PTOLEMY I "SOTER"

THE WINNING OF A KINGDOM

 

 

None of Alexander’s achievements was more facile, and yet none more striking, than his Egyptian campaign. His advent must have been awaited with all the agitations of fear and hope by the natives of all classes, for the Persian sway had been cruel and bloody, and if it did not lay extravagant burdens upon the poor, it certainly gave the higher classes an abundance of sentimental grievances, for it had violated the national feelings, and especially the national religion, with wanton brutality. The treatment of the revolted province by Ochus was not less violent and ruthless than had been the original conquest by Cambyses, which Herodotus tells us with graphic simplicity. No conquerors seem to have been more uncongenial to the Egyptians than the Persians. But all invaders of Egypt, even the Ptolemies, were confronted by a like hopelessness of gaining the sympathies of their subjects. If it was comparatively easy to make them slaves, they were perpetually revolting slaves. This was due not to the impatience of the average native, but rather to the hold which the national religion had gained upon his life. This religion was administered by an ambitious, organised, haughty priesthood, whose records and traditions told them of the vast wealth and power they had once possessed—a condition of things long past away, and never likely to return, even under a native dynasty, but still filling the imaginations of the priests, and urging them to set their people against every foreign ruler. The only chance of success for an invader lay in conciliating this vast and stubborn corporation. Every chief who headed a revolt against the Persians had made this the centre of his policy; the support of the priests must be gained by restoring them to their old supremacy—a supremacy which they doubtless exaggerated in their uncriticised records of the past.

There was another class of the population not less discontented—the military caste, which had long since  been thrust into the background by the employment of foreign, chiefly Greek, mercenaries. Even kings of national proclivities found these Greeks or Carians so much more efficient, that they could not be persuaded to dispense with them and depend upon native troops. The military caste, which denied that these foreigners were necessary, and professed all readiness to fight the king’s battles, or mount guard at his palace, was moody and jealous, and the neglect of its grievances must have given great additional force to the rebellions, usually supported by this section of the population. As for the labouring classes, we may assume that then, as now, they desired little more than freedom from forced labour, and security against the exactions of the tax-farmer. There is little mention, in this later Egyptian history, of any nobility territorial or otherwise, such as had flourished under the Middle Empire, though there were still over the administration officials of great importance from their knowledge of the people and their language. But most local magnates or feudal chiefs only asserted themselves during those weaknesses of the central power, which give special opportunities to ambitious and wealthy provincials for making their dignities hereditary. Such a body of nobles does not meet us in any of the records of this period. Yet the insurgent chiefs who rose against the Persians and against the fifth Ptolemy were apparently men of high birth, descended from royal ancestors; no ordinary Fellah would ever think of leading an army.

We can only assert these generalities concerning the condition of the oppressed people, who were watching with breathless interest Alexander’s attack upon the Persian Empire. All better information is wanting. The satrap of Egypt, Sabakes, had been summoned with most of the garrison to join his master Darius, and had fallen at the battle of Issus.¹ Though his division probably consisted of Greek and Asiatic mercenaries, it is hardly possible that some Egyptians did not accompany them, who must have brought back a startling report of the conqueror and his army. Even if they had not done so, the distinguished people mentioned by Arrian, the deserter Amyntas, Mentor’s son Thymondas, and others, who fled straight from Issus to Egypt, as to a land of safety, made matters plain enough. Then came the siege of Tyre, in which Alexander’s obstinacy, and his versatility of resource, had overcome apparent impossibilities, and during these many months, so long as the Tyrian fleet was able to keep the sea-way open, traders must have brought news of the gradual change from confidence to alarm, from alarm to despair, in the great naval mistress of the Syrian Levant. And after the fall of Tyre, and the consequent passage of the naval supremacy into Alexander’s hands, came in rapid succession the news of his clemency at Jerusalem, his severity at Gaza, and his advent at the Eastern gate of Egypt.

I have elsewhere explained the probable reasons for his tender treatment of the Jews, whose trading connexions over the world, combined with the regular journeys of the ‘Dispersion’ to Jerusalem, made them invaluable friends to him, as guides to his intelligence department. From them too did he learn the passes into Egypt between marshes and deserts, and they must have announced to the Egyptians his liberality towards their religion, and his graciousness towards those who submitted promptly and unreservedly to his commands. So, when the remaining Persian garrison and fleet had made hardly a show of resistance, the Macedonian entered into peaceable possession of the kingdom of the Pharaohs.

The various mercenary forces, whether in the pay of the Persians, or marauding in the country under pretence of defending it for the Great King, had now no alternative but to submit to Alexander, and swell the ranks of his army. The priests hailed with satisfaction the victorious enemy of their recent oppressors. Thus we may assume that his march along the eastern outlet of the Nile, from Pelusium to Heliopolis and Memphis, was a triumphal procession. No sooner had he arrived at Memphis than he displayed the same conciliatory policy to the priests which he had adopted at Jerusalem. He sacrificed to Apis and the other gods, and assured the priests of his favour and support. If the Jewish authorities were to help him in his campaigns through Asia with their knowledge of distances, their correspondents in remote cities, their exceptional geographical knowledge, the Egyptian priests were to serve him in another way; they were to secure to him without disturbance the supplies of provisions and money which in that favoured country seemed unlimited, even in troublous times and under the grossest misgovernment. Some six millions—the Ptolemies raised the figure to seven and a half—of hard-working fellahs were trained by hereditary oppression to work for their masters, and pay taxes out of all proportion to the size of the country. This safe and certain source of revenue was at the moment of great importance to the new king, who had not yet seized the great hoards of treasure at Susa and Persepolis. His own treasury was at the lowest ebb, though his conquests may have already obtained for him considerable pecuniary credit.

But we are only concerned with Alexander so far as we can explain through his acts more clearly the policy of his successor in the sovranty of Egypt. We hear that he appointed two Egyptians, Peteesis and Doloaspis, nomarchs of the provinces, of which he created for this purpose but two, probably Upper and Lower Egypt. Doloaspis, who presently obtained the whole management, has a name which hardly seems to be Egyptian, Peteesis, on the other hand, was the name of several native officials of importance in later generations. There were several Greeks and Macedonian grandees also appointed for military purposes, and to look after the treasury. Of these one only, Cleomenes, maintained his importance for some years. He was indeed the chief adviser of the king at the founding of Alexandria, if pseudo-Callisthenes, here apparently well-informed, is to be trusted; but in the sequel, and when no longer under Alexander’s eye, he earned a reputation for dishonesty and injustice. But, of course, all these appointments were merely provisional, pending a reconstruction of the Persian Empire.

Two acts only of the king were plainly intended as declarations of a deliberate policy. He had no time to visit Upper Egypt, but took care to send a detachment  the priests of Memphis, and consulted with them—though of course any such consultation was carefully kept a secret—set out by the western branch of the Nile, on his circuitous route to the temple of Jupiter Amon in the oasis now called that of Siwah. During his circuit the priests were, of course, duly informed of his approach by a detachment sent across the desert from Memphis. They, therefore, were quite prepared for him, and instructed how to receive him.

Meanwhile his sail down the Canopic arm must have led him close by the old Greek city of Naukratis, founded upon a lesser arm, the Herakleotic, more to the west than even the Canopic. And as this Herakleotic arm or canal opened into the Canopic—for we know that the waterway from the sea to Naukratis was to ascend the latter arm—it is most likely that Alexander, who had done everything hitherto to favour the Egyptians, received some petitions or representations from the ancient Greek settlement, and visited it on his way to the sea. Nor is it likely that they should not have claimed wider privileges through the agency of Cleomenes, now a great state-officer, selected from Naukratis, to control the finances of the country; and who is said by Justin to have been one of the architects of Alexandria along with Deinocrates: moreover Alexander was bound to show them that he did not mean his new province to be anti-Hellenic. Hitherto the Naukratites had been under all manner of jealous restrictions, which, though relaxed in recent times, might be reimposed by nationalist kings or governors. But if Alexander did visit their city, he found it considerably decayed, and situated on a water-way quite inadequate for the increasing trade with the north and west. Therefore I cannot but think that the proximity of Naukratis had some influence in determining the site of his new foundation at the western point of Egypt (331-330 BC winter). If the Naukratites asked for privileges, he could offer them such of tenfold value at the new site he had chosen, on the sea, and communicating with the old Greek mart by an easy water-way. It is even likely that a canal led straight from Naukratis into Lake Mareotis, and so to the new Alexandria in a few hours.

This very obvious reason for Alexander’s choice of the new site is not mentioned by the few ancient historians who are left to tell us about his famous foundation. They regale us instead with the prodigies which accompanied it, while their modern successors insist upon the rare genius which foresaw the suitabilities of the place. With these latter I am not in harmony. Alexander possessed undoubted genius, and his city was eminently successful, but it is almost certain that had he founded it anywhere else on the coast, say at Canopus or at Aboukir Bay, it would have made little difference. He plainly intended it to look to the west for its wealth. The traders of Naukratis must have always turned in the same direction. The coast has not been sufficiently surveyed to tell us whether other bays have not equal facilities for harbouring ships. Aboukir Bay certainly held fleets in recent days far more difficult to harbour than were the greatest Alexandrian merchantmen. Nor is either entrance into the harbours of Alexandria free from great risk. In fine it appears to me that the moment had come when any port on the Delta, in communication with an arm of the Nile, and open to foreign trade, must inevitably have a great success. It was, I believe, not the eagle eye of the conqueror, but the proximity of Naukratis, and the representations of its traders, which led him to choose the western extreme of the Delta. It replaced at once the port at the Canopic mouth of the river. It could not replace Pelusium, which was a great frontier fortress and which lasted throughout the Ptolemaic epoch, and probably far later, as the natural harbour for Syrian traffic.

The next point of interest in Alexander’s progress is his visit to the remote oasis of Amon, with great risk and trouble, to accomplish an object which could apparently have been compassed by consulting the priests of Memphis, or of the accredited oracles in many Hellenic countries. But what was his object? Some modern historians, shocked that so great a person should have coveted the sham prestige of a divine origin, insist that it was only a matter of policy to overawe Orientals, and that on Greeks and Macedonians the conqueror never sought to impose his own divinity. The sceptical spirit of the Greeks, they think, was as ready to scoff at any such assumption as we should be, nor is any really great man likely to promote or trade upon a manifest imposture.

Our ancient evidence on the other hand is consistent that he did advance such claims, and if Arrian only mentions sundry miracles which happened on the journey to the oasis, he in no way contradicts Diodorus and others as to the king’s main object, and even assumes that such claims were well known to his soldiers on subsequent occasions. During the mutiny at Babylon they jeer at him by telling him to apply to his father for an army— viz. to Zeus-Amon. When he dies it is decreed that he shall be buried in the temple of the god, not (as Perdiccas ordered, when he saw his mistake) at Aegae among the Macedonian kings. These indirect evidences are quite conclusive. Modern thinkers brought up under the influences of that Semitic spirit which places a single deity at a vast distance above man, are apt to forget that among people such as the Greeks and Egyptians, the divine and the human were not so far apart. Greek legends were full of instances of divine parentage among mortals, and if philosophers scouted such myths as absurd and unworthy of the gods, or as evidences that these gods were unreal, we know that the ordinary public, even long after Alexander’s day, were ready to attribute any extraordinary manifestation of human excellence, or even strange eccentricities in human character, to the fancy of a god for a love adventure with a mortal. There is nothing known to us of Alexander which permits us to picture him as a cool sceptic ridiculing such popular beliefs. On the contrary, the daemonic force, the deep enthusiasm, the absolute confidence in his own primacy among men, which moulded his life and determined his actions, are the very qualities we should expect from a man convinced that his origin was more than human. In Egypt too he learned that the old indigenous kings had all ranked as gods, and had been called the sons of gods quite other than their human fathers, without the smallest disrespect to their mothers, or to the relations between their earthly parents. We may go so far as to say that if Alexander had neglected or refused to accept divine honours in Egypt and the East, it would have been thought strange in those days. That he should accept them in the East, and not require them from his Greek subjects, would imply not only a policy opposed to that of fusing East and West into one common civilisation, but a curious ignorance of the readiness of Greek cities to decree divine honours to any benefactor. The Athens which presently lavished idolatry upon Demetrius the Besieger, was not likely to make difficulties about worshipping Alexander, whenever hope of favour or dread of disfavour might suggest it. Taking it therefore as certain that Alexander as well from exaltation of mind as from policy desired to claim a superhuman origin, it still remains for us to inquire why he chose the difficult and dangerous journey to the far oasis in order to obtain his desire.

It is hardly necessary to insist upon the strong attraction which difficulties presented to the royal adventurer. No feature in his character has been more consistently attested by history and by legend. The sober ground of his choice lay in the fact that this oracle of Amon, regarded with awe by the Egyptians as a sanctum of their religion protected by nature from all profane contact, was also the only one in Egypt which the Greeks for centuries back had known and consulted. Possibly the Greeks of Naukratis, and those of Cyrene, had something to do with this curious fact. Either of them may have thought it worth while to undertake the journey of 180 miles from Paraetonium, which they could reach by sea, to obtain the trade with the whole series of oases, whose produce comes to that of Siwah by caravan from the south. At all events, this oracle had a recognised authority throughout the Hellenic world, which none of the shrines of Memphis or of Thebes, however splendid, had attained.

It happened also that on his way westward, Alexander received the voluntary submission of Cyrene, which thus became legitimately a province of Egypt, and gave the Ptolemies that title to its sovranty, which was of great importance in the diplomatic disputes of the Hellenistic world. Upon his return from the oracle Alexander went to Memphis, whether by Alexandria or across the desert directly was a point upon which first-rate authorities, Aristobulus and Ptolemy, differed. From thence, having bridged the Nile and the various arms he required to cross, he brought his army to Phoenicia.

We have now reviewed the historical incidents of Alexander’s occupation of Egypt, giving stress to those which have been misunderstood, or required explanation, and to those which suggested to the Ptolemies the principles of their administration. Briefly; Alexander had asserted the dignity and credibility of the Egyptian religion, and his determination to support it, and receive support from it. He had refused to alter the local administration, and had even appointed some native officials to superintend it. On the other hand he had placed the control of the garrison and the central authority in the hands of Macedonians and Greeks, and had founded a new capital, which could not but be a Hellenistic city, and a rallying point for all the Greek traders throughout the country. The port of Canopus was formally closed, and its business transferred to the new city. That of Naukratis found its way there of necessity, though the old site was not abandoned and furnished in after days several distinguished authors to Greek literature.

We hear little hereafter of the other great cities of the Delta—unless it be in the occasional national revolts:— Sais, which had for some time been the Egyptian capital, but which may now have been partly absorbed by Alexandria; farther off, Tanis and Bubastos, the former of which was certainly the scene of a convocation of priests in the third Ptolemy’s time. Pelusium, as we now know, remained the port for Syrian merchandise.

During the succeeding decade of Alexander’s conquests, we hear of no disturbance in Egypt, beyond stray complaints of the misconduct of Cleomenes, which reached the ears of Alexander. But it is to be noted that on the death of his favourite Hephaestion, Alexander again applied to the oracle of Amon, as to the honours possible for his friend. Even in his case, Alexander was ready to admit some admixture of divinity. The account of these things in Arrian’s seventh book confirms the view above taken regarding Alexander’s deliberate claims.

