Greek Jug
In order to carry out his plan, Ptolemy sued for the hand of his own sister, according to the notions of the family of the Lagidæ, who had adopted the Egyptian views about marriage with a sister. Arsinoe was at first very timid, and her eldest son, though still a child, foresaw what was to come, and warned his mother, saying that the whole was a treacherous scheme. But Arsinoe was a silly woman, who allowed herself to be deceived by the prospect of becoming a queen, just as afterwards Nicæa allowed herself to be gained over by Antigonus Gonatas. She confided in him, opened the gates of the fortress, and admitted him into the town. But now the clouds vanished from her eyes, and she discovered too late what his intentions were. Ptolemy treacherously took possession of the gates of the town, and the first thing he did was to murder the two boys before the eyes of their mother; Arsinoe herself was stripped of all her ornaments (for the avarice of those men was as great as their other vices), and ignominiously sent to Samothrace. She afterwards returned to Egypt, where she spent the remainder of her life. The history of that period reveals to us an interesting but horrible spectacle; it is by no means as monotonous or as unimportant as we are easily tempted to imagine.
This crime of Ptolemy Ceraunus was soon followed by its punishment—the arrival of the Gauls as previously described.
Ptolemy drew his forces together, but foolishly declined the auxiliaries offered to him by the Dardanians, and thoughtlessly ventured upon a battle, the result of which was the same as that of the battle on the Allia. No army could resist the vehemence of the Celts, without having been previously accustomed to their appearance and their horrid war cries, and without having learned to sustain the shock with which the intoxicated and infuriated Celts rushed to battle. Familiarity with these things alone rendered resistance possible. Ptolemy, with all his crimes, was an able warrior; he fought bravely, until being severely wounded, he fell into the hands of the Gauls who murdered him.
ANARCHY IN MACEDONIA
[280-277 B.C.]
We know nothing of the consequences of this victory, except that there followed a state of anarchy in Macedonia, which lasted four years. A panic spread over the whole country, and even a number of towns no doubt succumbed to the Gauls; the open country was thoroughly inundated by the Gauls, and all the population was put to the sword or dragged into slavery, as is usually done by the Tartars and Turks, the latter of whom, in 1683, carried away from Austria no less than two hundred thousand men. There was no heir to the throne, for Ptolemy had left no issue; the families of Cassander and Lysimachus were extirpated, and Pyrrhus happened to be in Italy; civil disturbances breaking out among the Macedonians, whom the death of their king had left to themselves, completed the misfortune. One Meleager, a brother of Ptolemy Ceraunus, came forward as king, and then Antipater, a son of Philip, the brother of Cassander; but neither was able to maintain himself on account of the divisions among the Macedonians. What became of Meleager is uncertain, but Antipater afterwards appears again.
In these circumstances, Sosthenes, as we have seen, assembled an army, and successfully resisted the enemy. His exploits attracted so much attention that the Macedonians proclaimed him their king. But he did not accept the royal title for himself, but only demanded that they should take the oath of allegiance to him as a strategus; he is, however, enumerated among the kings of Macedonia. His modesty does him honour. When the barbarians had murdered and plundered to their hearts’ content, they gradually retreated, and Sosthenes restored a portion of Macedonia. But two years later, there followed a fresh invasion of the barbarians on their expedition to Delphi; he met them with all his forces, but the battle was lost, and the brave and worthy man died in consequence of illness, 279.
There now followed again a state of anarchy. Several pretenders arose against one another, who are mentioned in the fragments of Porphyrius on Macedonian history; Antipater came forward again, then Ptolemy a son of Lysimachus, Arrhidæus, and Antigonus. Antipater appears for a time to have had the upper hand, at least he was in possession of Macedonia at the time when Antigonus Gonatas gained the sovereignty. Among the pretenders we also find Eurydice, the daughter of Lysimachus, and widow of Antipater, the son of Cassander; she, being in possession of Cassandrea, restored its inhabitants to freedom. This must have happened after 280, when it was yet in the hands of Ptolemy Ceraunus, and before 277, in which year Antigonus Gonatas overpowered his competitors. We should scarcely know anything about that period, had not fortunately a kind providence preserved some isolated statements here and there, and in Eusebius the excerpts from Porphyrius on the chronology of the Macedonian kings.