_The Syrian Invasion: The Jews and the Bible: Relations with Rome:
Literature of the Age._
At the beginning of the last reign the Alexandrians had sadly felt the
want of a natural guardian to the young king, and they were now glad to
copy the customs of the conquered Egyptians. Epiphanes had left behind
him two sons, each named Ptolemy, and a daughter named Cleopatra; and
the elder son, though still a child, mounted the throne under the able
guardianship of his mother, Cleopatra, and took the very suitable name
of Philometor, or _mother-loving_. The mother governed the kingdom for
seven years as regent during the minority of her son. When Philometor
reached his fourteenth year, the age at which his minority ceased, his
coronation was celebrated with great pomp. Ambassadors from several
foreign states were sent to Egypt to wish the king joy, to do honour to
the day, and to renew the treaties of peace with him: Caius Valerius and
four others were sent from Rome; Apollonius, the son of Mnestheus, was
sent from Judæa; and we may regret with Polybius that he himself was not
able to form part of the embassy then sent from the Achaians, that he
might have seen the costly and curious ceremony, and given us an account
of it.
While Cleopatra lived, she had been able to keep her son at peace with
her brother, Antiochus Epiphanes, but upon her death, Leneus and the
eunuch Eulaius, who then had the care of the young king, sought to
reconquer Coele-Syria; and they embroiled the country in a war, at a
time when weakness and decay might have been seen in every part of
the army and navy, and when there was the greatest need of peace.
Coele-Syria and Phoenicia had been given to Ptolemy Epiphanes as his
wifes dower; but, when Philometor seemed too weak to grasp them,
Antiochus denied that his father had ever made such a treaty, and got
ready to march against Egypt, as the easiest way to guard Coele-Syria.
By this time the statesmen of Egypt ought to have learned the mistake
in their foreign policy. By widening their frontier they always weakened
it. They should have fortified the passes between the Red Sea and the
Mediterranean, not cities in Asia. When Antiochus entered Egypt he was
met at Pelusium by the army of Philometor, which he at once routed in
a pitched battle. The whole of Egypt was then in his power; he marched
upon Memphis with a small force, and seized it without having to strike
a blow, helped perhaps by the plea that he was acting on behalf of his
nephew, Ptolemy Philometor, who then fell into his hands.
On this, the younger Ptolemy, the brother of Philometor, who was with
his sister Cleopatra in Alexandria, and was about fifteen years old,
declared himself king, and sent ambassadors to Rome to ask for help
against Antiochus; and taking the name of the most popular of his
forefathers, he called himself Euergetes. He is, however, better known
in history as Ptolemy Physcon, or _bloated_, a nickname which was
afterwards given to him when he had grown fat and unwieldy from the
diseases of luxury.
Comanus and Cineas were the chief advisers of the young Euergetes; and
in their alarm they proposed to send the foreign ambassadors to meet the
invader on his march from Memphis, and to plead for peace. This task
the ambassadors kindly undertook. There were then in Alexandria two
embassies from the Achaians, one to renew the treaty of peace, and one
to settle the terms of the coming wrestling match. There were there
three embassies from Athens, one with gifts from the city, one about the
Panathenaic games, and one about the celebration of the mysteries. There
was also an embassy from Miletus, and one from Clazomenæ. On the day of
their arrival at Memphis, Antiochus feasted these numerous ambassadors
in grand state, and on the next day gave them an audience. But their
arguments for peace carried no weight with him; and he denied that his
father, Antiochus the Great, had ever given Coele-Syria as a dower
with his daughter Cleopatra to Epiphanes. To gain time he promised
the ambassadors that he would give them an answer as soon as his own
ambassadors returned from Alexandria; and in the meanwhile he carried
his army down the Nile to Naucratis, and thence marched to the capital
to begin the siege.
Antiochus, however, was defeated in his first assault upon Alexandria,
and finding that he should not soon be able to bring the siege to an
end, he sent off an embassy to Rome with a hundred and fifty talents of
gold, fifty as a present to the senate, and the rest to be divided among
the states of Greece, whose help he might need. At the same time, also,
an embassy from the Rhodians arrived in the port of Alexandria, to
attempt to restore peace to the country of their old allies. Antiochus
received the Rhodian ambassadors in his tent, but would not listen to
the long speech with which they threatened him, and shortly told them
that he came as the friend of his elder nephew, the young Philometor,
and if the Alexandrians wished for peace they should open the gates
to their rightful king. Antiochus was, however, defeated in all his
assaults on the city, and he at last withdrew his army and returned
to Syria. He left Euergetes, King of the Greeks, at Alexandria, and
Philometor at Memphis, King of the rest of Egypt. But he kept Pelusium,
where he placed a strong garrison that he might be able easily to
re-enter Egypt whenever he chose.
Ptolemy Macron, the Alexandrian governor of Cyprus, added to the
troubles of the country by giving up his island to Antiochus. But he
met with the usual fate of traitors, he was badly rewarded; and when he
complained of his treatment, he was called a traitor by the very men who
had gained by his treachery, and he poisoned himself in the bitterness
of his grief. Antiochus, like most invaders, carried off whatever
treasure fell into his hands. Egypt was a sponge which had not lately
been squeezed, and his court and even his own dinner-table then shone
with a blaze of silver and gold unknown in Syria before this inroad into
Egypt.
By these acts, and by the garrison left in Pelusium, the eyes of
Philometor were opened, and he saw that his uncle had not entered Egypt
for his sake, but to make it a province of Syria, after it had been
weakened by civil war. He therefore wisely forgave his rebellious
brother and sister in Alexandria, and sent offers of peace to them; and
it was agreed that the two Ptolemies should reign together, and turn
their forces against the common enemy. It was most likely at this
time, and as a part of this treaty, that Philometor married his sister
Cleopatra. It was mainly by her advice and persuasion that the quarrel
between the two brothers was for the time healed. On this treaty between
the brothers the year was called the twelfth of Ptolemy Philometor and
the first of Ptolemy Euergetes, and the public deeds of the kingdom were
so dated.
The next year Antiochus Epiphanes again entered Egypt, claiming the
island of Cyprus and the country round Pelusium as the price of his
forbearance; and, on his marching forward, Memphis a second time opened
its gates to him without a battle. He came down by slow marches towards
Alexandria, and crossed the canal at Leucine, four miles from the city.
There he was met by the Roman ambassadors, who ordered him to quit the
country. On his hesitating, Popilius, who was one of them, drew a circle
round him on the sand with his stick, and told him that, if he crossed
that line without promising to leave Egypt at once, it should be taken
as a declaration of war against Rome. On this threat Antiochus again
quitted Egypt, and the brothers sent ambassadors to Rome to thank the
senate for their help, and to acknowledge that they owed more to the
Roman people than they did to the gods or to their forefathers.
The treaty made on this occasion between Philometor and Antiochus
was written by Heraclides Lembus, the son of Serapion, a native of
Oxyrynchus, who wrote on the succession of the philosophers in the
several Greek schools, and other works on philosophy, but whose chief
work was a history named the Lembeutic History.