Such then was the immediate preparation of the country for the rise of a new and glorious dynasty.

 

COIN OF ALEXANDER (EGYPTIAN).

 

 

PTOLEMY I, SATRAP (322-3O7 B.C.)

 

Among the extant historians none has thought it worthwhile to tell us whether the future King of Egypt was there attending upon Alexander, and what impressions he derived from his visit. In his own history of Alexander’s campaigns, written perhaps forty years after, he seems not to have laid any stress upon this point; and yet it is more than probable that he went to Egypt with Alexander, and was impressed with the richness and the security of this new province. For its fruitfulness was only equalled by its isolation, there being natural frontiers of desert, marsh, and water which bar out all easy access. We are not told that Ptolemy went with the king to the oracle of Amon, and from the discrepancy mentioned by Arrian regarding the miracles on the way and the route of Alexander’s return, no safe conclusion can be drawn.

Ptolemy, son of Lagos and Arsinoe, was some years older than the king, probably born in BC 367, but still young enough to have been one of his companions at Mieza during his education, and so intimate with him during the domestic quarrels at the court of Philip that he was exiled with other friends of the young prince, and only returned to court on Alexander’s accession. These meagre facts are, however, sufficient to enable us to contradict the current legend, that Ptolemy was of mean extraction, a mere soldier of fortune, whose only claim to blue blood was a possible intimacy of his mother with King Philip of Macedon. That some indiscreet flatterer may in after days have sought to make him a half-brother of the great king is likely enough, but the fact of his being the young Alexander’s playfellow shows clearly that he came from one of those high families in Macedon—we might almost call them feudal nobles—who furnished the pages for the royal household. His very exile by Philip shows that his name must have had some importance at the court. On the other hand the historians never cite his noble origin as a cause of his popularity or position with the Macedonians, as they do in the case of Krateros, Perdiccas or Leonnatos.

We may infer that Ptolemy’s appointment to a place on the new king’s staff was secured by the trifling adversity of his early banishment, not apparently by any early display of military genius. He was not among the original A.D.C., if so I may translate friends corps, and was only promoted in Areia upon the treason of Demetrius. He was not appointed to any early independent command, such, for example, as Peukestas’ command of the Macedonian troops in Egypt. He worked his way upwards by the qualities of diligence, personal bravery and good temper, so as to be one of Alexander’s best generals of division. The accounts of his military prowess, notably his part in the attack on Aornos and the capture of Bessus, have not lost in their transmission to us from his own narrative of the great campaigns. He seems to have kept clear of all the jealousies and quarrels among the generals, which even Alexander found it hard to  quell. These excellent qualities of minding his own business thoroughly, and meddling with none of his colleagues, may also explain why we have hardly any personal anecdotes of him surviving. There are few eminent men in history who have left us a clearer general notion, or a fainter individual image, of their personality. He was no doubt like many of his brother-officers a dashing soldier; he was rather a prudent and safe than a brilliant commander. We may say of him that if he had excited no enmity among his companions, so he had aroused no enthusiasm. As a lieutenant acting under Alexander, he was always, if we believe the histories based upon his memoirs, brilliantly successful. When in after days, in the full maturity of experience, he commanded his own armies, he gained some signal successes, but also met with some sore defeats. He was then indeed no longer pitted against Orientals, but against his own compeers, and this made a considerable difference. But his readiness to retreat even after a victorious campaign shows a want of confidence in his own resources, and we find him throughout his long and successful life inaugurating that diplomatic habit which distinguished the court of Egypt in succeeding generations. Socially he stood in a very leading place. At the great ‘marriage of Europe and Asia,’ which Alexander ordered at Babylon, he was joined to the Princess Artakama, daughter of Artabazus, of whom we hear nothing subsequently. The scandal-loving Athenaeus also tells us that after Alexander’s death he formed an intimacy with the celebrated Greek courtezan Thais, and had by her three children, Leontiscus, again mentioned as taken prisoner by Demetrius in Cyprus in 307 BC, Lagos, and a daughter Eirene, who married Eunostos, king of Soli in Cyprus.

In the summer of 323 BC the great crisis, which many men must have foreseen as probable, fell suddenly upon the world. Alexander died after a fever of a few days’ duration. He was making great preparations, at the moment, for the conquest of Arabia by sea and land, and we may be sure all the information available about the wealth of Yemen, and the sea-way from thence to Egypt by the Red Sea, must have been gathered and brought before the king. Ptolemy, who was then in his intimate counsels, may have seen a new and undeveloped source of wealth likely to accrue to Egypt by this adventurous trade. Moreover, upon the king’s death, it is certain that nobody thought of him as the fit man for the regency— there were other Companions of Alexander both senior and more prominent; it is equally certain that he alone among them all had his mind fully made up both as to the province he would choose and as to his future independence of the Royal House. He was the strongest advocate, says Pausanias, that the whole power should not be concentrated on Philip Arridaeus, and that the nations should be distributed into several royalties. He entered upon his province with a full conviction that this quarrel would be fought out in the first instance with Perdiccas, who as guardian and representative of the royal house (Philip Arridaeus and the infant Alexander) was determined to maintain his actual authority over the whole empire. “Ptolemy” says Diodorus, took over Egypt without disturbance, and treated the natives with kindness; received in the country 8000 talents, collected a mercenary force and organised his power; moreover, there ran together to him a crowd of his friends on account of his popularity. He also sent an embassy to Antipater to make joint cause with him, seeing plainly that Perdiccas would attempt to oust him from the satrapy of Egypt. For that purpose Cleomenes, now the sole manager of Egypt, had not been superseded, but associated with him. This policy Ptolemy foiled by putting Cleomenes to death, an act hardly unjust, and certainly not unpopular in Egypt, if we accept the tales of dishonesty and oppression told of that governor. Perdiccas, however, turned his attention first to Ariarathes of Cappadocia, and to the cities of Pisidia which were disobedient, in both of which cases his cruelty as a conqueror showed the world plainly what sort of successor to Alexander’s rule they would have in him. He had thus, before he turned to attack Ptolemy, alienated the other satraps, and especially Antigonus, who had to fly for his life.

During the two years that elapsed after the death of Alexander, Ptolemy had gained several considerable advantages, one sentimental, the others solid. The council of generals in Babylon had directed that the body of Alexander should be set on a magnificent catafalque, and brought to the oasis of Amon, there to be laid to rest. The splendour of the bier, which was drawn by 64 mules, and its military escort, commanded by Arrabaeus, a distinguished Macedonian noble and staff-officer of Alexander, excited the deepest interest. All the world came out to see the splendid procession, which was met by Ptolemy in Syria with a large force, and, in spite of Perdiccas having countermanded that the dead king should go to Egypt, and having ordered him to be brought to Aegae, the ancient necropolis of the Macedonian kings, the catafalque was led by Ptolemy to Pelusium, and thence (probably on a state barge) to Memphis, where the sarcophagus of gold remained for some time (we know not how long), nominally on its way to the oasis, really awaiting its final resting-place at Alexandria. For as yet the Serna, a special temple for its reception, was not ready. Moreover, until Ptolemy was assured of his supremacy on the sea, a hostile fleet might carry off the golden sarcophagus by a sudden raid. To capture it at Memphis would mean to conquer the whole of Lower Egypt. The explicit narrative of Diodorus, the recently-recovered fragments of Arrian, and the absence of all contrary statement, make this episode in our history so certain that we may well wonder at the boldness of those who assert that a splendid sarcophagus of some Sidonian king, probably Hephaestion’s nominee, who was buried with members of his family at Saida, might be, if not the actual tomb, at least intended for the shrine of the great king’s body. This acquisition added more than we can estimate to the prestige of Ptolemy’s satrapy. If the tent of Alexander, with his imaginary presence, was enough to sway the turbulent Macedonian soldiery, what must the effect have been of possessing his actual remains?

But it brought the satrap of Egypt into direct opposition to the regent Perdiccas, who desired a good excuse to pass with an army into Macedonia and oust Antipater, and for this purpose announced that he intended himself to escort Alexander’s body to Aegae. He had sent two officers, Attalus and Polemo, to see that Arrabaeus did not bring it to Egypt; but this officer’s obstinacy, and Ptolemy’s armed intervention, could not be baulked by their interference.

Seeing then that a conflict with the regent and his forces was in prospect, it was highly desirable that Ptolemy should strengthen his position. His first care was to make alliance with the kings of the cities of Cyprus, who not only manned a large fleet, but actually attacked the only town—Marea—in the island which refused to join them. Thus he obtained a great addition to his fleet, which from the first was vital to him. The only real danger to Egypt was an attack by sea. Perdiccas indeed sent a Phoenician fleet to subdue the Cypriote kings, but meanwhile Antigonus, satrap of Phrygia, had been obliged to fly for his life from Perdiccas, and take refuge in Macedonia, where his representations to Antipater and Krateros awakened in them a sense of their danger, and a readiness to send ambassadors to Ptolemy, entreating an alliance against the regent. Antigonus was at once dispatched with a fleet, and, in conjunction with the Cypriote kings, defeated or checked the regent’s fleet. Antigonus seems to have remained some time in Cyprus, and thus to have at least negatively aided Ptolemy in securing him from an invasion by sea.

Fortune too, as usual, lent her aid to the skilful diplomatist. The embezzled wealth of Harpalus, so notorious in connexion with the disgrace of Demosthenes, excited the cupidity of others besides Athenian patriots. The wretched creature himself was murdered by his comrade the Lacedaemonian Thibron, who then hired mercenaries with the money, and was in Crete ready for an offer of employment. It soon came to him from Cyrene, or rather from the usual nemesis of Greek republics—a band of political exiles seeking restitution. Alexander’s last edict restoring exiles throughout Hellas had indeed, as was intended, stirred up everywhere a nest of hornets. Thibron, who seems to have intended to make himself despot over all the Cyrenaica and the neighbouring Libyans, was at first very successful, but by estranging his ablest lieutenant through his parsimony he strengthened his adversaries, the aristocrats; and so we have the edifying spectacle of the two classes in Cyrene each trying to destroy the other by means of foreign help. Into the details of this savage quarrel we need not enter. The aristocrats seem to have tried every other available ally—Libyans and Carthaginians— before they turned to Ptolemy. Even when he sent his general Ophelas to support this party, the whole state seemed ready to unite against so dangerous an arbitrator. But Ptolemy was too strong for them, and when he came himself to support Ophelas the Cyreneans submitted to his authority, and accepted Ophelas as governor.

The reflection of Diodorus  on the peaceful solution of this sanguinary internecine struggle is characteristic. It was the right thing for a respectable literary man to say, though it was unmeaning, if not mischievous: ‘Thus the Cyreneans having sacrificed their freedom were ranged under the sovranty of Ptolemy.’ They had already, according to the same author, offered its surrender to Alexander, whom they met on his way to the oasis of Amon. But what did their liberty mean? A long series of civil feuds, resulting in murders, exiles, and confiscations of property; nor can we doubt that the moderate tax levied by Ptolemy was but a tithe of the war requisitions and other sudden losses entailed by their perpetual discord.

It is not stated by Diodorus at what exact time this acquisition of Cyrene was made by Egypt, but historians generally have assumed that it came (322 BC) shortly before the great invasion of Perdiccas, and so not only freed Ptolemy from any possible diversion on his west frontier, but added a considerable contingent of Cyreneans, or mercenaries employed by them, to his army. The Petrie Papyri show that in the next generation Cyrenean veterans had received grants of land in Egypt, and if the inscriptions of their names which I found on the temple of Tothmes III over against Wadi-Halfa date from Ptolemaic times, and not earlier, we have evidence that they were employed on expeditions even as far as the second cataract.

The details of Perdiccas’ invasion are preserved to us in Photius’ Epitome of Arrian and by Diodorus. But unfortunately the battles which the latter describes are mere conglomerations of facts, which give us little insight into the strategy and none into the tactics of the belligerents. Perdiccas, bringing with him ‘the kings,’ that is to say, Philip Arridaeus and his wife Eurydike, the infant Alexander, his mother Roxane, and their suite, advanced by land to the frontier with a force which could not be resisted in the open field. There seems to have been a formal accusation brought before the assembled Macedonians against Ptolemy for having disobeyed the regent’s commands. Ptolemy defended himself before this assembly with ability, and convinced many that he was in the right, but surely he was not there, in Perdikkas’ camp, in person, as Droysen hesitatingly, Niese categorically affirm. Antigonus had recently escaped for his life from such a trial before Perdiccas, and surely Ptolemy was not such a fool as to put his head in the lion’s mouth. He probably had a written defence read by a friend. But of course though the Macedonian soldiers did not decide in favour of Perdiccas, and even grumbled at the trial, mere argument was idle. The fleet which accompanied this army along the coast was commanded by Attalus, and seems to have been unable to effect any independent diversion on the Egyptian coast. On the other hand the Egyptian fleet, if superior, did not take the offensive, and permitted the fleet of Attalus, even after the death of Perdiccas, to retreat with impunity to Tyre. The fleet of Antigonus, recently active off Ionia and Cyprus, is not mentioned as impeding, or even disturbing, the advance of Perdiccas.

His military operations on the frontier seem to have been three. In the first place, he cleared out an old and disused canal, probably to the east of his position, for the purpose of drawing off the water from the canal in front of him, which protected the Camels’ Fort. This engineering work seems to have been successful, for after a night march he crossed this canal without difficulty, and all but surprised the fort. On the other hand, the water broke into the old channel he had opened with such violence as to cause loss and damage to his camp, and to give an excuse to the faint-hearted and disloyal among his followers to describe the operation as a failure, and to desert. Such as he could catch were put to death with torture as traitors, and so the contrast between his haughty and cruel severity and Ptolemy’s kindliness was made even more manifest than before.

The Egyptians came up barely in time to occupy Camels’ Fort, and in the assault which ensued, and which was beaten off with the greatest difficulty, Ptolemy showed his well-known personal bravery, fighting as a soldier on the ramparts. His most brilliant feat was the disabling of the leading elephant and his mahout, for there were no elephants on the Egyptian side, and therefore the Indian contingent with Perdiccas must have been his most formidable arm. After the failure of the assault, the regent, with considerable strategic skill, abandoned his position by night, and by a forced march reached a point of the Nile near Memphis, where a large island in mid-stream, sufficient to hold all his camp, offered facilities for crossing. But, strange to say, Perdiccas seems to have had no better means of crossing rivers than wading at a ford. All the clever devices of his great master in the art of war seem to be forgotten. In this case the operation failed miserably. When a part of the army had reached the island, the ford was suddenly found to be deepening, and soon became impassable. Diodorus says the fine sand at the bottom when disturbed by many feet floated down the stream. Presently many were lost in attempting to cross, many more in endeavouring to recross to the east bank. We are not told one word of what Perdiccas intended to do, had he succeeded in bringing his whole force to the island. For Ptolemy was ready upon the west bank, and could surely have starved him out on the island. When Diodorus says that in addition to those drowned, more than 1000 were devoured by crocodiles, we feel disposed to lower our estimate of his authority. Ptolemy saved all he could, no doubt with the help of boats, and gave the rest honourable and even ostentatious burial within sight of their comrades. So it came to pass that the discontent of the generals and the rage of the soldiers against their commander proceeded to mutiny, and Perdiccas was murdered after a struggle in his tent by his cavalry.

