_The weakness of the Ptolemies: Egypt bequeathed to Rome: Pompey, Cæsar,
and Antony befriend Egypt._
On the death of Ptolemy Euergetes II., his widow, Cleopatra Cocce, would
have chosen her younger son, Ptolemy Alexander, then a child, for her
partner on the throne, most likely because it would have been longer in
the course of years before he would have claimed his share of power; but
she was forced, by a threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her
elder son king. Before, however, she would do this she made a treaty
with him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting,
the vice and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, although
married to his sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should put
her away, and marry his younger sister Selene; because the mother hoped
that Selene would be false to her husbands cause, and weaken his party
in the state by her treachery.
Ptolemy took the name of Soter II., though he is more often called
Lathyrus, from a stain upon his face in the form of an ivy-leaf, pricked
into his skin in honour of Osiris. He was also called Philometor; and we
learn from an inscription on a temple at Apollinopolis Parva, that both
these names formed part of the style in which the public acts ran in
this reign; it is dedicated by the Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy,
gods Philometores, Soteres, and his children, without mentioning his
wife. Here, as in Persia and Judaaa, the kings mother often held rank
above his wife. The name of Philometor was given to him by his mother,
because, though he had reached the years of manhood, she wished to
act as his guardian; but her unkindness to him was so remarkable that
historians have thought that it was a nickname. The mother and the son
were jointly styled sovereigns of Egypt; but they lived apart, and in
distrust of one another, each surrounded by personal friends; while
Cleopatras stronger mind and greater skill in kingcraft gained for her
the larger share of power, and the effective control of Egypt.
Cleopatra, the daughter, put away by her husband at the command of her
mother, soon made a treaty of marriage with Antiochus Cyzicenus, the
friend of her late husband, who was struggling for the throne of Syria
with his brother, Antiochus Grypus, the husband of her sister Tryphaana;
and on her way to Syria she stopped at Cyprus, where she raised a large
army and took it with her as her dower, to help her new husband against
his brother and her sister.
With this addition to his army Cyzicenus thought his forces equal to
those of his brother; he marched against him and gave him battle. But
he was beaten, and he fled with his wife Cleopatra; and they shut
themselves up in the city of Antioch. Grypus and Tryphaana then laid
siege to the city, and the astute Tryphaana soon took her revenge on
her sister for coming into Syria to marry the brother and rival of her
husband. The city was taken; and Tryphaana ordered her sister to be torn
from the temple into which she had fled, and to be put to death. In vain
Grypus urged that he did not wish his victory to be stained by the death
of a sister; that Cleopatra was by marriage his sister as well as hers;
that she was the aunt of their children; and that the gods would punish
them if they dragged her from the altar. But Tryphaana was merciless
and unmoved; she gave her own orders to the soldiers, and Cleopatra was
killed as she clung with her arms to the statue of the goddess. This
cruelty, however, was soon overtaken by punishment: in the next battle
Cyzicenus was the conqueror, and he put Tryphaana to death, to quiet, as
was said, the ghost of her murdered sister.
In the third year of her reign Cleopatra Cocce gave the island of Cyprus
to her younger son, Alexander, as an independent kingdom, thinking that
he would be of more use to her there, in upholding her power against his
brother Lathyrus, than he could be at Alexandria.
In the last reign Eudoxus had been entrusted by Euergetes with a vessel
and a cargo for a trading voyage of discovery towards India; and in this
reign he was again sent by Cleopatra down the Red Sea to trade with the
unknown countries in the east. How far he went may be doubted, but
he brought back with him from the coast of Africa the prow of a ship
ornamented with a horses head, the usual figurehead of the Carthaginian
ships. This he showed to the Alexandrian pilots, who knew it as
belonging to one of the Phoenician ships of Cadiz or Gibraltar. Eudoxus
justly argued that this prow proved that it was possible to sail round
Africa and to reach India by sea from Alexandria. The government,
however, would not fit him out for a third voyage; but his reasons were
strong enough to lead many to join him, and others to help him with
money, and he thereby fitted out three vessels on this attempt to sail
round Africa by the westward voyage. He passed the Pillars of Hercules,
or Straits of Gibraltar, and then turned southward. He even reached that
part of Africa where the coast turns eastward. Here he was stopped by
his ships wanting repair. The only knowledge that he brought back for us
is, that the natives of that western coast were of nearly the same race
as the Ethiopians on the eastern coast. He was able to sail only part
of the way back, and he reached Mauritania with difficulty by land. He
thence returned home, where he met with the fate not unusual to early
travellers. His whole story was doubted; and the geographers at home did
not believe that he had ever visited the countries that he attempted to
describe.
The people of Lower Egypt were, as we have seen, of several races; and,
as each of the surrounding nations was in its turn powerful, that race
of men was uppermost in Lower Egypt. Before the fall of Thebes the Kopts
ruled in the Delta; when the free states of Greece held the first rank
in the world, even before the time of Alexanders conquests, the Greeks
of Lower Egypt were masters of their fellow-countrymen; and now that
Judæa, under the bravery of the Maccabees, had gained among nations a
rank far higher than what its size entitled it to, the Egyptian Jews
found that they had in the same way gained weight in Alexandria.
Cleopatra had given the command of her army to two Jews, Chelcias and
Ananias, the sons of Onias, the priest of Heliopolis; and hence, when
the civil war broke out between the Jews and Samaritans, Cleopatra
helped the Jews, and perhaps for that reason Lathyrus helped the
Samaritans. He sent six thousand men to his friend, Antiochus Cyzicenus,
to be led against the Jews, but this force was beaten by the two sons of
Hyrcanus, the high priest.
By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will of the Jews of Lower
Egypt, and hence Cleopatra again ventured to choose her own partner on
the throne. She raised a riot in Alexandria against him, in the tenth
year of their reign, on his putting to death some of her friends, or
more likely, as Pausanias says, by showing to the people some of her
eunuchs covered with blood, who she said were wounded by him; and she
forced him to fly from Egypt. She took from him his wife, Selene, whom
she had before thrust upon him, and who had borne him two children; and
she allowed him to withdraw to the kingdom of Cyprus, from which place
she recalled her favourite son, Alexander, to reign with her in Egypt.
[Illustration: 268.jpg TEMPLE PORTICO AT CONTRA-LATOPOLI]
During these years the building was going forward of the beautiful
temple at the city, afterwards named by the Romans Contra-Latopolis, on
the other side of the Nile from Latopolis or Esne. Little now remains
of it but its massive portico, upheld by two rows of four columns each,
having the globe with outstretched wings carved on the overhanging
eaves. The earliest names found among the hieroglyphics with which its
walls are covered are those of Cleopatra Cocce and her son, Ptolemy
Soter, while the latest name is that of the Emperor Commodus. Even under
Cleopatra Cocce, who was nearly the worst of the family, the building of
these great temples did not cease.
The two sons were so far puppets in the hands of their clever mother,
that on the recall of Alexander no change was seen in the government
beyond that of the names which were placed at the head of the public
acts. The former year was called the tenth of Cleopatra and Ptolemy
Soter, and this year was called the eleventh of Cleopatra and eighth of
Ptolemy Alexander; as Alexander counted his years from the time when he
was sent with the title of king to Cyprus. As he was, like his brother,
under the guidance of his mother, he was like him in the hieroglyphical
inscriptions called _mother-loving_.