Four years afterwards, in B. c. 164, Antiochus Epiphanes died; and the
Jews of Judæa, who had been for some time struggling for liberty, then
gained a short rest for their unhappy country. Judas Maccabæus had
raised his countrymen in rebellion against the foreigners; he had
defeated the Syrian forces in several battles; and was at last able
to purify the temple and re-establish the service there as of old. He
therefore sent to the Jews of Egypt to ask them to join their Hebrew
brethren in celebrating the feast of tabernacles on that great occasion.
[Illustration: 219.jpg TEMPLE OF HERMONTHIS.]
The unhappy quarrels between the Egyptian kings soon broke out again;
and, as the party of Euergetes was the stronger, Philometor was driven
from his kingdom, and he fled to Rome for safety and for help. He
entered the city privately, and took up his lodgings in the house of
one of his own subjects, a painter of Alexandria. His pride led him
to refuse the offers of better entertainment which were made to him by
Demetrius, the nephew of Antiochus, who, like himself, was hoping to
regain his kingdom by the help of the Romans. The Kings of Egypt and
Syria, the two greatest kingdoms in the world, were at the same time
asking to be heard at the bar of the Roman senate, and were claiming the
thrones of their fathers at the hands of men who could make and unmake
kings at their pleasure.
As soon as the senate heard that Philometor was in Rome, they lodged him
at the cost of the state in a manner becoming his high rank, and soon
sent him back to Egypt, with orders that Euergetes should reign in
Cyrene, and that the rest of the kingdom should belong to Philometor.
This happened in the seventeenth year of Philometor and the sixth of
Euergetes, which was the last year that was named after the two kings.
Cassius Longinus, who was next year consul at Rome, was most likely
among the ambassadors who replaced Philometor on the throne; for he put
the Ptolemaic eagle and thunderbolt on his coins, as though to claim the
sovereignty of Egypt for the senate.
To these orders Euergetes was forced to yield; but the next year he
went himself to Rome to complain to the senate that they had made a
very unfair division of the kingdom, and to beg that they would add
the island of Cyprus to his share. After hearing the ambassadors from
Philometor, who were sent to plead on the other side, the senate granted
the prayer of Euergetes, and sent ambassadors to Cyprus, with orders to
hand that island over to Euergetes, and to make use of the fleets and
armies of the republic if these orders were disobeyed.
Euergetes, during his stay in Rome, if we may believe Plutarch, made an
offer of marriage to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but this offer
of a throne could not make the high-minded matron quit her children and
her country. He left Italy with the Roman ambassadors, and, in passing
through Greece, he raised a large body of mercenaries to help him to
wrest Cyprus from his brother, as it would seem that the governor,
faithful to his charge, would not listen to the commands of Rome. But
the ambassadors had been told to conquer Cyprus, if necessary, with the
arms of the republic only, and they therefore made Euergetes disband
his levies. They sailed for Alexandria to enforce their orders upon
Philometor, and sent Euergetes home to Cyrene. Philometor received the
Roman ambassadors with all due honours; he sometimes gave them fair
promises, and sometimes put them off till another day; and tried to spin
out the time without saying either yes or no to the message from the
senate. Euergetes sent to Alexandria to ask if they had gained their
point; but though they threatened to return to Rome if they were not at
once obeyed, Philometor, by his kind treatment and still kinder words,
kept them more than forty days longer at Alexandria.
At last the Roman ambassadors left Egypt, and on their way home they
went to Cyrene, to let Euergetes know that his brother had disobeyed the
orders of the senate, and would not give up Cyprus; and Euergetes then
sent two ambassadors to Rome to beg them to revenge their affronted
dignity and to enforce their orders by arms. The senate of course
declared the peace with Egypt at an end, and ordered the ambassadors
from Philometor to quit Rome within five days, and sent their own
ambassadors to Cyrene to tell Euergetes of their decree.
But while this was going on, the state of Cyrene had risen in arms
against Euergetes; his vices and cruelty had made him hated, they had
gained for him the nicknames of Kakergetes, or _mischief-maker_, and
Physcon, or _bloated_; and while wishing to gain Cyprus he was in danger
of losing his own kingdom. When he marched against the rebels, he was
beaten and wounded, either in the battle or by an attack upon his life
afterwards, and his success was for some time doubtful. When he had at
last put down this rising, he sailed for Rome, to urge his complaints
against Philometor, upon whom he laid the blame of the late rebellion,
and to ask for help. The senate, after hearing both sides, sent a small
fleet with Euergetes, not large enough to put him on the throne of
Cyprus, but gave him, what they had before refused, leave to levy
an army of his own, and to enlist their allies in Greece and Asia as
mercenaries under his standard.
The Roman troops seem not to have helped Euergetes; but he landed in
Cyprus with his own mercenaries, and was there met by Philometor, who
had brought over the Egyptian army in person. Euergetes, however, was
beaten in several battles, he was soon forced to shut himself up in
the city of Lapitho, and at last to lay down his arms before his elder
brother.
If Philometor had upon this put his brother to death, the deed would
have seemed almost blameless after the family murders already related
in this history. But, with a goodness of heart, he a second time forgave
his brother all that had passed, replaced him on the throne of Cyrene,
and promised to give him his daughter in marriage.
[Illustration: 223.jpg GARDEN NEAR HELIOPOLIS]
We are not told whether the firmness and forgiving mildness of
Philometor had turned the Roman senate in his favour, but their troops
seemed wanted in other quarters; at any rate they left off trying to
enforce their decree; Philometor kept Cyprus, and sent Euergetes a
yearly gift of grain from Alexandria.
During the wars in Syria between Philometor and Antiochus Epiphanes, at
the beginning of this reign, the Jews were divided into two parties, one
favouring the Egyptians and one the Syrians. At last the Syrian party
drove their enemies out of Jerusalem; and Onias, the high priest, with
a large body of Jews, fled to Egypt. There they were well received
by Philometor, who allowed them to dwell in the neighbourhood of
Heliopolis; and he gave them leave to build a temple and ordain priests
for themselves. Onias built his temple at On or Onion, a city about
twenty-three miles from Memphis, once the capital of the district of
Heliopolis. It was on the site of an old Egyptian temple of the goddess
Pasht, which had fallen into disuse and decay, and was built after the
model of the temple of Jerusalem. Though by the Jewish law there was to
be no second temple, yet Onias defended himself by quoting, as if meant
for his own times, the words of Isaiah, who says that in that day there
shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt. The
building of this temple, and the celebrating the Jewish feasts there,
as in rivalry to the temple of Jerusalem, were a never-failing cause
of quarrel between the Hebrew and the Greek Jews. They each altered the
words of the Bible to make it speak their own opinions. The Hebrew Bible
now says that the new temple was in the City of Destruction, and the
Greek Bible says that it was in the City of Righteousness; whereas, from
the Arabic version and some early commentaries, it seems that Isaiah was
speaking of the city of Heliopolis, where there had been of old an altar
to the Lord. The leaders of the Greek party wished the Jews to throw
aside the character of strangers and foreign traders; to be at home and
to become owners of the soil. Hate not laborious work, says the son of
Sirach; neither husbandry, which the Most High hath ordained.