Ptolemy now held the game in his hands. He crossed without delay into the hostile camp, bringing ample provisions, lamenting the brave soldiers that had found a wretched death in the river, deprecating the war of friends against friends to maintain the claims of one ambitious spirit. The soldiers were unanimous in offering him the regency, and the charge of the royal princes. But the cautious and far-seeing man felt all the difficulties of the situation. It would bring about him men higher in dignity and with better claims; and who could tell at what moment a military revolt, headed by one of these rivals, would not remove him as Perdiccas had been removed? Even if no such catastrophe supervened, how could he hope to maintain his place in Egypt if the young Alexander grew up in his great father’s foundation at Alexandria, and claimed his hereditary rights ?

Such considerations led him to decline the honour with every courtesy, but with firmness. He was at the moment so powerful that he was even able to confer the dignity on those two of his comrades who had supported him against Perdiccas—Arrabaeus in the matter of the body of Alexander, Python who had excited the recent mutiny against the regent and caused his murder. But even these men, returning with the army to Syria, found the position so difficult, that they imitated Ptolemy, and resigned the intolerable burden.

The new division of the empire at Triparadeisus (321 BC)—for such it practically was—left Egypt with the adjoining Libya, and ‘what he could conquer towards the setting sun,’ in Ptolemy’s hands, ‘for it was thought impossible to oust him from Egypt which he held, as it were, by right of conquest ’ which was the best of all titles in those days.

I incline to put the marriage of Ptolemy with Eurydice, daughter of Antipater, as Droysen does, at this point of our complicated history. He had indeed been married, along with all the Macedonian grandees, on the same day as Alexander the Great, and to Artakama, daughter of Artabazus, satrap of Bactria. But strange to say, besides Roxane the Queen, only two of these Persian brides reappear in after history, nor do we find even children of the rest mentioned. Whether the ladies were repudiated, or whether the whole affair was not considered as a huge joke, as soon as Alexander was dead, we cannot tell.

Within a few months after the so-called settlement at Triparadeisus, new troubles broke out, those in Asia Minor being specially caused by the ambition of Antigonus, who now becomes the most active and prominent of the Diadochi. But while he was busy in his wars with Eumenes, Ptolemy took the opportunity (320 BC) of occupying Cyprus with his fleet, and then the satrapy of Syria, which he first tried to buy from Laomedon, but on his refusal took him prisoner, and presently connived at his flight. In this easy and almost bloodless campaign, we hear that Ptolemy commanded the fleet, and entrusted Nikanor with his land-army.

It is fortunately no part of our duty to unravel the complications of the wars which followed, and which rent the Hellenistic world asunder for a whole generation. It is a tedious and unedifying labour. That Ptolemy was anxiously watching, and constantly meddling by diplomacy in all these quarrels is certain. But most, of the details are lost. In 319 BC we hear that he was approached by Casander, who upon the appointment of Polyperchon by the dying Antipater as regent, had adopted the policy of independent satrapies with a sullen determination which ruthlessly brushed aside every obstacle, and led him to the murder of all the remaining members of the royal house. Ptolemy, however, was ready to approach this very unsympathetic person for private reasons, as well as in support of his anti-imperial policy. He desired to secure the province of Syria, which he had taken, from recapture by Antigonus. In this latter object, as we shall see, he did not succeed.

In the same year appeared the first of those misleading and mischievous proclamations of freedom to all the Greeks, which was imitated by all the rival satraps in turn, and remained a sort of political shibboleth down to the time of Nero. It was now merely a war measure on the part of the new regent Polyperchon, issued in the name of Philip Arridaeus, as ruler of Alexander’s empire, and intended to cause difficulties to Casander in Greece, and to Antigonus in Asia Minor. But. it must have affected Ptolemy also, inasmuch as his recent subjugation of Cyrene was the very latest ‘enslavement of free and autonomous Hellenes,’ and therefore the most notorious. Diodorus professes to give us the actual text of this famous decree. The document is too long to quote, and with its details we are not concerned. But how real the proposed independence, may be inferred from one sentence near the end: ‘and that all the Greeks shall pass a decree, that no one is to serve in arms, or act politically against us; and that if any one does so, he and his family shall be exiled, and their goods confiscated.’

But for the next four years the satrap of Egypt was not actively engaged in war, though the growing power of Antigonus, who had overthrown all his other rivals, and removed by execution all who could not escape as Seleucos did, showed plainly what was coming. Seleucos arrived, a fugitive to Ptolemy in 316 BC, and his case was made a casus belli against Antigonus by Casander and Lysimachus, who each claimed a share of the conquests they had promoted, and by Ptolemy, who only insisted upon the retention of Syria. So a war for the possession of Syria began in 315. But before we enter upon it, let us inquire what the satrap of Egypt had been doing during these four years to consolidate his power.

A very important event in his domestic life had taken place in 317. In spite of his previous marriage to Eurydice, he now married Berenice, a grand-niece of Antipater, who had come in Eurydice’s retinue to Egypt. She was already a widow, with a son Magas, and two daughters, Theoxena and Antigone. But when the scholiast on Theocritus says¹ that Lagus was her father, and she therefore a step-sister of Ptolemy, it is likely he was misled by the formula ‘wife and sister ’ applied to Egyptian queens as a mere title of honour, and which was probably used in many documents regarding the present princess. She seems to have been a person of amiable and yet strong character, and to have maintained her influence over her husband all the rest of her life. Polygamy was now the rule among the Diadochi, but so distinctly political were their marriages, that a new alliance did not imply even a divorce of sentiment between the husband and his previous wife. In the present case there is no evidence that Eurydice was divorced, neither do we hear of any domestic conflicts between Eurydice and Berenice. This speaks well indeed not only for the ladies, but for the diplomatic skill of Ptolemy. The rivals for his affection might have given him more trouble than the rivals for his power. Berenice was, however, certainly the favourite, and was probably a good diplomatist, seeing that her son Magas became king of Cyrene, and her son Ptolemy, to the exclusion of Eurydice’s older son, king of Egypt. Yet is this second marriage of Ptolemy passed by in silence by the historians who weary us with their confused accounts of resultless battles. Nor do they tell us one word of his internal policy, his successes in welding the diverse population of his kingdom into an organised and definite society. The restoration of the outer shrine of the great temple at Luxor, built by Tothmes III and ruined by the Persians, took place during the nominal sovranty of Philip Arridaeus, and therefore quite early in Ptolemy’s satrapy. His restoration of the inner cella was in the name of the boy-king Alexander. It is likely that even the latter restoration took place during the present interval of peace. For between the war of 315 and the young king’s murder by Casander in 311 or 310, Ptolemy had but little leisure to think of temples in Upper Egypt. The statue found (I believe) in this shrine, and supposed to represent the unfortunate king, is most remarkable as one of the very rare examples of the mixture of a Greek type with Egyptian attributes. The statue is one of a grown youth, older than Alexander IV lived to be, but we need not find any difficulty in this; for the artist, who had never seen him, would probably avoid representing the reigning king as a child. Nor can we regard it as anything more than a conventional figure, though the gentle and melancholy expression would well suit the tragic fortunes of the ill-starred boy, a martyr to his greatness.

When the war began, Antigonus was somewhat in the position of the great Alexander when he first reached Syria. On land he was quite superior to any adversary, but he suffered from the weakness of his fleet. Hence as Alexander had found the subjugation of Tyre essential, so Antigonus. Ptolemy indeed did not attempt to resist him on land. He had no confidence in his genius as against Antigonus. But he garrisoned Tyre strongly, as well as Joppa and Gaza, and though the latter two were easily taken by the invader, Tyre was a more serious affair, and cost a fifteen months’ siege. Had the fleet of allies, with Seleucus as its commander, been more active, or stronger, even this success would have been impossible. But their fleet did not accomplish any serious diversion, and with the fall of Tyre Antigonus could easily obtain the supremacy by sea. For he had at the same time made interest at Cyprus and Rhodes to obtain timber, ships and shipwrights. Yet the fleet under Ptolemy’s brother Menelaos did succeed in ousting him from Cyprus, and by friendly letters, and a counter declaration that he would free the Greeks, Ptolemy neutralised the bid of Antigonus in the same direction. The Greeks were mainly passive, and Casander persuaded Antigonus’ general in the Peloponnesus to desert his master. This set free the fleet and army of Ptolemy, which was operating on the Greek coast under Polykleitos, who crossed at once to Cilicia, and finding that two officers of Antigonus, Perilaos and Theodotos, were coming from Caria along the coast with a fleet and an army, he laid wait for them, and destroyed their force, slaying one and taking the other prisoner. This brilliant success checked Antigonus. So Antigonus and Ptolemy met at a place called Ekregma, on the frontier between Palestine and Egypt, to discuss exchange or ransom of prisoners, but no further accommodation resulted. It must be remembered that all these rivals were old friends and comrades, who had served together in many campaigns. Personal hatreds among them are to be found, but they are exceptional; their hostilities were those of conflicting interests.

The following year was spent in campaigns on the coast of Asia Minor and Greece, in which Ptolemy was not active except with his fleet at Cyprus and the coast of Cilicia. The complete re-conquest of Cyprus was, however, almost contemporary with a revolt at Cyrene, stimulated no doubt by the proclamations of Greek liberty by Antigonus, and probably by more active propagandism. The revolt, which went so far as to besiege the Egyptian garrison in the Acropolis, was promptly put down by an Egyptian force. The ringleaders were carried in chains to Alexandria, and the government of Ophelas restored. The proceedings of Ptolemy at Cyprus were still more highhanded. He slew or deposed some of the local kings, destroyed the city of the Marieis, and transferred the inhabitants to Paphos. Nikokreon, king of Salamis, was made Strategus of the reconquered Cyprus. The position of this local king was made as dignified as possible. Cyprian coins of this date bear upon them the peculiar ensigns of a helmet, an aplustre and a star. These probably indicate that Nikokreon held the combined offices of strategus, admiral, and high-priest of the island — offices held by the same person according to a later Cyprian inscription. After some successful naval raids upon the Syrian coast, Ptolemy was persuaded by Seleucos to resume the occupation of Palestine, especially as Antigonus had his hands full in Asia Minor, and was only able to oppose the invasion by sending his son Demetrius with an army not superior to the Egyptian, except in the item of forty elephants, of which Ptolemy had none. As the second and third Ptolemies procured them easily enough from the southern coasts of the Red Sea, it is possible that the first Ptolemy had learned from Alexander to despise this auxiliary. Nor do we find him in any of his campaigns defeated by them; Diodorus’ authority is even most explicit in telling us how he repulsed or obviated their attacks.

The armies met very deliberately to try the fortune of battle near Gaza early in 312. Diodorus relates the course of the conflict with great detail. To the contemporaries of Alexander, his authorities, both strategy and tactics had the highest interest. Ptolemy and Seleucos on one side, on the other the staff of the youthful Demetrius, Nearchus, Peithon and others, were fighting generals of great experience, brought up in continuous war under the greatest master of the art. Nevertheless, like Napoleon’s generals, none of them seems to have possessed any originality, except perhaps Lysimachus and Eumenes. They are always imitating Alexander’s dispositions. Here at Gaza, the Egyptian army, contending against an array of elephants, seems to have been handled as the Macedonians had been in the battle with Porus. While the main line was directed to keep the elephants in check, the right wing of cavalry attacked those opposed to it, and when hotly engaged was supported by a reserve of cavalry which rode round farther to the right, and thus turned the left flank of Demetrius. And here as elsewhere, a few initial successes determined the victory, for both armies were almost all mercenaries, not fighting for their lives and liberties, but ready to serve either side for pay. There was a good understanding among the adversaries, who did not push matters to extremities, and settled more battles by treason than by fighting. Nor can we in the least believe the large figures of the slain set down by Diodorus in his narrative of these wars. Demetrius may have lost 8000 men in this battle of Gaza, but probably three-quarters of them became more or less willing prisoners, and took service under the victor’s flag. Demetrius fled, and was found at Azotus, whither Ptolemy sent him all his personal effects, which had been captured with his camp in the general rout. He also complimented him on his bravery, and there was an interchange of those courtesies which mark Hellenistic, as distinct from Hellenic culture.

The victors proceeded to occupy all Palestine and Syria; even Tyre was taken by the treachery of its defenders. Ptolemy was everywhere courteous and considerate, even forgiving Andronicus, governor of Tyre, who had treated him with insolence. He laid the foundation of that popularity of the power of Egypt in Palestine which the Seleucids of Antioch were never able to attain. He sent the exile Seleucos with a small force to recover Babylon, and his former satrapy. It was at the moment a war measure, to cause a diversion against Antigonus; it proved in the sequel a policy fraught with momentous consequences, for Seleucos not only maintained himself successfully, but founded a great empire. Ptolemy further sent all the soldiers he had captured to be distributed through the nauarchies, or naval defences, of Egypt. We learn also from a fragment of Hecataeus of Abdera that many Jews were now induced to settle in Egypt, and that the high-priest Hezekiah became Ptolemy’s firm friend. If the story which Josephus repeats from Agatharchides be true, that Ptolemy seized Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, when the Jews would not take arms, it may have happened during this occupation, though Cless puts it in his first occupation in 320. Josephus also adds two rather inconsistent statements : first, that he was a harsh ruler of Palestine ; secondly, that he induced large numbers of Jews to settle in Egypt, and put them in places of trust in the upper country. The latter statement repeats precisely what had been told of Alexander.

But his occupation of Syria was soon cut short. Demetrius, having reformed his army, advanced again from Cilicia, and was lucky enough to surprise by night a whole division of troops under Killes, which were taken prisoners almost without a blow. Antigonus was not far off in Phrygia with his main army. As usual Ptolemy adopted the cautious and cowardly rather than the bold policy. After a council of war, a general retreat was ordered; all the fortresses were dismantled; in the autumn of 312 Syria and Palestine were again cleared of Egyptians.

Though Antigonus at once re-occupied the territory in dispute, he was as careful in attacking Ptolemy in his ‘Torres Vedras,’ as Ptolemy was in avoiding the open field of battle. So he turned to subdue the Arab tribes of Nabataea, in order, if possible, to obtain a line of attack from the east upon Egypt, avoiding Pelusium and the frontier defences which had been so fatal to Perdiccas. His raids against the Arabian nomads were successful as battles, but unsuccessful as conquests. For he was now dealing with enemies not to be frightened, or bought over, by partial defeats. The varying fortunes and surprises of this desert fighting occupied him till the news of Seleucos’ successes in the East became so alarming that he was content to make peace (311 BC) By the terms of this peace Ptolemy did not recover Syria. It is suspected by historians that he was now involved in difficulties with Cyrene, as Ophelas was an untrustworthy lieutenant, and the cities of the district were still excited by the declaration of the freedom of all Hellenic cities, which Antigonus had recently issued, in imitation of Polyperchon, for the purpose of weakening his adversaries in Greece.

