Ptolemaic dynasty

“ The population of Egypt in the time of Ptolemy I. is put at 7,000,000 by Diodorus, who also says that it was greater then than it ever was before; at the end of the dynasty, in his own day, it was not much less though somewhat diminished. Civil wars and revolts must have greatly injured both Upper and Lower Egypt. It is remarkable that, while the building and decoration of temples continued in the reigns of Ptolemy Auletes and the later Ptolemies and Cleopatra, papyri of those times whether Greek or Egyptian are scarcely to be found. ”

“ Through the forty years of struggle which followed between the great Macedonian chiefs — the men who had learnt war under Alexander — Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, remained in his African province, safe as a tortoise in his shell, while armies marched to and fro across Asia and rival fleets battled in the Aegean. To some extent, indeed, he stretched forth out of his shell to mingle in the mellay, for the power ruling Egypt was now one of Hellenistic character, having various connexions, political, economic, cultural, with the other states of the Greek world. ”

“ It was a state of things not altogether unlike that which is found in certain countries the‐day, for the civilization of the ruling race in Ptolemaic Egypt was precisely that same Greek civilization which is the parent of the modern civilization of Europe, and their feeling of superiority to the people of the land was not unlike the feeling which "white men" have to‐day towards "natives." ”

“ Cleopatra had thought to snatch from Rome its Oriental Empire by the arm of Antony, in that immense disorder of revolution; to reconstruct the great Empire of Egypt, placing at its head the first general of the time, creating an army of Roman legionaries with the gold of the Ptolemies; to make Egypt and its dynasty the prime potentate of Africa and Asia, transferring to Alexandria the political and diplomatic control of the finest parts of the Mediterranean world.
As the move failed, men have deemed it folly and stupidity ”

“ As the hold of Egypt strengthened on his mind, Cleopatra tried to persuade him not to conquer Persia, but to accept openly the kingdom of Egypt, to found with her and with their children a new dynasty, and to create a great new Egyptian Empire, adding to Egypt the better part of the provinces that Rome possessed in Africa and in Asia, abandoning Italy and the provinces of the West forever to their destiny. ”

“ Our knowledge of the history of Alexander’s conquest, of the Ptolemies and of the Roman occupation is almost entirely derived from Greek sources, and in fact almost the same might be said of the history of Egypt as far back as the beginning of the XXVIth Dynasty. The non-literary Greek remains in papyri and inscriptions which are being found in great abundance throw a flood of light on life in Egypt and the administration of the country from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus to the Arab conquest. ”

“ While Ptolemy, the first Macedonian king who consolidated the power of Egypt, was setting up in the newly-built city of Alexandria fortifications, temples, and rites of worship, there appeared to him in his sleep a youth of singular beauty and more than human stature, who counselled the monarch to send his most trusty friends to Pontus, and fetch his effigy from that country. ”

“ Ptolemæus II., son of Ptolemy I., succeeded his father on the Egyptian throne, and was called Philadelphus by antiphrasis, because he killed two of his brothers. He showed himself worthy in every respect to succeed his great father, and, conscious of the advantages which arise from an alliance with powerful nations, he sent ambassadors to Italy to solicit the friendship of the Romans, whose name and military reputation had become universally known for the victories which they had just obtained over Pyrrhus and the Tarentines. ”

“ Alexander had called Alexandria Ptolemaic kingdom. into being; the first Ptolemy added Ptolemais as a Greek centre for Upper Egypt. They seem to have suffered no other community in the Nile Valley with the independent life of a Greek city, for the Greek and Macedonian soldier-colonies settled in the Fayum or elsewhere had no political self-existence. And even at Alexandria Hellenism was not allowed full development. Ptolemais, indeed, enjoyed all the ordinary forms of self-government, but Alexandria was governed despotically by royal officials. ”

“ Thousands of years have passed since the foundation of the first Egyptian dynasty. The Pyramids have seen the old empire, the Hycksos monarchs, the New Empire, the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman, the Mohammedan. They have stood while the heavens themselves have changed. They were already "five hundred years old when the Southern Cross disappeared from the horizon of the countries of the Baltic." The pole-star itself is a newcomer to them. ”

