+conquerors. We trace his march, not by the ruin, misery, and anarchy
+which usually follow in the rear of an army, but by the building of
+new cities, the more certain administration of justice, the revival of
+trade, and the growth of learning. On reaching Memphis, his first care
+was to prove to the Egyptians that he was come to re-establish their
+ancient monarchy. He went in state to the temple of Apis, and sacrificed
+to 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 by
+skilful Greeks for their amusement.
+
+[Illustration: 021.jpg PHTAH the god of Memphis]
+
+But though the temple of Phtah at Memphis, in which the state ceremonies
+were performed, had risen in beauty and importance by the repeated
+additions of the later kings, who had fixed the seat of government in
+Lower Egypt, yet the Sun, or Amon-Ra, or Kneph-Ra, the god of Thebes, or
+Jupiter-Amnion, as he was called by the Greeks, was the god under whose
+spreading wings Egypt had seen its proudest days. Every Egyptian king
+had called himself "the son of the Sun;" those who had reigned at Thebes
+had boasted that they were "beloved by Amon-Ra;" and when Alexander
+ordered the ancient titles to be used towards himself, he wished to lay
+his offerings in the temple of this god, and to be acknowledged by the
+priests as his son. As a reader of Homer, and the pupil of Aristotle,
+he must have wished to see the wonders of "Egyptian Thebes," the proper
+place for this ceremony; and it could only have been because, as a
+general, he had not time for a march of five hundred miles, that he
+chose the nearer and less known temple of Kneph-Ra, in the oasis of
+Ammon, one hundred and eighty miles from the coast.
+
+Accordingly, he floated down the river from Memphis to the sea,
+taking with him the light-armed troops and the royal band of
+knights-companions. When he reached Canopus, he sailed westward along
+the coast, and landed at Rhacotis, a small village on the spot where
+Alexandria now stands. Here he made no stay; but, as he passed through
+it, he must have seen at a glance, for he was never there a second time,
+that the place was formed by nature to be a great harbour, and that with
+a little help from art it would be the port of all Egypt. The mouths of
+the Nile were too shallow for the ever increasing size of the merchant
+vessels which were then being built; and the engineers found the deeper
+water which was wanted, between the village of Rhacotis and the little
+island of pharos. It was all that he had seen and admired at Tyre, but
+it was on a larger scale and with deeper water. It was the very spot
+that he was in search of; in every way suitable for the Greek colony
+which he proposed to found as the best means of keeping Egypt in
+obedience. Even before the time of Homer, the island of Pharos had
+given shelter to the Greek traders on that coast. He gave his orders
+to Hinocrates the architect to improve the harbour, and to lay down
+the plan of his new city; and the success of the undertaking proved
+the wisdom both of the statesman and of the builder, for the city of
+Alexandria subsequently became the most famous of all the commercial and
+intellectual centres of antiquity. From Rhacotis Alexander marched along
+the coast to Parastonium, a distance of about two hundred miles
+through the desert; and there, or on his way there, he was met by the
+ambassadors from Cyrene, who were sent with gifts to beg for peace,
+and to ask him to honour their city with a visit. Alexander graciously
+received the gifts of the Cyrenaeans, and promised them his friendship,
+but could not spare time to visit their city; and, without stopping, he
+turned southward to the oasis.
+
+At Memphis Alexander received the ambassadors that came from Greece to
+wish him joy of his success; he reviewed his troops, and gave out his
+plans for the government of the kingdom. He threw bridges of boats over
+the Nile at the ford below Memphis, and also over the several branches
+of the river. He divided the country into two nomarchies or judgeships,
+and to fill these two offices of nomarchs or chief judges, the highest
+civil offices in the kingdom, he chose Doloaspis and Petisis, two
+Egyptians. Their duty was to watch over the due administration of
+justice, one in Upper and the other in Lower Egypt, and perhaps to hear
+appeals from the lower judges.
+
+He left the garrisons in the command of his own Greek generals;
+Pantaleon commanded the counts, or knights-companions, who garrisoned
+Memphis, and Pole-mon was governor of Pelusium. These were the chief
+fortresses in the kingdom: Memphis overlooked the Delta, the navigation
+of the river, and the pass to Upper Egypt; Pelusium was the harbour for
+the ships of war, and the frontier town on the only side on which Egypt
+could be attacked. The other cities were given to other governors;
+Licidas commanded the mercenaries, Peucestes and Balacrus the other
+troops, Eugnostus was secretary, while AEschylus and Ephippus were left
+as overlookers, or perhaps, in the language of modern governments, as
+civil commissioners. Apollonius was made prefect of Libya, of which
+district Paraetonium was the capital, and Cleomenes prefect of Arabia at
+Heroopolis, in guard of that frontier. Orders were given to all these
+generals that justice was to be administered by the Egyptian nomarchs
+according to the common law or ancient customs of the land. Petisis,
+however, either never entered upon his office or soon quitted it, and
+Doloaspis 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 had
+gone out of cultivation with the gradual decline of Upper Egypt; and he
+employed them to guard the province against invasion or rebellion. He
+did not stay in Egypt longer than was necessary to give these orders,
+but hastened towards the Euphrates to meet Darius. In his absence Egypt
+remained quiet and happy. Peucestes soon followed him to Babylon with
+some of the troops that had been left in Egypt; and Cleomenes, the
+governor of Heroopolis, was then made collector of the taxes and prefect
+of Egypt. Cleomenes was a bad man; he disobeyed the orders sent from
+Alexander on the Indus, and he seems to have forgotten the mild feelings
+which guided his master; yet, upon the whole, after the galling yoke of
+the Persians, the Egyptians must have felt grateful for the blessings of
+justice and good government.
+
+At one time, when passing through the Thebaid in his barge on the Nile,
+Cleomenes was wrecked, and one of his children bitten by a crocodile. On
+this plea, he called together the priests, probably of Crocodilopolis,
+where this animal was held sacred, and told them that he intended
+to revenge himself upon the crocodiles by having them all caught
+and killed; and he was only bought off from carrying his threat into
+execution by the priests giving him all the treasure that they could
+get together. Alexander had left orders that the great market should be
+moved from Canopus to his new city of Alexandria, as soon as it should
+be ready to receive it. As the building went forward, the priests and
+rich traders of Canopus, in alarm at losing the advantages of their
+port, gave Cleomenes a large sum of money for leave to keep their
+market open. This sum he took, and, when the building at Alexandria was
+finished, he again came to Canopus, and because the traders would not or
+could not raise a second and larger sum, he carried Alexander's orders
+into execution, and closed the market of their city.
+
+But instances such as these, of a public officer making use of dishonest
+means to increase the amount of the revenue which it was his duty to
+collect, might unfortunately be found even in countries which were for
+the most part enjoying the blessings of wise laws and good government;
+and it is not probable that, while Alexander was with the army in
+Persia, the acts of fraud and wrong should have been fewer in his own
+kingdom of Macedonia. The dishonesty of Cleomenes was indeed equally
+shown toward the Macedonians, by his wish to cheat the troops out of
+part of their pay. The pay of the soldiers was due on the first day of
+each month, but on that day he took care to be out of the way, and
+the soldiers were paid a few days later; and by doing the same on each
+following month, he at length changed the pay-day to the last day of the
+month, and cheated the army out of a whole month's pay.
+
+Another act for which Cleomenes was blamed was not so certainly wrong.
+One summer, when the harvest had been less plentiful than usual, he
+forbade the export of grain, which was a large part of the trade of
+Egypt, thereby lowering the price to the poor so far as they could
+afford to purchase such costly food, but injuring the landowners. On
+this, the heads of the provinces sent to him in alarm, to say that they
+should not be able to get in the usual amount of tribute; he therefore
+allowed the export as usual, but raised the duty; and he was reproached
+for receiving a larger revenue while the landowners were suffering from
+a smaller crop.
+
+[Illustration: 027.jpg LIGHTHOUSE AT ALEXANDRIA]
+
+At Ecbatana, the capital of Media, Alexander lost his friend Hephaestion,
+and in grief for his death he sent to Egypt to enquire of the oracle at
+the temple of Kneph in the oasis of Ammon, what honours he might pay
+to the deceased. The messengers brought him an answer, that he might
+declare Hephaestion a demigod, and order that he should be worshipped.
+Accordingly, Alexander then sent an express command to Cleomenes that
+he should build a temple to his lost favourite in his new city of
+Alexandria, and that the lighthouse which was to be built on the island
+of Pharos should be named after him; and as modern insurances against
+risks by sea usually begin with the words "In the name of God; Amen;"
+so all contracts between merchants in the port of Alexandria were to
+be written solemnly "In the name of Hephaestion." Feeling diffident
+of enforcing obedience at the mouth of the Nile, while he was himself
+writing from the sources of the Indus, he added that if, when he came to
+Egypt he found his wish carried into effect, he would pardon Cleomenes
+for those acts of misgovernment of which he had been accused, and for
+any others which might then come to his ears.
+
+A somatophylax in the Macedonian army was no doubt at first, as the
+word means, one of the officers who had to answer for the king's safety;
+perhaps in modern language a colonel in the body-guards or household
+troops; but as, in unmixed monarchies, the faithful officer who was
+nearest the king's person, to whose watchfulness he trusted in the hour
+of danger, often found himself the adviser in matters of state, so,
+in the time of Alexander, the title of somatophylax was given to those
+generals on whose wisdom the king chiefly leaned, and by whose advice
+he was usually guided. Among these, and foremost in Alexander's love and
+esteem, was Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. Philip, the father of Alexander,
+had given Arsinoe, one of his relations, in marriage to Lagus; and her
+eldest son Ptolemy, born soon after the marriage, was always thought to
+be the king's son, though never so acknowledged. As he grew up, he was
+put into the highest offices by Philip, without raising in the young
+Alexander's mind the distrust which might have been felt if Ptolemy
+could have boasted that he was the elder brother. He earned the good
+opinion of Alexander by his military successes in Asia, and gained his
+gratitude by saving his life when he was in danger among the Oxydracae,
+near the river Indus; and moreover, Alexander looked up to him as the
+historian whose literary powers and knowledge of military tactics were
+to hand down to the wonder of future ages those conquests which he
+witnessed.
+
+Alexander's victories over Darius, and march to the river Indus, are no
+part of this history: it is enough to say that he died at Babylon eight
+years after he had entered Egypt; and his half-brother Philip Arridaeus,
+a weak-minded, unambitious young man, was declared by the generals
+assembled at Babylon to be his successor. His royal blood united more
+voices in the army in his favour than the warlike and statesmanlike
+character of any one of the rival generals. They were forced to be
+content with sharing the provinces between them as his lieutenants;
+some hoping to govern by their power over the weak mind of Arridaeus, and
+others secretly meaning to make themselves independent.
+
+In this weighty matter, Ptolemy showed the wisdom and judgment which
+had already gained him his high character. Though his military rank and
+skill were equal to those of any one of Alexander's generals, and his
+claim by birth perhaps equal to that of Arridaeous, he was not one of
+those who aimed at the throne; nor did he even aim at the second place,
+but left to Perdiccas the regency, with the care of the king's person,
+in whose name that ambitious general vainly hoped to govern the whole of
+Alexander's conquests. But Ptolemy, more wisely measuring his strength
+with 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 others
+the easiest to be held as an independent kingdom against the power of
+Perdiccas. When Egypt was given to Ptolemy by the council of generals,
+Cleomenes was at the same time and by the same power made second in
+command, and he governed Egypt for one year before Ptolemy's arrival,
+that being in name the first year of the reign of Philip Arridaeus, or,
+according to the chronologer's mode of dating, the first year after
+Alexander'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, had
+raised their voices against giving the whole of the conquered countries
+to one king; he wished that they should have been shared equally among
+the generals as independent kingdoms. In this he was overruled, and
+he accepted his government as the lieutenant of the youthful Philip
+Arridaeus, though no doubt with the fixed purpose of making Egypt an
+independent kingdom. On reaching Memphis, the seat of his government,
+his whole thoughts were turned towards strengthening himself against
+Perdiccas, who hoped to be obeyed, in the name of his young and
+weak-minded king, by all his fellow generals.
+
+The Greek and foreign mercenaries of which the army of Alexander was
+made up, and who were faithful to his memory and to his family, had
+little to guide them in the choice of which leader they should follow
+to his distant province, beside the thought of where they should be
+best treated; and Ptolemy's high character for wisdom, generosity, and
+warlike skill had gained many friends for him among the officers; they
+saw that the wealth of Egypt would put it in his power to reward those
+whose services were valuable to him; and hence crowds flocked to his
+standard. On reaching their provinces, the Greek soldiers, whether
+Spartans or Athenians, forgetting the glories of Thermopylae and
+Marathon, and proud of their wider conquests under the late king, always
+called themselves Macedonians. They pleased themselves with the thought
+that the whole of the conquered countries were still governed by
+the brother of Alexander; and no one of his generals, in his wildest
+thoughts of ambition, whether aiming, like Ptolemy, at founding a
+kingdom, or, like Perdiccas, at the government of the world, was unwise
+enough to throw off the title of lieutenant to Philip Arridaeus, and to
+forfeit the love of the Macedonian soldiers and his surest hold on their
+loyalty.
+
+The first act of Ptolemy was to put to death Cleomenes, who had been
+made sub-governor of Egypt by the same council of generals which
+had made Ptolemy governor. This act may have been called for by the
+dishonesty and crooked dealing which Cleomenes had been guilty of in
+collecting taxes; but, though the whole tenor of Ptolemy's life would
+seem to disprove the charge, we cannot but fear that he was in part
+led to this deed because he looked upon Cleomenes as the friend of
+Perdiccas, or because he could not trust him in his plans for making
+himself king of Egypt.
+
+From the very commencement of his government, Ptolemy prepared for the
+war which he knew must follow a declaration of his designs. Perhaps
+better than any other general of Alexander, he knew how to win the
+favour of the people under his rule. The condition of the country
+quickly improved under his mild administration. The growing seaport of
+Alexandria was a good market for a country rich in natural produce, and,
+above all, Egypt's marvellously good geographical position stood her
+in good stead in time of war. Surrounded nearly on all sides by desert
+land, the few inhabitants, roving Bedouins, offered no danger. The land
+of the Nile was accessible to an enemy in one direction only, along the
+coast of Syria. This even teemed with difficulties. Transports there
+could only be managed with the greatest ingenuity, and, in case of
+defeat, retreat was almost impossible. On the other hand, the Egyptian
+army, helped by all the advantages of a land irrigated on the canal
+system, and which could be flooded at will, had only to act on the
+defensive to be certain of victory. The country is perhaps more open to
+an attack from the sea, but, by a moderately well-conducted defensive
+movement, the enemy could be kept to the coast. Even the landing there
+is scarcely possible, on account of the natural difficulties at the
+mouth of the Nile. The one easy spot--Alexandria--was so well fortified
+that an invader had but little chance of success.
+
+About the time of Alexander's death (and to some extent brought about by
+this event), civil war broke out in Cyrenaica, in consequence of which
+the followers of one party were forced out of the town of Cyrene. These
+joined themselves with the exiles of the town of Barca, and together
+sought help of foreigners. They placed themselves under the leadership
+of the Spartan Thibron, formerly Alexander's chancellor of the
+exchequer. Begged by the exiled Cyrenians to help them, he now directed
+his forces against Libya, fought a fierce battle, and took possession
+of the harbour of Apollonia, two miles distant from the town. He then
+besieged the town of Cyrene, and forced the Cyrenians at last to sue for
+peace. They were obliged to make a payment of five hundred talents and
+to take back the exiles. Messengers were sent by Thibron to incite
+the other towns in Cyrenaica to join him and to help him conquer their
+neighbour, Libya. Thibron's followers were allowed to plunder, and this
+led to quarrels, desertions, treacherous acts, and the recruiting of his
+army from the Peloponnesus. After varying fortunes of war, in the
+spring of 322 B. C., some of the Cyrenians fled to Egypt, and related to
+Ptolemy what had occurred in Cyrenaica, begging him to help them back
+to their homes. The suggestion was welcome to him, for victory would be
+easy over these struggling factions. He sent a strong military and naval
+force, under Ophelas, the Macedonian, to Cyrenaica in the summer. When
+these were seen approaching, those exiles who had found refuge with
+Thibron decided to join them. Their plan, however, was discovered, and
+they were put to death. The leader of the rabble in Cyrene (fearful
+for his own safety, now that the exiles who had fled to Egypt were
+returning) made overtures of peace to Thibron, and joined with him to
+repulse Ophelas. The latter worked with the utmost caution, sent an army
+under Epicides of Olynth against Tancheira, whilst he himself marched
+against Cyrene.
+
+[Illustration: 036.jpg THE DOM PALM.]
+
+He met Thibron in a fierce fight. The latter was completely defeated and
+fled towards Tancheira, where he hoped to find help, but instead fell
+into Epicides' hands. Thibron was given over to the people of Tancheira
+for punishment. He was cruelly scourged, and then dragged to Apollonia,
+where he was crucified. Ophelas, however, was not able to conquer the
+Cyrenians until Ptolemy himself arrived with fresh troops, overpowered
+the town and joined the province to his own satrapy.
+
+The conquest of this Greek province was a gain equally for himself and
+for the Greeks. He put an end to the horrible anarchy that prevailed
+there, and proved himself their saviour as well as their conqueror. His
+name was now an honoured one among all the Greeks. When it was rumoured
+that war was likely to break out between Ptolemy and the royal party,
+the Macedonians flocked to Alexandria, "every man ready to give all and
+to sacrifice himself in order to help his friend." A popular belief of
+the day was that, although Ptolemy was known as the son of Lagos, he was
+in reality the son of Philip, and indeed much in his manner resembled
+the great founder of the Macedonian power. Amongst the successors of
+Alexander, not one understood as well as he how to retain and increase
+the power which he had won. He recognised, also, from the first, the
+tendency of the age: the tendency to split up the kingdom into different
+states; and he had made this the basis of his policy. It was under him
+that the first state (in the new sense of the word) was founded. He was
+the leader of the new movement that soon generated disunity, and to
+this end he made a secret contract with Antipatros against the regent
+Perdiccas. About this time also misunderstandings between the regent and
+the rulers in the West began to take a serious aspect.
+
+At a great meeting in Babylon in the summer of the year 323, it was
+decided that the body of Alexander was to be taken with great solemnity
+to the Temple of Amon, and that the equipping and guidance of the
+funeral procession should be entrusted to Arridaeus. At the end of the
+year 323, the necessary preparations were finished. The gigantic
+funeral car that was to carry the kingly bier had been decorated with
+unparalleled magnificence. Without waiting for orders from the regent,
+Arridaeus started with the funeral procession from Babylon. Crowds from
+far and near filled the streets, some curious to see the magnificent
+sight, others eager to show this last token of respect to the dead king.
+It was firmly believed amongst the Macedonians that the country in
+which Alexander's body had its last resting-place would become happy and
+powerful above all countries. This prophecy was uttered by the old seer
+Telmissus soon after the king's death. Did Ptolemy have this belief, or
+did he wish to make use of it? There were probably other reasons which
+had caused him to enter into an understanding with Arridaeus, and to
+arrange with him that he was to start without orders from the regent.
+He was afraid that Perdiccas, in order to add to the solemnity of the
+procession, would himself accompany the body with the imperial army to
+Egypt. Ptolemy felt that his position in the lands entrusted to his
+care would be greatly weakened if a higher authority than himself could
+appear there with a military force. Arridaeus led the funeral train to
+Damascus, as had been arranged before with Ptolemy. It was in vain that
+Pole-mon (one of Perdiccas' generals), who was in the neighbourhood,
+went to meet him. He was able to obtain no aspect for the express order
+of the regent. The funeral procession passed Damascus on its way to
+Egypt. Ptolemy accompanied the body with his army as far as Syria. It
+was then taken on to Memphis to rest there until it could be sheltered
+by that beautiful sepulchre of the kings at Alexandria.
+
+Arridaeus' action, in starting without permission, and the defiance of
+Polemon's order, were acts of open revolt against the higher authority
+of the kingdom. Perdiccas called all loyal followers to the council
+of war. Ptolemy, he said, had defied the order of the kings in his
+behaviour concerning the funeral procession; and he had also given
+shelter to the exiled satraps of Phrygia. He was prepared for war, which
+he hoped to bring about. It was for them (the loyal ones) to uphold
+the dignity of the kingdom. They must try to take him unawares, and to
+overcome them individually. The question was, if the Egyptians or the
+Macedonians ought to be first attacked. In the end, plans were carefully
+concerted for an attack on Egypt and the protection of Europe. In the
+early spring of B.C. 321, Perdiccas and his colleagues set out for
+Egypt with the imperial army, ordering the fleet to follow, and leaving
+Eumenes with skilled officers and troops in general command of Asia
+Minor for the purpose of guarding the Hellespont.
+
+At the Egyptian frontier, Perdiccas summoned the army together, that the
+men themselves should give judgment in the case of the satrap of Egypt,
+in the same way as in the preceding autumn they had given judgment in
+the case of Antigones. He expected a decision which would enable him
+to finish what he had already begun. The accusations were that he had
+refused obedience to the kings, that he had fought against and overcome
+the Greeks of Cyrenaica (who had received freedom from Alexander),
+and that he had taken possession of the king's body, and carried it to
+Memphis.
+
+According to the single account, which tells us of these proceedings,
+Ptolemy himself appeared to conduct his own defence before the assembled
+warriors. He had good reason for reckoning on the impression his
+confidence in them would make upon them, and on the love that he knew
+the Macedonians bore towards him. He knew, too, of the increasing
+dislike of the imperial regent. His defence was heard with growing
+approval, and the army's judgment was "freedom."
+
+In spite of this the regent kept to the war. The decision of the troops
+alienated him still more from them. The war with Egypt was contrary to
+their wishes, and they murmured openly. Perdiccas sought to put down the
+refractory spirit with a stern military hand, but the remonstrances
+of his officers were in vain. He treated the first in the land in an
+inconsiderate and despotic manner, removed the most deserving from their
+command, and trusted himself alone. This same man, who had climbed the
+path to greatness with so much foresight, self-command, energy, and
+statesmanship, seemed now, the nearer he grew to the summit of his
+ambition, to lose all clearness of sight and moderation, which traits
+alone could help him to take this last and dangerous step. He had the
+advantage of tried troops, the elephants of Alexander, and the fleet
+under the 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 had
+conquered Neoptolemas, the governor of Armenia, who had taken the side
+of Ptolemy.
+
+With all the more hope, Perdiccas went to meet the enemy. He reached
+Pelusium undisturbed. It was highly necessary that the army should
+cross to the Pelusaic side of the Nile, for there were several secure
+places there, which, if 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 himself
+within one of the fortresses on that side, and thence conduct operations
+against them, and, at the same time, remain in connection with his
+fleet, on which he could fall back in case of need. To enable the
+crossing to be accomplished as easily as possible, Perdiccas ordered the
+cleaning out of an old and filled-in canal, that led up from the Nile.
+The work was evidently begun without much thought, for the fact had not
+been considered that, at the rising of the Nile, the canal would want
+a much deeper bed than the present stream required. The canal had
+only just been opened up, when the water rose with unusual force and
+rapidity; the dam was completely destroyed, and many workers lost their
+lives. During the disturbance, many officers and men left the camp and
+hurried to Ptolemy. This was the beginning of the Egyptian war. The
+desertion of so many important men made Perdiccas think seriously.
+He summoned the officers of the army, spoke to them with much
+condescension, gave presents to some, honoured others with promotion,
+and begged them, for the sake of their honour and for the cause of their
+kings, to fight their hardest against this rebel, and with the order to
+hold their men in-readiness, he left them. The army was only told in the
+evening, at the signal for starting, where they were to march. Perdiccas
+feared, on account of the desertion that was taking place in his army,
+that his march might be discovered by the enemy. They marched with great
+speed through the night, and camped at last on the side of the river.
+At daybreak, after the troops had rested, Perdiccas gave the order
+to cross. First came the elephants, then the light infantry, next the
+storming party with ladders, and lastly, the pick of the cavalry, who,
+if the enemy should burst out during the storming, could easily drive
+them back. Perdiccas hoped, if he could only get a firm footing on
+that side of the river, to annihilate the Egyptian army easily with his
+superior force. He was right in feeling that his Macedonian troops, when
+face to face with the enemy, would forget their antipathy to him,
+and think only of their military honour. When about half the army had
+crossed, and just as the elephants were moving towards the fortress, the
+enemy were seen hurrying thither with great speed; their trumpet-calls
+and war-cries even were heard. They reached the fort before the
+Macedonians, and withdrew into the shelter of its walls. Not discouraged
+by this, the infantry stormed the fort. Ladders were placed against
+the walls, the elephants driven forward, and palisades taken from their
+backs to attack the ramparts.
+
+Ptolemy, in the dress of a Macedonian soldier, stood on the wall
+surrounded by a few selected men. He was first in the fight. From where
+he stood he pierced with his lance the eyes of the leading elephant, and
+stabbed the Indian on its back, and he wounded many and killed numbers
+of the storming party. His officers and men fought with the greatest
+spirit; the driver of the second elephant was killed and the infantry
+were driven back.
+
+Perdiccas led new troops to the attack, wishing to take the fortress at
+all costs. By word and deed, Ptolemy urged on his men, who fought with
+marvellous endurance. The dreadful battle waged the whole day; many were
+killed and wounded; evening came on and nothing was decided. Perdiccas
+ordered a retreat and returned to his camp.
+
+In the middle of the night he again started with his army, hoping that
+Ptolemy would stay in the fort with his troops, and that, after a trying
+march of some miles up-stream, he (Perdiccas) would be able to cross the
+river more easily. At daybreak he found himself opposite one of the many
+islands of the Nile; it was large enough for the camp of a great army.
+In spite of the difficulties of crossing, he decided to encamp his army
+there. The water reached up to the soldiers' knees, and it was with the
+greatest difficulty that they kept their footing against the force
+of the current. In order to break this current, Perdiccas ordered the
+elephants into the river to stand up-stream to the left of the fording
+party; he ordered the horsemen to stand at the other end to help those
+across that were driven down by the current. Some had, with great
+difficulty, managed to get across; others were still in the stream when
+it was noticed that the water was becoming deeper; the heavily armed men
+sank, and the elephants and horses stood deeper and deeper in the water.
+A fearful panic seized the army. They called out that the enemy had
+closed in the canals up-stream, and that the gods had destined bad
+weather in the upper provinces, on account of which the river was
+swollen. Those who understood saw that the bed of the river had become
+deepened by the crossing of so great a cavalcade. It was impossible for
+the remainder to cross or for those on the island to return. They were
+completely cut off and were at the mercy of the enemy, who were already
+seen approaching. There was nothing left but to order them to get back
+as well as they could; lucky indeed were those who could swim, and had
+sufficient 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 out
+and desperate, to the shore; others were drowned or eaten by crocodiles.
+Some were carried down-stream, and reached the shore where the enemy
+stood. Two thousand men were missing, many officers among them. The camp
+of the Egyptians was situated on the other side, and they could be seen
+helping the men in the water and burning logs of wood to show honour
+to the dead. On this side of the river there was sad silence; each man
+sought his comrade, or officer, and sought in vain. Food was scarce, and
+there was no means of overcoming this dreadful state of affairs; night
+came on, and curses and complaints were heard on all sides. The lives of
+so many brave men had been sacrificed for nothing; it was bad enough to
+lose the "honour of their arms," but now, through the stupidity of their
+leader, their lives had been lost, and to be swallowed by crocodiles was
+now the distinguished death of Macedonian warriors. Many of the officers
+went to the tent of the regent, and told him openly that he was the
+cause of this calamity. Outside the tent the Macedonians yelled, beside
+themselves with rage. About a hundred of the officers, headed by the
+satrap Python, refused to share further responsibility, resigned their
+commissions, and left the tent. The excitement grew intense. The troops,
+in ungovernable rage, entered the regent's tent and threw themselves
+upon him. Antigonus struck the first blow, others followed, and, after
+a desperate but short struggle, Perdiccas fell to the ground covered
+with wounds.
+
+Thus died Perdiccas, in the third year of his regency. His great idea,
+the unity of the kingdom entrusted to his care, should have made him
+worthy of more success had he given himself up to this idea with more
+conscientiousness. Unfortunately, with growing power, he became
+despotic and unjust. He was not great enough to become the successor of
+Alexander, to be another "ruler of the world." This last step, the one
+which was to lead him to his long-coveted goal, led him instead to his
+death.
+
+Ptolemy soon heard the news, and the next morning he crossed the river
+and came to the camp. He asked to be taken to the kings, presented them
+and some of the nobles with gifts; was kind and considerate to all, and
+was greeted with great joy. Then he called the troops together and spoke
+to them. He told the Macedonians that it was only stern necessity that
+caused him to take up arms against his old comrades. No man regretted
+more than he the untimely death of so many heroes. Perdiccas was the
+cause of this calamity; he had but received his just punishment. Now all
+enmity was to be ended. He had saved as many as he could from death in
+the water, and the corpses which the river had brought to the shore he
+had buried with all honour; and finally he told them that he had given
+orders for the immediate alleviation of the want which he knew was being
+felt in the camp. His speech was received with loud cheers. He stood
+there unhurt and admired before the Macedonians, who but a few hours
+earlier had been his bitterest foes. Now they looked upon him as their
+saviour; they all acknowledged him as the conqueror, and for the moment
+he stood in unequivocal possession of that power for which Perdiccas
+had worked so hard, and which he had so much abused. Who was now to
+be Perdiccas' successor, and to manage the kingdom in the name of the
+kings? With one voice the people begged Ptolemy to undertake this task.
+The foresight and presence of mind of the son of Lagus were not clouded
+by the allurement of such an offer gained by his sudden change of
+fortune. At this supreme moment he acted with consummate sagacity. He
+divined that a refusal of the proffered honour would make him in reality
+more powerful, although, at the moment, he would seem to be acting in an
+unselfish manner. He recommended to the army, as a favour which he had
+to bestow, those he thought worthy of his thanks; they were Python,
+the Median strategist, who had taken the first decisive step against
+Perdiccas; and Arridaeus, who, in spite of Perdiccas' orders, had taken
+the body of the king to Egypt. These two were nominated regents with
+loud cheers.
+
+The Macedonian army, accordingly, chose Python and Arridaeus as
+guardians, and as rulers with unlimited power over the whole of
+Alexander's conquests; but, though none of the Greek generals who now
+held Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia, Thrace, or Egypt dared to acknowledge
+it to the soldiers, yet in reality the power of the guardians was
+limited to the little kingdom of Macedonia. With the death of Perdiccas,
+and the withdrawal of his army, Phoenicia and Coele-Syria were left
+unguarded, and almost without a master. In order that Egypt might take
+an important part in the universal policy, Ptolemy felt he must possess
+Syria, which would open up the way for him to the countries along the
+Euphrates and the Tigris, and also the island of Cyprus, where he would
+be near the coast of Asia Minor. He could not yet think of conquering
+Cyprus, which had an important fleet. He felt that, if he annexed Syria,
+either by diplomacy or by force, the organisation of the kingdom and the
+territorial division of power would be changed in a tangible manner.
+The Egyptian satraps already possessed some measure of authority, and he
+could also depend upon the satrap of Syria joining him.
+
+Perdiccas had bestowed this satrapy upon Laomedon, the Amphysolite,
+who had taken no part in the great fight between Perdiccas and Ptolemy.
+Ptolemy now informed him that he wished to possess his satrapy, but was
+ready to compensate him with a sum of money. Laomedon refused this offer
+with scorn. Thereupon, an army under Nicanor, one of the "friends" of
+Ptolemy, marched into Palestine. Jerusalem was the only place that
+held out against the Egyptian army; but Nicanor, says the historian
+Agathareides, seeing that on every seventh day the garrison withdrew
+from the walls, chose that day for the assault, and thus gained the
+city. Without further opposition the Egyptians marched onwards. At
+last he met Laomedon, took him prisoner, and brought him back to Egypt.
+Egyptian sentries now guarded the strongholds of the country; Egyptian
+ships took the towns along the coast. A great number of the Jews were
+transported to Alexandria; they received the rights of citizenship
+there.
+
+[Illustration: 049.jpg A THEBAN BELLE]
+
+Without altering local conditions, Syria gradually came under the sway
+of the Egyptian satraps. Laomedon found means of escaping from Egypt;
+he fled to Alcetas in Caria, who had just withdrawn himself to the
+mountainous regions of Pisida, thence to begin the decisive war against
+Antigonus.
+
+[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 Thebaid
+enjoyed, under the Koptic kings, the trading wealth which followed the
+stream of its great river, the longest piece of inland navigation
+then known; but, with the improvement in navigation and ship-building,
+countries began to feel their strength in the timber of their forests
+and the number of their harbours; and, as timber and sea-coast were
+equally unknown in the Thebaid, that country fell as Lower Egypt rose;
+the wealth which before centred in Thebes was then found in the ports
+of the Delta, where the barges of the Nile met the ships of the
+Mediterranean. What used to be Egypt was an inland kingdom, surrounded by
+the desert; but Egypt under Ptolemy was country on the sea-coast; and,
+on the conquest of Phoenicia and Coele-Syria, he was master of the
+forests of Lebanon and Antilibanus, and stretched his coast from Cyrene
+to Antioch, a distance of twelve hundred miles. The wise and mild plans
+which were laid down by Alexander for the government of Egypt when a
+province were easily followed by Ptolemy when it became his own kingdom.
+The Greek soldiers lived in their garrisons or in Alexandria under the
+Macedonian laws, while the Egyptian laws were administered by their own
+priests, who were upheld in all the rights of their order and in their
+freedom from land-tax. The temples of Phtah, of Amon-Ra, and the other
+gods of the country were not only kept open, but were repaired and even
+built at the cost of the king; the religion of the people, and not that
+of their rulers, was made the established religion of the state. On
+the death of the god Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, the chief of the
+animals which were kept and fed at the cost of the several cities, and
+who had died of old age soon after Ptolemy came to Egypt, he spent the
+sum of fifty talents, or $42,500, on its funeral; and the priests, who
+had not forgotten that Cambyses, their former conqueror, had wounded the
+Apis of his day with his own sword, must have been highly pleased with
+this mark of his care for them. The burial-place for the bulls is an
+arched gallery tunnelled into the hill behind Memphis for more than two
+thousand feet, with a row of cells on each side of it. In every cell is
+a huge granite sarcophagus, within which were placed the remains of a
+bull that had once been the Apis of its day, which, after having for
+perhaps twenty years received the honours of a god, was there buried
+with more than kingly state. The cell was then walled up, and ornamented
+on the outside with various tablets in honour of the deceased
+animal, which were placed in these dark passages by the piety of his
+worshippers. The priests of Thebes were now at liberty to cut out from
+their monuments the names of usurping gods, and to restore those that
+had been before cut out. They also rebuilt the inner room, or the holy
+of holies, in the great temple of Karnak.
+
+It had been overthrown by the Persians in wantonness, or in hatred
+of the Egyptian religion; and the priests now put upon it the name of
+Philip Arridaeus, 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 seen
+their temples plundered and their trade crushed by the grasping tyranny
+of the Persian satraps, and had at other times been almost as much hurt
+by their own vain struggles for freedom, now found themselves in the
+quiet enjoyment of good laws, with a prosperity which promised soon to
+equal that of the reigns of Necho or Amasis. It is true that they had
+not regained their independence and political liberty; that, as compared
+with the Greeks, they felt themselves an inferior race, and that they
+only enjoyed their civil rights during the pleasure of a Greek autocrat;
+but then it is to be remembered that the native rulers with whom Ptolemy
+was compared were the kings of Lower Egypt, who, like himself, were
+surrounded by Greek mercenaries, and who never rested their power on the
+broad base of national pride and love of country; and that nobody
+could have hoped to see a Theban king arise to bring back the days
+of Thutmosis and Ramses. Thebes was every day sinking in wealth and
+strength; and its race of hereditary soldiers, proud in the recollection
+of former glory, who had, after centuries of struggles, been forced
+to receive laws from Memphis, perhaps yielded obedience to a Greek
+conqueror with less pain than they did formerly to their own vassals of
+Lower Egypt.
+
+Ptolemy's government was in form nearly the same in Alexandria as in the
+rest of Egypt, but in reality it was wholly different. His sway over the
+Egyptians was supported by Greek force, but over the Greeks it rested
+on the broad base of public opinion. Every Greek had the privilege of
+bearing arms, and of meeting in the gymnasium in public assembly, to
+explain a grievance, and petition for its redress. The citizens and
+the soldiers were the same body of men; they at the same time held the
+force, and had the spirit to use it. But they had no senate, no body
+of nobles, no political constitution which might save their freedom in
+after generations from the ambitious grasp of the sovereign, or from
+their own degeneracy. While claiming to be equal among themselves they
+were making themselves slaves; and though at present the government so
+entirely bore the stamp of their own will that they might fancy they
+enjoyed a democracy, yet history teaches us that the simple paternal
+form of government never fails to become sooner or later a cruel
+tyranny. The building of Alexandria must be held the master-stroke of
+policy by which Egypt was kept in obedience. Here, and afterwards in
+a few other cities, such as Ptolemais in the Thebaid and Parembole in
+Nubia, the Greeks lived without insulting or troubling the Egyptians,
+and by their numbers held the country like so many troops in garrison.
+It was a wise policy to make no greater change than necessary in
+the kingdom, and to leave the Egyptians under their own laws and
+magistrates, and in the enjoyment of their own religion; and yet it was
+necessary to have the country garrisoned with Greeks, whose presence in
+the old cities could not but be extremely galling to the Egyptians. This
+was done by means of these new Greek cities, where the power by which
+Egypt was governed was stronger by being united, and less hateful by
+being out of sight. Seldom or never was so great a monarchy founded with
+so little force and so little crime.
+
+Ptolemy, however, did not attempt the difficult task of uniting the two
+races, and of treating the conquered and the conquerors as entitled to
+the same privileges. From the time of Necho and Psammetichus, many of
+the Greeks who settled in Egypt intermarried with the natives, and very
+much laid aside their own habits; and sometimes their offspring, after
+a generation or two, became wholly Egyptian. By the Greek laws the
+children of these mixed marriages were declared to be barbarians; not
+Greeks but Egyptians, and were brought up accordingly. They left the
+worship of Jupiter and Juno for that of Isis and Osiris, and perhaps the
+more readily for the greater earnestness with which the Egyptian gods
+were worshipped. We now trace their descendants by the form of their
+skulls, even into the priestly families; and of one hundred mummies
+covered with hieroglyphics, taken up from the catacombs near Thebes,
+about twenty show a European origin, while of those from the tombs
+near Memphis, seventy out of every hundred have lost their Koptic
+peculiarities. It is easy to foresee that an important change would
+have been wrought in the character of the people and in their political
+institutions, if the Greek laws had been humane and wise enough to grant
+to the children of mixed marriages the privileges, the education, and
+thereby the moral feelings of the more favoured parent; and it is not
+too much to suppose, if the Greek law of marriage had been altered by
+Ptolemy, that within three centuries above half the nation would have
+spoken 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 been
+already mentioned. The founding of the famous museum and library
+of Alexandria may be, perhaps, regarded as the rounding-off of his
+political plans for the consolidation of his kingdom. Alexandria became,
+in fact, not only a centre of commerce and government, but also the
+intellectual capital of the Greeks. But for this supreme importance of
+the city, it is doubtful whether the descendants of Ptolemy Lagus could
+have continued to rule the Valley of the Nile.
+
+In return for the literature which Greece then gave to Egypt, she gained
+the knowledge of papyrus, a tall rush which grows wild near the sources
+of the Nile, and was then cultivated in the Egyptian marshes. Before
+that time books had been written on linen, wax, bark, or the leaves of
+trees; and public records on stone, brass, or lead: but the knowledge of
+papyrus was felt by all men of letters like the invention of printing
+in modern Europe. Books were then known by many for the first time,
+and very little else was afterwards used in Greece or Rome; for, when
+parchment was made about two centuries later, it was too costly to be
+used as long as papyrus was within reach. Copies were multiplied on
+frail strips of this plant, and it was found that mere thoughts, when
+worth preserving, were less liable to be destroyed by time than temples
+and palaces of the hardest stone.
+
+[Illustration: 056.jpb MANUSCRIPT ON PAPYRUS; HIEROGLYPHICS, THEBES]
+
+While Egypt, under Ptolemy, was thus enjoying the advantages of its
+insulated position, and cultivating the arts of peace, the other
+provinces were being harassed by the unceasing wars of Alexander's
+generals, who were aiming, like Ptolemy, at raising their own power.
+Many changes had taken place among them in the short space of eight
+years which had passed since the death of Alexander. Philip Arridaeus,
+in whose name the provinces had been governed, had been put to death;
+Antigonus was master of Asia Minor, with a kingdom more powerful though
+not so easily guarded as Egypt; Cassander held Macedonia, and had the
+care of the young Alexander AEgus, who was then called the heir to the
+whole of his father's wide conquests, and whose life, like that of
+Arridaeus, was soon to end with his minority; Lysimachus was trying
+to form a kingdom in Thrace; and Seleucus had for a brief period held
+Babylonia.
+
+Ptolemy bore no part in the wars which brought about these changes,
+beyond being once or twice called upon to send troops to guard his
+province of Cole-Syria.
+
+[Illustration: 057.jpg Alexander adoring Horus]
+
+But Antigonus, in his ambitious efforts to stretch his power over all
+the provinces, had by force or by treachery driven Seleucus out of
+Babylon, and forced him to seek Egypt for safety, where Ptolemy received
+him with the kindness and good policy which had before gained so many
+friends. No arguments of Seleucus were wanting to persuade Ptolemy that
+Antigonus was dreaming of universal conquest, and that his next attack
+would be upon Egypt. He therefore sent ambassadors to make treaties of
+alliance with Cassander and Lysimachus, who readily joined him against
+the common enemy.
+
+The large fleet and army which Antigonus got together for the invasion
+of Egypt proved his opinion of the strength and skill of Ptolemy. All
+Syria, except one or two cities, laid down its arms before him on his
+approach. But he found that the whole of the fleet had been already
+removed to the ports of Egypt, and he ordered Phoenicia to furnish him
+with eight thousand shipbuilders and carpenters, to build galleys from
+the forests of Lebanon and Antilibanus, and ordered Syria to send four
+hundred and fifty thousand medimni, or nearly three millions of bushels
+of wheat, for the use of his army within the year. By these means he
+raised his fleet to two hundred and forty-three long galleys or ships of
+war.
+
+Ptolemy was for a short time called off from the war in Syria by a
+rising in Cyrene. The Cyrenians, who clung to their Doric love of
+freedom, and were latterly smarting at its loss, had taken arms and were
+besieging the Egyptian, or, as they would have called themselves, the
+Macedonian garrison, who had shut themselves up in the citadel. He at
+first sent messengers to order the Cyrenians to return to their duty;
+but his orders were not listened to; the rebels no doubt thought
+themselves safe, as his armies seemed more wanted on the eastern
+frontier; his messengers were put to death, and the siege of the citadel
+pushed forward with all possible speed. On this he sent a large land
+force, followed by a fleet, in order to crush the revolt at a single
+blow; and the ringleaders were brought to Alexandria in chains. Magas, a
+son of Queen Berenice and stepson of Ptolemy, was then made governor of
+Cyrene.
+
+When this trouble at home was put an end to, Ptolemy crossed over to
+Cyprus to punish the kings of the little states on that island for
+having joined Antigonus. For now that the fate of empires was to be
+settled by naval battles the friendship of Cyprus became very important
+to the neighbouring states. The large and safe harbours gave to this
+island a great value in the naval warfare between Egypt, Phoenicia, and
+Asia Minor. Alexander had given it as his opinion that the command
+of the sea went with the island of Cyprus. When he held Asia Minor he
+called Cyprus the key to Egypt; and with still greater reason might
+Ptolemy, looking from Egypt, think that island the key to Phoenicia.
+Accordingly he landed there with so large a force that he met with no
+resistance. He added Cyprus to the rest of his dominions: he banished
+the kings, and made Nicocreon governor of the whole island.
+
+From Cyprus, Ptolemy landed with his army in Upper Syria, as the
+northern part of that country was called, while the part nearer to
+Palestine was called Coele-Syria. Here he took the towns of Posideion
+and Potami-Caron, and then marching hastily into Asia Minor he took
+Malms, a city of Cilicia. Having rewarded his soldiers with the booty
+there seized, he again embarked and returned to Alexandria. This inroad
+seems to have been meant to draw off the enemy from Coele-Syria; and it
+had the wished-for effect, for Demetrius, who commanded the forces of
+his father Antigonus in that quarter, marched northward to the relief
+of Cilicia, but he did not arrive there till Ptolemy's fleet was already
+under sail for its return journey to Egypt.
+
+Ptolemy, on reaching Alexandria, set his army in motion towards
+Pelusium, on its way to Palestine. His forces were eighteen thousand
+foot and four thousand horse, part Macedonians, as the Greeks living in
+Egypt were always called, and part mercenaries, followed by a crowd of
+Egyptians, of whom some were armed for battle, and some were to take
+care of the baggage. He had twenty-two thousand Greeks, and was met at
+Gaza by the young Demetrius with an army of eleven thousand foot and
+twenty-three hundred horse, followed by forty-three elephants and a
+body of light-armed barbarians, who, like the Egyptians in the army of
+Ptolemy, were not counted. But the youthful courage of Demetrius was no
+match for the cool skill and larger army of Ptolemy; the elephants were
+easily stopped by iron hurdles, and the Egyptian army, after gaining a
+complete victory, entered Gaza, while Demetrius fled to Azotus. Ptolemy,
+in his victory, showed a generosity unknown in modern warfare; he not
+only gave leave to the conquered army to bury their dead, but sent back
+the whole of the royal baggage which had fallen into his hands, and also
+those personal friends of Demetrius who were found among the prisoners;
+that is to say, all those who wished to depart, as the larger part of
+these Greek armies were equally ready to fight on either side.
+
+By this victory the whole of Phoenicia was again joined to Egypt, and
+Seleucus regained Babylonia. There, by following the example of Ptolemy
+in his good treatment of the people, and in leaving them their own laws
+and religion, he founded a monarchy, and gave his name to a race of
+kings which rivalled even the Lagidae. He raised up again for a short
+time the throne of Nebuchadnezzar. But it was only for a short time. The
+Chal-dees and Assyrians now yielded the first rank to the Greeks who
+had settled among them; and the Greeks were more numerous in the Syrian
+portion of his empire. Accordingly Seleucus built a new capital on
+the river Orontes, and named it Antioch after his father. Babylon then
+yielded the same obedience to this new Greek city that Memphis paid
+to Alexandria. Assyria and Babylonia became subject provinces; and
+the successors of Seleucus, who came to be known as Selucids, styled
+themselves not kings of Babylon but of Syria.
+
+When Antigonus, who was in Phrygia on the other side of his kingdom,
+heard that his son Demetrius had been beaten at Gaza, he marched with
+all his forces to give battle to Ptolemy. He soon crossed Mount Taurus,
+the lofty range which divides Asia Minor from Syria and Mesopotamia, and
+joined his camp to that of his son in Upper Syria. But Ptolemy had gone
+through life without ever making a hazardous move; not indeed without
+ever suffering a loss, but without ever fighting a battle when its loss
+would have ruined him, and he did not choose to risk his kingdom against
+the far larger forces of Antigonus. Therefore, with the advice of his
+council of generals, he levelled the fortifications of Acre, Joppa,
+Samaria, and Gaza, and withdrew his forces and treasure into Egypt,
+leaving the desert between himself and the army of Antigonus.
+
+Antigonus could not safely attempt to march through the desert in the
+face of Ptolemy's army. He had, therefore, first, either to conquer or
+gain the friendship of the Nabataeans, a warlike race of Arabs, who held
+the north of Arabia; and then he might march by Petra, Mount Sinai, and
+the coast of the Red Sea, without being in want of water for his army.
+The Nabataeans were the tribe at an earlier time called Edomites. But
+they lost that name when they carried it to the southern portion of
+Judaea, then called Idumaea; for when the Jews regained Idumaea, they
+called these Edomites of the desert Nebaoth or Nabataeans. The Nabataens
+professed neutrality between Antigonus and Ptolemy, the two contending
+powers; but the mild temper of Ptolemy had so far gained their
+friendship that the haughty Antigonus, though he did not refuse their
+pledges of peace, secretly made up his mind to conquer them. Petra, the
+city of the Nabataeans, is in a narrow valley between steep overhanging
+rocks, so difficult of approach that a handful of men could guard it
+against the largest army. Not more than two horsemen can ride abreast
+through the chasm in the rock by which it is entered from the east,
+while the other entrance from the west is down a hillside too steep for
+a loaded camel.