A remarkable hieroglyphic inscription, dated  in the seventh year of the young king Alexander, and therefore at this moment, gives us a glimpse into the internal policy of Ptolemy. It is a relief to turn to such a document, from the wearying complications of the wars with Antigonus and other hostile satraps. The whole text of this inscription I have given in another place. Here I shall not repeat the elaborate formulae, but merely give the substance of the document, which is the earliest home record we have of the Ptolemaic rule:  In the seventh year of the absent king Alexander there was a great satrap, Ptolemy was his name... He had brought back the images of the gods found in Asia; all the furniture of the books of all the temples of North and South Egypt, he had restored them to their place.’ It is quite possible that when Ptolemy was first declared governor of Egypt at Babylon, he collected from the treasures of the Persian kings various relics of their old Egyptian conquests, and so came to Egypt with a precious gift for the priests, and a peace-offering to national sentiment. ‘He had made his residence at Alexandria by the sea, Rhakotis was its former name. He had assembled Ionians (Greek mercenaries) and their cavalry and ships with their crews, and went to fight in Syria.  He penetrated into their land; his courage was as mighty as that of a hawk among little birds. He carried their princes (probably Jewish or Phoenician nobles as hostages), cavalry, ships, works of art to Egypt. After this, when he had set out for Marmarica (Cyrene), he led captive their men, women, horses in requital for what they had done to Egypt. The reader will note that only the victory at Gaza is commemorated, and no mention is made of any subsequent reverses; still it is not asserted that he conquered Syria, but only that he carried away from it great spoil. As he thrice evacuated Palestine without risking a personal defeat in the field, we may be sure that on each occasion he sought popularity by bringing back with him not only prisoners, but gifts from anxious cities, and other supplies, for his country. ‘When he had returned, he was glad, and celebrated a good day, and bethought him what he could do for the gods of Egypt. Then there spoke to him he that was at his side’—some Egyptian adviser—‘and the elders of the sea land, called the land of Buto, alleging that it had been granted to the gods of the cities of Pe and Tep, in that land, by the native king Chabbas, when he was gone to Pe and Tep to examine the sea border and the marshes, to examine every arm of the Nile that goes into the great sea, to keep off the fleet of Asia from Egypt.’ Ptolemy then sends for the priests of Pe and Tep and makes inquiry. They tell him that the miscreant Xerxes had taken away this property from the gods, and that it had been restored by the native (insurgent) king Chabbas. Whether this was literally true is doubtful enough; it expresses, however, in general, the Persian and the national policies. Ptolemy being satisfied has a decree drawn up giving the land of Buto, limited by Hermopolis and Sebennytus on the north and west, to the gods of Pe and Tep as their domain. There follow imprecations against him who may venture to reverse this decree.

We thus see the new satrap taking up the policy of the priests, and identifying himself with the native religion, in contrast to the harsh and insolent Persians. There appears to me, however a hint at something more practical in this document. Chabbas had minutely examined the mouths of the Nile, and given this tract of land to the priests, in connexion with the securing of these accesses to Egypt against invasions from the sea. We shall see presently how very carefully and completely these defences were organised by Ptolemy. We may therefore fairly conjecture that he got in return from the strong and friendly corporation of the priests who administered the property of the gods of Pe and Tep such assistance in defending the Sebennytic mouth of the Nile, as he could not have otherwise obtained.

The feature of the peace of 311 to which Ptolemy probably made most objection was the clause declaring the freedom of all Greek cities, that is to say their autonomy, or right of dealing as independent states with any of the great satraps. This precluded any garrisons occupying such cities, except by invitation of the citizens, and gave the latter authority to repudiate any alliance and adopt a new one by a decision of their assembly. Such a clause was directly subversive of Ptolemy’s control of the Cyrenaica.

His counter-move was one of singular success. He  asserted, the following year, that this clause had not been carried out by his adversary, and manned a fleet to enter the Levant and bring the promised liberty to the pining patriots of Greece. But among ‘Greek cities’ he chose to include those coast settlements in Caria, Cilicia, Pisidia, especially Xanthus, Kaunos, and Myndos, which were really peopled by a bold native population of hardy pirates, most useful for his navy, and a great protection to his all-important island of Cyprus. Here, with his usual severity when dealing with Cypriote kings, he ordered the death of Nikokles of Salamis, whose whole family then committed suicide. Of course his ‘ liberation of Greek cities ’ was not more seriously meant than any of the like proclamations of his rivals. In his complicated operations through the Greek waters, he seems to have abstained from freeing the cities under Casander’s sway, such as Athens, because Casander was now his friend and ally. But those under Casander’s adversaries, especially under Antigonus, were glad to get the help of his now dominant fleet, and he secured for his dynasty a support in the Levant which was among the greatest elements of its power. He ‘liberated’ Kos and Andros. The citadel of Corinth was handed over to him by Kratesipolis, the strong-minded widow of Polyperchon’s son Alexander, who was looking out for a new matrimonial alliance. This stronghold as well as Sicyon he kept for some time, and it must have been through Corinthian influence that he spread his sway over the islanders of Greece, who formed a coalition of which his son in after years, and probably he also, were presidents. For in the great procession with which Ptolemy Philadelphus inaugurated his accession was carried a figure of the first Ptolemy, with the city of Corinth (another figure) standing beside him.

It would lead to no better understanding of Ptolemy to give the intricate details of his chequered campaigns. The years 310-309 were stained with the murder of the remaining members of Alexander’s house—Cleopatra, the king’s sister, who was in Antigonus’ power, because she had designs of marrying Ptolemy; Roxane and the young Alexander, in Casander’s hands; Herakles, the bastard claimant, by Casander’s persuasion. Thus every legitimate claimant, direct and indirect, to Alexander’s succession was swept away, and the way laid open for the creation of independent sovranties.

But it was not yet settled whether there should be one— that of Antigonus, or several. We do not hear that Antigonus opposed Ptolemy actively in the Greek waters; probably he was engaged with Seleucos in the East. But he sent his very able son Demetrius to outbid Ptolemy, by liberating the cities under Casander, especially Athens, which Ptolemy had not approached. Moreover, Demetrius went further, and retook Corinth and Sikyon, of which the latter had been garrisoned by Egyptian forces; the former, for some unexplained reason, had been ceded to Casander.

The real attack on Ptolemy commenced with a counter blow of Demetrius on Cyprus, where Menelaos, the governor, was defeated, and besieged at Salamis, and when Ptolemy came to his aid with a fleet and army, he was worsted in a great battle by Demetrius. Consequently though Menelaos made a successful diversion from Salamis, the island was conquered, and Ptolemy abandoned it to his foes. The sea battles, of which Diodorus describes several at great length, seem to have been as nearly as possible copied from tactics on land. The generals are also admirals, and command on their own wing. There is a personage called the archpilot, who seems to direct the general manoeuvres. It was after this signal victory that Demetrius sent his father a despatch, hailing him through his envoy as king, a compliment returned by Antigonus. Most of our authorities assert that the other Hellenistic sovrans—Seleucos, Lysimachus, Casander — forthwith assumed the royal title. They assert it also of Ptolemy, but the era by which his dynasty dated their years does not begin till 305. Apparently therefore this great battle and the loss of Cyprus did not take place till 306, though we cannot for want of information fill the antecedent years with their events.

If Antigonus was busy in the East, so Ptolemy, after his successful parade through Greek waters, was partly at least occupied with the affairs of Cyrene. It seems that his viceroy Ophelas, who was not only a Macedonian of rank, but was married to an Athenian lady descended from Miltiades, had thought the time was come, in or about 312, to make himself independent, and found again the old kingdom of Cyrene. Possibly Ptolemy may have endeavoured to counteract this revolt by policy rather than by arms, and his proclamation of freedom to all Greek cities may have been a bid for the support of a democratic party at Cyrene against Ophelas. He knew, of course, that he could deal with democracy there at any moment; he could sow discord by means of bribes, and then appear as umpire when the sedition had become intolerable. To make an expedition against the forces of Ophelas, who was an experienced soldier, was another matter, and it is certain that the revolt was tolerated by Ptolemy without any attempt at punishing it for several years. But then, according to the historians, fortune again plays into his hands, and Agathocles of Syracuse, who had begun a war against the Carthaginians in Africa, sends to solicit, with the most tempting promises, the aid of Ophelas in subduing the Punic power. Agathocles was to claim no possessions in Africa, and after the conquest Ophelas was to occupy all Carthage, and add it to the kingdom of Cyrene. We are told that this prospect gathered together from Greece a herd of adventurers, hoping to occupy new lands in the rich and highly cultivated territory now under Carthage. After a long and very miserable march along the deserts of the Syrtes, Ophelas reached his ally with a diminished and disheartened force, only to find himself betrayed, and to lose his life at the hands of Agathocles. His army was at once absorbed into the ranks of the victor. Thus it came to pass that Ptolemy was able to re-occupy, in 307 BC, his outlying African province by sending a force under his stepson Magas, who remained regent or even king of Cyrene for fifty years to come.

Had this overthrow of Ophelas by the machinations of Agathocles taken place in the reign of Philadelphus, every one would have assumed that it was a deliberate stroke of policy on the part of the Egyptian diplomatists. They had ample means in their commercial relations with Agathocles to offer him inducements and rewards for his treachery, and indeed without some such negotiations his conduct seems pointless and even silly. Was it worthwhile to bring the veteran Ophelas with a large army into contact with his own, when any failure would have at once entailed the same results to Agathocles that overtook Ophelas? Agathocles, an upstart, but a powerful and ambitious one, was anxiously seeking to win his place as a Hellenistic sovran, and one recognised in the diplomacy of their courts. The marriage of his daughter with Pyrrhus, and his naval operations at Corcyra, show this plainly enough. His own marriage to Theoxena, Ptolemy’s stepdaughter, was a far more splendid alliance, and may have been the bribe offered by the Egyptian satrap for this very service. I cannot but conjecture therefore that this treacherous diversion was deliberately planned by Agathocles and Ptolemy, or by their respective diplomatists, and that here we have another case of that policy of indirect counter-moves which is almost a distinctive feature in the annals of Ptolemaic Egypt.

During the interval that elapsed not only Ptolemy but the diplomatic world had had time to forget the ‘liberation of all the Greeks,’ and we do not hear that the appointment of a new king or royal deputy to rule over Cyrene caused any indignation throughout the Greek world. Of course no one saw more clearly than the Greeks the hollowness of all such proclamations. Still there were certain decencies to be observed. Five years gave ample time and opportunity for the political situation to change; many Greek cities had not accepted the boon; Ptolemy may have professed a sincere desire to carry out the liberation, but pleaded his inability to overcome the difficulties it caused, and may have protested against any partial liberation affecting his own power, as compared with that of his rivals. At all events every Hellenistic sovran who made such declarations concerning independence—and which of them did not?—was ready to violate them, as soon as they interfered with his own interests. The age was like that of Macchiavelli, in which principle was only asserted as a means of promoting selfish objects, and of making the want of principle more successful. With all the courtesy and bonhomie which are asserted of Ptolemy, the whole course of his history shows him a true child of his age, and not superior to his fellows in morals or in uprightness, but merely in the clearness of his intellect, and the moderation of his ambition. It was during one of his campaigns in the Aegean in 308 that his wife Berenice, who accompanied him, bore him at Kos the son who is commonly known under the title of Philadelphus.

From this time onward, we know that the relations between Kos and Alexandria were very intimate, for not only was Kos the favourite retreat of Alexandrian literary men, wearied with the heat and pressure of life in the great seething capital, but it was frequently chosen as a place of safety for royal exiles, and also as a place of education for royal princes. The poetical and the medical schools of this island held their own against the rivalry even of the Museum. Such being the case, we should have expected researches on the island to have unearthed for us many stray lights on Ptolemaic history. Unfortunately these hopes have not been realised. Mr. Paton’s careful inquiry, though he does not profess it to be final, has only been able to give us a couple of Ptolemaic inscriptions, and we can hardly hope to find much more even in the unexplored Turkish citadel.

The defeat of Ptolemy at Cyprus, and the loss of the island, were the prelude to another attack upon Egypt, this time by Antigonus and Demetrius. The first attack by Perdiccas had ignominiously failed, but neither in power nor in popularity could he be compared with the father and son, whose combined talents seemed now likely to unite again under a single sway all the disrupted provinces of Alexander’s empire. Moreover, the experience of Perdiccas’ failure was there, and the obstacles which he stumbled upon could now be foreseen and avoided. The frontier tribes must be won over; the supplies along the route must be carried by a fleet superior to that of the enemy and in touch with the land-army.

In all these matters Antigonus took unusual precautions. The whole campaign was planned at Antigoneia, the new capital on the Orontes, and from thence the troops and ships were sent to assemble at Gaza, which was the proper starting-point for the march against Egypt. Ancient historians are utterly untrustworthy as regards figures; I therefore only repeat the alleged numbers of Antigonus’ attacking force to show what kind of armament Egypt was supposed able to resist. Antigonus advanced, we are told, with more than 80,000 infantry, 8000 cavalry, 83 elephants, 150 ships of war, 100 transport ships. He had obtained from the nomad Arabs a great convoy of camels which he loaded with 130,000 medimni of corn and green fodder for the beasts. His siege-train, now an important arm of attack, was on the transport ships.

Two obvious dangers threatened the invasion. In the first place the army was of unwieldy size and unable to undertake quick or stealthy operations. Secondly, the season was wrongly chosen or rather, I suppose, the expedition was accidentally delayed till the setting of the Pleiades, early in November (306 BC) For not only were storms now to be expected along the harbourless and shoaly coast, as the seamen expressly warned Antigonus; but at this time the Nile is still high, and the passage of any of its mouths accordingly difficult, especially in the face of a watchful enemy. Antigonus must have had the strongest counter-inducements to advance in spite of these well-known obstacles. We can only conjecture that it was thought all-important to attack Ptolemy so rapidly after his great defeat at Cyprus as to find his troops still dispirited and his fleet disorganised. He had lost about 140 ships at Cyprus. In a few months of dockyard activity these might be replaced, and the supremacy at sea become again doubtful. An attack by land along the narrow coastline without a superior fleet to protect its flank, and secure its communications with Syria, was held to be more risky than to brave the weather.

But the elements did their work for Ptolemy. Demetrius, who commanded the fleet, found his task almost hopeless by reason of the strong north-west winds which set in, as was predicted by the seamen. He first met a storm which drove several of his heaviest ships on shore at Raphia, so that but for the arrival of the land-army to succour them, and make his landing secure from the enemy, the expedition might then and there have been given up. When the combined forces arrived at Pelusium, they found it amply defended; the entrance of the river blocked with boats, and the river above covered with small armed cruisers to resist any attempt at crossing, ready, moreover, to circulate among the invaders promises of large bribes and good service if they would desert and join Ptolemy. As these bribes amounted to two minae for the private, a talent for the officer, it was with difficulty, and by punishing such deserters as he could stop with death by torture, that Antigonus escaped an end similar to that of Perdiccas. Demetrius, finding any entrance at Pelusium impracticable, attempted to land farther west, first at a so-called sham outlet, probably from the present Lake Menzaleh, and then at the Damietta mouth (Phatnitic). In both places he was beaten off, and was then overtaken by another storm, which wrecked three more of his largest ships; and with difficulty did he make his way back to his father’s camp east of the Pelusiac entrance.