While the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria were alike weakened by civil wars
and by the vices of their kings, Judæa, as we have seen, had risen
under the wise government of the Maccabees to the rank of an independent
state; and latterly Aristobulus, the eldest son of Hyr-canus, and
afterwards Alexander Jannseus, his second son, had made themselves
kings. But Gaza, Ptolemaïs, and some other cities, bravely refused to
part with their liberty, and sent to Lathyrus, then King of Cyprus, for
help. This was not, however, done without many misgivings; for some were
wise enough to see that, if Lathyrus helped them, Cleopatra would, on
the other hand, help their king, Jannasus; and when Lathyrus landed at
Sicaminos with thirty thousand men, the citizens of Ptolemaïs refused
even to listen to a message from him.
The city of Gaza then eagerly sent for the help which the city of
Ptolemaïs refused. Lathyrus drove back Jannasus, and marched upon
Asochis, a city of Galilee, where he scaled the walls on the Sabbath
Day, and took ten thousand prisoners and a large booty. He then sat down
before the city of Saphoris, but left it on hearing that Jannasus was
marching against him on the other side of the Jordan, at the head of a
force larger than his own. He crossed the river in face of the Jewish
army, and routed it with great slaughter. The Jewish historian adds,
that between thirty and fifty thousand men were slain upon the field
of battle, and that the women and children of the neighbouring villages
were cruelly put to death.
Cleopatra now began to fear that her son Lathyrus would soon make
himself too powerful, if not checked in his career of success, and that
he might be able to march upon Egypt. She therefore mustered her forces,
and put them under the command of Chelcias and Ananias, her Jewish
generals. She sent her treasure, her will, and the children of
Alexander, to the island of Cos, as a place of safety, and then marched
with the army into Palestine, having sent forward her son Alexander with
the fleet. By this movement Lathyrus was unable to keep his ground in
Coele-Syria, and he took the bold step of marching towards Egypt. But
he was quickly followed by Chelcias, and his army was routed, though
Chelcias lost his life in the battle. Cleopatra, after taking Ptolemaïs,
sent part of her army to help that which had been led by Chelcias; and
Lathyrus was forced to shut himself up in Gaza. Soon after this the
campaign ended, by Lathyrus returning to Cyprus, and Cleopatra to Egypt.
On this success, Cleopatra was advised to seize upon the throne of
Jannseus, and again to add to Egypt the provinces of Palestine
and Coele-Syria, which had so long made part of the kingdom of her
forefathers. She yielded, however, to the reasons of her general
Ananias, for the Jews of Lower Egypt were too strong to be treated with
slight. It was by the help of the Jews that Cleopatra had driven her son
Lathyrus out of Egypt; they formed a large part of the Egyptian armies,
which were no longer even commanded by Greeks; and it must have been by
these clear and unanswerable reasons that Ananias was able to turn
the queen from the thoughts of this conquest, and to renew the league
between Egypt and Judæa.
Cleopatra, however, was still afraid that Lathyrus would be helped by
his friend Antiochus Cyzicenus to conquer Egypt, and she therefore kept
up the quarrel between the brothers by again sending troops to help
Antiochus Grypus; and lastly, she gave him in marriage her daughter
Selene, whom she had before forced upon Lathyrus. She then sent an
army against Cyprus; and Lathyrus was beaten and forced to fly from the
island.
In the middle of this reign died Ptolemy Apion, King of Cyrene. He was
the half-brother of Lathyrus and Alexander, and, having been made King
of Cyrene by his father Euergetes II., he had there reigned quietly for
twenty years. Being between Egypt and Carthage, then called the Roman
province of Africa, and having no army which he could lead against the
Roman legions, he had placed himself under the guardianship of Rome; he
had bought a truce during his lifetime, by making the Roman people his
heirs in his will, so that on his death they were to have his kingdom.
Cyrene had been part of Egypt for above two hundred years, and was
usually governed by a younger son or brother of the king. But on the
death of Ptolemy Apion, the Roman senate, who had latterly been
grasping at everything within their reach, claimed his kingdom as their
inheritance, and in the flattering language of their decree by which the
country was enslaved, they declared Cyrene free. From that time forward
it was practically a province of Rome.
Ptolemy Alexander, who had been a mere tool in the hands of his mother,
was at last tired of his gilded chains; but he saw no means of throwing
them off, or of gaining that power in the state which his birth and
title, and the age which he had then reached, ought to have given him.
The army was in favour of his mother, and an unsuccessful effort would
certainly have been punished with death; so he took perhaps the only
path open to him: he left Egypt by stealth, and chose rather to quit his
throne and palace than to live surrounded by the creatures of his mother
and in daily fear for his life. Cleopatra might well doubt whether she
could keep her throne against both her sons, and she therefore sent
messengers with fair promises to Alexander, to ask him to return to
Egypt. But he knew his mother too well ever again to trust himself in
her hands; and while she was taking steps to have him put to death on
his return, he formed a plot against her life by letters. In this double
game Alexander had the advantage of his mother; her character was so
well known that he needed not to be told of what was going on; while she
perhaps thought that the son whom she had so long ruled as a child would
not dare to act as a man. Alexanders plot was of the two the best laid,
and on his reaching Egypt his mother was put to death.
But Alexander did not long enjoy the fruits of his murder. The next year
the Alexandrians rose against him in a fury. He was hated not so much
perhaps for the murder of his mother as for the cruelties which he had
been guilty of, or at least had to bear the blame of, while he reigned
with her. His own soldiers turned against him, and he was forced to seek
his safety by flying on board a vessel in the harbour, and he left Egypt
with his wife and daughter. He was followed by a fleet under the command
of Tyrrhus, but he reached Myrse, a city of Lycia, in safety; and
afterwards, in crossing over to Cyprus, he was met by an Egyptian fleet
under Chaereas, and killed in battle.
Though others may have been guilty of more crimes, Alexander had perhaps
the fewest good qualities of any of the family of the Lagidaa. During
his idle reign of twenty years, in which the crimes ought in fairness to
be laid chiefly to his mother, he was wholly given up to the lowest and
worst of pleasures, by which his mind and body were alike ruined. He was
so bloated with vice and disease that he seldom walked without crutches;
but at his feasts he could leap from his raised couch and dance with
naked feet upon the floor with the companions of his vices. He was
blinded by flattery, ruined by debauchery, and hated by the people.
His coins are not easily known from those of the other kings, which also
bore the name of Ptolemy the king round the eagle. Some of the coins
of his mother have the same words round the eagle on the one side,
while on the other is her head, with a helmet formed like the head of an
elephant, or her head with the name of Queen Cleopatra There are other
coins with the usual head of Jupiter, and with two eagles to point out
the joint sovereignty of herself and son.
Few buildings or parts of buildings mark the reign of Ptolemy Alexander;
but his name is not wholly unknown among the sculptures of Upper Egypt.
On the walls of the temple of Apollinopolis Magna he is represented
as making an offering to the god Horus. There the Egyptian artist has
carved a portrait of this Greek king, whom he perhaps had never seen,
clothed in a dress which he never wore, and worshipping a god whom he
may have hardly known by name.
