Ptolemy the younger was “fair haired and delicate” in youth, resembling his father, but with more regular features, and the thick neck characteristic of many members of the family. His manners were gentle as well as popular and probably he had already shown an appreciation of his father’s policy and a taste for intellectual and scientific pursuits. Few fathers would not take more pleasure in the succession of a son likely to carry out their views, than in one who seemed disposed to change and alter all their arrangements.
Gorgeous pageants celebrated the advent of the new king. His father, it may be said, had in a certain measure slipped into power; not so with the son, his successor. It was a matter of direct inheritance and in Egypt at least his claim was not disputed. Whatever assistance Ptolemy Keraunos secured was from foreign aid and not from partizans at home. The banqueting hall was decorated with sculpture and painted and carpeted with flowers, the gold and silver vessels, crown treasures, were carried in the grand procession. There were fruits of all sorts displayed and droves of camels, elephants and other wild animals. Elephants were then much in favor as battle chargers with the kings of this period, and though the Ptolemies made less use of them in this respect, they too had large numbers of them. Their popularity, however, soon declined and in later wars they were no longer deemed available. Ptolemy Sotor presented the victors in the games at his son’s coronation with twenty crowns, Queen Berenike with twenty-three.
Historical and allegorical tableaux were interspersed and eighty thousand troops of cavalry and infantry took part. It must have been a combination of the circus processions of modern times, with less tinsel and more of solid value, with a fine military parade. It delighted the people from morning till evening and showed to all strangers the wealth and power of the Ptolemy House.
Spite of gentle seeming, as soon as his father’s death left him in possession of the regal power, the new king made it quite clear he would tolerate no rival and meant to keep possession of all he had gained. Like his father, perhaps, he had no special taste for the shedding of blood; indeed he is said to have deplored what he considered the necessity of pursuing this policy, none the less did he hesitate to do so to secure his throne, and several people were put to death whom he thought might give him trouble. Probably his elder brother would have been among these could he have laid his hand on him. It was mortal strife between them, and Ptolemy Keraunos was now in another country doing his best to unseat the young king.
Some years before her brother’s accession the young Arsinoe, a girl of sixteen, first child of Ptolemy Sotor and Berenike, had married, or rather been married, to the elderly Lysimachus, King of Thrace (disparity of years was of course of no account in a political marriage), and had exchanged her sunny Egyptian home for the cooler and more rigorous climate of the mountainous regions of Northern Greece. Beautiful, clever and ambitious, as were most of the Ptolemy women, she was prominent among them and destined to have strong influence wherever she went, especially over two at least of the men with whom she was most closely associated. This marriage took place about 300 B. C.
So anxious was Ptolemy Sotor to cement the alliance between Lysimachus and himself, that marriage after marriage was arranged for and it might have been supposed that the two families were so closely united that peace among them had been secured. His step-daughter Lysandra was given to the Thracian Crown Prince Agathocles, thus making her at the same time sister and daughter-in-law of Arsinoe, who was probably the younger of the two, and not content with this, a marriage was arranged between the young king of Egypt and Arsinoe, daughter of Lysimachus, and half-sister of Agathocles, who thus became Queen Arsinoe I of Egypt.
She, too, was a person of spirit, decision and character, bloodshed marked her footsteps; she caused an illicit lover of her mother’s to be slain, and is said herself, young though she was, to have hastened on her marriage with the Egyptian king. One of policy rather than affection probably on both sides. It requires a clear head to follow out these complicated relationships. Arsinoe I had attained her ambition, but it was a position, in those unsettled times, involving quite as much peril as honor. She became the mother of several children, but whether her life was a happy one we may justly have our doubts. It held, however, less tragedy than that of her successor. Perhaps she was neither beautiful nor winning, certain it is that the courtesies which were subsequently paid to various queens, of putting their likeness on the coins and naming cities after them, were omitted in her case.
Ptolemy Philadelphus founded, it is said, four Berenikes in honor of his mother, eighteen Arsinoes, in honor of his second wife, and three Philoteras, in honor of his sister, in Egypt and elsewhere. These last were out of regard to a favorite sister Philotera, who dwelt in single blessedness—shall we call it a rare privilege in those days?—and lived in great harmony with her brother and his queens. As to the queen, Arsinoe II, so to the maiden sister also poems were addressed by the versifiers of the times.
The Thracian Arsinoe I, notwithstanding her early self-assertion, seems to have made little mark either upon her husband or upon Egypt. The comparative neglect with which she was treated may have embittered her and made true the accusation brought against her of having conspired against the life of her husband. If it was true she was leniently dealt with. She was divorced about 277 B. C. in the eighth or ninth year of Ptolemy’s reign, and banished to Koptos, where she lived in some state and appears from certain records to have been accompanied or visited by her younger son. She kept up her intercourse, too, perhaps with some of her Thracian relatives; and built shrines to the gods. The very fact that her life did not pay the forfeit of her alleged crime seems to throw doubt upon it. Or possibly, though this seems less likely, Arsinoe II, her supplanter, who in general, her purpose accomplished, showed no desire for the shedding of blood, may have induced the king to spare her. We can only surmise.
Ptolemy Philadelphus was a prosperous and popular king; living in comparative peace in sunny Egypt with his Thracian wife, remote from most of the wars which were carried on in his name and caring little what battles raged at a distance so that he preserved himself and his kingdom in relative quiet. There were wars and rebellions afar, there were times even when Egypt itself was threatened, but through it all, at home, Ptolemy was able to pursue a relatively peaceful way. He spent his time adorning his splendid city and enlarging and, so to call it, emphasizing the scope of his great museum, a combination of university, club and social gathering place. The early Ptolemies, especially, were patrons of learning and people of all nations met at their brilliant court. He gathered around him men of intellectual and scientific pursuits and enjoyed mental pleasures as well as those of a lower order. His courtiers lavished upon him unstinted adulation and he might well have walked the earth as proudly as the great Rameses II, his predecessor.