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.
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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.