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.
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.