History has not told us who was the first wife of Alexander, but he left
a son by her named after himself Ptolemy Alexander, whom we have seen
sent by his grandmother for safety to the island of Cos, the fortress
of the family, and a daughter whom he carried with him in his flight
to Lycia. His second wife was Cleopatra Berenicê, the daughter of his
brother Lathyrus, by whom he had no children, and who is called in the
hieroglyphics his queen and sister.
[Illustration: 274.jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ALEXANDER]
On the flight of Alexander, the Alexandrians sent an embassy to Cyprus
to bring back Soter II., or Lathyrus, as he is called; and he entered
Egypt without any opposition. He had reigned ten years with his mother,
and then eighteen years by himself in Cyprus; and during those years of
banishment had shown a wisdom and good behaviour which must have won
the esteem of the Alexandrians, when compared with his younger brother
Alexander. He had held his ground against the fleets and armies of his
mother, but either through weakness or good feeling had never invaded
Egypt.
His reign is remarkable for the rebellion and ruin of the once powerful
city of Thebes. It had long been falling in trade and in wealth, and had
lost its superiority in arms; but its temples, like so many citadels,
its obelisks, its colossal statues, and the tombs of its great kings
still remained, and with them the memory of its glory then gone by.
[Illustration: 275.jpg COIN OF CLEOPATRA AND ALEXANDER, WITH EAGLES]
The hieroglyphics on the walls still recounted to its fallen priests
and nobles the provinces in Europe, Asia, and Africa which they once
governed, and the weight of gold, silver, and corn which these provinces
sent as a yearly tribute. The paintings and sculptures showed the men of
all nations and of all colours, from the Tatar of the north to the Negro
of the south, who had graced the triumphs of their kings: and with these
proud trophies before their eyes they had been bending under the yoke
of Euergetes II. and Cleopatra Cocce for about fifty years. So small a
measure of justice has usually been given to a conquered people by their
rulers, that their highest hopes have risen to nothing more than
an escape from excess of tyranny. If life, property, female honour,
national and religious feelings have not been constantly and wantonly
outraged, lesser evils have been patiently endured.
[Illustration: 276.jpg THE MEMNONIUM AT THEBES]
Political servitude, heavy taxes, daily ill-treatment, and occasional
cruelty the Thebans had borne for two centuries and a half under their
Greek masters, as no less the lot of humanity than poverty, disease, and
death. But under the government of Cleopatra Cocce the measure of
their injuries overflowed, and taking advantage of the revolutions in
Alexandria, a large part of Upper Egypt rose in rebellion.
We can therefore hardly wonder that when Lathyrus landed in Egypt, and
tried to recall the troubled cities to quiet government and good order,
Thebes should have refused to obey. The spirit of the warriors who
followed Ramses to the shores of the Black Sea was not quite dead. For
three years the brave Kopts, entrenched within their temples, every one
of which was a castle, withstood his armies; but the bows, the hatchets,
and the chariots could do little against Greek arms; while the overthrow
of the massive temple walls, and the utter ruin of the city, prove
how slowly they yielded to greater skill and numbers, and mark the
conquerors distrust lest the temples should be again so made use of.
Perhaps the only time before when Thebes had been stormed after a long
siege was when it first fell under the Persians; and the ruin which
marked the footsteps of Cambyses had never been wholly repaired. But the
wanton cruelty of the foreigners did little mischief, when compared with
the unpitying and unforgiving distrust of the native conquerors. The
temples of Tentyra, Apollinopolis, Latopolis, and Philæ show that the
massive Egyptian buildings, when let alone, can withstand the wear
of time for thousands of years; but the harder hand of man works much
faster, and the wide acres of Theban ruins prove alike the greatness
of the city and the force with which it was overthrown; and this is the
last time that Egyptian Thebes is met with in the pages of history.
The traveller, whose means and leisure have allowed him to reach the
spot, now counts the Arab villages which have been built within the
citys bounds, and perhaps pitches his tent in the open space in the
middle of them. But the ruined temples still stand to call forth his
wonder. They have seen the whole portion of time of which history keeps
the reckoning roll before them; they have seen kingdoms and nations rise
and fall: Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Persians, Greeks, and Romans.
They have seen the childhood of all that we call ancient; and they still
seem likely to stand, to tell their tale to those who will hereafter
call us ancients. After this rebellion, Lathyrus reigned in quiet, and
was even able to be of use to his Greek allies; and the Athenians, in
gratitude, set up statues of bronze to him and Berenicê, his daughter.
During this reign, the Romans were carrying on a war with Mithridates,
King of Pontus, in Asia Minor; and Sulla, who was then at the head
of the republic, sent Lucullus, the soldier, the scholar, and the
philosopher, as ambassador to Alexandria, to ask for help against the
enemy. The Egyptian fleet moved out of harbour to meet him, a pomp
which the kings of Egypt had before kept for themselves alone. Lathyrus
received him on shore with the greatest respect, lodged him in the
palace, and invited him to his own table, an honour which no foreigner
had enjoyed since the kings of Egypt had thrown aside the plain manners
of the first Ptolemies. Lucullus had brought with him the philosopher
Antiochus of Athens, who had been the pupil of Philo, and they found
time to enjoy the society of Dion, the academic philosopher, who was
then teaching at Alexandria; and there they might have been seen with
Heraclitus of Tyre, talking together about the changes which were
creeping into the Platonic philosophy, and about the two newest works of
Philo, which had just come to Alexandria. Antiochus could not read them
without showing his anger: such sceptical opinions had never before been
heard of in the Academy; but they knew the handwriting of Philo, they
were certainly his. Selius and Tetrilius, who were there, had heard him
teach the same opinions at Rome, whither he had fled, and where he was
then teaching Cicero. The next day, the matter was again talked over
with Lucullus, Heraclitus, Aristus of Athens, Ariston, and Dion; and it
ended in Antiochus writing a book, which he named Sosus, against those
new opinions of his old master, against the new Academy, and in behalf
of the old Academy.
Lathyrus understood the principles of the balance of power and his own
interest too well to help the Romans to crush Mithridates, and he wisely
wished not to quarrel with either. He therefore at once made up his mind
not to grant the fleet which Lucullus had been sent to ask for. It
had been usual for the kings of Egypt to pay the expenses of the Roman
ambassadors while living in Alexandria; and Lathyrus offered four
times the usual allowance to Lucullus, beside eighty talents of silver.
Lucullus, however, would take nothing beyond his expenses, and returned
the gifts, which were meant as a civil refusal of the fleet; and, having
failed in his embassy, he sailed hastily for Cyprus, leaving the wonders
of Egypt unvisited. Lathyrus sent a fleet of honour to accompany him on
his voyage, and gave him his portrait cut in an emerald. Mithridates
was soon afterwards conquered by the Romans; and it was only by skilful
embassies and well-timed bribes that Lathyrus was able to keep off
the punishment which seemed to await him for having thus disobeyed the
orders of Sulla. Egypt was then the only kingdom, to the west of Persia,
that had not yet bowed its neck under the Roman yoke.
The coins of Lathyrus are not easily or certainly known from those of
the other Ptolemies; but those of his second wife bear her head on the
one side, with the name of Queen Selene, and on the other side the
eagle, with the name of King Ptolemy.
[Illustration: 280.jpg COIN OF Ptolemy Lathyrus AND SELENE.]