About the same time the Jews brought before Ptolemy, as a judge, their
quarrel with the Samaritans, as to whether, according to the law of
Moses, the temple ought to have been built at Jerusalem, or on the green
and fertile Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans built their temple, or
on the barren white crags of Mount Ebal, where the Hebrew Bible says
that it should be built; and as to which nation had altered their copies
of the Bible in the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy and eighth
chapter of Joshua. This dispute had lately been the cause of riots and
rebellion. Ptolemy seems to have decided the question for political
reasons, and to please his own subjects, the Alexandrian Jews; and
without listening to the arguments as to what the law ordered, he was
content with the proof that the temple had stood at Jerusalem for about
eight hundred years, and he put to death the two Samaritan pleaders, who
had probably been guilty of some outrage against the Jews in zeal for
Mount Gerizim, and for which they might then have been on their trial.
Onias, the high priest, was much esteemed by Philometor, and bore high
offices in the government; as also did Dositheus, another Jew, who had
been very useful in helping the king to crush a rebellion. Dositheus
called himself a priest and a Levite, though his title to that honour
seems to have been doubted by his countrymen. He had brought with him
into Egypt the book of Esther, written in Greek, which he said had been
translated out of the Hebrew in Jerusalem by Lysimachus. It contained
some additions for which the Hebrew has never been brought forward, and
which are now placed among the uncanonical books in the Apocrypha.
Since the Ptolemies had found themselves too weak to hold Ethiopia, they
had placed a body of soldiers on the border of the two countries, to
guard Egypt from the inroads of the enemy. This station, twelve miles
to the south of Syênê, had by degrees grown into a city, and was called
Parembole, or _The Camp_; and, as most of the soldiers were Greek
mercenaries, it was natural that the temple which Philometor built there
should be dedicated in the Greek language. Of the temples hitherto built
by the Ptolemies, in the Egyptian cities, every one seems to have had
the kings name and titles, and its dedication to the gods, carved on
its massive portico in hieroglyphics; but this was in a Greek city, and
it was dedicated to Isis and Serapis, on behalf of Philometor and his
queen, in a Greek inscription.
[Illustration: 227.jpg TEMPLE OF APOLLONOPOLIS]
Philometor also built a temple at Antseopolis to Antaeus, a god of whom
we know little, but that he gave his name to the city; and another to
Aroëris at Ombos; and in the same way he carved the dedications on the
porticoes in the Greek language. This custom became common after that
time, and proves both the lessened weight which the native Egyptians
bore in the state, and that the kings had forgotten the wise rules of
Ptolemy Soter, in regard to the religious feelings of the people. They
must have been greatly shocked by this use of foreign writing in the
place of the old characters of the country, which, from having been used
in the temples, even for ages beyond the reach of history, had at last
been called sacred. In the temple at Antoopolis we note a marked change
in the style of building. The screen in front of the great portico is
almost removed by having a doorway made in it between every pair of
columns.
It is to this reign, also, that we seem to owe the great temple at
Apollinopolis Magna, although it was not finished till one or two
reigns later. It is one of the largest and least ruined of the Egyptian
temples. Its front is formed of two huge square towers, with sloping
sides, between which is the narrow doorway, the only opening in its
massive walls. Through this the worshipper entered a spacious courtyard
or cloister, where he found shade from the sun under a covered walk on
either side. In front is the lofty portico with six large columns, the
entrance to the body of the building. This last is flat-roofed, and far
lower than the grand portico which hid it from the eyes of the crowd in
the courtyard. The staircases in the towers are narrow. The sacred rooms
within were small and dark, with only a glimmering flame here and there
before an altar, except when lighted up with a blaze of lamps on a
feast-day. As a castle it must have had great strength; from the top
and loopholes of the two towers, stones and darts might be hurled at the
enemy; and as it was in the hands of the Egyptians, it is the strongest
proof that they were either not distrusted or not feared by their Greek
rulers. The city of Apollinopolis stands on a grand and lofty situation,
overlooking the river and the valley; and this proud temple, rising
over all, can only have been planned by military skill as a fortress to
command the whole.
At this time the Greeks in Egypt were beginning to follow the custom of
their Egyptian brethren, to take upon themselves monastic vows, and
to shut themselves up in the temples in religious idleness. But these
foreigners were looked upon with jealousy by the Egyptian monks as
intruders on their endowments, and we meet with a petition addressed
to Philometor by Ptolemy, the son of Glaucias, a monk in the temple of
Serapis at Memphis, who styles himself a Macedonian, complaining that
his cell had been violently entered and himself ill-treated because
he was a Greek; and reminding the king that last year, when the king
visited the Serapium, he had addressed the same petition to him through
the bars of his window. The priests in temples of Egypt were maintained,
partly by their own estates, and partly by the offerings of the pious;
and we still possess a deed of sale made in this reign by the Theban
priests, of one-half of a third of their collections for the dead who
had been buried in Thynabunum, the Libyan suburb of Thebes. This sixth
share of the collections consisted of seven or eight families of slaves;
the price of it was four hundred pieces of brass; the bargain was made
in the presence of sixteen witnesses, whose names are given; and the
deed was registered and signed by a public notary in the city of Thebes.
The custom of giving offerings to the priests for the good of the dead
would seem to have been a cause of some wealth to the temples. It was
one among the many Egyptian customs forbidden by the law of Moses.
From this deed of sale we also gain some knowledge of the state of
slavery in Egypt. The names of the slaves and of their fathers are
Koptic, and in some cases borrowed from the names of the gods; hence
the slaves were probably of the same religion, and spoke nearly the same
language as their masters. They sunk into that low state rather by their
own want of mind than by their masters power. In each case the slave
was joined in the same lot with his children; and the low price of four
hundred pieces of brass, perhaps about thirty-eight dollars for eight
families, or even if it be meant for the half of eight families, proves
that they were of the nature of serfs, and that the master, either by
law or custom, could have had no power of cruelly overworking them. On
the other hand, in the reign of Philadelphus, the prisoners taken in
battle, who might be treated with greater severity, were ransomed at
fifteen dollars each. We see by the monuments that there were also a
few negroes in the same unhappy state of slavery. They were probably not
treated much worse than the lowest class of those born on the soil,
but they were much more valuable. Other slaves of the Berber race were
brought in coasting vessels from Opone on the incense coast, near to the
island of Dioscorides.
Aristarchus, who had been the tutor of Euergetes II., and of a son of
Philometor, was one of the ornaments of this reign. He had been a pupil
of Aristophanes, the grammarian, and had then studied under Crates at
Pergamus, the rival school to Alexandria. He died at Cyprus, whither he
probably withdrew on the death of Philometor. He was chiefly known for
his critical writings, in which his opinions of poetry were thought
so just that few dared to disagree with them; and his name soon became
proverbial for a critic. Aristarchus had also the good fortune to be
listened to in his lecture-room by one whose name is far more known than
those of his two royal pupils. Moschus of Syracuse, the pastoral poet,
was one of his hearers; but his fame must not be claimed for Alexandria;
he can hardly have learned from the critic that just taste by which he
joined softness and sweetness to the rude plainness of the Doric muse.
