Chapter IV: Ptolemy Euergetes, Ptolemy Philopator, and Ptolemy (2)

The night, however, passed off without any violence; but at daybreak the murmurs became louder, and the thousands in the palace yard called for the young king. By that time the Greek soldiers joined the mob, and then the guards within were no longer to be feared. The gates were soon burst open, and the palace searched. The mob rushed through the halls and lobbies, and, learning where the king had fled, hastened to the underground passage. It was guarded by three doors of iron grating; but, when the first was beaten in, Aristomenes was sent out to offer terms of surrender. Agathocles was willing to give up the young king, his misused power, his ill-gotten wealth and estates; he asked only for his life. But this was sternly refused, and a shout was raised to kill the messenger; and Aristomenes, the best of the ministers, whose only fault was the being a friend of Agathocles, and the having named his little daughter Agathoclea, would certainly have been killed upon the spot if somebody had not reminded them that they wanted to send back an answer.

Agathocles, seeing that he could hold out no longer, then gave up the little king, who was set upon a horse, and led away to the stadium amid the shouts of the crowd. There they seated him on the throne, and, while he was crying at being surrounded by strange faces, the mob loudly called for revenge on the guilty ministers. Sosibius, the somatophylax, the son of the former general of that name, seeing no other way of stopping the fury of the mob and the childs sobs, asked him if the enemies of his mother and of his throne should be given up to the people. The child of course answered yes, without understanding what was meant; and on that they let Sosibius take him to his own house to be out of the uproar. Agathocles was soon led out bound, and was stabbed by those who two days before would have felt honoured by a look from him. Agathoclea and her sister were then brought out, and lastly OEnanthe, their mother was dragged away from the altar of Ceres and Proserpine. Some bit them, some struck them with sticks, some tore their eyes out; her body was torn to pieces, and her limbs scattered among the crowd; to such lengths of madness and angry cruelty was the Alexandrian mob sometimes driven.

In the meanwhile some of the women called to mind that Philammon, who had been employed in the murder of Arsinoë, had within those three days come to Alexandria, and they made a rush at his house. The doors quickly gave way before their blows, and he was killed upon the spot by clubs and stones; his little son was strangled by these raging mothers, and his wife dragged naked into the street, and there torn to pieces. Thus died Agathocles and all his family; and the care of the young king then fell to Sosibius, and to Aristomenes, who had already gained a high character for wisdom and firmness.

While Egypt was thus without a government, Philip of Macedonia and Antiochus of Syria agreed to divide the foreign provinces between them; and Antiochus marched against Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. The guardians of the young Ptolemy sent against him an army under Scopas, the Ætolian, who was at first successful, but was afterwards beaten by Antiochus at Paneas in the valley of the Jordan, three and twenty miles above the Lake of Tiberias, and driven back into Egypt. In these battles the Jews, who had not forgotten the ill treatment that they had received from Philopator, joined Antiochus, after having been under the government of Egypt for exactly one hundred years; and in return Antiochus released Jerusalem from all taxes for three years, and afterwards from one-third of the taxes. He also sent a large sum of money for the service of the temple, and released the elders, priests, scribes, and singing men from all taxes for the future.

The Alexandrian statesmen had latterly shown themselves in their foreign policy very unworthy pupils of Ptolemy Soter and Philadelphus, who had both ably trimmed the balance of power between the several successors of Alexander. But even had they been wiser, they could hardly, before the end of the second Punic war, have foreseen that the Romans would soon be their most dangerous enemies. The overthrow of Hannibal, however, might perhaps have opened their eyes; but it was then too late; Egypt was too weak to form an alliance with Macedonia or Syria against the Romans. About this time, also, the Romans sent to Alexandria, to inform the king that they had conquered Hannibal, and brought to a close the second Punic war, and to thank him for the friendship of the Egyptians during that long and doubtful struggle of eighteen years, when so many of their nearer neighbours had joined the enemy. They begged that if the senate felt called upon to undertake a war against Philip, who, though no friend to the Egyptians, had not yet taken arms against them, it might cause no breach in the friendship between the King of Egypt and the Romans. In answer to this embassy, the Alexandrians, rushing to their own destruction, sent to Rome a message, which was meant to place the kingdom wholly in the hands of the senate. It was to beg them to undertake the guardianship of the young Ptolemy, and the defence of the kingdom against Philip and Antiochus during his childhood.