He had before reigned ten years with his mother, and after his brothers
death he reigned six years and a half more, but, as he counted the years
that he had reigned in Cyprus, he died in the thirty-seventh year of
his reign. He left a daughter named Berenicê, and two natural sons, each
named Ptolemy, one of whom reigned in Cyprus, and the other, nicknamed
Auletes, _the piper_, afterwards gained the throne of Egypt.
On the death of Lathyrus, or Ptolemy Soter II., his daughter Cleopatra
Berenicê, the widow of Ptolemy Alexander, mounted the throne of Egypt
in B.C. 80; but it was also claimed by her stepson, the young Alexander,
who was then living in Rome. Alexander had been sent to the island of
Cos, as a place of safety, when his grandmother Cleopatra Cocce followed
her army into Coele-Syria. But, as the Egyptians had lost the command of
the sea, the royal treasure in Cos was no longer out of danger, and the
island was soon afterwards taken by Mithridates, King of Pontus, who
had conquered Asia Minor. Among the treasures in that island the
Alexandrians lost one of the sacred relics of the kingdom, the chlamys
or war-cloak which had belonged to Alexander the Great, and which they
had kept with religious care as the safeguard of the empire. It then
fell into the hands of Mithridates, and on his overthrow it became
the prize of Pompey, who wore it in his triumph at the end of the
Mithridatic war. With this chlamys, as had always been foretold by the
believers in wonders, Egypt lost its rank among nations, and the command
of the world passed to the Romans, who now possessed this time-worn
symbol of sovereignty.
Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of Mithridates; but he
afterwards escaped, and reached the army of Sulla, under whose care he
lived for some time in Rome. The Alexandrian prince hoped to gain the
throne of his father by means of the friendship of one who could make
and unmake kings at his pleasure; and Sulla might have thought that the
wealth of Egypt would be at his command by means of his young friend. To
these reasons Alexander added the bribe which was then becoming common
with the princes who held their thrones by the help of Rome, he made a
will, in which he named the Roman people as his heirs; and the senate
then took care that the kingdom of Egypt should be a part of the wealth
which was afterwards to be theirs by inheritance. After Berenicê,
his stepmother, had been queen about six months, they sent him to
Alexandria, with orders that he should be received as king; and, to
soften the harshness of this command, he was told to marry Berenicê, and
reign jointly with her.
The orders of Sulla, the Roman dictator, were of course obeyed; and the
young Alexander landed at Alexandria, as King of Egypt and the friend of
Rome. He married Berenicê; and on the nineteenth day of his reign, with
a cruelty unfortunately too common in this history, he put her to death.
The marriage had been forced upon him by the Romans, who ordered all the
political affairs of the kingdom; but, as they took no part in the civil
or criminal affairs, he seems to have been at liberty to murder his
wife. But Alexander was hated by the people as a king thrust upon them
by foreign arms; and Berenicê, whatever they might have before thought
of her, was regretted as the queen of their choice. Hence his crime met
with its reward. His own guards immediately rose upon him; they dragged
him from the palace to the gymnasium, and there put him to death.
Though the Romans had already seized the smaller kingdom of Cyrene under
the will of Ptolemy Apion, they could not agree among themselves upon
the wholesale robbery of taking Egypt under the will which Alexander had
made in their favour. They seized, however, a paltry sum of money which
he had left at Tyre as a place of safety; and it was a matter of debate
for many years afterwards in Rome, whether they should not claim the
kingdom of Egypt. But the nobles of Rome, who sold their patronage to
kings for sums equal to the revenues of provinces, would have lost much
by handing the kingdom over to the senate. Hence the Egyptian monarchy
was left standing for two reigns longer.
On the death of Ptolemy Alexander, the Alexandrians might easily have
changed their weak and wicked rulers, and formed a government for
themselves, if they had known how. The legitimate male line of the
Ptolemies came to an end on the death of the young Alexander II. The
two natural sons of Soter II. were then the next in succession; and, as
there was no other claimant, the crown fell to the elder. He was young,
perhaps even a minor under the age of fourteen. His claims had been
wholly overlooked at the death of his father; for though by the Egyptian
law every son was held to be equally legitimate, it was not so by the
Macedonian law. He took the name of Neus Dionysus, or the young Osiris,
as we find it written in the hieroglyphics, though he is usually called
Auletes, _the piper_; a name afterwards given him because he was more
proud of his skill in playing on the flute than of his very slender
knowledge of the art of governing.
It was in this reign that the historian Diodorus Siculus travelled in
Egypt, and wrote his account of the manners and religion of the people.
What he tells us of the early Egyptian history is of little value when
compared with the history by Manetho, who was a native of the country
and could read the hieroglyphic records, or even with that by Herodotus;
but nevertheless he deserves great praise, and our warmest thanks, for
being nearly the first Greek writer when Egyptian learning could no
longer be thought valuable; when the religion, though looked down upon,
might at any rate be studied with ease--for being nearly the first
writer who thought the manners of this ancient people, after they
had almost passed off the page of history, worth the notice of a
philosopher.
Diodorus never quotes Manetho, but follows Herodotus in making one
great hero for the chief actions of antiquity, whom he calls Sesoosis or
Sesonchosis. To him he assigns every great work of which the author was
unknown, the canals in the Delta, the statue of Amenhôthes III., the
obelisks of Ramses II., the distant navigation under Necho, the mounds
and trenches dug against Assyrian and Persian invasion, and even the
great ship of Ptolemy Philopator; and not knowing that Southern Arabia
and even Ethiopia had by the Alexandrians been sometimes called India,
he says that this hero conquered even India beyond the Ganges. On the
other hand, the fabulous conquest of the great serpent, the enemy of the
human race, which we see sculptured on the sarcophagus of Oimenepthah,
he describes as an historic fact of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
He tells us how this huge beast, forty-five feet long, was beaten down
by troops of archers, slingers, and cavalry, and brought alive in a
net to Alexandria, where Eves old enemy was shown in a cage for the
amusement of the curious citizens.
Memphis was then a great city; in its crowded streets, its palaces and
temples, it was second only to Alexandria. A little to the west stood
the pyramids, which were thought one of the seven wonders of the world.
Their broad bases, sloping sides, and solid masonry had withstood the
weather for ages; and their huge unwieldy stones were a less easy quarry
for after builders than the live rock when nearer to the rivers side.
The priests of Memphis knew the names of the kings who, one after the
other, had built a new portico to their great temple of Phtah; but as to
when or by whom the pyramids were built, they had perhaps less knowledge
than the present day historian. The modern Egyptologist, with his
patient investigation, assigns the largest of these three pyramids to
Khûfûi or Kheops, a famous ruler of the fourth dynasty, and the others
were erected by his immediate successors. The temple of Phtah, and every
other building of Memphis, is now gone, and near the spot stands the
great city of Cairo, whose mosques and minarets have been quarried of
its ruins, but the pyramids still stand, after fifty-six centuries of
broken and changing history, unbroken and unchanged. They have outlived
any portion of time that their builders could have dreamed of, but their
worn surface no longer declares to us their builders names and history.
Their sloping sides, formed to withstand attacks, have not saved the
inscriptions which they once held; and the builders, in thus overlooking
the reed which was growing in their marshes, the papyrus, to which the
great minds of Greece afterwards trusted their undying names, have only
taught us how much safer it would have been, in their wish to be
thought of and talked of in after ages, to have leaned upon the poet and
historian.