Indeed in this he only followed his young friend Bion, whose death he
so beautifully bewails, and from whose poems he generously owns that he
learned so much. It may be as well to add that the lines in which he
says that Theocritus, who had been dead above one hundred years, joined
with him in his sorrow for the death of Bion are later additions not
found in the early manuscripts of his poems.
From our slight acquaintance with Bions life, we are left in doubt
whether he accompanied his friend Moschus to the court of Alexandria;
but it is probable that he did. In his beautiful lamentation for the
death of Adonis, we have an imitation of the melancholy chant of the
Egyptians, named _maneros_, which they sang through the streets in the
procession on the feast of Isis, when the crowd joined in the chorus,
Ah, hapless Isis, Osiris is no more. The tale has been a good deal
changed by the Sicilian muse of Bion, but in the boar which killed
Adonis, we have the wicked Typhon as carved on the monuments; we have
also the wound in the thigh, and the consolations of the priests,
who every year ended their mournful song with advising the goddess to
reserve her sorrow for another year, when on the return of the festival
the same lament would be again celebrated. The whole poem has a depth
and earnestness of feeling which is truly Egyptian, but which was very
little known in Alexandria.
To the Alexandrian grammarians, and more particularly to Aristophanes,
Aristarchus, and their pupil, Ammonius, we are indebted for our
present copies of Homer. These critics acted like modern editors, each
publishing an edition, or rather writing out a copy, which was then
re-copied in the museum as often as called for by the demands of the
purchasers of books. Aristophanes left perhaps only one such copy or
edition, while Aristarchus, in his efforts to correct the text of the
great epic poet, made several such copies. These were in the hands of
the later scholiasts, who appealed to them as their authority, and
ventured to make no further alterations; we therefore now read the Iliad
and Odyssey nearly as left by these Alexandrian critics. They no doubt
took some liberties in altering the spelling and smoothing the lines;
and, though we should value most highly a copy in the rougher form in
which it came into their hands, yet, on the whole, we must be great
gainers by their labours. They divided the Iliad and Odyssey into
twenty-four books each, and corrected the faulty metres; but one of
their chief tasks was to set aside, or put a mark against, those more
modern lines which had crept into the ancient poems. It had been
usual to call every old verse Homers or Homeric, and these it was the
business of the critic to mark as not genuine. Aristarchus was jocosely
said to have called every line spurious which he did not like; but
everything that we can learn of him leads us to believe that he executed
his task with judgment. From these men sprang the school of Alexandrian
grammarians, who for several centuries continued their minute and often
unprofitable studies in verbal criticism.
[Illustration: 234.jpg THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER]
These were the palmy days of criticism. Never before or since have
critics held so high a place in literature. The world was called upon to
worship and do honour to the poet, but chiefly that it might admire the
skill of the critic who could name the several sources of his beauties.
The critic now ranked higher than a priest at the foot of Mount
Parnassus. Homer was lifted to the skies that the critic might stand on
a raised pedestal among the Muses. Such seems to be the meaning of
the figures on the upper part of the well-known sculpture called the
Apotheosis of Homer. It was made in this reign; and at the foot Ptolemy
and his mother, in the characters of Time and the World, are crowning
the statue of the poet, in the presence of ten worshippers who represent
the literary excellences which shine forth in his poems. The figures
of the Iliad and Odyssey kneel beside his seat, and the Frogs and Mice
creep under his footstool, showing that the latter mock-heroic poem was
already written and called the work of Homer.
Other celebrities who flourished under the fifth Ptolemy were
Pamphilius, an Alexandrian physician who wrote on medical plants;
Meander, a poet and physician who studied poisons, and the great
Hipparchus, the founder of mathematical astronomy. Hero, also, in this
reign, invented a kind of primitive steam-engine.
[Illustration: 235.jpg HEROS ROTATING STEAM ENGINE]
These men and their contemporaries were in the habit of writing their
scientific observations in the form of poetry, but it was verse without
earnestness and feeling, and such of it as survives is valued not for
its literary qualities or charms of diction, but for the side-lights it
throws upon the manners and education of the age.
The portrait of the king is known from those coins which bear the name
of _King Ptolemy the mother-loving god_. The eagle on the other side
of the coins has a phoenix or palm-branch on its wing or by its side,
which may be supposed to mean that they were struck in Phoenicia.
We have not before met with the title of god, on the coins of
the Ptolemies; but, as every one of them had been so named in the
hieroglyphical inscriptions, it can scarcely be called new.
When Philometor quitted the island of Cyprus after beating his brother
in battle, he left Archias as governor, who entered into a plot to give
it up to Demetrius, King of Syria, for the sum of five hundred talents.
But the plot was found out, and the traitor then put an end to his own
life, to escape from punishment and self-reproach. By this treachery of
Demetrius, Philometor was made his enemy, and he joined Attalus, King
of Pergamus, and Ariarathes, King of Cappadocia, in setting up Alexander
Balas as a pretender to the throne of Syria, who beat Demetrius in
battle, and put him to death. Philometor two years afterwards gave his
elder daughter, Cleopatra, in marriage to Alexander, and led her himself
to Ptolemaïs, or Acre, where the marriage was celebrated with great
pomp.
But even in Ptolemaïs, the city in which Alexander had been so covered
with favours, Philometor was near falling under the treachery of his new
son-in-law. He learned that a plot had been formed against his life by
Ammonius, and he wrote to Alexander to beg that the traitor might be
given up to justice. But Alexander acknowledged the plot as his own,
and refused to give up his servant. On this, Philometor recalled his
daughter, and turned against Alexander the forces which he had led into
Syria to uphold him. He then sent to the young Demetrius, afterwards
called Nicator, the son of his late enemy, to offer him the throne and
wife which he had lately given to Alexander Balas. Demetrius was equally
pleased with the two offers. Philometor then entered Antioch at the head
of his army, and there he was proclaimed by the citizens King of Asia
and Egypt; but with a forbearance then very uncommon, he called together
the council of the people, and refused the crown, and persuaded them to
receive Demetrius as their king.
[Illustration: 237.jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY V.]
It is interesting to note that Alexander Balas and Demetrius Nicator
each in his turn acknowledged his debt to the King of Egypt by putting
the Ptolemaic eagle on his coins, and adjusting them to the Egyptian
standard of weight: and in this they were afterwards followed by
Antiochus, the son of Demetrius. The Romans, on the other hand,
sometimes used the same eagle in boast of their power over Egypt; but we
cannot be mistaken in what was meant by these Syrian kings, who none of
them, when their coins were struck, were seated safely on the throne.
With them, as with some of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the use of
the Egyptian eagle on the coins was an act of homage.
Philometor and Demetrius, as soon as the latter was acknowledged king at
Antioch, then marched against Alexander, routed his army, and drove him
into Arabia. But in this battle Philometors horse was frightened by the
braying of an elephant, and threw the king into the ranks of the enemy,
and he was taken up covered with wounds. He lay speechless for five
days, and the surgeons then endeavoured to cut out a piece of the broken
bone from his skull. He died under the operation: but not before the
head of Alexander had been brought to him as the proof of his victory.
