Predecessors of Cleopatra

by Leigh North

The year after the Canopus decree, the tenth of his reign, Ptolemy Euergetes went with great pomp to the refounding of the temple of Edfu, in Upper Egypt, one of the most splendid with which the Ptolemy name is connected, and where a great feast was held for six days.

We know but little definitely about the private life of the king and queen, but one or two incidents connected with her are preserved. Other wives or mistresses, claimants on her husband’s affection, made no figure, if they existed, so we may believe Berenike’s marriage relations to have been more than usually peaceful and happy. One pleasant anecdote is told of her which Mahaffy gives in a footnote. While the king was one day playing at dice, an officer came to him to read out a list of criminals to be condemned, but the queen gently took it away and would not allow him to decide so important a matter so hastily, and at such a time, and it further states that the king yielded to her wishes. That the queen thus dared to interfere and the king so readily accepted her action seems to give proof of the peculiarly amiable relations existing between them.

The queen is also spoken of as a patroness of various aromatic oils, toilette articles, etc., which leads us to suppose she was particular about and careful of her personal appearance. Ptolemy Euergetes was, like his predecessor, fat and handsome, with a full, voluptuous face. The early Ptolemies all had full, voluptuous faces, but handsome, while in the cases of their successors the features were less regular, the nose sharper, and the chin more prominent.

The royal pair had several children, of whom the oldest succeeded his father, the king dying in the twenty-fifth year of his reign. The three first Ptolemies were men of mark, their descendants were decadents, profligate, perfidious and cruel, unfaithful in every way to moral obligations and their task of governing.

Ptolemy Philopator was a young man when he ascended the throne, 222 B. C., his name is said to signify “the son designated for the throne by his father,” with whom, as was so frequently the case, he had probably already been associated in the government. Some authors even suggest that he was not even innocent of the death of this parent, as that of the other was certainly laid at his door, and that he selected the name Philopater to disarm suspicion. But possibly, like Cambyses, as he proved himself a man of evil, nothing was too bad to believe of him. Immediately on his accession he murdered his younger brother Magas, of this there seems no doubt. Berenike II was much attached to this younger son and perhaps wished him to succeed his father, as Philadelphus had done, in preference to Keraunos, which may have been the cause of the new king’s unnatural hatred against her, she was given in charge of Sosibios, an official and favorite of the king’s, and is said either to have been murdered or committed suicide by poison, so unendurable to the high-spirited princess was her imprisonment. She who had been reigning queen and so beloved. It was a melancholy close to her life’s story.

A number of other murders are laid to the king’s charge, through the influence of the same Sosibios. Polybius, who is deemed a reliable authority on this period, says the king “would attend to no business and would hardly grant an interview to the officials about the court,” but was “absorbed in unworthy intrigues and senseless and continual drunkenness,” and “treated the several branches of the government with equal indifference;” all was managed by the officials, or any who might seize the power. His generals fought his battles and gained his victories, with little thanks due to the wisdom or judgment of the king. Agathocles and Sosibios were his leading ministers. But occasionally, at least, he seems to have roused himself and appeared in person on the field, as we read of his setting out from Alexandria with 70,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry and 73 elephants. At Raphia was fought a great battle, between Antiochus of Syria and Ptolemy, which was opened by a charge of elephants in which the Egyptians came off victorious.

And here we catch a glimpse of the next queen of Egypt (subsequently deified with her husband as gods Philapatores) Arsinoe III, daughter of Euergetes I and Berenike II. She accompanied her brother and rode with him, a fearless horsewoman, like her mother, perhaps, in front of the troops, before the battle, exhorting the soldiers to courage and conquest. Like her mother also she is said to have dedicated a lock of her hair in the temple, but the story is not so well authenticated. Besides this little glimpse of her personality at the battle, which shows vigor and bravery, we learn little of her, probably she was fair, perhaps virtuous. She was a late child of her parents’ marriage, it may be the youngest, and it seems to be implied that she was early left an orphan and had a sad youth. It was some years after this battle about 213 B. C. that she was married to Ptolemy Philopator, and became Arsinoe III of Egypt. Her husband, given to debauchery, amusing himself with literary work, a taste he shared with the earlier Ptolemies, and not, we may imagine, of a very high character, and under the influence of his minister, Sosibios, as well as Agathocles and Agathoclea, sister of the latter, could not have been a very love inspiring companion. The queen bore a son in 210 or 209 B. C., who succeeded his father at five years of age, under the title of Ptolemy V, Epiphanes.

The cruelties to the Jews practiced or allowed by Ptolemy IV were in contrast to the policy of his predecessors, and though some inscriptions remain (the temple of Edfu has mention of this) which do him honor, the weight of testimony seems to be that he was an oppressive and cruel king and hated by his subjects. Yet these few inscriptions, as is frequently the case, for in any important matter the testimony is often conflicting, give a different and better view of his character. The chief cause of, or accessory to many murders he undoubtedly was.

A temple in Nubia gives pictures of Ptolemy Philopater and his wife, Arsinoe III, receiving offerings, as well as those of his father and mother, grandfather and grandmother. It is thought that the Prince of Nubia may have assisted in putting down a revolt of his subjects.

The murder of Arsinoe III was due to the influence of the king’s shameless mistress, Agathoclea and her brother Agathocles, but what had made the unfortunate queen especially obnoxious to them we do not know. Perhaps she was merely an obstacle in the path of their ambition, and they thought that if they could get the child absolutely in their power they could regulate things better to their own liking; perhaps some stories, true or false, were raised against the queen to justify their proceedings. She seems to have had a sad life and to have been friendless in the midst of enemies.