+
+[Illustration: 062.jpg ON THE COAST OF THE RED SEA]
+
+The Eastern proverb reminds us that "Water is the chief thing;" and
+a large stream within the valley, in addition to the strength of the
+fortress, made it a favourite resting-place for caravans, which, whether
+they were coming from Tyre or Jerusalem, were forced to pass by this
+city in their way to the Incense Country of Arabia Felix, or to the
+Elanitic Gulf of the Red Sea, and for other caravans from Egypt to Dedam
+on the Persian Gulf. These warlike Arabs seem to have received a toll
+from the caravans, and they held their rocky fastness unconquered by
+the great nations which surrounded them. Their temples and tombs were
+cut out of the live rock, and hence the city was by the Jews named
+Selah, (the rock), and by the Greeks named Petra, from which last the
+country was sometimes called Arabia Petraea.
+
+Antigonus heard that the Nabataeans had left Petra less guarded than
+usual, and had gone to a neighbouring fair, probably to meet a caravan
+from the south, and to receive spices in exchange for the woollen goods
+from Tyre. He therefore sent forward four thousand light-armed foot and
+six hundred horse, who overpowered the guard and seized the city. The
+Arabs, when they heard of what had happened, returned in the night,
+surrounded the place, came upon the Greeks from above, by paths known
+only to themselves, and overcame them with such slaughter that, out of
+the four thousand six hundred men, only fifty returned to Antigonus to
+tell the tale.
+
+The Nabataeans then sent to Antigonus to complain of this crafty attack
+being made upon Petra after they had received from him a promise of
+friendship. He endeavoured to put them off their guard by disowning the
+acts of his general; he sent them home with promises of peace, but at
+the same time sent forward his son Demetrius, with four thousand horse
+and four thousand foot, to take revenge upon them, and again seize their
+city. But the Arabs were this time upon their guard; the nature of
+the place was as unfavourable to the Greek arms and warfare as it was
+favourable to the Arabs; and these eight thousand men, the flower of the
+army, under brave Demetrius, were unable to force their way through the
+narrow pass into this remarkable city.
+
+Had Antigonus been master of the sea, he might perhaps have marched
+through the desert along the coast of the Mediterranean to Pelusium,
+with his fleet to wait upon his army, as Perdiccas had done. But
+without this, the only way that he could enter Egypt was through the
+neighbourhood of Petra, and then along the same path which the Jews are
+supposed to have followed; and the stop thus put upon the invasion of
+Egypt by this little city shows us the strength of Ptolemy's eastern
+frontier. Antigonus then led his army northward, leaving the kingdom of
+Egypt unattacked.
+
+This retreat was followed by a treaty of peace between these generals,
+by which it was agreed that each should keep the country that he then
+held; that Cassan-der should govern Macedonia until Alexander AEgus, the
+son of Alexander the Great, should be of age; that Lysimachus should
+keep Thrace, Ptolemy Egypt, and Antigonus Asia Minor and Palestine; and
+each wishing to be looked upon as the friend of the soldiers by whom
+his power was upheld, and the whole of these wide conquests kept in awe,
+added the very unnecessary article, that the Greeks living in each of
+these countries should be governed according to their own laws.
+
+All the provinces held by these generals became more or less Greek
+kingdoms, yet in no one did so many Greeks settle as in Lower Egypt.
+Though the rest of Egypt was governed by Egyptian laws and judges, the
+city of Alexandria was under Macedonian law. It did not form part of the
+nome of Hermopolites in which it was built. It scarcely formed a part of
+Egypt, but was a Greek state in its neighbourhood, holding the Egyptians
+in a state of slavery. In that city no Egyptian could live without
+feeling himself of a conquered race. He was not admitted to the
+privileges of Macedonian citizenship, while they were at once granted to
+every Greek, and soon to every Jew, who would settle there.
+
+By the treaty just spoken of, Ptolemy, in the thirteenth year after the
+death of Alexander, was left undisputed master of Egypt. During these
+years he had not only gained the love of the Egyptians and Alexandrians
+by his wise and just government, but had won their respect as a general
+by the skill with which he had kept the war at a distance. He had lost
+and won battles in Syria, in Asia Minor, in the island of Cyprus, and at
+sea; but since Perdiccas marched against him, before he had a force to
+defend himself with, no foreign army had drunk the sacred waters of the
+Nile.
+
+It was under the government of Ptolemy that the wonders of Upper Egypt
+were first seen by any Greeks who had leisure, a love of knowledge, and
+enough of literature, to examine carefully and to describe what they
+saw. Loose and highly coloured accounts of the wealth of Thebes
+had reached Greece even before the time of Homer, and again through
+Herodotus and other travellers in the Delta; but nothing was certainly
+known of it till it was visited by Hecataeus of Abdera, who, among other
+works, wrote a history of the Hyperborean or northern nations, and also
+a history, or rather a description of Egypt, part of which we now read
+in the pages of Dio-dorus Siculus. When he travelled in Upper Egypt,
+Thebes, though still a populous city, was more thought of by the
+antiquary than by the statesman. Its wealth, however, was still great;
+and when, under the just government of Ptolemy, it was no longer
+necessary for the priests to hide their treasures, it was found that the
+temples still held the very large sum of three hundred talents of gold,
+and two thousand three hundred talents of silver, or above five million
+dollars, which had escaped the plundering hands of the Persian satraps.
+Many of the Theban tombs, which are sets of rooms tunnelled into the
+hills on the Libyan side of the Nile, had even then been opened to
+gratify the curiosity of the learned or the greediness of the conqueror.
+Forty-seven royal tombs were mentioned in the records of the priests,
+of which the entrances had been covered up with earth, and hidden in
+the sloping sides of the hills, in the hope that they might remain
+undisturbed and unplundered, and might keep safe the embalmed bodies
+of the kings till they should rise again at the end of the world; and
+seventeen of these had already been found out and broken open. Hecataeus
+was told that the other tombs had been before destroyed; and we owe it,
+perhaps, to this mistake that they remained unopened for more than two
+thousand years longer, to reward the searches of modern travellers, and
+to unfold to us the history of their builders.
+
+The Memnonium, the great palace of Ramses II., was then standing; and
+though it had been plundered by the Persians, the building itself was
+unhurt. Its massive walls had scarcely felt the wear of the centuries
+which had rolled over them. Hecataaus measured its rooms, its
+courtyards, and its avenue of sphinxes; and by his measurements we can
+now distinguish its ruins from those of the other palaces of Thebes. One
+of its rooms, perhaps after the days of its builder, had been fitted up
+as a library, and held the histories and records of the priests; but the
+golden zodiac, or circle, on which were engraved the days of the year,
+with the celestial bodies seen to rise at sunrise and set at sunset,
+by which each day was known, had been taken away by Cambyses. Hecataaus
+also saw the three other palace-temples of Thebes, which we now call
+by the names of the villages in which they stand, namely, of Luxor, of
+Karnak, and of Medinet-Habu. But the Greeks, in their accounts of
+Egypt, have sadly puzzled us by their careless alteration of names from
+similarity of sound. To Miamun Ramses, they gave the common Greek name
+Memnon; and the city of Hahiroth they called Heroopolis, as if it meant
+the _city of heroes_. The capital of Upper Egypt, which was called The
+City, as a capital is often called, or in Koptic, _Tape or Thabou_, they
+named Thebes, and in their mythology they confounded it with Thebes in
+Bootia. The city of the god Kneph they called Canopus, and said it
+was so named after the pilot of Menelaus. The hill of Toorah opposite
+Memphis they called the Trojan mountain. One of the oldest cities in
+Egypt, This, or with the prefix for city, Abouthis, they called Abydos,
+and then said that it was colonised by Milesians from Abydos in Asia.
+In the same careless way have the Greeks given us an account of the
+Egyptian gods. They thought them the same as their own, though with new
+faces; and, instead of describing their qualities, they have in the main
+contented themselves with translating their names.
+
+If Ptolemy did not make his government as much feared by the half-armed
+Ethiopians as it was by the well-disciplined Europeans, it must have
+been because the Thebans wished to guard their own frontier rather than
+because his troops were always wanted against a more powerful enemy; but
+the inroads of the Ethiopians were so far from being checked that the
+country to the south of Thebes was unsafe for travellers, and no Greek
+was able to reach Syene and the lower cataracts during his reign. The
+trade through Ethiopia was wholly stopped, and the caravans went from
+Thebes to Cosseir to meet the ships which brought the goods of Arabia
+and India from the opposite coast of the Red Sea.
+
+In the wars between Egypt and Asia Minor, in which Palestine had the
+misfortune to be the prize struggled for and the debatable land on which
+the battles were fought, the Jews were often made to smart under
+the stern pride of Antigonus, and to rejoice at the milder temper
+of Ptolemy. The Egyptians of the Delta and the Jews had always been
+friends; and hence, when Ptolemy promised to treat the Jews with the
+same kindness as the Greeks, and more than the Egyptians, and held out
+all the rights of Macedonian citizenship to those who would settle in
+his rising city of Alexandria, he was followed by crowds of industrious
+traders, manufacturers, and men of letters. They chose to live in Egypt
+in peace and wealth, rather than to stay in Palestine in the daily fear
+of having their houses sacked and burnt at every fresh quarrel between
+Ptolemy and Antigonus. In Alexandria, a suburb by the sea, on the east
+side of the city, was allotted for their use, which was afterwards
+included within the fortifications, and thus made a fifth ward of the
+Lagid metropolis.
+
+No sooner was the peace agreed upon between the four generals, who were
+the most powerful kings in the known world, than Cassander, who held
+Macedonia, put to death both the Queen Roxana and her son, the young
+Alexander AEgus, then thirteen years old, in whose name these generals
+had each governed his kingdom with unlimited sway, and who was then of
+an age that the soldiers, the givers of all power, were already
+planning to make him the real King of Macedonia and of his father's wide
+conquests.
+
+The Macedonian phalanx, which formed the pride and sinews of every
+army, were equally held by their deep-rooted loyalty to the memory of
+Alexander, whether they were fighting for Ptolemy or for Antigonus, and
+equally thought that they were guarding a province for his heir; and it
+was through fear of loosening their hold upon the faithfulness of these
+their best troops that Ptolemy and his rivals alike chose to govern
+their kingdoms under the unpretending title of lieutenants of the King
+of Macedonia. Hence, upon the death of Alexander AEgus, there was a
+throne, or at least a state prison, left empty for a new claimant.
+Polysperchon, an old general of Alexander's army, then thought that he
+saw a way to turn Cassander out of Macedonia, by the help of Hercules,
+the natural son of Alexander by Barce; and, having proclaimed him king,
+he led him with a strong army against Cassander. But Polysperchon wanted
+either courage or means for what he had undertaken, and he soon yielded
+to the bribes of Cassander and put Hercules to death.
+
+The cities on the southern coast of Asia Minor yielded to Antigonus
+obedience as slight as the ties which held them to one another. The
+cities of Pamphylia and Cilicia, in their habits as in their situation,
+were nearer the Syrians, and famous for their shipping. They all enjoyed
+a full share of the trade and piracy of those seas, and were a tempting
+prize to Ptolemy. The treaty of peace between the generals never
+lessened their jealousy nor wholly stopped the warfare, and the
+next year Ptolemy, finding that his troops could hardly keep their
+possessions in Cilicia, carried over an army in person to attack the
+forces of Antigonus in Lycia. He landed at Phaselis, the frontier town
+of Pamphylia, and, having carried that by storm, he moved westward along
+the coast of Lycia. He made himself master of Xanthus, the capital,
+which was garrisoned by the troops of Antigonus; and then of Caunus, a
+strong place on the coast of Caria, with two citadels, one of which he
+gained by force and the other by surrender. He then sailed to the island
+of Cos, which he gained by the treachery of Ptolemy, the nephew of
+Antigonus, who held it for his uncle, but who went over to the Egyptian
+king with all his forces. By this success he gained the whole southern
+coast of Asia Minor.
+
+The brother and two children of Alexander having been in their turns,
+as we have seen, murdered by their guardians, Cleopatra, his sister, and
+Thessalonica, his niece, were alone left alive of the royal family
+of Macedonia. Almost every one of the generals had already courted a
+marriage with Cleopatra, which had either been refused by herself or
+hindered by his rivals; and lastly Ptolemy, now that by the death of her
+nephews she brought kingdoms, or the love of the Macedonian mercenaries,
+which was worth more than kingdoms, as her dower, sent to ask her hand
+in marriage. This offer was accepted by Cleopatra; but, on her journey
+from Sardis, the capital of Lydia, to Egypt, on her way to join her
+future husband, she was put to death by Antigonus. The niece was put
+to death a few years later. Thus every one who was of the family of
+Alexander paid the forfeit of life for that honour, and these two deaths
+ended the Macedonian dynasty with a double tragedy.
+
+While Ptolemy was busy in helping the Greek cities of Asia to gain their
+liberty, Menelaus, his brother and admiral, was almost driven out of
+Cyprus by Demetrius. On this Ptolemy got together his fleet, to the
+number of one hundred and forty long galleys and two hundred transports,
+manned with not less than ten thousand men, and sailed with them to the
+help of his brother. This fleet, under the command of Menelaus, was met
+by Demetrius with the fleet of Antigonus, consisting of one hundred and
+twelve long galleys and a number of transports; and the Egyptian fleet,
+which had hitherto been master of the sea, was beaten near the city
+of Salamis in Cyprus by the smaller fleet of Demetrius. This was the
+heaviest loss that had ever befallen Ptolemy. Eighty long galleys were
+sunk, and forty long galleys, with one hundred transports and eight
+thousand men, were taken prisoners. He could no longer hope to keep
+Cyprus, and he sailed hastily back to Egypt, leaving to Demetrius the
+garrisons of the island as his prisoners, all of whom were enrolled in
+the army of Antigonus, to the number of sixteen thousand foot and six
+hundred horse.
+
+This naval victory gave Demetrius the means of unburdening his proud
+mind of a debt of gratitude to his enemy; and accordingly, remembering
+what Ptolemy had done after the battle of Gaza, he sent back to Egypt,
+unasked for and unransomed, those prisoners who were of high rank, that
+is to say, all those who had any choice about which side they fought
+for; and among them were Leontiscus, the son, and Menelaus, the brother,
+of Ptolemy.
+
+Antigonus was overjoyed with the news of his son's victory. By lessening
+the power of Ptolemy, it had done much to smooth his own path to the
+sovereignty of Alexander's empire, which was then left without an heir;
+and he immediately took the title of king, and gave the same title to
+his son Demetrius. In this he was followed by Ptolemy and the other
+generals, but with this difference, that while Antigonus called himself
+king of all the provinces, Ptolemy called himself King of Egypt; and
+while Antigonus gained Syria and Cyprus, Ptolemy gained the friendship
+of every other kingdom and of every free city in Greece; they all looked
+upon him as their best ally against Antigonus, the common enemy.
+
+The next year Antigonus mustered his forces in Coele-Syria, and got
+ready for a second attack upon Egypt. He had more than eighty thousand
+foot, accompanied with what was then the usual proportion of cavalry,
+namely, eight thousand horse and eighty-three elephants. Demetrius
+brought with him from Cyprus the fleet of one hundred and fifty long
+galleys, and one hundred transports laden with stores and engines of
+war. With this fleet, to which Ptolemy, after his late loss, had no
+ships that he could oppose, Antigonus had no need to ask leave of the
+Arabs of the little city of Petra to march through their passes; but he
+led his army straight through the desert to Pelusium, while the ships of
+burden kept close to the shore with the stores. The pride of Antigonus
+would not let him follow the advice of the sailors, and wait eight days
+till the north winds of the spring equinox had passed; and by this haste
+many of his ships were wrecked on the coast, while others were driven
+into the Nile and fell into the hands of Ptolemy. Antigonus himself,
+marching with the land forces, found all the strong places well guarded
+by the Egyptian army; and, being driven back at every point, discouraged
+by the loss of his ships and by seeing whole bodies of his troops go
+over to Ptolemy, he at last took the advice of his officers and led back
+his army to Syria, while Ptolemy returned to Alexandria, to employ those
+powers of mind in the works of peace which he had so successfully used
+in his various wars.
+
+Antigonus then turned the weight of his mighty kingdom against the
+little island of Rhodes, which, though in sight of the coast of Asia
+Minor, held itself independent of him, and in close friendship with
+Ptolemy. The Dorian island of Rhodes had from the earliest dawn of
+history held a high place among the states of Greece; and in all the
+arts of civilised life, in painting, sculpture, letters, and commerce,
+it had been lately rising in rank while the other free states had been
+falling. Its maritime laws were so highly thought of that they were
+copied by most other states, and, being afterwards adopted into the
+Pandects of Justinian, they have in part become the law of modern
+Europe. It was the only state in which Greek liberty then kept its
+ground against the great empires of Alexander's successors.
+
+Against this little state Demetrius led two hundred long galleys and one
+hundred and seventy transports, with more than forty thousand men. The
+Greek world looked on with deep interest while the veterans of Antigonus
+were again and again driven back from the walls of the blockaded city
+by its brave and virtuous citizens; who, while their houses were burning
+and their walls crumbling under the battering-ram, left the statues of
+Antigonus and Demetrius standing unhurt in the market-place, saved by
+their love of art and the remembrance of former kindness, which, with
+a true greatness of mind, they would not let the cruelties of the siege
+outweigh. The galleys of Ptolemy, though unable to keep at sea against
+the larger fleet of Demetrius, often forced their way into the harbour
+with the welcome supplies of grain. Month after month every stratagem
+and machine which the ingenuity of Demetrius could invent were tried and
+failed; and, after the siege had lasted more than a year, he was glad to
+find an excuse for withdrawing his troops; and the Rhodians in their joy
+hailed Ptolemy with the title of Soter or _saviour_. This name he ever
+afterwards kept, though by the Greek writers he is more often called
+Ptolemy the son of Lagus. If we search the history of the world for a
+second instance of so small a state daring to withstand the armies of so
+mighty an empire, we shall perhaps not find any one more remarkable than
+that of the same island, when, seventeen hundred years afterwards, it
+again drew upon itself the eyes of the world, while it beat off the
+forces of the Ottoman empire under Mahomet II.; and, standing like a
+rock in front of Christendom, it rolled back for years the tide of war,
+till its walls were at last crumbled to a heap of ruins by Suleiman the
+Great, after a siege of many months.
+
+The next of Ptolemy's conquests was Coele-Syria; and soon after this
+the wars between these successors of Alexander were put an end to by
+the death of Antigonus, whose overtowering ambition was among the
+chief causes of quarrel. This happened at the great battle of Ipsus in
+Phrygia, where they all met, with more than eighty thousand men in
+each army. Antigonus, King of Asia Minor, was accompanied by his son
+Demetrius, and by Pyrrhus, King of Epirus; and he was defeated by
+Ptolemy, King of Egypt, Seleucus, King of Babylon, Lysimachus, King of
+Thrace, and Cassander, King of Macedonia; and the old man lost his life
+fighting bravely. After the battle Demetrius fled to Cyprus, and yielded
+to the terms of peace which were imposed on him by the four allied
+sovereigns. He sent his friend Pyrrhus as a hostage to Alexandria; and
+there this young King of Epirus soon gained the friendship of Ptolemy
+and afterwards his stepdaughter in marriage. Ptolemy was thus left
+master of the whole of the southern coast of Asia Minor and Syria,
+indeed of the whole coast of the eastern end of the Mediterranean, from
+the island of Cos on the north to Cyrene on the south.
+
+During these formidable wars with Antigonus, Ptolemy had never been
+troubled with any serious rising of the conquered Egyptians; and perhaps
+the wars may not have been without their use in strengthening his
+throne. The first danger to a successful conqueror is from the avarice
+and disappointment of his followers, who usually claim the kingdom as
+their booty, and who think themselves wronged and their past services
+forgotten if any limit is placed to their tyranny over the conquered.
+But these foreign wars may have taught the Alexandrians that Ptolemy was
+not strong enough to ill-treat the Egyptians, and may thus have saved
+him from the indiscretion of his friends and from their reproaches for
+ingratitude.
+
+In the late war, the little Dorian island of Cos on the coast of Asia
+Minor fell, as we have seen, under the power of Ptolemy. This island was
+remarkable as being the first spot in Europe into which the manufacture
+of silk was introduced, which it probably gained when under the power
+of Persia before the overthrow of Darius. The luxury of the Egyptian
+ladies, who affected to be overheated by any clothing that could conceal
+their limbs, had long ago introduced a tight, thin dress which neither
+our climate nor notions of modesty would allow, and for this dress,
+silk, when it could be obtained, was much valued; and Pamphila of Cos
+had the glory of having woven webs so transparent that the Egyptian
+women were enabled to display their fair forms yet more openly by means
+of this clothing.
+
+[Illustration: 081.jpg ALEXANDRIAN LADY, ATTIRED IN BOMBYX SILK]
+
+Cos continued always in the power of the Ptolemies, who used it as a
+royal fortress, occasionally sending their treasures and their children
+there as to a place of safety from Alexandrian rebellion; and there the
+silk manufacture flourished in secret for two or three centuries.
+When it ceased is unknown, as it was part of the merchants' craft to
+endeavour to keep each branch of trade to themselves, by concealing the
+channel through which they obtained their supply of goods, and many of
+the dresses which were sold in Rome under the emperors by the name of
+Coan robes may have been brought from the East through Alexandria.
+
+One of the most valuable gifts which Egypt owed to Ptolemy was its
+coinage. Even Thebes, "where treasures were largest in the houses" never
+was able to pass gold and silver from hand to hand without the trouble
+of weighing, and the doubt as to the fineness of the metal. The Greek
+merchants who crowded the markets of Canopus and Alexandria must have
+filled Lower Egypt with the coins of the cities from whence they came,
+all unlike one another in stamp and weight; but, while every little city
+or even colony of Greece had its own coinage, Egypt had as yet very few
+coins of its own. We are even doubtful whether we know by sight those
+coined by the Persians In the early years of Ptolemy's government
+Ptolemy had issued a very few coins bearing the names of the young kings
+in whose name he held the country, but he seems not to have coined any
+quantity of money till after he had himself taken the title of king. His
+coins are of gold, silver, and bronze, and are in a fine style of Greek
+workmanship. Those of gold and silver bear on one side the portrait of
+the king, without a beard, having the head bound with the royal diadem,
+which, unlike the high priestly crown of the native Egyptian kings, or
+the modern crown of gold and precious stones, is a plain riband tied in
+a bow behind. On the other side they have the name of Ptolemy Soter, or
+King Ptolemy, with an eagle standing upon a thunderbolt, which was only
+another way of drawing the eagle and sun, the hieroglyphical characters
+for the title Pharaoh.
+
+[Illustration: 082.jpg EGYPTIAN COINAGE]
+
+The gold coins of Egypt were probably made in Alexandria. The coins
+are not of the same weight as those of Greece; but Ptolemy followed the
+Egyptian standard of weight, which was that to which the Jewish shekel
+was adjusted, and which was in use in the wealthy cities of Tyre and
+Sidon and Beryttus. The drachma weighs fifty-five grains, making the
+talent of silver worth about seven hundred and fifty dollars. Ptolemy's
+bronze coins have the head of Serapis or Jupiter in the place of that of
+the king, as is also the case with those of his successors; but few of
+these bronze pieces bear any marks from which we can learn the reign
+in which they were coined. They are of better metal than those of other
+countries, as the bronze is free from lead and has more tin in it. The
+historian, in his very agreeable labours, should never lose sight of the
+coins. They teach us by their workmanship the state of the arts, and by
+their weight, number, and purity of metal, the wealth of the country.
+They also teach dates, titles, and the places where they were struck;
+and even in those cases where they seem to add little to what we learn
+from other sources, they are still the living witnesses to which we
+appeal, 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 seen
+them to surpass any that had been before painted, or were likely to be
+painted, had quarrelled with Ptolemy, who had known him well when he
+was the friend and painter of Alexander. Once when he was at Alexandria,
+somebody wickedly told him that he was invited to dine at the royal
+table, and when Ptolemy asked who it was that had sent his unwelcome
+guest, Apelles drew the face of the mischief-maker on the wall, and he
+was known to all the court by the likeness. It was, perhaps, at one
+of these dinners, at which Ptolemy enjoyed the society of the men of
+letters, or perhaps when visiting the philosophers in their schools,
+that he asked Euclid if he could not show him a shorter and easier way
+to the higher truths of mathematics than that by which he led the pupils
+in the Museum; and Euclid, as if to remind him of the royal roads of
+Persia, which ran by the side of the highroads, but were kept clear and
+free for the king's own use, made him the well-known answer, that there
+was no royal road to geometry.
+
+Ptolemy lived in easy familiarity with the learned men of Alexandria;
+and at another of these literary dinners, when Diodorus, the
+rhetorician, who was thought to have been the inventor of the Dilemma,
+was puzzled by a question put to him by Stilpo, the king in joke said
+that his name should be Cronus, a god who had been laughed at in the
+comedies. Indeed, he was so teased by Ptolemy for not being able to
+answer it, that he got up and left the room. He afterwards wrote a book
+upon the subject; but the ridicule was said to have embittered the rest
+of his life. This was the person against whom Callimachus, some years
+later, wrote a bitter epigram, beginning "Cronus is a wise man."
+Diodorus was of the sceptical school of philosophy, which, though not
+far removed from the Cyrenaic school, was never popular in Alexandria.
+Among other paradoxes he used to deny the existence of motion. He argued
+that the motion was not in the place where the body moved from, nor in
+the place that the body moved to, and that accordingly it did not exist
+at all. Once he met with a violent fall which put his shoulder out of
+joint, and he applied to Herophilus, the surgeon, to set it. Herophilus
+began by asking him where the fall took place, whether in the place
+where the shoulder was, or in the place where it fell to; but the
+smarting philosopher begged him to begin by setting his limb, and they
+would talk about the existence of motion after the operation.
+
+Stilpo was at this time only on a visit to Ptolemy, for he had refused
+his offer of money and a professorship in the Museum, and had chosen
+to remain at Megara where he was the ornament of his birthplace. He
+had been banished from Athens for speaking against their gods, and for
+saying that the colossal Minerva was not the daughter of Jupiter, but of
+Phidias, the sculptor. His name as a philosopher stood so high that when
+Demetrius, in his late wars with Ptolemy, took the city of Megara by
+storm, the conqueror bid spare the house of Stilpo, when temple and
+tower went to the ground; and when Demetrius gave orders that Stilpo
+should be repaid for what he had lost in the siege, the philosopher
+proudly answered that he had lost nothing, and that he had no wealth but
+his learning.
+
+The historian Theopompus of Chios then came to Alexandria, and wrote an
+account of the wars between the Egyptians and the Persians. It is now
+lost, but it contained at least the events from the successful invasion
+by Artaxerxes Longimanus till the unsuccessful invasion by Artaxerxes
+Mnemon.
+
+No men of learning in Alexandria were more famous than the physicians.
+Erasistratus of Cos had the credit of having once cured Antiochus,
+afterwards King of Syria. He was the grandson of Aristotle, and may
+be called the father of the science of anatomy: his writings are often
+quoted by Dioscorides. Antiochus in his youth had fallen deeply in love
+with his young stepmother, and was pining away in silence and despair.
+Erasistratus found out the cause of his illness, which was straightway
+cured by Seleucus giving up his wife to his own son. This act strongly
+points out the changed opinions of the world as to the matrimonial
+relation; for it was then thought the father's best title to the name
+of Nicator; he had before conquered his enemies, but he then conquered
+himself.
+
+Erasistratus was the first who thought that a knowledge of anatomy
+should be made a part of the healing art. Before his time surgery and
+medicine had been deemed one and the same; they had both been studied by
+the slow and uncertain steps of experience, unguided by theory. Many a
+man who had been ill, whether through disease or wound, and had regained
+his health, thought it his duty to Esculapius and to his neighbours to
+write up in the temple of the god the nature of his ailings, and the
+simples to which he fancied that he owed his cure. By copying these
+loose but well-meant inscriptions of medical cases, Hippocrates had,
+a century earlier, laid the foundations of the science; but nothing
+further was added to it till Erasistratus, setting at nought the
+prejudices in which he was born, began dissecting the human body in the
+schools of Alexandria. There the mixing together of Greeks and Egyptians
+had weakened those religious feelings of respect for the dead which are
+usually shocked by anatomy; and this study flourished from the low
+tone of the morality as much as from the encouragement which good sense
+should grant to every search for knowledge.
+
+Herophilus lived about the same time with Erasistratus, and was, like
+him, famous for his knowledge of the anatomy of man. But so hateful was
+this study in the eyes of many, that these anatomists were charged by
+writers who ought to have known better, with the cruelty of cutting
+men open when alive. They had few followers in the hated use of the
+dissecting-knife. It was from their writings that Galen borrowed the
+anatomical parts of his work; and thus it was to the dissections of
+these two great men, helped indeed by opening the bodies of animals,
+that the world owed almost the whole of its knowledge of the anatomy of
+man, till the fifteenth century, when surgeons were again bold enough to
+face the outcry of the mob, and to study the human body with the knife.
+
+Hegesias of Cyrene was an early lecturer on philosophy at Alexandria.
+His short and broken sentences are laughed at by Cicero, yet he was so
+much listened to, when lecturing against the fear of death, and showing
+that in quitting life we leave behind us more pains than pleasures, that
+he was stopped by Ptolemy Soter through fear of his causing self-murder
+among his hearers. He then wrote a book upon the same subject, for
+though the state watched over the public teaching, it took no notice
+of books; writing had not yet become the mightiest power on earth. The
+miseries, however, of this world, which he so eloquently and feelingly
+described in his lectures and writings, did not drive him to put an end
+to his own life.
+
+Philostephanus of Cyrene, the friend of Callimachus, was a naturalist
+who wrote upon fishes, and is the first investigator that we hear of who
+thought it desirable to limit his studies to one branch of the science
+of natural history.
+
+But Cyrene did not send all its great men to Alexandria. Plato had
+studied mathematics there under Theodorus, and it had a school of its
+own which gave its name to the Cyrenaic sect. The founder of this sect
+was Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates who had missed the high honour of
+being present at his death. He was the first philosopher who took money
+from his pupils, and used to say that they valued their lessons more
+for having to pay for them; but he was blamed by his brethren for
+thus lowering the dignity of the teacher. He died several years before
+Ptolemy Soter came into Egypt. The Cyrenaic sect thought happiness,
+not goodness, was the end to be aimed at through life, and selfishness,
+rather than kindness to others, the right spring of men's actions. It
+would hardly be fair to take their opinions from the mouths of their
+enemies; and the dialogues of Socrates, with their founder, as told to
+us by Xeno-phon, would prove a lower tone of morality than he is likely
+to have held. The wish for happiness and the philosophical love of self,
+which should lead to goodness, though a far worse rule of life than the
+love of goodness for its own sake, which is the groundwork of religion,
+was certainly far better than unguided passion and the love of to-day's
+pleasure. But often as this unsafe rule has been set up for our
+guidance, there have always been found many to make use of it in a way
+not meant by the teacher. The Cyrenaic sect soon fell into the disrepute
+to which these principles were likely to lead it, and wholly ceased when
+Epicurus taught the same opinions more philosophically, Anniceris of
+Cyrene, though a follower of Aristippus, somewhat improved upon the
+low-toned philosophy of his master. He granted that there were many
+things worth our aim, which could not be brought within the narrow
+bounds of what is useful. He did not overlook friendship, kindness,
+honouring our parents, and serving our country; and he thought that a
+wise man would undertake many labours which would bring him no return in
+the things which were alone thought happiness.
+
+The chair of philosophy at Cyrene was afterwards filled by Arete, the
+daughter of Aristippus; for such were the hindrances in the way of
+gaining knowledge, that few could be so well qualified to teach as the
+philosopher's daughter. Books were costly, and reading by no means
+a cheap amusement. She was followed, after her death, by her son
+Aristippus, who, having been brought up in his mother's lecture-room,
+was called, in order to distinguish him from his grandfather of the same
+name, Metrodidactus, or _mother-taught_. History has not told us whether
+he took the name himself in gratitude for the debt which he owed to this
+learned lady, or whether it was given him by his pupils; but in either
+case it was a sure way of giving to the mother the fame which was due to
+her for the education of her son; for no one could fail to ask who was
+the mother of Metrodidactus.
+
+Theodorus, one of the pupils of Metrodidactus, though at one time
+banished from Cyrene, rose to honour under Soter, and was sent by him as
+ambassador to Lysimachus, He was called the Atheist by his enemies, and
+the Divine by his friends, but we cannot now determine which title he
+best deserved. It was then usual to call those atheists who questioned
+the existence of the pagan gods; and we must not suppose that all who
+suffered under that reproach denied that the world was governed by a
+ruling providence. The disbeliever in the false religion of the many is
+often the only real believer in a God. Theodorus was of the cold school
+of philosophy, which was chiefly followed in Alexandria. It was earthly,
+lifeless, and unpoetical, arising from the successful cultivation of
+the physical sciences, not enough counteracted by the more ennobling
+pursuits of poetry and the fine arts. Hence, while commerce and the arts
+of production were carried to higher perfection than at any former
+time, and science was made greatly to assist in the supply of our bodily
+wants, the arts of civilisation, though by no means neglected, were
+cultivated without any lofty aim, or any true knowledge of their
+dignity.
+
+[Illustration: 092.jpg THE CHARIOT OF ANTIPHILUS]
+
+Antiphilus, who was born in Egypt and had studied painting under
+Ctesidemus, rose to high rank as a painter in Alexandria. Among his
+best-known pictures were the bearded Bacchus, the young Alexander, and
+Hip-polytus, or rather his chariot-horses, frightened by the bull. His
+boy, blowing up a fire with his mouth, was much praised for the mouth
+of the boy, and for the light and shade of the room. His Ptolemy
+hunting was also highly thought of. Antiphilus showed a mean jealousy
+of Apelles, and accused him of joining in a plot against the king, for
+which the painter narrowly escaped punishment; but Ptolemy, finding that
+the charge was not true, sent Apelles a gift of one hundred talents to
+make amends. The angry feelings of Apelles were by no means cooled by
+this gift, but they boiled over in his great picture of Calumny. On the
+right of the picture sat Ptolemy, holding out his hand to Calumny, who
+was coming up to him. On each side of the king stood a woman who seemed
+meant for Ignorance and Suspicion. Calumny was a beautiful maiden, but
+with angry and deep-rooted malice in her face: in her left hand was a
+lighted torch, and with her right she was dragging along by the hair
+a young man, who was stretching forth his hands to heaven, and calling
+upon the gods to bear witness that he was guiltless. Before her walked
+Envy, a pale, hollow-eyed, diseased man, perhaps a portrait of
+the accuser; and behind were two women, Craft and Deceit, who were
+encouraging and supporting her. At a distance stood Repentance, in the
+ragged, black garb of mourning, who was turning away her face for shame
+as Truth came up to her.
+
+Ptolemy Soter was plain in his manners, and scarcely surpassed his own
+generals in the costliness of his way of life. He often dined and slept
+at the houses of his friends; and his own house had so little of the
+palace, that he borrowed dishes and tables of his friends when he asked
+any number of them to dine with him in return, saying that it was the
+part of a king to enrich others rather than to be rich himself. Before
+he took the title of king, he styled himself, and was styled by friendly
+states, by the simple name of Ptolemy the Macedonian; and during the
+whole of his reign he was as far from being overbearing in his behaviour
+as from being kinglike in his dress and household. Once when he wished
+to laugh at a boasting antiquary, he asked him, what he knew could not
+be answered, who was the father of Peleus; and the other let his wit so
+far get the better of his prudence as in return to ask the king, who had
+perhaps never heard the name of his own grandfather, if he knew who was
+the father of Lagus. But Ptolemy took no further notice of this than to
+remark that if a king cannot bear rude answers he ought not to ask rude
+questions.
+
+An answer which Ptolemy once made to a soothsayer might almost be taken
+as the proverb which had guided him through life. When his soldiers met
+with an anchor in one of their marches, and were disheartened on being
+told by the soothsayer that it was a proof that they ought to stop where
+they then were, the king restored their courage by remarking, that an
+anchor was an omen of safety, not of delay.
+
+Ptolemy's first children were by Thais, the noted courtesan, but they
+were not thought legitimate. Leontiscus, the eldest, we afterwards hear
+of fighting bravely against Demetrius; of the second, named Lagus after
+his grandfather, we hear nothing.
+
+He then married Eurydice, the daughter of Antipater, by whom he had
+several children. The eldest son, Ptolemy, was named Ceraunus, _the
+Thunderer_, and was banished by his father from Alexandria. In his
+distress he fled to Seleucus, by whom he was kindly received; but after
+the death of Ptolemy Soter he basely plotted against Seleucus and
+put him to death. He then defeated in battle Antigonus, the son of
+Demetrius, and got possession of Macedonia for a short time. He married
+his half-sister Arsinoe, and put her children to death; and was soon
+afterwards put to death himself by the Gauls, who were either fighting
+against him or were mercenaries in his own army. Another son of Ptolemy
+and Eurydice was put to death by Ptolemy Philadelphus, for plotting
+against his throne, to which, as the elder brother, he might have
+thought himself the best entitled. Their daughter Lysander married
+Agathocles, the son of Lysimachus; but when Agathocles was put to death
+by his father, she fled to Egypt with her children, and put herself
+under Ptolemy's care.
+
+Ptolemy then, as we have seen, asked in marriage the hand of Cleopatra,
+the sister of Alexander; but on her death he married Berenice, a lady
+who had come into Egypt with Eurydice, and had formed part of her
+household. She was the widow of a man named Philip; and she had by her
+first husband a son named Magas, whom Ptolemy made governor of Cyrene,
+and a daughter, Antigone, whom Ptolemy gave in marriage to Pyrrhus when
+that young king was living in Alexandria as hostage for Demetrius.
+
+Berenice's mildness and goodness of heart were useful in softening her
+husband's severity. Once, when Ptolemy was unbending his mind at a game
+of dice with her, one of his officers came up to his side, and began to
+read over to him a list of criminals who had been 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 unhappy
+tale; 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 him
+finish reading it; saying it was very unbecoming in the king to treat
+the matter so lightly, as if he thought no more of the loss of a life
+than the loss of a throw.
+
+With Berenice Ptolemy spent the rest of his years without anything to
+trouble the happiness of his family. He saw their elder son, Ptolemy,
+whom we must call by the name which he took late in life, Philadelphus,
+grow up everything that he could wish him to be; and, moved alike by his
+love for the mother and by the good qualities of the son, he chose
+him as his successor on the throne, instead of his eldest son, Ptolemy
+Ceraunus, who had shown, by every act in his life, his unfitness for the
+royal position.
+
+His daughter Arsinoe married Lysimachus in his old age, and urged
+him against his son, Agathocles, the husband of her own sister. She
+afterwards married her half-brother, Ptolemy Ceraunus; and lastly became
+the wife of her brother Philadelphus. Argzeus, the youngest son of
+Ptolemy, was put to death by Philadelphus on a charge of treason. Of
+his youngest daughter Philotera we know nothing, except that her brother
+Philadelphus afterwards named a city on the coast of the Red Sea after
+her.
+
+After the last battle with Demetrius, Ptolemy had regained the island of
+Cyprus and Cole-Syria, including Judaea; and his throne became stronger
+as his life drew to an end. With a wisdom rare in kings and conquerors,
+he had never let his ambition pass his means; he never aimed at
+universal power; and he was led, both by his kind feelings and
+wise policy, to befriend all those states which, like his own, were
+threatened by that mad ambition in others.
+
+His history of Alexander's wars is lost, and we therefore cannot judge
+of his merits as an author; but we may still point out with pleasure how
+much his people gained from his love of letters; though indeed we do not
+need the example of Ptolemy to show that learning and philosophy are as
+much in place, and find as wide a field of usefulness, in governing
+a kingdom as in the employments of the teacher, the lawyer, or the
+physician, who so often claim them as their own.
+
+His last public act, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, was ordered
+by the same forbearance which had governed every part of his life.
+Feeling the weight of years press heavily upon him, that he was less
+able than formerly to bear the duties of his office, and wishing to see
+his son firmly seated on the throne, he laid aside his diadem and
+his title, and, without consulting either the army or the capital,
+proclaimed Ptolemy, his son by Berenice, king, and contented himself
+with the modest rank of somatophylax, or satrap, to his successor. He
+had used his power so justly that he was not afraid to lay it down;
+and he has taught us how little of true greatness there is in rank by
+showing how much more there is in resigning it. This is perhaps the most
+successful instance known of a king, who had been used to be obeyed by
+armies and by nations, willingly giving up his power when he found his
+bodily strength no longer equal to it. Ptolemy Soter had the happiness
+of having a son willing to follow in the track which he had laid down
+for him, and of living to see the wisdom of his own laws proved by the
+well-being of the kingdom under his son and successor.
+
+But while we are watching the success of Ptolemy's plans, and the rise
+of this Greek monarchy at Alexandria, we cannot help being pained with
+the thought that the Kopts of Upper Egypt are forgotten, and asking
+whether it would not have been still better to have raised Thebes to
+the place which it once held, and to have recalled the days of Ramses,
+instead of trying what might seem the hopeless task of planting Greek
+arts in Africa. But a review of this history will show that, as far as
+human forethought can judge, this could not have been done. A people
+whose religious opinions were fixed against all change, like the pillars
+upon which they were carved, and whose philosophy had not noticed that
+men's minds were made to move forward, had no choice but to be left
+behind and trampled on, as their more active neighbours marched onwards
+in the path of improvement. If Thebes had fallen only on the conquest by
+Cambyses, if the rebellions against the Persians had been those of Kopts
+throwing off their chains and struggling for freedom, we might have
+hoped to have seen Egypt, on the fall of Darius, again rise under kings
+of the blood and language of the people; and we should have thought the
+gilded and half-hid chains of the Ptolemies were little better than the
+heavy yoke of the Persians. This, however, is very far from having been
+the case. We first see the kings of Lower Egypt guarding their thrones
+at Sais by Greek soldiers; and then, that every struggle of Inarus, of
+Nectanebo, and of Tachos, against the Persians, was only made by the
+courage and arms of Greeks hired in the Delta by Egyptian gold. During
+the three hundred years before Alexander was hailed by Egypt as its
+deliverer, scarcely once had the Kopts, trusting to their own courage,
+stood up in arms against either Persians or Greeks; and the country was
+only then con-quered without a battle because the power and arms were
+already in the hands of the Greeks; because in the mixed races of
+the Delta the Greeks were so far the strongest, though not the most
+numerous, that a Greek kingdom rose there with the same ease, and for
+the same reasons, that an Arab kingdom rose in the same place nine
+centuries 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 of
+clanship are the chief grounds upon which a great people can be raised.
+These feelings are closely allied to self-denial, or a willingness on
+the part of each man to give up much for the good of the whole. By this,
+chiefly, public monuments are built, and citizens stand by one another
+in battle; and these feelings were certainly strong in Upper Egypt
+in the days of its greatness. But, when the throne was moved to Lower
+Egypt, when the kingdom was governed by the kings of Sais, and even
+afterwards, when it was struggling against the Persians, these virtues
+were wanting, and they trusted to foreign hirelings in their struggle
+for freedom. The Delta was peopled by three races of men, Kopts, Greeks,
+and Phoenicians, or Arabs; and even before the sceptre was given to the
+Greeks by Alexander's conquests, we have seen that the Kopts had lost
+the 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 fair
+prospects before them as the second Ptolemy. He was born in Cos, an
+island on the coast of Caria, which the Ptolemies kept as a family
+fortress, safe from Egyptian rebellion and Alexandrian rudeness, and,
+while their fleets were masters of the sea, safe from foreign armies. He
+had been brought up with great care, and, being a younger son, was not
+spoilt by that flattery which in all courts is so freely offered to the
+heir. He first studied letters and philosophy under Philetas of Cos,
+an author of some elegies and epigrams now lost; and as he grew up, he
+found himself surrounded by all the philosophers and writers with whom
+his father mixed on the easiest terms of friendship. During the
+long reign of Ptolemy Soter the people had been made happy by wise
+regulations and good laws, trade had been flourishing, the cities had
+greatly 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 the
+Egyptians were enrolled in a phalanx, armed and disciplined like
+the Macedonians. The population of the country was counted at seven
+millions. Alexandria, the capital of the kingdom, was not only the
+largest trading city in the world, but was one of the most favoured
+seats of learning. It surely must have been easy to foresee that the
+prince, then mounting the throne, even if but slightly gifted with
+virtues, would give his name to a reign which could not be otherwise
+than remarkable in the history of Egypt. But Philadelphus, though like
+his father he was not free from the vices of his times and of his rank,
+had more of wisdom than is usually the lot of kings; and, though we
+cannot but see that he was only watering the plants and gathering
+the fruit where his father had planted, yet we must at the same time
+acknowledge that Philadelphus was a successor worthy of Ptolemy Soter.
+He may have been in the twenty-third year of his age when his father
+gave up to him the cares and honours of royalty.
+
+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 to
+the troops and people. All that was dazzling, all that was costly or
+curious, all that the wealth of Egypt could buy or the gratitude of the
+provinces could give, was brought forth to grace this religious show,
+which, as we learn from the sculptures in the old tombs, was copied
+rather from the triumphs of Ramses and Thutmosis than from anything that
+had been seen in Greece.
+
+The procession began with the pomp of Osiris, at the head of which were
+the Sileni in scarlet and purple cloaks, who opened the way through the
+crowd. Twenty satyrs followed on each side of the road, bearing torches;
+and then Victories with golden wings, clothed in skins, each with
+a golden staff six cubits long, twined round with ivy. An altar was
+carried next, covered with golden ivy-leaves, with a garland of golden
+vine-leaves tied with white ribands; and this was followed by a hundred
+and twenty boys in scarlet frocks, carrying bowls of crocus, myrrh,
+and frankincense, which made the air fragrant with the scent. Then came
+forty dancing satyrs crowned with golden ivy-leaves, with their naked
+bodies stained with gay colours, each carrying a crown of vine leaves
+and gold; then two Sileni in scarlet cloaks and white boots, one having
+the hat and wand of Mercury and the other a trumpet; and between them
+walked a man, six feet high, in tragic dress and mask, meant for the
+Year, carrying a golden cornucopia. He was followed by a tall and
+beautiful woman, meant for the Lustrum of five years, carrying in one
+hand a crown and in the other a palm-branch. Then came an altar, and a
+troop of satyrs in gold and scarlet, carrying golden drinking-cups.
+
+Then came Philiscus the poet, the priest of Osiris, with all the
+servants of the god; then the Delphic tripods, the prizes which were
+to be given in the wrestling matches; that for the boys was nine cubits
+high, and that for the men twelve cubits high. Next came a four-wheeled
+car, fourteen cubits long and eight wide, drawn along by one hundred
+and eighty men, on which was the statue of Osiris, fifteen feet high,
+pouring wine out of a golden vase, and having a scarlet frock down to
+his feet, with a yellow transparent robe over it, and over all a scarlet
+cloak. Before the statue was a large golden bowl, and a tripod with
+bowls of incense on it. Over the whole was an awning of ivy and vine
+leaves; and in the same chariot were the priests and priestesses of the
+god.
+
+This was followed by a smaller chariot drawn by sixty men, in which was
+the statue of Isis in a robe of yellow and gold. Then came a chariot
+full of grapes, and another with a large cask of wine, which was poured
+out on the road, as the procession moved on, and at which the eager
+crowd filled their jugs and drinking-cups. Then came another band of
+satyrs and Sileni, and more chariots of wine; then eighty Delphic vases
+of silver, and Panathenaic and other vases; and sixteen hundred dancing
+boys in white frocks and golden crowns: then a number of beautiful
+pictures; and a chariot carrying a grove of trees, out of which flew
+pigeons and doves, so tied that they might be easily caught by the
+crowd.
+
+On another chariot, drawn by an elephant, came Osiris, as he returned
+from his Indian conquests. He was followed by twenty-four chariots drawn
+by elephants, sixty drawn by goats, twelve by some kind of stags,
+seven by gazelles, four by wild asses, fifteen by buffaloes, eight by
+ostriches, and seven by stags of some other kind. Then came chariots
+loaded with the tributes of the conquered nations; men of Ethiopia
+carrying six hundred elephants' teeth; sixty huntsmen leading two
+thousand four hundred dogs; and one hundred and fifty men carrying
+trees, in the branches of which were tied parrots and other beautiful
+birds. Next walked the foreign animals, Ethiopian and Arabian sheep,
+Brahmin bulls, a white bear, leopards, panthers, bears, a camelopard,
+and a rhinoceros; proving to the wondering crowd the variety and
+strangeness of the countries that owned their monarch's sway.
