Cleopatra II. had two daughters of the same name. The elder was married first to Alexander Bala and then to Demetrius Nicator of Syria. She seems to have been an embodiment of Ptolemaic cruelty and vice. When her second husband was taken prisoner, she accepted his brother, Antiochus Sidetes, in his stead, and placed him upon the throne. But nine years afterwards, on the return of Demetrius, murdered Sidetes and her son Seleukos, who had attempted to assume the crown. She had also, it is said, prepared poison for her second son, Antiochus Grippus, but he discovered her intent and forced her to swallow the fatal draught herself. Her younger sister Cleopatra, only a year or two after Physcon’s marriage with her mother Cleopatra II, he also took to wife, thus establishing one of the most revolting connections entered into by any member of this atrocious family, yet, strange to say, both were recognized in public acts as queens of Egypt, the younger bearing the title of Cleopatra III. Incomprehensible and repellant as this seems, it appears well authenticated. There is a relief of Philometer, clad in a white mantle, and accompanied by one of the Cleopatras. At Kom Ombos there is on the wall of the temple a picture of Ptolemy VII, and also of Ptolemy IX, between the goddesses and again of Horus bestowing gifts on Ptolemy IX. and the two Cleopatras. We read of an inscription from Kos, too, where the children of both were perhaps educated, in which “the king and his two queens honor with a golden crown and gilded image the tutor of their children.”
In 146 B. C. Physcon apparently married Cleopatra II. and two or three years later her daughter. In 130 or 129 B. C. he was exiled and obliged to flee the country, Cleopatra II reigning alone for about two years, at the expiration of which time the absent king returned and again took the power into his own hands. In his private life Ptolemy Physcon appears as a monster, in his public career he has been esteemed by some writers as a good, or at least a great king. That is, his sway was widely extended, and he built or added to innumerable temples to the gods. At Edfu, begun by Ptolemy III, Euergetes, in 237 B. C., he completed the great hypostile hall, in 122 B. C. At Der-el-Medineh he finished the graceful temple begun by Ptolemy IV. and dedicated to Hathor. At El Kab he built a rock temple, while at Karnak and many other places he added his portion to the great whole. “At Thebes we find no reign so marked.” He seems to have showed special favor to the native Egyptian population, but is credited with many cruelties to others. With Rome he kept up friendly, if subservient, relations.
At what precise time the elder Cleopatra passed away from the scene we do not know, but she died before Physcon, leaving her successor to a certain extent to re-enact her story. Physcon gave his daughter Tryphena to Grippus, the Syrian prince who had poisoned his mother, and her aunt, Cleopatra. Ptolemy IX, Physcon, died in 117 B. C., having reigned twenty-nine years since the death of his brother, Philometor. His widow, Cleopatra III, Cocce, succeeded to the power and is sometimes called queen, sometimes regent. She appears to have held the position for a while alone, and then her son, Ptolemy X, Philometor, or Sotor II (Lathyrus), was associated with her. She was, it is said, a “strong and remarkable woman,” considerably younger than her husband and having great influence with him. She succeeded in having the elder son, and natural successor, sent away, as governor to Cyprus, and thus deprived him of the power of claiming his inheritance. She preferred her younger son Alexander, whom she had made independent king of Cyprus, but the people would not accept him, and Ptolemy X (Lathyrus), as has been said, succeeded. He apparently was already married to his sister, another Cleopatra, called the IV, but his mother obliged him, from motives not clear to us, though it has been suggested that it was because only such children as were born to the purple, could reign; to put her away and marry a younger sister Selene. This queen’s name does not appear in some of the inscriptions which read “in the name of Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy, gods Philometores, Sotores and his children.”
This Cleopatra IV was, no more than the rest of the Ptolemy women, meek or submissive. She naturally resented the treatment she had received and offered herself and the riches of which she seemed possessed to one of the claimants of the Syrian throne, but only to meet the too common fate, for the wife of the said Antiochus Grippus, her own sister Tryphæna, caused her to be murdered. Some of the Egyptian princesses, as has been narrated, went to Syria, and of them it is said that “they show the usual features ascribed to Ptolemaic princesses—great power and wealth which makes an alliance with them imply the command of large resources in men and money; mutual hatred, disregard of all ties of family and affection; the dearest object fratricide—such pictures of depravity as make any reasonable man pause and ask whether human nature had deserted these women and the Hyrcanian tiger of the past taken its place.”