We can imagine the feelings with which Antigonus called a council of war to weigh the situation. The fate of Perdiccas stared them in the face. Mercenary armies will not tolerate ill-success and increasing want in the face of a courteous well-supplied enemy ready to welcome deserters. Another couple of storms would certainly destroy any fleet, however well-handled, on this inhospitable and harbourless coast. The nomad tribes, friendly to a successful invader, would be certain to fall upon a dispirited retreating army. It was determined, we may say of necessity rather than of wisdom, to retreat while retreat was a military evolution, and not an irreparable disaster.

Ptolemy seems to have made no effort to harass the departing host. He had shown once more that Egypt in able hands was impregnable, and that to attack it without success was so perilous, by reason of the difficulties of retreat, as to deter any prudent commander from incurring the risk. Now therefore Ptolemy had proved himself more secure than ever, and he sent official notifications to his allies Casander, Lysimachus and Seleucus, in which I am disposed to think he first formally called himself king. As Droysen has conjectured, the official era only commenced with the opening of the next Egyptian year, and this accounts for the late date assigned to it—November 305 BC. But the notices extant that Ptolemy assumed it along with the other satraps lead us to believe that in the acclamations of his courtiers, and in the flatteries of correspondence, the title appeared before its solemn assumption by the acclamation of the ‘Macedonian’ soldiers. At all events, the title king belonged to him before the issue of the next great conflict, in which he was only engaged indirectly, and without great personal risk. For with the repulse of Antigonus, Ptolemy’s active campaigning was over, and he was able to devote the rest of his long and useful life to the arts of peace.

 

 

 

COIN OF PTOLEMY

 

PTOLEMY I (SOTER) KING, 305-285 BC.

 

The first event of importance after Ptolemy’s assumption of royalty was the great siege of Rhodes, which was attacked by Antigonus because it had refused to help him against Egypt. The Rhodians protested that they had only observed neutrality; that on Ptolemy depended a great part of their prosperity; that they were ready to make any concession short of military occupation by Antigonus. But the old king and his son were determined upon subduing Rhodes, as a stepping-stone to subdue Egypt. With the Rhodian fleet a new attack on the Delta might be successful, and the invasion had surely not been abandoned, but postponed. So Demetrius was sent by his father with 40,000 troops, 200 ships of war, 170 transports—even if the numbers be exaggerated, a veritable Armada—against the great trading city. The details of the siege, which lasted nearly a year, and was then raised by a compromise, do not concern us beyond the interference of Ptolemy. Though Rhodes had entered upon an almost hopeless struggle on his account (for neutrality in a war against him was the point at issue), he did not declare war against Antigonus, and send an Egyptian army and fleet to defend that city. In fact he ran no risk of losing a battle, or even weakening his prestige against the formidable Demetrius. But both he, and the other kings opposed to Antigonus in policy, that is to say Lysimachus and Casander, sent supplies of food, war material, and Ptolemy even mercenaries, to aid the Rhodians.

The weak point of Demetrius’ attack was his inability or failure to invest the city. His first attack was upon the harbour, when the city was still supplied with men and provisions from the land side. Then he attempted to storm it from the land side, but left the harbour open so that not only could Ptolemy throw in supplies from the sea, but the Rhodian cruisers were able to cut off a portion of the supplies the besiegers derived from the mainland. They even captured the royal luxuries in robes and plate, which had been sent to Demetrius by his wife Phila, and these, as being only suitable to a royal personage, the islanders sent as a present to Ptolemy. It is quite certain that but for the active help of Egypt, Rhodes would have fallen; yet no sooner was the success of Demetrius doubtful, than Ptolemy urged the Rhodians to accept any fair compromise. Various Greek cities had already offered arbitration; ultimately on the intervention of the Aetolians, whose league held a far higher position in the Greek world than Polybius would allow us to suppose, the terms of an agreement were arranged. Ptolemy carried the point of importance to himself in the transaction. The Rhodians were to be allies of Antigonus against any enemy, save only against Egypt. They even gave hostages to Demetrius. So then the great siege turned out a great failure, and left the position of Egypt untouched.

The anxiety of so many neutral cities to end the conflict was of course owing to commercial reasons. The whole trade of the Levant, and that of Egypt too, suffered terribly from the closing of the great mart and banking centre, upon which all their correspondences depended. In the next century we hear that the stopping of payment at Rhodian banks meant a collapse of credit all through the Hellenistic world.¹ Hence the protracted siege was a commercial disaster of the gravest kind, and to business men it mattered little under what conditions Rhodes made peace, provided she could resume her trading business. These reasons may have weighed even upon Antigonus, who was building his brilliant capital Antigoneia, on the Orontes, and could hardly obtain all the appliances required, when the sea was being swept by Rhodian cruisers and quasi-Rhodian pirates, and when commercial credit was shaken everywhere. But far more serious to the old king was the threatened combination of Seleucus, Lysimachus and Casander, a thundercloud which burst upon him at Ipsus, and laid his ambitions to rest with his life.

Meanwhile the Rhodians showed themselves extravagantly grateful for the active succour afforded them by Ptolemy, even though he had risked nothing but some of his wealth to save them from subjugation. They had already set up statues to Antigonus and Demetrius, in the hope of averting the attack; and they were too prudent to disturb them, even during the siege. Of course therefore they were bound to set up statues of the friendly kings, Lysimachus and Casander, who had helped them with supplies. But this was not enough to represent their gratitude to Ptolemy. They sent to the oracle of Amon to ask whether it were lawful to honour him as a god, and receiving an affirmative answer, set up a shrine in a sacred enclosure surrounded by four colonnades, each a stadion long, which they called the Ptolemaeion. Athenaeus refers to the hymn sung in his honour at this shrine which had the form of a Paean. These events seem to have taken place in 304 BC and the result to Ptolemy was not only the confirmation of his royal dignity, but the additional sanction of that quasi-divinity which was so easily accorded in those days, that its absence may have been considered a deficiency in the attributes of a king.

The form of worship established in this case points to his being regarded a second founder of the city. Pausanias adds that now the title of sotiri was given him by the Rhodians, by which he was known in Egypt, as we learn from coins and the documents of his son’s reign.

But as his years advanced, we see an increase of that caution, which marred his greatness. He makes no attempt to recover Cyprus, now a secure residence even for the Antigonid princesses; he attempts no more to dispute Demetrius’ supremacy at sea, and when that prince carries his baffled fleet from Rhodes into Greek waters, and begins to press sore upon Ptolemy’s old ally Casander, the king of Egypt does nothing till an alliance of Casander and Lysimachus with Seleucos promises him the result that he may again re-occupy Palestine, and perhaps Syria.

The operations of the allies commenced in the spring of 302. While Casander strove to maintain himself against Demetrius, Lysimachus, by a sudden invasion, took possession of almost all Asia Minor. His arrangements must have been prompt and secret, for they came upon Antigonus as a surprise, while he was organising a great feast at his newly-built capital on the Orontes. But this is not the only case in these wars where we find a great want of proper information and prompt transmission of news from one land to another. We should have thought it impossible for Lysimachus to mass troops and provisions on the northern frontier of Antigonus’ dominions, without ample notice reaching his adversary. Antigonus, however, stopped his Founder’s feast, dismissed all the theatrical artists there assembled with ample gifts, and set out to fight his old comrade.

And here we see at once how much greater the capacity of Lysimachus was than that of Ptolemy, in resisting a superior force. Instead of forthwith evacuating Asia Minor, and carrying off his spoil and captives to Thrace, Lysimachus occupied a fortified camp, at which Antigonus was checked for a long time and could not force a battle. When he managed to cut off Lysimachus’ supplies, the latter abandoned this camp with such skill as to make his retreat safely and without loss to another position, forty miles north, where the same tactics were renewed. In vain did Antigonus offer battle, or endeavour to starve out his enemy. His only resource was to storm the works, and when he had brought up with delay and trouble his siege-train, Lysimachus again outwitted him one stormy night, and carried off his own army to winter quarters, whither Antigonus essayed in vain to pursue him, foreseeing that his enemy was sure of a junction in the spring with the host of Seleucus advancing from the east along the northern highway by Armenia and Paphlagonia.

By this masterly campaign, Lysimachus had not only enjoyed the revenues of Asia Minor and the prestige of occupying his adversary’s country, but he had secured the unmolested advent of his allies. Towards the end of the season he was in considerable difficulties as to his northern communications, for the fleet of Demetrius, summoned by Antigonus, controlled the coast along the Dardanelles, and threatened his rear. Nevertheless he did what Ptolemy never ventured to do, and to' him was due the successful issue of the war. For Ptolemy, advancing into Palestine according to the terms of his alliance, and busy with the siege of Sidon, was frightened away by the mere false  rumour that Antigonus had met and defeated the allies. He left indeed some garrisons behind, but lost his great chance of extending his territory northward, for when the issue came at Ipsus (301 BC), those who had borne the brunt of the conflict, made their settlement without even consulting him.

It was indeed a great battle, like that of Leipzig in our century, where the kings of the earth met together to settle a momentous question. Antigonus, now eighty-one years old, and for more than thirty years dominant in Asia Minor and Syria, was supported by his son Demetrius, the most successful captain of the younger generation, and with him was the youthful Pyrrhus, presently to become the most brilliant soldier of his age. On the other side were Lysimachus, now over sixty, the best strategist among Alexander’s generals, who had carved himself out, amid successes and reverses, a noble kingdom in the northern provinces; Seleucos, the most successful, and perhaps the ablest of the Diadochi, and now also the most powerful with his army of Indian elephants; Casander, whose cruel consistency and stubborn determination had influenced the course of this history more than the superior tactics of his rivals.

In this famous array, Ptolemy was absent, hiding himself in the security of his far-off Egypt, and waiting to take advantage of the result. The fact that Demetrius commanded the sea could hardly have hindered his effecting a landing on the south coast of Asia Minor, especially while Demetrius was operating on the Hellespont against Lysimachus and his communications.

Most unfortunately our only full authority for the period, Diodorus, is not preserved, except in needy excerpts, beyond his twentieth book, which ends just before the great battle. We are consequently unable to discover what were the exact terms of the division of Antigonus’ empire among the victors. Seleucos certainly got the lion’s share; though most of the sea coast of Asia Minor, as far as Cilicia, seems to have been ceded to Lysimachus. Syria was certainly from henceforth a part, and a very vital part, of the kingdom of Seleucos. He intended no longer to be a king of the far East, ruling at Babylon, but a Hellenistic sovran, in contact with the culture, the trade, the politics of the Greek world. A quotation from the lost twenty-first book of Diodorus tells us: ‘After his victory over Antigonus, Seleucos marched back to Phoenicia, in order to occupy Coele-Syria in accordance with the terms of the partition. But Ptolemy had already occupied the cities and complained that Seleucus, his ally, should have agreed to accept the territory already occupied by the king of Egypt, and, moreover, that the other kings had not allotted to Egypt, in spite of its participation in the war, any part of the conquered territory. To this Seleucus replied: that it was only fair for those who had actually overthrown the enemy in fight to control what they had conquered; yet for old friendship’s sake he would not for the present insist upon the matter of Coele-Syria, but in due time would consider his position towards allies who were too grasping.’ Thus the question was left open, and the discussion was so indefinite that in after days both Seleucids and Lagids appealed to it as giving them a right to occupy the disputed country. As a matter of fact, when Seleucus and Ptolemy met and discussed the possession of Syria, the coast from Tyre to Gaza belonged to neither of them, but to Demetrius and his garrisons. Hence the country claimed by Seleucos could only be inner Syria, which we know to have been the country settled with independent cities under Seleucid influence. All the Decapolis was a Syrian creation. Ptolemy on the other hand, having the only fleet which could cope with that of Demetrius, must have contended with him not only for Cyprus, but for the coast cities of Philistia and Phoenicia. In the end Ptolemy prevailed, and it is likely that he put garrisons into these cities after Demetrius fell, while Seleucos occupied the Cilician and Pisidian forts. This seems to be the general outline of the wars from 301 to 294 BC.

But, of course, new jealousies led to new complications. Ptolemy took care to fortify himself against the threatened advances of Seleucos, by drawing closer to Lysimachus, who though now living at Sardis in perfect harmony with his noble Persian wife Amastris, sent her home to her city Herakleia, and married (probably in 300 BC) Ptolemy’s daughter Arsinoe, whose half-sister Lysandra also married Lysimachus’ eldest son and heir Agathocles. On the other hand Seleucus, who at once set about founding his new capital Antioch, with the materials of the dismantled Antigoneia, drew near in policy to Demetrius, who, though a fugitive without a kingdom, commanded the sea, and hence Cyprus, and many Cilician coast towns and lesser islands. It is at this moment that historians suppose Ptolemy to have sought the friendship of the upstart Agathocles, and obtained a diversion against Casander at Corcyra, by marrying to Agathocles his stepdaughter Theoxena, sister of Magas of Cyrene.

The complicated wars, alliances, counter-alliances of the next five years are not to be extricated from the confusion in which we have them, till we discover some further information. Plutarch, who covers the period in his Life of Demetrius, seems to have no clear idea of the sequence of events. The action of Ptolemy is perhaps more obscure than the rest. He had to maintain himself against the fleet of Demetrius, and we even hear from one source (Eusebius) that the latter took from him Samaria, which had been settled with a new population, perhaps of veterans, by Perdiccas. On the other hand, it is certain that during this period the two kings came to some agreement, according to which at one moment Demetrius offered hostages, and his brother-in-law Pyrrhus voluntarily undertook the agreeable bondage. At another, Ptolemy betrothed his daughter Ptolemais to his rival. Pyrrhus so ingratiated himself with Ptolemy and his favourite wife Berenice, that they gave him her daughter Antigone to wife, and so established Egyptian connexions with Epirus, which the young man soon made his kingdom.

But where did Ptolemy not form these matrimonial alliances? He now had daughters or stepdaughters married: Theoxena to Agathocles of Syracuse, Antigone to Pyrrhus, Lysandra to Casander’s son Alexander, Lysandra (probably a second of the name) to Agathocles son of Lysimachus of Thrace, Arsinoe to Lysimachus himself; Eirene to Eunostos king of Soli in Cyprus, ultimately (in 287 BC) even Ptolemais to Demetrius.

We hear from a decree in honour of Demochares that Ptolemy contributed fifty talents to help the Athenians in their struggles against Demetrius. He also succeeded in recovering (in 295 BC) Cyprus, held for eleven years by Demetrius. But now the strange power and fascination of the Besieger were on the wane; his vast plans terrified all the reigning kings, and he ended his life a state prisoner in the hands of Seleucos. On the other hand, the deliberate foundation of the new capital of Seleucos in Syria must have convinced Ptolemy that any permanent hold on Coele-Syria was for Egypt impossible. He did not cease, however, to assert his claims upon Palestine, and it is probable that such towns as Gaza, Jerusalem, Joppa were permanently under his influence.