+
+In another chariot was seen Bacchus running away from Juno, and flying
+to the altar of Rhea. After that came the statues of Alexander and
+Ptolemy Soter crowned with gold and ivy: by the side of Ptolemy stood
+the statues of Virtue, of the god Chem, and of the city of Corinth;
+and he was followed by female statues of the conquered cities of Ionia,
+Greece, Asia Minor, and Persia; and the statues of other gods. Then came
+crowds of singers and cymbal-players, and two thousand bulls with gilt
+horns, crowns, and breast-plates. Then came Amon-Ra and other gods;
+and the statue of Alexander between Victory and the goddess Neith, in a
+chariot 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 the
+throne of Ptolemy Soter was a crown worth ten thousand _aurei_, or
+nearly thirty thousand dollars; then three thousand two hundred golden
+crowns, twenty golden shields, sixty-four suits of golden armour; and
+the whole was closed with forty waggons of silver vessels, twenty
+of golden vessels, eighty of costly Eastern scents, and fifty-seven
+thousand six hundred foot soldiers, and twenty-three thousand two
+hundred horse. The procession began moving by torchlight before day
+broke in the morning, and the sun set in the evening before it had all
+passed on its way.
+
+[Illustration: 106.jpg BRONZE COSMETIC HOLDER]
+
+It went through the streets of Alexandria to the royal tents on the
+outside of the city, where, as in the procession, everything that was
+costly in art, or scarce in nature, was brought together in honour of
+the day. At the public games, as a kind of tax or coronation money,
+twenty golden crowns were given to Ptolemy Soter, twenty-three to
+Berenice, and twenty to their son, the new king, beside other costly
+gifts; and two thousand two hundred and thirty-nine talents, or one
+million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, were spent on the
+amusements of the day. For the account of this curious procession we are
+indebted to Callixenes of Rhodes, who was then travelling in Egypt, and
+who wrote a history of Alexandria.
+
+Ptolemy Soter lived two years after he had withdrawn himself from the
+cares of government; and the weight of his name was not without its
+use in adding steadiness to the throne of his successor. Instead of
+parcelling out his wide provinces among his sons as so many kingdoms, he
+had given them all to one son, and that not the eldest; and on his death
+the jealousy of those who had been disinherited and disappointed broke
+out in rebellion.
+
+It is with peculiar interest that we hear in this reign for the
+first time that the bravery and rising power of the Romans had forced
+themselves into the notice of Philadelphus. Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus,
+had been beaten by the Romans, and driven out of Italy; and the King of
+Egypt thought it not beneath him to send an ambassador to the senate, to
+wish them joy of their success, and to make a treaty of peace with the
+republic. The embassy, as we might suppose, was received in Rome with
+great joy; and three ambassadors, two of the proud name of Fabius, with
+Quintus Ogulnius, were sent back to seal the treaty. Philadelphus gave
+them some costly gifts, probably those usually given to ambassadors;
+but Rome was then young, her citizens had not yet made gold the end for
+which they lived, and the ambassadors returned the gifts, for they could
+receive nothing beyond the thanks of the senate for having done their
+duty. This treaty was never broken; and in the war which broke out in
+the middle of this reign between Rome and Carthage, usually called the
+first Punic war, when the Carthaginians sent to Alexandria to beg for
+a loan of two thousand talents, Philadelphus refused it, saying that he
+would help them against his enemies, but not against his friends.
+
+From that time forward we find Egypt in alliance with Rome. But we also
+find that they were day by day changing place with one another: Egypt
+soon began to sink, while Rome was rising in power; Egypt soon received
+help from her stronger ally, and at last became a province of the Roman
+empire.
+
+At the time of this embassy, when Greek arts were nearly unknown to the
+Romans, the ambassadors must have seen much that was new to them, and
+much that was worth copying; and three years afterwards, when one of
+them, Quintus Ogulnius, together with Caius Fabius Pictor, were chosen
+consuls, they coined silver for the first time in Rome. With them begins
+the series of consular denarii, which throws such light on Roman life
+and history.
+
+About the middle of this reign, Berenice, the mother of the king, died,
+and it was most likely then that Philadelphus began to date from the
+beginning of his own reign: he had before gone on like his father,
+dating from the beginning of his father's reign. In the year after her
+death, the great feast of Osiris, in the month of Mesore, was celebrated
+at Alexandria with more than usual pomp by the Queen Arsinoe. Venus, or
+Isis, had just raised Berenice to heaven; and Arsinoe, in return, showed
+her gratitude by the sums of money spent on the feast of Osiris, or
+Adonis as he was sometimes called by the Greeks. Theocritus, who was
+there, wrote a poem on the day, and tells us of the crowds in the
+streets, of the queen's gifts to the temple, and of the beautiful
+tapestries, on which were woven the figures of the god and goddess
+breathing as if alive; and he has given a free translation of the
+Maneros, the national poem in which the priests each year consoled the
+goddess Isis for the death of Osiris, which was sung through the streets
+of Alexandria by a Greek girl in the procession. One of the chief
+troubles in the reign of Philadelphus was the revolt of Cyrene. The
+government of that part of Africa had been entrusted to Magas, the
+half-brother of the king, a son of Berenice by her former husband.
+Berenice, who had been successful in setting aside Ceraunus to make room
+for her son Philadelphus on the throne of Egypt, has even been said to
+have favoured the rebellious and ungrateful efforts of her elder son
+Magas to make himself King of Cyrene. Magas, without waiting till the
+large armies of Egypt were drawn together to crush his little state,
+marched hastily towards Alexandria, in the hopes of being joined by
+some of the restless thousands of that crowded city. But he was quickly
+recalled to Cyrene by the news of the rising of the Marmaridas, the race
+of Libyan herdsmen that had been driven back from the coast by the Greek
+settlers who founded Cyrene. Philadelphus then led his army along the
+coast against the rebels; but he was, in the same way, stopped by the
+fear of treachery among his own Gallic mercenaries. With a measured
+cruelty which the use of foreign mercenaries could alone have taught
+him, he led back his army to the marshes of the Delta, and, entrapping
+the four thousand distrusted Gauls* on one of the small islands, he
+hemmed them in between the water and the spears of the phalanx, and they
+all 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-Syria
+and Palestine, to call off the army of Philadelphus from Cyrene. But
+Philadelphus did not wait for this attack: his armies moved before
+Antiochus was ready, and, by a successful inroad upon Syria, he
+prevented any relief being sent to Magas.
+
+After the war between the brothers had lasted some years, Magas made
+an offer of peace, which was to be sealed by betrothing his only
+child, Berenice, to the son of Philadelphus. To this offer Philadelphus
+yielded; as by the death of Magas, who was already worn out by luxury
+and disease, Cyrene would then fall to his own son. Magas, indeed, died
+before the marriage took place; but, notwithstanding the efforts made
+by his widow to break the agreement, the treaty was kept, and on this
+marriage Cyrene again formed part of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt.
+
+The black spot upon the character of Philadelphus, which all the blaze
+of science and letters by which he was surrounded can not make us
+overlook, is the death of two of his brothers: a son of Eurydice, who
+might, perhaps, have thought that he was robbed of the throne of Egypt
+by his younger brother, and who was unsuccessful in raising the island
+of Cyprus in rebellion; and a younger brother, Argasus, who was also
+charged with joining in a plot; both lost their lives by his orders.
+
+It was only in the beginning of this reign, after Egypt had been for
+more than fifty years under the rule of the Macedonians, that the evils
+which often follow conquest were brought to an end. Before this reign
+no Greek was ever known to have reached Elephantine and Syene or Aswan
+since Herodotus made his hasty tour in the Thebaid; and during much of
+the last reign no part of Upper Egypt was safe for a Greek traveller,
+if he were alone, or if he quitted the highroad. The peasants, whose
+feelings of hatred we can hardly wonder at, waylaid the stragglers, and
+Egyptian-like as the Greeks said, or slave-like as it would be wiser to
+say, often put them to death in cold blood. But a long course of good
+government had at last quieted the whole country, and left room for
+further improvements by Philadelphus.
+
+Among other buildings, Philadelphus raised a temple in Alexandria to the
+honour of his father and mother, and placed in it their statues, made of
+ivory and gold, and ordered that they should be worshipped like the
+gods and other kings of the country. He also built a temple to Ceres and
+Proserpine, and then the Eleusinian mysteries were taught in Alexandria
+to the few who were willing and worthy to be admitted. The southeast
+quarter of the city in which this temple stood was called the Eleusinis;
+and here the troop of maidens were to be seen carrying the sacred basket
+through the streets, and singing hymns in honour of the goddess; while
+they charged all profane persons, who met the procession, to keep
+their eyes upon the ground, lest they should see the basket and the
+priestesses, who were too pure for them to look upon.
+
+In this reign was finished the lighthouse on the island of Pharos, as
+a guide to ships when entering the harbour of Alexandria by night. The
+navigation of the waters of the Red Sea, along which the wind blows hard
+from the north for nine months in the year, was found so dangerous by
+the little vessels from the south of Arabia, that they always chose the
+most southerly port in which they could meet the Egyptian buyers. The
+merchants with their bales of goods found a journey on camels through
+the desert, where the path is marked only by the skeletons of the
+animals that have died upon the route, less costly than a coasting
+voyage. Hence, when Philadelphus had made the whole of Upper Egypt to
+the cataracts at Aswan (Syene) as quiet and safe as the Delta, he made a
+new port on the rocky coast of the Red Sea, nearly two hundred miles to
+the south of Cosseir, and named it Berenice after his mother. He also
+built four public inns, or watering-houses, where the caravans might
+find water for the camels, and shelter from the noonday sun, on their
+twelve days' journey through the desert from Koptos on the Nile to this
+new port. He rebuilt, and at the same time renamed, the old port of
+Cosseir, or AEnnum as it was before called, and named it Philotera after
+his younger sister. The trade which thus passed down the Nile from
+Syene, from Berenice, and from Philotera, paid a toll or duty at the
+custom-house station of Phylake a little below Lycopolis on the west
+bank of the river, where a guard of soldiers was encamped; and this
+station gradually grew into a town.
+
+[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 Arsinoe, after his sister; and
+he again opened the canal which Necho II. and Darius had begun, by which
+ships were to pass from the Nile to this city on the Red Sea. This canal
+began in the Pelusiac branch of the river, a little above Bubastis,
+and was carried to the Lower Bitter Lakes in the reign of Darius. From
+thence Philadelphus wished to carry it forward to the Red Sea, near
+the town of Arsinoe, and moreover cleared it from the sands which
+soon overwhelmed it and choked it up whenever it was neglected by the
+government. But his undertaking was stopped by the engineers finding the
+waters 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 could
+neither water the fields nor give drink to the cities in the valley. He
+also built a second city of the name of Berenice, called the Berenice
+Epidires, at the very mouth of the Red Sea on a point of land where
+Abyssinia is hardly more than fifteen miles from the opposite coast of
+Arabia. This naming of cities after his mother and sisters was no idle
+compliment; they probably received the crown revenues of those cities
+for their personal maintenance.
+
+With a view further to increase the trade with the East, Philadelphus
+sent Dionysius on an expedition overland to India, to gain a knowledge
+of the country and of its means and wants. He went by the way of the
+Caspian Sea through Bactria, in the line of Alexander's march. He
+dwelt there, at the court of the sovereign, soon after the time that
+Megasthenes was there; and he wrote a report of what he saw and learned.
+But it is sad to find, in our search for what is valuable in the history
+of past times, that the information gained on this interesting journey
+of discovery is wholly lost.
+
+In the number of ports which were then growing into the rank of cities,
+we see full proof of the great trade of Egypt at that time; and we may
+form some opinion of the profit which was gained from the trade of the
+Red Sea from the report of Clitarchus to Alexander, that the people of
+one of the islands would give a talent of gold for a horse, so plentiful
+with them was gold, and so scarce the useful animals of Europe; and one
+of the three towns named after the late queen, on that coast, was known
+by the name of the Nubian or Golden Berenice, from the large supply of
+gold which was dug from the mines in the neighbourhood. In latitude 17 deg.,
+separated from the Golden Berenice by one of the forests of Ethiopia,
+was the new city of Ptolemais, which, however, was little more than a
+post from which the hunting parties went out to catch elephants for
+the armies of Egypt. Philadelphus tried to command, to persuade, and to
+bribe the neighbouring tribes not to kill these elephants for food, but
+they refused all treaty with him; these zealous huntsmen answered that,
+if he offered them the kingdom of Egypt with all its wealth, they would
+not give up the pleasure of catching and eating elephants. The Ethiopian
+forests, however, were able to supply the Egyptian armies with about one
+elephant for every thousand men, which was the number then thought best
+in the Greek military tactics. Asia had been the only country from which
+the armies had been supplied with elephants before Philadelphus brought
+them from Ethiopia.
+
+The temple of Isis among the palm groves in Philae, a rocky island in the
+Nile near the cataracts of Syene, was begun in this reign, though not
+finished till some reigns later. It is still the wonder of travellers,
+and by its size and style proves the wealth and good taste of the
+priests. But its ornaments are not so simple as those of the older
+temples; and the capitals of its columns are varied by the full-blown
+papyrus 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 the
+site 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 bend
+of the river just above the cataracts forms a quiet lake surrounded on
+all sides by fantastic cliffs of red granite. Its name is a corruption
+from Abu-lakh, the city of the frontier. This temple was one of the
+places in which Osiris was said to be buried. None but priests ever set
+foot on this sacred island, and no oath was so binding as that sworn in
+the name of Him that lies buried in Philae. The statues of the goddess
+in the temple were all meant for portraits of the queen Arsinoe. The
+priests who dwelt in the cells within the courtyards of the temples of
+which we see the remains in this temple at Philae, were there confined
+for life to the service of the altar by the double force of religion and
+the stone walls. They showed their zeal for their gods by the amount of
+want which they were able to endure, and they thought that sitting upon
+the ground in idleness, with the knees up to the chin, was one of the
+first of religious duties.
+
+[Illustration: 116.jpg TEMPLE OF PHILAE]
+
+The Museum of Alexandria held at this time the highest rank among the
+Greek schools, whether for poetry, mathematics, astronomy, or medicine,
+the four branches into which it was divided. Its library soon held two
+hundred thousand rolls of papyrus; which, however, could hardly have
+been equal to ten thousand printed volumes. Many of these were bought by
+Philadelphus in Athens and Rhodes; and his copy of Aristotle's works was
+bought of the philosopher Nileus, who had been a hearer of that great
+man, and afterwards inherited his books through Theophrastus, to whom
+they had been left by Aristotle. The books in the museum were of course
+all Greek; the Greeks did not study foreign languages, and thought the
+Egyptian writings barbarous.
+
+At the head of this library had been Demetrius Phalereus, who, after
+ruling Athens with great praise, was banished from his country, and fled
+to Ptolemy Soter, under whom he consoled himself for the loss of power
+in the enjoyment of literary leisure. He was at the same time the most
+learned and the most polished of orators. He brought learning from the
+closet into the forum; and, by the soft turn which he gave to public
+speaking, made that sweet and lovely which had before been grave and
+severe. Cicero thought him the great master in the art of speaking, and
+seems to have taken him as the model upon which he wished to form his
+own style. He wrote upon philosophy, history, government, and poetry;
+but the only one of his works which has reached our time is his treatise
+on elocution; and the careful thought which he there gives to the
+choice of words and to the form of a sentence, and even the parts of a
+sentence, shows the value then set upon style. Indeed he seems rather
+to have charmed his hearers by the softness of his words than to have
+roused them to noble deeds by the strength of his thoughts. He not only
+advised Ptolemy Soter what books he should buy, but which he should
+read, and he chiefly recommended those on government and policy; and
+it is alike to the credit of the king and of the librarian, that he
+put before him books which, from their praise of freedom and hatred of
+tyrants, few persons would even speak of in the presence of a king.
+But Demetrius had also been consulted by Soter about the choice of a
+successor, and had given his opinion that the crown ought to be left
+to his eldest son, and that wars would arise between his children if
+it were not so left; hence we can hardly wonder that, on the death of
+Soter, Demetrius should have lost his place at the head of the museum,
+and been ordered to leave Alexandria. He died, as courtiers say, in
+disgrace; and he was buried near Diospolis in the Busirite nome of the
+Delta. According to one account he was put to death by the bite of
+an asp, in obedience to the new king's orders, but this story is not
+generally credited; although this was not an uncommon way of inflicting
+death.
+
+[Illustration: 118.jpg ANUBIS, GOD OF THE LOWER WORLD]
+
+Soon after this we find Zenodotus of Ephesus filling the office of
+librarian to the museum. He was a poet, who, with others, had been
+employed by Soter in the education of his children. He is also known as
+the first of those Alexandrian critics who turned their thoughts towards
+mending the text of Homer, and to whom we are indebted for the tolerably
+correct state of the great poet's works, which had become faulty through
+the carelessness of the copiers. Zenodotus was soon followed by other
+critics in this task of editing Homer. But their labours were not
+approved of by all; and when Aratus asked Timon which he thought the
+best edition of the poet, the philosopher shrewdly answered, "That which
+has been least corrected."
+
+At the head of the mathematical school was Euclid; who is, however,
+less known to us by what his pupils have said of him than by his own
+invaluable work on geometry. This is one of the few of the scientific
+writings of the ancients that are still in use. The discoveries of the
+man of science are made use of by his successor, and the discoverer
+perhaps loses part of his reward when his writings are passed by, after
+they have served us as a stepping-stone to mount by. If he wishes his
+works to live with those of the poet and orator, he must, like them,
+cultivate those beauties of style which are fitted to his matter. Euclid
+did so; and his Elements have been for more than two thousand years the
+model for all writers on geometry. He begins at the beginning, and
+leads the learner, step by step, from the simplest propositions, called
+axioms, which rest upon metaphysical rather than mathematical proof, to
+high geometrical truths. The mind is indeed sometimes wearied by being
+made to stop at every single step in the path, and wishes, with Ptolemy
+Soter, for a shorter road; but, upon the whole, Euclid's clearness has
+never been equalled.
+
+Ctesibus wrote on the theory of hydrostatics, and was the inventor of
+several water-engines; an application of mathematics which was much
+called for by the artificial irrigation of Egypt. He also invented that
+useful 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 to
+enjoy the patronage of Philadelphus was Theocritus. Many of his poems
+are lost; but his pastoral poems, though too rough for the polished
+taste of Quintilian, and perhaps more like nature than we wish any works
+of imitative art to be, have always been looked upon as the model of
+that kind of poetry. If his shepherds do not speak the language of
+courtiers, they have at least a rustic propriety which makes us admire
+the manners and thoughts of the peasant. He repaid the bounty of the
+king in the way most agreeable to him; he speaks of him as one
+
+                              to freemen kind,
+     Wise, fond of books and love, of generous mind;
+     Knows well his friend, but better knows his foe;
+     Scatters his wealth; when asked he ne'er says No,
+     But gives as kings should give.
+     Idyll, xiv. 60.
+
+Theocritus boasted that he would in an undying poem place him in the
+rank of the demigods; and, writing with the pyramids and the Memnonium
+before his eyes, assured him that generosity towards the poets would
+do more to make his name live for ever than any building that he could
+raise.
+
+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 could
+not long dwell so near the court of Philadelphus unknown and unhonoured.
+He was made professor of poetry in the museum, and even now repays
+the king and patron for what he then received. He was a man of great
+industry, and wrote in prose and in all kinds of verse; but of these
+only a few hymns and epigrams have come down to our time. Egypt seems to
+have been the birthplace of the mournful elegy, and Callimachus was the
+chief of the elegiac poets. He was born at Cyrene; and though, from the
+language in which he wrote, his thoughts are mostly Greek, yet he did
+not forget the place of his birth. He calls upon Apollo by the name of
+Carneus, because, after Sparta and Thera, Cyrene was his chosen seat.
+He paints Latona, weary and in pain in the island of Delos, as leaning
+against a palm-tree, by the side of the river Inopus, which, sinking
+into the ground, was to rise again in Egypt, near the cataracts of
+Syene; and, prettily pointing to Philadelphus, he makes Apollo, yet
+unborn, ask his mother not to give birth to him in the island of Cos,
+because that island was already chosen as the birthplace of another god,
+the child of the gods Soteres, who would be the copy of his father,
+and under whose diadem both Egypt and the islands would be proud to be
+governed by a Macedonian.
+
+[Illustration: 123.jpg THE CARARACT ON THE ASWAN]
+
+The poet Philastas, who had been the first tutor of Philadelphus, was
+in elegy second only to Callimachus; but Quintilian (while advising us
+about books, to read much but not many) does not rank him among the
+few first-rate poets by whom the student should form his taste; and his
+works are now lost. He was small and thin in person, and it was jokingly
+said of him that he wore leaden soles to his shoes lest he should be
+blown away by the wind. But in losing his poetry, we have perhaps lost
+the point of the joke. While these three, Theocritus, Callimachus, and
+Philastas, were writing in Alexandria, the museum was certainly the
+chief seat of the muses. Athens itself could boast of no such poet
+but Menander, with whom Attic literature ended; and him Philadelphus
+earnestly invited to his court. He sent a ship to Greece on purpose to
+fetch him; but neither this honour nor the promised salary could make
+him quit his mother country and the schools of Athens; and, in the time
+of Pausanias, his tomb was still visited by the scholar on the road to
+the Pmeus, and his statue was still seen in the theatre.
+
+Strato, the pupil of Theophrastus, though chiefly known for his writings
+on physics, was also a writer on many branches of knowledge. He was
+one of the men of learning who had taken part in the education of
+Phil-adelphus; and the king showed his gratitude to his teacher by
+making him a present of eighty talents, or sixty thousand dollars. He
+was for eighteen years at the head of one of the Alexandrian schools.
+
+Timocharis, the astronomer, made some of his observations at Alexandria
+in the last reign, and continued them through half of this reign. He
+began a catalogue of the fixed stars, with their latitudes and their
+longitudes measured from the equinoctial point; by the help of which
+Hipparchus, one hundred and fifty years afterwards, made the great
+discovery that the equinoctial point had moved. He has left an
+observation of the place of Venus, on the seventeenth day of the month
+of Mesore, in the thirteenth year of this reign, which by the modern
+tables of the planets is known to have been on the eighth day
+of October, B.C. 272; from which we learn that the first year of
+Philadelphus ended in October, B.C. 284, and the first year of Ptolemy
+Soter ended in October, B.C. 322; thus fixing the chronology of
+these reigns with a certainty which leaves nothing to be wished for.
+Aris-tillus also made some observations of the same kind at Alexandria.
+Few of them have been handed down to us, but they were made use of by
+Hipparchus.
+
+Aristarchus, the astronomer of Samos, most likely came to Alexandria
+in the last reign, as some of his observations were made in the very
+beginning of the reign of Philadelphus. He is the first astronomer who
+is known to have taken the true view of the solar system. He said that
+the sun was the centre round which the earth moved in a circle; and, as
+if he had foreseen that even in after ages we should hardly be able to
+measure the distance of the fixed stars, he said that the earth's yearly
+path bore no greater proportion to the hollow globe of the heavens in
+which the stars were set, than the point without size in the centre of a
+circle does to its circumference. But the work in which he proved these
+great truths, or perhaps threw out these happy guesses, is lost; and the
+astronomers who followed him clung to the old belief that the earth was
+the centre round which the sun moved. The only writings of Aristarchus
+which now remain are his short work on the distances and magnitude of
+the sun and moon, in which the error in his results arises from the want
+of good observations, rather than from any mistake in his mathematical
+principles.
+
+Aratus, who was born in Cilicia, is sometimes counted among the
+pleiades, or seven stars of Alexandria. His _Phenomena_ is a short
+astronomical poem, without life or feeling, which scarcely aims at
+any of the grace or flow of poetry. It describes the planets and the
+constellations 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 the
+stars seen at night at each time of the year. When maps were little
+known, it must have been of great use, to learners; and its being in
+verse made it the more easy to remember. The value which the
+ancients set upon this poem is curiously shown by the number of Latin
+translations which were made from it. Cicero in his early youth, before
+he was known as an orator or philosopher, perhaps before he himself knew
+in which path of letters he was soon to take the lead, translated this
+poem. The next translation is by Germanicus Caesar, whose early death
+and 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 Greek
+comedies, his Latin orations, and his poem on Augustus are lost, while
+his translation of Aratus is all that is left to prove that this high
+name in literature was not given to him for his political virtues alone.
+Lastly Avienus, a writer in the reign of Diocletian, or perhaps
+of Theodosius, has left a rugged, unpolished translation of this
+much-valued poem. Aratus, the poet of the heavens, will be read, said
+Ovid, as long as the sun and moon shall shine.
+
+Sosibius was one of the rhetoricians of the museum who lived upon the
+bounty of Philadelphus. The king, wishing to laugh at his habit of
+verbal criticism, once told his treasurer to refuse his salary, and say
+that it had been already paid. Sosibius complained to the king, and the
+book of receipts was sent for, in which Philadelphus found the names of
+Soter, Sosigines, Bion, and Apollonius, and showing to the critic one
+syllable of his name in each of those words, said that putting them
+together, they must be taken as the receipt for his salary. Other
+authors wrote on lighter matters. Apollodorus Gelous, the physician,
+addressed to Philadelphus a volume of advice as to which Greek wines
+were best fitted for his royal palate. The Italian and Sicilian were
+then unknown in Egypt, and those of the Thebaid were wholly beneath
+his notice, while the vine had as yet hardly been planted in the
+neighbourhood of Alexandria. He particularly praised the Naspercenite
+wine from the southern banks of the Black Sea, the Oretic from the
+island of Euboea; the OEneatic from Locris; the Leuca-dian from the
+island 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 of
+Peparethus, a wine which of course did not please the many, as this
+experienced taster acknowledges that nobody is likely to have a true
+relish for it till after six years' acquaintance. Such were the Greek
+authors who basked in the sunshine of royal favour at Alexandria; who
+could have told us, if they had thought it worth their while, all that
+we now wish to know of the trade, religion, language, and early history
+of Egypt. But they thought that the barbarians were not worth the
+notice of men who called themselves Macedonians. Philadelphus, however,
+thought otherwise; and by his command Manetho, an Egyptian, wrote in
+Greek a history of Egypt, copied from the hieroglyphical writing on
+the temples, and he dedicated it to the king. We know it only in the
+quotations of Josephus and Julius Africanus, and what we have is little
+more than a list of kings' names. He was a priest of Heliopolis, the
+great seat of Egyptian learning. The general correctness of Manetho's
+history, which runs back for nearly two thousand years, is shown by our
+finding the kings' names agree with many Egyptian inscriptions. Manetho
+owes his reputation to the merit of being the first who distinguished
+himself as a writer and critic upon religion and philosophy, as well
+as chronology and history, using the Greek language, but drawing his
+materials from native sources, especially the Sacred Books. That he was
+"skilled in Greek letters": we learn from Josephus, who also declares
+that he contradicted many of Herodotus' erroneous statements. Manetho
+was better suited for the task of writing a history of Egypt than any of
+his contemporaries.
+
+As an Egyptian he could search out and make use of all the native
+Egyptian sources, and, thanks to his knowledge of Greek, he could
+present them in a form intelligible to the Hellenes. It must be
+confessed that he has occasionally fallen into the error of allowing
+Greek thoughts and traditions to slip into his work. The great worth
+in Manetho's work lies in the fact that he relates the history of Egypt
+based 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 not
+mention; but above all, Manetho gives us a list of Egyptian rulers
+arranged according to a regular system. But however important in
+this respect Manetho's work may be, it must not be forgotten what
+difficulties he had to contend with in the writing of it, and what
+unreliable sources lay in these difficulties. He could not use the
+sources in the form in which he found them. He was obliged to re-write
+them, and he added to them synchronisms and relations to other peoples
+which necessarily exposed him to the dangers of colouring his report
+correspondingly.
+
+But a much greater difficulty consisted in the fact that the
+chronological reports of the earlier history were all arranged according
+to the reigning years of the rulers, so that Manetho was obliged to
+construct an era for his work. Boeckh was the first to discover
+with certainty the existence and form of this era. According to his
+researches, the whole work of Manetho is based upon Sothicycles of 1460
+Julianic years. The Egyptian year was movable, and did not need the
+extra day every few years, but the consequence was that every year
+remained 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 to
+a whole year, and so the movable year and the fixed year fell together
+again. It is this Sothic period which Manetho has employed in his
+account of Egyptian history. Besides his history, Manetho has left us a
+work on astrology, called _Apotelesmatica_, or Events, a work of which
+there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness.
+
+It is a poem in hexameter verse, in good Greek, addressed to King
+Ptolemy, in which he calls, not only upon Apollo and the Muse, but, like
+a true Egyptian, upon Hermes, from whose darkly worded writings he had
+gained his knowledge. He says that the king's greatness might have been
+foretold from the places of Mars and the Sun at the time of his birth,
+and that his marriage with his sister Arsinoe arose from the places of
+Venus and Saturn at the same time. But while we smile at this being said
+as the result of astronomical calculations, we must remember that for
+centuries afterwards, almost in our own time, the science of judicial
+astrology was made a branch of astronomy, and that the fault lay rather
+in the age than in the man; and we have the pain of thinking that,
+while many of the valuable writings by Manetho are lost, the copiers and
+readers of manuscripts have carefully saved for us this nearly worthless
+poem on astrology.
+
+Petosiris was another writer on astrology and astronomy who was highly
+praised by his friend Manetho; and his calculations on the distances
+of the sun and planets are quoted by Pliny. His works are lost; but his
+name calls for our notice, as he must have been a native Egyptian, and
+a priest. Like Manetho, he also wrote on the calculation of nativities;
+and the later Greek astrologers, when what they had foretold did not
+come to pass, were wont to lay the blame on Petosiris. The priests were
+believed to possess these and other supernatural powers; and to help
+their claims to be believed many of them practised ventriloquism.
+
+Timosthenes, the admiral under Philadelphus, must not be forgotten in
+this list of authors; for though his verses to Apollo were little worth
+notice, his voyages of discovery, and his work in ten books on harbours,
+placed him in the first rank among geographers. Colotes, a pupil and
+follower of Epicurus, dedicated to Philadelphus a work of which the very
+title proves the nature of his philosophy, and how soon the rules of his
+master had fitted themselves to the habits of the sensualist. Its
+title was "That it is impossible even to support life according to the
+philosophical rules of any but the Epicureans." It was a good deal read
+and talked about; and three hundred years afterwards Plutarch thought it
+not a waste of time to write against it at some length.
+
+At a time when books were few, and far too dear to be within reach of
+the many, and indeed when the number of those who could read must have
+been small, other means were of course taken to meet the thirst after
+knowledge; and the chief of these were the public readings in the
+theatre. This was not overlooked by Phila-delphus, who employed
+Hegesias to read Herodotus, and Hermophantus to read Homer, the earliest
+historian and the earliest poet, the two authors who had taken deepest
+root in the minds of the Greeks. These public readings, which were
+common throughout Greece and its colonies, had not a little effect on
+the authors. They then wrote for the ear rather than the eye, to be
+listened to rather than to be read, which was one among the causes of
+Greek elegance and simplicity of style.
+
+Among others who were brought to Alexandria by the fame of Philadelphus'
+bounty was Zoilus, the grammarian, whose ill-natured criticism on
+Homer's poems had earned for him the name of Homeromastix, or the
+scourge of Homer. He read his criticisms to Philadelphus, who was so
+much 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 beauties
+of the Iliad and Odyssey in their public readings, surely one person who
+was so much wiser might be able to live by pointing out the faults.
+
+Timon, a tragic poet, was also one of the visitors to this court; but,
+as he was more fond of eating and drinking than of philosophy, we need
+not wonder at our knowing nothing of his tragedies, or at his not
+being made a professor by Philadelphus. But he took his revenge on the
+better-fed philosophers of the court, in a poem in which he calls them
+literary fighting-cocks, who were being fattened by the king, and were
+always quarrelling in the coops of the museum.
+
+The Alexandrian men of science and letters maintained themselves, some
+few by fees received from their pupils, others as professors holding
+salaries in the museum, and others by civil employments under the
+government. There was little to encourage in them the feelings of noble
+pride or independence. The first rank in Alexandria was held by the
+civil and military servants of the crown, who enjoyed the lucrative
+employments of receiving the taxes, hearing the lawsuits by appeal, and
+repressing rebellions. With these men the philosophers mixed, not as
+equals, but partaking of their wealth and luxuries, and paying their
+score with wit and conversation. There were no landholders in the city,
+as the soil of the country was owned by Egyptians; and the wealthy
+trading classes, of all nations and languages, could bestow little
+patronage on Greek learning, and therefore little independence on its
+professors.
+
+Philadelphus was not less fond of paintings and statues than of books;
+and he seems to have joined the Achaian league as much for the sake of
+the pictures which Aratus, its general, was in the habit of sending
+to him, as for political reasons. Aratus, the chief of Sicyon, was an
+acknowledged judge of paintings, and Sicyon was then the first school
+of Greece. The pieces which he sent to Philadelphus were mostly those of
+Pamphilus, the master, and of Melanthius, the fellow-pupil, of Apelles.
+Pamphilus was famed for his perspective; and he is said to have received
+from every pupil the large sum of ten talents, or seven thousand five
+hundred dollars, a year. His best known pieces were, Ulysses in his
+ship, and the victory of the Athenians near the town of Phlius. It was
+through Pamphilus that, at first in Sicyon, and afterwards throughout
+all Greece, drawing was taught to boys as part of a liberal education.
+Neacles also painted for Aratus; and we might almost suppose that it was
+as a gift to the King of Egypt that he painted his Sea-fight between the
+Egyptians and the Persians, in which the painter shows us that it was
+fought within the mouth of the Nile by making a crocodile bite at an ass
+drinking 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 the
+Battle of Issus, which three hundred years afterwards was hung up by
+Vespasian in the Temple of Peace at Rome. We must wonder at a woman
+choosing to paint the horrors and pains of a battle-piece; but, as we
+are not told what point of time was chosen, we may hope that it was
+after the battle, when Alexander, in his tent, raised up from their
+knees the wife and lovely daughter of Darius, who had been found among
+the prisoners. As for the Egyptians, they showed no taste in painting.
+
+[Illustration: 137.jpg METHOD OF EGYPTIAN DRAFTSMANSHIP]
+
+Their method of drawing the human figure mathematically by means of
+squares, which was not unsuitable in working a statue sixty feet high,
+checked all flights of genius; and it afterwards destroyed Greek art,
+when the Greek painters were idle enough to use it. We hear but little
+of the statues and sculptures made for Philadelphus; but we cannot help
+remarking that, while the public places of Athens were filled with
+the statues of the great and good men who had deserved well of their
+country, the statues which were most common in Alexandria were those of
+Cline, a favourite damsel, who filled the office of cup-bearer to the
+king of Egypt.
+
+The favour shown to the Jews by Ptolemy Soter was not withdrawn by his
+son. He even bought from his own soldiers and freed from slavery one
+hundred and twenty thousand men of that nation, who were scattered over
+Egypt. He paid for each, out of the royal treasury, one hundred and
+twenty drachmas, or about fifteen dollars, to those of his subjects who
+held them either by right of war or by purchase. In fixing the amount
+of the ransom, the king would seem to have been guided by his Jewish
+advisers, as this is exactly equal to thirty shekels, the sum fixed
+by the Jewish law as the price of a slave. The Jews who lived in Lower
+Egypt, in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, looked upon that
+country as their home. They had already a Greek translation of either
+the whole or some part of their sacred writings, which had been made for
+those whose families had been for so many generations in Egypt that they
+could not read the language of their forefathers. But they now hoped,
+by means of the king's friendship and the weight which his wishes must
+carry with them, to have a Greek translation of the Bible which should
+bear the stamp of official authority.
+
+Accordingly, to please them, Philadelphus sent Aris-taaus, a man whose
+wisdom had gained his friendship, and Andrseus, a captain of the guard,
+both of them Greek Jews, with costly gifts to Eleazer, the high priest
+of Jerusalem; and asked him to employ learned and fit men to make a
+Greek translation of the Bible for the library at Alexandria. Eleazer,
+so runs the tradition, named seventy elders to undertake the task, who
+held their first sitting on the business at the king's dinner-table;
+when Menedemus, the Socratic philosopher, the pupil of Plato, was also
+present, who had been sent to Philadelphus as ambassador from Eubcea.
+The translators then divided the work among themselves; and when each
+had finished his task it wras laid before a meeting of the seventy, and
+then published by authority. Thus was said to have been made the
+Greek translation of the Old Testament, which, from the number of the
+translators, we now call the Septuagint; but a doubt is thrown upon
+the whole story by the fables which have been mingled with it to give
+authority to the translation. By this translation the Bible became known
+for the first time to the Greek philosophers. We do not indeed hear that
+they immediately read it or noticed it, we do not find it quoted till
+after the spread of Christianity; but it had a silent effect on
+their opinions, which we trace in the new school of Platonists soon
+afterwards rising in Alexandria.
+
+When Aratus of Sicyon first laid a plot to free his country from its
+tyrant, who reigned by the help of the King of Macedonia, he sent to
+Philadelphus to beg for money. He naturally looked to the King of Egypt
+for help when entering upon a struggle against their common rival; but
+the king seems to have thought the plans of this young man too wild to
+be countenanced. Aratus, however, soon raised Sicyon to a level with the
+first states of Greece, and made himself leader of the Achaian league,
+under which band and name the Greeks were then struggling for freedom
+against Macedonia; and when, by his courage and success, he had shown
+himself worthy of the proud name which was afterwards given him, of the
+"Last of the Greeks," Philadelphus, like other patrons, gave him
+the help which he less needed. Aratus, as we have seen, bought his
+friendship with pictures, the gifts of all others the most welcome;
+and, when he went to Egypt, Philadelphus gave him one hundred and fifty
+talents, or forty-five thousand dollars, and joined the Achaian league,
+on the agreement that in carrying on the war by sea and land they should
+obey the orders from Alexandria.
+
+The friendship of Philadelphus, indeed, was courted by all the
+neighbouring states; the little island of Delos set up its statue to
+him; and the cities of Greece vied with one another in doing him honour.
+The Athenians named one of the tribes of their city and also one
+of their public lecture-rooms by his name; and two hundred years
+afterwards, when Cicero and his friend Atticus were learning wisdom and
+eloquence from the lips of Antiochus in Athens, it was in the gymnasium
+of Ptolemy.
+
+Philadelphus, when young, had married Arsinoe, the daughter of
+Lysimachus of Thrace, by whom he had three children, Ptolemy, who
+succeeded him, Lysimachus, and Berenice; but, having found that his
+wife was intriguing with Amyntas, and with his physician Chrysippus
+of Rhodes, he put these two to death and banished the Queen Arsinoe to
+Koptos in the Thebaid.
+
+He then took Arsinoe, his own sister, as the partner of his throne. She
+had married first the old Lysimachus, King of Thrace, and then Ceraunus,
+her half-brother, when he was King of Macedonia. As they were not
+children of the same mother, this second marriage was neither illegal
+nor improper in Macedonia; but her third marriage with Philadelphus
+could only be justified by the laws of Egypt, their adopted country.
+They were both past the middle age, and whether Philadelphus looked
+upon her as his wife or not, at any rate they had no children. Her
+own children by Lysimachus had been put to death by Ceraunus, and she
+readily adopted those of her brother with all the kindness of a mother.
+She was a woman of an enlarged mind; her husband and her stepchildren
+alike valued her; and Eratosthenes showed his opinion of her learning
+and strong sense by giving the name of Arsinoe 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 and
+Arsinoe]
+
+This seeming marriage, however, between brother and sister did not
+escape blame with the Greeks of Alexandria. The poet Sotades, whose
+verses were as licentious as his life, wrote some coarse lines against
+the queen, for which he was forced to fly from Egypt, and, being
+overtaken at sea, he was wrapped up in lead and thrown overboard.
+
+In the Egyptian inscriptions Ptolemy and Arsinoe are always called the
+brother-gods; on the coins they are called Adelphi, the brothers; and
+afterwards the king took the name of Philadelphus, or sister-loving,
+by which he is now usually known. In the first half of his reign
+Philadelphus dated his coins from the year that his father came to the
+throne; and it was not till the nineteenth year of his reign, soon after
+the death of his mother, that he made an era of his own, and dated his
+coins by the year of his own reign. The wealth of the country is well
+shown by the great size of those most in use, which were, in gold the
+tetra-stater or piece of eight drachms, and in silver the tetra-drachma,
+or piece of four drachms, while Greece had hardly seen a piece of gold
+larger than the single stater. In Alexandrian accounts also the unit
+of money was the silver didrachm, and thus double that in use among the
+merchants of Greece.
+
+[Illustration: 142.jpg COIN WITH THE HEADS OF SOTER, PHILADELPHUS AND
+BERENICE]
+
+Among the coins is one with the heads of Soter and Philadelphus on the
+one side, and the head of Berenice, the wife of the one and mother of
+the other, on the other side. This we may suppose to have been struck
+during the first two years of his reign, in the lifetime of his father.
+Another bears on one side the heads of Ptolemy Soter and Berenice, with
+the title of "the gods," and on the other side the heads of Philadelphus
+and his wife Arsinoe, with the title of "the brothers." This was struck
+after the death of his parents. A third was struck by the king in honour
+of his queen and sister. On the one side is the head of the queen, and
+on the other is the name of "Arsinoe, the brother-loving," with the
+cornucopia, or horn of Amalthea, an emblem borrowed by the queens of
+Egypt from the goddess Amalthea, the wife of the Libyan Anion. This was
+struck after his second marriage.
+
+On the death of Arsinoe, Philadelphus built a tomb for her in
+Alexandria, called the Arsinoeum, and set up in it an obelisk eighty
+cubits high, which had been made by King Nectanebo, but had been left
+plain, without carving.
+
+[Illustration: 143.jpg COIN OF ARSINOE, SISTER OF PTOLEMY II.]
+
+Satyrus, the architect, had the charge of moving it. He dug a canal to
+it as it lay upon the ground, and moved two heavily laden barges under
+it. The burdens were then taken out of the barges, and as they floated
+higher they raised the obelisk off the ground. He then found it a task
+as great or greater to set it up in its place; and this Greek engineer
+must surely have looked back with wonder on the labour and knowledge of
+mechanics which must have been used in setting up the obelisks, colossal
+statues, and pyramids, which he saw scattered over the country. This
+obelisk now ornaments the cathedral of the Popes on the Vatican hill at
+Rome. Satyrus wrote a treatise on precious stones, and he also carved
+on them with great skill; but his works are known only in the following
+lines, which were written by Diodorus on his portrait of Arsinoe cut in
+crystal:
+
+     E'en Zeuxis had been proud to trace
+     The lines within this pebble seen;
+     Satyrus here hath carved the face
+     Of fair Arsinoe, Egypt's queen;
+     But such her beauty, sweetness, grace,
+     The copy falls far short, I ween.
+
+Two beautiful cameos cut on sardonyx are extant, one with the heads of
+Philadelphus and his first wife, Arsinoe, and the other with the heads
+of the same king and his second wife, Arsinoe. It is not impossible that
+one or both of them may be the work of Satyrus.
+
+Philadelphus is also said to have listened to the whimsical proposal
+of Dinochares, the architect, to build a room of loadstone in Arsinoe's
+tomb, so that an iron statue of the queen should hang in the air between
+the floor and the roof. But the death of the king and of the architect
+took place before this was tried. He set up there, however, her statue
+six feet high, carved out of a most remarkable block of topaz, which had
+been presented to his mother by Philemon, the prefect of the Troglodytic
+coast in the last reign.
+
+Philadelphus lived in peace with Ergamenes, King of Meroe or Upper
+Ethiopia, who, while seeking for a knowledge of philosophy and the arts
+of life from his Greek neighbours, seems also to have gained a love
+of despotism, and a dislike of that control with which the priests of
+Ethiopia and Egypt had always limited the power of their kings. The King
+of Meroe had hitherto reigned like Amenothes or Thutmosis of old, as
+the head of the priesthood, supported and controlled by the priestly
+aristocracy by which he was surrounded. But he longed for the absolute
+power of Philadelphus. Accordingly he surrounded the golden temple with
+a chosen body of troops, and put the whole of the priests to death; and
+from that time he governed Ethiopia as an autocrat. But, with the loss
+of their liberties, the Ethiopians lost the wish to guard the throne; by
+grasping at more power, their sovereign lost what he already possessed;
+and in the next reign their country was conquered by Egypt.
+
+The wars between Philadelphus and his great neighbour, Antiochus Theos,
+seem not to have been carried on very actively, though they did not
+wholly cease till Philadelphus offered as a bribe his daughter Berenice,
+with a large sum of money under the name of a dower. Antiochus was
+already married to Laodice, whom he loved dearly, and by whom he had two
+children, Seleucus and Antiochus; but political ambition had deadened
+the feelings of his heart, and he agreed to declare this first marriage
+void and his two sons illegitimate, and that his children, if any should
+be born to him by Berenice, should inherit the throne of Babylon and the
+East. Philadelphus, with an equal want of feeling, and disregarding the
+consequences of such a marriage, led his daughter to Pelusium on her
+journey to her betrothed husband, and sent with her so large a sum of
+gold and silver that he was nicknamed the "dower-giver."
+
+The peace between the two countries lasted as long as Philadelphus
+lived, and was strengthened by kindnesses which each did to the other.
+Ptolemy, when in Syria, was much struck by the beauty of a statue of
+Diana, and begged it of Antiochus as an ornament for Alexandria. But as
+soon as the statue reached Egypt, Arsinoe fell dangerously ill, and she
+dreamed that the goddess came by night, and told her that the illness
+was sent to her for the wrong done to the statue by her husband; and
+accordingly it was sent back with many gifts to the temple from which it
+had been brought.
+
+While Berenice and her husband lived at Antioch, Philadelphus kindly
+sent there from time to time water from the sacred Nile for her use, as
+the Egyptians believed that none other was so wholesome. Antiochus,
+when ill, sent to Alexandria for a physician; and Cleombrotus of Cos
+accordingly went, by command of Ptolemy, to Syria. He was successful
+in curing the king, and on his return he received from Philadelphus a
+present of one hundred talents, or seventy-five thousand dollars, as a
+fee for his journey.
+
+Philadelphus was a weak frame of body, and had delicate health; and,
+though a lover of learning beyond other kings of his time, he also
+surpassed them in his unmeasured luxury and love of pleasure. He had
+many mistresses, Egyptian as well as Greek, and the names of some of
+them have been handed down to us. He often boasted that he had found out
+the way to live for ever; but, like other free-livers, he was sometimes,
+by the gout in his feet, made to acknowledge that he was only a man, and
+indeed to wish that he could change places with the beggar whom he saw
+from his palace windows, eating the garbage on the banks of the Nile
+with an appetite which he had long wanted. It was during illness that
+he found most time for reading, and his mind most open to the truths of
+philosophy; and he chiefly wooed the Muses when ill health left him at
+leisure from his other courtships. He had a fleet of eight hundred state
+barges with gilt prows and poops and scarlet awnings upon the decks,
+which were used in the royal processions and religious shows, and which
+usually lay in dock at Schedia, on the Canopic River, five and twenty
+miles from Alexandria. He was no doubt in part withheld from war by this
+luxurious love of ease; but his reign taught the world the new lesson,
+that an ambitious monarch may gratify his wish for praise and gain the
+admiration of surrounding nations, as much by cultivating the blessed
+arts of peace as by plunging his people into the miseries of war.
+
+He reigned over Egypt, with the neighbouring parts of Arabia; also over
+Libya, Phoenicia, Cole-Syria, part of Ethiopia, Pamphylia, Cilicia,
+Lycia, Caria, Cyprus, and the isles of the Cyclades. The island of
+Rhodes and many of the cities of Greece were bound to him by the closest
+ties of friendship, for past help and for the hope of future. The
+wealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon did homage to him, as before to his
+father, by putting his crowned head upon their coins. The forces of
+Egypt reached the very large number of two hundred thousand foot and
+twenty thousand horse, two thousand chariots, four hundred Ethiopian
+elephants, fifteen hundred ships of war and one thousand transports. Of
+this large force, it is not likely that even one-fourth should have been
+Greeks; the rest must have been Egyptians and Syrians, with some Gauls.
+The body of chariots, though still forming part of the force furnished
+for military service by the Theban tenants of the crown, was of no
+use against modern science; and the other Egyptian troops, though now
+chiefly armed and disciplined like Greeks, were very much below the
+Macedonian phalanx in real strength. The galleys also, though no doubt
+under the guidance and skill of Greeks and Phoenicians, were in part
+manned by Egyptians, whose inland habits wholly unfitted them for the
+sea, and whose religious prejudices made them feel the conscription for
+the navy as a heavy grievance.