The Romans, in return, gave the wished-for answer; they sent ambassadors to Antiochus and Philip, to order them to make no attack upon Egypt, on pain of falling under the displeasure of the senate; and they sent Marcus Lepidus to Alexandria, to accept the offered prize, and to govern the foreign affairs of the kingdom, under the modest name of tutor to the young king. This high honour was afterwards mentioned by Lepidus, with pride, upon the coins struck when he was consul, in the eighteenth year of this reign. They have the city of Alexandria on the one side, and on the other the title of Tutor to the king, with the figure of the Roman in his toga, putting the diadem on the head of the young Ptolemy.

The haughty orders of the senate at first had very little weight with the two kings. Antiochus conquered Phoenicia and Coele-Syria; and he was then met by a second message from the senate, who no longer spoke in the name of their ward, the young King of Egypt, but ordered him to give up to the Roman people the states which he had seized, and which belonged, they said, to the Romans by the right of war.

On this, Antiochus made peace with Egypt by a treaty, in which he betrothed his daughter Cleopatra to the young Ptolemy, and added the disputed provinces of Phoenicia and Ccele-Syria as a dower, which were to be given up to Egypt when the king was old enough to be married.

Philip marched against Athens and the other states of Greece which had heretofore held themselves independent and in alliance with Egypt; and, when the Athenian embassy came to Alexandria to beg for the usual help, Ptolemys ministers felt themselves so much in the power of the senate that they sent to Rome to ask whether they should help their old friends, the Athenians, against Philip, the common enemy, or whether they should leave it to the Romans to help them. And these haughty republicans, who wished all their allies to forget the use of arms, who valued their friends not for their strength but for their obedience, sent them word that the senate did not wish them to help the Athenians, and that the Roman people would take care of their own allies. The Alexandrians looked upon the proud but unlettered Romans only as friends, as allies, who asked for no pay, who took no reward, who fought only for ambition and for the glory of their country.

Soon after this, the battle of Cynocephake in Thessaly was fought between Philip and the Romans, in which the Romans lost only seven hundred men, while as many as eight thousand Macedonians were left dead upon the field. This battle, though only between Rome and Macedonia, must not be passed unnoticed in the history of Egypt, where the troops were armed and disciplined like Macedonians; as it was the first time that the world had seen the Macedonian phalanx routed and in flight before any troops not so armed.

The phalanx was a body of spearsmen, in such close array that each man filled a space of only one square yard. The spear was seven yards long, and, when held in both hands, its point was five yards in front of the soldiers breast. There were sixteen ranks of these men, and, when the first five ranks lowered their spears, the point of the fifth spear was one yard in front of the foremost rank. The Romans, on the other hand, fought in open ranks, with one yard between each, or each man filled a space of four square yards, and in a charge would have to meet ten Macedonian spears. But then the Roman soldiers went into battle with much higher feelings than those of the Greeks. In Rome, arms were trusted only to the citizens, to those who had a country to love, a home to guard, and who had some share in making the laws which they were called upon to obey. But the Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria were made up either of natives who bowed their necks in slavery, or of mercenaries who made war their trade and rioted in its lawlessness; both of whom felt that they had little to gain from victory, and nothing to lose by a change of masters. Moreover, the warlike skill of the Romans was far greater than any that had yet been brought against the Greeks. It had lately been improved in their wars with Hannibal, the great master of that science. They saw that the phalanx could use its whole strength only on a plain; that a wood, a bog, a hill, or a river were difficulties which this close body of men could not always overcome. A charge or a retreat equally lessened its force; the phalanx was meant to stand the charge of others. The Romans, therefore, chose their own time and their own ground; they loosened their ranks and widened their front, avoided the charge, and attacked the Greeks at the side and in the rear; and the fatal discovery was at last made that the Macedonian phalanx was not unconquerable, and that closed ranks were only strong against barbarians. This news must have been heard by every statesman of Egypt and the East with alarm; the Romans were now their equals, and were soon to be their masters.