“ After his example, Seleucus, Cassander, Lysimachus and Ptolemy, took upon themselves the title and dignity of kings, having abstained from this honour while there remained any of Alexander's race to inherit the crown. Thus the monarchy of the Greeks for want of an heir was broken into several kingdoms; four of which, seated to the four winds of heaven, were very eminent. For Ptolemy reigned over Egypt, Lybia and Ethiopia; Antigonus over Syria and the lesser Asia; Lysimachus over Thrace; and Cassander over Macedon, Greece and Epirus, as above. ”

“ Happy is the day wherein thou didst return to the land of thy fathers, and sattest in the throne of their kingdom.
56 And now I will do to thee as thou hast written: but meet me at Ptolemais, that we may see one another, and I may give her to thee as thou hast said.
57 So Ptolemee went out of Egypt, with Cleopatra his daughter, and he came to Ptolemais in the hundred and sixty-second year.
58 And king Alexander met him, and he gave him his daughter Cleopatra: and he celebrated her marriage at Ptolemais, with great glory, after the manner of kings. ”

“ If, on the other hand, we scorn to become the subjects of our conqueror, why should we become subject to one who45 has not conquered us, and so prove ourselves inferior to two men instead of one, by becoming the courtiers of Ptolemy as well as fleeing before Antigonus? Is it on account of your mother that we are going to Egypt? If so, you will indeed make a glorious appearance before her, and you will be much to be envied when she shows her son to the ladies of Ptolemy’s court, an exile instead of a king. ”

“ There were plenty of men, it is true, in Egypt, but these were not the right kind of men, the men out of which one could make armies able to stand against armies of Macedonian and Greek soldiers such as Antigonus or Seleucus could put into the field. Ptolemy must have his sure supply of Macedonians, too. He could remember how the nucleus of the army, which under Alexander had conquered half the world, had been drawn from the man-power of old Macedonia, the horse-riding aristocracy, the stout pike-men who were farmers or field-labourers of the Balkan countryside in peace time. ”

“ I have discovered several very per{103}fect series of Ptolemies, the longest coming down to Neos Dionysos and his wife Cleopatra, who{104} was surnamed Tryphæna by the Egyptians, according to the hieroglyphic inscriptions. [48] A fact of some importance is also that in this Egyptian list of Ptolemies, the first King is never Ptolemæus Soter I. but Philadelphus. ”

“ Argzeus, the youngest son of Ptolemy, was put to death by Philadelphus on a charge of treason. Of his youngest daughter Philotera we know nothing, except that her brother Philadelphus afterwards named a city on the coast of the Red Sea after her.
After the last battle with Demetrius, Ptolemy had regained the island of Cyprus and Cole-Syria, including Judæa; and his throne became stronger as his life drew to an end. With a wisdom rare in kings and conquerors, he had never let his ambition pass his means; he never aimed at universal power ”

“ On the later coins we find the head of Antony joined with hers, as king and queen, and he is styled “the emperor” and she “the young goddess.” Cleopatra was perhaps the last Greek sovereign that bore the title of god. Nor did it seem unsuitable to her, so common had the Greeks of Asia and Egypt made that epithet, by giving it to their kings, and even to their kings’ families and favourites. But the use of the word made no change in their religious opinions; they never for a moment supposed that the persons whom they so styled had any share in the creation and government of the world. ”

“ Sarapis was not the only new deity whom the Macedonians and Greeks of Ptolemaic Egypt worshipped in addition to the gods of their fathers. The deification of men recently dead or still living was a feature of the Greek world after Alexander. ”

“ Men were beginning to think in millions, to gaze boldly into deep abysses of space, to talk of vast fiery globes that made the earth insignificant But the splendid energy gradually failed, and the long line was closed by Ptolemaeus, who once more put the earth in the centre of the system, and so imposed what is called the Ptolemaic system on Europe. The keen school-life of Alexandria still ran on, and there might have been a return to the saner early doctrines, but at last Alexandrian culture was extinguished in the blood of the aged Hypatia, and the night fell. ”