Thus fell Ptolemy Philometor in the forty-second year of his age. His
reign began in trouble; before he reached the years of manhood the
country had been overrun by foreigners, and torn to pieces by civil war;
but he left the kingdom stronger than he found it, a praise which he
alone can share with Ptolemy Soter. He was alike brave and mild; he
was the only one of the race who fell in battle, and the only one whose
hands were unstained with civil blood. At an age and in a country when
poison and the dagger were too often the means by which the kings
authority was upheld, when goodness was little valued, and when
conquests were thought the only measure of greatness, he spared the life
of a brother taken in battle, he refused the crown of Syria when offered
to him; and not only no one of his friends or kinsmen, but no citizen
of Alexandria, was put to death during the whole of his reign. We find
grateful inscriptions to his honour at the city of Citium in Cyprus, in
the island of Therse, and at Methone in Argolis.
Philometor had reigned thirty-five years in all; eleven years alone,
partly while under age, then six years jointly with his brother,
Euergetes II., and eighteen more alone while his brother reigned in
Cyrene. He married his sister Cleopatra, and left her a widow, with two
daughters, each named Cleopatra. The elder daughter we have seen offered
to Euergetes, then married to Alexander Balas, and lastly to Demetrius.
The younger daughter, afterwards known by the name of Cleopatra Cocce,
was still in the care of her mother. He had most likely had three sons.
One perhaps had been the pupil of Aristarchus, and died before his
father; as the little elegy by Antipator of Sidon, which is addressed to
the dead child, on the grief of his father and mother, would seem to be
meant for a son of Philometor. A second son was murdered, and a third
lived in Syria.
On the death of Philometor, his widow, Cleopatra, and some of the chief
men of Alexandria proclaimed his young son king, most likely under the
name of Ptolemy Eupator; but Euergetes, whose claim was favoured by
the mob, marched from Cyrene to Alexandria to seize the crown of Egypt.
Onias the Jew defended the city for Cleopatra; but a peace was soon made
by the help of Thermus, the Roman ambassador, and on this the gates of
Alexandria were opened. It was agreed that Euergetes should be king, and
marry Cleopatra, his sister and his brothers widow. We may take it for
granted that one article of the treaty was that her son should reign on
the death of his uncle; but Euergetes, forgetting that he owed his own
life to Philometor, and also disregarding the Romans who were a party to
the treaty, had the boy put to death on the day of the marriage.
The Alexandrians, after the vices and murders of former kings, could not
have been much struck by the behaviour of Euergetes towards his family;
but he was not less cruel towards his people. Alexandria, which he
had entered peaceably, was handed over to the unbridled cruelty of the
mercenaries, and blood flowed in every street. The anger of Euergetes
fell more particularly on the Jews for the help which they had given to
Cleopatra, and he threatened them with utter destruction. The threat
was not carried into execution; but such was the Jews alarm, that they
celebrated a yearly festival in Alexandria for several hundred years, in
thankfulness for their escape from it. The population of the city, who
looked upon it less as a home than as a place of trade in which they
could follow their callings with the greatest gain, seemed to quit
Alexandria as easily as they had come there under Ptolemy Soter; and
Euergetes, who was afraid that he should soon be left to reign over a
wilderness, made new laws in favour of trade and of strangers who would
settle there.
In the lifetime of Philometor he had never laid aside his claim to the
throne of Egypt, but had only yielded to the commands of Rome and to his
brothers forces, and he now numbered the years of his reign from his
former seizing of Alexandria. He had reigned six years with his brother,
and then eighteen years in Cyrene, and he therefore called the first
year of his real reign the twenty-fifth.
In the next year he went to Memphis to be crowned; and, while the pomps
and rites were there being performed, his queen and sister bore him a
son, whom, from the place and to please the people, he named Memphites.
But his queen was already in disgrace; and some of those very friends
who on his brothers death had marched with him against Alexandria were
publicly put to death for speaking ill of his mistress Irene. He soon
afterwards put away his wife and married her younger daughter, his
niece, Cleopatra Cocce. The divorced Cleopatra was allowed to keep her
title; and, as she was the widow of the late king, she held a rank in
the state before the wife of the reigning king. Thus, the small temple
of Hâthor in the island of Philæ was dedicated to the goddess in the
name of King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra his sister, and Queen Cleopatra
his wife, designated as the gods Euergetæ.
[Illustration: 241.jpg TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT PHILAE]
The Roman senate, however, felt its authority slighted by this murder
of the young Eupator, and divorce of Cleopatra, both of whom were living
under its protection. The late ambassador, Thermus, by whose treachery
or folly Euergetes had been enabled to crush his rivals and gain the
sovereign power, was on his return to Rome called to account for his
conduct. Cato the Censor, in one of his great speeches, accused him of
having been seduced from his duty by the love of Egyptian gold, and of
having betrayed the queen to the bribes of Euergetes. In the meanwhile
Scipio Africanus the younger and two other Roman ambassadors were
sent by the senate to see that the kingdom of their ally was peaceably
settled. Euergetes went to meet him with great pomp, and received him
with all the honours due to his rank; and the whole city followed him in
crowds through the streets, eager to catch a sight of the conqueror of
Carthage, of the greatest man who had been seen in Alexandria, of one
who by his virtues and his triumphs had added a new glory even to the
name of Scipio. He brought with him, as his friend and companion (in
the case of a modern ambassador we should say, as his chaplain), the
philosopher, Pansetius, the chief of the Stoics, who had gained a great
name for his three books on the Duty of Man, which were afterwards
copied by Cicero.
[Illustration: 242b.jpg]
Euergetes showed them over the palace and the treasury; but, though the
Romans had already begun to run the down-hill race of luxury, in which
the Egyptians were so far ahead of them, yet Scipio, who held to the old
fashions and plain manners of the republic, was not dazzled by mere gold
and purple. But the trade of Alexandria, the natural harbour, the forest
of masts, and the lighthouse, the only one in the world, surpassed
anything that his well-stored mind had looked for. He went by boat to
Memphis, and saw the rich crops on either bank, and the easy navigation
of the Nile, in which the boats were sailing up the river by the force
of the wind and floating down by the force of the stream. The villages
on the river side were large and thickly set, each in the bosom of its
own grove of palm-trees; and the crowded population was well fed and
well clothed. The Roman statesman saw that nothing was wanting but a
good government to make Egypt what it used to be, the greatest kingdom
in the world.
Scipio went no higher than Memphis; the buildings of Upper Egypt, the
oldest and the largest in the world, could not draw him to Thebes, a
city whose trade had fallen off, where the deposits of bullion in the
temples had lessened, and whose linen manufacture had moved towards the
Delta. Had this great statesman been a Greek he would perhaps have gone
on to this city, famous alike in history and in poetry; but, as it was,
Scipio and his friends then sailed for Cyprus, Syria, and the other
provinces or kingdoms under the power of Rome, to finish this tour of
inspection.
