The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

These large forces were maintained by a yearly income, equally large, of fourteen thousand eight hundred talents, or two millions and a quarter pounds sterling, besides the tax on corn, which was taken in kind, of a million and a half of artabas, or about five millions of bushels. To this we may add a mass of gold, silver, and other valuable stores in the treasury, which were boastfully reckoned at the unheard-of sum of seven hundred and forty thousand talents, or above one hundred million pounds sterling.

The trade down the Nile was larger than it had ever been before; the coasting trade on the Mediterranean was new; the people were rich and happy; justice was administered to the Egyptians according to their own laws, and to the Greeks of Alexander, according to the Macedonian laws; the navy commanded the whole of the eastern half of the Mediterranean; the schools and library had risen to a great height upon the wise plans of Ptolemy Soter; in every point of view Alexandria was the chief city in the world. Athens had no poets or other writers during this century equal in merit to those who ennobled the Museum. Philadelphus, by joining to the greatness and good government of his father the costly splendour and pomp of an eastern monarch, so drew the eyes of after ages upon his reign that his name passed into a proverb.

Needless to say, the civilisation of this time was essentially Greek. The main body of writers and scholars of the period naturally gave the stamp of this culture to the epoch. Yet the old civilisation of Egypt must have reacted upon the intruders in many ways.

Philadelphus died in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, leaving the kingdom as powerful and more wealthy than when it came to him from his father; and he had the happiness of having a son who would carry on, even for the third generation, the wise plans of the first Ptolemy.

PTOLEMY EUERGETES

Ptolemy, the eldest son of Philadelphus, succeeded his father on the throne of Egypt, and after a short time took the name of Euergetes. He began his reign with a Syrian war; for no sooner was Philadelphus dead than Antiochus, who had married Berenice only because it was one of the articles of the treaty with Egypt, sent her away together with her young son. Antiochus then recalled his first wife, Laodice, and she, distrusting her changeable husband, had him at once murdered to secure the throne to her own children. Seleucus, the eldest, seized the throne of Syria; and, urged on by his mother, sent a body of men after Berenice, with orders to put her to death, together with her son, who by the articles of marriage had been made heir to the throne.

[245-222 B.C.]

The cities of Asia Minor hastily sent help to the queen and her son, while Ptolemy Euergetes, her brother, who had just come to the throne of Egypt, marched without loss of time into Syria. But it was too late to save them; they were both put to death by the soldiers of Seleucus. Many of the cities, moved by hatred of their king’s cruelty, opened their gates to the army of Euergetes; and, had he not been recalled to Egypt by troubles at home, he would soon have been master of the whole of the kingdom of Seleucus. As it was, he had marched beyond the Euphrates, had left an Egyptian army in Seleucia the capital of Syria, and had gained a large part of Asia Minor. On his march homeward, he laid his gifts upon the altar in the temple of Jerusalem, and there returned thanks to heaven for his victories. He had been taught to bow the knee to the crowds of Greek and Egyptian gods; and, as Palestine was part of his kingdom, it seemed quite natural to add the god of the Jews to the list.