The beautiful temples of Dendera and Latopolis, which were raised by the
untiring industry of ages and finished, under the Roman emperors, were
begun about this reign. Though some of the temples of Lower Egypt had
fallen into decay; and though the throne was then tottering to its fall,
the priests in Upper Egypt were still building for immortality. The
religion of the Kopts was still flourishing.
The Egyptians opinion of the creation was the growth of his own rivers
bank. The thoughtful man, who saw the Nile every year lay a body of
solid manure upon his field, was able to measure against the walls of
the old temples that the ground was slowly but certainly rising. An
increase of the earth was being brought about by the river. Hence he
readily believed that the world itself had of old been formed out of
water, and by means of water. The philosophers were nearly of the same
opinion. They held that matter was itself eternal, like the other gods,
and that our world, in the beginning, before it took any shape upon
itself, was like thin mud, or a mass of water containing all things that
were afterwards to be brought forth out of it. When the water had by its
divine will separated itself from the earth, then the great Ra, the sun,
sent down his quickening heat, and plants and animals came forth out of
the wet-land, as the insects are spawned out of the fields, before
the eyes of the husbandman, every autumn after the Niles overflow
has retreated. The crafty priests of the Nile declared that they had
themselves visited and dwelt in the caverns beneath the river, where
these treasures, while yet unshaped, were kept in store and waiting to
come into being.
[Illustration: 287.jpg HORUS ON THE CROCODILES. BULAK MUSEUM.]
And on the days sacred to the Nile, boys, the children of priestly
families, were every year dedicated to the blue river-god that they
might spend their youth in monastic retirement, and as it was said in
these caverns beneath his waves. These early Egyptian myths seem to have
influenced the compilers of the Hebrew Scriptures. The author of the
book of Genesis tells us that the Hebrew God formed the earth and its
inhabitants by dividing the land from the water, and then commanding
them both to bring forth living creatures; and again one of the
Psalmists says that his substance, while yet imperfect, was by the
Creator curiously wrought in the lowest depths of the earth. The Hebrew
writer, however, never thinks that any part of the creation was its own
creator. But in the Egyptian philosophy sunshine and the river Nile are
themselves the divine agents; and hence fire and water received divine
honours, as the two purest of the elements; and every day when the
temple of Serapis in Alexandria was opened, the singer standing on the
steps of the portico sprinkled water over the marble floor while he held
forth the fire to the people; and though he and most of his hearers were
Greeks, he called upon the god in the Egyptian language.
The inner walls of the temples glittered with gold and silver and amber,
and sparkled with gems from Ethiopia and India; and the recesses were
veiled with rich curtains. The costliness was often in striking contrast
with the chief inmate, much to the surprise of the Greek traveller,
who, having leave to examine a temple, had entered the sacred rooms, and
asked to be shown the image of the god for whose sake it was built. One
of the priests in waiting then approached with a solemn look, chanting
a hymn, and pulling aside the veil allowed him to peep in at a snake,
a crocodile, or a cat, or some other beast, fitter to inhabit a bog or
cavern than to lie on a purple cushion in a stately palace. The funerals
of the sacred animals were celebrated with great pomp, particularly that
of the bull Apis; and at a cost, in one case, of one hundred talents,
or eighty-five thousand dollars, which was double what Ptolemy Soter,
in his wish to please his new subjects, spent upon the Apis of his day.
After the funeral the priests looked for a calf with the right spots,
and when they had found one they fattened it for forty days, and brought
it to Memphis in a boat under a golden awning, and lodged it safely in
the temple.
[Illustration: 289.jpg RELIGIOUS PROCESSION ON THE NILE]
The religious feelings of the Egyptians were much warmer and stronger
than those of the Greeks or Romans; they have often been accused of
eating one another, but never of eating a sacred animal. Once a year the
people of Memphis celebrated the birthday of Apis with great pomp
and expense, and one of the chief ceremonies on the occasion was
the throwing a golden dish into the Nile. During the week that these
rejoicings lasted, while the sacred river was appeased by gifts, the
crocodile was thought to lose its fierceness, its teeth were harmless,
and it never attempted to bite; and it was not till six oclock on the
eighth day that this animal again became an object of fear to those
whose occupations brought them to the banks of the Nile. Once a year
also the statues of the gods were removed from their pedestals and
placed in barges, and thus carried in solemn procession along the Nile,
and only brought back to the temples after some days. It was supposed
that the gods were passing these days on a visit to the righteous
Ethiopians.
The cat was at all times one of the animals held most sacred by the
Egyptians. In the earliest and latest times we find the statues of their
goddesses with cats heads. The cats of Alexandria were looked upon as
so many images of Neith or the Minerva of Saïs, a goddess worshipped
both by Greeks and Egyptians; and it passed into a proverb with the
Greeks, when they spoke of any two things being unlike, to say that
they were as much like one another as a cat was to Minerva. It is to
Alexandria also that we trace the story of a cat turned into a lady to
please a prince who had fallen in love with it. The lady, however, when
dressed in her bridal robes, could not help scampering about the room
after a mouse seen upon the floor; and when Plutarch was in Egypt it had
already become a proverb, that any one in too much finery was as awkward
as a cat in a crocus-coloured robe.
So deeply rooted in the minds of the Egyptians was the worship of these
animals that, when a Roman soldier had killed a cat unawares, though
the Romans were masters of the country, the people rose against him in a
fury. In vain the king sent a message to quiet the mob, to let them know
that the cat was killed by accident; and, though the fear of Rome would
most likely have saved a Roman soldier unharmed whatever other crime he
might have been guilty of, in this case nothing would quiet the people
but his death, and he was killed before the eyes of Diodorus, the
historian. One nation rises above another not so much from its greater
strength or skill in arms as from its higher aim and stronger wish for
power. The Egyptians, we see, had not lost their courage, and when the
occasion called them out they showed a fearlessness not unworthy of
their Theban forefathers; on seeing a dead cat in the streets they rose
against the kings orders and the power of Rome; had they thought their
own freedom or their countrys greatness as much worth fighting for,
they could perhaps have gained them.
[Illustration: 291.jpg EGYPTIAN FUNERAL CEREMONIES]
But the Egyptians had no civil laws or rights that they cared about;
they had nothing left that they valued but their religion, and this the
Romans took good care not to meddle with. Had the Romans made war upon
the priests and temples, as the Persians had done, they would perhaps in
the same way have been driven out of Egypt: but they never shocked the
religious feelings of the people, and even after Egypt had become a
Roman province, when the beautiful temples of Esne, Dendera, and other
cities, were dedicated in the names of the Roman emperors, they seldom
copied the example of Philometor, and put Greek, much less Roman,
writing on the portico, but continued to let the walls be covered with
hieroglyphical inscriptions.