+
+These large forces were maintained by a yearly income equally large, of
+fourteen thousand eight hundred talents, or twelve million two hundred
+and fifty thousand dollars, beside the tax on grain, which was taken
+in kind, of a million and a half of artabas, or about five millions of
+bushels. To this we may add a mass of gold, silver, and other valuable
+stores in the treasury, which were boastfully reckoned at the unheard-of
+sum of seven hundred and forty thousand talents, or above five hundred
+million dollars.
+
+[Illustration: 149.jpg A TYPICAL NILE PILOT]
+
+The trade down the Nile was larger than it had ever been before; the
+coasting trade on the Mediterranean was new; the people were rich and
+happy; justice was administered to the Egyptians according to their own
+laws, 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 plans
+of Ptolemy Soter; in every point of view Alexandria was the chief city
+in the world. Athens had no poets or other writers during this century
+equal in merit to those who ennobled the museum. Philadelphus, by
+joining to the greatness and good government of his father the costly
+splendour and pomp of an eastern monarch, so drew the eyes of after ages
+upon his reign that his name passed into a proverb: if any work of
+art was remarkable for its good taste or costliness, it was called
+Philadelphian; even history and chronology were set at nought, and we
+sometimes find poets of a century later counted among the Pleiades of
+Alexandria in the reign of Philadelphus. It is true that many of these
+advantages were forced in the hotbed of royal patronage; that the navy
+was built in the harbours of Phoenicia and Asia Minor; and that the men
+of letters who then drew upon themselves the eyes of the world were
+only Greek settlers, whose writings could have done little to raise
+the character of the native Kopts. But the Ptolemies, in raising this
+building of their own, were not at the same time crushing another. Their
+splendid monarchy had not been built on the ruins of freedom; and even
+if the Greek settlers in the Delta had formed themselves into a free
+state, we can hardly believe that the Egyptians would have been so well
+treated as they were by this military despotism. From the temples
+which were built or enlarged in Upper Egypt, and from the beauty of the
+hieroglyphical inscriptions, we find that even the native arts were
+more flourishing than they had ever been since the fall of the kings of
+Thebes; and we may almost look upon the Greek conquest as a blessing to
+Upper Egypt.
+
+Philadelphus, though weak in body, was well suited by his
+keen-sightedness and intelligence for the tasks which the state of
+affairs at that time demanded from an Egyptian king. He was a diplomat
+rather than a warrior, and that was exactly what Egypt needed.
+
+A curious anecdote about Ptolemy Philadelphus is related by Niebuhr. He
+had reached the zenith of his glory, when suddenly he was attacked by
+a species of insanity, consisting of an indescribable fear of death.
+Chemical artifices were practised in Egypt from the earliest times; and
+hence Ptolemy took every 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 the
+seacoast, and seriously meditated upon the subject of his longing; it
+must have been in winter-time, when the sand, exposed to the rays of the
+sun, becomes very warm. He saw some poor boys burying themselves in the
+warm sand and screaming with delight, and the aged king began bitterly
+to cry, seeing the ragged urchins enjoying their life without any
+apprehension of losing it; for he felt that with all his riches he could
+not purchase that happiness, and that his end was very near at hand. He
+died in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, and perhaps the sixty-first
+of his age. He left the kingdom as powerful and more wealthy than when
+it came to him from his father; and he had the happiness of having a son
+who would carry on, even for the third generation, the wise plans of the
+first Ptolemy.
+
+[Illustration: 153.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--PTOLEMY EUERGETES, PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR, AND PTOLEMY
+EPIPHANES.
+
+
+_The struggle for Syria--Decline of the dynasty--Advent of Roman
+control._
+
+
+Ptolemy, the eldest son of Philadelphus, succeeded his father on
+the throne of Egypt, and after a short time was accorded the name of
+Euergetes. The new reign was clouded by dark occurrences, which again
+involved Egypt and Syria in war. It has been already related that when
+peace was concluded between Antiochus and Philadelphus, the latter gave
+to the former his daughter Berenice in marriage, stipulating that the
+offspring of that union should succeed to the Syrian throne, though
+Antiochus had, by his wife Laodice, a son, already arrived at the age of
+manhood. The repudiated queen murdered her husband, and placed Seleucus
+on the vacant throne; who, in order to remove all competition on the
+part of Berenice and her child, made no scruple to deprive them both
+of life. Euergetes could not behold such proceedings unmoved. Advancing
+into Syria at the head of a powerful army, he took possession of the
+greater part of the country, which seems not to have been defended,
+the majority of the cities opening their gates at his approach. The
+important town of Seleucia Pieria, the seaport of the capital, fell into
+his hands, in the neighbourhood of which he was still further gratified
+with the apprehension of the cruel Laodice, at whose instigation his
+sister and nephew lost their lives. The punishment of this unprincipled
+woman seems, however, to have completely satiated his resentment; for,
+instead of securing his conquests in Syria, and achieving the entire
+humiliation of Seleucus, he led his army on a plundering expedition into
+the remote provinces of Asia, whence, on the news of domestic troubles,
+he returned to the shores of Africa in triumph, laden with an immense
+booty, comprising among other objects all the statues of the Egyptian
+deities which had been carried off by Cambyses to Persia or Babylon.
+These he restored to their respective temples, an act by which he earned
+the greatest popularity among his native Egyptian subjects, who bestowed
+upon him, in consequence, the title of Euergetes (Benefactor), by which
+he is generally known. He brought back also from this expedition a vast
+number of other works of art, for the museums were a passion with the
+Ptolemies. The Asiatics might, indeed, have got over these things, but
+he levied, in addition, immense contributions from the Asiatics, and is
+said to have raised over forty thousand talents. On his march homeward,
+he laid his gifts upon the altar in the Temple of Jerusalem, and there
+returned thanks to Heaven for his victories. He had been taught to bow
+the knee to the crowds of Greek and Egyptian gods; and, as Palestine was
+part of his kingdom, it seemed quite natural to add the God of the Jews
+to the list.
+
+Of the insurrection in Egypt, which obliged him to return, we know no
+particulars, but Euergetes seems to have become convinced that Egypt was
+too small a basis for such an empire. "If he had wished to retain all
+his conquests" relates the chronicler, "he would have been obliged to
+make Antioch his residence, and this would weaken the ground of his
+strength. He, moreover, appears to have been well aware that the
+conquests had been made too quickly." He accordingly divided them,
+retaining for himself Syria as far as Euphrates, and the coast districts
+of Asia Minor and Thrace, so that he had a complete maritime empire. The
+remaining territories he divided into two states: the country beyond the
+Euphrates was given, according to St. Jerome, to one Xantippus, who
+is otherwise unknown, and Western Asia was left to Antiochus Hierax. It
+would seem that after this he never visited those countries again.
+
+One of the notable incidents of the war against Syria was an offer
+of help to Egypt from the Romans. From the middle of the reign of
+Philadelphus till the fifth year of this reign, for twenty-two years,
+the Romans had been struggling with the Carthaginians for their very
+being, in the first Punic war, which they had just brought to a close,
+and on hearing of Ptolemy's war in Syria, they sent to Egypt with
+friendly offers of help. But their ambassadors did not reach Alexandria
+before peace was made, and they were sent home with many thanks. The
+event serves to show the trend of the aspirations of this now important
+nation, which was afterwards destined to engulf the kingdoms of Egypt
+and Syria alike.
+
+After Euergetes had, as he thought, established his authority in Asia,
+a party hostile to him came forward to oppose him. The Rhodians, with
+their wise policy, who had hitherto given no decided support to either
+empire, now stepped forward, setting to other maritime cities the
+example of joining that hostile party. The confederates formed a fleet,
+with the assistance of which, and supported by a general insurrection of
+the Asiatics, who were exasperated against the Egyptians on account of
+their rapacity, Seleucus Callinicus rallied again.
+
+[Illustration: 157.jpg AN ABYSSINIAN SLAVE]
+
+He recovered the whole of upper Asia, and for a time he was united with
+his brother, Antiochus Hierax. The insurrection in Egypt must have
+been of a very serious nature, and Ptolemy, being pressed on all
+sides, concluded a truce of ten years with Seleucus on basis of _uti
+possidetis_. Both parties seem to have retained the places which they
+possessed at the time, so that all the disadvantage was on the side of
+the Seleucidae, for the fortified town of Seleucia, for example, remained
+in the hands of the Egyptians, whereby the capital was placed in a
+dangerous position. A part of Cilicia, the whole of Caria, the Ionian
+cities, the Thracian Chersonesus, and several Macedonian towns likewise
+continued to belong to Egypt. Soon after his re-appearance in Egypt,
+Euergetes was solicited by Cleomenes, the King of Sparta, to grant the
+assistance of his arms in the struggle which that republic was then
+supporting with Antigonus, the ruler of Macedon, and with the members
+of the Achaian league. But the battle of Sellasia proved that the aid
+offered was inadequate. Cleomenes fled to the banks of the Nile, where
+he found his august ally reposing under the successful banners of a
+numerous army, which he had just led home from the savage mountains of
+Ethiopia, whither his love of romantic conquest had conducted them. He
+appears to have penetrated into the interior provinces of Abyssinia,
+and to have subdued the rude tribes which dwelt on the shores of the
+Red Sea, levying on the unfortunate natives the most oppressive
+contributions in cattle, gold, perfumes, and other articles belonging
+to that valuable merchandise which the Ethiopians and Arabs had long
+carried on with their Egyptian neighbours. At Adule, the principal
+seaport of Abyssinia, he collected his victorious troops, and made them
+a speech on the wonderful exploits which they had achieved under his
+auspices, and on the numerous benefits which they had thereby secured
+to their native country. The throne on which he sat, composed of white
+marble and supported by a slab of porphyry, was consecrated to the god
+of war, whom he chose to claim for his father and patron, and that the
+descendants of the vanquished Ethiopians might not be ignorant of their
+obligations to Ptolemy Euergetes, King of Egypt, he gave orders that his
+name and principal triumphs should be inscribed on the votive chair. But
+not content with his real conquests, which reached from the Hellespont
+to the Euphrates, he added, like Ramsesr that he had conquered
+Thrace, Persia, Media, and Bactria. He thus teaches us that monumental
+inscriptions, though read with difficulty, do not always tell the truth.
+This was the most southerly spot to which the kings of Egypt ever sent
+an army. But they kept no hold on the country. Distance had placed it
+not only beyond their power, but almost beyond their knowledge; and
+two hundred years afterwards, when the geographer Strabo was making
+inquiries about that part of Arabia, as it was called, he was told of
+this monument as set up by the hero Sesostris, to whom it was usual to
+give the credit of so many wonderful works. These inscriptions, it
+is worthy of remark, are still preserved, and constitute the only
+historical account that has reached these times of the Ethiopian warfare
+of this Egyptian monarch. About seven hundred years after the reign
+of Euergetes, they were first published in the _Topography_ of Cosmas
+Indicopleustes, a Grecian monk, by whom they were copied on the spot.
+The traveller Bruce, moreover, informs us that the stone containing the
+name of Ptolemy Euergetes serves as a footstool to the throne on which
+the 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 title
+of the same Egyptian sovereign. This empty fame, however, is the only
+return that ever recompensed the toils of Euergetes among the fierce
+barbarians of the south.
+
+Euergetes, as part of his general policy of conciliating the Egyptians,
+enlarged the great temple at Thebes, which is now called the temple
+of Karnak, on the walls of which we see him handing an offering to
+his father and mother, the brother-gods. In one place he is in a Greek
+dress, which is not common on the Ptolemaic buildings, as most of the
+Greek kings are carved upon the walls in the dress of the country. The
+early kings had often shown their piety to a temple by enlarging the
+sacred area and adding a new wall and gateway in front of the former;
+and this custom Euergetes followed at Karnak. As these grand stone
+sculptured gateways belonged to a wall of unbaked bricks which has long
+since crumbled to pieces, they now stand apart like so many triumphal
+arches. He also added to the temple at Hibe in the Great Oasis, and
+began a small temple at Esne, or Latopolis, where he is drawn upon the
+walls in the act of striking down the chiefs of the conquered nations,
+and is followed by a tame lion.
+
+[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 settled
+there, the ancient religion was not yet driven out of the Delta; and he
+dedicated it to the god in a Greek inscription on a plate of gold, in
+the names of himself and Berenice, whom he called his wife and sister.
+She is also called the king's sister in many of the hieroglyphical
+inscriptions, as are many of the other queens of the Ptolemies who were
+not so related to their husbands. This custom, though it took its rise
+in the Egyptian mythology, must have been strengthened by the marriages
+of Philadelphus and some of his successors with their sisters. In the
+hieroglyphical inscriptions he is usually called "beloved by Phtah,"
+the god of Memphis, an addition to his name which was used by most of
+his successors.
+
+During this century the Greek artists in Egypt, as indeed elsewhere,
+adopted in their style an affectation of antiquity, which, unless seen
+through, would make us think their statues older than they really are.
+They sometimes set a stiff beard upon a face without expression, or
+arranged the hair of the head in an old-fashioned manner, and, while
+making the drapery fly out in a direction opposed to that of the figure,
+gave to it formal zigzag lines, which could only be proper if it were
+hanging down in quiet. At other times, while they gave to the human
+figure all the truth to which their art had then reached, they yet gave
+to the drapery these stiff zigzag forms.
+
+[Illustration: 163.jpg RUINS OF SAIS]
+
+No habit of mind would have been more improving to the Alexandrian
+character than a respect for antiquity; but this respect ought to be
+shown in a noble rivalry, in trying to surpass those who have gone
+before them, and not as in this manner by copying their faults.
+Hieroglyphics seem to have flourished in their more ancient style and
+forms under the generous patronage of the Ptolemies. In the time of the
+Egyptian kings of Lower Egypt, we find new grammatical endings to the
+nouns, and more letters used to spell each word than under the kings of
+Thebes; but, on comparing the hieroglyphics of the Ptolemies with the
+others, we find that in these and some other points they are more like
+the older writings, under the kings of Thebes, than the newer, under the
+kings of Sais.
+
+But, while the Egyptians were flattered, and no doubt raised in moral
+worth, by their monarch's taking up the religious feelings of the
+country, and throwing aside some of the Greek habits of his father and
+grandfather, Euergetes was sowing the seeds of a greater change than he
+could himself have been aware of. It was by Greek arms and arts of war
+that Egypt then held its place among nations, and we shall see in
+the coming reigns that, while the court became more Asiatic and
+less European, the army and government did not retain their former
+characteristics.
+
+Since Coele-Syria and Judaea were by the first Ptolemy made a province of
+Egypt, the Jews had lived in unbroken tranquillity, and with very
+little loss of freedom. The kings of Egypt had allowed them to govern
+themselves, to live under their own laws, and choose their own high
+priest; but they required of them the payment to Alexandria of a yearly
+tribute. Part of this was the sacred poll-tax of half a shekel, or
+about sixteen cents for every male above the age of twenty, which by the
+Mosaic law they had previously paid for the service of the Temple.
+This is called in the Gospels the Didrachms; though the Alexandrian
+translators of the Bible, altering the sum, either through mistake or on
+purpose, have made it in the Greek Pentateuch only half a didrachm, or
+about eight cents. This yearly tribute from the Temple the high priest
+of Jerusalem had been usually allowed to collect and farm; but in the
+latter end of this reign, the high priest Onias, a weak and covetous
+old man, refused to send to Alexandria the twenty talents, or fifteen
+thousand dollars, at which it was then valued. When Euergetes sent
+Athenion as ambassador to claim it, and even threatened to send a body
+of troops to fetch it, still the tribute was not paid; notwithstanding
+the fright of the Jews, the priest would not part with his money. On
+this, Joseph, the nephew of Onias, set out for Egypt, to try and turn
+away the king's anger. He went to Memphis, and met Euergetes riding in
+his chariot with the queen and Athenion, the ambassador. The king, when
+he knew him, begged him to get into the chariot and sit with him; and
+Joseph made himself so agreeable that he was lodged in the palace
+at Memphis, and dined every day at the royal table. While he was at
+Memphis, the revenues of the provinces for the coming year were put up
+to auction; and the farmers bid eight thousand talents, or six million
+dollars, for the taxes of Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Samaria. Joseph
+then bid double that sum, and, when he was asked what security he could
+give, he playfully said that he was sure that Euergetes and the queen
+would willingly become bound for his honesty; and the king was so much
+pleased with him that the office was at once given to him, and he held
+it for twenty-two years.
+
+Among the men of letters who at this time taught in the Alexandrian
+schools was Aristophanes, the grammarian, who afterwards held the office
+of head of the museum. At one of the public sittings at which the king
+was to hear the poems and other writings of the pupils read, and, by
+the help of seven men of letters who sat with him as judges, was to
+give away honours and rewards to the best authors, one of the chairs was
+empty, one of the judges happened not to be there. The king asked who
+should be called up to fill his place; and, after thinking over the
+matter, the six judges fixed upon Aristophanes, who had made himself
+known to them by being seen daily studying in the public library. When
+the reading was over, the king, the public, and the six other judges
+were agreed upon which was the best piece of writing; but Aristophanes
+was bold enough to think otherwise, and he was able, by means of his
+great reading, to find the book in the library from which the pupil had
+copied the greater part of his work. The king was much struck with
+this proof of his learning, and soon afterwards made him keeper of
+the library which he had already so well used. Aristophanes followed
+Zenodotus in his critical efforts to mend the text of Homer's poems. He
+also invented the several marks by which grammarians now distinguish the
+length and tone of a syllable and the breathing of a vowel, that is, the
+marks for long and short, and the accents and aspirate. The last two,
+after his time, were always placed over Greek words, and are still used
+in printed books.
+
+Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the inventor of astronomical geography, was at
+this time the head of the mathematical school. He has the credit for
+being the first to calculate the circumference of the earth by means
+of his Theory of Shadows. As a poet he wrote a description of the
+constellations. He also wrote a history of Egypt, to correct the errors
+of Manetho. What most strikes us with wonder and regret is, that of
+these two writers, Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote in Greek,
+Eratosthenes, a Greek who understood something of Egyptian, neither of
+them took the trouble to lay open to their readers the peculiarities of
+the hieroglyphics. Through all these reigns, the titles and praises of
+the Ptolemies were carved upon the temples in the sacred characters.
+These two histories were translated from the same inscriptions. We even
+now read the names of the kings which they mention carved on the statues
+and temples; and yet the language of the hieroglyphics still remained
+unknown beyond the class of priests; such was the want of curiosity on
+the part of the Greek grammarians of Alexandria. Such, we may add, was
+their want of respect for the philosophy of the Egyptians; and we
+need no stronger proof that the philosophers of the museum had hitherto
+borrowed none of the doctrines of the priests.
+
+[Illustration: 169.jpg GATEWAY OF PTOLEMY EUERGETES AT KARNAK]
+
+Lycon of Troas was another settler in Alexandria. He followed Strato at
+the head of one of the schools in the museum. He was very successful in
+bringing up the young men, who needed, he used to say, modesty and the
+love of praise, as a horse needs bridle and spur. His eloquence was so
+pleasing that he was wittily called Glycon, or the sweet. Carneades of
+Cyrene at the same time held a high place among philosophers; but as
+he had removed to Athens, where he was at the head of a school, and was
+even sent to Rome as the ambassador of the Athenians, we must not claim
+the whole honour of him for the Ptolemies under whom he was born. It is
+therefore enough to say of him that, though a follower of Plato, he made
+such changes in the opinions of the Academy, by not wholly throwing off
+the evidence of the senses, that his school was called the New Academy.
+
+Apollonius, who was born at Alexandria, but is commonly called
+Apollonius Rhodius because he passed many years of his life at Rhodes,
+had been, like Eratosthenes, a hearer of Callimachus. His only work
+which we now know is his _Argonautics_, a poem on the voyage of Jason
+to Colchis in search of the golden fleece. It is a regular epic poem,
+in imitation of Homer; and, like other imitations, it wants the interest
+which hangs upon reality of manners and story in the Iliad.
+
+Callimachus showed his dislike of his young rival by hurling against him
+a reproachful poem, in which he speaks of him under the name of an Ibis.
+This is now lost, but it was copied by Ovid in his poem of the same
+name; and from the Roman we can gather something of the dark and learned
+style in which Callimachus threw out his biting reproaches. We do not
+know from what this quarrel arose, but it seems to have been the cause
+of Apollonius leaving Alexandria. He removed to Rhodes, where he taught
+in the schools during all the reign of Philopator, till he was recalled
+by Epiphanes, and made librarian of the museum in his old age, on the
+death of Eratosthenes.
+
+Lycophron, the tragic writer, lived about this time at Alexandria, and
+was one of the seven men of letters sometimes called the Alexandrian
+Pleiades, though writers are not agreed upon the names which fill up the
+list. His tragedies are all lost, and the only work of his which we now
+have is the dark and muddy poem of Alcandra, or Cassandra, of which the
+lines most striking to the historian are those in which the prophetess
+foretells the coming greatness of Rome; that the children of AEneas will
+raise the crown upon their spears, and seize the sceptres of sea and
+land. Lycophron was the friend of Menedemus and Aratus; and it is not
+easy to believe that these lines were written before the overthrow of
+Hannibal in Italy, and of the Greek phalanx at Cynocephale, or that
+one who was a man in the reign of Philadelphus should have foreseen the
+triumph of the Roman arms. These words must have been a later addition
+to the poem, to improve the prophecy.
+
+Conon, one of the greatest of the Alexandrian astronomers, has left no
+writings for us to judge of his merits, though they were thought highly
+of, and made great use of, by his successors. He worked both as an
+observer and an inquirer, mapping out the heavens by his observations,
+and collecting the accounts of the eclipses which had been before
+observed in Egypt. He was the friend of Archimedes of Syracuse, to
+whom he sent his problems, and from whom he received that great
+geometrician's writings in return.
+
+Apollonius of Perga came to Alexandria in this reign, to study
+mathematics under the pupils of Euclid. He is well known for his work
+on conic sections, and he may be called the founder of this study.
+The Greek mathematicians sought after knowledge for its own sake, and
+followed up those branches of their studies which led to no end that
+could in the narrow sense be called useful, with the same zeal that they
+did other branches out of which sprung the great practical truths of
+mechanics, astronomy, and geography. They found reward enough in the
+enlargement of their minds and in the beauty of the truth learnt.
+Alexandrian science gained in loftiness of tone what its poetry and
+philosophy wanted. Thus the properties of the ellipse, the hyperbola,
+and the parabola, continued to be studied by after mathematicians; but
+no use was made of this knowledge till nearly two thousand years later,
+when Kepler crowned the labours of Apollonius with the great discovery
+that the paths of the planets round the sun were conic sections.
+The Egyptians, however, made great use of mathematical knowledge,
+particularly in the irrigation of their fields; and Archimedes of
+Syracuse, who came to Alexandria about this time to study under Conon,
+did the country a real service by his invention of the cochlea, or
+screw-pump. The more distant fields of the valley of the Nile, rising
+above the level of the inundation, have to be watered artificially by
+pumping out of the canals into ditches at a higher level. For this work
+Archimedes proposed a spiral tube, twisting round an axis, which was to
+be put in motion either by the hand or by the force of the stream out
+of which it was to pump; and this was found so convenient that it soon
+became the machine most in use throughout Egypt for irrigation.
+
+But while we are dazzled by the brilliancy of these clusters of men of
+letters and science who graced the court of Alexandria, we must not shut
+our eyes to those faults which are always found in works called forth
+rather by the fostering warmth of royal pensions than by a love of
+knowledge in the people. The well-fed and well-paid philosophers of the
+museum were not likely to overtake the mighty men of Athens in its
+best days, who had studied and taught without any pension from the
+government, without taking any fee from their pupils; who were urged
+forward towards excellence by the love of knowledge and of honour; who
+had no other aim than that of being useful to their hearers, and looked
+for no reward beyond their love and esteem.
+
+In oratory Alexandria made no attempts whatever; it is a branch of
+literature not likely to flourish under a despotic monarchy. In Athens
+it fell with the loss of liberty, and Demetrius Phalereus was the
+last of the real Athenian orators. After his time the orations were
+declamations written carefully in the study, and coldly spoken in the
+school for the instruction of the pupils, and wholly wanting in fire and
+genius; and the Alexandrian men of letters forbore to copy Greece in
+its lifeless harangues. For the same reasons the Alexandrians were not
+successful in history. A species of writing, which a despot requires
+to be false and flattering, is little likely to flourish; and hence
+the only historians of the museum were chronologists, antiquaries, and
+writers of travels. The coins of Euergetes bear the name of "Ptolemy the
+king," round the head on the one side, with no title by which they can
+be known from the other kings of the same name.
+
+[Illustration: 175.jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY III.]
+
+But his portrait is known from his Phoenician coins. In the same way the
+coins of his queen have only the name of "Berenice the queen," but
+they are known from those of the later queens by the beauty of the
+workmanship, which soon fell far below that of the first Ptolemies.
+
+Euergetes had married his cousin Berenice, who like the other queens of
+Egypt is sometimes called Cleopatra; by her he left two sons, Ptolemy
+and Magas, to the eldest of whom he left his kingdom, after a reign of
+twenty-five years of unclouded prosperity. Egypt was during this reign
+at the very height of its power and wealth. It had seen three kings,
+who, though not equally great men, not equally fit to found a monarchy
+or to raise the literature of a people, were equally successful in the
+parts which they had undertaken. Euergetes left to his son a kingdom
+perhaps as large as the world had ever seen under one sceptre; and
+though many of his boasted victories were like letters written in
+the sand, of which the traces were soon lost, yet he was by far the
+greatest, and possibly the wisest, monarch of his day.
+
+We may be sure that in these prosperous reigns life and property were
+safe, and justice was administered fairly by judges who were independent
+of the crown; as even centuries afterwards we find that it was part of
+a judge's oath on taking office, that, if he were ordered by the king to
+do what was wrong, he would not obey him. But here the bright pages in
+the history of the Ptolemies end.
+
+[Illustration: 176.jpg COIN OF BERENICE, WIFE OF PTOLEMY III.]
+
+Though trade and agriculture still enriched the country, though arts and
+letters did not quit Alexandria, we have from this time forward to mark
+the growth only of vice and luxury, and to measure the wisdom of Ptolemy
+Soter by the length of time that his laws and institutions were able to
+bear up against the misrule and folly of his descendants.
+
+Ptolemy, the eldest son of Euergetes, inherited the crown of his
+forefathers, but none of the great qualities by which they had won and
+guarded it. He was then about thirty-four years old. His first act was
+to call together his council, and to ask their advice about putting to
+death his mother Berenice and his brother Magas. Their crime was the
+being too much liked by the army; and the council was called upon to say
+whether it would be safe to have them killed. Cleomenes, the banished
+King of Sparta, who was one of the council, alone raised his voice
+against their murder, and wisely said that the throne would be still
+safer if there were more brothers to stand between the king and the
+daring hopes of a traitor. The minister Sosibius, on the other hand,
+said that the mercenaries could not be trusted while Magas was alive;
+but Cleomenes remarked to him, that more than three thousand of them
+were Peloponnesians, and that they would follow him sooner than they
+would follow Magas.
+
+Berenice and Magas were, however, put to death, but the speech of
+Cleomenes was not forgotten. If his popularity with the mercenaries
+could secure their allegiance, he could, when he chose, make them rebel;
+from that time he was treated rather as a prisoner than as a friend,
+and by his well-meaning but incautious observation he lost all chance
+of being helped to regain his kingdom. Nothing is known of the death of
+Euergetes, the late king, and there is no proof that it was by unfair
+means. But when his son began a cruel and wicked reign by putting to
+death his mother and brother, and by taking the name of Philopator, or
+father-loving, the world seems to have thought that he was the murderer
+of his father, and had taken this name to throw a cloak over the deed.
+By this murder of his brother, and by the minority both of Antiochus,
+King of Syria, and of Philip, King of Macedonia, Philopator found
+himself safe from enemies either at home or abroad, and he gave himself
+up to a life of thoughtlessness and pleasure. The army and fleet were
+left to go to ruin, and the foreign provinces, which had hitherto been
+looked upon as the bulwarks of Egypt, were only half-guarded; but the
+throne rested on the virtues of his forefathers, and it was not till his
+death that it was found to have been undermined by his own follies and
+vice.
+
+Egypt had been governed by kings of more than usual wisdom for above one
+hundred years, and was at the very height of its power when Philopator
+came to the throne. He found himself master of Ethiopia, Cy-rene,
+Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, part of Upper Syria, Cyprus, Rhodes, the cities
+along the coast of Asia Minor from Pamphilia to Lysimachia, and the
+cities of AEnos and Maronea in Thrace. The unwilling obedience of
+distant provinces usually costs more than it is worth; but many of these
+possessions across the Mediterranean had put themselves willingly into
+the power of his predecessors for the sake of their protection, and
+they cost little more than a message to warn off invaders. Egypt was the
+greatest naval power in the world, having the command of the sea and the
+whole of the coast at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
+
+On the death of Euergetes, the happiness of the people came to an end.
+The first trouble arose from the loose and vicious habits of the new
+king, and was an attempt made upon his life by Cleomenes, who found the
+palace in Alexandria had now become a prison. The Spartan took advantage
+of the king's being at Canopus to escape from his guards, and to raise
+a riot in Alexandria; but not being able to gain the citadel, and seeing
+that disgrace and death must follow upon his failure, he stabbed himself
+with his own dagger.
+
+The kingdom of Syria, after being humbled by Ptolemy Euergetes,
+had risen lately under the able rule of Antiochus, son of Seleucus
+Callinicus. He was a man possessed of abilities of a high order. His
+energy and courage soon recovered from Egypt the provinces that Syria
+had before lost, and afterwards gained for him the name of Antiochus the
+Great. He made himself master of the city of Damascus by a stratagem.
+Soon after this, Seleucia, the capital, which had been taken by
+Euergetes, was retaken by Antiochus, or rather given up to him by
+treachery. Theodotus also, the Alexandrian governor of Coele-Syria,
+delivered up to him that province; and Antiochus marched southward, and
+had taken Tyre and Ptolemais before the Egyptian army could be brought
+into the field. There he gained forty ships of war, of which twenty were
+decked vessels with four banks of oars, and the others smaller. He
+then marched towards Egypt, and on his way learned that Ptolemy was at
+Memphis. On his arrival at Pelusium he found that the place was strongly
+guarded, and that the garrison had opened the flood-gates from the
+neighbouring lake, and thereby spoiled the fresh water of all the
+neighbourhood; he therefore did not lay siege to that city, but seized
+many of the open towns on the east side of the Nile.
+
+On this, Philopator roused himself from his idleness, and got together
+his forces against the coming danger. His troops consisted of Greeks,
+Egyptians, and mercenaries to the total of seventy-three thousand men
+and seventy-three elephants, or one elephant to every thousand men,
+which was the number usually allowed to the armies about this time. But
+before this army reached Pelusium, Antiochus had led back his forces
+to winter in Seleucia. The next spring Antiochus again marched towards
+Egypt with an army of seventy-two thousand foot, six thousand horse, and
+one hundred and two elephants. Philopator led his whole forces to the
+frontier to oppose his march, and met the Syrian army near the village
+of Raphia, the border town between Egypt and Palestine. Arsinoe, his
+queen and sister, rode with him on horseback through the ranks, and
+called upon the soldiers to fight for their wives and children. At first
+the Egyptians seemed in danger of being beaten. As the armies approached
+one another, the Ethiopian elephants trembled at the very smell of the
+Indian elephants, and shrunk from engaging with beasts so much larger
+than themselves. On the charge, the left wing of each army was routed,
+as was often the case among the Greeks, when, from too great a trust in
+the shield, every soldier kept moving to the right, and thus left the
+left wing uncovered. But before the end of the day the invading army was
+defeated; and, though some of the Egyptian officers treacherously left
+their posts, and carried their troops over to Antiochus, yet the Syrian
+army was wholly routed, and Arsinoe enjoyed the knowledge and the praise
+of having been the chief cause of her husband's success. The king in
+gratitude sacrificed to the gods the unusual offering of four elephants.
+
+By this victory Philopator regained Coele-Syria, and there he spent
+three months; he then made a hasty, and, if we judge his reasons
+rightly, we must add, a disgraceful treaty with the enemy, that he might
+the sooner get back to his life of ease. Before going home he passed
+through Jerusalem, where he gave thanks and sacrificed to the Hebrew
+god in the temple of the Jews; and, being struck with the beauty of the
+building, asked to be shown into the inner room, in which were kept
+the ark of the covenant, Aaron's rod that budded, and the golden pot of
+manna, with the tables of the covenant. The priests told him of their
+law, by which every stranger, every Jew, and every priest but the high
+priest, was forbidden to pass beyond the second veil; but Philopator
+roughly answered that he was not bound by the Jewish laws, and ordered
+them to lead him into the holy of holies.
+
+The city was thrown into alarm by this unheard-of wickedness; the
+streets were filled with men and women in despair; the air was rent
+with shrieks and cries, and the priests prayed to Javeh to guard his own
+temple from the stain. The king's mind, however, was not to be changed;
+the refusal of the priests only strengthened his wish, and all struggle
+was useless while the court of the temple was filled with Greek
+soldiers. But, says the Jewish historian, the prayer of the priests was
+heard; the king fell to the ground in a fit, like a reed broken by the
+wind, and was carried out speechless by his friends and generals.
+
+On his return to Egypt, he showed his hatred of the nation by his
+treatment of the Jews in Alexandria. He made a law that they should lose
+the rank of Macedonians, and be enrolled among the class of Egyptians.
+He ordered them to have their bodies marked with pricks, in the form of
+an ivy leaf, in honour of Bacchus; and those who refused to have this
+done were outlawed, or forbidden to enter the courts of justice. The
+king himself had an ivy leaf marked with pricks upon his forehead, from
+which he received the nickname of Gallus. This custom of marking the
+body had been forbidden in the Levitical law: it was not known among the
+Kopts, but must always have been in use among the Lower Egyptians. It
+was used by the Arab prisoners of Ramses, and is still practiced among
+the Egyptian Arabs of the present day.
+
+He also ordered the Jews to sacrifice on the pagan altars, and many of
+them were sent up to Alexandria to be punished for rebelling against
+his decree. Their resolution, however, or, as their historian asserts,
+a miracle from heaven changed the king's mind. They expected to be
+trampled to death in the hippodrome by furious elephants; but after some
+delay they were released unhurt. The history of their escape, however,
+is more melancholy than the history of their danger. No sooner did the
+persecution cease than they turned with Pharisaical cruelty against
+their weaker brethren who had yielded to the storm; and they put to
+death three hundred of their countrymen, who in the hour of danger had
+yielded to the threats of punishment, and complied with the ceremonies
+required of them.
+
+The Egyptians, who, when the Persians were conquered by Alexander, could
+neither help nor hinder the Greek army, and who, when they formed part
+of the troops under the first Ptolemy, were uncounted and unvalued, had
+by this time been armed and disciplined like Greeks; and in the battle
+of Raphia the Egyptian phalanx had shown itself not an unworthy rival
+of the Macedonians. By this success in war, and by their hatred of
+their vicious and cruel king, the Egyptians were now for the first
+time encouraged to take arms against the Greek government. The Egyptian
+phalanx murmured against their Greek officers, and claimed their right
+to be under an Egyptian general. But history has told us nothing more
+of the rebellion than that it was successfully put down. The Greeks
+were still the better soldiers. The ships built by Philopator were
+more remarkable for their unwieldy size, their luxurious and costly
+furniture, than for their fitness for war. One was four hundred and
+twenty feet long and fifty-seven feet wide, with forty banks of oars.
+The longest oars were fifty-seven feet long, and weighted with lead at
+the handles that they might be the more easily moved. This huge ship
+was to be rowed by four thousand rowers, its sails were to be shifted by
+four hundred sailors, and three thousand soldiers were to stand in ranks
+upon deck. There were seven beaks in front, by which it was to strike
+and sink the ships of the enemy. The royal barge, in which the king and
+court moved on the quiet waters of the Nile, was nearly as large as this
+ship of war. It was three hundred and thirty feet long, and forty-five
+feet wide; it was fitted up with staterooms and private rooms, and was
+nearly sixty feet high to the top of the royal awning. A third ship,
+which even surpassed these in its fittings and ornaments, was given to
+Philopator by Hiero, King of Syracuse. It was built under the care
+of Archimedes, and its timbers would have made sixty triremes. Beside
+baths, and rooms for pleasures of all kinds, it had a library, and
+astronomical instruments, not only for navigation, as in modern ships,
+but for study, as in an observatory. It was a ship of war, and had eight
+towers, from each of which stone's were to be thrown at the enemy by
+six men. Its machines, like modern cannons, could throw stones of three
+hundred pounds weight, and arrows of eighteen feet in length. It had
+four anchors of wood, and eight of iron. It was called the ship of
+Syracuse, but after it had been given to Philopator it was known by the
+name of the ship of Alexandria.
+
+In the second year of Philopator's reign the Romans began that long
+and doubtful war with Hannibal, called the second Punic war, and in the
+twelfth year of this reign they sent ambassadors to renew their treaty
+of peace with Egypt. They sent as their gifts robes of purple for
+Philopator and Arsinoe, and for Philopator a chair of ivory and
+gold, which was the usual gift of the republic to friendly kings.
+The Alexandrians kept upon good terms both with the Romans and the
+Carthaginians during the whole of the Punic wars.
+
+When the city of Rhodes, which had long been joined in close friendship
+with Egypt, was shaken by an earthquake, that threw down the colossal
+statue of Apollo, together with a large part of the city walls and
+docks, Philopator was not behind the other friendly kings and states in
+his gifts and help. He sent to his brave allies a large sum of money,
+with grain, timber, and hemp.
+
+On the birth of his son and heir, in B.C. 209, ambassadors crowded to
+Alexandria with gifts and messages of joy. But they were all thrown into
+the shade by Hyrcanus, the son of Joseph, who was sent from Jerusalem by
+his father, and who brought to the king one hundred boys and one hundred
+girls, each carrying a talent of silver.
+
+Philopator, soon after the birth of this his only child, employed
+Philammon, at the bidding of his mistress, to put to death his queen and
+sister Arsinoe, or Eurydice, as she is sometimes called. He had already
+forgotten his rank, and his name ennobled by the virtues of three
+generations, and had given up his days and nights to vice and riot.
+He kept in his pay several fools, or laughing-stocks as they were then
+called, who were the chosen companions of his meals; and he was the
+first who brought eunuchs into the court of Alexandria. His mistress
+Agathoclea, her brother Agathocles, and their mother OEnanthe, held him
+bound by those chains which clever, worthless, and selfish favourites
+throw around the mind of a weak and debauched king. Agathocles, who
+never left his side, was his adviser in matters of business or pleasure,
+and governed alike the army, the courts of justice, and the women. Thus
+was spent a reign of seventeen years, during which the king had never
+but once, when he met Antiochus in battle, roused himself from his life
+of sloth.
+
+The misconduct and vices of Agathocles raised such an outcry against
+him, that Philopator, without giving up the pleasure of his favourite's
+company, was forced to take away from him the charge of receiving the
+taxes. That high post was then given to Tlepolemus, a young man, whose
+strength of body and warlike courage had made him the darling of the
+soldiers. Another charge given to Tlepolemus was that of watching over
+the supply and price of corn in Alexandria. The wisest statesmen of old
+thought it part of a king's duty to take care that the people were fed,
+and seem never to have found out that it would be better done if the
+people were left to take care of themselves. They thought it moreover a
+piece of wise policy, or at any rate of clever kingcraft, to keep down
+the price of food in the capital at the cost of the rest of the kingdom,
+and even sometimes to give a monthly fixed measure of corn to each
+citizen. By such means as these the crowd of poor and restless citizens,
+who swell the mob of every capital, was larger in Alexandria than it
+otherwise would have been; and the danger of riot, which it was meant to
+lessen, was every year increased.
+
+Sosibius had made himself more hated than Agathocles; he had been the
+king's ready tool in all his murders. He had been stained, or at least
+reproached, with the murder of Lysimachus, the son of Philadelphus; then
+of Magas, the son of Euergetes, and Berenice, the widow of Euergetes; of
+Cleomenes, the Spartan; and lastly, of Arsinoe, the wife of Philopator.
+For these crimes Sosibius was forced by the soldiers to give up to
+Tlepolemus the king's ring, or what in modern language would be called
+the great seal of the kingdom, the badge of office by which Egypt was
+governed; but the world soon saw that a body of luxurious mercenaries
+were 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 letters
+which has thrown so bright a light around the whole of the family; and
+to his other luxuries he sometimes added that of the society of the
+learned men of the museum. When one of the professorships was empty he
+wrote to Athens, and invited to Alexandria, Sphaerus, who had been the
+pupil of Zeno. One day when Sphaerus was dining with the king, he
+said that a wise man should never guess, but only say what he knows.
+Philopator, wishing to tease him, ordered some waxen pomegranates to be
+handed to him, and when Sphaerus bit one of them he laughed at him for
+guessing that it was real fruit. But the stoic answered that there are
+many cases in which our actions must be guided by what seems probable.
+None of the works of Sphaerus have come down to us. Eratosthenes, of
+whom we have before spoken, was librarian of the museum during this
+reign; and Ptolemy, the son of Agesarchus, then wrote his history of
+Alexandria, a work now lost.
+
+[Illustration: 188jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY PHILOPATER]
+
+The want of moral feeling in Alexandria was poorly supplied by the
+respect for talent. Philopator built there a shrine or temple to Homer,
+in which he placed a sitting figure of the poet, and round it seven
+worshippers, meant for the seven cities which claimed the honour of
+giving him birth. Had Homer himself worshipped in such temples, and had
+his thoughts been raised by no more lofty views, he would not have left
+us an Iliad or an Odyssey. In Upper Egypt there was no such want of
+religious earnestness; there the priests placed the name of Philopator
+upon a small temple near Medinet-Habu, dedicated to Amon-Ra and the
+goddess Hathor; his name is also seen upon the temple at Karnak, and
+on the additions to the sculptures on the temple of Thot at Pselcis in
+Ethiopia.
+
+Some of this king's coins bear the name of "Ptolemy Philopator," while
+those of the queen have her name, "Arsinoe Philopator," around the head.
+They are of 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 monument
+to him in the temple of Venus.
+
+The first three Ptolemies had been loved by their subjects and feared by
+their enemies; but Philopator, though his power was still acknowledged
+abroad, had by his vices and cruelty made himself hated at home, and had
+undermined the foundations of the government. He began his reign like an
+Eastern despot; instead of looking to his brother as a friend for help
+and strength, he distrusted him as a rival, and had him put to death. He
+employed the ministers of his vicious pleasures in the high offices of
+government; and instead of philosophers and men of learning, he brought
+eunuchs into the palace as the companions of his son. In B.C. 204 he
+died, worn out with disease, in the seventeenth year of his reign and
+about the fifty-first of his age; and very few lamented his decease.
+
+On the death of Philopator his son was only five years old. The minister
+Agathocles, who had ruled over the country with unbounded power,
+endeavoured, by the help of his sister Agathoclea and the other
+mistresses of the late king, to keep his death secret; so that while the
+women seized the money and jewels of the palace, he might have time to
+take such steps as would secure his own power over the kingdom.
+
+[Illustration: 189.jpg COIN OF ARSINOE PHILOPATE]
+
+But the secret could not be long kept, and Agathocles called together
+the citizens of Alexandria to tell them of the death of Philopator, and
+to show them their young king.
+
+He went to the meeting, followed by his sister Agathoclea and the young
+Ptolemy, afterwards called Epiphanes. He began his speech, "Ye men of
+Macedonia," as this mixed body of Greeks and Jews was always called. He
+wiped his eyes in well-feigned grief, and showed them the new king,
+who had been trusted, he said, by his father, to the motherly care of
+Agathoclea and to their loyalty. He then accused Tlepolemus of aiming at
+the throne, and brought forward a creature of his own to prove the truth
+of the charge. But his voice was soon drowned in the loud murmurs of the
+citizens; they had smarted too long under his tyranny, and were too well
+acquainted with his falsehoods, to listen to anything that he could
+say against his rival. Besides, Tlepolemus had the charge of supplying
+Alexandria with corn, a duty which was more likely to gain friends than
+the pandering to the vices of their hated tyrant. Agathocles soon saw
+that his life was in danger, and he left the meeting and returned to the
+palace, in doubt whether he should seek for safety in flight, or boldly
+seize the power which he was craftily aiming at, and rid himself of his
+enemies by their murder.
+
+While he was wasting these precious minutes in doubt, the streets were
+filled with groups of men, and of boys, who always formed a part of the
+mobs of Alexandria. They sullenly but loudly gave vent to their hatred
+of the minister; and if they had but found a leader they would have been
+in rebellion. In a little while the crowd moved off to the tents of
+the Macedonians, to learn their feelings on the matter, and then to the
+quarters of the mercenaries, both of which were close to the palace, and
+the mixed mob of armed and unarmed men soon told the fatal news, that
+the soldiers were as angry as the citizens. But they were still without
+a 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 knew
+what to do than his guilty rival.
+
+Agathocles, in his doubt, did nothing; he sat down to supper with
+his friends, perhaps hoping that the storm might blow over of itself,
+perhaps trusting to chance and to the strong walls of the palace. His
+mother, OEnanthe, ran to the temple of Ceres and Proserpine, and sat
+down before the altar in tears, believing that the sanctuary of the
+temple would be her best safeguard; as if the laws of heaven, which had
+never bound her, would bind her enemies. It was a festal day, and the
+women in the temple, who knew nothing of the storm which had risen in
+the forum within these few hours, came forward to comfort her; but she
+answered them with curses; she knew that she was hated and would soon be
+despised, and she added the savage prayer, that they might have to eat
+their own children. The riot did not lessen at sunset. Men, women, and
+boys were moving through the streets all night with torches. The crowds
+were greatest in the stadium and in the theatre of Bacchus, but most
+noisy in front of the palace. Agathocles was awakened by the noise, and
+in his fright ran to the bedroom of the young Ptolemy; and, distrusting
+the palace walls, hid himself, with his own family, the king, and two
+or three guards, in the underground passage which led from the palace to
+the theatre.
+
+The night, however, passed off without any violence; but at daybreak the
+murmurs became louder, and the thousands in the palace yard called for
+the young king. By that time the Greek soldiers joined the mob, and then
+the guards within were no longer to be feared. The gates were soon burst
+open, and the palace searched. The mob rushed through the halls
+and lobbies, and, learning where the king had fled, hastened to the
+underground passage. It was guarded by three doors of iron grating; but,
+when the first was beaten in, Aristomenes was sent out to offer terms of
+surrender. Agathocles was willing to give up the young king, his misused
+power, his ill-gotten wealth and estates; he asked only for his life.
+But this was sternly refused, and a shout was raised to kill the
+messenger; and Aristomenes, the best of the ministers, whose only fault
+was the being a friend of Agathocles, and the having named his little
+daughter Agathoclea, would certainly have been killed upon the spot if
+somebody had not reminded them that they wanted to send back an answer.
+
+Agathocles, seeing that he could hold out no longer, then gave up the
+little king, who was set upon a horse, and led away to the stadium amid
+the shouts of the crowd. There they seated him on the throne, and,
+while he was crying at being surrounded by strange faces, the mob loudly
+called for revenge on the guilty ministers. Sosibius, the somatophylax,
+the son of the former general of that name, seeing no other way of
+stopping the fury of the mob and the child's sobs, asked him if the
+enemies of his mother and of his throne should be given up to the
+people. The child of course answered "yes," without understanding what
+was meant; and on that they let Sosibius take him to his own house to be
+out of the uproar. Agathocles was soon led out bound, and was stabbed by
+those who two days before would have felt honoured by a look from him.
+Agathoclea and her sister were then brought out, and lastly 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 mob
+sometimes driven.
+
+In the meanwhile some of the women called to mind that Philammon, who
+had been employed in the murder of Arsinoe, had within those three days
+come to Alexandria, and they made a rush at his house. The doors quickly
+gave way before their blows, and he was killed upon the spot by clubs
+and stones; his little son was strangled by these raging mothers, and
+his wife dragged naked into the street, and there torn to pieces. Thus
+died Agathocles and all his family; and the care of the young king then
+fell to Sosibius, and to Aristomenes, who had already gained a high
+character for wisdom and firmness.
+
+While Egypt was thus without a government, Philip of Macedonia and
+Antiochus of Syria agreed to divide the foreign provinces between them;
+and Antiochus marched against Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. The guardians
+of the young Ptolemy sent against him an army under Scopas, the AEtolian,
+who was at first successful, but was afterwards beaten by Antiochus at
+Paneas in the valley of the Jordan, three and twenty miles above the
+Lake of Tiberias, and driven back into Egypt. In these battles the Jews,
+who had not forgotten the ill treatment that they had received from
+Philopator, joined Antiochus, after having been under the government of
+Egypt for exactly one hundred years; and in return Antiochus released
+Jerusalem from all taxes for three years, and afterwards from one-third
+of the taxes. He also sent a large sum of money for the service of the
+temple, and released the elders, priests, scribes, and singing men from
+all taxes for the future.