“ But their joint reign did not last long, for Ptolemy, or, rather, Pothinus and Achillas, his chief advisers, expelled his sister from the throne. Cleopatra collected a force in Syria, with which she invaded Egypt. The generals of Ptolemy were encamped opposite her, near Alexandria, when Pompey arrived off the coast and craved the protection of the young king. This request threw Pothinus and Achillas into great difficulty, for there were many of Pompey's old soldiers in the Egyptian army, and they feared he would become master of Egypt. They therefore determined to put him to death. ”

“ Thus tragically was ushered in the reign of the boy-king, Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, the Illustrious, whose dates are 205-182 B. C., and whose pre-nomen or throne name, found on his cartouch, means “heir of the (two) father loving gods, chosen of Ptah, strength of the Ka of Ra, living image of Amen.” Too young to take matters into his own hands, the power seems to have been divided between Tlepolemus as military, and Aristomenes, called the king’s tutor, as civil administrator of affairs. ”

“ They were forced to be content with sharing the provinces between them as his lieutenants; some hoping to govern by their power over the weak mind of Arridæus, and others secretly meaning to make themselves independent.
In this weighty matter, Ptolemy showed the wisdom and judgment which had already gained him his high character. Though his military rank and skill were equal to those of any one of Alexander’s generals, and his claim by birth perhaps equal to that of Arridæous, he was not one of those who aimed at the throne ”

“ The ease with which the wide-spreading provinces of this once mighty empire fell off from their allegiance, showed how the whole had been upheld by the warlike skill of its kings, rather than by a deep-rooted hold in the habits of the people. Instead of wondering that the handful of Greeks in Alexandria, on whom the power rested, lost those wide provinces, we should rather wonder that they were ever able to hold them.
After the death of Antiochus the Great, Ptolemy again proposed to enforce his rights over Ccele-Syria, which he had given up only in the weakness of his minority ”

“ Certain arms in an army of the period were almost always furnished, not by Macedonian regulars, but by mercenaries from some particular region — archers from Crete, javelineers from Thrace. Of the Cretans, Thracians, Athenians, Spartans, Boeotians, Sicilians, who came in this way to Egypt, many apparently stayed there. Ptolemy seems to have exerted himself to be known all over the Greek world as the kind of genial, free-handed, valiant gentleman whom any young man inclined to the life of a soldier might cross the sea to serve. ”

“ About five months later, one of his marshals, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, appeared in Egypt as the satrap appointed by the new Macedonian king, Philip Arrhidaeus. The new king was a feeble-minded half-brother of Alexander's, and the real power was in the hands of the great Macedonian chiefs who had served under Alexander, especially in that of Perdiccas, whose precise office, if it is somewhat obscure to modern scholars, was perhaps already a matter of controversy amongst the great chiefs themselves in the confused struggle of those days which followed the great conqueror's abrupt removal. ”

“ A statue of the young king is in the Gizeh Museum. It is of granite and about nine feet in height. The gentle and melancholy expression seems well suited to the youth’s tragic fate, but he is represented as much older than when he died, and it is probably a conventional likeness, with a mingling of the Egyptian and Greek in type and attributes. A certain inscription in Egypt mentions Ptolemy in the seventh year of the absent Alexander. His destroyer kept up the fiction of his authority, thus [347] Ptolemy granted lands in the name of Alexander and Philip after their decease. ”

“ Even in a great empire there might be a degree of virtue and justice, such as the Greeks believed to have existed under the sway of the first Persian kings. But all such empires were liable to degenerate, and soon incurred the anger of the gods. Their Oriental wealth, and splendour of gold and silver, and variety of colours, seemed also to be at variance with the simplicity of Greek notions. In the island of Atlantis, Plato is describing a sort of Babylonian or Egyptian city, to which he opposes the frugal life of the true Hellenic citizen. ”