The Egyptians, when rich enough to pay for it, still had the bodies of
their friends embalmed at their death, and made into mummies; though
the priests, to save part of the cost, often put the mummy of a man just
dead into a mummy-case which had been made and used in the reign of a
Thûtmosis or an Amenhôthes. They thought that every man at his death
took upon himself the character of Osiris, that the nurses who laid out
the dead body represented the goddesses Isis and Nepthys, while the man
who made the mummy was supposed to be the god Anubis. When the embalming
was finished, it was part of the funeral to bring the dead man to trial
for what he had done when living, and thus to determine whether he was
entitled to an honourable burial. The mummy was ferried across the lake
belonging to the temple, and taken before the judge Osiris. A pair of
scales was brought forth by the dog-headed Anubis and the hawk-headed
Horus; and with this they weighed the past life of the deceased. The
judge, with the advice of a jury of forty-two, then pronounced the
solemn verdict, which was written down by the ibis-headed Thot. But
human nature is the same in all ages and in all countries, and, whatever
might have been the past life of the dead, the judge, not to hurt the
feelings of the friends, always declared that he was a righteous and
a good man: and, notwithstanding the show of truth in the trial, it
passed into a proverb to say of a wicked man, that he was too bad to be
praised even at his funeral. This custom of embalming was thought right
by all; but from examining the mummies that have come down to us, it
would seem to have been very much confined to the priestly families, and
seldom used in the case of children. The mummies, however, were highly
valued by the survivors of the family, and when from poverty any man was
driven to borrow money, the mummies were thought good security by the
lender, and taken as such for the loan.
[Illustration: 293.jpg MUMMY, MUMMY-CASES, AND CASKET]
The mummy-cases indeed could be sold for a large sum, as when made of
wood they were covered with painting, and sometimes in part gilt, and
often three in number, one enclosing the other. The stone mummy-cases
were yet more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster or
hard black basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved with
hieroglyphics, and modelled to the shape of the body like the inner
wooden cases.
It is interesting to note here that the pigment known to modern art
by the name of mummy is, in many cases, actually prepared from the
bituminous substances preserved within the wrappings of the ancient
mummies. The grinding up of mummies imported from Thebes or Memphis
for the purpose of enabling the twentieth century painter to paint the
golden tresses of contemporary belles is of course not very extensively
carried on, for one mummy will make several thousand tubes of paint,
but the practice exists, and of late has been protested against both in
England and France.
Though the old laws of Egypt must very much have fallen into disuse
during the reigns of the latter Ptolemies, they had at least been left
unchanged; and they teach us that the shadow of freedom may be seen, as
in Rome under the Cæsars, and in Florence under the Medici, long after
the substance has been lost. In quarrels between man and man, the thirty
judges, from the cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis, were still
guided by the eight books of the law. The king, the priests, and the
soldiers were the only landholders in the country, while the herdsmen,
husbandmen, and handicraftsmen were thought of lower caste. Though the
armies of Egypt were for the most part filled with Greek mercenaries,
and the landholders of the order of soldiers could then have had as
little to do with arms as knights and esquires have in our days, yet
they still boasted of the wisdom of their laws, by which arms were only
to be trusted to men who had a stake in the country worth fighting for.
The old manners had long since passed away. The priests alone obeyed the
old marriage law, that a man should have only one wife. Other men, when
rich enough, married several. All children were held equally legitimate,
whatever woman was the mother.
[Illustration: 295.jpg DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTIAN CARICATURE]
It is to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was
sadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art were
alike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in
Egypt. We find drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation used
to hold sacred. The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in
little; and cats, dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of
the gods and kings of old. In one picture we have the mice attacking a
castle defended by the cats, copied from a battle-scene of Ramses II.
fighting against the Ethiopians. In another the king on his throne as
a dog, with a second dog behind him as a fan-bearer, is receiving the
sacred offerings from a cat. In a third the king and queen are seen
playing at chess or checkers in the form of a lion playing with a
unicorn or horned ass.
We may form some opinion of the wealth of Egypt in its more prosperous
times when we learn from Cicero that in this reign, when the Romans had
good means of knowing, the revenues of the country amounted to twelve
thousand five hundred talents, or ten million dollars; just one-half of
which wras paid by the port of Alexandria. This was at a time when the
foreign trade had, through the faults of the government, sunk down to
its lowest ebb; when not more than twenty ships sailed each year from
the Red Sea to India; when the free population of the kingdom had so far
fallen off that it was not more than three millions, which was only half
of what it had been in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, though Alexandria
alone still held three hundred thousand persons.
But, though much of the trade of the country was lost, though many of
the royal works had ceased, though the manufacture of the finer linen
had left the country, the digging in the gold mines, the favourite
source of wealth to a despot, never ceased. Night and day in the mines
near the Golden Berenicê did slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war
work without pause, chained together in gangs, and guarded by soldiers,
who were carefully chosen for their not being able to speak the language
of these unhappy workmen.
[Illustration: 297.jpg THE MINES OF MAGHARA]
The rock which held the gold was broken up into small pieces; when hard
it was first made brittle in the fire; the broken stone was then washed
to separate the waste from the heavier grains which held the gold; and,
lastly, the valuable parts when separated were kept heated in a furnace
for five days, at the end of which time the pure gold was found melted
into a button at the bottom. But the mines were nearly worn out; and
the value of the gold was a very small part of the thirty-five million
dollars which they are said to have yielded every year in the reign of
Ramses II.
As Auletes felt himself hardly safe upon the throne, his first wish was
to get himself acknowledged as king by the Roman senate. For this end he
sent to Rome a large sum of money to buy the votes of the senators,
and he borrowed a further sum of Rabirius Posthumus, one of the richest
farmers of the Roman taxes, which he spent on the same object. But
though the Romans never tried to turn him out of his kingdom, he did not
get the wished-for decree before he went to Rome in the twenty-fourth
year of his reign. But we know nothing of the first years of his reign.
A nation must be in a very demoralised state when its history disproves
the saying, that the people are happy while their annals are short.
There was more virtue and happiness, and perhaps even less bloodshed,
with the stir of mind while Ptolemy Soter was at war with Antigonus than
during this dull, un-warlike, and vicious time. The king gave himself up
to his natural bent for pleasure and debauchery. At times when virtue is
uncopied and unrewarded it is usually praised and let alone; but in this
reign sobriety was a crime in the eyes of the king, a quiet behaviour
was thought a reproach against his irregularities. The Platonic
philosopher Demetrius was in danger of being put to death because it
was told to the king that he never drank wine, and had been seen at the
feast of Bacchus in his usual dress, while every other man was in the
dress of a woman. But the philosopher was allowed to disprove the charge
of sobriety, or at least to make amends for his fault; and, on the king
sending for him the next day, he made himself drunk publicly in the
sight of all the court, and danced with cymbals in a loose dress of
Tarentine gauze. But so few are the deeds worth mentioning in the
falling state that we are pleased even to be told that, in the one
hundred and seventy-eighth Olympiad, Strato of Alexandria conquered in
the Olympic games and was crowned in the same day for wrestling, and
for _pancratium_, or wrestling and boxing joined, these sports being
considered among the most honourable in which athletes could contend.
In the thirteenth year of this reign (B.C. 68), when the war against the
pirates called for the whole naval force of Rome, Pompey sent a fleet
under Lentulus Marcellinus to clear the coast and creeks of Egypt from
these robbers. The Egyptian government was too weak to guard its own
trade; and Lentulus in his consulship put the Ptolemaic eagle and
thunderbolt on his coins, to show that he had exercised an act of
sovereignty. Three years later, we again meet with the eagle and
thunderbolt on the consular coins of Aurelius Cotta; and we learn from
Cicero that in that year it was found necessary to send a fleet to
Alexandria to enforce the orders of the senate.