For some time past, the Jews, taking advantage of the weakness of Egypt
and Syria, had been struggling to make themselves free; and, at the
beginning of this reign Simon Maccabæus, the high priest, sent an
embassy to Rome, with a shield of gold weighing one thousand _minae_, as
a present, to get their independence acknowledged by the Romans. On this
the senate made a treaty of alliance with the family of the Maccabees,
and, using the high tone of command to which they had for some time past
been accustomed, they wrote to Euergetes and the King of Syria, ordering
them not to make war upon their friends, the Jews. But in an after
decree the Romans recognise the close friendship and the trading
intercourse between Egypt and Judæa; and when they declared that they
would protect the Jews in their right to levy custom-house duties, they
made an exception in favour of the Egyptian trade. The people of Judæa
in these struggles were glad to forget the jealousy which had separated
them from their brethren in Egypt, and the old quarrel between the
Hebrews and the Hellenists; the Sanhedrim of Jerusalem wrote to the
Sanhedrim of Alexandria, telling them that they were going to keep the
Feast of the Tabernacles in solemn thanksgiving to the Almighty for
their deliverance, and begging for the benefit of their prayers.
The Jews, however, of Judæa, on their gaining their former place as a
nation, did not, as before, carry forward the chain of history in their
sacred books. While they had been under the yoke of the Babylonians, the
Persians, and the Syrians, their language had undergone some changes;
and when the Hebrew of the Old Testament was no longer the spoken
language, they perhaps thought it unworthy of them to write in any
other. At any rate, it is to their Greek brethren in Egypt that we
are indebted for the history of the bravery of the Maccabees. Jason
of Cyrene wrote the history of the Maccabees, and of the Jewish wars
against Antiochus Epiphanes and his son, Antiochus Eupator. This work,
which was in five books, is lost, and we now read only the short history
which was drawn from it by some unknown Greek writer, which, with the
letter from the Jews of Judaaa to their brethren of Egypt, forms the
second book of Maccabees.
In the list of Alexandrian authors, we must not forget to mention Jesus,
the son of Sirach, who came into Egypt in this reign, and translated
into Greek the Hebrew work of his grandfather Jesus, which is named the
Book of Wisdom, or Ecclesiasticus. It is written in imitation of the
Proverbs of Solomon; and though its pithy sayings fall far short of the
deep wisdom and lofty thoughts which crowd every line of that wonderful
work, yet it will always be read with profit and pleasure. In this
book we see the earliest example that we now possess of a Jewish writer
borrowing from the Greek philosophers; though how far the Greek thoughts
were part of the original Hebrew may be doubted, because the work
was left unfinished by Jesus the grandfather, and completed by the
Alexandrian translator, his grandson. Hereafter we shall see the
Alexandrian Jews engrafting on the Jewish theology more and more of the
Platonic philosophy, which very well suited the serious earnestness of
their character, and which had a most remarkable effect in making their
writings and opinions more fitted to spread into the ancient schools.
This and other writings of the Alexandrian Jews were by them added to
the list of sacred books which together made their Greek Bible; but they
were never acknowledged at Jerusalem. The Hebrew books of the law and
the prophets were first gathered together by Nehemiah after the return
of the Hebrews from Babylon; but his library had been broken up during
the Syrian wars. These Hebrew books, with some few which had since been
written, were again got together by Judas Maccabaeus; and after his time
nothing more seems to have been added to them, though the Alexandrian
Jews continued to add new books to their Greek Bible, while cultivating
the Platonic philosophy with a success which made a change in their
religious opinions. It was in Alexandria, and very much by the help
of the Jews, that Eastern and Western opinions now met. Each made some
change in the other, and, on the union of the two, Alexandria gave to
the world a new form of philosophy. The vices and cruelty of Euergetes
called for more than usual skill in the minister to keep down the angry
feelings of the people. This skill was found in the general Hierax,
who was one of those men whose popular manners, habits of business,
and knowledge of war, make them rise over every difficulty in times
of trouble. On him rested the whole weight of the government; his wise
measures in part made up for the vices of his master; and, when the
treasure of the state had been turned to the kings pleasures, and the
soldiers were murmuring for want of pay, Hierax brought forward his own
money to quiet the rebellion. But at last the people could bear their
grievances no longer; the soldiers without pay, instead of guarding the
throne, were its greatest enemies, and the mob rose in Alexandria,
set fire to the palace, and Euergetes was forced to leave the city and
withdraw to Cyprus.
The Alexandrians, when free from their tyrant, sent for Cleopatra,
his sister and divorced queen, and set her upon the throne. Her son by
Philometor, in whose name she had before claimed the throne, had been
put to death by Euergetes; Memphites, one of her sons by Euergetes, was
with his father in the island of Cyprus; and Euergetes, fearing that his
first wife Cleopatra and her advisers might make use of his sons
name to strengthen her throne, had the child at once put to death.
The birthday of Cleopatra was at hand, and it was to be celebrated in
Alexandria with the usual pomp; and Euergetes, putting the head, hands,
and feet of his son Memphites into a box, sent it to Alexandria by a
messenger, who had orders to deliver it to Cleopatra in the midst of
the feast, when the nobles and ambassadors were making their accustomed
gifts. The grief of Cleopatra was only equalled by the anger of the
Alexandrians, who the more readily armed themselves under Marsyas to
defend the queen against the invasion for which Euergetes was then
making preparations.
The queens forces shortly marched against the army of Euergetes that
was entering Egypt under the command of Hegelochus; but the Egyptian
army was beaten on the Syrian frontier. Marsyas was sent prisoner to
Euergetes; and the king then showed the only act of mercy which can
be mentioned to his praise, and spared the life of a prisoner whom
he thought he could make use of. Cleopatra then sent to Syria, to
her son-in-law Demetrius, to ask for help, which was at first readily
granted, but Demetrius was soon called home again by a rising in
Antioch. But great indeed must be the cruelty which a people will not
bear from their own king rather than call in a foreign master to relieve
them.
[Illustration: 249.jpg OBELISK AT HELIOPOLIS]
The return of the hated and revengeful Euergetes was not dreaded so much
by the Alexandrians as the being made a province of Syria. Cleopatra
received no help from Demetrius, but she lost the love of her people by
asking for it, and she was soon forced to fly from Alexandria. She
put her treasures on board a ship, and joined her son Ptolemy and her
son-in-law Demetrius in Syria, while Euergetes regained his throne.
As soon as Euergetes was again master of Egypt, it was his turn to
be revenged upon Demetrius; and he brought forward Zabbineus, a young
Egyptian, the son of Protarchus, a merchant, and sent him into Syria
with an army to claim the throne under the name of Alexander, the
adopted son of Antiochus. Alexander easily conquered and then put to
death Demetrius, but, when he found that he really was King of Syria, he
would no longer receive orders from Egypt; and Euergetes found that the
same plots and forces were then wanted to put down this puppet, which he
had before used to set him up. He began by making peace with his sister
Cleopatra, who was again allowed to return to Egypt; and we find her
name joined with those of Euergetes and his second queen in one of
the public acts of the priests. He then sent an army and his daughter
Tryphaena in marriage to Antiochus Grypus, one of the sons of Demetrius,
who gladly received his help, and conquered Alexander and gained the
throne of his father.