But according as the king grows older, he retires from the wearisome conflicts to liberate the Greeks, to hold cities on the Cilician coast, to maintain the balance of power among his warring rivals, and devotes himself to the internal organisation of his kingdom, which was the wealthiest in the Hellenistic world, not excepting the vast domain of Seleucos. Here it is that the history of Ptolemaic Egypt truly begins, and here we indeed long for larger and better materials to tell us of so important a step in the world’s civilisation. But alas! inscriptions and papyri, which multiply in the reigns of the later kings, are here but few and trifling. The old historians have left us nothing. The development of Alexandria, and even the foundation of the world-famed Museum are left in obscurity and in doubt. The time will come when further discoveries will disclose to us-these secrets; at present we can only enumerate the few facts that are known, and ‘wait for the day.’

Mention has already been made of the grant of lands to the gods of the cities of Pe and Tep by Ptolemy, acting for the youthful Alexander IV, as well as the restorations at Thebes in the names of Philip Arridaeus and the boy Alexander. There is also a shrine cut in the rock at Beni Hassan, near the Speos Artemidos, which is dated in this Alexander’s reign, Ptolemy being satrap of Egypt. In the centre of the cornice are the well-known globe and asps which mark all the Ptolemaic temples, and on the architrave beneath, the king is kneeling to present the figure of Truth to the goddess Pasht. Behind him stands Hathor. On one side of the door the figure of the king is represented standing in the presence of Amon and Horus, on the other, in presence of Thoth and Chem. There is no Greek flavour in any of these representations. They are purely Egyptian. It would be difficult to find a bolder or more complete assumption of a strange cult by any conqueror. Ptolemy and his staff can hardly have understood what these symbols meant in detail. But his policy was clear-sighted enough. So thoroughly did he and his successors adopt as an official religion the old faith or faiths of the Egyptians, that modern scholars were long at fault concerning the temples the Ptolemies erected all over the country. Until the reading of the hieroglyphics was assured, and the Greek inscriptions were shown by Letronne to agree with what the hieroglyphics said, no one suspected that the great temples of Edfu, Esneh, and Dendera could be other than old Egyptian. It was imagined that the Ptolemies had left no mark on the land. We know better now. The great majority of surviving Egyptian temples is either partly or wholly of Ptolemaic construction. And here it is of importance to note that this whole policy was inaugurated by the first king.

It is, however, most remarkable that the actual buildings which can now be ascribed to him of this Egyptian character all date from his satrapy, not from his royalty. Is this an accident, or does it indicate a modification of his policy? The destruction of so large a proportion of the temples by Arabs and Turks may have hidden from us buildings in the upper country dating from his later days. Still the silence in our authorities agrees with the absence of archaeological evidence, and makes it probable that as soon as he had pacified the priests with endowments, and shown the people, by some signal restorations of what the Persians had destroyed, his friendliness to national traditions, he turned to the Greek or Macedonian element in his realm, and spent his later liberalities upon Alexandria. Tacitus says it was he who built the fortifications of the city. But even here we do not learn of his doing as the older Greek settlers at Naukratis had done—introducing the gods of their respective cities and building them a dwelling-place, just as English settlers in any part of the world are wont to carry their religion with them, and build a church. As he designed the population of his new capital to be composite—or may I use the word mongrel—so we hear that he was at pains to introduce a mongrel god into the city, and make his shrine the principal sanctuary of Alexandria.

He had already, at the opening of his rule, contributed fifty talents of silver to the obsequies of the Apis bull that died at that time, and it is likely that this peculiar form of the worship of Osir-hapi—Osiris Ptah, two distinct deities jumbled together, in a manner only possible among the Egyptians—was the most prominent at that period. The excesses of Cambyses had reached their culmination by his attack on this particular god in his animal manifestation.

It seems that a further fusion of this vague personage with the Greek Zeus, or Hades, as the god of the dead, was considered by the priests and politicians of the day a, valuable aid to the fusing of the nationalities. The story told us by Plutarch and by Tacitus has not the least the air of naive enthusiasm, but rather of a calculated and prepared appeal to popular superstition on the part of those who regarded religion as an engine for civil administration. Unfortunately the details given by the authors just named, and by Clemens from Athenodorus of Tarsus, show considerable discrepancies. This would seem strange if their only source was the book on Egyptian religion by Manetho, a contemporary priest, who enjoyed the confidence of this and the next Ptolemy, and who did so much to expound Egyptian history and cult in the Greek tongue.

At all events the king had a dream, in which a divine figure ordered him to seek the statue of the god, and make a home for it in Alexandria. Tacitus says that Pontus was specified as the residence of the god, Plutarch that the figure gave no details, and that the king had to ascertain by description of his vision to experienced persons where the image was to be found. At all events, by the help of Greek theologians the right statue was found at Sinope, in a temple of Pluto, or Dis, and then was obtained either by theft, as Plutarch most improbably relates, or by long persuasion of the tyrant of Sinope and his unwilling people, aided by large gifts, and of course apparitions of the same figure to the ruler of Sinope, as soon as he felt it prudent to give way. So the statue was brought with pomp to Alexandria, and set up in a special temple built on the spot called Rhakotis, now the centre of the new city of Alexandria.

The naturalisation of the Pluto of Sinope as Sarapis was, however, of wide religious import. Many other shrines were set up to him, first in Egypt, then throughout the Hellenistic world. At Sakkara Mariette even found a Greek Serapeum, a regular temple in antis, in conjunction with the old Egyptian Serapeum, with its pylons and its courts. In the Egyptian temple, but beneath the surface, were the famous vaults of the Apis bulls, buried there ever since the eighteenth dynasty.

It will be noticed that in the legends of the foundation the king plays the principal part. To him comes the dream, and he sets the learned in theology at work to find the solution. We know so little of his character that we cannot tell whether the ingenious idea of fusing a Greek god with an Egyptian was his own, or whether it was suggested by the priests, such as Manetho, who had learned Greek, and could advise him on the religious requirements of the new state. The Greek historians were always ready enough to identify foreign gods with their own,, and in Egypt the hopeless confusion of persons had  certainly arisen from unsystematic attempts of the priests to incorporate the worship of the several ancient cities of Egypt into some sort of unity.¹ If we are to believe Arrian, who is generally trustworthy, the temple of Isis at Alexandria, a goddess afterwards so popular in the Graeco-Roman world, was founded by the orders of Alexander himself.

Though Ptolemy adorned his new capital with palaces and temples, with parks and colonnades, and with the other splendours of Hellenistic cities, though he paid special attention to the official promotion of religion and, as we shall see, of letters, he seems not to have favoured political or even communal liberties. According to all theorists and critics, the one great source of Hellenic superiority in civilisation was the autonomous polis, or polity which might embrace a mere town and its suburbs, and yet give it the privilege of treating as an independent community with great kings or federations. It was essential to a polls to have its own assembly of citizens, who passed laws for its management, and elected the magistrates who were to carry out these laws. It possessed the exclusive right of taxing its inhabitants, and even issued coinage from its own mint. We feel surprise, though we have no evidence of this feeling among the men of that day, that Alexander’s greatest foundation possessed none of these privileges. Alexandria was from the outset the royal residence of the satrap-king, never a foundation of Graeco-Macedonians with city-privileges in a foreign land. Such foundations were very common, especially in the Seleucid empire. We have the coins of many such independent cities in Syria and Palestine, with the date of their own era, which meant the starting-point of their existence, or the declaration of their independence. Alexandria was not set up on this model. Her inhabitants had many privileges, so much so that in after days it was the necessary step for a native, who desired the Roman franchise, first to acquire the status of an Alexandrian. Unfortunately we have no details beyond the triviality that while the rest of the population could be beaten with the whip, the Alexandrian only with a stick. The whip was probably nothing else than the kurbash used till yesterday to keep the natives in order.

We may, however, be certain that Alexandria was free from most of the taxes that weighed upon the country population. Just as the Turks made Stamboul free of taxes, so it is more than probable that the poll-tax was not levied in the capital, and also that some indirect taxes were not there enforced. Thus we find that veterans settled in the Fayyum, under the next Ptolemy, speak in their wills of their furnished house in Alexandria, 100 miles distant. No doubt this enabled them to retain the privileges of that sort of citizenship.

But the only assembly recognised there was that of the ‘Macedonian’ soldiers, who proclaimed a new king, or could try a state-prisoner, as they had done under the old home kings. This occasional and not strictly organised assembly was generally backed up by a great mob, whose influence under a weak ruler might increase into a veritable despotism. The early Ptolemies saw the danger, and kept the city submissive with the aid of a large mercenary force, so well paid and appointed that service in Egypt was the promised land of the Greek soldier of fortune.

We shall return again to the details of government at the opening of the next reign. What here concerns us is only the general principle adopted by Ptolemy in contrast to that of Seleucos, and indeed to that of Alexander. But both Alexander and Seleukos proposed to themselves to rule as emperors over a conglomerate of widely varying nationalities or states, in each of which the free cities would form a nucleus of civilisation, and a moral support to the imperial crown. Ptolemy, as far as Egypt went, had a different task before him, or rather, he chose to solve his task in a different way. He possessed indeed a homogeneous, isolated kingdom, which he could control personally and completely from his capital. But did it not require real genius for any one of the Diadochi to abandon the great idea framed and partly carried out by their matchless master, who was the very ideal to them of imperial monarchy? This is the great historic claim to honour of the first Ptolemy, and how thoroughly Aristotle would have agreed with him!

It was remarked that, while founding cities in outlying dependencies, the Ptolemies avoided doing so in Egypt. The first Ptolemy only founded two that we can name, Ptolemais (now the site of Menshieh), which succeeded to the prosperity of Thebes, and Menelaos, the principal place in the Nitriotic nome south-west of Alexandria, which was called, says Strabo, after the king’s brother. About the man Menelaos we know nothing beyond his military command in Cyprus, and about the city nothing but the name. Ptolemais is specially reported to have been founded on the Greek model, and the few inscriptions which have as yet been discovered there corroborate the statement of Strabo. There was a guild of Dionysiac artists settled there, which shows that even Greek amusements had to be supplied for its population. It is certain that the settlement dates from the first king, but (as Niebuhr argued) if it was his principle not to allow civic liberties in Alexandria, why should he set up another city with greater privileges? My reply is, that we now know from the Revenue Papyrus, which agrees very well with Strabo, that the list of Ptolemaic nomes ended with Kynopolis, and that the whole south country was called the Thebaid. It is quite likely that Ptolemy found it difficult to persuade Hellenic settlers to go so far up the river, and only persuaded them to do so by establishing them in a sort of southern capital with special privileges.¹

It was now that Thebes and its wonders were opened to ordinary Greek travellers, and we can still see, in the transcript of Diodorus, the astonishment of Hecataeus of Abdera, and other Greek tourists, who ascended the river from Ptolemais, and visited the splendours of the Tombs of the Kings. Stray Greek mercenaries had of course penetrated farther. Inscriptions at Abu-Simbel, and even at Wadi Haifa of far older date tell us that. But now first was Thebes open to the tourist, as Syene was opened to him by the expedition of the next king. We may assume that the populations of decaying Thebes and of Abydos, once great centres of wealth, came to swell the new city.

But what happened at Naukratis, an old Hellenic settlement certainly possessing its own communal constitution, and proving it to us by the occurrence of two coins, which seem to date from this very period? It is not unlikely that Cleomenes, a citizen of Naukratis, whom Ptolemy found controlling the country, may have promoted this assertion of liberty, and it may have been one of the reasons why Ptolemy so promptly got rid of him. The majority of the important people at Naukratis could be bribed or coerced into the greater and more brilliant Alexandria; the rest were too insignificant to make themselves heard. At all events Naukratis sinks henceforward into a mere Egyptian town, ruled, we may assume, as all the rest were, by officers of the crown.

It is sometimes stated that the new foundation of Crocodilopolis in the Fayyum was also a city on the Greek model. Neither the many documents recovered from the papers of that city nor the statements of Strabo support this view. It appears to me that the position of capital in a nome precluded in some way the existence of Hellenic political rights; Ptolemais, being beyond or outside the Ptolemaic nomes, though the chief town of the whole Thebaid, stands on a different footing. Even Naukratis is mentioned as a distinct item in the Saitic nome.

But in addition to Egypt, which was to a great extent literally crown property, there were outlying possessions or dependencies of the crown of Egypt which required very different treatment. There was Cyrene, most valuable for the production of silphium, and for its breed of horses, not to say for its very pure and distinguished Greek population. There was Cyprus, which supplied Egypt with timber and with copper; there was Palestine, the highway to Syria and to Babylon, not only the great source of produce most important to Egypt, such as balm and asphalt, but the home of a stirring mercantile population, invaluable as friends, dangerous as enemies. There was, moreover, the whole series of islands through the Aegean, which, from the moment that Demetrius’ sea-power was broken (in 294 BC), and he himself interned by Seleukos, became the subject in some sense of the Egyptian naval power, which ruled the waters for several generations. These various dependencies, often mutinous, often occupied by his enemies with a superior force, offered great difficulties, both military and diplomatic, and left ample scope for the king to show his resources as a statesman.

Cyrene was the easiest to control, so far as the population was concerned. For here, beyond the reach of the great armies which had intimidated most Hellenic cities under Alexander and his generals, the old feud of aristocrat and populace was in full vigour. The whole territory was occupied by a group of independent communities always jealous, and often at variance. Within each city the majority of votes in the assembly was set against the preponderance of wealth, and so we have those desperate wars of city factions, in which either side is ready to call in a foreign force, in order to subdue, or massacre, or exile, its opponents. And then there are always exiles, seeking to be restored to property and power by foreign intervention. But as soon as they are restored, there is the usual impatience of foreign control, especially of the control of that sentimental bugbear, a king, who prevents the restored from wreaking their vengeance, and insists on preserving peace. Thus it was very easy for Ptolemy to obtain a pretext for interference, but not so easy to maintain permanent order and obedience in this remote appanage of his empire. He could only rule it by keeping a military force there under a viceroy.

The course of events showed that these viceroys themselves were not trustworthy. Whenever they were able to reconcile the cities to harmony under their sway, they too were ready to throw off their allegiance, and become monarchs for themselves. This ambition was of course promoted by all the inducements which the rivals of Egypt, especially the Macedonian monarchy, could offer.

The policy of Ptolemy was consistent under all these difficulties. He never trusted the Cyrenaica to rule itself, which would mean that it must fall into the hands of some military adventurer; but he left to his lieutenant, and under him to the cities, great liberty. That he ruled in the interests of the richer classes is obvious. That he drew subsidies from the taxes upon exports, and regulated the external policy of the Cyrenaica, may be assumed as certain. But their internal arrangements did not concern him; probably he knew it to be his interest to keep both factions, the aristocratic and popular, alive, and at variance. His only danger lay in a loyal combination of all the cities, either as a federation, or under a popular viceroy.