+
+The Alexandrian statesmen had latterly shown themselves in their foreign
+policy very unworthy pupils of Ptolemy Soter and Philadelphus, who had
+both ably trimmed the balance of power between the several successors of
+Alexander. But even had they been wiser, they could hardly, before the
+end of the second Punic war, have foreseen that the Romans would soon be
+their most dangerous enemies. The overthrow of Hannibal, however, might
+perhaps have opened their eyes; but it was then too late; Egypt was too
+weak to form an alliance with Macedonia or Syria against the Romans.
+About this time, also, the Romans sent to Alexandria, to inform the
+king that they had conquered Hannibal, and brought to a close the second
+Punic war, and to thank him for the friendship of the Egyptians during
+that long and doubtful struggle of eighteen years, when so many of their
+nearer neighbours had joined the enemy. They begged that if the senate
+felt called upon to undertake a war against Philip, who, though no
+friend to the Egyptians, had not yet taken arms against them, it might
+cause no breach in the friendship between the King of Egypt and the
+Romans. In answer to this embassy, the Alexandrians, rushing to their
+own destruction, sent to Rome a message, which was meant to place
+the kingdom wholly in the hands of the senate. It was to beg them to
+undertake the guardianship of the young Ptolemy, and the defence of the
+kingdom against Philip and Antiochus during his childhood.
+
+The Romans, in return, gave the wished-for answer; they sent ambassadors
+to Antiochus and Philip, to order them to make no attack upon Egypt,
+on pain of falling under the displeasure of the senate; and they sent
+Marcus Lepidus to Alexandria, to accept the offered prize, and to govern
+the foreign affairs of the kingdom, under the modest name of tutor to
+the young king. This high honour was afterwards mentioned by Lepidus,
+with pride, upon the coins struck when he was consul, in the eighteenth
+year of this reign. They have the city of Alexandria on the one side,
+and on the other the title of "Tutor to the king," with the figure
+of the Roman in his toga, putting the diadem on the head of the young
+Ptolemy.
+
+The haughty orders of the senate at first had very little weight with
+the two kings. Antiochus conquered Phoenicia and Coele-Syria; and he was
+then met by a second message from the senate, who no longer spoke in the
+name of their ward, the young King of Egypt, but ordered him to give up
+to the Roman people the states which he had seized, and which belonged,
+they said, to the Romans by the right of war.
+
+[Illustration: 196.jpg ROMAN COIN, ISSUED UNDER PTOLEMY V.]
+
+On this, Antiochus made peace with Egypt by a treaty, in which he
+betrothed his daughter Cleopatra to the young Ptolemy, and added the
+disputed provinces of Phoenicia and Ccele-Syria as a dower, which were
+to 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 had
+heretofore 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 senate
+that they sent to Rome to ask whether they should help their old
+friends, the Athenians, against Philip, the common enemy, or whether
+they should leave it to the Romans to help them. And these haughty
+republicans, who wished all their allies to forget the use of arms, who
+valued their friends not for their strength but for their obedience,
+sent them word that the senate did not wish them to help the Athenians,
+and that the Roman people would take care of their own allies. The
+Alexandrians looked upon the proud but unlettered Romans only as
+friends, as allies, who asked for no pay, who took no reward, who fought
+only for ambition and for the glory of their country.
+
+Soon after this, the battle of Cynocephake in Thessaly was fought
+between Philip and the Romans, in which the Romans lost only seven
+hundred men, while as many as eight thousand Macedonians were left dead
+upon the field. This battle, though only between Rome and Macedonia,
+must not be passed unnoticed in the history of Egypt, where the troops
+were armed and disciplined like Macedonians; as it was the first time
+that the world had seen the Macedonian phalanx routed and in flight
+before any troops not so armed.
+
+The phalanx was a body of spearsmen, in such close array that each man
+filled a space of only one square yard. The spear was seven yards long,
+and, when held in both hands, its point was five yards in front of the
+soldier's breast. There were sixteen ranks of these men, and, when the
+first five ranks lowered their spears, the point of the fifth spear was
+one yard in front of the foremost rank. The Romans, on the other hand,
+fought in open ranks, with one yard between each, or each man filled
+a space of four square yards, and in a charge would have to meet ten
+Macedonian spears. But then the Roman soldiers went into battle with
+much higher feelings than those of the Greeks. In Rome, arms were
+trusted only to the citizens, to those who had a country to love, a
+home to guard, and who had some share in making the laws which they were
+called upon to obey. But the Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria
+were made up either of natives who bowed their necks in slavery, or of
+mercenaries who made war their trade and rioted in its lawlessness; both
+of whom felt that they had little to gain from victory, and nothing to
+lose by a change of masters. Moreover, the warlike skill of the Romans
+was far greater than any that had yet been brought against the Greeks.
+It had lately been improved in their wars with Hannibal, the great
+master of that science. They saw that the phalanx could use its whole
+strength only on a plain; that a wood, a bog, a hill, or a river were
+difficulties which this close body of men could not always overcome. A
+charge or a retreat equally lessened its force; the phalanx was meant to
+stand the charge of others. The Romans, therefore, chose their own time
+and their own ground; they loosened their ranks and widened their front,
+avoided the charge, and attacked the Greeks at the side and in the rear;
+and the fatal discovery was at last made that the Macedonian phalanx
+was not unconquerable, and that closed ranks were only strong against
+barbarians. This news must have been heard by every statesman of Egypt
+and the East with alarm; the 'Romans were now their equals, and were
+soon to be their masters.
+
+But to return to Egypt. It was, as we have seen, a country governed by
+men of a foreign race. Neither the poor who tilled the land, nor the
+rich who owned the estates, had any share in the government. They had no
+public duty except to pay taxes to their Greek masters, who walked among
+them as superior beings, marked out for fitness to rule by greater skill
+in the arts both of war and peace. The Greeks by their arms, or rather
+by their military discipline, had enforced obedience for one hundred and
+fifty years; and as they had at the same time checked lawless violence,
+made life and property safe, and left industry to enjoy a large share of
+its own earnings, this obedience had been for the most part granted to
+them willingly. They had even trusted the Egyptians with arms. But none
+are able to command unless they are at the same time able to obey. The
+Alexandrians were now almost in rebellion against their young king
+and his ministers; and the Greek government no longer gave the usual
+advantages in return for the obedience which it tyrannically enforced.
+Confusion increased each year during the childhood of the fifth Ptolemy,
+to whom Alexandrian flattery gave the title of Epiphanes, or The
+Illustrious. The Egyptian phalanx had in the last reign shown signs
+of disobedience, and at length it broke out in open rebellion. The
+discontented party strengthened themselves in the Busirite nome, in the
+middle of the Delta, and fortified the city of Lycopolis against the
+government; and a large supply of arms and warlike stores which
+they there got together proved the length of time that they had been
+preparing for resistance. The royal troops laid siege to the city in due
+form; they surrounded it with mounds and ditches; they dammed up the
+bed of the river on each side of it, and, being helped by a rise in the
+Nile, which was that year greater than usual, they forced the rebels to
+surrender, on the king's promise that they should be spared. But Ptolemy
+was not bound by promises; he was as false and cruel as he was weak; the
+rebels were punished; and many of the troubles in his reign arose from
+his discontented subjects not being able to rely upon his word.
+
+The rich island of Cyprus also, which had been left by Philopator under
+the command of Polyerates, showed some signs of wishing to throw off
+the Egyptian yoke. But Polyerates was true to his trust; and, though
+the king's ministers were almost too weak either to help the faithful or
+punish the treacherous, he not only saved the island for the minor, but,
+when he gave up his government to Ptolemy of Megalopolis, he brought to
+the royal treasury at Alexandria a large sum from the revenues of
+his province. By this faithful conduct he gained great weight in the
+Alexandrian councils, till, corrupted by the poisonous habits of the
+place, he gave way to luxury and vice.
+
+About the same time Scopas, who had lately led back to Alexandria his
+AEtolian mercenaries, so far showed signs of discontent and disobedience
+that the minister, Aristomenes, began to suspect him of planning
+resistance to the government. Scopas was greedy of money; nothing would
+satisfy his avarice.
+
+[Illustration: 201.jpg THE ROSETTA STONE (BRITISH MUSEUM)]
+
+The other Greek generals of his rank received while in the Egyptian
+service a mina, or ten dollars a day, under the name of mess-money,
+beyond the usual military pay; and Scopas claimed and received for his
+services the large sum of ten minas, or one hundred and twenty-five
+dollars, a day for mess-money. But even this did not content him.
+Aristomenes observed that he was collecting his friends for some secret
+purpose, and in frequent consultation with them. He therefore summoned
+him to the king's presence, and, being prepared for his refusal, he sent
+a large force to fetch him. Fearing that the mercenaries might support
+their general, Aristomenes had even ordered out the elephants and
+prepared 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 AEtolian ambassadors and the chiefs of the
+mercenaries to his trial, and, as they made no objection, he then had
+him poisoned in prison.
+
+No sooner was this rebellion crushed than the council took into
+consideration the propriety of declaring the king's minority at an
+end, as the best means of re-establishing the royal authority; and they
+thereupon determined shortly to celebrate his Anacleteria, or the grand
+ceremony of exhibiting him to the people as their monarch, though he
+wanted some years of the legal age; and accordingly, in the ninth year
+of his reign, the young king was crowned with great pomp at Memphis, the
+ancient capital of the kingdom.
+
+On this occasion he came to Memphis by barge, in grand state, where
+he was met by the priests of Upper and Lower Egypt, and crowned in the
+temple of Phtah with the double crown, called Pschent, the crown of the
+two provinces. After the ceremony, the priests made the Decree in honour
+of the king, which is carved on the stone known by the name of the
+Rosetta Stone, in the British Museum. Ptolemy is there styled King of
+Upper 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, Ptolemy
+immortal, beloved by Phtah, god Epiphanes most gracious. In the date
+of the decree we are told the names of the priests of Alexander, of the
+gods Soteres, of the gods Adelphi, of the gods Euergetae, of the gods
+Philopatores, of the god Epiphanes himself, of Berenice Euergetis, of
+Arsinoe Philadelphus, and of Arsinoe Philopator. The preamble mentions
+with gratitude the services of the king, or rather of his wise minister,
+Aristomenes; and the enactment orders that the statue of the king
+shall be worshipped in every temple of Egypt, and be carried out in the
+processions with those of the gods of the country; and lastly, that
+the decree is to be carved at the foot of every statue of the king, in
+sacred, in common, and in Greek writing. It is to this stone, with its
+three kinds of letters, and to the skill and industry of Dr. Thomas
+Young, and of the French scholar, Champollion, that we now owe our
+knowledge of hieroglyphics. The Greeks of Alexandria, and after them the
+Romans, who might have learned how to read this kind of writing if they
+had wished, seem never to have taken the trouble: it fell into disuse on
+the rise of Christianity in Egypt; and it was left for an Englishman
+to unravel the hidden meaning after it had been forgotten for nearly
+thirteen centuries.
+
+The preamble of this decree tells us also that during the minority of
+the king the taxes were lessened; the crown debtors were forgiven; those
+who were found in prison charged with crimes against the state were
+released; the allowance from government for upholding the splendour of
+the temples was continued, as was the rent from land belonging to the
+priests; the first-fruits, or rather the coronation money, a tax paid by
+the priests to the king on the year of his coming to the throne, which
+was by custom allowed to be less than what the law ordered, was not
+increased; the priests were relieved from the heavy burden of making a
+yearly voyage to do homage at Alexandria; there was a stop put to the
+impressing men for the navy, which had been felt as a great cruelty by
+an inland people, whose habits and religion alike made them hate the
+sea, and this was a boon which was the more easily granted, as the
+navy of Alexandria, which was built in foreign dockyards and steered by
+foreign pilots, had very much fallen off in the reign of Philopator. The
+duties on linen cloth, which was the chief manufacture of the kingdom,
+and, after grain, the chief article exported, were lessened; the
+priests, who manufactured linen for the king's own use, probably for the
+clothing of the army, and the sails for the navy, were not called upon
+for so large a part of what they made as before; and the royalties on
+the other linen manufactories and the duties on the samples or patterns,
+both of which seem to have been unpaid for the whole of the eight years
+of the minority, were wisely forgiven. All the temples of Egypt, and
+that of Apis at Memphis in particular, were enriched by his gifts; in
+which pious actions, in grateful remembrance of their former benefactor,
+and with a marked slight to Philopator, they said that he was following
+the wishes of his grandfather, the god Euergetes. From this decree we
+gain some little insight into the means by which the taxes were raised
+under the Ptolemies; and we also learn that they were so new and foreign
+that they had no Egyptian word by which they could speak of them, and
+therefore borrowed the Greek word _syntaxes_.
+
+History gives us many examples of kings who, like Epiphanes, gained
+great praise for the mildness and weakness of the government during
+their minorities. Aristomenes, the minister, who had governed Egypt for
+Epiphanes, fully deserved that trust. While the young king looked up to
+him as a father, the country was well governed, and his orders obeyed;
+but, as he grew older, his good feelings were weakened by the pleasures
+which usually beset youth and royalty. The companions of his vices
+gained that power over his mind which Aristomenes lost, and it was not
+long before this wise tutor and counsellor was got rid of. The king,
+weary perhaps with last night's debauchery, had one day fallen
+asleep when he should have been listening to the speech of a foreign
+ambassador. Aristomenes gently shook him and awoke him. His flatterers,
+when alone with him, urged him to take this as an affront. If, said
+they, it was right to blame the king for falling asleep when worn
+out with business and the cares of state, it should have been done in
+private, and not in the face of the whole court. So Aristomenes was put
+to death by being ordered to drink poison. Epiphanes then lost that love
+of his people which the wisdom of the minister had gained for him; and
+he governed the kingdom with the cruelty of a tyrant, rather than with
+the legal power of a king.
+
+[Illustration: 207.jpg OUTSIDE ROSETTA]
+
+Even Aristonicus, his favourite eunuch, who was of the same age as
+himself, and had been brought up as his playfellow, passed him in the
+manly virtues of his age, and earned the praise of the country for
+setting him a good example, and checking him in his career of vice.
+
+In the thirteenth year of his reign (B.C. 192), when the young king
+reached the age of eighteen, Antiochus the Great sent his daughter
+Cleopatra into Egypt, and the marriage, which had been agreed upon
+six years before, was then carried into effect; and the provinces of
+Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Judaea, 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; and
+Antiochus hoped that, by means of the power which she would have over
+the weaker mind of Epiphanes, he should gain more than he lost by giving
+up Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. But she acted the part of a wife and
+a queen, and, instead of betraying her husband into the hands of her
+father, she was throughout the reign his wisest and best counsellor.
+
+Antiochus seems never to have given up his hold upon the provinces which
+had been promised as the dower; and the peace between the two countries,
+which had been kept during the six years after Cleopatra had been
+betrothed, was broken as soon as she was married. The war was still
+going on between Antiochus and the Romans; and Epiphanes soon sent to
+Rome a thousand pounds weight of gold and twenty thousand pounds of
+silver, to help the republic against their common enemy. But the Romans
+neither hired mercenaries nor fought as such, the thirst for gold had
+not yet become the strongest feeling in the senate, and they sent back
+the money to Alexandria with many thanks.
+
+In the twentieth year of his reign Epiphanes was troubled by a second
+serious rebellion of the Egyptians. Polycrates marched against them at
+the head of the Greek troops; and, as he brought with him a superior
+force, and the king's promise of a free pardon to all who should return
+to their obedience, the rebels yielded to necessity and laid down their
+arms. The leaders of the rebellion, Athinis, Pausiras, Chesuphus, and
+Irobashtus, whose Koptic names prove that this was a struggle on the
+part of the Egyptians to throw off the Greek yoke, were brought before
+the king at Sais. Epiphanes, in whose youthful heart were joined the
+cruelty and cowardice of a tyrant, who had not even shown himself to the
+army during the danger, was now eager to act the conqueror; and in spite
+of the promises of safety on which these brave Kopts had laid down their
+arms, he had them tied to his chariot wheels, and copying the vices
+of men whose virtues he could not even understand, like Achilles and
+Alexander, he dragged them living round the city walls, and then ordered
+them to be put to death. He then led the army to Naucratis, which was
+the port of Sais, and there he embarked on the Nile for Alexandria, and
+taking with him a further body of mercenaries, which Aristonicus had
+just brought from Greece, he entered the city in triumph.
+
+Ptolemy of Megalopolis, the new governor of Cyprus, copied his
+predecessor, Polycrates, in his wise and careful management. His chief
+aim was to keep the province quiet, and his next to collect the taxes.
+He was at first distrusted by the Alexandrian council for the large sum
+of money which he had got together and kept within his own power;
+but when he sent it all home to the empty treasury, they were as much
+pleased as they were surprised.
+
+Apollonius, whom we have spoken of in the reign of Euergetes, and who
+had been teaching at Rhodes during the reign of Philopator, was recalled
+to Alexandria in the beginning of this reign, and made librarian of
+the museum on the death of Eratosthenes. But he did not long enjoy that
+honour. He was already old, and shortly afterwards died at the age of
+ninety.
+
+[Illustration: 210.jpg A DESERT ROAD BETWEEN EGYPT AND SYRIA.]
+
+The coins of this king are known by the glory or rays of sun which
+surround his head, and which agrees with his name, Epiphanes,
+illustrious, or as it is written in the hieroglyphics, "light bearing."
+On the other side is the cornucopia between two stars, with the name of
+"King Ptolemy." No temples, and few additions to temples, seem to have
+been built in Upper Egypt during this reign, which began and ended in
+rebellion. We find, however, a Greek inscription at Philas, of "King
+Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra, gods Epiphanes, and Ptolemy their son, to
+Asclepius," a god whom the Egyptians called Imothph the son of Pthah.
+
+Cyprus and Cyrene were nearly all that were left to Egypt of its
+foreign provinces. The cities of Greece, which had of their own wish
+put themselves under Egypt for help against their nearer neighbours, now
+looked 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 been
+given up to Epiphanes, had been again soon lost; and the Jews, who in
+all former wars had sided with the Kings of Egypt, as being not only the
+stronger but the milder rulers, now joined Seleucus. The ease with which
+the wide-spreading provinces of this once mighty empire fell off from
+their allegiance, showed how the whole had been upheld by the warlike
+skill of its kings, rather than by a deep-rooted hold in the habits
+of the people. Instead of wondering that the handful of Greeks in
+Alexandria, on whom the power rested, lost those wide provinces, we
+should rather wonder that they were ever able to hold them.
+
+After the death of Antiochus the Great, Ptolemy again proposed to
+enforce his rights over Ccele-Syria, which he had given up only in the
+weakness of his minority; and he is said to have been asked by one of
+his generals, how he should be able to pay for the large forces which
+he' was getting together for that purpose; and he playfully answered,
+that his treasure was in the number of his friends. But his joke was
+taken in earnest; they were afraid of new taxes and fresh levies on
+their estates; and means were easily taken to poison him. He died in
+the twenty-ninth year of his age, after a reign of twenty-four years;
+leaving the navy unmanned, the army in disobedience, the treasury empty,
+and the whole framework of government out of order.
+
+Just before his death he had sent to the Achaians to offer to send ten
+galleys to join their fleet; and Polybius, the historian, to whom we
+owe so much of our knowledge of these reigns, although he had not yet
+reached the age called for by the Greek law, was sent by the Achaians
+as one of the ambassadors, with his father, to return thanks; but before
+they had quitted their own country they were stopped by the news of the
+death of Epiphanes.
+
+Those who took away the life of the king seem to have had no thoughts of
+mending the form of government, nor any plan by which they might lessen
+the power of his successor. It was only one of those outbreaks of
+private vengeance which have often happened in unmixed monarchies, where
+men are taught that the only way to check the king's tyranny is by his
+murder; and the little notice that was taken of it by the people proves
+their want of public virtue as 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 the
+want of a natural guardian to the young king, and they were now glad to
+copy the customs of the conquered Egyptians. Epiphanes had left behind
+him two sons, each named Ptolemy, and a daughter named Cleopatra; and
+the elder son, though still a child, mounted the throne under the able
+guardianship of his mother, Cleopatra, and took the very suitable name
+of Philometor, or _mother-loving_. The mother governed the kingdom for
+seven years as regent during the minority of her son. "When Philometor
+reached his fourteenth year, the age at which his minority ceased, his
+coronation was celebrated with great pomp. Ambassadors from several
+foreign states were sent to Egypt to wish the king joy, to do honour to
+the day, and to renew the treaties of peace with him: Caius Valerius and
+four others were sent from Rome; Apollonius, the son of Mnestheus, was
+sent from Judaea; and we may regret with Polybius that he himself was not
+able to form part of the embassy then sent from the Achaians, that he
+might have seen the costly and curious ceremony, and given us an account
+of it.
+
+While Cleopatra lived, she had been able to keep her son at peace with
+her brother, Antiochus Epiphanes, but upon her death, Leneus and the
+eunuch Eulaius, who then had the care of the young king, sought to
+reconquer Coele-Syria; and they embroiled the country in a war, at a
+time when weakness and decay might have been seen in every part of
+the army and navy, and when there was the greatest need of peace.
+Coele-Syria and Phoenicia had been given to Ptolemy Epiphanes as his
+wife's dower; but, when Philometor seemed too weak to grasp them,
+Antiochus denied that his father had ever made such a treaty, and got
+ready to march against Egypt, as the easiest way to guard Coele-Syria.
+
+By this time the statesmen of Egypt ought to have learned the mistake
+in their foreign policy. By widening their frontier they always weakened
+it. They should have fortified the passes between the Red Sea and the
+Mediterranean, not cities in Asia. When Antiochus entered Egypt he was
+met at Pelusium by the army of Philometor, which he at once routed in
+a pitched battle. The whole of Egypt was then in his power; he marched
+upon Memphis with a small force, and seized it without having to strike
+a blow, helped perhaps by the plea that he was acting on behalf of his
+nephew, Ptolemy Philometor, who then fell into his hands.
+
+On this, the younger Ptolemy, the brother of Philometor, who was with
+his sister Cleopatra in Alexandria, and was about fifteen years old,
+declared himself king, and sent ambassadors to Rome to ask for help
+against Antiochus; and taking the name of the most popular of his
+forefathers, he called himself Euergetes. He is, however, better known
+in history as Ptolemy Physcon, or _bloated_, a nickname which was
+afterwards given to him when he had grown fat and unwieldy from the
+diseases of luxury.
+
+Comanus and Cineas were the chief advisers of the young Euergetes; and
+in their alarm they proposed to send the foreign ambassadors to meet the
+invader on his march from Memphis, and to plead for peace. This task
+the ambassadors kindly undertook. There were then in Alexandria two
+embassies from the Achaians, one to renew the treaty of peace, and one
+to settle the terms of the coming wrestling match. There were there
+three embassies from Athens, one with gifts from the city, one about the
+Panathenaic games, and one about the celebration of the mysteries. There
+was also an embassy from Miletus, and one from Clazomenae. On the day of
+their arrival at Memphis, Antiochus feasted these numerous ambassadors
+in grand state, and on the next day gave them an audience. But their
+arguments for peace carried no weight with him; and he denied that his
+father, Antiochus the Great, had ever given Coele-Syria as a dower
+with his daughter Cleopatra to Epiphanes. To gain time he promised
+the ambassadors that he would give them an answer as soon as his own
+ambassadors returned from Alexandria; and in the meanwhile he carried
+his army down the Nile to Naucratis, and thence marched to the capital
+to begin the siege.
+
+Antiochus, however, was defeated in his first assault upon Alexandria,
+and finding that he should not soon be able to bring the siege to an
+end, he sent off an embassy to Rome with a hundred and fifty talents of
+gold, fifty as a present to the senate, and the rest to be divided among
+the states of Greece, whose help he might need. At the same time, also,
+an embassy from the Rhodians arrived in the port of Alexandria, to
+attempt to restore peace to the country of their old allies. Antiochus
+received the Rhodian ambassadors in his tent, but would not listen to
+the long speech with which they threatened him, and shortly told them
+that he came as the friend of his elder nephew, the young Philometor,
+and if the Alexandrians wished for peace they should open the gates
+to their rightful king. Antiochus was, however, defeated in all his
+assaults on the city, and he at last withdrew his army and returned
+to Syria. He left Euergetes, King of the Greeks, at Alexandria, and
+Philometor at Memphis, King of the rest of Egypt. But he kept Pelusium,
+where he placed a strong garrison that he might be able easily to
+re-enter Egypt whenever he chose.
+
+Ptolemy Macron, the Alexandrian governor of Cyprus, added to the
+troubles of the country by giving up his island to Antiochus. But he
+met with the usual fate of traitors, he was badly rewarded; and when he
+complained of his treatment, he was called a traitor by the very men who
+had gained by his treachery, and he poisoned himself in the bitterness
+of his grief. Antiochus, like most invaders, carried off whatever
+treasure fell into his hands. Egypt was a sponge which had not lately
+been squeezed, and his court and even his own dinner-table then shone
+with a blaze of silver and gold unknown in Syria before this inroad into
+Egypt.
+
+By these acts, and by the garrison left in Pelusium, the eyes of
+Philometor were opened, and he saw that his uncle had not entered Egypt
+for his sake, but to make it a province of Syria, after it had been
+weakened by civil war. He therefore wisely forgave his rebellious
+brother and sister in Alexandria, and sent offers of peace to them; and
+it was agreed that the two Ptolemies should reign together, and turn
+their forces against the common enemy. It was most likely at this
+time, and as a part of this treaty, that Philometor married his sister
+Cleopatra. It was mainly by her advice and persuasion that the quarrel
+between the two brothers was for the time healed. On this treaty between
+the brothers the year was called the twelfth of Ptolemy Philometor and
+the first of Ptolemy Euergetes, and the public deeds of the kingdom were
+so dated.
+
+The next year Antiochus Epiphanes again entered Egypt, claiming the
+island of Cyprus and the country round Pelusium as the price of his
+forbearance; and, on his marching forward, Memphis a second time opened
+its gates to him without a battle. He came down by slow marches towards
+Alexandria, and crossed the canal at Leucine, four miles from the city.
+There he was met by the Roman ambassadors, who ordered him to quit the
+country. On his hesitating, Popilius, who was one of them, drew a circle
+round him on the sand with his stick, and told him that, if he crossed
+that line without promising to leave Egypt at once, it should be taken
+as a declaration of war against Rome. On this threat Antiochus again
+quitted Egypt, and the brothers sent ambassadors to Rome to thank the
+senate for their help, and to acknowledge that they owed more to the
+Roman people than they did to the gods or to their forefathers.
+
+The treaty made on this occasion between Philometor and Antiochus
+was written by Heraclides Lembus, the son of Serapion, a native of
+Oxyrynchus, who wrote on the succession of the philosophers in the
+several Greek schools, and other works on philosophy, but whose chief
+work was a history named the Lembeutic History.
+
+Four years afterwards, in B. c. 164, Antiochus Epiphanes died; and the
+Jews of Judaea, who had been for some time struggling for liberty, then
+gained a short rest for their unhappy country. Judas Maccabaeus had
+raised his countrymen in rebellion against the foreigners; he had
+defeated the Syrian forces in several battles; and was at last able
+to purify the temple and re-establish the service there as of old. He
+therefore sent to the Jews of Egypt to ask them to join their Hebrew
+brethren in celebrating the feast of tabernacles on that great occasion.
+
+[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 driven
+from his kingdom, and he fled to Rome for safety and for help. He
+entered the city privately, and took up his lodgings in the house of
+one of his own subjects, a painter of Alexandria. His pride led him
+to refuse the offers of better entertainment which were made to him by
+Demetrius, the nephew of Antiochus, who, like himself, was hoping to
+regain his kingdom by the help of the Romans. The Kings of Egypt and
+Syria, the two greatest kingdoms in the world, were at the same time
+asking to be heard at the bar of the Roman senate, and were claiming the
+thrones of their fathers at the hands of men who could make and unmake
+kings at their pleasure.
+
+As soon as the senate heard that Philometor was in Rome, they lodged him
+at the cost of the state in a manner becoming his high rank, and soon
+sent him back to Egypt, with orders that Euergetes should reign in
+Cyrene, and that the rest of the kingdom should belong to Philometor.
+This happened in the seventeenth year of Philometor and the sixth of
+Euergetes, which was the last year that was named after the two kings.
+Cassius Longinus, who was next year consul at Rome, was most likely
+among the ambassadors who replaced Philometor on the throne; for he put
+the Ptolemaic eagle and thunderbolt on his coins, as though to claim the
+sovereignty of Egypt for the senate.
+
+To these orders Euergetes was forced to yield; but the next year he
+went himself to Rome to complain to the senate that they had made a
+very unfair division of the kingdom, and to beg that they would add
+the island of Cyprus to his share. After hearing the ambassadors from
+Philometor, who were sent to plead on the other side, the senate granted
+the prayer of Euergetes, and sent ambassadors to Cyprus, with orders to
+hand that island over to Euergetes, and to make use of the fleets and
+armies of the republic if these orders were disobeyed.
+
+Euergetes, during his stay in Rome, if we may believe Plutarch, made an
+offer of marriage to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but this offer
+of a throne could not make the high-minded matron quit her children and
+her country. He left Italy with the Roman ambassadors, and, in passing
+through Greece, he raised a large body of mercenaries to help him to
+wrest Cyprus from his brother, as it would seem that the governor,
+faithful to his charge, would not listen to the commands of Rome. But
+the ambassadors had been told to conquer Cyprus, if necessary, with the
+arms of the republic only, and they therefore made Euergetes disband
+his levies. They sailed for Alexandria to enforce their orders upon
+Philometor, and sent Euergetes home to Cyrene. Philometor received the
+Roman ambassadors with all due honours; he sometimes gave them fair
+promises, and sometimes put them off till another day; and tried to spin
+out the time without saying either yes or no to the message from the
+senate. Euergetes sent to Alexandria to ask if they had gained their
+point; but though they threatened to return to Rome if they were not at
+once obeyed, Philometor, by his kind treatment and still kinder words,
+kept them more than forty days longer at Alexandria.
+
+At last the Roman ambassadors left Egypt, and on their way home they
+went to Cyrene, to let Euergetes know that his brother had disobeyed the
+orders of the senate, and would not give up Cyprus; and Euergetes then
+sent two ambassadors to Rome to beg them to revenge their affronted
+dignity and to enforce their orders by arms. The senate of course
+declared the peace with Egypt at an end, and ordered the ambassadors
+from Philometor to quit Rome within five days, and sent their own
+ambassadors to Cyrene to tell Euergetes of their decree.
+
+But while this was going on, the state of Cyrene had risen in arms
+against Euergetes; his vices and cruelty had made him hated, they had
+gained for him the nicknames of Kakergetes, or _mischief-maker_, and
+Physcon, or _bloated_; and while wishing to gain Cyprus he was in danger
+of losing his own kingdom. When he marched against the rebels, he was
+beaten and wounded, either in the battle or by an attack upon his life
+afterwards, and his success was for some time doubtful. When he had at
+last put down this rising, he sailed for Rome, to urge his complaints
+against Philometor, upon whom he laid the blame of the late rebellion,
+and to ask for help. The senate, after hearing both sides, sent a small
+fleet with Euergetes, not large enough to put him on the throne of
+Cyprus, but gave him, what they had before refused, leave to levy
+an army of his own, and to enlist their allies in Greece and Asia as
+mercenaries under his standard.
+
+The Roman troops seem not to have helped Euergetes; but he landed in
+Cyprus with his own mercenaries, and was there met by Philometor, who
+had brought over the Egyptian army in person. Euergetes, however, was
+beaten in several battles, he was soon forced to shut himself up in
+the city of Lapitho, and at last to lay down his arms before his elder
+brother.
+
+If Philometor had upon this put his brother to death, the deed would
+have seemed almost blameless after the family murders already related
+in this history. But, with a goodness of heart, he a second time forgave
+his brother all that had passed, replaced him on the throne of Cyrene,
+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 of
+Philometor had turned the Roman senate in his favour, but their troops
+seemed wanted in other quarters; at any rate they left off trying to
+enforce their decree; Philometor kept Cyprus, and sent Euergetes a
+yearly gift of grain from Alexandria.
+
+During the wars in Syria between Philometor and Antiochus Epiphanes, at
+the beginning of this reign, the Jews were divided into two parties, one
+favouring the Egyptians and one the Syrians. At last the Syrian party
+drove their enemies out of Jerusalem; and Onias, the high priest, with
+a large body of Jews, fled to Egypt. There they were well received
+by Philometor, who allowed them to dwell in the neighbourhood of
+Heliopolis; and he gave them leave to build a temple and ordain priests
+for themselves. Onias built his temple at On or Onion, a city about
+twenty-three miles from Memphis, once the capital of the district of
+Heliopolis. It was on the site of an old Egyptian temple of the goddess
+Pasht, which had fallen into disuse and decay, and was built after the
+model of the temple of Jerusalem. Though by the Jewish law there was to
+be no second temple, yet Onias defended himself by quoting, as if meant
+for his own times, the words of Isaiah, who says that in that day there
+shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt. The
+building of this temple, and the celebrating the Jewish feasts there,
+as in rivalry to the temple of Jerusalem, were a never-failing cause
+of quarrel between the Hebrew and the Greek Jews. They each altered the
+words of the Bible to make it speak their own opinions. The Hebrew Bible
+now says that the new temple was in the City of Destruction, and the
+Greek Bible says that it was in the City of Righteousness; whereas, from
+the Arabic version and some early commentaries, it seems that Isaiah was
+speaking of the city of Heliopolis, where there had been of old an altar
+to the Lord. The leaders of the Greek party wished the Jews to throw
+aside the character of strangers and foreign traders; to be at home and
+to become owners of the soil. "Hate not laborious work," says the son of
+Sirach; "neither husbandry, which the Most High hath ordained."
+
+About the same time the Jews brought before Ptolemy, as a judge, their
+quarrel with the Samaritans, as to whether, according to the law of
+Moses, the temple ought to have been built at Jerusalem, or on the green
+and fertile Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans built their temple, or
+on the barren white crags of Mount Ebal, where the Hebrew Bible says
+that it should be built; and as to which nation had altered their copies
+of the Bible in the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy and eighth
+chapter of Joshua. This dispute had lately been the cause of riots and
+rebellion. Ptolemy seems to have decided the question for political
+reasons, and to please his own subjects, the Alexandrian Jews; and
+without listening to the arguments as to what the law ordered, he was
+content with the proof that the temple had stood at Jerusalem for about
+eight hundred years, and he put to death the two Samaritan pleaders, who
+had probably been guilty of some outrage against the Jews in zeal for
+Mount Gerizim, and for which they might then have been on their trial.
+
+Onias, the high priest, was much esteemed by Philometor, and bore high
+offices in the government; as also did Dositheus, another Jew, who had
+been very useful in helping the king to crush a rebellion. Dositheus
+called himself a priest and a Levite, though his title to that honour
+seems to have been doubted by his countrymen. He had brought with him
+into Egypt the book of Esther, written in Greek, which he said had been
+translated out of the Hebrew in Jerusalem by Lysimachus. It contained
+some additions for which the Hebrew has never been brought forward, and
+which are now placed among the uncanonical books in the Apocrypha.
+
+Since the Ptolemies had found themselves too weak to hold Ethiopia, they
+had placed a body of soldiers on the border of the two countries, to
+guard Egypt from the inroads of the enemy. This station, twelve miles
+to the south of Syene, had by degrees grown into a city, and was called
+Parembole, or _The Camp_; and, as most of the soldiers were Greek
+mercenaries, it was natural that the temple which Philometor built there
+should be dedicated in the Greek language. Of the temples hitherto built
+by the Ptolemies, in the Egyptian cities, every one seems to have had
+the king's name and titles, and its dedication to the gods, carved on
+its massive portico in hieroglyphics; but this was in a Greek city, and
+it was dedicated to Isis and Serapis, on behalf of Philometor and his
+queen, in a Greek inscription.
+
+[Illustration: 227.jpg TEMPLE OF APOLLONOPOLIS]
+
+Philometor also built a temple at Antseopolis to Antaeus, a god of whom
+we know little, but that he gave his name to the city; and another to
+Aroeris at Ombos; and in the same way he carved the dedications on the
+porticoes in the Greek language. This custom became common after that
+time, and proves both the lessened weight which the native Egyptians
+bore in the state, and that the kings had forgotten the wise rules of
+Ptolemy Soter, in regard to the religious feelings of the people. They
+must have been greatly shocked by this use of foreign writing in the
+place of the old characters of the country, which, from having been used
+in the temples, even for ages beyond the reach of history, had at last
+been called sacred. In the temple at Antoopolis we note a marked change
+in the style of building. The screen in front of the great portico is
+almost removed by having a doorway made in it between every pair of
+columns.
+
+It is to this reign, also, that we seem to owe the great temple at
+Apollinopolis Magna, although it was not finished till one or two
+reigns later. It is one of the largest and least ruined of the Egyptian
+temples. Its front is formed of two huge square towers, with sloping
+sides, between which is the narrow doorway, the only opening in its
+massive walls. Through this the worshipper entered a spacious courtyard
+or cloister, where he found shade from the sun under a covered walk on
+either side. In front is the lofty portico with six large columns, the
+entrance to the body of the building. This last is flat-roofed, and far
+lower than the grand portico which hid it from the eyes of the crowd in
+the courtyard. The staircases in the towers are narrow. The sacred rooms
+within were small and dark, with only a glimmering flame here and there
+before an altar, except when lighted up with a blaze of lamps on a
+feast-day. As a castle it must have had great strength; from the top
+and loopholes of the two towers, stones and darts might be hurled at the
+enemy; and as it was in the hands of the Egyptians, it is the strongest
+proof that they were either not distrusted or not feared by their Greek
+rulers. The city of Apollinopolis stands on a grand and lofty situation,
+overlooking the river and the valley; and this proud temple, rising
+over all, can only have been planned by military skill as a fortress to
+command the whole.
+
+At this time the Greeks in Egypt were beginning to follow the custom of
+their Egyptian brethren, to take upon themselves monastic vows, and
+to shut themselves up in the temples in religious idleness. But these
+foreigners were looked upon with jealousy by the Egyptian monks as
+intruders on their endowments, and we meet with a petition addressed
+to Philometor by Ptolemy, the son of Glaucias, a monk in the temple of
+Serapis at Memphis, who styles himself a Macedonian, complaining that
+his cell had been violently entered and himself ill-treated because
+he was a Greek; and reminding the king that last year, when the king
+visited the Serapium, he had addressed the same petition to him through
+the bars of his window. The priests in temples of Egypt were maintained,
+partly by their own estates, and partly by the offerings of the pious;
+and we still possess a deed of sale made in this reign by the Theban
+priests, of one-half of a third of their collections for the dead who
+had been buried in Thynabunum, the Libyan suburb of Thebes. This sixth
+share of the collections consisted of seven or eight families of slaves;
+the price of it was four hundred pieces of brass; the bargain was made
+in the presence of sixteen witnesses, whose names are given; and the
+deed 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 dead
+would seem to have been a cause of some wealth to the temples. It was
+one among the many Egyptian customs forbidden by the law of Moses.
+
+From this deed of sale we also gain some knowledge of the state of
+slavery in Egypt. The names of the slaves and of their fathers are
+Koptic, and in some cases borrowed from the names of the gods; hence
+the slaves were probably of the same religion, and spoke nearly the same
+language as their masters. They sunk into that low state rather by their
+own want of mind than by their masters' power. In each case the slave
+was joined in the same lot with his children; and the low price of four
+hundred pieces of brass, perhaps about thirty-eight dollars for eight
+families, or even if it be meant for the half of eight families, proves
+that they were of the nature of serfs, and that the master, either by
+law or custom, could have had no power of cruelly overworking them. On
+the other hand, in the reign of Philadelphus, the prisoners taken in
+battle, who might be treated with greater severity, were ransomed at
+fifteen dollars each. We see by the monuments that there were also a
+few negroes in the same unhappy state of slavery. They were probably not
+treated much worse than the lowest class of those born on the soil,
+but they were much more valuable. Other slaves of the Berber race were
+brought in coasting vessels from Opone on the incense coast, near to the
+island of Dioscorides.
+
+Aristarchus, who had been the tutor of Euergetes II., and of a son of
+Philometor, was one of the ornaments of this reign. He had been a pupil
+of Aristophanes, the grammarian, and had then studied under Crates at
+Pergamus, the rival school to Alexandria. He died at Cyprus, whither he
+probably withdrew on the death of Philometor. He was chiefly known for
+his critical writings, in which his opinions of poetry were thought
+so just that few dared to disagree with them; and his name soon became
+proverbial for a critic. Aristarchus had also the good fortune to be
+listened to in his lecture-room by one whose name is far more known than
+those of his two royal pupils. Moschus of Syracuse, the pastoral poet,
+was one of his hearers; but his fame must not be claimed for Alexandria;
+he can hardly have learned from the critic that just taste by which he
+joined softness and sweetness to the rude plainness of the Doric muse.
+Indeed in this he only followed his young friend Bion, whose death he
+so beautifully bewails, and from whose poems he generously owns that he
+learned so much. It may be as well to add that the lines in which he
+says that Theocritus, who had been dead above one hundred years, joined
+with him in his sorrow for the death of Bion are later additions not
+found in the early manuscripts of his poems.
+
+From our slight acquaintance with Bion's life, we are left in doubt
+whether he accompanied his friend Moschus to the court of Alexandria;
+but it is probable that he did. In his beautiful lamentation for the
+death of Adonis, we have an imitation of the melancholy chant of the
+Egyptians, named _maneros_, which they sang through the streets in the
+procession on the feast of Isis, when the crowd joined in the chorus,
+"Ah, hapless Isis, Osiris is no more." The tale has been a good deal
+changed by the Sicilian muse of Bion, but in the boar which killed
+Adonis, we have the wicked Typhon as carved on the monuments; we have
+also the wound in the thigh, and the consolations of the priests,
+who every year ended their mournful song with advising the goddess to
+reserve her sorrow for another year, when on the return of the festival
+the same lament would be again celebrated. The whole poem has a depth
+and earnestness of feeling which is truly Egyptian, but which was very
+little known in Alexandria.
+
+To the Alexandrian grammarians, and more particularly to Aristophanes,
+Aristarchus, and their pupil, Ammonius, we are indebted for our
+present copies of Homer. These critics acted like modern editors, each
+publishing an edition, or rather writing out a copy, which was then
+re-copied in the museum as often as called for by the demands of the
+purchasers of books. Aristophanes left perhaps only one such copy or
+edition, while Aristarchus, in his efforts to correct the text of the
+great epic poet, made several such copies. These were in the hands of
+the later scholiasts, who appealed to them as their authority, and
+ventured to make no further alterations; we therefore now read the Iliad
+and Odyssey nearly as left by these Alexandrian critics. They no doubt
+took some liberties in altering the spelling and smoothing the lines;
+and, though we should value most highly a copy in the rougher form in
+which it came into their hands, yet, on the whole, we must be great
+gainers by their labours. They divided the Iliad and Odyssey into
+twenty-four books each, and corrected the faulty metres; but one of
+their chief tasks was to set aside, or put a mark against, those more
+modern lines which had crept into the ancient poems. It had been
+usual to call every old verse Homer's or Homeric, and these it was the
+business of the critic to mark as not genuine. Aristarchus was jocosely
+said to have called every line spurious which he did not like; but
+everything that we can learn of him leads us to believe that he executed
+his task with judgment. From these men sprang the school of Alexandrian
+grammarians, who for several centuries continued their minute and often
+unprofitable studies in verbal criticism.
+
+[Illustration: 234.jpg THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER]
+
+These were the palmy days of criticism. Never before or since have
+critics held so high a place in literature. The world was called upon to
+worship and do honour to the poet, but chiefly that it might admire the
+skill of the critic who could name the several sources of his beauties.
+The critic now ranked higher than a priest at the foot of Mount
+Parnassus. Homer was lifted to the skies that the critic might stand on
+a raised pedestal among the Muses. Such seems to be the meaning of
+the figures on the upper part of the well-known sculpture called the
+Apotheosis of Homer. It was made in this reign; and at the foot Ptolemy
+and his mother, in the characters of Time and the World, are crowning
+the statue of the poet, in the presence of ten worshippers who represent
+the literary excellences which shine forth in his poems. The figures
+of the Iliad and Odyssey kneel beside his seat, and the Frogs and Mice
+creep under his footstool, showing that the latter mock-heroic poem was
+already written and called the work of Homer.
+
+Other celebrities who flourished under the fifth Ptolemy were
+Pamphilius, an Alexandrian physician who wrote on medical plants;
+Meander, a poet and physician who studied poisons, and the great
+Hipparchus, the founder of mathematical astronomy. Hero, also, in this
+reign, 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 their
+scientific observations in the form of poetry, but it was verse without
+earnestness and feeling, and such of it as survives is valued not for
+its literary qualities or charms of diction, but for the side-lights it
+throws upon the manners and education of the age.
+
+The portrait of the king is known from those coins which bear the name
+of "_King Ptolemy the mother-loving god_." The eagle on the other side
+of the coins has a phoenix or 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 of
+the Ptolemies; but, as every one of them had been so named in the
+hieroglyphical inscriptions, it can scarcely be called new.
+
+When Philometor quitted the island of Cyprus after beating his brother
+in battle, he left Archias as governor, who entered into a plot to give
+it up to Demetrius, King of Syria, for the sum of five hundred talents.
+But the plot was found out, and the traitor then put an end to his own
+life, to escape from punishment and self-reproach. By this treachery of
+Demetrius, Philometor was made his enemy, and he joined Attalus, King
+of Pergamus, and Ariarathes, King of Cappadocia, in setting up Alexander
+Balas as a pretender to the throne of Syria, who beat Demetrius in
+battle, and put him to death. Philometor two years afterwards gave his
+elder daughter, Cleopatra, in marriage to Alexander, and led her himself
+to Ptolemais, or Acre, where the marriage was celebrated with great
+pomp.
+
+But even in Ptolemais, the city in which Alexander had been so covered
+with favours, Philometor was near falling under the treachery of his new
+son-in-law. He learned that a plot had been formed against his life by
+Ammonius, and he wrote to Alexander to beg that the traitor might be
+given up to justice. But Alexander acknowledged the plot as his own,
+and refused to give up his servant. On this, Philometor recalled his
+daughter, and turned against Alexander the forces which he had led into
+Syria to uphold him. He then sent to the young Demetrius, afterwards
+called Nicator, the son of his late enemy, to offer him the throne and
+wife which he had lately given to Alexander Balas. Demetrius was equally
+pleased with the two offers. Philometor then entered Antioch at the head
+of his army, and there he was proclaimed by the citizens King of Asia
+and Egypt; but with a forbearance then very uncommon, he called together
+the council of the people, and refused the crown, and persuaded them to
+receive Demetrius as their king.
+
+[Illustration: 237.jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY V.]
+
+It is interesting to note that Alexander Balas and Demetrius Nicator
+each in his turn acknowledged his debt to the King of Egypt by putting
+the Ptolemaic eagle on his coins, and adjusting them to the Egyptian
+standard of weight: and in this they were afterwards followed by
+Antiochus, the son of Demetrius. The Romans, on the other hand,
+sometimes used the same eagle in boast of their power over Egypt; but we
+cannot be mistaken in what was meant by these Syrian kings, who none of
+them, when their coins were struck, were seated safely on the throne.
+With them, as with some of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the use of
+the Egyptian eagle on the coins was an act of homage.
+
+Philometor and Demetrius, as soon as the latter was acknowledged king at
+Antioch, then marched against Alexander, routed his army, and drove him
+into Arabia. But in this battle Philometor's horse was frightened by the
+braying of an elephant, and threw the king into the ranks of the enemy,
+and he was taken up covered with wounds. He lay speechless for five
+days, and the surgeons then endeavoured to cut out a piece of the broken
+bone from his skull. He died under the operation: but not before the
+head of Alexander had been brought to him as the proof of his victory.