But to return to Egypt. It was, as we have seen, a country governed by men of a foreign race. Neither the poor who tilled the land, nor the rich who owned the estates, had any share in the government. They had no public duty except to pay taxes to their Greek masters, who walked among them as superior beings, marked out for fitness to rule by greater skill in the arts both of war and peace. The Greeks by their arms, or rather by their military discipline, had enforced obedience for one hundred and fifty years; and as they had at the same time checked lawless violence, made life and property safe, and left industry to enjoy a large share of its own earnings, this obedience had been for the most part granted to them willingly. They had even trusted the Egyptians with arms. But none are able to command unless they are at the same time able to obey. The Alexandrians were now almost in rebellion against their young king and his ministers; and the Greek government no longer gave the usual advantages in return for the obedience which it tyrannically enforced. Confusion increased each year during the childhood of the fifth Ptolemy, to whom Alexandrian flattery gave the title of Epiphanes, or The Illustrious. The Egyptian phalanx had in the last reign shown signs of disobedience, and at length it broke out in open rebellion. The discontented party strengthened themselves in the Busirite nome, in the middle of the Delta, and fortified the city of Lycopolis against the government; and a large supply of arms and warlike stores which they there got together proved the length of time that they had been preparing for resistance. The royal troops laid siege to the city in due form; they surrounded it with mounds and ditches; they dammed up the bed of the river on each side of it, and, being helped by a rise in the Nile, which was that year greater than usual, they forced the rebels to surrender, on the kings promise that they should be spared. But Ptolemy was not bound by promises; he was as false and cruel as he was weak; the rebels were punished; and many of the troubles in his reign arose from his discontented subjects not being able to rely upon his word.

The rich island of Cyprus also, which had been left by Philopator under the command of Polyerates, showed some signs of wishing to throw off the Egyptian yoke. But Polyerates was true to his trust; and, though the kings ministers were almost too weak either to help the faithful or punish the treacherous, he not only saved the island for the minor, but, when he gave up his government to Ptolemy of Megalopolis, he brought to the royal treasury at Alexandria a large sum from the revenues of his province. By this faithful conduct he gained great weight in the Alexandrian councils, till, corrupted by the poisonous habits of the place, he gave way to luxury and vice.

About the same time Scopas, who had lately led back to Alexandria his Ætolian mercenaries, so far showed signs of discontent and disobedience that the minister, Aristomenes, began to suspect him of planning resistance to the government. Scopas was greedy of money; nothing would satisfy his avarice.

The other Greek generals of his rank received while in the Egyptian service a mina, or ten dollars a day, under the name of mess-money, beyond the usual military pay; and Scopas claimed and received for his services the large sum of ten minas, or one hundred and twenty-five dollars, a day for mess-money. But even this did not content him. Aristomenes observed that he was collecting his friends for some secret purpose, and in frequent consultation with them. He therefore summoned him to the kings presence, and, being prepared for his refusal, he sent a large force to fetch him. Fearing that the mercenaries might support their general, Aristomenes had even ordered out the elephants and prepared for battle. But, as the blow came upon Scopas unexpectedly, no resistance was made, and he was brought prisoner to the palace. Aristomenes, however, did not immediately venture to punish him, but wisely summoned the Ætolian ambassadors and the chiefs of the mercenaries to his trial, and, as they made no objection, he then had him poisoned in prison.

No sooner was this rebellion crushed than the council took into consideration the propriety of declaring the kings minority at an end, as the best means of re-establishing the royal authority; and they thereupon determined shortly to celebrate his Anacleteria, or the grand ceremony of exhibiting him to the people as their monarch, though he wanted some years of the legal age; and accordingly, in the ninth year of his reign, the young king was crowned with great pomp at Memphis, the ancient capital of the kingdom.

On this occasion he came to Memphis by barge, in grand state, where he was met by the priests of Upper and Lower Egypt, and crowned in the temple of Phtah with the double crown, called Pschent, the crown of the two provinces. After the ceremony, the priests made the Decree in honour of the king, which is carved on the stone known by the name of the Rosetta Stone, in the British Museum. Ptolemy is there styled King of Upper and Lower Egypt, son of the gods Philopatores, approved by Phtah, to whom Ra has given victory, a living image of Amon, son of Ra, Ptolemy immortal, beloved by Phtah, god Epiphanes most gracious. In the date of the decree we are told the names of the priests of Alexander, of the gods Soteres, of the gods Adelphi, of the gods Euergetae, of the gods Philopatores, of the god Epiphanes himself, of Berenicê Euergetis, of Arsinoë Philadelphus, and of Arsinoë Philopator. The preamble mentions with gratitude the services of the king, or rather of his wise minister, Aristomenes; and the enactment orders that the statue of the king shall be worshipped in every temple of Egypt, and be carried out in the processions with those of the gods of the country; and lastly, that the decree is to be carved at the foot of every statue of the king, in sacred, in common, and in Greek writing. It is to this stone, with its three kinds of letters, and to the skill and industry of Dr. Thomas Young, and of the French scholar, Champollion, that we now owe our knowledge of hieroglyphics. The Greeks of Alexandria, and after them the Romans, who might have learned how to read this kind of writing if they had wished, seem never to have taken the trouble: it fell into disuse on the rise of Christianity in Egypt; and it was left for an Englishman to unravel the hidden meaning after it had been forgotten for nearly thirteen centuries.