His control of Cyprus was much more highhanded. He had to deal here not with free Greek communities, but with local ‘kings ’ or dynasts, who ruled the various cities of the island after the manner of the tyrants in Greece, except that they seem to have possessed hereditary power, which the Greek tyrant very seldom established. Ptolemy was ready to attach them to his house even by alliance with his family, though we may note that it was only a bastard daughter whom he gave away to Eunostos, king of Soli. But when these kings played him false, and joined his opponents, they did so at the risk not only of their thrones but of their lives. This we know from the case of Nicocles, tyrant of Paphos, whom he compelled to commit suicide (which his whole family also did) on the plea of suspected treason.¹ Ptolemy’s brother Menelaos was for some time viceroy of Cyprus; in after days it was usual for a royal prince to be sent there; he collected and forwarded the taxes of the island to his sovran. It is remarkable that, while this was the simple form of government, the cities under the kings were still counted free cities, which retained their right of local coinage, like the cities of Cyrene, and were even allowed to use a local era—e.g. the era of the people of Kition —to mark the date of their independence. They had, according to inscriptions, their council, and consequently their assembly. But these must have been a mere shadow, like the constitution of the Greek cities long afterwards under Roman sway; the practical power  lay with the kings, and through them Ptolemy conquered, lost, and ultimately recovered the island.

His relations to Palestine are more difficult to understand, or at least, are not explained by the historians who tell us the facts. It was noticed as remarkable with what favour Alexander had treated the Jews. In contrast to Tyre and Gaza, Jerusalem, which offered no resistance to his conquest, received every consideration. In another place I have pointed out that, to Alexander the friendship of this people was a military advantage of the highest importance. The Jewish diaspora, scattered through all the cities of inner Asia as far at least as Rhagae, were in frequent contact with Jerusalem, and made regular voyages to its temple. Hence to an invader of Asia, who had no maps, no full information as to the routes and resources for feeding his army, no organised system of interpreters, these Jews were the natural intelligence department. They knew all the roads, stations, towns, fords in the interior, and could communicate through the Jewish residents of the diaspora with all the foreign nations of the far provinces. Hence it was, as Arrian tells us, that a large number of Jews took military service under Alexander, and went with him, first to Egypt, and then to Asia.

It is added by Josephus that the king settled a great number of them in his new Alexandria, a statement which can hardly be false. When a large new population, especially of trading people, was required, the Jews were at hand, friendly to the king, and ready to seize the all-important moment. He further states that Alexander gave the Jews rights equal to those of the Macedonians and Greeks in that city. Seeing that it was not a Greek polis and that these rights were rather privileges over the aborigines, or immunities from taxes, I am disposed to believe this also. Moreover in the settlement of the Fayyum they (or the Samaritans) were allowed to found villages, and there are allusions which point to their being on a par with the Greeks. But surely the so-called Macedonians must always have had that right of meeting as free men in arms, which they brought with them from their homes, and which no other Alexandrian could claim.

The Jews, then, under Alexander were made at home in Egypt, and were friendly to the Macedonian conquest. For if they had met with some violence at his hands, they had also received unusual favours. When Ptolemy had succeeded to the throne of Egypt, and had beaten off the attack of Perdiccas, he forthwith made an invasion into Palestine and Syria, and annexed all the country. When driven out of it by Antigonus, we hear that he carried off to Egypt a large number of the inhabitants either as slaves, or as compulsory settlers. And this happened apparently four times. He always, retreated in time to carry his booty with him. But in spite of these repeated raids, or temporary occupations, and this repeated carrying off of plunder from Palestine, we are persistently informed that the house of Ptolemy was most popular with the Jews, in contrast to those of the other Diadochi, Antigonus, and afterwards Seleucos. Whenever the Seleucids did occupy Palestine, they took it by force, and held it by force.

Whence did the lasting popularity of the Lagidae arise? Diodorus lays great stress on the pleasant manners and courtesy of the first Ptolemy, and contrasts it with the harshness of Perdiccas, and the overbearing roughness of Antigonus. But this is not sufficient. There must have been far larger causes to outbalance the considerable disturbance, if not suffering, caused to the people of Palestine by the repeated armed incursions and occupations of the Egyptians.

Two such causes present themselves, one sentimental, the other real.

In the long duel between Mesopotamia and Egypt, when Palestine lay between the hammer and the anvil, and was the prey alternately of Assyrian and Egyptian conquerors, the feeling of the people had turned to Egypt as the lesser evil, if conquest there must be. There was something harsher and fiercer about the Assyrians or the Babylonians. Captives were treated better in Egypt, and the land was so near Palestine that they knew its comforts and its luxuries, and could expect to make a home there. We learn this feeling from the angry objurgations of the later Hebrew prophets, who oppose its influence with all their might. They know the cruelties and hardships of Babylonian dominion, the miseries of Babylonish exile; but these are far better for the people of Jehovah than the fleshpots of idolatrous Egypt, where the captive will be well fed and happy, and forget his God. Thus Jeremiah and Ezekiel are always contending against the desire of the wealthier Jews to go and settle in Egypt. But they were unable to prevent it. The ultimate violent deportation by Nebuchadnezzar to inner Asia must have burnt this hatred for Babylonia (in comparison with Egypt) deep into the popular mind.

When the Persians succeeded to the empire of Mesopotamia, it was only the founder Cyrus who treated the Jews with consideration; he alone was broad-minded enough to respect their religion. The succeeding kings were either bigoted, or cruel, or both; and the inhabitants of Palestine could not congratulate themselves upon the change of dynasty. The Persians in their wars against Greece and against Egypt had compelled many Jews and Phoenicians to serve. The conquest of their country by Ochus (350 BC), on his way to Egypt, had been marked by great cruelties, and was still fresh in Jewish memories.

None of these extreme misfortunes had ever resulted from Egyptian occupation. Many Jews had found a friendly reception there in recent times. Thus there must have been a strong sentiment, produced by long experience, in favour of Egypt, and against the inland powers of the North East.

The policy adopted by Seleucos in his Empire must have greatly strengthened this feeling. He undertook to found a great number of cities on the Hellenic model through all his various provinces, not the least in Coele-Syria, and along the course of the Jordan. We do not know what arrangements were made with the surrounding inhabitants of each city: how the territory of each city was acquired, and what indemnity, if any, was granted to the old possessors. But we may be sure there were many cases of positive hardship and injustice, not to speak of the theological objections which the Jews would have to Greek cities, with Greek manners and gods, settled through their country.

Ptolemy avoided this policy. During his long occupation of the country, we are not aware of any new foundation in Palestine. Ptolemais (Ake) on the sea-coast could hardly count, as the fortresses along the Philistian coast were inhabited by people hostile to the Jews, whose subjection to Ptolemy and subsequent quietness would benefit their unfriendly neighbours. Thus while Ptolemy would provide for any number of Jewish emigrants in Egypt, and make room in their homes for the rest, Seleucos would crowd the country with heathen settlers, privileged in their cities, offering a bad example, and much inducement to follow it, to the ambitious youth of Judaea. Such considerations account for the comparative popularity of Ptolemy, though a foreign conqueror.

We come now to the relations subsisting between Ptolemy and the islands of the Aegean. I have already narrated his interference on behalf of Rhodes, and the extraordinary gratitude of that community for the supplies of men and provisions which he sent them.¹ The position of Rhodes was too independent to admit of any political interference with its constitution; yet the religious honours conferred upon the king amounted to those of a second founder. But more than once he passed through the Aegean, not only to Athens, but either he or his admirals swept the sea up to the Hellespont, declaring the freedom and autonomy of these little communities. About 289-8 BC he was approached by a begging embassy from Athens, organised by Demochares, and contributed 50 talents to the demes of Athens. But the fact that stingy Lysimachos gave 130, only shows how much more important the good will of Athens was to the king of Thrace in his impending struggle with Seleucos. Possibly Lysimachos was paying the Athenians for the possession of Lemnos, which served him to check the Egyptian naval supremacy, for we now know that Seleucos gave back the island to the Athenians, who complained of the tyranny of Lysimachos. It appears from the inscriptions found by M. Homolle at Delos, that there was a confederation of the islanders of which the king of Egypt was formal president, and which celebrated, probably at Tenos, a festival called Ptolemaia. Unfortunately none of the inscriptions as yet found specify the particular king of the series, and it has usually been assumed by historians that the League was formed by the diplomacy of Philadelphus. In the absence of positive evidence I incline to think that the first Ptolemy is more probably the author of this important adjunct to the naval power of Egypt. He was for a long time contending with Demetrius for the supremacy by sea and, though sometimes defeated, succeeded ultimately in consolidating his power. We may be certain that the Rhodians lent all their influence to aid this combination. It seems to me more likely that the active and stirring Soter effected it, than the somewhat easy-going Philadelphus. Moreover, had the latter really been the author, some of his many flatterers would probably have told us all about it.

I have reserved till now any mention of the famous Museum at Alexandria, which has also been ascribed by many to the second king, but which was certainly the work of Soter, aided by the advice of Demetrius of Thaleron, who migrated to Egypt a short time after his expulsion (307 BC) by Demetrius the Besieger from Athens, which he had governed for Casander during at least ten years. This Demetrius the philosopher is known to have been against the succession of Philadelphus to the throne, and in favour of the elder Ptolemy Keraunos, in consequence of which the new king disliked him and sent him into exile.

It is indeed strange that so famous a seat of learning should not have left us some account of its foundation, its constitution, and its early fortunes. No other school of such moment among the Greeks is so obscure to us now. And yet it was founded in the broad daylight of history, by a famous king, in one of the most frequented cities of the world. The whole modern literature on the subject is a literature of conjectures. If it were possible to examine the site, which now lies twenty feet deep under the modern city, many questions which we ask in vain might be answered. The real outcome of the great school is fortunately preserved. In literary criticism, in exact science, in geography and kindred studies, the Museum made advances in knowledge which were among the most important in the progress of human civilisation. If the produce in poetry and in philosophy was poor, we must attribute such failure to the decadence of that century, in comparison with the classical days of Ionia and of Athens. But in preserving the great masters of the golden age, the Library, which was part of the same foundation, did more than we can estimate. It is, therefore, well worth while to tell what is known, and to weigh what has been conjectured, concerning the origin of this, the greatest glory of Ptolemaic Alexandria.

The idea of making Alexandria a centre, not only of commerce but of letters, seems to have matured gradually in the mind of the king. The date of the foundation is nearly determined by the arrival of the philosopher Demetrius in Egypt, where he helped the king’s idea to take shape by his experience of the academies of Athens. The very name museum, which is still in Germany applied to literary clubs, points to an Attic origin. It is well known that a nominal religious cult gave security to the property of each school, and that each society of the kind of Athens gradually became an independent corporation, endowed by the founder and by his disciples. The state stood aloof, except at a few stray moments, when it interfered to repress or persecute. It was clearly out of the question for the military bureaucracy of Egypt to tolerate a powerful intellectual force of this kind beyond government control and patronage. Hence from the first the endowment of the new Museum was a state allowance, given directly by the king to each member. But for what?

Ptolemy was by no means interested in the spread of any special doctrine; he probably knew little, and cared less, about the differences of the Athenian schools. What he wanted was to have celebrated men thinking and writing at Alexandria, and he left it at first to the superior judgment of Demetrius, and perhaps to his own son, the crown prince, what the complexion of the school—if such we can call it—should be.  It seems, therefore, that the king and his minister of education founded an institution more like an old college at Oxford or Cambridge than anything else of the kind. It was a foundation supported by the king, and adjoining the royal buildings, in which there was a Commons’ Hall, courts, cloisters, and gardens, where dwelt men selected for their literary and scientific eminence. They were under a provost or principal, who was a priest, and who was nominated by the king, but whose religious services in the college were apparently confined to the formal cult of the Muses, a feature borrowed from the Academy at Athens. It may serve to show the contrast of spirit between the republican academies of Athens and ’ the Royal University of Alexandria, that the priest of the Muses, who had the charge of the religious services of the Peripatetic Academy, and was for the time president in the Commons’ Hall, was elected by the members for thirty days, on the last of which he gave an entertainment, partly by subscription and partly at his own cost. The ecclesiastical head of the Museum was nominated by the king, apparently for no short or fixed period, but no doubt during royal pleasure. If this provost was also the high priest of Sarapis, we come to something like the Episcopal Visitors in some of our old colleges. It is certain that he was not an Egyptian. We hear the names of no Egyptians mentioned as members of the Museum, and the Egyptian reaction upon Greek and Jewish philosophy certainly did not work through the Museum. This college, on the contrary, like our own ancient colleges, was rather a home of critical research and of erudition than of new ideas and of the advancement of knowledge. Its provost was probably no more important intellectually than the heads of houses are now at our universities. The endowed fellows were no doubt men of learning, still more men of critical habit, and sometimes great men of science. But they seem rather to have taught accurately what was known than to have ventured into new paths in philosophy or religion.

It is moreover tolerably certain that teaching and tutorial work were not among the early conditions of their appointment, just as in the foundation of old Oxford colleges there was sometimes a provision that the fellows should not be required to spend their energy in teaching, but should devote it to their own studies. Yet, just as at Oxford this admirable provision gradually went out of fashion, and was discarded for the lower view of making the colleges advanced boarding-schools, so at Alexandria young men naturally gathered about the Museum, and the Fellows of that college were gradually persuaded to undertake tutorial or professorial work. And this too determined more clearly than ever their function to be that of promoting erudition and not knowledge. In pure mathematics, starting from Euclid, in medicine and allied researches, in natural history, we may make exception, and say that the University of Alexandria did original work; but, on the whole, we can conceive thinking men in later classical days saying what they now say of our richly-endowed colleges—that the outcome has not been worth the cost.

The Museum of Alexandria can certainly vindicate itself before the world. Apart from the scientific side, which requires special knowledge to discuss, and for which I therefore refer to Mr. Gow’s History of Greek Mathematics the Fellows of the Museum, when brought together into a society by their intercourse with the second Ptolemy, developed that critical spirit which sifted the wheat from the chaff in Greek literature, and preserved for us the great masterpieces in carefully edited texts.

It also became the model to men who wished to found colleges. There were several more such houses founded at Alexandria, one for example by the Emperor Claudius, with the condition that his own historical works should be read through there publicly once a year. So the Jews had a school there, and presently the Christians—all separate centres for study.

It seems therefore quite legitimate to compare this condition of things with the old English universities and their colleges. Foreign scholars writing about it are not familiar with these colleges, and therefore the analogy does not strike them. But though there were many points of difference— notably the very questionable advantage of the Museum being situated in a great capital, the adjunct to a royal palace, directly supported by annual royal gifts—the likeness is too strong to be evaded, and makes the history of this establishment of the deepest interest to English students.

So it came to pass that Ptolemy Soter gathered into his capital every kind of splendour. He had secured for it the most important monument of its kind in the world—the tomb of the great Alexander, which commanded the veneration of centuries, down to the debased age of Caracalla. He established the most brilliant palace and court, with festivals which were the wonder of the world. He gathered all that he could command of learning and literary fame. And for this the city was adequate by the largeness and splendour of its external appearance. We have it described in later times as astonishing the beholder not only with its vastness but with the splendour of the colonnades which lined the streets for miles, and kept the ways cool for passengers; with the din and bustle of the thoroughfares, of which the principal were horse and carriage ways, contrary to the usual Greek practice ; with the number and richness of its public buildings, and with the holiday and happy air of its vast population, who rested not day and night, but had their streets so well lighted that the author just named says the sun did not set, but was distributed in small change to illumine the gay night. The palaces and other royal buildings and parks were walled off, like the Palace at Pekin, and had their own port and seashore, but all the rest of the town had water near it and ship traffic in all directions. Every costume and language must have been met in its streets and quays. It had its fashionable suburbs too, and its bathing resorts to the east, Canopus, Eleusis, and Nicopolis; to the west its Necropolis. But of all this splendour no eyewitness has left us any detail.                    