+
+Thus fell Ptolemy Philometor in the forty-second year of his age. His
+reign began in trouble; before he reached the years of manhood the
+country had been overrun by foreigners, and torn to pieces by civil war;
+but he left the kingdom stronger than he found it, a praise which he
+alone can share with Ptolemy Soter. He was alike brave and mild; he
+was the only one of the race who fell in battle, and the only one whose
+hands were unstained with civil blood. At an age and in a country when
+poison and the dagger were too often the means by which the king's
+authority was upheld, when goodness was little valued, and when
+conquests were thought the only measure of greatness, he spared the life
+of a brother taken in battle, he refused the crown of Syria when offered
+to him; and not only no one of his friends or kinsmen, but no citizen
+of Alexandria, was put to death during the whole of his reign. We find
+grateful inscriptions to his honour at the city of Citium in Cyprus, in
+the island of Therse, and at Methone in Argolis.
+
+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 in
+Cyrene. He married his sister Cleopatra, and left her a widow, with two
+daughters, each named Cleopatra. The elder daughter we have seen offered
+to Euergetes, then married to Alexander Balas, and lastly to Demetrius.
+The younger daughter, afterwards known by the name of Cleopatra Cocce,
+was 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 his
+father; as the little elegy by Antipator of Sidon, which is addressed to
+the dead child, on the grief of his father and mother, would seem to be
+meant for a son of Philometor. A second son was murdered, and a third
+lived in Syria.
+
+On the death of Philometor, his widow, Cleopatra, and some of the chief
+men of Alexandria proclaimed his young son king, most likely under the
+name of Ptolemy Eupator; but Euergetes, whose claim was favoured by
+the mob, marched from Cyrene to Alexandria to seize the crown of Egypt.
+Onias the Jew defended the city for Cleopatra; but a peace was soon made
+by the help of Thermus, the Roman ambassador, and on this the gates of
+Alexandria were opened. It was agreed that Euergetes should be king, and
+marry Cleopatra, his sister and his brother's widow. We may take it for
+granted that one article of the treaty was that her son should reign on
+the death of his uncle; but Euergetes, forgetting that he owed his own
+life to Philometor, and also disregarding the Romans who were a party to
+the treaty, had the boy put to death on the day of the marriage.
+
+The Alexandrians, after the vices and murders of former kings, could not
+have been much struck by the behaviour of Euergetes towards his family;
+but he was not less cruel towards his people. Alexandria, which he
+had entered peaceably, was handed over to the unbridled cruelty of the
+mercenaries, and blood flowed in every street. The anger of Euergetes
+fell more particularly on the Jews for the help which they had given to
+Cleopatra, and he threatened them with utter destruction. The threat
+was not carried into execution; but such was the Jews' alarm, that they
+celebrated a yearly festival in Alexandria for several hundred years, in
+thankfulness for their escape from it. The population of the city, who
+looked upon it less as a home than as a place of trade in which they
+could follow their callings with the greatest gain, seemed to quit
+Alexandria as easily as they had come there under Ptolemy Soter; and
+Euergetes, who was afraid that he should soon be left to reign over a
+wilderness, made new laws in favour of trade and of strangers who would
+settle there.
+
+In the lifetime of Philometor he had never laid aside his claim to the
+throne of Egypt, but had only yielded to the commands of Rome and to his
+brother's forces, and he now numbered the years of his reign from his
+former seizing of Alexandria. He had reigned six years with his brother,
+and then eighteen years in Cyrene, and he therefore called the first
+year of his real reign the twenty-fifth.
+
+In the next year he went to Memphis to be crowned; and, while the pomps
+and rites were there being performed, his queen and sister bore him a
+son, whom, from the place and to please the people, he named Memphites.
+But his queen was already in disgrace; and some of those very friends
+who on his brother's death had marched with him against Alexandria were
+publicly put to death for speaking ill of his mistress Irene. He soon
+afterwards put away his wife and married her younger daughter, his
+niece, Cleopatra Cocce. The divorced Cleopatra was allowed to keep her
+title; and, as she was the widow of the late king, she held a rank in
+the state before the wife of the reigning king. Thus, the small temple
+of Hathor in the island of Philae was dedicated to the goddess in the
+name of King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra his sister, and Queen Cleopatra
+his wife, designated as the gods Euergetae.
+
+[Illustration: 241.jpg TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT PHILAE]
+
+The Roman senate, however, felt its authority slighted by this murder
+of the young Eupator, and divorce of Cleopatra, both of whom were living
+under its protection. The late ambassador, Thermus, by whose treachery
+or folly Euergetes had been enabled to crush his rivals and gain the
+sovereign power, was on his return to Rome called to account for his
+conduct. Cato the Censor, in one of his great speeches, accused him of
+having been seduced from his duty by the love of Egyptian gold, and of
+having betrayed the queen to the bribes of Euergetes. In the meanwhile
+Scipio Africanus the younger and two other Roman ambassadors were
+sent by the senate to see that the kingdom of their ally was peaceably
+settled. Euergetes went to meet him with great pomp, and received him
+with all the honours due to his rank; and the whole city followed him in
+crowds through the streets, eager to catch a sight of the conqueror of
+Carthage, of the greatest man who had been seen in Alexandria, of one
+who by his virtues and his triumphs had added a new glory even to the
+name of Scipio. He brought with him, as his friend and companion (in
+the case of a modern ambassador we should say, as his chaplain), the
+philosopher, Pansetius, the chief of the Stoics, who had gained a great
+name for his three books on the "Duty of Man," which were afterwards
+copied by Cicero.
+
+[Illustration: 242b.jpg]
+
+Euergetes showed them over the palace and the treasury; but, though the
+Romans had already begun to run the down-hill race of luxury, in which
+the Egyptians were so far ahead of them, yet Scipio, who held to the old
+fashions and plain manners of the republic, was not dazzled by mere gold
+and purple. But the trade of Alexandria, the natural harbour, the forest
+of masts, and the lighthouse, the only one in the world, surpassed
+anything that his well-stored mind had looked for. He went by boat to
+Memphis, and saw the rich crops on either bank, and the easy navigation
+of the Nile, in which the boats were sailing up the river by the force
+of the wind and floating down by the force of the stream. The villages
+on the river side were large and thickly set, each in the bosom of its
+own grove of palm-trees; and the crowded population was well fed and
+well clothed. The Roman statesman saw that nothing was wanting but a
+good government to make Egypt what it used to be, the greatest kingdom
+in the world.
+
+Scipio went no higher than Memphis; the buildings of Upper Egypt, the
+oldest and the largest in the world, could not draw him to Thebes, a
+city whose trade had fallen off, where the deposits of bullion in the
+temples had lessened, and whose linen manufacture had moved towards the
+Delta. Had this great statesman been a Greek he would perhaps have gone
+on to this city, famous alike in history and in poetry; but, as it was,
+Scipio and his friends then sailed for Cyprus, Syria, and the other
+provinces or kingdoms under the power of Rome, to finish this tour of
+inspection.
+
+For some time past, the Jews, taking advantage of the weakness of Egypt
+and Syria, had been struggling to make themselves free; and, at the
+beginning of this reign Simon Maccabaeus, the high priest, sent an
+embassy to Rome, with a shield of gold weighing one thousand _minae_, as
+a present, to get their independence acknowledged by the Romans. On this
+the senate made a treaty of alliance with the family of the Maccabees,
+and, using the high tone of command to which they had for some time past
+been accustomed, they wrote to Euergetes and the King of Syria, ordering
+them not to make war upon their friends, the Jews. But in an after
+decree the Romans recognise the close friendship and the trading
+intercourse between Egypt and Judaea; and when they declared that they
+would protect the Jews in their right to levy custom-house duties, they
+made an exception in favour of the Egyptian trade. The people of Judaea
+in these struggles were glad to forget the jealousy which had separated
+them from their brethren in Egypt, and the old quarrel between the
+Hebrews and the Hellenists; the Sanhedrim of Jerusalem wrote to the
+Sanhedrim of Alexandria, telling them that they were going to keep the
+Feast of the Tabernacles in solemn thanksgiving to the Almighty for
+their deliverance, and begging for the benefit of their prayers.
+
+The Jews, however, of Judaea, on their gaining their former place as a
+nation, did not, as before, carry forward the chain of history in their
+sacred books. While they had been under the yoke of the Babylonians, the
+Persians, and the Syrians, their language had undergone some changes;
+and when the Hebrew of the Old Testament was no longer the spoken
+language, they perhaps thought it unworthy of them to write in any
+other. At any rate, it is to their Greek brethren in Egypt that we
+are indebted for the history of the bravery of the Maccabees. Jason
+of Cyrene wrote the history of the Maccabees, and of the Jewish wars
+against Antiochus Epiphanes and his son, Antiochus Eupator. This work,
+which was in five books, is lost, and we now read only the short history
+which was drawn from it by some unknown Greek writer, which, with the
+letter from the Jews of Judaaa to their brethren of Egypt, forms the
+second 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 translated
+into Greek the Hebrew work of his grandfather Jesus, which is named the
+Book of Wisdom, or Ecclesiasticus. It is written in imitation of the
+Proverbs of Solomon; and though its pithy sayings fall far short of the
+deep wisdom and lofty thoughts which crowd every line of that wonderful
+work, yet it will always be read with profit and pleasure. In this
+book we see the earliest example that we now possess of a Jewish writer
+borrowing from the Greek philosophers; though how far the Greek thoughts
+were part of the original Hebrew may be doubted, because the work
+was left unfinished by Jesus the grandfather, and completed by the
+Alexandrian translator, his grandson. Hereafter we shall see the
+Alexandrian Jews engrafting on the Jewish theology more and more of the
+Platonic philosophy, which very well suited the serious earnestness of
+their character, and which had a most remarkable effect in making their
+writings and opinions more fitted to spread into the ancient schools.
+
+This and other writings of the Alexandrian Jews were by them added to
+the list of sacred books which together made their Greek Bible; but they
+were never acknowledged at Jerusalem. The Hebrew books of the law and
+the prophets were first gathered together by Nehemiah after the return
+of the Hebrews from Babylon; but his library had been broken up during
+the Syrian wars. These Hebrew books, with some few which had since been
+written, were again got together by Judas Maccabaeus; and after his time
+nothing more seems to have been added to them, though the Alexandrian
+Jews continued to add new books to their Greek Bible, while cultivating
+the Platonic philosophy with a success which made a change in their
+religious opinions. It was in Alexandria, and very much by the help
+of the Jews, that Eastern and Western opinions now met. Each made some
+change in the other, and, on the union of the two, Alexandria gave to
+the world a new form of philosophy. The vices and cruelty of Euergetes
+called for more than usual skill in the minister to keep down the angry
+feelings of the people. This skill was found in the 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 times
+of trouble. On him rested the whole weight of the government; his wise
+measures in part made up for the vices of his master; and, when the
+treasure of the state had been turned to the king's pleasures, and the
+soldiers were murmuring for want of pay, Hierax brought forward his own
+money to quiet the rebellion. But at last the people could bear their
+grievances no longer; the soldiers without pay, instead of guarding the
+throne, were its greatest enemies, and the mob rose in Alexandria,
+set fire to the palace, and Euergetes was forced to leave the city and
+withdraw to Cyprus.
+
+The Alexandrians, when free from their tyrant, sent for Cleopatra,
+his sister and divorced queen, and set her upon the throne. Her son by
+Philometor, in whose name she had before claimed the throne, had been
+put to death by Euergetes; Memphites, one of her sons by Euergetes, was
+with his father in the island of Cyprus; and Euergetes, fearing that his
+first wife Cleopatra and her advisers might make use of his son's
+name 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 in
+Alexandria with the usual pomp; and Euergetes, putting the head, hands,
+and feet of his son Memphites into a box, sent it to Alexandria by a
+messenger, who had orders to deliver it to Cleopatra in the midst of
+the feast, when the nobles and ambassadors were making their accustomed
+gifts. The grief of Cleopatra was only equalled by the anger of the
+Alexandrians, who the more readily armed themselves under Marsyas to
+defend the queen against the invasion for which Euergetes was then
+making preparations.
+
+The queen's forces shortly marched against the army of Euergetes that
+was entering Egypt under the command of Hegelochus; but the Egyptian
+army was beaten on the Syrian frontier. Marsyas was sent prisoner to
+Euergetes; and the king then showed the only act of mercy which can
+be mentioned to his praise, and spared the life of a prisoner whom
+he thought he could make use of. Cleopatra then sent to Syria, to
+her son-in-law Demetrius, to ask for help, which was at first readily
+granted, but Demetrius was soon called home again by a rising in
+Antioch. But great indeed must be the cruelty which a people will not
+bear from their own king rather than call in a foreign master to relieve
+them.
+
+[Illustration: 249.jpg OBELISK AT HELIOPOLIS]
+
+The return of the hated and revengeful Euergetes was not dreaded so much
+by the Alexandrians as the being made a province of Syria. Cleopatra
+received no help from Demetrius, but she lost the love of her people by
+asking for it, and she was soon forced to fly from Alexandria. She
+put her treasures on board a ship, and joined her son Ptolemy and her
+son-in-law Demetrius in Syria, while Euergetes regained his throne.
+As soon as Euergetes was again master of Egypt, it was his turn to
+be revenged upon Demetrius; and he brought forward Zabbineus, a young
+Egyptian, the son of Protarchus, a merchant, and sent him into Syria
+with an army to claim the throne under the name of Alexander, the
+adopted son of Antiochus. Alexander easily conquered and then put to
+death Demetrius, but, when he found that he really was King of Syria, he
+would no longer receive orders from Egypt; and Euergetes found that the
+same plots and forces were then wanted to put down this puppet, which he
+had before used to set him up. He began by making peace with his sister
+Cleopatra, who was again allowed to return to Egypt; and we find her
+name joined with those of Euergetes and his second queen in one of
+the public acts of the priests. He then sent an army and his daughter
+Tryphaena in marriage to Antiochus Grypus, one of the sons of Demetrius,
+who gladly received his help, and conquered Alexander and gained the
+throne of his father.
+
+We possess a curious inscription upon an obelisk that once stood in the
+island of Philae, recording, as one of the grievances that the villagers
+smarted under, the necessity of finding supplies for the troops on their
+marches, and also for all the government messengers and public servants,
+or those who claimed to travel as such. The cost of this grievance was
+probably greater at Philae than in other places, because the traveller
+was there stopped in his voyage by the cataracts on the Nile, and he had
+to be supplied with labourers to carry his luggage where the navigation
+was interrupted. Accordingly the priests at Philae petitioned the king
+that their temple might be relieved from this heavy and vexatious
+charge, which they said lessened their power of rightly performing their
+appointed sacrifices; and they further begged to be allowed to set up a
+monument to record the grant which they hoped for. Euergetes granted the
+priests' prayer, and accordingly they set up a small obelisk; and the
+petition and the king's answer were carved on the base of this monument.
+
+The gold mines near the Nubian or Golden Berenice, though not so rich
+as they used to be, were worked with full activity by the unhappy
+prisoners, criminals, and slaves, who were there condemned to labour in
+gangs under the lash of their taskmasters. Men and women alike, even old
+men and children, each at such work as his overstretched strength was
+equal to, were imprisoned in these caverns tunnelled under the sea or
+into the side of the mountain; and there by torchlight they suffered
+the cruel tortures of their overseers without having power to make their
+groans heard above ground. No lot upon earth could be more wretched than
+that of these unhappy men; to all of them death would have been thought
+a boon.
+
+The survey of the coast of the Red Sea, which was undertaken in this or
+the last reign, did not reach beyond the northern half of that sea. It
+was made by Agatharcides, who, when the philosopher Heracleides Lembus
+filled the office of secretary to the government under Philometor, had
+been his scribe and reader. Agatharcides gives a curious account of the
+half-savage people on these coasts, and of the more remarkable animals
+and products of the country. He was a most judicious historian, and gave
+a better guess than many at the true cause of why there was most water
+in the Nile in the dry est season of the year; which was a subject of
+never-ceasing inquiry with the travellers and writers on physics. Thaies
+said that its waters were held back at its mouths by the Etesian winds,
+which blow from the north during the summer months; and Democritus of
+Abdera said that these winds carried heavy rain-clouds to Ethiopia;
+whereas the north winds do not begin to blow till the Nile has risen,
+and the river has returned to its usual size before the winds cease.
+Anaxagoras, who was followed by Euripides, the poet, thought that the
+large supply of water came from the melting of snow in Ethiopia. Ephorus
+thought that there were deep springs in the river's bed, which gushed
+forth with greater force in summer than in winter. Herodotus and
+OEnopides both thought that the river was in its natural state when
+the country was overflowed; and the former said that its waters were
+lessened in winter by the attraction of the sun, then over Southern
+Ethiopia; and the latter said that, as the earth grew cool, the waters
+were sucked into its pores. The sources of the Nile were hidden by the
+barbarism of the tribes on its banks; but by this time travellers had
+reached the region of tropical rains; and Agatharcides said that the
+overflow in Egypt arose from the rains in Upper Ethiopia. But the
+Abyssinian rains begin to fall at midsummer, too late to cause the
+inundation in Egypt; and therefore the truth seemed after all to lie
+with the priests of Memphis, who said the Nile rises on the other side
+of the equator, and the rain falling in what was winter on that side of
+the globe made the Nile overflow in the Egyptian summer.
+
+From the very earliest times, says Ebers, the Pharaohs had understood
+the necessity of measuring exactly the amount or deficiency of the
+inundations of the Nile, and Nilometers are preserved which were erected
+high up the river in Nubia by kings of the Old Empire, by princes, that
+is to say, who reigned before the invasion of the Hyksos. Herodotus
+tells us that the river must rise sixteen ells for the inundation to be
+considered a favourable one. If it remained below this mark, the higher
+fields failed in obtaining a due supply of water, and a dearth was the
+result. If it greatly exceeded it, it broke down the dykes, damaged the
+villages, and had not retired into its bed by the time for sowing the
+seed. Thus the peasant, who could expect no rain, and was threatened
+neither by frosts nor storms, could have his prospects of a good or bad
+harvest read off by the priests with perfect certainty by the scale of
+the Nilometer, and not by the servants of the divinities only, but by
+the officers of the realm, who calculated the amount of taxes to be paid
+to them in proportion to the rising of the river.
+
+[Illustration: 254.jpg NILOMETER AT RHODHA]
+
+The standard was protected by the magic power of unapproachable
+sanctity, and the husbandman has been strictly interdicted from the
+earliest time to this very day from casting a glance at it during the
+time when the river is rising; for what sovereign could bear to disclose
+without reserve the decrees of Providence as to the most important of
+his rights, that of estimating the amount of taxes to be imposed? In the
+time of the Pharaohs it was the priesthood that declared to the king and
+to the people their estimate of the inundations, and at the present day,
+the sheik, who is sworn to secrecy, is under the control of the police
+of Cairo, and has his own Nilometer, the zero point of which is said
+to be somewhat below that of the ancient standard. The engineers of
+the French expedition first detected the fraud, by means of which the
+government endeavoured every year to secure the full amount of taxes.
+
+When the Nile has reached a height of a little over fifteen old Arabic
+ells, it exceeds its lowest level by more than eight ells, and has
+reached the height requisite to enable it to irrigate the highest
+fields. This happy event is announced to the people, who await it with
+breathless anxiety, and the opening of the dykes may be proceeded with.
+A festival to celebrate this occasion has been held from the remotest
+times. At the present time customs prevail which can, it is alleged, be
+traced by direct descent to the times of the Pharaohs, and yet during
+the dominion of Christianity in Egypt, and later again under sovereigns
+governing a nation wholly converted to Islam, the old worship of the
+Nile, with all its splendour, its display, and its strange ceremonies,
+was extirpated with the utmost rigour. But some portion of every
+discarded religion becomes merged in the new one that has supplanted it
+as a fresh form of superstition, and thus we discover from a Christian
+document dating from the sixth century, that the rising of the Nile "in
+its time" was no longer attributed to Osiris, but to a certain Saint
+Orion, and, as the priest of antiquity taught that a tear of Isis led to
+the overflowing of the Nile, so we hear the Egyptians of the present
+day say that "a divine tear" has fallen into the stream and caused the
+flood.
+
+The trade of the Egyptians had given them very little knowledge of
+geography. Indeed the whole trade of the ancients was carried on by
+buying goods from their nearest neighbours on one side, and selling
+them to those on the other side of them. Long voyages were unknown; and,
+though the trading wealth of Egypt had mainly arisen from carrying the
+merchandise of India and Arabia Felix from the ports on the Red Sea to
+the ports on the Mediterranean, the Egyptians seem to have gained no
+knowledge of the countries from which these goods came.
+
+[Illustration: 256b.jpg SUK EL SALEH, CAIRO]
+
+They bought them of the Arab traders, who came to Cosseir and the
+Troglodytic Berenice from the opposite coast; the Arabs had probably
+bought them from the caravans that had carried them across the desert
+from the Persian Gulf; and that these land journeys across the desert
+were both easier and cheaper than a coasting voyage, we have before
+learned, from Phila-delphus thinking it worth while to build watering
+and resting-houses in the desert between Koptos and Berenice, to save
+the voyage between Berenice and Cosseir. India seems to have been only
+known to the Greeks as a country that by sea was to be reached by the
+way of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; and though Scylax had, by
+the orders of Darius, dropped down the river Indus, coasted Arabia,
+and thence reached the Red Sea, this voyage was either forgotten or
+disbelieved, and in the time of the Ptolemies it seems probable that
+nobody thought that India could be reached by sea from Egypt. Arrian
+indeed thought that the difficulty of carrying water in their small
+ships, with large crews of rowers, was alone great enough to stop a
+voyage of such a length along a desert coast that could not supply them
+with fresh water.
+
+The long voyages of Solomon and Necho had been limited to coasting
+Africa; the voyage of Alexander the Great had been from the Indus to the
+Persian Gulf; hence it was that the court of Euergetes was startled by
+the strange news that the Arabian guards on the coast of the Red Sea had
+found a man in a boat by himself, who could not speak Koptic, but who
+they afterwards found was an Indian, who had sailed straight from India,
+and had lost his shipmates. He was willing to show any one the route
+by which he had sailed; and Eudoxus of Cyzicus in Asia Minor came to
+Alexandria to persuade Euergetes to give him the command of a vessel for
+this voyage of discovery. A vessel was given him; and, though he was but
+badly fitted out, he reached a country, which he called India, by sea,
+and brought back a cargo of spices and precious stones. He wrote an
+account of the coasts which he visited, and it was made use of by Pliny.
+But it is more than probable the unknown country called India, which
+Eudoxus visited, was on the west coast of Africa. Abyssinia was often
+called India by the ancients.
+
+In these attempts at maritime discovery, and efforts after a cheaper
+means of obtaining the Indian products, the Greek sailors of Euergetes
+made a settlement in the island of Dioscorides, now called Socotara,
+in the Indian Ocean, forty leagues eastward of the coast of Africa; and
+there they met the trading vessels from India and Ceylon. This little
+island continued a Greek colony for upwards of seven centuries, and
+Greek was the only language spoken there till it fell under the Arabs
+in the twilight of history, when all the European possessions in Africa
+were overthrown. But the art of navigation was so far unknown that but
+little use was made of this voyage; the goods of India, which were all
+costly and of small weight, were still for the most part carried across
+the desert on camels' backs, and we may remark that at a later period
+hardly more than twenty small vessels ever went to India in one year
+during the reigns of the Ptolemies, and that it was not till Egypt was a
+province of Rome that the trade-winds across the Arabian Sea were found
+out by Hippalus, a pilot in the Indian trade. The voyage was little
+known in the time of Pliny; even the learned Propertius seems to have
+thought that silk was a product of Arabia; and Palmyra and Petra, the
+two chief cities in the desert, whose whole wealth rested and whose very
+being hung upon their being watering-places for these caravans, were
+still wealthy cities in the second century of our era, when the voyage
+by the Arabian Sea became for the first time easier and cheaper than the
+journeys across the desert.
+
+Euergetes had been a pupil of Aristobolus, a learned Jew, a writer of
+the peripatetic sect of philosophers, one who had made his learning
+respected by the pagans from his success in cultivating their
+philosophy; and also of Aristarchus, the grammarian, the editor
+of Homer; and, though the king had given himself up to the lowest
+pleasures, yet he held with his crown that love of letters and of
+learning which had ennobled his forefathers. He was himself an author,
+and wrote, like Ptolemy Soter, his Memorabilia, or an account of what
+he had seen most remarkable in his lifetime. We may suppose that his
+writings were not of a very high order; they were quoted by Athengeus,
+who wrote in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; but we learn little else from
+them than the names of the mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and that
+a flock of pheasants was kept in the palace of Alexandria. He also
+wrote a commentary on Homer, of which we know nothing. When busy
+upon literature, he would allow his companions to argue with him till
+midnight on a point of history or a verse of poetry; but not one of them
+ever uttered a word against his tyranny, or argued in favour of a less
+cruel treatment of his enemies.
+
+In this reign the schools of Alexandria, though not holding the rank
+which they had gained under 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 very
+large sum of twelve talents, or ten thousand dollars a year. Sositheus
+and his rival, the younger Homer, the tragic poets of this reign, have
+even been called two of the Pleiades of Alexandria; but that was a
+title given to many authors of very different times, and to some of
+very little merit. Such indeed was the want of merit among the poets of
+Alexandria that many of their names would have been unknown to posterity
+had they not been saved in the pages of the critics and grammarians, and
+pieced together by the skill of nineteenth century investigators.
+
+[Illustration: 260.jpg TEMPLE OF KOM OMBO.]
+
+But, unfortunately, the larger number of the men of letters had in the
+late wars taken part with Philome-tor against the cruel and luxurious
+Euergetes. Hence, when the streets of Alexandria were flowing with the
+blood of those whom he called his enemies, crowds of learned men left
+Egypt, and were driven to earn a livelihood by teaching in the cities
+to which they then fled. They were all Greeks, and few of them had been
+born in Alexandria. They had been brought there by the wealth of the
+country and the favour of the sovereign; and they now withdrew when
+these advantages were taken away from them. The isles and coasts of the
+Mediterranean were so filled with grammarians, philosophers, geometers,
+musicians, schoolmasters, painters, and physicians from Alexandria that
+the cruelty of Euergetes II., like the taking of Constantinople by the
+Turks, may be said to have spread learning by the ill-treatment of its
+professors.
+
+The city which was then rising highest in arts and letters was Pergamus
+in Asia Minor, which, under Eumenes and Attalus, was almost taking the
+place which Alexandria had before held. Its library already held
+two hundred thousand volumes, and raised a jealousy in the mind of
+Euergetes. Not content with buying books and adding to the size of
+his own library, he wished to lessen the libraries of his rivals; and,
+nettled at the number of volumes which Eumenes had got together at
+Pergamus, he made a law, forbidding the export of the Egyptian papyrus
+on which they were written. On this the copiers employed by Eumenes
+wrote their books upon sheepskins, which were called _charta pergamena_,
+or parchment, from the name of the city in which they were written. Thus
+our own two words, parchment from _Pergamus_, and paper from _papyrus_,
+remain as monuments of the rivalry in book-collecting between the two
+kings.
+
+Euergetes was so bloated with disease that his body was nearly six feet
+round, and he was made weak and slothful by this weight of flesh.
+He walked with a crutch, and wore a loose robe like a woman's, which
+reached to his feet and hands. He gave himself up very much to eating
+and drinking, and on the year that he was chosen priest of Apollo by
+the Cyrenians, he showed his pleasure at the honour by a memorable feast
+which he gave in a costly manner to all those who had before filled that
+office. He had reigned six years with his brother, then eighteen years
+in Cyrene, and lastly twenty-nine years after the death of his brother,
+and he died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign, and perhaps the
+sixty-ninth of his age. He left a widow, Cleopatra Cocce; two sons,
+Ptolemy and Ptolemy Alexander; and three daughters, Cleopatra, married
+to her elder brother; Tryphsena, married to Antiochus Grypus; and Selene
+unmarried; and also a natural son, Ptolemy Apion, to whom by will he
+left the kingdom of Cyrene; while he left the kingdom of Egypt to his
+widow and one of his sons, giving her the power of choosing which should
+be her colleague. The first Euergetes earned and deserved the name,
+which was sadly disgraced by the second; but such was the fame of
+Egypt's greatness that the titles of its kings were copied in nearly
+every Greek kingdom. We meet with the flattering names of Soter,
+Philadelphus, Euergetes, and the rest, on the coins of Syria, Parthia,
+Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Pon-tus, Bactria, and Bithynia; while that
+of Euergetes, _the benefactor_, was at last used as another name for a
+tyrant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT
+
+
+_The weakness of the Ptolemies: Egypt bequeathed to Rome: Pompey, Caesar,
+and Antony befriend Egypt._
+
+
+On the death of Ptolemy Euergetes II., his widow, Cleopatra Cocce, would
+have chosen her younger son, Ptolemy Alexander, then a child, for her
+partner on the throne, most likely because it would have been longer in
+the course of years before he would have claimed his share of power; but
+she was forced, by a threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her
+elder son king. Before, however, she would do this she made a treaty
+with him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting,
+the vice and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, although
+married to his sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should put
+her away, and marry his younger sister Selene; because the mother hoped
+that Selene would be false to her husband's cause, and weaken his party
+in the state by her treachery.
+
+Ptolemy took the name of Soter II., though he is more often called
+Lathyrus, from a stain upon his face in the form of an ivy-leaf, pricked
+into his skin in honour of Osiris. He was also called Philometor; and we
+learn from an inscription on a temple at Apollinopolis Parva, that both
+these names formed part of the style in which the public acts ran in
+this reign; it is dedicated by "the Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy,
+gods Philometores, Soteres, and his children," without mentioning his
+wife. Here, as in Persia and Judaaa, the king's mother often held rank
+above his wife. The name of Philometor was given to him by his mother,
+because, though he had reached the years of manhood, she wished to
+act as his guardian; but her unkindness to him was so remarkable that
+historians have thought that it was a nickname. The mother and the son
+were jointly styled sovereigns of Egypt; but they lived apart, and in
+distrust of one another, each surrounded by personal friends; while
+Cleopatra's stronger mind and greater skill in kingcraft gained for her
+the larger share of power, and the effective control of Egypt.
+
+Cleopatra, the daughter, put away by her husband at the command of her
+mother, soon made a treaty of marriage with Antiochus Cyzicenus, the
+friend of her late husband, who was struggling for the throne of Syria
+with his brother, Antiochus Grypus, the husband of her sister Tryphaana;
+and on her way to Syria she stopped at Cyprus, where she raised a large
+army and took it with her as her dower, to help her new husband against
+his brother and her sister.
+
+With this addition to his army Cyzicenus thought his forces equal to
+those of his brother; he marched against him and gave him battle. But
+he was beaten, and he fled with his wife Cleopatra; and they shut
+themselves up in the city of Antioch. Grypus and Tryphaana then laid
+siege to the city, and the astute Tryphaana soon took her revenge on
+her sister for coming into Syria to marry the brother and rival of her
+husband. The city was taken; and Tryphaana ordered her sister to be torn
+from the temple into which she had fled, and to be put to death. In vain
+Grypus urged that he did not wish his victory to be stained by the death
+of a sister; that Cleopatra was by marriage his sister as well as hers;
+that she was the aunt of their children; and that the gods would punish
+them if they dragged her from the altar. But Tryphaana was merciless
+and unmoved; she gave her own orders to the soldiers, and Cleopatra was
+killed as she clung with her arms to the statue of the goddess. This
+cruelty, however, was soon overtaken by punishment: in the next battle
+Cyzicenus was the conqueror, and he put Tryphaana to death, to quiet, as
+was said, the ghost of her murdered sister.
+
+In the third year of her reign Cleopatra Cocce gave the island of Cyprus
+to her younger son, Alexander, as an independent kingdom, thinking that
+he would be of more use to her there, in upholding her power against his
+brother Lathyrus, than he could be at Alexandria.
+
+In the last reign Eudoxus had been entrusted by Euergetes with a vessel
+and a cargo for a trading voyage of discovery towards India; and in this
+reign he was again sent by Cleopatra down the Red Sea to trade with the
+unknown countries in the east. How far he went may be doubted, but
+he brought back with him from the coast of Africa the prow of a ship
+ornamented with a horse's head, the usual figurehead of the Carthaginian
+ships. This he showed to the Alexandrian pilots, who knew it as
+belonging to one of the Phoenician ships of Cadiz or Gibraltar. Eudoxus
+justly argued that this prow proved that it was possible to sail round
+Africa and to reach India by sea from Alexandria. The government,
+however, would not fit him out for a third voyage; but his reasons were
+strong enough to lead many to join him, and others to help him with
+money, and he thereby fitted out three vessels on this attempt to sail
+round Africa by the westward voyage. He passed the Pillars of Hercules,
+or Straits of Gibraltar, and then turned southward. He even reached that
+part of Africa where the coast turns eastward. Here he was stopped by
+his ships wanting repair. The only knowledge that he brought back for us
+is, that the natives of that western coast were of nearly the same race
+as the Ethiopians on the eastern coast. He was able to sail only part
+of the way back, and he reached Mauritania with difficulty by land. He
+thence returned home, where he met with the fate not unusual to early
+travellers. His whole story was doubted; and the geographers at home did
+not believe that he had ever visited the countries that he attempted to
+describe.
+
+The people of Lower Egypt were, as we have seen, of several races; and,
+as each of the surrounding nations was in its turn powerful, that race
+of men was uppermost in Lower Egypt. Before the fall of Thebes the Kopts
+ruled in the Delta; when the free states of Greece held the first rank
+in the world, even before the time of Alexander's conquests, the Greeks
+of Lower Egypt were masters of their fellow-countrymen; and now that
+Judaea, under the bravery of the Maccabees, had gained among nations a
+rank far higher than what its size entitled it to, the Egyptian Jews
+found that they had in the same way gained weight in Alexandria.
+Cleopatra had given the command of her army to two Jews, Chelcias and
+Ananias, the sons of Onias, the priest of Heliopolis; and hence, when
+the civil war broke out between the Jews and Samaritans, Cleopatra
+helped the Jews, and perhaps for that reason Lathyrus helped the
+Samaritans. He sent six thousand men to his friend, Antiochus Cyzicenus,
+to be led against the Jews, but this force was beaten by the two sons of
+Hyrcanus, the high priest.
+
+By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will of the Jews of Lower
+Egypt, and hence Cleopatra again ventured to choose her own partner on
+the throne. She raised a riot in Alexandria against him, in the tenth
+year of their reign, on his putting to death some of her friends, or
+more likely, as Pausanias says, by showing to the people some of her
+eunuchs covered with blood, who she said were wounded by him; and she
+forced him to fly from Egypt. She took from him his wife, Selene, whom
+she had before thrust upon him, and who had borne him two children; and
+she allowed him to withdraw to the kingdom of Cyprus, from which place
+she 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 beautiful
+temple at the city, afterwards named by the Romans Contra-Latopolis, on
+the other side of the Nile from Latopolis or Esne. Little now remains
+of it but its massive portico, upheld by two rows of four columns each,
+having the globe with outstretched wings carved on the overhanging
+eaves. The earliest names found among the hieroglyphics with which its
+walls are covered are those of Cleopatra Cocce and her son, Ptolemy
+Soter, while the latest name is that of the Emperor Commodus. Even under
+Cleopatra Cocce, who was nearly the worst of the family, the building of
+these great temples did not cease.
+
+The two sons were so far puppets in the hands of their clever mother,
+that on the recall of Alexander no change was seen in the government
+beyond that of the names which were placed at the head of the public
+acts. The former year was called the tenth of Cleopatra and Ptolemy
+Soter, and this year was called the eleventh of Cleopatra and eighth of
+Ptolemy Alexander; as Alexander counted his years from the time when he
+was sent with the title of king to Cyprus. As he was, like his brother,
+under the guidance of his mother, he was like him in the hieroglyphical
+inscriptions called _mother-loving_.
+
+While the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria were alike weakened by civil wars
+and by the vices of their kings, Judaea, as we have seen, had risen
+under the wise government of the Maccabees to the rank of an independent
+state; and latterly Aristobulus, the eldest son of Hyr-canus, and
+afterwards Alexander Jannseus, his second son, had made themselves
+kings. But Gaza, Ptolemais, and some other cities, bravely refused to
+part with their liberty, and sent to Lathyrus, then King of Cyprus, for
+help. This was not, however, done without many misgivings; for some were
+wise enough to see that, if Lathyrus helped them, Cleopatra would, on
+the other hand, help their king, Jannasus; and when Lathyrus landed at
+Sicaminos with thirty thousand men, the citizens of Ptolemais refused
+even to listen to a message from him.
+
+The city of Gaza then eagerly sent for the help which the city of
+Ptolemais refused. Lathyrus drove back Jannasus, and marched upon
+Asochis, a city of Galilee, where he scaled the walls on the Sabbath
+Day, and took ten thousand prisoners and a large booty. He then sat down
+before the city of Saphoris, but left it on hearing that Jannasus was
+marching against him on the other side of the Jordan, at the head of a
+force larger than his own. He crossed the river in face of the Jewish
+army, and routed it with great slaughter. The Jewish historian adds,
+that between thirty and fifty thousand men were slain upon the field
+of battle, and that the women and children of the neighbouring villages
+were cruelly put to death.
+
+Cleopatra now began to fear that her son Lathyrus would soon make
+himself too powerful, if not checked in his career of success, and that
+he might be able to march upon Egypt. She therefore mustered her forces,
+and put them under the command of Chelcias and Ananias, her Jewish
+generals. She sent her treasure, her will, and the children of
+Alexander, to the island of Cos, as a place of safety, and then marched
+with the army into Palestine, having sent forward her son Alexander with
+the fleet. By this movement Lathyrus was unable to keep his ground in
+Coele-Syria, and he took the bold step of marching towards Egypt. But
+he was quickly followed by Chelcias, and his army was routed, though
+Chelcias lost his life in the battle. Cleopatra, after taking Ptolemais,
+sent part of her army to help that which had been led by Chelcias; and
+Lathyrus was forced to shut himself up in Gaza. Soon after this the
+campaign ended, by Lathyrus returning to Cyprus, and Cleopatra to Egypt.
+
+On this success, Cleopatra was advised to seize upon the throne of
+Jannseus, and again to add to Egypt the provinces of Palestine
+and Coele-Syria, which had so long made part of the kingdom of her
+forefathers. She yielded, however, to the reasons of her general
+Ananias, for the Jews of Lower Egypt were too strong to be treated with
+slight. It was by the help of the Jews that Cleopatra had driven her son
+Lathyrus out of Egypt; they formed a large part of the Egyptian armies,
+which were no longer even commanded by Greeks; and it must have been by
+these clear and unanswerable reasons that Ananias was able to turn
+the queen from the thoughts of this conquest, and to renew the league
+between Egypt and Judaea.
+
+Cleopatra, however, was still afraid that Lathyrus would be helped by
+his friend Antiochus Cyzicenus to conquer Egypt, and she therefore kept
+up the quarrel between the brothers by again sending troops to help
+Antiochus Grypus; and lastly, she gave him in marriage her daughter
+Selene, whom she had before forced upon Lathyrus. She then sent an
+army against Cyprus; and Lathyrus was beaten and forced to fly from the
+island.
+
+In the middle of this reign died Ptolemy Apion, King of Cyrene. He was
+the half-brother of Lathyrus and Alexander, and, having been made King
+of Cyrene by his father Euergetes II., he had there reigned quietly for
+twenty years. Being between Egypt and Carthage, then called the Roman
+province of Africa, and having no army which he could lead against the
+Roman legions, he had placed himself under the guardianship of Rome; he
+had bought a truce during his lifetime, by making the Roman people his
+heirs in his will, so that on his death they were to have his kingdom.
+Cyrene had been part of Egypt for above two hundred years, and was
+usually governed by a younger son or brother of the king. But on the
+death of Ptolemy Apion, the Roman senate, who had latterly been
+grasping at everything within their reach, claimed his kingdom as their
+inheritance, and in the flattering language of their decree by which the
+country was enslaved, they declared Cyrene free. From that time forward
+it was practically a province of Rome.
+
+Ptolemy Alexander, who had been a mere tool in the hands of his mother,
+was at last tired of his gilded chains; but he saw no means of throwing
+them off, or of gaining that power in the state which his birth and
+title, and the age which he had then reached, ought to have given him.
+The army was in favour of his mother, and an unsuccessful effort would
+certainly have been punished with death; so he took perhaps the only
+path open to him: he left Egypt by stealth, and chose rather to quit his
+throne and palace than to live surrounded by the creatures of his mother
+and in daily fear for his life. Cleopatra might well doubt whether she
+could keep her throne against both her sons, and she therefore sent
+messengers with fair promises to Alexander, to ask him to return to
+Egypt. But he knew his mother too well ever again to trust himself in
+her hands; and while she was taking steps to have him put to death on
+his return, he formed a plot against her life by letters. In this double
+game Alexander had the advantage of his mother; her character was so
+well known that he needed not to be told of what was going on; while she
+perhaps thought that the son whom she had so long ruled as a child would
+not dare to act as a man. Alexander's plot was of the two the best laid,
+and on his reaching Egypt his mother was put to death.
+
+But Alexander did not long enjoy the fruits of his murder. The next year
+the Alexandrians rose against him in a fury. He was hated not so much
+perhaps for the murder of his mother as for the cruelties which he had
+been guilty of, or at least had to bear the blame of, while he reigned
+with her. His own soldiers turned against him, and he was forced to seek
+his safety by flying on board a vessel in the harbour, and he left Egypt
+with his wife and daughter. He was followed by a fleet under the command
+of Tyrrhus, but he reached Myrse, a city of Lycia, in safety; and
+afterwards, in crossing over to Cyprus, he was met by an Egyptian fleet
+under Chaereas, and killed in battle.
+
+Though others may have been guilty of more crimes, Alexander had perhaps
+the fewest good qualities of any of the family of the Lagidaa. During
+his idle reign of twenty years, in which the crimes ought in fairness to
+be laid chiefly to his mother, he was wholly given up to the lowest and
+worst of pleasures, by which his mind and body were alike ruined. He was
+so bloated with vice and disease that he seldom walked without crutches;
+but at his feasts he could leap from his raised couch and dance with
+naked feet upon the floor with the companions of his vices. He was
+blinded by flattery, ruined by debauchery, and hated by the people.
+
+His coins are not easily known from those of the other kings, which also
+bore the name of "Ptolemy the king" round the eagle. Some of the coins
+of his mother have the same words round the eagle on the one side,
+while on the other is her head, with a helmet formed like the head of an
+elephant, or her head with the name of "Queen Cleopatra" There are other
+coins with the usual head of Jupiter, and with two eagles to point out
+the joint sovereignty of herself and son.
+
+Few buildings or parts of buildings mark the reign of Ptolemy Alexander;
+but his name is not wholly unknown among the sculptures of Upper Egypt.
+On the walls of the temple of Apollinopolis Magna he is represented
+as making an offering to the god Horus. There the Egyptian artist has
+carved a portrait of this Greek king, whom he perhaps had never seen,
+clothed in a dress which he never wore, and worshipping a god whom he
+may have hardly known by name.
+
+History has not told us who was the first wife of Alexander, but he left
+a son by her named after himself Ptolemy Alexander, whom we have seen
+sent by his grandmother for safety to the island of Cos, the fortress
+of the family, and a daughter whom he carried with him in his flight
+to Lycia. His second wife was Cleopatra Berenice, the daughter of his
+brother Lathyrus, by whom he had no children, and who is called in the
+hieroglyphics his queen and sister.
+
+[Illustration: 274.jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ALEXANDER]
+
+On the flight of Alexander, the Alexandrians sent an embassy to Cyprus
+to bring back Soter II., or Lathyrus, as he is called; and he entered
+Egypt without any opposition. He had reigned ten years with his mother,
+and then eighteen years by himself in Cyprus; and during those years of
+banishment had shown a wisdom and good behaviour which must have won
+the esteem of the Alexandrians, when compared with his younger brother
+Alexander. He had held his ground against the fleets and armies of his
+mother, but either through weakness or good feeling had never invaded
+Egypt.
+
+His reign is remarkable for the rebellion and ruin of the once powerful
+city of Thebes. It had long been falling in trade and in wealth, and had
+lost its superiority in arms; but its temples, like so many citadels,
+its obelisks, its colossal statues, and the tombs of its great kings
+still remained, and with them the memory of its glory then gone by.
+
+[Illustration: 275.jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ALEXANDER, WITH EAGLES]
+
+The hieroglyphics on the walls still recounted to its fallen priests
+and nobles the provinces in Europe, Asia, and Africa which they once
+governed, and the weight of gold, silver, and corn which these provinces
+sent as a yearly tribute. The paintings and sculptures showed the men of
+all nations and of all colours, from the Tatar of the north to the Negro
+of the south, who had graced the triumphs of their kings: and with these
+proud trophies before their eyes they had been bending under the yoke
+of Euergetes II. and Cleopatra Cocce for about fifty years. So small a
+measure of justice has usually been given to a conquered people by their
+rulers, that their highest hopes have risen to nothing more than
+an escape from excess of tyranny. If life, property, female honour,
+national and religious feelings have not been constantly and wantonly
+outraged, lesser evils have been patiently endured.
+
+[Illustration: 276.jpg THE MEMNONIUM AT THEBES]
+
+Political servitude, heavy taxes, daily ill-treatment, and occasional
+cruelty the Thebans had borne for two centuries and a half under their
+Greek masters, as no less the lot of humanity than poverty, disease, and
+death. But under the government of Cleopatra Cocce the measure of
+their injuries overflowed, and taking advantage of the revolutions in
+Alexandria, a large part of Upper Egypt rose in rebellion.
+
+We can therefore hardly wonder that when Lathyrus landed in Egypt, and
+tried to recall the troubled cities to quiet government and good order,
+Thebes should have refused to obey. The spirit of the warriors who
+followed Ramses to the shores of the Black Sea was not quite dead. For
+three years the brave Kopts, entrenched within their temples, every one
+of which was a castle, withstood his armies; but the bows, the hatchets,
+and the chariots could do little against Greek arms; while the overthrow
+of the massive temple walls, and the utter ruin of the city, prove
+how slowly they yielded to greater skill and numbers, and mark the
+conqueror's distrust lest the temples should be again so made use of.
+Perhaps the only time before when Thebes had been stormed after a long
+siege was when it first fell under the Persians; and the ruin which
+marked the footsteps of Cambyses had never been wholly repaired. But the
+wanton cruelty of the foreigners did little mischief, when compared with
+the unpitying and unforgiving distrust of the native conquerors. The
+temples of Tentyra, Apollinopolis, Latopolis, and Philae show that the
+massive Egyptian buildings, when let alone, can withstand the wear
+of time for thousands of years; but the harder hand of man works much
+faster, and the wide acres of Theban ruins prove alike the greatness
+of the city and the force with which it was overthrown; and this is the
+last time that Egyptian Thebes is met with in the pages of history.
+
+The traveller, whose means and leisure have allowed him to reach the
+spot, now counts the Arab villages which have been built within the
+city's bounds, and perhaps pitches his tent in the open space in the
+middle of them. But the ruined temples still stand to call forth his
+wonder. They have seen the whole portion of time of which history keeps
+the reckoning roll before them; they have seen kingdoms and nations rise
+and fall: Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Persians, Greeks, and Romans.
+They have seen the childhood of all that we call ancient; and they still
+seem likely to stand, to tell their tale to those who will hereafter
+call us ancients. After this rebellion, Lathyrus reigned in quiet, and
+was even able to be of use to his Greek allies; and the Athenians, in
+gratitude, set up statues of bronze to him and Berenice, his daughter.
+
+During this reign, the Romans were carrying on a war with Mithridates,
+King of Pontus, in Asia Minor; and Sulla, who was then at the head
+of the republic, sent Lucullus, the soldier, the scholar, and the
+philosopher, as ambassador to Alexandria, to ask for help against the
+enemy. The Egyptian fleet moved out of harbour to meet him, a pomp
+which the kings of Egypt had before kept for themselves alone. Lathyrus
+received him on shore with the greatest respect, lodged him in the
+palace, and invited him to his own table, an honour which no foreigner
+had enjoyed since the kings of Egypt had thrown aside the plain manners
+of the first Ptolemies. Lucullus had brought with him the philosopher
+Antiochus of Athens, who had been the pupil of Philo, and they found
+time to enjoy the society of Dion, the academic philosopher, who was
+then teaching at Alexandria; and there they might have been seen with
+Heraclitus of Tyre, talking together about the changes which were
+creeping into the Platonic philosophy, and about the two newest works of
+Philo, which had just come to Alexandria. Antiochus could not read them
+without showing his anger: such sceptical opinions had never before been
+heard of in the Academy; but they knew the handwriting of Philo, they
+were certainly his. Selius and Tetrilius, who were there, had heard him
+teach the same opinions at Rome, whither he had fled, and where he was
+then teaching Cicero. The next day, the matter was again talked over
+with Lucullus, Heraclitus, Aristus of Athens, Ariston, and Dion; and it
+ended in Antiochus writing a book, which he named Sosus, against those
+new opinions of his old master, against the new Academy, and in behalf
+of the old Academy.
