There is something very pathetic in the story of the early life of Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, who became king, at five years of age, his father dead, his mother murdered, so soon that he could scarcely have remembered her, and he left in the hands of her murderers. Polybius gives a picture of these events in the following words: “The next step of Agathocles was to summon a meeting of the Macedonian guards. He entered the assembly accompanied by the young king and his own sister, Agathoclea. At first he feigned not to be able to say what he wished for tears, but after again and again wiping his eyes with his chlamys, he at length mastered his emotion, and, taking the young king in his arms, he spoke as follows: Take this boy, whom his father on his death bed placed in this lady’s care (pointing to his sister) and confided to your loyalty, men of Macedonia. Her affection has but little influence in securing the child’s safety; it is on you that safety now depends, ‘his fortunes are in your hands.’” He then proceeded to inveigh against Tlepolemus, governor of Pelusium, and a general in the army, who was evidently popular with the soldiers and in so doing overshot his mark.
The murder of the queen, and even of the man into whose hands the letter ordering the same had fallen, seems gradually to have been traced (though at first kept secret) to its true authors, and this added to other acts of cruelty and unlawful seizure of power, raised a storm of feeling among the soldiers and the populace generally, against Agathocles and his associates, and his words were received with “hootings and loud murmurs,” so that he began to fear the worst for himself and made haste to escape. The fury of a mob, of any nationality and at any period of the world’s history, once raised, is not easy to allay, and seldom have such uprisings been known, unattended by bloodshed. In this, as in other cases, there were some leaders ready to fan rather than to extinguish the flame of popular wrath, and they determined to overthrow the obnoxious ministers.
The whole city was in a ferment and the next morning the Macedonian guard broke open the palace, seized the person of the little king, placed him on horseback and led him among the people, who shouted and clapped their hands. They then put him on the royal seat and extracted from the, doubtless frightened, child permission to surrender to the populace “those who had injured him or his mother.” Pitiful it must have been to see a mere baby placed in such circumstances. Whether he really understood anything of what was going on, or had any affection for those in question we cannot tell. It of course resulted in the murder of Agathocles and all his kinsfolk. A fate well deserved perhaps by most of them, but horrible to contemplate. But the dreadful thirst for blood was awakened in the angry crowd, and there were bound to be victims, more or less numerous.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH.
PTOLEMY QUEENS (CONTINUED).
Thus tragically was ushered in the reign of the boy-king, Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, the Illustrious, whose dates are 205-182 B. C., and whose pre-nomen or throne name, found on his cartouch, means “heir of the (two) father loving gods, chosen of Ptah, strength of the Ka of Ra, living image of Amen.” Too young to take matters into his own hands, the power seems to have been divided between Tlepolemus as military, and Aristomenes, called the king’s tutor, as civil administrator of affairs. The reign of a minor is apt to be distracted by conflicts of one sort and another, and this proved no exception.
In the case of the youthful son of Alexander the Great it was the generals of his father’s army who wrested from him his inheritance; in that of the young Ptolemy it was the foreign powers, the kings of Macedonia and Syria, who sought to do so. But the Romans proved the instruments of the boy’s salvation, though not for his sake, and conquered in battle and made tributary the men who were his enemies, while the two ministers who had taken his affairs in charge guarded him well at home.
There are also some who maintain that the guardianship of the boy’s rights was offered to the Romans, though the weight of evidence seems against this idea. Certain it is, however, that Ptolemy Epiphanes, or those who acted for him, sent very submissive embassies to this great and growing power, destined eventually to swallow up his country, or rather to become possessed of its sovereignty.