Eurydike, though probably the elder, may have survived her rival, but their part was now played on the stage of history and they passed from the scene, leaving it to a multitude of other actresses, some of whom excelled them in beauty and celebrity, while others remain to us but as a shadow and a name.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH.
ARSINOE II.
The most prominent figure in the long and involved list of Ptolemy queens, next to that of the famed Cleopatra, is Arsinoe II, daughter of Sotor and Berenike, and sister and wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus. She is spoken of on the Mendes stele, now at Gizeh, as “the charming princess, the most attractive, lovely and beautiful, the crowned one, who has received the double diadem, whose splendor fills the palace, the friend of the sacred Ram and his priestess Uta Utaba, the king’s sister and wife who loves him, the queen Arsinoe.” And of no other queen do we find so many monuments in various parts of the Greek world.
To the day of Arsinoe’s death she seems to have had the strongest hold upon her husband’s affections and no token of honor and respect was too great to lavish upon her while living, or to eulogize her merits after her decease. The early part of her life was a tragic story, but she survived the cruel sorrows which might have killed a woman of less toughness of fibre than that which distinguished all the female members of the Ptolemy race, and lived through a prosperous and successful middle life, turning her back on the bitterness of the past and making the most of the honors and dignity which came to her in the course of years.
Arsinoe.
In placing his younger son on the throne, instead of the elder, who would usually have been considered the rightful heir, Ptolemy Sotor may have been influenced by the personal character of the two, as well as by other motives. The elder bore the name of Ptolemy Keraunos, a soubriquet or nick-name meaning gloomy or violent, and was “of fiery temper and unsteady life.” Mahaffy suggests that the thunderbolt added to the Ptolemy coins at the time of his birth possibly gave rise to the nick-name. History does not chronicle details, but there may have been actual quarrels between father and son, a state of affairs not unknown in modern times. Be this as it may, the younger was preferred before the elder. Neither succession perhaps could have prevented subsequent bitterness of feeling and strife. Yet peace was outwardly observed during the life of the old king. Keraunos submitted and left Egypt with his mother, brothers and sister, while Berenike’s son was made king, co-ruler with his father (who virtually abdicated in 285-4) with feasts and rejoicing.