+
+Lathyrus understood the principles of the balance of power and his own
+interest too well to help the Romans to crush Mithridates, and he wisely
+wished not to quarrel with either. He therefore at once made up his mind
+not to grant the fleet which Lucullus had been sent to ask for. It
+had been usual for the kings of Egypt to pay the expenses of the Roman
+ambassadors while living in Alexandria; and Lathyrus offered four
+times the usual allowance to Lucullus, beside eighty talents of silver.
+Lucullus, however, would take nothing beyond his expenses, and returned
+the gifts, which were meant as a civil refusal of the fleet; and, having
+failed in his embassy, he sailed hastily for Cyprus, leaving the wonders
+of Egypt unvisited. Lathyrus sent a fleet of honour to accompany him on
+his voyage, and gave him his portrait cut in an emerald. Mithridates
+was soon afterwards conquered by the Romans; and it was only by skilful
+embassies and well-timed bribes that Lathyrus was able to keep off
+the punishment which seemed to await him for having thus disobeyed the
+orders of Sulla. Egypt was then the only kingdom, to the west of Persia,
+that had not yet bowed its neck under the Roman yoke.
+
+The coins of Lathyrus are not easily or certainly known from those of
+the other Ptolemies; but those of his second wife bear her head on the
+one side, with the name of "Queen Selene," and on the other side the
+eagle, with the name of "King Ptolemy."
+
+[Illustration: 280.jpg COIN OF Ptolemy Lathyrus AND SELENE.]
+
+He had before reigned ten years with his mother, and after his brother's
+death he reigned six years and a half more, but, as he counted the years
+that he had reigned in Cyprus, he died in the thirty-seventh year of
+his reign. He left a daughter named Berenice, and two natural sons, each
+named Ptolemy, one of whom reigned in Cyprus, and the other, nicknamed
+Auletes, _the piper_, afterwards gained the throne of Egypt.
+
+On the death of Lathyrus, or Ptolemy Soter II., his daughter Cleopatra
+Berenice, the widow of Ptolemy Alexander, mounted the throne of Egypt
+in 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 of
+Cos, as a place of safety, when his grandmother Cleopatra Cocce followed
+her army into Coele-Syria. But, as the Egyptians had lost the command of
+the sea, the royal treasure in Cos was no longer out of danger, and the
+island was soon afterwards taken by Mithridates, King of Pontus, who
+had conquered Asia Minor. Among the treasures in that island the
+Alexandrians lost one of the sacred relics of the kingdom, the chlamys
+or war-cloak which had belonged to Alexander the Great, and which they
+had kept with religious care as the safeguard of the empire. It then
+fell into the hands of Mithridates, and on his overthrow it became
+the prize of Pompey, who wore it in his triumph at the end of the
+Mithridatic war. With this chlamys, as had always been foretold by the
+believers in wonders, Egypt lost its rank among nations, and the command
+of the world passed to the Romans, who now possessed this time-worn
+symbol of sovereignty.
+
+Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of Mithridates; but he
+afterwards escaped, and reached the army of Sulla, under whose care he
+lived for some time in Rome. The Alexandrian prince hoped to gain the
+throne of his father by means of the friendship of one who could make
+and unmake kings at his pleasure; and Sulla might have thought that the
+wealth of Egypt would be at his command by means of his young friend. To
+these reasons Alexander added the bribe which was then becoming common
+with the princes who held their thrones by the help of Rome, he made a
+will, in which he named the Roman people as his heirs; and the senate
+then took care that the kingdom of Egypt should be a part of the wealth
+which was afterwards to be theirs by inheritance. After Berenice,
+his stepmother, had been queen about six months, they sent him to
+Alexandria, with orders that he should be received as king; and, to
+soften the harshness of this command, he was told to marry Berenice, and
+reign jointly with her.
+
+The orders of Sulla, the Roman dictator, were of course obeyed; and the
+young Alexander landed at Alexandria, as King of Egypt and the friend of
+Rome. He married Berenice; and on the nineteenth day of his reign, with
+a cruelty unfortunately too common in this history, he put her to death.
+The marriage had been forced upon him by the Romans, who ordered all the
+political affairs of the kingdom; but, as they took no part in the civil
+or criminal affairs, he seems to have been at liberty to murder his
+wife. But Alexander was hated by the people as a king thrust upon them
+by foreign arms; and Berenice, whatever they might have before thought
+of her, was regretted as the queen of their choice. Hence his crime met
+with its reward. His own guards immediately rose upon him; they dragged
+him from the palace to the gymnasium, and there put him to death.
+
+Though the Romans had already seized the smaller kingdom of Cyrene under
+the will of Ptolemy Apion, they could not agree among themselves upon
+the wholesale robbery of taking Egypt under the will which Alexander had
+made in their favour. They seized, however, a paltry sum of money which
+he had left at Tyre as a place of safety; and it was a matter of debate
+for many years afterwards in Rome, whether they should not claim the
+kingdom of Egypt. But the nobles of Rome, who sold their patronage to
+kings for sums equal to the revenues of provinces, would have lost much
+by handing the kingdom over to the senate. Hence the Egyptian monarchy
+was left standing for two reigns longer.
+
+On the death of Ptolemy Alexander, the Alexandrians might easily have
+changed their weak and wicked rulers, and formed a government for
+themselves, if they had known how. The legitimate male line of the
+Ptolemies came to an end on the death of the young Alexander II. The
+two natural sons of Soter II. were then the next in succession; and, as
+there 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 been
+wholly overlooked at the death of his father; for though by the Egyptian
+law every son was held to be equally legitimate, it was not so by the
+Macedonian law. He took the name of Neus Dionysus, or the young Osiris,
+as we find it written in the hieroglyphics, though he is usually called
+Auletes, _the piper_; a name afterwards given him because he was more
+proud of his skill in playing on the flute than of his very slender
+knowledge of the art of governing.
+
+It was in this reign that the historian Diodorus Siculus travelled in
+Egypt, and wrote his account of the manners and religion of the people.
+What he tells us of the early Egyptian history is of little value when
+compared with the history by Manetho, who was a native of the country
+and could read the hieroglyphic records, or even with that by Herodotus;
+but nevertheless he deserves great praise, and our warmest thanks, for
+being nearly the first Greek writer when Egyptian learning could no
+longer be thought valuable; when the religion, though looked down upon,
+might at any rate be studied with ease--for being nearly the first
+writer who thought the manners of this ancient people, after they
+had almost passed off the page of history, worth the notice of a
+philosopher.
+
+Diodorus never quotes Manetho, but follows Herodotus in making one
+great hero for the chief actions of antiquity, whom he calls Sesoosis or
+Sesonchosis. To him he assigns every great work of which the author was
+unknown, the canals in the Delta, the statue of Amenhothes III., the
+obelisks of Ramses II., the distant navigation under Necho, the mounds
+and trenches dug against Assyrian and Persian invasion, and even the
+great ship of Ptolemy Philopator; and not knowing that Southern Arabia
+and even Ethiopia had by the Alexandrians been sometimes called India,
+he says that this hero conquered even India beyond the Ganges. On the
+other hand, the fabulous conquest of the great serpent, the enemy of the
+human race, which we see sculptured on the sarcophagus of Oimenepthah,
+he describes as an historic fact of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
+He tells us how this huge beast, forty-five feet long, was beaten down
+by troops of archers, slingers, and cavalry, and brought alive in a
+net to Alexandria, where Eve's old enemy was shown in a cage for the
+amusement of the curious citizens.
+
+Memphis was then a great city; in its crowded streets, its palaces and
+temples, it was second only to Alexandria. A little to the west stood
+the pyramids, which were thought one of the seven wonders of the world.
+Their broad bases, sloping sides, and solid masonry had withstood the
+weather for ages; and their huge unwieldy stones were a less easy quarry
+for after builders than the live rock when nearer to the river's side.
+The priests of Memphis knew the names of the kings who, one after the
+other, had built a new portico to their great temple of Phtah; but as to
+when or by whom the pyramids were built, they had perhaps less knowledge
+than the present day historian. The modern Egyptologist, with his
+patient investigation, assigns the largest of these three pyramids to
+Khufui or Kheops, a famous ruler of the fourth dynasty, and the others
+were erected by his immediate successors. The temple of Phtah, and every
+other building of Memphis, is now gone, and near the spot stands the
+great city of Cairo, whose mosques and minarets have been quarried of
+its ruins, but the pyramids still stand, after fifty-six centuries of
+broken and changing history, unbroken and unchanged. They have outlived
+any portion of time that their builders could have dreamed of, but their
+worn surface no longer declares to us their builders' names and history.
+Their sloping sides, formed to withstand attacks, have not saved the
+inscriptions which they once held; and the builders, in thus overlooking
+the reed which was growing in their marshes, the papyrus, to which the
+great minds of Greece afterwards trusted their undying names, have only
+taught us how much safer it would have been, in their wish to be
+thought of and talked of in after ages, to have leaned upon the poet and
+historian.
+
+The beautiful temples of Dendera and Latopolis, which were raised by the
+untiring industry of ages and finished, under the Roman emperors, were
+begun about this reign. Though some of the temples of Lower Egypt had
+fallen into decay; and though the throne was then tottering to its fall,
+the priests in Upper Egypt were still building for immortality. The
+religion of the Kopts was still flourishing.
+
+The Egyptian's opinion of the creation was the growth of his own river's
+bank. The thoughtful man, who saw the Nile every year lay a body of
+solid manure upon his field, was able to measure against the walls of
+the old temples that the ground was slowly but certainly rising. An
+increase of the earth was being brought about by the river. Hence he
+readily believed that the world itself had of old been formed out of
+water, and by means of water. The philosophers were nearly of the same
+opinion. They held that matter was itself eternal, like the other gods,
+and that our world, in the beginning, before it took any shape upon
+itself, was like thin mud, or a mass of water containing all things that
+were afterwards to be brought forth out of it. When the water had by its
+divine will separated itself from the earth, then the great Ra, the sun,
+sent down his quickening heat, and plants and animals came forth out of
+the wet-land, as the insects are spawned out of the fields, before
+the eyes of the husbandman, every autumn after the Nile's overflow
+has retreated. The crafty priests of the Nile declared that they had
+themselves visited and dwelt in the caverns beneath the river, where
+these treasures, while yet unshaped, were kept in store and waiting to
+come into being.
+
+[Illustration: 287.jpg HORUS ON THE CROCODILES. BULAK MUSEUM.]
+
+And on the days sacred to the Nile, boys, the children of priestly
+families, were every year dedicated to the blue river-god that they
+might spend their youth in monastic retirement, and as it was said in
+these caverns beneath his waves. These early Egyptian myths seem to have
+influenced the compilers of the Hebrew Scriptures. The author of the
+book of Genesis tells us that the Hebrew God formed the earth and its
+inhabitants by dividing the land from the water, and then commanding
+them both to bring forth living creatures; and again one of the
+Psalmists says that his substance, while yet imperfect, was by the
+Creator curiously wrought in the lowest depths of the earth. The Hebrew
+writer, however, never thinks that any part of the creation was its own
+creator. But in the Egyptian philosophy sunshine and the river Nile are
+themselves the divine agents; and hence fire and water received divine
+honours, as the two purest of the elements; and every day when the
+temple of Serapis in Alexandria was opened, the singer standing on the
+steps of the portico sprinkled water over the marble floor while he held
+forth the fire to the people; and though he and most of his hearers were
+Greeks, he called upon the god in the 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 were
+veiled with rich curtains. The costliness was often in striking contrast
+with the chief inmate, much to the surprise of the Greek traveller,
+who, having leave to examine a temple, had entered the sacred rooms, and
+asked to be shown the image of the god for whose sake it was built. One
+of the priests in waiting then approached with a solemn look, chanting
+a hymn, and pulling aside the veil allowed him to peep in at a snake,
+a crocodile, or a cat, or some other beast, fitter to inhabit a bog or
+cavern than to lie on a purple cushion in a stately palace. The funerals
+of the sacred animals were celebrated with great pomp, particularly that
+of the bull Apis; and at a cost, 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 brought
+it to Memphis in a boat under a golden awning, and lodged it safely in
+the temple.
+
+[Illustration: 289.jpg RELIGIOUS PROCESSION ON THE NILE]
+
+The religious feelings of the Egyptians were much warmer and stronger
+than those of the Greeks or Romans; they have often been accused of
+eating one another, but never of eating a sacred animal. Once a year the
+people of Memphis celebrated the birthday of Apis with great pomp
+and expense, and one of the chief ceremonies on the occasion was
+the throwing a golden dish into the Nile. During the week that these
+rejoicings lasted, while the sacred river was appeased by gifts, the
+crocodile was thought to lose its fierceness, its teeth were harmless,
+and it never attempted to bite; and it was not till six o'clock on the
+eighth day that this animal again became an object of fear to those
+whose occupations brought them to the banks of the Nile. Once a year
+also the statues of the gods were removed from their pedestals and
+placed in barges, and thus carried in solemn procession along the Nile,
+and only brought back to the temples after some days. It was supposed
+that the gods were passing these days on a visit to the righteous
+Ethiopians.
+
+The cat was at all times one of the animals held most sacred by the
+Egyptians. In the earliest and latest times we find the statues of their
+goddesses with cats' heads. The cats of Alexandria were looked upon as
+so many images of Neith or the Minerva of Sais, a goddess worshipped
+both by Greeks and Egyptians; and it passed into a proverb with the
+Greeks, when they spoke of any two things being unlike, to say that
+they were as much like one another as a cat was to Minerva. It is to
+Alexandria also that we trace the story of a cat turned into a lady to
+please a prince who had fallen in love with it. The lady, however, when
+dressed in her bridal robes, could not help scampering about the room
+after a mouse seen upon the floor; and when Plutarch was in Egypt it had
+already become a proverb, that any one in too much finery was as awkward
+as a cat in a crocus-coloured robe.
+
+So deeply rooted in the minds of the Egyptians was the worship of these
+animals that, when a Roman soldier had killed a cat unawares, though
+the Romans were masters of the country, the people rose against him in a
+fury. In vain the king sent a message to quiet the mob, to let them know
+that the cat was killed by accident; and, though the fear of Rome would
+most likely have saved a Roman soldier unharmed whatever other crime he
+might have been guilty of, in this case nothing would quiet the people
+but his death, and he was killed before the eyes of Diodorus, the
+historian. One nation rises above another not so much from its greater
+strength or skill in arms as from its higher aim and stronger wish for
+power. The Egyptians, we see, had not lost their courage, and when the
+occasion called them out they showed a fearlessness not unworthy of
+their Theban forefathers; on seeing a dead cat in the streets they rose
+against the king's orders and the power of Rome; had they thought their
+own 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 the
+Romans took good care not to meddle with. Had the Romans made war upon
+the priests and temples, as the Persians had done, they would perhaps in
+the same way have been driven out of Egypt: but they never shocked the
+religious feelings of the people, and even after Egypt had become a
+Roman province, when the beautiful temples of Esne, Dendera, and other
+cities, were dedicated in the names of the Roman emperors, they seldom
+copied the example of Philometor, and put Greek, much less Roman,
+writing on the portico, but continued to let the walls be covered with
+hieroglyphical inscriptions.
+
+The Egyptians, when rich enough to pay for it, still had the bodies of
+their friends embalmed at their death, and made into mummies; though
+the priests, to save part of the cost, often put the mummy of a man just
+dead into a mummy-case which had been made and used in the reign of a
+Thutmosis or an Amenhothes. They thought that every man at his death
+took upon himself the character of Osiris, that the nurses who laid out
+the dead body represented the goddesses Isis and Nepthys, while the man
+who made the mummy was supposed to be the god Anubis. When the embalming
+was finished, it was part of the funeral to bring the dead man to trial
+for what he had done when living, and thus to determine whether he was
+entitled to an honourable burial. The mummy was ferried across the lake
+belonging to the temple, and taken before the judge Osiris. A pair of
+scales was brought forth by the dog-headed Anubis and the hawk-headed
+Horus; and with this they weighed the past life of the deceased. The
+judge, with the advice of a jury of forty-two, then pronounced the
+solemn verdict, which was written down by the ibis-headed Thot. But
+human nature is the same in all ages and in all countries, and, whatever
+might have been the past life of the dead, the judge, not to hurt the
+feelings of the friends, always declared that he was "a righteous and
+a good man:" and, notwithstanding the show of truth in the trial, it
+passed into a proverb to say of a wicked man, that he was too bad to be
+praised even at his funeral. This custom of embalming was thought right
+by all; but from examining the mummies that have come down to us, it
+would seem to have been very much confined to the priestly families, and
+seldom used in the case of children. The mummies, however, were highly
+valued by the survivors of the family, and when from poverty any man was
+driven to borrow money, the mummies were thought good security by the
+lender, 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 of
+wood they were covered with painting, and sometimes in part gilt, and
+often three in number, one enclosing the other. The stone mummy-cases
+were yet more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster or
+hard black basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved with
+hieroglyphics, and modelled to the shape of the body like the inner
+wooden cases.
+
+It is interesting to note here that the pigment known to modern art
+by the name of mummy is, in many cases, actually prepared from the
+bituminous substances preserved within the wrappings of the ancient
+mummies. The grinding up of mummies imported from Thebes or Memphis
+for the purpose of enabling the twentieth century painter to paint the
+golden tresses of contemporary belles is of course not very extensively
+carried on, for one mummy will make several thousand tubes of paint,
+but the practice exists, and of late has been protested against both in
+England and France.
+
+Though the old laws of Egypt must very much have fallen into disuse
+during the reigns of the latter Ptolemies, they had at least been left
+unchanged; and they teach us that the shadow of freedom may be seen, as
+in Rome under the Caesars, and in Florence under the Medici, long after
+the substance has been lost. In quarrels between man and man, the thirty
+judges, from the cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, were still
+guided by the eight books of the law. The king, the priests, and the
+soldiers were the only landholders in the country, while the herdsmen,
+husbandmen, and handicraftsmen were thought of lower caste. Though the
+armies of Egypt were for the most part filled with Greek mercenaries,
+and the landholders of the order of soldiers could then have had as
+little to do with arms as knights and esquires have in our days, yet
+they still boasted of the wisdom of their laws, by which arms were only
+to be trusted to men who had a stake in the country worth fighting for.
+The old manners had long since passed away. The priests alone obeyed the
+old marriage law, that a man should have only one wife. Other men, when
+rich enough, married several. All children were held equally legitimate,
+whatever woman was the mother.
+
+[Illustration: 295.jpg DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTIAN CARICATURE]
+
+It is to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was
+sadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art were
+alike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in
+Egypt. We find drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation used
+to hold sacred. The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in
+little; and cats, dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of
+the gods and kings of old. In one picture we have the mice attacking a
+castle defended by the cats, copied from a battle-scene of Ramses II.
+fighting against the Ethiopians. In another the king on his throne as
+a dog, with a second dog behind him as a fan-bearer, is receiving the
+sacred offerings from a cat. In a third the king and queen are seen
+playing at chess or checkers in the form of a lion playing with a
+unicorn or horned ass.
+
+We may form some opinion of the wealth of Egypt in its more prosperous
+times when we learn from Cicero that in this reign, when the Romans had
+good means of knowing, the revenues of the country amounted to twelve
+thousand five hundred talents, or ten million dollars; just one-half of
+which wras paid by the port of Alexandria. This was at a time when the
+foreign trade had, through the faults of the government, sunk down to
+its lowest ebb; when not more than twenty ships sailed each year from
+the Red Sea to India; when the free population of the kingdom had so far
+fallen off that it was not more than three millions, which was only half
+of what it had been in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, though Alexandria
+alone still held three hundred thousand persons.
+
+But, though much of the trade of the country was lost, though many of
+the royal works had ceased, though the manufacture of the finer linen
+had left the country, the digging in the gold mines, the favourite
+source of wealth to a despot, never ceased. Night and day in the mines
+near the Golden Berenice did slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war
+work without pause, chained together in gangs, and guarded by soldiers,
+who were carefully chosen for their not being able to speak the language
+of these unhappy workmen.
+
+[Illustration: 297.jpg THE MINES OF MAGHARA]
+
+The rock which held the gold was broken up into small pieces; when hard
+it was first made brittle in the fire; the broken stone was then washed
+to separate the waste from the heavier grains which held the gold; and,
+lastly, the valuable parts when separated were kept heated in a furnace
+for five days, at the end of which time the pure gold was found melted
+into a button at the bottom. But the mines were nearly worn out; and
+the value of the gold was a very small part of the thirty-five million
+dollars which they are said to have yielded every year in the reign of
+Ramses II.
+
+As Auletes felt himself hardly safe upon the throne, his first wish was
+to get himself acknowledged as king by the Roman senate. For this end he
+sent to Rome a large sum of money to buy the votes of the senators,
+and he borrowed a further sum of Rabirius Posthumus, one of the richest
+farmers of the Roman taxes, which he spent on the same object. But
+though the Romans never tried to turn him out of his kingdom, he did not
+get the wished-for decree before he went to Rome in the twenty-fourth
+year of his reign. But we know nothing of the first years of his reign.
+A nation must be in a very demoralised state when its history disproves
+the 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 than
+during this dull, un-warlike, and vicious time. The king gave himself up
+to his natural bent for pleasure and debauchery. At times when virtue is
+uncopied and unrewarded it is usually praised and let alone; but in this
+reign sobriety was a crime in the eyes of the king, a quiet behaviour
+was thought a reproach against his irregularities. The Platonic
+philosopher Demetrius was in danger of being put to death because it
+was told to the king that he never drank wine, and had been seen at the
+feast of Bacchus in his usual dress, while every other man was in the
+dress of a woman. But the philosopher was allowed to disprove the charge
+of sobriety, or at least to make amends for his fault; and, on the king
+sending for him the next day, he made himself drunk publicly in the
+sight of all the court, and danced with cymbals in a loose dress of
+Tarentine gauze. But so few are the deeds worth mentioning in the
+falling state that we are pleased even to be told that, in the one
+hundred and seventy-eighth Olympiad, Strato of Alexandria conquered in
+the Olympic games and was crowned in the same day for wrestling, and
+for _pancratium_, or wrestling and boxing joined, these sports being
+considered among the most honourable in which athletes could contend.
+
+In the thirteenth year of this reign (B.C. 68), when the war against the
+pirates called for the whole naval force of Rome, Pompey sent a fleet
+under Lentulus Marcellinus to clear the coast and creeks of Egypt from
+these robbers. The Egyptian government was too weak to guard its own
+trade; and Lentulus in his consulship put the Ptolemaic eagle and
+thunderbolt on his coins, to show that he had exercised an act of
+sovereignty. Three years later, we again meet with the eagle and
+thunderbolt on the consular coins of Aurelius Cotta; and we learn from
+Cicero that in that year it was found necessary to send a fleet to
+Alexandria to enforce the orders of the senate.
+
+We next find the Roman senate debating whether they should not seize the
+kingdom as their inheritance under the wall of Ptolemy Alexander II.,
+but, moved by the bribes of Auletes, and perhaps by other reasons which
+we are not told, they forbore to grasp the prize. In this difficulty
+Auletes was helped by the great Pompey, to whom he had sent an embassy
+with a golden crown wrorth four thousand pieces of gold, which met him
+at Damascus on his Syrian campaign. He then formed a secret treaty with
+Mithridates, King of Pontus, who was engaged in warfare with the Romans,
+their common enemy. Auletes was now a widower with six young children,
+and Mithridates had two daughters; and accordingly it was agreed that
+one daughter should be married to Auletes, and the other to his brother,
+the King of Cyprus. But the ruin and death of Mithridates broke off the
+marriages; and Auletes was able to conceal from the Romans that he had
+ever formed an alliance with their enemy.
+
+In the year which was made famous by the consulship of Cicero, Jerusalem
+was taken by the Roman army under Pompey; and Judaea, which had enjoyed
+a shortlived freedom of less than one hundred years under the Maccabees,
+was then put under a Roman governor. The fortifications of the temple
+were destroyed. This was felt by the Jews of Lower Egypt as a heavy
+blow, and from this time their sufferings in that country began. While
+their brethren had been lords of Judaea, they had held up their heads
+with the Greeks in Alexandria, but upon the fall of Jerusalem they sunk
+down to the rank of the Egyptians. They thought worse of themselves,
+and they were thought worse of by others. The Egyptian Jews were very
+closely allied to the people of the Delta. Though they had been again
+and again warned by their prophets not to mix with the Egyptians, they
+seem not to have listened to the warning. They were in many religious
+points less strict than their brethren in Judaea. The living in Egypt,
+the building a second temple, and the using a Greek Bible, were all
+breaches, if not of the law, at least of the tradition. They surrounded
+their synagogues with sacred groves, which were clearly forbidden by
+Moses. Though they were not guilty of worshipping images, yet they did
+not think it wrong to have portraits and statues of themselves. In their
+dislike of pork, in their washings, and in other Eastern customs, they
+were like the Egyptians; and hence the Greeks, who thought them both
+barbarians, very grudgingly yielded to them the privileges of choosing
+their own magistrates, of having their own courts of justice, and
+the other rights of citizenship which the policy of the Ptolemies
+had granted. The Jews, on the other hand, in whose eyes religion was
+everything, saw the Greeks and Egyptians worshipping the same gods and
+the same sacred animals, and felt themselves as far above the Greeks in
+those branches of philosophy which arise out of religion as they were
+below them in that rank which is gained by success in war. Hence it was
+with many heartburnings, and not without struggles which shed blood
+in the streets of Alexandria, that they found themselves, in the years
+which ushered in the Christian era, sinking down to the level of the
+Egyptians, and losing one by one the rights of Macedonian citizenship.
+
+During these years Auletes had been losing his friends and weakening
+his government, and, at last, when he refused to quarrel with the senate
+about the island of Cyprus, the Egyptians rose against him in arms, and
+he was forced to fly from Alexandria. He took ship for Rome, and in his
+way there he met Cato, who was at Rhodes on his voyage to Cyprus. He
+sent to Cato to let him know that he was in the city, and that he wished
+to see him. But the Roman sent word back that he was unwell, and that
+if the king wanted to speak to him he must come himself. This was not
+a time for Auletes to quarrel with a senator, when he was on his way
+to Rome to beg for help against his subjects; so he was forced to go
+to Cato's lodgings, who did not even rise from his seat when the king
+entered the room. But this treatment was not quite new to Auletes; in
+his flight from Alexandria, in disguise and without a servant, he had
+had to eat brown bread in the cottage of a peasant; and he now learned
+how much more irksome it was to wait upon the pleasure of a Roman
+senator. Cato gave him the best advice; that, instead of going to Rome,
+where he would find that all the wealth of Egypt would be thought
+a bribe too small for the greediness of the senators whose votes he
+wanted, he would do better to return to Alexandria, and make peace with
+his rebellious subjects. Auletes, however, went on to Italy, and he
+arrived at Rome in the twenty-fourth year of his reign; and in the
+three years that he spent there in courting and bribing the senators, he
+learned the truth of Cato's statements, and the value of his advice.
+
+His brother Ptolemy, who was reigning in Cyprus, was not even so well
+treated. The Romans passed a law making that wealthy island a Roman
+province, no doubt upon the plea of the will of Alexander II. and the
+king's illegitimacy; and they sent Cato, rather against his will, to
+turn Ptolemy out of his kingdom. Ptolemy gave up the island without Cato
+being called upon to use force, and in return the Romans made him high
+priest in the temple of the Paphian Venus; but he soon put himself to
+death by poison. Canidius Crassus, who had been employed by Cato in
+this affair, may have had some fighting at sea with the Egyptians, as
+on one of his coins we see on one side a crocodile, and on the other the
+prow of a ship, as if he had beaten the Egyptian fleet in the mouth of
+the Nile.
+
+On the flight of their king, the rebellious Alexandrians set on
+the throne the two eldest of his daughters, Cleopatra Tryphaena and
+Berenice, and sent an embassy, at the head of which was Dion, the
+academic philosopher, to plead their cause at Rome against the king. But
+the gold of Auletes had already gained the senate; and Cicero spoke, on
+his behalf, one of his great speeches, now unfortunately lost, in which
+he rebutted the charge that Auletes was at all to be blamed for the
+death of Alexander, whom he thought justly killed by his guards for the
+murder of his queen and kinswoman. Caesar, whose year of consulship was
+then drawing to an end, took his part warmly; and Auletes became in debt
+to him in the sum of seventeen million drachmas, or nearly two and a
+half million dollars, either for money lent to bribe the senators, or
+for bonds then given to Caesar instead of money. By these means Auletes
+got his title acknowledged; the door of the senate was shut against
+the Alexandrian ambassadors; and the philosopher Dion, the head of the
+embassy, was poisoned in Rome by the slaves of his friend Lucceius, in
+whose house he was dwelling. But nevertheless, Auletes was not able to
+get an army sent to help him against his rebellious subjects and his
+daughters; nor was Caesar able to get from the senate, for the employment
+of his proconsular year, the task of replacing Auletes on the throne.
+
+This high employment was then sought for both by Lentulus and by Pompey.
+The senate at first leaned in favour of the former; and he would perhaps
+have gained it if the Roman creditors of Auletes, who were already
+trembling for their money, had not bribed openly in favour of Pompey,
+as the more powerful of the two. On Pompey, therefore, the choice of
+the senate at last fell. Pompey then took Auletes into his house, as his
+friend and guest, and would have got orders to lead him back into his
+kingdom at the head of a Roman army had not the tribunes of the people,
+fearing any addition to Pompey's great power, had recourse to their
+usual state-engine, the Sibylline books; and the pontifex, at their
+bidding, publicly declared that it was written in those sacred pages
+that the King of Egypt should have the friendship of Rome, but should
+not be helped with an army.
+
+But though Lentulus and Pompey were each strong enough to stop the other
+from having this high command, Auletes was not without hopes that some
+Roman general would be led, by the promise of money, and by the honour,
+to undertake his cause, though it would be against the laws of Rome to
+do so without orders from the senate. Cicero then took him under his
+protection, and carried him in a litter of state to his villa at Baiae,
+and wrote to Lentulus, the proconsul of Cilicia and Cyprus, strongly
+urging him to snatch the glory of replacing Auletes on the throne, and
+of being the patron of the King of Egypt. But Lentulus seems not to have
+chosen to run the risk of so far breaking the laws of his country.
+
+Auletes then went, with pressing letters from Pompey, to Gabinius, the
+proconsul of Syria, and offered him the large bribe of ten thousand
+talents, or seven and a half million dollars, if he would lead the Roman
+army into Egypt, and replace him on the throne. Most of the officers
+were against this undertaking; but the letters of Pompey, the advice of
+Mark Antony, the master of the horse, and perhaps the greatness of the
+bribe, outweighed those cautious opinions.
+
+While Auletes had been thus pleading his cause at Rome and with the
+army, Cleopatra Tryphaena, the elder of the two queens, had died; and, as
+no one of the other children of Auletes was old enough to be joined with
+Berenice on the throne, the Alexandrians sent to Syria for Seleucus, the
+son of Antiochus Grypus and of Selene, the sister of Lathyrus, to come
+to Egypt and marry Berenice. He was low-minded in all his pleasures and
+tastes, and got the nickname of _Cybiosactes_, the scullion. He was
+even said to have stolen the golden sarcophagus in which the body of
+Alexander was buried; and was so much disliked by his young wife that
+she had him strangled on the fifth day after their marriage. Berenice
+then married Archelaus, a son of Mithridates Eupator, King of Pontus;
+and she had reigned one year with her sister and two years with her
+husbands when the Roman army brought back her father, Ptolemy Auletes,
+into Egypt.
+
+Gabinius, on marching, gave out as an excuse for quitting the province
+entrusted to him by the senate, that it was in self-defence; and that
+Syria was in danger from the Egyptian fleet commanded by Archelaus. He
+was accompanied by a Jewish army under the command of Antipator, sent by
+Hyrcanus, whom the Romans had just made governor of Judaea. Mark Antony
+was sent forward with the horse, and routed the Egyptian army near
+Pelusium, and then entered the city with Auletes. The king, in the
+cruelty of his revenge, wished to put the citizens to the sword, and was
+only stopped by Antony's forbidding it. The Egyptian army was at this
+time in the lowest state of discipline; it was the only place where the
+sovereign was not despotic. The soldiers, who prized the lawlessness of
+their trade even more than its pay, were a cause of fear only to their
+fellow-citizens. When Archelaus led them out against the Romans, and
+ordered them to throw up a trench around their camp, they refused to
+obey; they said that ditch-making was not work for soldiers, but that
+it ought to be done at the cost of the state. Hence, when on this first
+success Gabinius followed with the body of the army, he easily conquered
+the rest of the country and put to death Berenice and Archelaus. He then
+led back the army into his province of Syria, but left behind him a body
+of troops under Lucius Septimius to guard the throne of Auletes and to
+check the risings of the Alexandrians.
+
+Gabinius had refused to undertake this affair, which was the more
+dangerous because against the laws of Rome, unless the large bribe were
+first paid down in money. He would take no promises; and Auletes, who in
+his banishment had no money at his command, had to borrow it of some one
+who would listen to his large promises of after payment. He found this
+person in Rabirius Posthumus, who had before lent him money, and who saw
+that it would be all lost unless Auletes regained the throne. Rabirius
+therefore lent him all he was worth, and borrowed the rest from his
+friends; and as soon as Auletes was on the throne, he went to Alexandria
+to claim his money and his reward.
+
+[Illustration: 309.jpg VOCAL STATUE OF MEMNON]
+
+While Auletes still stood in need of Roman help, and saw the advantage
+of keeping faith with his foreign creditors, Rabirius was allowed to
+hold the office of royal _dioecetes_, or paymaster-general, which was
+one of great state and profit, and one by which he could in time have
+repaid himself his loan. He wore a royal robe; the taxes of Alexandria
+went through his hands; he was indeed master of the city. But when the
+king felt safe on his throne, he sent away his troublesome creditor,
+who returned to Rome with the loss of his money, to stand his trial as
+a state criminal for having lent it. Rabirius had been for a time
+mortgagee in possession of the revenues of Egypt; and Auletes had felt
+more indebted for his crown to a Roman citizen than to the senate. But
+in the dealings of Rome with foreign kings, these evils had often before
+arisen, and at last been made criminal; and while Gabinius was tried
+for treason, _de majestate_, for leading his army out of his province,
+Rabirius was tried, under the _Lex Julia de pecuniis repetundis_, for
+lending money and taking office under Auletes.
+
+One of the last acts of Gabinius in Syria was to change the form of
+the Jewish government into an aristocracy, leaving Hyrcanus as the high
+priest. The Jews thereon began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, that
+had been thrown down by Pompey. Among the prisoners sent to Rome by
+Gabinius was Timagenes, the son of the king's banker, who probably lost
+his liberty as a hostage on Ptolemy's failure to repay the loan. But he
+was afterwards ransomed from slavery by a son of Sulla, and he remained
+at Rome teaching Greek eloquence in the schools, and writing his
+numerous works.
+
+The climate of Egypt is hardly suited to Europeans, and perhaps at no
+time did the births in the Greek families equal the deaths. That part
+of the population was kept up by newcomers; and latterly the Romans had
+been coming over to share in the plunder that was there scattered among
+the ruling class. For some time past Alexandria had been a favourite
+place of settlement for such Romans as either through their fault or
+their 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 from
+trial, all runaway slaves, all ruined debtors, found a place of safety
+in Alexandria; and by enrolling themselves in the Egyptian army they
+joined in bonds of fellowship with thousands like themselves, who made
+it a point of honour to screen one another from being overtaken by
+justice or reclaimed by their masters. With such men as these, together
+with some bands of robbers from Syria and Cilicia, had the ranks of the
+Egyptian army latterly been recruited. These were now joined by a
+number of soldiers and officers from the army of Gabinius, who liked the
+Egyptian high pay and lawlessness better than the strict discipline of
+the Romans. As, in this mixed body of men, the more regular courage
+and greater skill in war was found among the Romans, they were chiefly
+chosen as officers, and the whole had something of the form of a Roman
+army. These soldiers in Alexandria were above all law and discipline.
+
+The laws were everywhere badly enforced, crimes passed unpunished, and
+property became unsafe. Robberies were carried on openly, and the only
+hope of recovering what was stolen was by buying it back from the thief.
+In many cases, whole villages lived upon plunder, and for that purpose
+formed themselves into a society, and put themselves under the orders of
+a chief; and, when any merchant or husbandman was robbed, he applied to
+this chief, who usually restored to him the stolen property on payment
+of one-fourth of its value.
+
+As the country fell off in wealth, power, and population, the schools
+of Alexandria fell off in learning, and we meet with few authors whose
+names 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 is
+still remaining in manuscript.
+
+[Illustration: 314.jpg]
+
+[Illustration: 314b.jpg BEARERS OF EVIL TIDINGS]
+
+Beside his name of Neus Dionysus, the king is in the hieroglyphics
+sometimes called Philopator and Philadelphus; and in a Greek inscription
+on a statue at Philae he is called by the three names, Neus Dionysus,
+Philopator, Philadelphus. The coins which are usually thought to be his
+are in a worse style of art than those of the kings before him. He
+died in B.C. 51, in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, leaving four
+children, namely, Cleopatra, Arsinoe, and two Ptolemies.
+
+[Illustration: 315.jpg PAGE IMAGE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS
+
+
+_Pompey, Caesar, and Antony in Egypt--Cleopatra's extravagance and
+intrigues--Octavianus annexes Egypt--Retrospect._
+
+
+Ptolemy Neus Dionysus had by his will left his kingdom to Cleopatra and
+Ptolemy, his elder daughter and elder son, who, agreeably to the custom
+of the country, were to marry one another and reign with equal power.
+He had sent one copy of his will to Rome, to be lodged in the public
+treasury, and in it he called upon the Roman people, by all the gods and
+by the treaties by which they were bound, to see that it was obeyed.
+He had also begged them to undertake the guardianship of his son. The
+senate voted Pompey tutor to the young king, or governor of Egypt; and
+the Alexandrians in the third year of his reign sent sixty ships of war
+to help the great Pompey in his struggle against Julius Caesar for the
+chief power in Rome. But Pompey's power was by that time drawing to an
+end, and the votes of the senate could give no strength to the weak:
+hence the eunuch Pothinus, who had the care of the elder Ptolemy, was
+governor of Egypt, and his first act was to declare his young pupil
+king, and to set at nought the will of Auletes, by which Cleopatra was
+joined with him on the throne.
+
+Cleopatra fled into Syria, and, with a manly spirit which showed what
+she was afterwards to be, raised an army and marched back to the borders
+of Egypt, to claim her rights by force of arms. It was in the fourth
+year of her reign, when the Egyptian troops were moved to Pelusium to
+meet her, and the two armies were within a few leagues of one another,
+that Pompey, who had been the friend of Auletes when the king wanted a
+friend, landed on the shores of Egypt in distress, and almost alone. His
+army had just been beaten at Pharsalia, and he was flying from Caesar,
+and he hoped to receive from the son the kindness which he had shown
+to the father. But gratitude is a virtue little known in palaces, and
+Ptolemy had been cradled in princely selfishness. In this civil war
+between Pompey and Caesar, the Alexandrians would have been glad to be
+the friends of both, but that was now out of the question; Pompey's
+coming made it necessary for them to choose which they should join, and
+Ptolemy'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 the
+men by whom the fate of this great Roman was decided. "By putting him to
+death," said Theodotus, "you will oblige Caesar, and have nothing to
+fear from Pompey;" and he added with a smile, "Dead men do not bite."
+So Achilles and Lucius Septimius, the head of the Roman troops in the
+Egyptian army, were sent down to the seaside to welcome him, to receive
+him as a friend, and to murder him. They handed him out of his galley
+into their boat, and put him to death on his landing. They then cut off
+from his lifeless trunk the head which had been three times crowned with
+laurels in the capitol; and in that disfigured state the young Ptolemy
+saw for the first time, and without regret, the face of his father's
+best friend.
+
+When Caesar, following the track of Pompey, arrived in the roadstead of
+Alexandria, all was already over. With deep agitation he turned away
+when the murderer brought to his ship the head of the man who had been
+his son-in-law and for long years his colleague in rule, and to get
+whom alive into his power he had come to Egypt. The dagger of the rash
+assassin precluded an answer to the question, how Caesar would have dealt
+with the captive Pompey; but, while the human sympathy which still found
+a place in the great soul of Caesar, side by side with ambition, enjoined
+that he should spare his former friend, his interest also required that
+he should annihilate Pompey otherwise than by the executioner. Pompey
+had been for twenty years the acknowledged ruler of Rome; a dominion so
+deeply rooted does not end with the ruler's death. The death of Pompey
+did not break up the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an aged,
+incapable, and worn-out chief, in his sons Gnacus and Sextus, two
+leaders, both of whom were young and active, and the second of them of
+decided capacity. To the newly founded hereditary monarchy, hereditary
+pretendership attached itself at once like a parasite, and it was very
+doubtful whether by this change of persons Caesar did not lose more than
+he gained.
+
+Meanwhile in Egypt Caesar had now nothing further to do, and the Romans
+and Egyptians expected that he would immediately set sail and
+apply himself to the subjugation of Africa, and to the huge task of
+organisation which awaited him after the victory. But Caesar, faithful
+to his custom--wherever he found himself in the wide Empire--of finally
+regulating matters at once and in person, and firmly convinced that no
+resistance was to be expected either from the Roman garrison or from
+the court; being, moreover, in urgent pecuniary embarrassment, landed
+in Alexandria with the two amalgamated legions accompanying him to the
+number of thirty-two hundred men and eight hundred Celtic and German
+cavalry, took up his quarters in the royal palace, and proceeded
+to collect the necessary sums of money and to regulate the Egyptian
+succession, without allowing himself to be disturbed by the saucy remark
+of Pothinus that Caesar should not for such petty matters neglect his own
+so important affairs. In his dealings with the Egyptians he was just
+and even indulgent. Although the aid which they had given to Pompey
+justified the imposing of a war contribution, the exhausted land was
+spared from this; and, while the arrears of the sums stipulated for in
+B.C. 59, and since then only about half paid, were remitted, there was
+required merely a final payment of ten million denarii (two million
+dollars). The belligerent brother and sister were enjoined immediately
+to suspend hostilities, and were invited to have their dispute
+investigated and decided before the arbiter. They submitted; the royal
+boy was already in the palace and Cleopatra also presented herself
+there. Caesar adjudged the kingdom of Egypt, agreeably to the testament
+of Auletes, to the intermarried brother and sister Cleopatra and
+Ptolomoreus Dionysus, and further gave unasked the kingdom of
+Cyprus--cancelling the earlier act of annexation--as the appanage of
+the second-born of Egypt to the younger children of Auletes, Arsinoe and
+Ptolemy the younger. But a storm was secretly preparing. Alexandria
+was a cosmopolitan city as well as Rome, hardly inferior to the Italian
+capital in the number of its inhabitants, far superior to it in stirring
+commercial spirit, in skill of handicraft, in taste for science and
+art: in the citizens there was a lively sense of their own national
+importance, and, if there was no political sentiment, there was at any
+rate a turbulent spirit, which induced them to indulge in their street
+riots regularly and heartily. We may conceive their feeling when they
+saw the Roman general ruling in the palace of the Lagids, and their
+kings accepting the award of his tribunal. Pothinus and the boy-king,
+both, as may be conceived, very dissatisfied at once with the peremptory
+requisition of all debts and with the intervention in the throne-dispute
+which could only issue, as it did, in the favour of Cleopatra, sent--in
+order to pacify the Roman demands--the treasures of the temple and the
+gold plate of the king with intentional ostentation to be melted at the
+mint; with increasing indignation the Egyptians--who were pious even
+to superstition, and who rejoiced in the world-renowned magnificence
+of their court as if it were a possession of their own--beheld the bare
+walls of their temples and the wooden cups on the table of their
+king. The Roman army of occupation also, which had been essentially
+denationalised by its long abode in Egypt and the many intermarriages
+between the soldiers and Egyptian women, and which moreover numbered a
+multitude of the old soldiers of Pompey and runaway Italian criminals
+and slaves in its ranks, was indignant at Caesar, by whose orders it had
+been obliged to suspend its action on the Syrian frontier, and at his
+handful of haughty legionaries. The tumult even at the landing, when
+the multitude saw the Roman axes carried into the old palace, and the
+numerous instances in which his soldiers were assassinated in the city,
+had taught Caesar the immense danger in which he was placed with his
+small force in presence of the exasperated multitude. But it was
+difficult to return on account of the northwest winds prevailing at this
+season of#the year, and the attempt of embarkation might easily become
+a signal for the outbreak of the insurrection; besides, it was not the
+nature of Caesar to take his departure without having accomplished his
+work. He accordingly ordered up at once reinforcements from Asia,
+and meanwhile, till these arrived, made a show of the utmost
+self-possession. Never was there greater gaiety in his camp than during
+this rest at Alexandria, and while the beautiful and clever Cleopatra
+was not sparing of her charms in general and least of all towards her
+judge, Caesar also appeared among all his victories to value most those
+won over beautiful women. It was a merry prelude to graver scenes. Under
+the leadership of Achilles and, as was afterwards proved, by the secret
+orders of the king and his guardian, the Roman army of occupation
+stationed in Egypt appeared unexpectedly in Alexandria, and, as soon
+as the citizens saw that it had come to attack Caesar, they made common
+cause with the soldiers.
+
+With a presence of mind, which in some measure justifies his
+foolhardiness, Caesar hastily collected his scattered men; seized the
+persons of the king and his ministers; entrenched himself in the royal
+residence and adjoining theatre; and gave orders, as there was no time
+to place in safety the war-fleet stationed in the principal harbour
+immediately in front of the theatre, that it should be set on fire and
+that Pharos, the island with the light-tower commanding the harbour,
+should be occupied by means of boats. Thus at least a restricted
+position for defence was secured, and the way was kept open to procure
+supplies and reinforcements. At the same time orders were issued to the
+commandant of Asia Minor as well as to the nearest subject countries,
+the Syrians and the Nabataeans, the Cretans and the Rhodians, to send
+men and ships in all haste to Egypt. The insurrection, at the head of
+which the Princess Arsinoe and her confidant, the eunuch Ganymedes, had
+placed themselves, meanwhile had free course in all Egypt and in the
+greater part of the capital. In the streets of the latter there was
+daily fighting, but without success either on the part of Caesar in
+gaining freer scope and breaking through to the fresh water lake of
+Mariut which lay behind the town, where he could have provided himself
+with water and forage; or on the part of the Alexandrians in acquiring
+superiority in besieging and depriving them of all drinking water; for,
+when the Nile canals in Caesar's part of the town had been spoiled by the
+introduction of salt water, drinkable water was unexpectedly found in
+wells dug on the beach.
+
+As Caesar was not to be overcome from the landward side, the exertions
+of the besiegers were directed to destroy his fleet and cut him off from
+the sea, by which supplies reached him. The island with the lighthouse
+and the mole by which this was connected with the mainland divided the
+harbour into a western and an eastern half, which were in communication
+with each other through two arch-openings in the mole. Caesar commanded
+the island and the east harbour, while the mole and the west harbour
+were in possession of the citizens; and, as the Alexandrian fleet
+was burnt, his vessels sailed in and out without hindrance. The
+Alexandrians, after having vainly attempted to introduce fire-ships from
+the western into the eastern harbour, equipped with the remnant of their
+arsenal a small squadron, and with this blocked up the way of Caesar's
+vessels, when these were towing in a fleet of transports with a legion
+that had arrived from Asia Minor; but the excellent Rhodian mariners
+of Caesar mastered the enemy. Not long afterwards, however, the citizens
+captured the lighthouse-island, and from that point totally closed the
+narrow and rocky mouth of the east harbour for larger ships; so that
+Caesar's fleet was compelled to take its station in the open roads before
+the east harbour, and his communication with the sea hung only on a
+weak thread. Caesar's fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeatedly by
+the superior naval force of the enemy, could neither shun the unequal
+strife, since the loss of the lighthouse-island closed the inner harbour
+against it, nor yet withdraw, for the loss of the roadstead would
+have debarred Caesar wholly from the sea. Though the brave legionaries,
+supported by the dexterity of the Rhodian sailors, had always hitherto
+decided these conflicts in favour of the Romans, the Alexandrians
+renewed and augmented their naval armaments with unwearied perseverance;
+the besieged had to fight as often as it pleased the besiegers, and,
+if the former should be on a signal occasion vanquished, Caesar would be
+totally hemmed in and probably lost.
