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.
