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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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