The preamble of this decree tells us also that during the minority of the king the taxes were lessened; the crown debtors were forgiven; those who were found in prison charged with crimes against the state were released; the allowance from government for upholding the splendour of the temples was continued, as was the rent from land belonging to the priests; the first-fruits, or rather the coronation money, a tax paid by the priests to the king on the year of his coming to the throne, which was by custom allowed to be less than what the law ordered, was not increased; the priests were relieved from the heavy burden of making a yearly voyage to do homage at Alexandria; there was a stop put to the impressing men for the navy, which had been felt as a great cruelty by an inland people, whose habits and religion alike made them hate the sea, and this was a boon which was the more easily granted, as the navy of Alexandria, which was built in foreign dockyards and steered by foreign pilots, had very much fallen off in the reign of Philopator. The duties on linen cloth, which was the chief manufacture of the kingdom, and, after grain, the chief article exported, were lessened; the priests, who manufactured linen for the kings own use, probably for the clothing of the army, and the sails for the navy, were not called upon for so large a part of what they made as before; and the royalties on the other linen manufactories and the duties on the samples or patterns, both of which seem to have been unpaid for the whole of the eight years of the minority, were wisely forgiven. All the temples of Egypt, and that of Apis at Memphis in particular, were enriched by his gifts; in which pious actions, in grateful remembrance of their former benefactor, and with a marked slight to Philopator, they said that he was following the wishes of his grandfather, the god Euergetes. From this decree we gain some little insight into the means by which the taxes were raised under the Ptolemies; and we also learn that they were so new and foreign that they had no Egyptian word by which they could speak of them, and therefore borrowed the Greek word _syntaxes_.

History gives us many examples of kings who, like Epiphanes, gained great praise for the mildness and weakness of the government during their minorities. Aristomenes, the minister, who had governed Egypt for Epiphanes, fully deserved that trust. While the young king looked up to him as a father, the country was well governed, and his orders obeyed; but, as he grew older, his good feelings were weakened by the pleasures which usually beset youth and royalty. The companions of his vices gained that power over his mind which Aristomenes lost, and it was not long before this wise tutor and counsellor was got rid of. The king, weary perhaps with last nights debauchery, had one day fallen asleep when he should have been listening to the speech of a foreign ambassador. Aristomenes gently shook him and awoke him. His flatterers, when alone with him, urged him to take this as an affront. If, said they, it was right to blame the king for falling asleep when worn out with business and the cares of state, it should have been done in private, and not in the face of the whole court. So Aristomenes was put to death by being ordered to drink poison. Epiphanes then lost that love of his people which the wisdom of the minister had gained for him; and he governed the kingdom with the cruelty of a tyrant, rather than with the legal power of a king.

Even Aristonicus, his favourite eunuch, who was of the same age as himself, and had been brought up as his playfellow, passed him in the manly virtues of his age, and earned the praise of the country for setting him a good example, and checking him in his career of vice.

In the thirteenth year of his reign (B.C. 192), when the young king reached the age of eighteen, Antiochus the Great sent his daughter Cleopatra into Egypt, and the marriage, which had been agreed upon six years before, was then carried into effect; and the provinces of Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Judæa, which had been promised as a dower, were, in form at least, handed over to the generals of Epiphanes. Cleopatra was a woman of strong mind and enlarged understanding; and Antiochus hoped that, by means of the power which she would have over the weaker mind of Epiphanes, he should gain more than he lost by giving up Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. But she acted the part of a wife and a queen, and, instead of betraying her husband into the hands of her father, she was throughout the reign his wisest and best counsellor.

Antiochus seems never to have given up his hold upon the provinces which had been promised as the dower; and the peace between the two countries, which had been kept during the six years after Cleopatra had been betrothed, was broken as soon as she was married. The war was still going on between Antiochus and the Romans; and Epiphanes soon sent to Rome a thousand pounds weight of gold and twenty thousand pounds of silver, to help the republic against their common enemy. But the Romans neither hired mercenaries nor fought as such, the thirst for gold had not yet become the strongest feeling in the senate, and they sent back the money to Alexandria with many thanks.

