were too well acquainted with his falsehoods, to listen to anything that he could say against his rival. Besides, Tlepolemus had the charge of supplying Alexandria with corn, a duty which was more likely to gain friends than the pandering to the vices of their hated tyrant. Agathocles soon saw that his life was in danger, and he left the meeting and returned to the palace, in doubt whether he should seek for safety in flight, or boldly seize the power which he was craftily aiming at, and rid himself of his enemies by their murder.

(58) While he was wasting these precious minutes in doubt, the streets were filled with groups of men and of boys, who always formed a part of the mobs of Alexandria. They sullenly, but loudly, gave vent to their hatred of the minister; and if they had but found a leader they would have been in rebellion. In a little while the crowd moved off to the tents of the Macedonians, to learn their feelings on the matter, and then to the quarters of the mercenaries, both of which were close to the palace, and the mixed mob of armed and unarmed men soon told the fatal news, that the soldiers were as angry as the citizens. But they were still without a leader; they sent messengers to Tlepolemus, who was not in Alexandria, and he promised that he would soon be there; but perhaps he no more knew what to do than his guilty rival.

(59) Agathocles, in his doubt, did nothing; he sat down to supper with his friends, perhaps hoping that the storm might blow over of itself, perhaps trusting to chance and to the strong walls of the palace. His mother Enanthe ran to the temple of Ceres and Proserpine, and sat down before the altar in tears, believing that the sanctuary of the temple would be her best safeguard; as if the laws of God, which had never bound her, would bind her enemies. It was a festal day, and the women in the temple, who knew nothing of the storm which had risen in the forum within these few hours, came forward to comfort her; but she answered them with curses; she knew that she was hated and would soon be despised, and she added the savage prayer, that they might have to eat their own children. The riot did not lessen at sunset. Men, women, and boys were moving through the streets all night with torches. The crowds were greatest in the stadium and in the theatre of Bacchus, but most noisy in

front of the palace. Agathocles was awakened by the noise, and in his fright ran to the bedroom of the young Ptolemy; and, distrusting the palace walls, hid himself, with his own family, the king, and two or three guards, in the underground passage which led from the palace to the theatre.

(60) The night, however, passed off without any violence; but at daybreak the murmurs became louder, and the thousands in the palace-yard called for the young king. By that time the Greek soldiers joined the mob, and then the guards within were no longer to be feared. The gates were soon burst open, and the palace searched. The mob rushed through the halls and lobbies, and learning where the king had fled, hastened to the underground passage. It was guarded by three doors of iron grating; but when the first was beaten in, Aristomenes was sent out to offer terms of surrender. Agathocles was willing to give up the young king, his misused power, his ill-gotten wealth and estates; he asked only for his life. But this was sternly refused, and a shout was raised to kill the messenger; and Aristomenes, the best of the ministers, whose only fault was the being a friend of Agathocles, and the having named his little daughter Agathoclea, would certainly have been killed upon the spot, if somebody had not reminded them that they wanted to send back an answer.

(61) Agathocles, seeing that he could hold out no longer, then gave up the little king, who was set upon a horse, and led away to the stadium amid the shouts of the crowd. There they seated him on the throne, and while he was crying at being surrounded by strange faces, the mob loudly called for revenge on the guilty ministers. Sosibius, the somatophylax, the son of the former general of that name, seeing no other way of stopping the fury of the mob and the child's sobs, asked him if the enemies of his mother and of his throne should be given up to the people. The child of course answered " yes," without understanding what was meant; and on that they let Sosibius take him to his own house to be out of the uproar. Agathocles was soon led out bound, and was stabbed by those who two days before would have felt honoured by a look from him. Agathoclea and her sister were then brought out, and lastly Enanthe their mother was dragged away from the altar of Ceres and

Proserpine. Some bit them, some struck them with sticks, some tore their eyes out; as each fell down her body was torn to pieces, and her limbs scattered among the crowd; to such lengths of madness and angry cruelty was the Alexandrian mob sometimes driven. In the meanwhile some of the women called to mind that Philammon, who had been employed in the murder of Arsinoë, had within those three days come to Alexandria, and they made a rush at his house. The doors quickly gave way before their blows, and he was killed upon the spot by clubs and stones; his little son was strangled by these raging mothers, and his wife dragged naked into the street, and there torn to pieces. Thus died Agathocles and all his family; and the care of the young king then fell to Sosibius, the son of the late minister of that name, and to Aristomenes, who had already gained a high character for wisdom and firmness.

lib. xxxi. 1.