The history of the Jews is largely involved with that of Egypt during many of the Ptolemy reigns, but it is not within the scope of this small monograph to include these relationships in the more purely personal story. The new king, to a greater or less extent, now held the power, as testified to by the coinage bearing simply “the year of Lathyrus” instead of his mother Cleopatra III. He appears in a copper coin clad in an elephant skin, and there are also joint coins of Cleopatra III and Alexander. The queen, indisposed to yield her authority, succeeded in raising the populace against Lathyrus, so that he fled to Cyprus, his brother Alexander returning from there and sharing the throne with his mother. Lathyrus meanwhile was attempting to set up a kingdom in Palestine, but the powerful queen wrested it from him and added it to her own dominions. Ptolemy Apion, an illegitimate son of Ptolemy Physcon, had been ruling in Cyrene the home and possession of the former queen, Berenike II, which he left on his death to the Roman people, who thus, whenever their other warlike entanglements permitted, tightened their grasp on everything Egyptian, but the Egyptian monarchs, busy with more personal and family difficulties, did not interfere.
Ptolemy X, Alexander I, reigned with his mother till 101 B. C. when, weary perhaps of her powerful hand, which kept him from full possession of the throne, he murdered her. Possibly she would have done the like to him, but it seems a shocking and ungrateful return for the preference for him which she at first so evidently showed. Other authorities throw some doubt on this matricide, but the weight of opinion seems to certify to it.
The next queen is spoken of as Cleopatra, Berenike IV, or Berenike III, and her name is sometimes associated both with Alexander, whom she married, and the queen mother. She is believed to have been a daughter of Sotor II (Lathyrus), and hence Alexander’s niece. This marriage may not have been agreeable to the elder queen, who so evidently hated her elder son, the father of the bride. This king is sometimes spoken of as “Ptolemy, also called Alexander, the god Philometor.” In the midst of these domestic quarrels and public difficulties, the king yet kept up the usual habit of temple building and his name appears in connection with several, especially Denderah. Says Mahaffy: “It is difficult not to suspect in the continued building of the same temples by Philometor and Euergetes II, of Sotor II, and of Alexander, the influence of the great ladies who lived through the change of kings without stay or intermittence of their royalty,” though, strange to say, the priests of Edfu do not speak of them. Alexander appears in communion with the gods and, triumphing over his enemies. “It is also certain that the crypts of the temple of Denderah, finished by Cleopatra VI, were commenced according to an ancient plan by the X and XI Ptolemies.”
After the murder of Cleopatra III the people rose against Alexander and recalled Lathyrus, who, upon regaining the crown, pursued his brother, who was slain in a naval battle, thus leaving his widow Berenike III to share with her father the Egyptian throne. She seems to have lived at peace with him after his return and is regarded by some as co-regent or ruler, by others as not assuming power till after his death.
Lathyrus is considered as among the gentler and better members of the Ptolemy family. Even so he put down a rebellion of the native population with great severity and razed Thebes to the ground. Dying, at about the age of sixty, he left the kingdom in the hands of his daughter, Cleopatra IV, Berenike III, who reigned for some six months, when Alexander, son of Alexander I, by another marriage, returned from Rome and was accepted as king, under the title of Alexander II, Ptolemy XII, sharing the throne with Berenike, the queen. Though his stepmother, there was probably no great disparity in their years, and it was by the suggestion of the Roman dictator, Sylla, that he contracted this strange alliance. But the abhorrent connection was of brief duration, for Alexander II murdered his wife and was himself murdered in turn by her household troops, within a month. As queen or regent she had been associated with the royal power for a number of years, and this prompt avengement of her death seems to prove that she had her share of popularity.
At this period, and indeed for a long time, what the Alexandrians willed seems to have been law to the whole country.