In the twentieth year of his reign Epiphanes was troubled by a second serious rebellion of the Egyptians. Polycrates marched against them at the head of the Greek troops; and, as he brought with him a superior force, and the kings promise of a free pardon to all who should return to their obedience, the rebels yielded to necessity and laid down their arms. The leaders of the rebellion, Athinis, Pausiras, Chesuphus, and Irobashtus, whose Koptic names prove that this was a struggle on the part of the Egyptians to throw off the Greek yoke, were brought before the king at Saïs. Epiphanes, in whose youthful heart were joined the cruelty and cowardice of a tyrant, who had not even shown himself to the army during the danger, was now eager to act the conqueror; and in spite of the promises of safety on which these brave Kopts had laid down their arms, he had them tied to his chariot wheels, and copying the vices of men whose virtues he could not even understand, like Achilles and Alexander, he dragged them living round the city walls, and then ordered them to be put to death. He then led the army to Naucratis, which was the port of Saïs, and there he embarked on the Nile for Alexandria, and taking with him a further body of mercenaries, which Aristonicus had just brought from Greece, he entered the city in triumph.

Ptolemy of Megalopolis, the new governor of Cyprus, copied his predecessor, Polycrates, in his wise and careful management. His chief aim was to keep the province quiet, and his next to collect the taxes. He was at first distrusted by the Alexandrian council for the large sum of money which he had got together and kept within his own power; but when he sent it all home to the empty treasury, they were as much pleased as they were surprised.

Apollonius, whom we have spoken of in the reign of Euergetes, and who had been teaching at Rhodes during the reign of Philopator, was recalled to Alexandria in the beginning of this reign, and made librarian of the museum on the death of Eratosthenes. But he did not long enjoy that honour. He was already old, and shortly afterwards died at the age of ninety.

The coins of this king are known by the glory or rays of sun which surround his head, and which agrees with his name, Epiphanes, illustrious, or as it is written in the hieroglyphics, light bearing. On the other side is the cornucopia between two stars, with the name of King Ptolemy. No temples, and few additions to temples, seem to have been built in Upper Egypt during this reign, which began and ended in rebellion. We find, however, a Greek inscription at Philas, of King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra, gods Epiphanes, and Ptolemy their son, to Asclepius, a god whom the Egyptians called Imothph the son of Pthah.

Cyprus and Cyrene were nearly all that were left to Egypt of its foreign provinces. The cities of Greece, which had of their own wish put themselves under Egypt for help against their nearer neighbours, now looked to Rome for that help; part of Asia Minor was under Seleu-cus, the son of Antiochus the Great; Cole-Syria and Phoenicia, which had been given up to Epiphanes, had been again soon lost; and the Jews, who in all former wars had sided with the Kings of Egypt, as being not only the stronger but the milder rulers, now joined Seleucus. The ease with which the wide-spreading provinces of this once mighty empire fell off from their allegiance, showed how the whole had been upheld by the warlike skill of its kings, rather than by a deep-rooted hold in the habits of the people. Instead of wondering that the handful of Greeks in Alexandria, on whom the power rested, lost those wide provinces, we should rather wonder that they were ever able to hold them.

After the death of Antiochus the Great, Ptolemy again proposed to enforce his rights over Ccele-Syria, which he had given up only in the weakness of his minority; and he is said to have been asked by one of his generals, how he should be able to pay for the large forces which he was getting together for that purpose; and he playfully answered, that his treasure was in the number of his friends. But his joke was taken in earnest; they were afraid of new taxes and fresh levies on their estates; and means were easily taken to poison him. He died in the twenty-ninth year of his age, after a reign of twenty-four years; leaving the navy unmanned, the army in disobedience, the treasury empty, and the whole framework of government out of order.

Just before his death he had sent to the Achaians to offer to send ten galleys to join their fleet; and Polybius, the historian, to whom we owe so much of our knowledge of these reigns, although he had not yet reached the age called for by the Greek law, was sent by the Achaians as one of the ambassadors, with his father, to return thanks; but before they had quitted their own country they were stopped by the news of the death of Epiphanes.

Those who took away the life of the king seem to have had no thoughts of mending the form of government, nor any plan by which they might lessen the power of his successor. It was only one of those outbreaks of private vengeance which have often happened in unmixed monarchies, where men are taught that the only way to check the kings tyranny is by his murder; and the little notice that was taken of it by the people proves their want of public virtue as well as of political wisdom.