We possess a curious inscription upon an obelisk that once stood in the
island of Philæ, recording, as one of the grievances that the villagers
smarted under, the necessity of finding supplies for the troops on their
marches, and also for all the government messengers and public servants,
or those who claimed to travel as such. The cost of this grievance was
probably greater at Philæ than in other places, because the traveller
was there stopped in his voyage by the cataracts on the Nile, and he had
to be supplied with labourers to carry his luggage where the navigation
was interrupted. Accordingly the priests at Philæ petitioned the king
that their temple might be relieved from this heavy and vexatious
charge, which they said lessened their power of rightly performing their
appointed sacrifices; and they further begged to be allowed to set up a
monument to record the grant which they hoped for. Euergetes granted the
priests prayer, and accordingly they set up a small obelisk; and the
petition and the kings answer were carved on the base of this monument.
The gold mines near the Nubian or Golden Berenicê, though not so rich
as they used to be, were worked with full activity by the unhappy
prisoners, criminals, and slaves, who were there condemned to labour in
gangs under the lash of their taskmasters. Men and women alike, even old
men and children, each at such work as his overstretched strength was
equal to, were imprisoned in these caverns tunnelled under the sea or
into the side of the mountain; and there by torchlight they suffered
the cruel tortures of their overseers without having power to make their
groans heard above ground. No lot upon earth could be more wretched than
that of these unhappy men; to all of them death would have been thought
a boon.
The survey of the coast of the Red Sea, which was undertaken in this or
the last reign, did not reach beyond the northern half of that sea. It
was made by Agatharcides, who, when the philosopher Heracleides Lembus
filled the office of secretary to the government under Philometor, had
been his scribe and reader. Agatharcides gives a curious account of the
half-savage people on these coasts, and of the more remarkable animals
and products of the country. He was a most judicious historian, and gave
a better guess than many at the true cause of why there was most water
in the Nile in the dry est season of the year; which was a subject of
never-ceasing inquiry with the travellers and writers on physics. Thaïes
said that its waters were held back at its mouths by the Etesian winds,
which blow from the north during the summer months; and Democritus of
Abdera said that these winds carried heavy rain-clouds to Ethiopia;
whereas the north winds do not begin to blow till the Nile has risen,
and the river has returned to its usual size before the winds cease.
Anaxagoras, who was followed by Euripides, the poet, thought that the
large supply of water came from the melting of snow in Ethiopia. Ephorus
thought that there were deep springs in the rivers bed, which gushed
forth with greater force in summer than in winter. Herodotus and
OEnopides both thought that the river was in its natural state when
the country was overflowed; and the former said that its waters were
lessened in winter by the attraction of the sun, then over Southern
Ethiopia; and the latter said that, as the earth grew cool, the waters
were sucked into its pores. The sources of the Nile were hidden by the
barbarism of the tribes on its banks; but by this time travellers had
reached the region of tropical rains; and Agatharcides said that the
overflow in Egypt arose from the rains in Upper Ethiopia. But the
Abyssinian rains begin to fall at midsummer, too late to cause the
inundation in Egypt; and therefore the truth seemed after all to lie
with the priests of Memphis, who said the Nile rises on the other side
of the equator, and the rain falling in what was winter on that side of
the globe made the Nile overflow in the Egyptian summer.
From the very earliest times, says Ebers, the Pharaohs had understood
the necessity of measuring exactly the amount or deficiency of the
inundations of the Nile, and Nilometers are preserved which were erected
high up the river in Nubia by kings of the Old Empire, by princes, that
is to say, who reigned before the invasion of the Hyksos. Herodotus
tells us that the river must rise sixteen ells for the inundation to be
considered a favourable one. If it remained below this mark, the higher
fields failed in obtaining a due supply of water, and a dearth was the
result. If it greatly exceeded it, it broke down the dykes, damaged the
villages, and had not retired into its bed by the time for sowing the
seed. Thus the peasant, who could expect no rain, and was threatened
neither by frosts nor storms, could have his prospects of a good or bad
harvest read off by the priests with perfect certainty by the scale of
the Nilometer, and not by the servants of the divinities only, but by
the officers of the realm, who calculated the amount of taxes to be paid
to them in proportion to the rising of the river.
[Illustration: 254.jpg NILOMETER AT RHODHA]
The standard was protected by the magic power of unapproachable
sanctity, and the husbandman has been strictly interdicted from the
earliest time to this very day from casting a glance at it during the
time when the river is rising; for what sovereign could bear to disclose
without reserve the decrees of Providence as to the most important of
his rights, that of estimating the amount of taxes to be imposed? In the
time of the Pharaohs it was the priesthood that declared to the king and
to the people their estimate of the inundations, and at the present day,
the sheik, who is sworn to secrecy, is under the control of the police
of Cairo, and has his own Nilometer, the zero point of which is said
to be somewhat below that of the ancient standard. The engineers of
the French expedition first detected the fraud, by means of which the
government endeavoured every year to secure the full amount of taxes.
When the Nile has reached a height of a little over fifteen old Arabic
ells, it exceeds its lowest level by more than eight ells, and has
reached the height requisite to enable it to irrigate the highest
fields. This happy event is announced to the people, who await it with
breathless anxiety, and the opening of the dykes may be proceeded with.
A festival to celebrate this occasion has been held from the remotest
times. At the present time customs prevail which can, it is alleged, be
traced by direct descent to the times of the Pharaohs, and yet during
the dominion of Christianity in Egypt, and later again under sovereigns
governing a nation wholly converted to Islam, the old worship of the
Nile, with all its splendour, its display, and its strange ceremonies,
was extirpated with the utmost rigour. But some portion of every
discarded religion becomes merged in the new one that has supplanted it
as a fresh form of superstition, and thus we discover from a Christian
document dating from the sixth century, that the rising of the Nile in
its time was no longer attributed to Osiris, but to a certain Saint
Orion, and, as the priest of antiquity taught that a tear of Isis led to
the overflowing of the Nile, so we hear the Egyptians of the present
day say that a divine tear has fallen into the stream and caused the
flood.
The trade of the Egyptians had given them very little knowledge of
geography. Indeed the whole trade of the ancients was carried on by
buying goods from their nearest neighbours on one side, and selling
them to those on the other side of them. Long voyages were unknown; and,
though the trading wealth of Egypt had mainly arisen from carrying the
merchandise of India and Arabia Felix from the ports on the Red Sea to
the ports on the Mediterranean, the Egyptians seem to have gained no
knowledge of the countries from which these goods came.
[Illustration: 256b.jpg SUK EL SALEH, CAIRO]
They bought them of the Arab traders, who came to Cosseir and the
Troglodytic Berenicê from the opposite coast; the Arabs had probably
bought them from the caravans that had carried them across the desert
from the Persian Gulf; and that these land journeys across the desert
were both easier and cheaper than a coasting voyage, we have before
learned, from Phila-delphus thinking it worth while to build watering
and resting-houses in the desert between Koptos and Berenicê, to save
the voyage between Berenicê and Cosseir. India seems to have been only
known to the Greeks as a country that by sea was to be reached by the
way of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; and though Scylax had, by
the orders of Darius, dropped down the river Indus, coasted Arabia,
and thence reached the Red Sea, this voyage was either forgotten or
disbelieved, and in the time of the Ptolemies it seems probable that
nobody thought that India could be reached by sea from Egypt. Arrian
indeed thought that the difficulty of carrying water in their small
ships, with large crews of rowers, was alone great enough to stop a
voyage of such a length along a desert coast that could not supply them
with fresh water.