We next find the Roman senate debating whether they should not seize the
kingdom as their inheritance under the wall of Ptolemy Alexander II.,
but, moved by the bribes of Auletes, and perhaps by other reasons which
we are not told, they forbore to grasp the prize. In this difficulty
Auletes was helped by the great Pompey, to whom he had sent an embassy
with a golden crown wrorth four thousand pieces of gold, which met him
at Damascus on his Syrian campaign. He then formed a secret treaty with
Mithridates, King of Pontus, who was engaged in warfare with the Romans,
their common enemy. Auletes was now a widower with six young children,
and Mithridates had two daughters; and accordingly it was agreed that
one daughter should be married to Auletes, and the other to his brother,
the King of Cyprus. But the ruin and death of Mithridates broke off the
marriages; and Auletes was able to conceal from the Romans that he had
ever formed an alliance with their enemy.
In the year which was made famous by the consulship of Cicero, Jerusalem
was taken by the Roman army under Pompey; and Judæa, which had enjoyed
a shortlived freedom of less than one hundred years under the Maccabees,
was then put under a Roman governor. The fortifications of the temple
were destroyed. This was felt by the Jews of Lower Egypt as a heavy
blow, and from this time their sufferings in that country began. While
their brethren had been lords of Judæa, they had held up their heads
with the Greeks in Alexandria, but upon the fall of Jerusalem they sunk
down to the rank of the Egyptians. They thought worse of themselves,
and they were thought worse of by others. The Egyptian Jews were very
closely allied to the people of the Delta. Though they had been again
and again warned by their prophets not to mix with the Egyptians, they
seem not to have listened to the warning. They were in many religious
points less strict than their brethren in Judæa. The living in Egypt,
the building a second temple, and the using a Greek Bible, were all
breaches, if not of the law, at least of the tradition. They surrounded
their synagogues with sacred groves, which were clearly forbidden by
Moses. Though they were not guilty of worshipping images, yet they did
not think it wrong to have portraits and statues of themselves. In their
dislike of pork, in their washings, and in other Eastern customs, they
were like the Egyptians; and hence the Greeks, who thought them both
barbarians, very grudgingly yielded to them the privileges of choosing
their own magistrates, of having their own courts of justice, and
the other rights of citizenship which the policy of the Ptolemies
had granted. The Jews, on the other hand, in whose eyes religion was
everything, saw the Greeks and Egyptians worshipping the same gods and
the same sacred animals, and felt themselves as far above the Greeks in
those branches of philosophy which arise out of religion as they were
below them in that rank which is gained by success in war. Hence it was
with many heartburnings, and not without struggles which shed blood
in the streets of Alexandria, that they found themselves, in the years
which ushered in the Christian era, sinking down to the level of the
Egyptians, and losing one by one the rights of Macedonian citizenship.
During these years Auletes had been losing his friends and weakening
his government, and, at last, when he refused to quarrel with the senate
about the island of Cyprus, the Egyptians rose against him in arms, and
he was forced to fly from Alexandria. He took ship for Rome, and in his
way there he met Cato, who was at Rhodes on his voyage to Cyprus. He
sent to Cato to let him know that he was in the city, and that he wished
to see him. But the Roman sent word back that he was unwell, and that
if the king wanted to speak to him he must come himself. This was not
a time for Auletes to quarrel with a senator, when he was on his way
to Rome to beg for help against his subjects; so he was forced to go
to Catos lodgings, who did not even rise from his seat when the king
entered the room. But this treatment was not quite new to Auletes; in
his flight from Alexandria, in disguise and without a servant, he had
had to eat brown bread in the cottage of a peasant; and he now learned
how much more irksome it was to wait upon the pleasure of a Roman
senator. Cato gave him the best advice; that, instead of going to Rome,
where he would find that all the wealth of Egypt would be thought
a bribe too small for the greediness of the senators whose votes he
wanted, he would do better to return to Alexandria, and make peace with
his rebellious subjects. Auletes, however, went on to Italy, and he
arrived at Rome in the twenty-fourth year of his reign; and in the
three years that he spent there in courting and bribing the senators, he
learned the truth of Catos statements, and the value of his advice.
His brother Ptolemy, who was reigning in Cyprus, was not even so well
treated. The Romans passed a law making that wealthy island a Roman
province, no doubt upon the plea of the will of Alexander II. and the
kings illegitimacy; and they sent Cato, rather against his will, to
turn Ptolemy out of his kingdom. Ptolemy gave up the island without Cato
being called upon to use force, and in return the Romans made him high
priest in the temple of the Paphian Venus; but he soon put himself to
death by poison. Canidius Crassus, who had been employed by Cato in
this affair, may have had some fighting at sea with the Egyptians, as
on one of his coins we see on one side a crocodile, and on the other the
prow of a ship, as if he had beaten the Egyptian fleet in the mouth of
the Nile.
On the flight of their king, the rebellious Alexandrians set on
the throne the two eldest of his daughters, Cleopatra Tryphaena and
Berenicê, and sent an embassy, at the head of which was Dion, the
academic philosopher, to plead their cause at Rome against the king. But
the gold of Auletes had already gained the senate; and Cicero spoke, on
his behalf, one of his great speeches, now unfortunately lost, in which
he rebutted the charge that Auletes was at all to be blamed for the
death of Alexander, whom he thought justly killed by his guards for the
murder of his queen and kinswoman. Cæsar, whose year of consulship was
then drawing to an end, took his part warmly; and Auletes became in debt
to him in the sum of seventeen million drachmas, or nearly two and a
half million dollars, either for money lent to bribe the senators, or
for bonds then given to Cæsar instead of money. By these means Auletes
got his title acknowledged; the door of the senate was shut against
the Alexandrian ambassadors; and the philosopher Dion, the head of the
embassy, was poisoned in Rome by the slaves of his friend Lucceius, in
whose house he was dwelling. But nevertheless, Auletes was not able to
get an army sent to help him against his rebellious subjects and his
daughters; nor was Cæsar able to get from the senate, for the employment
of his proconsular year, the task of replacing Auletes on the throne.
This high employment was then sought for both by Lentulus and by Pompey.
The senate at first leaned in favour of the former; and he would perhaps
have gained it if the Roman creditors of Auletes, who were already
trembling for their money, had not bribed openly in favour of Pompey,
as the more powerful of the two. On Pompey, therefore, the choice of
the senate at last fell. Pompey then took Auletes into his house, as his
friend and guest, and would have got orders to lead him back into his
kingdom at the head of a Roman army had not the tribunes of the people,
fearing any addition to Pompeys great power, had recourse to their
usual state-engine, the Sibylline books; and the pontifex, at their
bidding, publicly declared that it was written in those sacred pages
that the King of Egypt should have the friendship of Rome, but should
not be helped with an army.
But though Lentulus and Pompey were each strong enough to stop the other
from having this high command, Auletes was not without hopes that some
Roman general would be led, by the promise of money, and by the honour,
to undertake his cause, though it would be against the laws of Rome to
do so without orders from the senate. Cicero then took him under his
protection, and carried him in a litter of state to his villa at Baiæ,
and wrote to Lentulus, the proconsul of Cilicia and Cyprus, strongly
urging him to snatch the glory of replacing Auletes on the throne, and
of being the patron of the King of Egypt. But Lentulus seems not to have
chosen to run the risk of so far breaking the laws of his country.