Polybius,

(62) While Egypt was thus without a government, Philip of Macedonia and Antiochus of Syria agreed to divide the foreign provinces between them; and Justinus, Antiochus marched against Cole-Syria and Phenicia. The guardians of the young Ptolemy sent against him an army under Scopas, the Ætolian, who was at first successful, but was afterwards beaten by Antiochus at Paneas in the valley of the Jordan, three and twenty miles above the Lake of Tiberias, and driven back into Egypt. Legat. 72. In these battles the Jews, who had not forgotten the ill-treatment that they had received from Philopator, joined Antiochus, after having been under the government of Egypt for exactly one hundred years; and in return Antiochus released Jerusalem from all taxes for three years, and afterwards from one third of the taxes, and he sent a large sum of money for the service of the temple, and released the elders, priests, scribes, and singing men from all taxes for the future.

Josephus, Antiq. xii. 3.

B.C. 202.

(63) The Alexandrian statesmen had latterly shown themselves in their foreign policy very unworthy pupils of Ptolemy Soter and Philadelphus, who Lad both ably trimmed the balance of power between the several successors of Alexander. But even had they been wiser, they could hardly, before the end of the second Punic war, have foreseen that the Romans would soon be their most dangerous enemics. The overthrow

of Hannibal, however, might perhaps have opened their eyes; but it was then too late; Egypt was too weak to form an alliance with Macedonia or Syria against the Romans. About this time the Romans sent ambassadors to AlexLivy, lib. xxxi. 2. andria, to tell the king that they had conquered B.C. 201. Hannibal, and brought to a close the second Punic war, and to thank him for the friendship of the Egyptians during that long and doubtful struggle of eighteen years, when so many of their nearer neighbours had joined the enemy. They begged that if the senate felt called upon to undertake a war against Philip, who, though no friend to the Egyptians, had not yet taken arms against them, it might cause no breach in the friendship between the king of Egypt and the Romans. In answer to this embassy, the AlexanJustinus, drians, rushing to their own destruction, sent to lib. xxx. 2. Rome a message, which was meant to place the kingdom wholly in the hands of the senate. It was to beg them to undertake the guardianship of the young Ptolemy, and the defence of the kingdom against Philip and Antiochus during his childhood.

(64) The Romans, in return, gave the wished-for answer; they sent ambassadors to Antiochus and Philip, to order them to make no attack upon Egypt, on pain of falling under the displeasure of the senate; and they sent Marcus Lepidus to Alexandria, to accept the offered prize, and to govern the foreign affairs of the kingdom, under the modest name of tutor to the young king. This high honour was afterEckhel, wards mentioned by Lepidus, with pride, upon the vol. v. 123. coins struck when he was consul, in the eighteenth year of this reign (see Fig. 246). They have the city of

MLEPIDYS

Fig. 246.

Alexandria on the one side, and on the other the title of "Tutor to the king," with the figure of the Roman in his

Justinus,

lib. xxxi. 1.

toga, putting the diadem on the head of the young Ptolemy, afterwards known by the name of PTOLEMY EPIPHANES. (65) The haughty orders of the senate at first had very little weight with the two kings. Antiochus conquered Phenicia and Cole-Syria; and he was then met by a second message from the senate, who no longer spoke in the name of their ward, the young king of Egypt, but ordered him to give up to the Roman people the states which he had seized, and which belonged, they said, to the Romans by the right of war. On this, Hieronym.

Antiochus made peace with Egypt by a treaty, in Dan. xi. in which he betrothed his daughter Cleopatra to B.C. 198. the young Ptolemy, and added the disputed provinces of Phenicia and Cole-Syria as a dower, which were to be given up to Egypt when the king was old enough to be married.

Livy, lib. xxxi. 9.

(66) Philip marched against Athens and the other states of Greece which had heretofore held themselves independent and in alliance with Egypt; and, when the Athenian embassy came to Alexandria to beg for the usual help, Ptolemy's ministers felt themselves so much in the power of the senate, that they sent to Rome to ask whether they should help their old friends the Athenians against Philip, the common enemy, or whether they should leave it to the Romans to help them. And these haughty republicans, who wished all their allies to forget the use of arms, who valued their friends not for their strength but for their obedience, sent them word that the senate did not wish them to help the Athenians, and that the Roman people would take care of their own allies.

(67) If we now look back for two centuries, to the time when Egypt fought its battles against the Persians and guarded its coasts by the help of Greek arms, we remark that from that time it sunk till it became a province of Macedonia; and we cannot fail to see that the Greek kingdom of Egypt was in its turn at this time falling by the same steps by which it had then risen, and that it was already in reality, though not yet in name, a Roman province. But while, during this second fall, the Alexandrians looked upon the proud but unlettered Romans only as friends, as allies, who asked for no pay, who took no reward, who fought only for