The long voyages of Solomon and Necho had been limited to coasting
Africa; the voyage of Alexander the Great had been from the Indus to the
Persian Gulf; hence it was that the court of Euergetes was startled by
the strange news that the Arabian guards on the coast of the Red Sea had
found a man in a boat by himself, who could not speak Koptic, but who
they afterwards found was an Indian, who had sailed straight from India,
and had lost his shipmates. He was willing to show any one the route
by which he had sailed; and Eudoxus of Cyzicus in Asia Minor came to
Alexandria to persuade Euergetes to give him the command of a vessel for
this voyage of discovery. A vessel was given him; and, though he was but
badly fitted out, he reached a country, which he called India, by sea,
and brought back a cargo of spices and precious stones. He wrote an
account of the coasts which he visited, and it was made use of by Pliny.
But it is more than probable the unknown country called India, which
Eudoxus visited, was on the west coast of Africa. Abyssinia was often
called India by the ancients.
In these attempts at maritime discovery, and efforts after a cheaper
means of obtaining the Indian products, the Greek sailors of Euergetes
made a settlement in the island of Dioscorides, now called Socotara,
in the Indian Ocean, forty leagues eastward of the coast of Africa; and
there they met the trading vessels from India and Ceylon. This little
island continued a Greek colony for upwards of seven centuries, and
Greek was the only language spoken there till it fell under the Arabs
in the twilight of history, when all the European possessions in Africa
were overthrown. But the art of navigation was so far unknown that but
little use was made of this voyage; the goods of India, which were all
costly and of small weight, were still for the most part carried across
the desert on camels backs, and we may remark that at a later period
hardly more than twenty small vessels ever went to India in one year
during the reigns of the Ptolemies, and that it was not till Egypt was a
province of Rome that the trade-winds across the Arabian Sea were found
out by Hippalus, a pilot in the Indian trade. The voyage was little
known in the time of Pliny; even the learned Propertius seems to have
thought that silk was a product of Arabia; and Palmyra and Petra, the
two chief cities in the desert, whose whole wealth rested and whose very
being hung upon their being watering-places for these caravans, were
still wealthy cities in the second century of our era, when the voyage
by the Arabian Sea became for the first time easier and cheaper than the
journeys across the desert.
Euergetes had been a pupil of Aristobolus, a learned Jew, a writer of
the peripatetic sect of philosophers, one who had made his learning
respected by the pagans from his success in cultivating their
philosophy; and also of Aristarchus, the grammarian, the editor
of Homer; and, though the king had given himself up to the lowest
pleasures, yet he held with his crown that love of letters and of
learning which had ennobled his forefathers. He was himself an author,
and wrote, like Ptolemy Soter, his Memorabilia, or an account of what
he had seen most remarkable in his lifetime. We may suppose that his
writings were not of a very high order; they were quoted by Athengeus,
who wrote in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; but we learn little else from
them than the names of the mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and that
a flock of pheasants was kept in the palace of Alexandria. He also
wrote a commentary on Homer, of which we know nothing. When busy
upon literature, he would allow his companions to argue with him till
midnight on a point of history or a verse of poetry; but not one of them
ever uttered a word against his tyranny, or argued in favour of a less
cruel treatment of his enemies.
In this reign the schools of Alexandria, though not holding the rank
which they had gained under Philadelphus, were still highly thought of.
The king still gave public salaries to the professors; and Panaretus,
who had been a pupil of the philosopher Arcesilaus, received the very
large sum of twelve talents, or ten thousand dollars a year. Sositheus
and his rival, the younger Homer, the tragic poets of this reign, have
even been called two of the Pleiades of Alexandria; but that was a
title given to many authors of very different times, and to some of
very little merit. Such indeed was the want of merit among the poets of
Alexandria that many of their names would have been unknown to posterity
had they not been saved in the pages of the critics and grammarians, and
pieced together by the skill of nineteenth century investigators.
[Illustration: 260.jpg TEMPLE OF KOM OMBO.]
But, unfortunately, the larger number of the men of letters had in the
late wars taken part with Philome-tor against the cruel and luxurious
Euergetes. Hence, when the streets of Alexandria were flowing with the
blood of those whom he called his enemies, crowds of learned men left
Egypt, and were driven to earn a livelihood by teaching in the cities
to which they then fled. They were all Greeks, and few of them had been
born in Alexandria. They had been brought there by the wealth of the
country and the favour of the sovereign; and they now withdrew when
these advantages were taken away from them. The isles and coasts of the
Mediterranean were so filled with grammarians, philosophers, geometers,
musicians, schoolmasters, painters, and physicians from Alexandria that
the cruelty of Euergetes II., like the taking of Constantinople by the
Turks, may be said to have spread learning by the ill-treatment of its
professors.
The city which was then rising highest in arts and letters was Pergamus
in Asia Minor, which, under Eumenes and Attalus, was almost taking the
place which Alexandria had before held. Its library already held
two hundred thousand volumes, and raised a jealousy in the mind of
Euergetes. Not content with buying books and adding to the size of
his own library, he wished to lessen the libraries of his rivals; and,
nettled at the number of volumes which Eumenes had got together at
Pergamus, he made a law, forbidding the export of the Egyptian papyrus
on which they were written. On this the copiers employed by Eumenes
wrote their books upon sheepskins, which were called _charta pergamena_,
or parchment, from the name of the city in which they were written. Thus
our own two words, parchment from _Pergamus_, and paper from _papyrus_,
remain as monuments of the rivalry in book-collecting between the two
kings.
Euergetes was so bloated with disease that his body was nearly six feet
round, and he was made weak and slothful by this weight of flesh.
He walked with a crutch, and wore a loose robe like a womans, which
reached to his feet and hands. He gave himself up very much to eating
and drinking, and on the year that he was chosen priest of Apollo by
the Cyrenians, he showed his pleasure at the honour by a memorable feast
which he gave in a costly manner to all those who had before filled that
office. He had reigned six years with his brother, then eighteen years
in Cyrene, and lastly twenty-nine years after the death of his brother,
and he died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign, and perhaps the
sixty-ninth of his age. He left a widow, Cleopatra Cocce; two sons,
Ptolemy and Ptolemy Alexander; and three daughters, Cleopatra, married
to her elder brother; Tryphsena, married to Antiochus Grypus; and Selene
unmarried; and also a natural son, Ptolemy Apion, to whom by will he
left the kingdom of Cyrene; while he left the kingdom of Egypt to his
widow and one of his sons, giving her the power of choosing which should
be her colleague. The first Euergetes earned and deserved the name,
which was sadly disgraced by the second; but such was the fame of
Egypts greatness that the titles of its kings were copied in nearly
every Greek kingdom. We meet with the flattering names of Soter,
Philadelphus, Euergetes, and the rest, on the coins of Syria, Parthia,
Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Pon-tus, Bactria, and Bithynia; while that
of Euergetes, _the benefactor_, was at last used as another name for a
tyrant.