Auletes then went, with pressing letters from Pompey, to Gabinius, the
proconsul of Syria, and offered him the large bribe of ten thousand
talents, or seven and a half million dollars, if he would lead the Roman
army into Egypt, and replace him on the throne. Most of the officers
were against this undertaking; but the letters of Pompey, the advice of
Mark Antony, the master of the horse, and perhaps the greatness of the
bribe, outweighed those cautious opinions.
While Auletes had been thus pleading his cause at Rome and with the
army, Cleopatra Tryphæna, the elder of the two queens, had died; and, as
no one of the other children of Auletes was old enough to be joined with
Berenicê on the throne, the Alexandrians sent to Syria for Seleucus, the
son of Antiochus Grypus and of Selene, the sister of Lathyrus, to come
to Egypt and marry Berenicê. He was low-minded in all his pleasures and
tastes, and got the nickname of _Cybiosactes_, the scullion. He was
even said to have stolen the golden sarcophagus in which the body of
Alexander was buried; and was so much disliked by his young wife that
she had him strangled on the fifth day after their marriage. Berenicê
then married Archelaus, a son of Mithridates Eupator, King of Pontus;
and she had reigned one year with her sister and two years with her
husbands when the Roman army brought back her father, Ptolemy Auletes,
into Egypt.
Gabinius, on marching, gave out as an excuse for quitting the province
entrusted to him by the senate, that it was in self-defence; and that
Syria was in danger from the Egyptian fleet commanded by Archelaus. He
was accompanied by a Jewish army under the command of Antipator, sent by
Hyrcanus, whom the Romans had just made governor of Judæa. Mark Antony
was sent forward with the horse, and routed the Egyptian army near
Pelusium, and then entered the city with Auletes. The king, in the
cruelty of his revenge, wished to put the citizens to the sword, and was
only stopped by Antonys forbidding it. The Egyptian army was at this
time in the lowest state of discipline; it was the only place where the
sovereign was not despotic. The soldiers, who prized the lawlessness of
their trade even more than its pay, were a cause of fear only to their
fellow-citizens. When Archelaus led them out against the Romans, and
ordered them to throw up a trench around their camp, they refused to
obey; they said that ditch-making was not work for soldiers, but that
it ought to be done at the cost of the state. Hence, when on this first
success Gabinius followed with the body of the army, he easily conquered
the rest of the country and put to death Berenicê and Archelaus. He then
led back the army into his province of Syria, but left behind him a body
of troops under Lucius Septimius to guard the throne of Auletes and to
check the risings of the Alexandrians.
Gabinius had refused to undertake this affair, which was the more
dangerous because against the laws of Rome, unless the large bribe were
first paid down in money. He would take no promises; and Auletes, who in
his banishment had no money at his command, had to borrow it of some one
who would listen to his large promises of after payment. He found this
person in Rabirius Posthumus, who had before lent him money, and who saw
that it would be all lost unless Auletes regained the throne. Rabirius
therefore lent him all he was worth, and borrowed the rest from his
friends; and as soon as Auletes was on the throne, he went to Alexandria
to claim his money and his reward.
[Illustration: 309.jpg VOCAL STATUE OF MEMNON]
While Auletes still stood in need of Roman help, and saw the advantage
of keeping faith with his foreign creditors, Rabirius was allowed to
hold the office of royal _dioecetes_, or paymaster-general, which was
one of great state and profit, and one by which he could in time have
repaid himself his loan. He wore a royal robe; the taxes of Alexandria
went through his hands; he was indeed master of the city. But when the
king felt safe on his throne, he sent away his troublesome creditor,
who returned to Rome with the loss of his money, to stand his trial as
a state criminal for having lent it. Rabirius had been for a time
mortgagee in possession of the revenues of Egypt; and Auletes had felt
more indebted for his crown to a Roman citizen than to the senate. But
in the dealings of Rome with foreign kings, these evils had often before
arisen, and at last been made criminal; and while Gabinius was tried
for treason, _de majestate_, for leading his army out of his province,
Rabirius was tried, under the _Lex Julia de pecuniis repetundis_, for
lending money and taking office under Auletes.
One of the last acts of Gabinius in Syria was to change the form of
the Jewish government into an aristocracy, leaving Hyrcanus as the high
priest. The Jews thereon began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, that
had been thrown down by Pompey. Among the prisoners sent to Rome by
Gabinius was Timagenes, the son of the kings banker, who probably lost
his liberty as a hostage on Ptolemys failure to repay the loan. But he
was afterwards ransomed from slavery by a son of Sulla, and he remained
at Rome teaching Greek eloquence in the schools, and writing his
numerous works.
The climate of Egypt is hardly suited to Europeans, and perhaps at no
time did the births in the Greek families equal the deaths. That part
of the population was kept up by newcomers; and latterly the Romans had
been coming over to share in the plunder that was there scattered among
the ruling class. For some time past Alexandria had been a favourite
place of settlement for such Romans as either through their fault or
their misfortune were forced to leave their homes.
[Illustration: 312.jpg THE SPHINX]
All who were banished for their crimes or who went away to escape from
trial, all runaway slaves, all ruined debtors, found a place of safety
in Alexandria; and by enrolling themselves in the Egyptian army they
joined in bonds of fellowship with thousands like themselves, who made
it a point of honour to screen one another from being overtaken by
justice or reclaimed by their masters. With such men as these, together
with some bands of robbers from Syria and Cilicia, had the ranks of the
Egyptian army latterly been recruited. These were now joined by a
number of soldiers and officers from the army of Gabinius, who liked the
Egyptian high pay and lawlessness better than the strict discipline of
the Romans. As, in this mixed body of men, the more regular courage
and greater skill in war was found among the Romans, they were chiefly
chosen as officers, and the whole had something of the form of a Roman
army. These soldiers in Alexandria were above all law and discipline.
The laws were everywhere badly enforced, crimes passed unpunished, and
property became unsafe. Robberies were carried on openly, and the only
hope of recovering what was stolen was by buying it back from the thief.
In many cases, whole villages lived upon plunder, and for that purpose
formed themselves into a society, and put themselves under the orders of
a chief; and, when any merchant or husbandman was robbed, he applied to
this chief, who usually restored to him the stolen property on payment
of one-fourth of its value.
As the country fell off in wealth, power, and population, the schools
of Alexandria fell off in learning, and we meet with few authors whose
names can brighten the pages of this reign. Apollonius of Citium,
indeed, who had studied surgery and anatomy at Alexandria under Zopyrus,
when he returned to Cyprus, wrote a treatise on the joints of the body,
and dedicated his work to Ptolemy, king of that island. The work is
still remaining in manuscript.
[Illustration: 314.jpg]
[Illustration: 314b.jpg BEARERS OF EVIL TIDINGS]
Beside his name of Neus Dionysus, the king is in the hieroglyphics
sometimes called Philopator and Philadelphus; and in a Greek inscription
on a statue at Philae he is called by the three names, Neus Dionysus,
Philopator, Philadelphus. The coins which are usually thought to be his
are in a worse style of art than those of the kings before him. He
died in B.C. 51, in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, leaving four
children, namely, Cleopatra, Arsinoë, and two Ptolemies.
[Illustration: 315.jpg PAGE IMAGE]