+
+It was absolutely necessary to make an attempt to recover the
+lighthouse-island. The double attack, which was made by boats from the
+side of the harbour and by the war-vessels from the seaboard, in reality
+brought not only the island but also the lower part of the mole into
+his power; it was only at the second arch-opening of the mole that
+Caesar ordered the attack to be stopped, and the mole to be there closed
+towards the city by a transverse wall. But while a violent conflict
+arose here round the entrenchers, the Roman troops left the lower
+part of the mole adjoining the island bare of defenders; a division
+of Egyptians landed there unexpectedly, attacked in the rear the Roman
+soldiers and sailors crowded together on the mole of the transverse
+wall, and drove the whole mass in wild confusion into the sea. A part
+were taken on board by the Roman ships; but more were drowned. Some
+four hundred soldiers and a still greater number of men belonging to the
+fleet were sacrificed on this day; the general himself, who had shared
+the fate of his men, had been obliged to seek refuge in his ship, and,
+when this sank from having been overloaded with men, he had to save
+himself by swimming to another. But, severe as was the loss suffered,
+it was amply compensated by the recovery of the lighthouse-island, which
+along with the mole as far as the first arch-opening remained in the
+hands of Caesar.
+
+At length the longed-for relief arrived, Mithridates of Pergamus, an
+able warrior of the school of Mithridates Eupator, whose natural son
+he claimed to be, brought up by land from Syria a motley army,--the
+Ituraeans of the prince of the Libanus, the Bedouins of Jamblichus,
+son of Sampsiceramus, the Jews under the minister Antipater, and the
+contingents generally of the petty chiefs and communities of Cilicia and
+Syria. From Pelusium, which Mithridates had the fortune to occupy on
+the day of his arrival, he took the great road towards Memphis, with the
+view of avoiding the intersected ground of the Delta and crossing the
+Nile before its division; during which movement his troops received
+manifold support from the Jewish peasants who were settled in this part
+of Egypt. The Egyptians, with the young king Ptolemy now at their head,
+whom Caesar had released to his people in the vain hope of allaying the
+insurrection by his means, despatched an army to the Nile, to detain
+Mithridates on its farther bank. The army fell in with the enemy
+even beyond Memphis at the so-called Jews' camp, between Onion and
+Heliopolis; nevertheless Mithridates, trained in the Roman fashion
+of manoeuvring and encamping, amidst successful conflicts gained the
+opposite bank at Memphis. Caesar, on the other hand, as soon as he
+obtained news of the arrival of the relieving army, conveyed a part
+of his troops in ships to the end of the lake of Morea to the west
+of Alexandria, and marched round this lake and down the Nile to meet
+Mithridates advancing up the river.
+
+The junction took place without the enemy attempting to hinder it. Caesar
+then marched into the Delta, whither the king had retreated, overthrew,
+notwithstanding the deeply cut canal in their front, the Egyptian
+vanguard at the first onset, and immediately stormed the Egyptian camp
+itself. It lay at the foot of a rising ground between the Nile--from
+which only a narrow path separated it--and marshes difficult of access.
+Caesar caused the camp to be assailed simultaneously from the front
+and from the flank on the path along the Nile; and during this assault
+ordered a third detachment to ascend unseen the heights of the camp. The
+victory was complete; the camp was taken, and those of the Egyptians who
+did not fall beneath the sword of the enemy were drowned in the attempt
+to escape to the fleet on the Nile. With one of the boats, which sank
+overladen with men, the young king also disappeared in the waters of his
+native stream. Immediately after the battle Caesar advanced at the head
+of his cavalry from the land side straight into the portion of the
+capital occupied by the Egyptians. In mourning attire, with the images
+of their gods in their hands, the enemy received him and sued for
+peace; and his troops, when they saw him return as victor from the side
+opposite to that by which he had set forth, welcomed him with boundless
+joy. The fate of the town, which had ventured to thwart the plans of
+the master of the world and had brought him within a hair's-breadth of
+destruction, lay in Caesar's hands; but he was too much of a ruler to
+be sensitive, and dealt with the Alexandrians as with the Massiliots.
+Caesar--pointing to their city severely devastated and deprived of its
+granaries, of its world-renowned library, and of other important public
+buildings on the occasion of the burning of the fleet--exhorted the
+inhabitants in future earnestly to cultivate the arts of peace alone,
+and to heal the wounds inflicted on themselves; for the rest, he
+contented himself with granting to the Jews settled in Alexandria the
+same rights which the Greek population of the city enjoyed, and
+with placing in Alexandria instead of the previous Roman army of
+occupation--which nominally at least obeyed the kings of Egypt, a
+Roman garrison--two of the legions besieged there, and a third which
+afterwards arrived from Syria--under a commander nominated by himself.
+For this position of trust a man was purposely selected whose birth made
+it impossible for him to abuse it--Rufio, an able soldier, but the son
+of a freed man. Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy obtained the
+sovereignty of Egypt under the supremacy of Rome; the Princess Arsinoe
+was carried off to Italy, that she might not serve once more as a
+pretext for insurrections to the Egyptians, who were after the Oriental
+fashion quite as much devoted to their dynasty as they were indifferent
+towards the individual dynasts; and Cyprus became again a part of the
+Roman province of Cilicia. Caesar's love for Cleopatra, who had just
+borne him a son named Caesarion, was not so strong as his ambition;
+and after having been above a year in Egypt he left her to govern the
+kingdom in her own name, but on his behalf; and sailed for Italy, taking
+with him the sixth legion. While engaged in this warfare in Alexandria,
+Caesar had been appointed dictator in Rome, where his power was exercised
+by Mark Antony, his master of the horse; and for above six months he
+had not written one letter home, as though ashamed to write about the
+foolish difficulty he had entangled himself in, until he had got out of
+it.
+
+On reaching Rome Caesar amused the people and himself with a grand
+triumphal show, in which, among the other prisoners of war, the Princess
+Arsinoe followed his car in chains; and, among the works of art
+and nature which were got together to prove to the gazing crowd the
+greatness of his conquests, was that remarkable African animal the
+camelopard, then for the first time seen in Rome. In one chariot was a
+statue of the Nile god; and in another the Pharos lighthouse on fire,
+with painted flames. Nor was this the last of Caesar's triumphs, for soon
+afterwards Cleopatra, and her brother Ptolemy, then twelve years old,
+who was called her husband, came to Rome as his guests, and dwelt for
+some time with him in his house.
+
+The history of Egypt, at this time, is almost lost in that of Rome.
+Within five years of Caesar's landing in Alexandria, and finding that by
+the death of Pompey he was master of the world, he paid his own life as
+the forfeit for crushing his country's liberty. The Queen of Egypt, with
+her infant son Caesarion about four years old, was then in Rome, living
+with Caesar in his villa on the farther side of the Tiber. On Caesar's
+death her first wish was to get the child acknowledged by the Roman
+senate as her colleague on the throne of Egypt, and as a friend of the
+Roman people. With this view she applied to Cicero for help, making
+him an offer of some books or works of art; but he was offended at
+her haughtiness and refused her gifts. Besides, she was more likely
+to thwart than to help the cause for which he was struggling. He was
+alarmed at hearing that she was soon to give birth to another child. He
+did not want any more Caesars. He hoped she would miscarry, as he wished
+she had before miscarried. So he bluntly refused to undertake her cause.
+On this she thought herself unsafe in Rome, she fled privately, and
+reached Egypt in safety with Caesarion; but we hear of no second child
+by Julius. The Romans were now the masters of Egypt, and Cleopatra could
+hardly hope to reign but by the help of one of the great generals who
+were struggling for the sovereignty of the republic. Among these was the
+young Sextus Pompeius, whose large fleet made him for a time master
+of Sicily and of the sea; and he was said to have been admitted by the
+Queen of Egypt as a lover. But he was able to be of but little use
+to her in return for her favours, as his fleet was soon defeated by
+Octavianus.
+
+Caesar had left behind him, in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, a large
+body of Roman troops, in the pay and nominally under the orders of
+Cleopatra, but in reality to keep Egypt in obedience. There they lived
+as if above all Egyptian law or Roman discipline, indulging in the vices
+of that luxurious capital. When some of them in a riot, in the year 45
+B.C., killed two sons of Bibulus the consul, Cleopatra was either afraid
+or unable to punish the murderers; the most she could do was to get
+them sent in chains into Syria to the grieving father, who with true
+greatness of mind sent them back to the Egyptian legions, saying that it
+was for the senate to punish them, not for him.
+
+While Ptolemy her second husband was a boy and could claim no share
+of the government, he was allowed to live with all the outward show of
+royalty, but as soon as he reached the age of fifteen, in B.C. 44, at
+which he might call himself her equal and would soon be her master,
+Cleopatra had him put to death. She had then reigned four years with
+her elder brother and four years with her younger brother, and from that
+time forward she reigned alone, calling her child by Caesar her colleague
+on the throne.
+
+At a time when vice and luxury claimed the thoughts of all who were not
+busy in the civil wars, we cannot hope to find the fruits of genius in
+Alexandria; but the mathematics are plants of a hardy growth, and are
+not choked so easily as poetry and history. Sosigenes was then the
+first astronomer in Egypt, and Julius Caesar was guided by his advice
+in setting right the Roman Calendar. He was a careful and painstaking
+mathematician, and, after fixing the length of the year at three hundred
+and sixty-five days and a quarter, he three times changed the beginning
+of the year, in his doubts as to the day on which the equinox fell; for
+the astronomer could then only make two observations in a year with a
+view to learn the time of the equinox, by seeing when the sun shone
+in the plane of the equator. Photinus the mathematician wrote both
+on arithmetic and geometry, and was usually thought the author of a
+mathematical work published in the name of the queen, called the Canon
+of Cleopatra.
+
+Didymus was another of the writers that we hear of at that time. He was
+a man of great industry, both in reading and writing; but when we are
+told that he wrote three thousand five hundred volumes, or rolls, it
+rather teaches us that a great many rolls of papyrus would be wanted to
+make a modern book, than what number of books he wrote. These writings
+were mostly on verbal criticism, and all have long since perished except
+some notes or scholia on the Hiad and Odyssey which bear his name, and
+are still printed in some editions of Homer.
+
+Dioscorides, the physician of Cleopatra, has left a work on herbs and
+minerals, and on their uses in medicine; also on poisons and poisonous
+bites. To these he has added a list of prescriptions. His works
+have been much read in all ages, and have only been set aside by the
+discoveries of the last few centuries. Serapion, another physician, was
+perhaps of this reign.
+
+[Illustration: 333.jpg RUINS OF HERMONTHIS]
+
+He followed medicine rather than surgery; and, while trusting chiefly to
+his experience gained in clinical or bedside practice, was laughed at by
+the surgeons as an empiric.
+
+The small temple at Hermonthis, near Thebes, seems to have been built
+in this reign, and it is dedicated to Mandoo, or the sun, in the name
+of Cleopatra and Cassation. It is unlike the older Egyptian temples in
+being much less of a fortress; for what in them is a strongly walled
+courtyard, with towers to guard the narrow doorway, is here a small
+space between two double rows of columns, wholly open, without walls,
+while the roofed building is the same as in the older temples. Near it
+is a small pool, seventy feet square, with stone sides, which was used
+in the funerals and other religious rites.
+
+The murder of Caesar did not raise the character of the Romans, or make
+them more fit for self-government. It was followed by the well-known
+civil war; and when, by the battle of Philippi and the death of Brutus
+and Cassius, his party was again uppermost, the Romans willingly bowed
+their necks to his adopted son Octavianus, and his friend Mark Antony.
+
+It is not easy to determine which side Cleopatra meant to take in
+the war between Antony and the murderers of Caesar; she did not openly
+declare herself, and she probably waited to join that which fortune
+favoured. Allienus had been sent to her by Dolobella to ask for such
+troops as she could spare to help Antony, and he led a little army of
+four Roman legions out of Egypt into Syria; but when there he added
+them to the force which Cassius had assembled against Antony. Whether he
+acted through treachery to the queen or by her orders is doubtful, for
+Cassius felt more gratitude to Allienus than to Cleopatra. Serapion
+also, the Egyptian governor of Cyprus, joined what was then the stronger
+side, and sent all the ships that he had in his ports to the assistance
+of Cassius. Cleopatra herself was getting ready another large fleet, but
+since the war was over, and Brutus and Cassius dead before it sailed,
+she said it was meant to help Octavianus and Antony. Thus, by the acts
+of her generals and her own hesitation, Cleopatra fairly laid herself
+open to the reproach of ingratitude to her late friend Caesar, or at
+least of thinking that the interests of his son Caesarion were opposed to
+those of his nephew Octavianus; and accordingly, as Antony was passing
+through Cilicia with his army, he sent orders to her to come from Egypt
+and meet him at Tarsus, to answer the charge of having helped Brutus and
+Cassius in the late military campaign.
+
+Dellius, the bearer of the message, showed that he understood the
+meaning of it, by beginning himself to pay court to her as his queen. He
+advised her to go, like Juno in the Iliad, "tricked in her best attire,"
+and told her that she had nothing to fear from the kind and gallant
+Antony. On this she sailed for Cilicia laden with money and treasures
+for presents, full of trust in her beauty and power of pleasing. She had
+won the heart of Caesar when, though younger, she was less skilled in
+the arts of love, and she was still only twenty-five years old; and,
+carrying with her such gifts and treasures as became her rank, she
+entered the river Cydnus with the Egyptian fleet in a magnificent
+galley. The stern was covered with gold; the sails were of scarlet
+cloth: and the silver oars beat time to the music of flutes and harps.
+The queen, dressed like Venus, lay under an awning embroidered with
+gold, while pretty dimpled boys, like Cupids, stood on each side of
+the sofa fanning her. Her maidens, dressed like sea-nymphs and graces,
+handled the silken tackle and steered the vessel. As she approached
+the town of Tarsus the winds wafted the perfumes and the scent of the
+burning incense to the shores, which were lined with crowds who had come
+out to see her land; and Antony, who was seated on the tribunal waiting
+to receive her, found himself left alone.
+
+Tarsus on the river Cydnus was situated at the foot of the wooded slopes
+of Mount Taurus, and it guarded the great pass in that range between the
+Phrygian tribes and the Phoenician tribes. It was a city half-Greek
+and half-Asiatic, and had from the earliest days been famed for
+ship-building and commerce. Mount Taurus supplied it with timber, and
+around the mouth of its river, as it widens into a quiet lake, were the
+ancient dockyards which had made the ships of Tarshish proverbial with
+the Hebrew writers. Its merchants, enriched by industry and enlightened
+by foreign trade, had ornamented their city with public buildings, and
+established a school of Greek learning. Its philosophers, however, were
+more known as travelling teachers than as scholars. No learned men came
+to Tarsus; but it sent forth its rhetoricians in its own ships, who
+spread themselves as teachers over the neighbouring coasts. In Rome
+there were more professors of rhetoric, oratory, and poetry from Tarsus
+than from Alexandria or Athens. Athenodorus Cordylion, the stoic, taught
+Cato; Athenodorus, the son of Sandon, taught Caesar; Nestor a little
+later taught the young Marcellus; while Demetrius was one of the first
+men of learning who sailed to the distant island of Britain. This
+school, in the next generation, sent forth the apostle Paul, who taught
+Christianity throughout the same coasts.
+
+Tarsus was now to be amused by the costly follies and extravagances of
+Cleopatra. As an initial display, soon after landing, she invited Antony
+and his generals to a dinner, at which the whole of the dishes placed
+before them were of gold, set with precious stones, and the room and the
+twelve couches were ornamented with purple and gold. On his praising the
+splendour of the sight, as passing anything he had before seen, she said
+it was a trifle, and begged that he would take the whole of it as a gift
+from her. The next day he again dined with her, and brought a larger
+number of his friends and generals, and was of course startled to see a
+costliness which made that of the day before seem nothing; and she again
+gave him the whole of the gold upon the table, and gave to each of his
+friends the couch upon which he sat.
+
+These costly and delicate dinners were continued every day; and one
+evening, when Antony playfully blamed her wastefulness, and said that it
+was not possible to fare in a more costly manner, she told him that the
+dinner of the next day should cost ten thousand ses-tertia, or three
+hundred thousand dollars. This he would not believe, and laid her a
+wager that she would fail in her promise. When the day came the dinner
+was as grand and dainty as those of the former days; but when Antony
+called upon her to count up the cost of the meats and wines, she said
+that she did not reckon them, but that she should herself soon eat and
+drink the ten thousand sestertia. She wore in her ears two pearls, the
+largest known in the world, which, like the diamonds of European kings,
+had come to her with her crown and kingdom, and were together valued at
+that large sum.
+
+[Illustration: 338.jpg EGYPTIAN PICTURE OF CLEOPATRA]
+
+On the servants removing the meats, they set before her a glass of
+vinegar, and she took one of these earrings from her ear and dropped
+it into the glass, and when dissolved drank it off. Plancus, one of the
+guests, who had been made judge of the wager, snatched the other from
+the queen's ear, and saved it from being drunk up like the first, and
+then declared that Antony had lost his bet. The pearl which was saved
+was afterwards cut in two and made into a pair of earrings for the
+statue of Venus in the Pantheon at Rome; and the fame of the wager may
+be said to have made the two half pearls at least as valuable as the two
+whole ones.
+
+The beauty, sweetness, and gaiety of this young queen, joined to her
+great powers of mind, which were all turned to the art of pleasing, had
+quite overcome Antony; he had sent for her as her master, but he was
+now her slave. Her playful wit was delightful; her voice was as an
+instrument of many strings; she spoke readily to every ambassador in his
+own language; and was said to be the only sovereign of Egypt who could
+understand the languages of all her subjects: Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopie,
+Troglodytic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. With these charms, at the age
+of five-and-twenty, the luxurious Antony could deny her nothing. The
+first favour which she asked of her lover equals any cruelty that we
+have met with in this history: it was, that he would have her sister
+Arsinoe put to death. Caesar had spared her life, after his triumph,
+through love of Cleopatra; but he was mistaken in the heart of his
+mistress; she would have been then better pleased at Arsinoe's death;
+and Antony, at her bidding, had her murdered in the temple of Diana, at
+Ephesus.
+
+Though Fulvia, the faithful wife of Antony, could scarcely keep together
+his party at Rome against the power of Octavianus, his colleague in the
+triumvirate, and though Labienus, with the Parthian legions, was ready
+to march into Syria against him, yet he was so entangled in the artful
+nets of Cleopatra, that she led him captive to Alexandria; and there the
+old warrior fell into every idle amusement, and offered up at the shrine
+of pleasure one of the greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of his
+time. The lovers visited each other every day, and the waste of their
+entertainments passed belief. Philotas, a physician who was following
+his studies at Alexandria, told Plutarch's grandfather that he was once
+invited to see Antony's dinner cooked, and among other meats were eight
+wild boars roasting whole; and the cook explained to him that, though
+there were only twelve guests, yet as each dish had to be roasted to a
+single turn of the spit, and Antony did not know at what hour he should
+dine, it was necessary to cook at least eight dinners. But the most
+costly of the luxuries then used in Egypt were the scents and the
+ointments. Gold, silver, and jewels, as Pliny remarks, will pass to a
+man's heirs, even clothes will last a few months or weeks, but scents
+fly off and are lost at the first moment that they are admired; and
+yet ointments, like the attar of roses, which melted and gave out their
+scent, and passed into air when placed upon the back of the hand, as the
+coolest part of the body, were sold for four hundred denarii the pound.
+But the ointment was not meant to be used quite so wastefully. It was
+usually sealed up in small alabaster jars, which were made in the town
+of Alabastron, on the east of the Nile, and thence received their name.
+These were long in shape, without a foot, and had a narrow mouth. They
+were meant never to be opened, but to let the scent escape slowly and
+sparingly through the porous stone. In these Egyptian jars scented
+ointment was carried by trade to the banks of the Tigris and to the
+shores of the Mediterranean.
+
+The tenth and eleventh years of the queen's reign were marked by
+a famine through the land, caused by the Nile's not rising to the
+wished-for height and by the want of the usual overflow; and an
+inscription which was written both in the Greek and Egyptian languages
+declares the gratitude of the Theban priests and elders and citizens to
+Callimachus, the prefect of the Theban taxes, who did what he could to
+lessen the sufferings in that city. The citizens of Alexandria on those
+years received from the government a smaller gift of corn than usual,
+and the Jews then felt their altered rank in the state. They were
+told that they were not citizens, and accordingly received no portion
+whatever out of the public granaries, but were left like the Egyptians
+to take care of themselves. From this time forward there was an
+unceasing quarrel between Greeks and Jews in the city of Alexandria.
+
+Cleopatra, who held her power at the pleasure of the Roman legions,
+spared no pains to please Antony. She had borne him first a son named
+Ptolemy, and then a son and daughter, twins, Alexander Helius and
+Cleopatra Selene, or _Sun_ and _Moon_. She gamed, she drank, she hunted,
+she reviewed the troops with him, and, to humour his coarser tastes, she
+followed him, in his midnight rambles through the city, in the dress of
+a servant; and nothing that youth, beauty, wealth, and elegance could do
+to throw a cloak over the grossness of vice and crime was forgotten by
+her. The biographer thought it waste of time to mention all Cleopatra's
+arts and Antony's follies, but the story of his fishing was not to be
+forgotten. One day, when sitting in the boat with her, he caught but
+little, and was vexed at her seeing his want of success. So he ordered
+one of his men to dive into the water and put upon his hook a fish which
+had been before taken. Cleopatra, however, saw what was being done, and
+quietly took the hint for a joke of her own. The next day she brought a
+larger number of friends to see the fishing, and, when Antony let down
+his line, she ordered one of her divers to put on the hook a salted
+fish. The line was then drawn up and the fish landed amid no little
+mirth of their friends; and Cleopatra playfully consoled him, saying:
+"Well, general, you may leave fishing to us petty princes of Pharos and
+Canopus; your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms."
+
+Antony's eldest son by Fulvia came to Alexandria at this time, and lived
+in the same princely style with his father. Philotas the physician lived
+in his service, and one day at supper when Philotas silenced a tiresome
+talker with a foolish sophism the young Antony gave him as a reward the
+whole sideboard of plate. But in the middle of this gaiety and feasting
+Antony was recalled to Europe by letters which told him that his wife
+and brother had been driven out of Rome by Octavianus. Before, however,
+he reached Rome his wife Fulvia was dead; and, wishing to strengthen his
+party, he at once married Octavia, the sister of Octavianus and widow of
+Marcellus.
+
+In that year Herod passed through Egypt on his way to Rome to claim
+Judaea as his kingdom. He came through Arabia to Pelusium, and thence
+he sailed to Alexandria. Cleopatra, who wanted his services, gave him
+honourable entertainment in her capital, and made him great offers in
+order to persuade him to take the command of her army. But the Jewish
+prince saw that a kingdom was to be gained by offering his services
+to Antony and Octavianus; and he went on to Rome. There through the
+friendship of Antony he was declared King of Judaea by the senate. He
+then returned to Syria to collect an army and to win the kingdom which
+had been granted to him; and by the help of Sosius, Antony's lieutenant,
+he had conquered Jerusalem when the war broke out between Antony and
+Octavianus.
+
+In the next year (B.C. 38) Antony was himself in Syria, carrying on the
+war which ended with the battle of Actium; and he sent to Alexandria to
+beg Cleopatra to join him there. On her coming, he made her perhaps the
+largest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress: he gave her the wide
+provinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part of
+Judaea, and part of Arabia Nabataea. These large gifts only made her ask
+for more, and she begged him to put to death Herod, King of Judaea, and
+Malichus, King of Arabia Nabataea, the former of whom had advised Antony
+to break through the disgraceful ties which bound him to Cleopatra, as
+the only means of saving himself from being crushed by the rising power
+of Octavianus. She asked to have the whole of Arabia and Judaea given to
+her. But Antony had not so far forgotten himself as to yield to these
+commands; and he only gave her the balsam country around Jericho, and
+a rent-charge of two hundred talents, or one hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars, a year, on the revenues of Judaea. On receiving this large
+addition to her kingdom, and perhaps in honour of Antony, who had then
+lost all power in Italy but was the real king of Egypt and its Greek
+provinces, Cleopatra began to count the years of her reign afresh: what
+was really the sixteenth of her reign, and had been called the sixteenth
+of Ptolemy, her elder brother, she called the first of her own reign,
+and she reckoned them in the same way till her death. Cleopatra had
+accompanied Antony on his expedition against Armenia, as far as the
+river Euphrates, and returned through Damascus to Judaea. There she was
+politely received by her enemy Herod, who was too much in fear of Antony
+to take his revenge on her. She farmed out to him the revenues of her
+parts of Arabia and Judaea, and was accompanied by him on her way towards
+Egypt. But after wondering at the wasteful feasts and gifts, in which
+pearls and provinces were alike trifled with, we are reminded that even
+Cleopatra was of the family of the Lagido, and that she was well aware
+how much the library of the museum had added to the glory of Alexandria.
+It had been burnt by the Roman troops under Caesar, and, to make amends
+for this, Antony gave her the large library of the city of Pergamus, by
+which Eumenes and Attalus had hoped to raise a school that should equal
+the museum of Alexandria. Cleopatra placed these two hundred thousand
+volumes in the temple of Serapis; and Alexandria again held the largest
+library in the world; while Pergamus ceased to be a place of learning.
+By the help of this new library, the city still kept its trade in books
+and its high rank as a school of letters; and, when the once proud
+kingdom of Egypt was a province of Rome, and when almost every trace of
+the monarchy was lost, and half a century afterwards Philo, the Jewish
+philosopher of Alexandria, asked, "Where are now the Ptolemies?" the
+historian could have found an answer by pointing to the mathematical
+schools and the library of the Serapeum.
+
+But to return to our history. When Antony left Cleopatra, he marched
+against the Parthians, and on his return he again entered Alexandria in
+triumph, leading Artavasdes, King of Armenia, chained behind his chariot
+as he rode in procession through the city. He soon afterwards made
+known his plans for the government of Egypt and the provinces. He called
+together the Alexandrians in the Gymnasium, and, seating himself and
+Cleopatra on two golden thrones, he declared her son Caesarion her
+colleague, and that they should hold Egypt, Cyprus, Africa, and
+Coele-Syria. To her sons by himself he gave the title of kings the
+children of kings; and to Alexander, though still a child, he gave
+Armenia and Media, with Parthia when it should be conquered; and to
+Ptolemy he gave Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Cleopatra wore the
+sacred robe of Isis, and took the title of the New Isis, while the young
+Alexander wore a Median dress with turban and tiara, and the little
+Ptolemy a long cloak and slippers, with a bonnet encircled by a diadem,
+like the successors of Alexander. Antony himself wore an Eastern
+scimetar by his side, and a royal diadem round Ins head, as being not
+less a sovereign than Cleopatra. To Cleopatra he then gave the whole of
+his Parthian booty, and his prisoner Tigranes.
+
+[Illustration: 346.jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTHONY]
+
+But notwithstanding Antony's love for Cleopatra, her falsehood and
+cruelty were such that when his power in Rome fell he could no longer
+trust her. He even feared that she might have him poisoned, and would
+not eat or drink in her palace without having the food first tasted
+herself. But she had no such thoughts, and only laughed at him for his
+distrust. One day to prove her power, and at the same time her good
+faith, she had the flowers with which he was to be crowned, as he
+reclined at her dinner-table, dipped in deadly poison. Antony dined with
+these round his head, while she wore a crown of fresh flowers. During
+the dinner Cleopatra playfully took off her garland and dipped it in
+her cup to flavour the wine, and Antony did the same with his poisoned
+flowers, steeping them in his own cup of wine. He even raised it to his
+lips to drink, when she hastily caught hold of his hand. "Now," said
+she, "I am the enemy against whom you have latterly been so careful. If
+I could have endured to live without you, that draught would have given
+me the opportunity." She then ordered the wine to be taken to one of
+the condemned criminals, and sent Antony out to see that the man died on
+drinking it.
+
+On the early coins of Cleopatra we see her head on the one side and
+the eagle or the cornucopia on the other side, with the name of "_Queen
+Cleopatra_." After she had borne Antony children, we find the words
+round their heads, "_Of Antony, on the conquest of Armenia;" "Of
+Cleopatra the queen, and of the kings the children of kings_." On the
+later coins we find the head of Antony joined with hers, as king and
+queen, and he is styled "_the emperor_" and she "_the young goddess_."
+Cleopatra was perhaps the last Greek sovereign that bore the title of
+god. Nor did it seem unsuitable to her, so common had the Greeks of Asia
+and Egypt made that epithet, by giving it to their kings, and even to
+their kings' families and favourites. But the use of the word made no
+change in their religious opinions; they never for a moment supposed
+that the persons whom they so styled had any share in the creation and
+government of the world.
+
+[Illustration: 347.jpg LATER COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY.]
+
+The death of Julius Caesar and afterwards of Brutus and Cassius had left
+Antony with the chief sway in the Roman world; but his life of pleasure
+in Egypt had done much to forfeit it; and Octavianus, afterwards called
+Augustus, had been for some time rising in power against him. His party,
+however, was still strong enough in Rome to choose for consul his friend
+Soslus, who put the head of Antony on one side of his coins, and the
+Egyptian eagle and thunderbolt on the other. Soon afterwards Antony was
+himself chosen as consul elect for the coming year, and he then struck
+his last coins in Egypt. The rude copper coins have on one side the name
+of "_The queen, the young goddess_," and on the other side of "_Antony,
+Consul a third time_." But he never was consul for the third time;
+before the day of entering on the office he was made an enemy of Rome by
+the senate. Octavianus, however, would not declare war against him, but
+declared war against Cleopatra, or rather, as he said, against Mardion
+her slave, Iris her waiting-woman, and Charmion, another favourite
+woman; for these had the chief management of Antony's affairs.
+
+At the beginning of the year B.C. 31, which was to end with the battle
+of Actium, Octavianus held Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Carthage, with an
+army of eighty thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and a fleet of two
+hundred and fifty ships: Antony held Egypt, Ethiopia, and Cyrene, with
+one hundred thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and five hundred
+ships; he was followed by the kings of Africa, Upper Cilicia,
+Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Commagene, and Thrace; and he received help
+from the kings of Pontus, Arabia, Judaea, Lycaonia, Galatia, and Media.
+Thus Octavianus held Rome, with its western provinces and hardy legions,
+while Antony held the Greek kingdom of Ptolemy Phila-delphus. Cleopatra
+was confident of success and as boastful as she was confident. Her most
+solemn manner of promising was: "As surely as I shall issue my decrees
+from the Roman Capitol." But the mind of Antony was ruined by his life
+of pleasure. He carried her with him into battle, at once his strength
+and his weakness, and he was beaten at sea by Octavianus, on the coast
+of Epirus, near Actium. This battle, which sealed the fate of Antony, of
+Egypt, and of Rome, would never have been spoken of in history if he had
+then had the courage to join his land forces; but he sailed away in a
+fright with Cleopatra, leaving an army larger than that of Octavianus,
+which would not believe that he was gone. They landed at Parastonium in
+Libya, where he remained in the desert with Aristocrates the rhetorician
+and one or two other friends, and sent Cleopatra forward to Alexandria.
+There she talked of carrying her ships across the isthmus to the head
+of the Red Sea, along the canal from Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, and
+thence flying to some unknown land from the power of the conqueror.
+Antony soon however followed her, but not to join in society. He
+locked himself up in his despair in a small fortress by the side of
+the harbour, which he named his Timonium, after Timon, the Athenian
+philosopher who forsook the society of men. When the news, however,
+arrived that his land forces had joined Octavianus, and his allies had
+deserted him, he came out of his Timonium and joined the queen.
+
+In Alexandria, Antony and Cleopatra only so far regained their courage
+as to forget their losses, and to plunge into the same round of costly
+feasts and shows that they had amused themselves with before their fall;
+but, while they were wasting these few weeks in pleasure, Octavianus was
+moving his fleet and army upon Egypt.
+
+When he landed on the coast, Egypt held three millions of people; he
+might have been met by three hundred thousand men able to bear arms.
+As for money, which has sometimes been called the sinews of war, though
+there might have been none in the treasury, yet it could not have been
+wanting in Alexandria. But the Egyptians, like the ass in the fable, had
+nothing to fear from a change of masters; they could hardly be kicked
+and cuffed worse than they had been; and, though they themselves
+were the prize struggled for, they looked on with the idle stare of a
+bystander. Some few of the garrisons made a show of holding out; but, as
+Antony had left the whole of his army in Greece when he fled away after
+the battle of Actium, he had lost all chance of safety.
+
+When Pelusium was taken, it was said by some that Seleucus the commander
+had given it up by Cleopatra's orders; but the queen, to justify
+herself, put the wife and children of Seleucus into the hands of Antony
+to be punished if he thought fit. When Octavianus arrived in front of
+Alexandria he encamped not far from the hippodrome, a few miles from the
+Canopic or eastern gate. On this Antony made a brisk sally, and, routing
+the Roman cavalry, returned to the city in triumph. On his way to
+the palace he met Cleopatra, whom he kissed, armed as he was, and
+recommended to her favour a brave soldier who had done good service in
+the battle. She gave the man a cuirass and helmet of gold; but he
+saw that Antony's cause was ruined; his new-gotten treasure made him
+selfish, and he went over to the enemy's camp that very night. The next
+morning Antony ordered out his forces, both on land and sea, to engage
+with those of Octavianus; but he was betrayed by his generals: his fleet
+and cavalry deserted him without a 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 wheat
+distributed out of the public granaries to the citizens of Alexandria.
+The Jews in return showed no loyalty to Cleopatra, nor regret at her
+enemy's success; and on this defeat of her troops her rage fell upon
+them. She made a boast of her cruelty towards them, and thought if she
+could have killed all the Jews with her own hand she should have been
+repaid for the loss of the city. On the other hand, Antony thought that
+he had been betrayed by Cleopatra, as she had received many messengers
+from Octavianus. To avoid his anger, therefore, she fled to a monument
+which she had built near the temple of Isis, and in which she had before
+placed her treasure, her gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory,
+and cinnamon, together with a large quantity of flax and a number of
+torches, as though to burn herself and her wealth in one flame. Here she
+retired with two of her women, and secured herself with bars and bolts,
+and sent word to Antony that she was dead. Antony, when he heard it,
+believing that she had killed herself, and wishing not to be outdone in
+courage by a woman, plunged his sword into his breast. But the wound was
+not fatal, and when Cleopatra heard of it she sent to beg that he would
+come to her. Accordingly his servants carried him to the door of her
+monument. But the queen, in fear of treachery, would not suffer the door
+to be opened; but she let a cord down from the window, and she with her
+two women drew him up. Nothing could be more affecting than the sight to
+all who were near; Antony covered with blood, in the agonies of death,
+stretching out his hands to Cleopatra, and she straining every nerve and
+every feature of her face with the effort she was making. He was at last
+lifted in at the window, but died soon afterwards. By this time the city
+was in the power of Octavianus; he had not found it necessary to storm
+the walls, for Antony's troops had all joined him, and he sent in Gallus
+to endeavour to take Cleopatra alive. This he succeeded in doing by
+drawing her into conversation at the door of her monument, while three
+men scaled the window and snatched out of her hand the dagger with which
+she would have stabbed herself.
+
+Octavianus, henceforth called Augustus, began by promising his soldiers
+two hundred and fifty drachmas each as prize money, for not being
+allowed to plunder Alexandria. He soon afterwards entered the city, not
+on horseback armed at the head of his victorious legions, but on foot,
+leaning on the arm of the philosopher Arius; and, as he wished to be
+thought as great a lover of learning as of mercy, he gave out that he
+spared the place to the prayers of his Alexandrian friend. He called the
+Greek citizens together in the gymnasium, and, mounting the tribunal,
+promised that they should not be hurt. Cleopatra's three children by
+Antony, who had not the misfortune to be of the same blood with the
+conqueror, were kindly treated and taken care of; while Caesarion, her
+son by Julius Caesar, who was betrayed by his tutor Rhodon while flying
+towards Ethiopia, was put to death as a rival. The flatterers of the
+conqueror would of course say that Caesarion was not the son of
+Julius, but of Ptolemy, the elder of the two boys who had been called
+Cleopatra's husbands. The feelings of humanity might have answered
+that, if he was not the only son of the uncle to whom Octavianus owed
+everything, he was at least helpless and friendless, and that he never
+could trouble the undisputed master of the world; but Augustus, with
+the heartless cruelty which murdered Cicero, and the cold caution which
+marked his character through life, listening to the remark of Arius,
+that there ought not to be two Caesars, had him at once put to death.
+
+Augustus gave orders that Cleopatra should be carefully guarded lest she
+should put an end to her own life; he wished to carry her with him to
+Rome as the ornament of his triumph. He paid her a visit of condolence
+and consolation. He promised her she should receive honourable
+treatment. He allowed her to bury Antony. He threatened that her
+children should be punished if she hurt herself; but she deceived her
+guards and put herself to death, either by poison, or, as was more
+commonly thought, by the bite of an asp brought to her in a basket
+of fruit. She was thirty-nine years of age, having reigned twenty-two
+years, of which the last seven were in conjunction with Antony; and she
+was buried in his tomb with all regal splendour.
+
+The death of Cleopatra was hailed at Rome as a relief from a sad
+disgrace by others besides the flatterers of the conqueror. When
+governed by Julius Caesar, and afterwards by Antony, the Romans sometimes
+fancied they were receiving orders from the barbarian queen to
+whom their master was a slave. When Antony was in arms against his
+countrymen, they were not without alarm at Cleopatra's boast that she
+would yet make her power felt in the Capitol; and many feared that even
+when Antony was overthrown the conqueror might himself be willing to
+wear her chains. But the prudent Augustus was in no danger of being
+dazzled by beauty. He saw clearly all that was within his reach; he did
+not want her help to the sovereignty of Egypt; and from the day that he
+entered the empty palace in Alexandria, his reign began as sole master
+of Rome and its dependent provinces.
+
+While we have in this history been looking at the Romans from afar, and
+only seen their dealings with foreign kings, we have been able to note
+some of the changes in their manners nearly as well as if we had stood
+in the Forum. When Epiphanes, Philometor, and Euergetes II. owed their
+crowns to Roman help, Rome gained nothing but thanks, and that weight in
+their councils which is fairly due to usefulness: the senate asked for
+no tribute, and the citizens took no bribes. But with the growth
+of power came the love of conquest and of its spoils. Macedonia
+was conquered in what might be called self-defence; in the reign of
+Cleopatra Cocce, Cyrene was won by fraud, and Cyprus was then seized
+without a plea. The senators were even more eager for bribes than the
+senate for provinces. The nobles who governed these wide provinces
+grew too powerful for the senate, and found that they could heap up
+ill-gotten wealth faster by patronising kings than by conquering them;
+and the Egyptian monarchy was left to stand in the reigns of Auletes
+and Cleopatra, because the Romans were still more greedy than when they
+seized Cyrene and Cyprus. And, lastly, when the Romans were worn out by
+quarrels and the want of a steady government, and were ready to obey
+any master who could put a stop to civil bloodshed, they made Octavianus
+autocrat of Rome; he then gained for himself whatever he seized in
+the name of the republic, and he at once put an end to the Egyptian
+monarchy.
+
+Thus fell the family of the Ptolemies, a family that had perhaps done
+more for arts and letters than any that can be pointed out in history.
+Like other kings who have bought the praises of poets, orators, and
+historians, they may have misled the talents which they wished to
+guide, and have smothered the fire which they seemed to foster; but,
+in rewarding the industry of the mathematicians and anatomists, of the
+critics, commentators, and compilers, they seem to have been highly
+successful. It is true that Alexandria never sent forth works with the
+high tone of philosophy, the lofty moral aim and the pure taste which
+mark the writings of Greece in its best ages, and which ennoble the mind
+and mend the heart; but it was the school to which the world long looked
+for knowledge in all those sciences which help the body and improve the
+arts of life, and which are sometimes called useful knowledge. Though
+great and good actions may not have been unknown in Alexandria, so few
+valued them that none took the trouble to record them. The well-paid
+writers never wrote the lives of the Ptolemies. The muse of history
+had no seat in the museum, but it was almost the birthplace of anatomy,
+geometry, conic sections, geography, astronomy, and hydrostatics.
+
+[Illustration: 357.jpg GRAND COLUMN AT KARNAK]
+
+If we retrace the steps by which this Graeco-Egyptian monarchy rose and
+fell, we shall see that virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, care and
+thoughtlessness, were for the most part followed by the rewards which to
+us seem natural. The Egyptian gold which first tempted the Greeks into
+the country, and then helped their energies to raise the monarchy,
+afterwards undermined those same energies, and became one of the
+principal causes of its final overthrow.
+
+In Ptolemy Soter we see plain manners, careful plans, untiring activity,
+and a wise choice of friends. By him talents were highly paid wherever
+they were found; no service left unrewarded; the people trusted and
+taught the use of arms; their love gained by wise laws and even-handed
+justice; docks, harbours, and fortresses built, schools opened; and
+by these means a great monarchy founded. Ptolemy was eager to fill
+the ranks of his armies with soldiers, and his new city with traders.
+Instead of trying to govern against the will of the people, to thwart
+or overlook their wishes and feelings, his utmost aim was to guide them,
+and to make Alexandria a more agreeable place of settlement than the
+cities of Asia Minor and Syria, for the thousands who were then
+pouring out of Greece on the check given to its trading industry by the
+overthrow of its freedom. Though every thinking man might have seen
+that the new government, when it gained shape and strength, would be a
+military despotism; yet his Greek subjects must have felt, while it was
+weak and resting on their good-will rather than on their habits, that
+they were enjoying many of the blessings of freedom. Had they then
+claimed a share in the government, they would most likely have gained
+it, and thereby they would have handed down those blessings to their
+children.
+
+Before the death of Ptolemy Soter, the habits of the people had so
+closely entwined themselves round the throne, that Philadelphus was able
+to take the kingdom and the whole of its wide provinces at the hands of
+his father as a family estate. He did nothing to mar his father's wise
+plans, which then ripened into fruit-bearing. Trade crowded the harbours
+and markets, learning filled the schools, conquests rewarded the
+discipline of the fleets and armies; power, wealth, and splendour
+followed in due order. The blaze thus cast around the throne would by
+many kings have been made to stand in the place of justice and mildness,
+but under Philadelphus it only threw a light upon his good government.
+He was acknowledged both at home and abroad to be the first king of
+his age; Greece and its philosophers looked up to him as a friend and
+patron; and though as a man he must take rank far below his father, by
+whose wisdom the eminence on which he stood was raised, yet in all the
+gold and glitter of a king Philadelphus was the greatest of his family.
+
+The Egyptians had been treated with kindness by both of these Greek
+kings. As far as they had been able or willing to copy the arts of
+Greece they had been raised to a level with the Macedonians. The
+Egyptian worship and temples had been upheld, as if in obedience to
+the oft-repeated answer of the Delphic oracle, that the gods should
+everywhere be worshipped according to the laws of the country. But
+Euergetes was much more of an Egyptian, and while he was bringing back
+the ancient splendour to the temples, the priests must have regained
+something of their former rank. But they had no hold on the minds of the
+soldiers. Had the mercenaries, upon whom the power of the king rested,
+been worshippers in the Egyptian temples, the priests might, as in the
+earlier times, like a body of nobles, have checked his power when too
+great, and at other times upheld it. But it was not so; and upon the
+whole, little seems to have been gained by the court becoming more
+Egyptian, while the army must have lost something of its Greek
+discipline and plainness of manners.
+
+But in the next reign the fruits of this change were seen to be most
+unfortunate. Philopator was an Eastern despot, surrounded by eunuchs,
+and drowned in pleasures. The country was governed by his women and
+vicious favourites. The army, which at the beginning of his reign
+amounted to seventy-three thousand men, beside the garrisons, was at
+first weakened by rebellion, and before the end of his reign it fell to
+pieces. Nothing, however, happened to prove his weakness to surrounding
+nations; Egypt was still the greatest of kingdoms, though Rome on the
+conquest of Carthage, and Syria under Antiochus the Great, were fast
+gaining ground upon it; but he left to his infant son a throne shaken to
+the very foundations.
+
+The ministers of Epiphanes, the infant autocrat, found the government
+without a head and without an army, the treasury without money, and the
+people without virtue or courage; and they placed the kingdom under the
+hands of the Romans to save it from being shared between the kings of
+Syria and Macedonia. Thus passed the first five reigns, the first one
+hundred and fifty years, the first half of the three centuries that the
+kingdom of the Ptolemies lasted. It was then rotten at the core with
+vice and luxury. Its population was lessening, its trade falling off,
+its treasury empty, its revenue too small for the wasteful expenses of
+the government; but, nevertheless, in the eyes of surrounding nations,
+its trade and wealth seemed boundless.
+
+[Illustration: 362.jpg Cleopatra's needle.]
+
+Taste, genius, and poetry had passed away; but mathematics, surgery, and
+grammar still graced the museum. The decline of art is shown upon the
+coins, and even in the shape of the letters upon the coins. On those
+of Cleopatra the engraver followed the fashion of the penman; the S is
+written like our C, the E has a round back, and the long O is formed
+like an M reversed.
+
+During the reigns of the later Ptolemies the kingdom was under the
+shield, but also under the sceptre of Rome. Its kings sent to Rome
+for help, sometimes against their enemies, and sometimes against their
+subjects; sometimes they humbly asked the senate for advice, and at
+other times were able respectfully to disobey the Roman orders. One
+by one the senate seized the provinces; Coele-Syria, the coast of
+Asia Minor, Cyrene, and the island of Cyprus; and lastly, though the
+Ptolemies still reigned, they were counted among the clients of the
+Roman patrician, to whom they looked up for patronage. From this low
+state Egypt could scarcely be said to fall when it became a part of the
+great empire of Augustus.
+
+During the reigns of the Ptolemies, the sculpture, the style of
+building, the religion, the writing, and the language of the Kopts in
+the Thebaid were nearly the same as when their own kings were reigning
+in Thebes, with even fewer changes than usually creep in through time.
+They had all become less simple; and though it would be difficult, and
+would want a volume by itself to trace these changes, and to show when
+they came into use, yet a few of them may be pointed out. The change of
+fashion must needs be slower in buildings which are only raised by the
+untiring labour of years, and which when built stand for ages; but in
+the later temples we find less strength as fortresses, few obelisks or
+sphinxes, and no colossal statues; we no longer meet with vast caves
+or pyramids. The columns in a temple have several new patterns. The
+capitals which used to be copied from the papyrus plant are now formed
+of lotus flowers, or palm branches. In some cases, with a sad want of
+taste, the weight of the roof rests on the weak head of a woman.
+The buildings, however, of the Ptolemies are such that, before the
+hieroglyphics on them had been read by Doctor Young, nobody had ever
+guessed that they were later than the time of Cambyses, while three or
+four pillars at Alexandria were almost the only proof that the country
+had ever been held by Greeks.
+
+In the religion we find many new gods or old gods in new dresses.
+Hapimou, the Nile, now pours water out of a jar like a Greek river god.
+The moon, which before ornamented the heads of gods, is now a goddess
+under the name of Ioh. The favourite Isis had appeared in so many
+characters 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 the
+chief place. Strange change had also taken place in the names of men
+and cities. In the place of Petisis, Petamun, Psammo, and Serapion,
+we find men named Eudoxus, Hermophantus, and Poly crates; while of the
+cities, 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 the
+hieroglyphics, as the camelopard, the mummy lying on a couch, the ships
+with sails, and the chariot with horses; there were more words spelled
+with letters, the groups were more crowded, and the titles of the kings
+within the ovals became much longer.
+
+With the papyrus, which was becoming common about the time of the
+Persian invasion, we find the running hand, the enchorial or common
+writing, as it was called, coming into use, in which there were few
+symbols, and most of the words were spelt with letters. Each letter was
+of the easy sloping form, which came from its being made with a reed or
+pen, instead of the stiff form of the hieroglyphics, which were mostly
+cut in stone. But there is a want of neatness, which has thrown a
+difficulty over them, and has made these writings less easy to read than
+the hieroglyphics.
+
+When the country fell into the hands of Augustus, the Kopts were in
+a much lower state than when conquered by Alexander. Of the old moral
+worth and purity of manners very little remained. All respect for women
+was lost; and, when men degrade those who should be their helps towards
+excellence, they degrade themselves also. Not a small part of the
+nation was sunk in vice. They had been slaves for three hundred years,
+sometimes trusted and well-treated, but more often trampled on and
+ground down with taxes and cruelty. They had never held up their heads
+as freemen, or felt themselves lords of their own soil; they had fallen
+off in numbers, in wealth, and in knowledge; nothing was left to them
+but their religion, their temples, their hieroglyphics, and the painful
+remembrance of their faded glories.
+
+END OF VOL. X.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The
+Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12), by S. Rappoport
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