I can find but few recent studies upon this great subject. Even Lumbroso, so learned and so thorough on other Graeco-Egyptian questions, has barely touched the Museum and the Library in either of his excellent books. No doubt he found that there was no new material at hand. We do not know how many Fellows were appointed on his Foundation by Soter, and can only infer from the bitter jibe of Timon that there were a good many, and that he thought them occupied about idle controversies, under royal control—but we also know that the literary men with whom the king associated, as well as those whom he invited to come and who declined, were the most eminent of the day.

Concerning the great Library, we are not better informed. Was it part of the Museum, or separate  Was the chief librarian, who was a great literary personage, as such a Fellow of the Museum? It is difficult to suppose he was not, or that the primary use of the Library should not have been to supply materials for the researches& of the Museum. We only hear vaguely of the Libraries of the Museum, and that the first was built in the Bruchium. Diodorus says he used the Court Journals at Alexandria, but so does Appian, writing long after the supposed conflagration of 48 CBC Strabo, visiting Alexandria in the days of Augustus, makes no mention whatever of the Library, or of its alleged destruction. The only reasonable inference is that he regarded it as part of the Museum. But he says not a word about consulting books or archives. The story that the physician Memnon borrowed a book from the great Library, to read, and added notes of his own, is as late as Galen. If this were indeed so, it would be comparable to such English libraries as the Sunderland and Spencer, gathered by rich dilettanti in the same way that they gather china and pictures. This too might possibly account for the extraordinary apathy with which the destruction of it in Julius Caesar’s day is mentioned, or not mentioned, by those whom we should expect to lament over it.

Under these circumstances it is not easy to form an idea of the literary life at Alexandria under the first Ptolemy. The recorded facts, are very few, and concerning the leading men it is generally uncertain whether they worked under the latter half of the first or the opening of the second reign. We may state as probable that Ptolemy Soter, in spite of his active life and his many other occupations, did spend both time and treasure on the pursuit and patronage of learning. He had his views, too, based upon what was good for the state, for though he did not scruple to employ in confidential missions Theodorus of Cyrene, an atheist so decided that the people of Athens would not tolerate him, no such patronage was extended to Hegesias, who taught practical pessimism so cogently, as to produce a public tendency to suicide, and who was therefore silenced. We hear of Ptolemy associating with Diodorus (the dialectician) and with Stilpo, both of whom he met at Megara, apparently in 307-6 BC. If it be true that Ptolemy nicknamed the former Kronos, because he long delayed to answer some subtle question of Stilpo’s, he must have had some wit, for in Homer subtle is the standing epithet of Saturn, but this god is nevertheless dethroned by a younger rival. His relations to Demetrius the Phalerean have already been mentioned, and there is no doubt that this man was as competent as any then living to advise about the literary projects of the king. Philetas of Kos was chosen as tutor for the crown prince—Philetas not only honoured as the greatest master of the modern elegy, but as a skilled grammarian and the compiler of the first lexicon of strange terms. This grammatical side of philology was further prosecuted by Zenodotus, the first Librarian and author of a recension of Homer. That Ptolemy built a theatre in Alexandria is very probable; if he invited Menander to come from Athens, it may have been to produce a play; it may have been to honour the Museum with his company. The exploring of the southern Red Sea and its coasts was entrusted to his admiral Philon; the exploring of the no less remote mysteries of Egyptian theology to Hecataeus of Abdera, who with Manetho and Timotheos began that fusion of creeds so essential to the new empire.

But all these various literary or quasi-literary developments at Alexandria were as nothing compared to the momentous studies and teaching of Euclid in geometry, of Herophilos in surgery. Euclid was probably not so much a discoverer as a teacher, unsurpassed in establishing once for all the conditions of scientific demonstration. For his immortal Elements are perhaps more distinctively exercises in Logic than they are in Mathematics. He omits no step in his reasoning, and yet with all his explicitness modern attempts to abbreviate him have shown that, logically, nothing is redundant. This man, therefore, alone makes the reign of his patron an epoch in the scientific development of the human mind.

Not less important was Herophilos, the first great teacher of anatomy, and the father of surgery, as Hippocrates may be called the father of medicine. We might have guessed that the process of embalming would make Egypt the best country for beginning the study of the viscera, and ascertaining the causes of death from autopsy. But we are told that the king’s influence did far more than that for Herophilos. He was permitted to dissect the human body, and even to vivisect not only the lower animals, but criminal men abandoned to him for, the purpose. We have no evidence how far he made use of this terrible license. There can be no doubt, however, that he too founded a truly scientific method of investigating facts, and so added his vast influence to make Alexandria the centre of the highest Hellenistic civilisation. While the schools of Athens—Stoics, Epicureans, Peripatetics—were discussing abstract questions of metaphysics and morals, these men were the pioneers of that positive science, which is the most fruitful legacy left us by the GraecoRoman world, for this alone is directly applicable to every new form of civilisation.

From the time that Ptolemy recovered Cyprus, and with it the supremacy at sea, from Demetrius, he was no longer engaged in any serious conflict. The gigantic armaments of the Besieger in 288 BC evidently foreboded an attack on Seleukos rather than on Egypt, and though Ptolemy joined the coalition against this desperate knight-errant, the prudent king probably saw clearly that the great army of Demetrius was not a reality. The numbers of his troops—98,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry with 500 ships—were probably at the time grossly and intentionally exaggerated, and, whatever the quantity was, the quality was bad, for such bands and their condottieri could always be bribed with superior pay to abandon a needy cause. Our astonishment is that Demetrius should have been able even to enlist a large force with the financial resources at his command. Promises of plunder must have served him for actual payments, so that the solid wealth of Ptolemy or of Seleucos was certain to overcome him, unless his initial successes were rapid and complete. The king of Egypt was, moreover, an old man, disinclined to enter upon foreign conflicts and, like his brother Diadochi, desirous to increase the beauty and establish the importance of his

If, as we have seen, he founded the Museum and Library, it is most unlikely that he allowed the body of Alexander to lie at Memphis till the reign of his son, though that prince may have been formally charged with the guard of honour and the pompous ceremonies with which this solemn transference of the great relics in their coffin of gold must have been performed. Thus it would happen that Philadelphus was credited with this act by his courtiers. For all through Soter’s life, we find him not concerned with claiming originality or greatness, provided his kingdom, reaped the fruits of his wisdom. He was one of those rare rulers, like Victor Emmanuel in our own century, who choose and utilise brilliant men, casting them aside when they prove dangerous, but allowing them to obtain credit with the world for all the steady and consistent background of government whereby a nation makes solid growth. But to ascribe to the transient minister or agitator the work of the permanent ruler, is to assert that the ship of the state is guided by the brilliant planets which wander across the heavens, not by the modest polestar, whose sleepless eye never sets in the northern sky.

It was probably in connexion with the founding of the Library, and the transference of the body of Alexander to the Sema in the capital, that Ptolemy in his old days, or in his comparative leisure, was persuaded to turn author, and perhaps inaugurate the collecting of books by an authentic account of the great wars of Alexander, in which he had taken so prominent a part. Arrian cites this book as the best and safest authority for his history, though for the silly reason that it was written by a king, who would naturally have less cause than other men to tell falsehoods, and, moreover, would be less likely to violate his dignity by doing so. If, however, the impression produced by the work had not been that of a sober and honest writer, we may be sure Arrian would have been compelled to admit that even a king may lie.

The analysis of the fragments by Frankel leads him to hold that the narrative of Ptolemy was shorter and plainer than those of Aristobulus and the rest, that he dealt less in the marvellous, and made it his principal object to narrate accurately the military operations which he was so competent to explain. One ingenious German even goes so far as to think that he wrote his book specially to contradict the exaggerations of Kleitarchos. Our evidence is insufficient to establish any such conclusions, though we are naturally attracted by the view that a real general would write without pomp or exaggeration, as Julius Caesar has done in his Gallic War. We have furthermore references made to a collection of his Letters, apparently on public affairs, published by Dionysodorus, a pupil of Aristarchus. There seems no reason to doubt that this work was genuine, but alas 1 we only know it by name.

It seems inconsistent with the temperate character of his life that he should have held such a feast as to be specially described by the contemporary Lynceus of Samos among the most luxurious banquets of his time. It stands, too, in direct contradiction to the note preserved in Plutarch’s Apophthegms to the effect that Ptolemy, son of Lagus, frequently dined and slept at his friends’ houses; and when he did give a feast, he used their appointments, sending for cups, and carpets and tables; as he himself possessed only what was necessary for his own use. He used to say that making rich was more royal than being rich. Perhaps, however, the description of Lynceus was only to illustrate the thesis of this gastronomic author,  that cooking was an art far more advanced in Egypt than elsewhere.

Yet it might be said, and was said by ancient historians, that his relations with women showed a pleasure loving nature. He had at least twelve children by various wives, as well as the courtezan Thais, and as he grew near the term of his life, the question of the succession to his throne must have long and anxiously concerned the prudent king. On the one hand his eldest son, whose mother Eurydice was now of royal race, being sister of Casander, was a youth of fiery temper and unsteady life. The epithet Keraunos, by which he was designated, is said to refer to his gloomy violence. Yet the safest rule for founding a hereditary sovranty was to observe primogeniture, and this was doubtless the substance of the advice of Demetrius of Phaleron. On the other hand, Berenice was the favourite wife of the old king, and her son a youth of gentle and popular manners. His sister Arsinoe was the young queen of Lysimachus, and not unlikely to control the policy of that king. Wilamowitz holds that grave political considerations may also have been dominant. Keraunos and his supporter Demetrius may have been the advocates of a trenchant Macedonian policy, which would grant nothing to Egyptian tastes. Philadelphus may have represented the more liberal policy of fusing the two cultures, and promoting the compromise of creeds and of cults inaugurated by Soter. At all events Ptolemy determined to settle the question during his life, and abdicated in 285 BC in favour of his second son. The coronation of the new king was received, we are told, with great enthusiasm by the people, and Ptolemy Keraunos went into exile, whether voluntary or not, to his relatives at Lysimacheia. His life was certainly not safe within the realm of the new king. Thus Ptolemy Soter had the satisfaction of bequeathing his kingdom to a popular successor without civil war or assassinations, and we are told that for two years longer the old man used to appear at the court of his son in the new character of a subject.

In 283 BC he died, in the eighty-fifth year of his age, leaving a record to posterity which few men in the world have surpassed. Equally efficient whether as servant or as master, he made up for the absence of genius in war or diplomacy by his persistent good sense, the moderation of his demands, the courtesy of his manners to friend and foe alike. While the old crown of Macedon was still the unsettled prize for which rival kings staked their fortunes, he and his fellow-in-arms, Seleucos, founded dynasties which resisted the disintegrations of the Hellenistic world for centuries.

We have no portrait of him, either literary or artistic, except upon his coins, and therefore miss almost completely throughout his life those small touches of character, those semi-historical anecdotes, which give us the impression made by his personality on those around him. Pausanias saw portrait-statues of him at Athens, Delphi, and Olympia, but does not describe them, nor have modern excavations been as yet fortunate enough to recover them. His portraits on Ptolemaic coins are probably somewhat idealised and therefore not trustworthy in giving us an accurate reproduction of his countenance. Yet the face, even so, is not handsome, in the sense that the Alexander-type on the coins of the same king are, which is more like a god or hero than an actual man. Ptolemy’s features on coins are very marked, and the face is not classical in its features. The forehead is remarkably fleshy over the eyes, and not high; the eyebrows arched; the nose is too short, but thick and with very wide nostrils. The mouth is firm and the chin rather prominent. If asked to guess his character from these coins, I should say that energy and kindliness are the most prominently indicated qualities.

There is but one more point concerning which researches upon the site of Alexandria may yet enlighten us. While we have shown it to be more than probable that Ptolemy bestowed special care upon the domesticating of science, philosophy, and literature in his capital, we can only infer from the beauty of his coinage that he was a patron of art. Yet it is most unlikely that, as he controlled the architectural features of the new city, he could have avoided an intimate connexion with the sister arts of sculpture, painting and music. Many great temples and palaces, not to speak of the Serna, grew up in his day, and in a land where he had to rival the massive and gorgeous architecture of the Pharaohs. All the resources of the best Greek art were not too great for this mighty competition, and it might be assumed by many that this art being now in its decadence, would hardly prove equal to the trial. This very impression—that Greek art was now decaying—has probably been the cause of the lukewarm spirit with which the antiquities of Alexandria have been regarded by classical scholars.

Yet now we can prove that this impression is false, and that the Alexandria of the Ptolemies may still contain wonders of artistic taste, as it certainly did of learning. The marble sarcophagus of a nameless king of Sidon, with its matchless coloured reliefs, dating certainly from this generation, stands in the museum of Constantinople, convicting us of the narrowness and folly of placing limits to the Protean manifestations of Greek genius. These battles of the Macedonians and Persians, these hunting-scenes of Persians and Macedonians, wherein the artist has- celebrated the marriage of Europe and of Asia in grace, in dignity, in manly sport, as well as in heroic combat, are rendered to us in marble and in colours with a perfection second only to that of the frieze of the Parthenon. If such was the work done by an unnamed sculptor, for an unknown king at Sidon, what must have been the work done for the early Ptolemies at Alexandria by the most distinguished artists of the same generation? That they can have exceeded in perfection the tomb of the king at Sidon is well-nigh impossible, but how much larger may have been the scale, how much greater the variety of the work done upon the Serna to honour the tomb of Alexander? Let no one, therefore, think of the decoration of the city of Ptolemy Soter as of some Roman, or Roman-Greek city. We know that there were transcendent artists living in his day; we may be sure they helped him to make his capital the fairest in the world.

It is but yesterday that a new mass of evidence for the artistic culture of Alexandria has been brought together by M. Schreiber. In a masterly essay he has shown that Toreutic or the working of small gold and silver household vessels, which has usually been regarded as a development of artistic handicraft chiefly Roman, is really the production of Alexandria. He enters with great detail into the spirit and the exquisite execution of this work, of which many beautiful specimens are still extant. He shows how the ideas of the artists—the forerunners of Benvenuto Cellini and his school—were analogous to those of the best Alexandrian poets, with this addition, that there is more distinctly an Egyptian flavour in many of the accessories.

It would be unfair in this place to give a mere summary of his fascinating essay, but any one who reads it and examines his many illustrations will perceive the peculiarly romantic colouring of this art. A deep sense of the beauty of landscape, a delight in flowers, garlands, and arabesques is peculiar to it. We see in it plainly the problem set before the artists—to invent decorations for the feasts of a stately court. It is but another brilliant manifestation of that hybrid civilisation, in which science and art, the east and the west, old creeds and new dogmas are woven into a gorgeous texture like the Byzantine robe, with an intricate design like the splendid surfaces of the marble tombs in the first bloom of the Italian Renaissance.