ambition and for the glory of their country, we cannot but remark, and with sorrow for the cause of arts and letters, that in their former fall the Egyptians had only seen the elegant and learned Greeks in the light of mean hirelings who looked only for their pay, and who fought with equal pleasure on either side, with little thought about the justice of the cause, or their country's greatness. The Roman soldier would have been shocked at hearing the cry for quarter in his mother tongue; but the Spartan and the Athenian were used to it. Many are the virtues which the Romans gained with their strict feelings of clanship or pride of country, and which the Greeks lost, after the time of Alexander, by becoming philosophic citizens of the world. Polybius, (68) Soon after this, the battle of Cynocephalæ in Thessaly was fought between Philip and the Romans, in which lib. xvii. the Romans lost only seven hundred men, while as B.C. 197. many as eight thousand Macedonians were left dead upon the field. This battle, though only between Rome and Macedonia, must not be passed unnoticed in the history of Egypt, where the troops were armed and disciplined like Macedonians, as it was the first time that the world had seen the Macedonian phalanx routed and in flight before any troops not so armed. . (69) The phalanx was a body of spearsmen, in such close array that each man filled a space of only one square yard The spear was seven yards long, and, when held in both hands, its point was five yards in front of the soldier's breast There were sixteen ranks of these men, and when the fr five ranks lowered their spears the point of the fifth spe was one yard in front of the foremost rank. The Roma on the other hand, fought in open ranks, with one y between each, or each man filled a space of four square yards! and in a charge would have to meet ten Macedonian spears! But then the Roman soldiers went into battle with m higher feelings than those of the Greeks. In Rome, were trusted only to the citizens, to those who had country to love, a home to guard, and who had some share making the laws which they were called upon to obey. Ethe Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria, were ma up either of natives who bowed their necks in slavery, mercenaries who made war their trade and rioted in its lawlessness, both of whom felt that they had little to gain from victory, and nothing to lose by a change of masters. Moreover, the warlike skill of the Romans was far greater than any that had yet been brought against the Greeks. It had lately been improved in their wars with Hannibal, the great master of that science. They saw that the phalanx could use its whole strength only on a plain; that a wood, a bog, a hill, or a river, were difficulties which this close body of men could not always overcome. A charge or a retreat equally lessened its force; the phalanx was meant to stand the charge of others. The Romans, therefore, chose their own time and their own ground; they loosened their ranks and widened their front, avoided the charge, and attacked the Greeks at the side and in the rear; and the fatal discovery was at last made, that the Macedonian phalanx was not unconquerable, and that closed ranks were only strong against barbarians. This news must have been heard by every statesman of Egypt and the East with alarm; the Romans were now their equals, and were soon to be their masters. (70) But to return to Egypt. It was, as we have seen, a country governed by men of a foreign race. Neither the poor who tilled the land, nor the rich who owned the estates, had any share in the government. They had no public duty except to pay taxes to their Greek masters, who walked among them as superior beings, marked out for fitness to rule by greater skill in the arts both of war and peace. The Greeks by their arms, or rather by their military discipline, had enforced obedience for one hundred and fifty years; and as they had at the same time checked lawless violence, made life and property safe, and left industry to enjoy a large share of its own earnings, this obedience had been for the most part granted to them willingly. They had even trusted the Egyptians with arms. But none are able to command unless they are at the same time able to obey. The Alexandrians were now almost in rebellion against their young king and his ministers; and the Greek government no longer gave usual advantages in return for the obedience which it tyrannically enforced. Anarchy and confusion increased each year during the childhood of the fifth Ptolemy, to whom Alexandrian flattery gave the title of the Rosetta Stone. Epiphanes, or The Illustrious. The Egyptian phalanx had in the last reign shown signs of disobedience, and at length it broke out in open rebellion. The discontented party strengthened themselves in the Busirite nome, in the middle of the Delta, and fortified the city of Lycopolis against the government; and a large supply of arms and warlike stores which they there got together proved the length of time that they had been preparing for resistance. The royal troops laid siege to the city in due form; they surrounded it with mounds and ditches, they dammed up the bed of the river on each side of it; and, being helped by a rise in the Polybius, Nile, which was that year greater than usual, they Virtut. xx. forced the rebels to surrender, on the king's promise that they should be spared. But Ptolemy was not bound by promises; he was as false and cruel as he was weak; the rebels were punished; and many of the troubles in his reign arose from his discontented subjects not being able to rely upon his word. Polybius, (71) The rich island of Cyprus also, which had been left by Philopator under the command of Polycrates, Hist. xvii. showed some signs of wishing to throw off the Virtut. xix. Egyptian yoke. But Polycrates was true to his trust; and though the king's ministers were almost too weak either to help the faithful or punish the treacherous, he not only saved the island for the minor, but, when he gave up his government to Ptolemy of Megalopolis, he brought to the royal treasury at Alexandria a large sum from the revenues of his province. By this faithful conduct he gained great weight in the Alexandrian councils, till, corrupted by the poisonous habits of the place, he gave way to luxury and vice. Virtut. xiii. (72) About the same time Scopas, who had lately led back to Alexandria his Ætolian mercenaries, so far showed signs of discontent and disobedience that the minister Aristomenes began to suspect him of planning resistance to the government. Scopas was greedy of money; nothing would satisfy his avarice. The other Greek generals of his rank received while in the Egyptian service a mina or fifty shillings a day, under the name of mess-money, beyond the usual military pay; and Scopas claimed and received for his services the large sum of ten minæ or twenty-five pounds sterling a day for mess-money. But even this did not content him. Aristomenes observed that he was collecting Hist. xvii. his friends for some secret purpose, and in frequent consultation with them. He therefore summoned him to the king's presence, and 'being prepared for his refusal he sent a large force to fetch him. Fearing that the mercenaries might support their general, Aristomenes had even ordered out the elephants and prepared for battle. But as the blow came upon Scopas unexpectedly no resistance was made, and he was brought prisoner to the palace. Aristomenes, however, did not immediately venture to punish him, but wisely summoned the Etolian ambassadors and the chiefs of the mercenaries to his trial; and, as they made no objection, he then had him poisoned in prison. (73) No sooner was this rebellion crushed than the council took into consideration the propriety of declaring the king's minority at an end, as the best means of re-establishing the royal authority; and they thereupon determined shortly to celebrate his Anacleteria, or the grand ceremony of exhibiting him to the people as their monarch, though he wanted some years of the legal age; and accordingly, in the ninth year of his reign, the young king was crowned with great pomp at Memphis, the ancient capital of the kingdom. B.C. 196. Stone. (74) On this occasion he came to Memphis by barge, in grand state, where he was met by the priests of Rosetta Upper and Lower Egypt, and crowned in the temple of Pthal with the double crown called Pschent, the crown of the two provinces. After the ceremony the priests made the decree in honour of the king, which is carved on the stone known by the name of the Rosetta Stone, in the British Museum. Ptolemy is there styled king of Upper and Lower Egypt, son of the gods Philopatores, approved by Pthah, to whom Ra has given victory, a living image of Amun, son of Ra, Ptolemy immortal, beloved by Pthah, god Epiphanes most gracious. In the date of the decree we are told the names of the priests of Alexander, of the gods Soteres, of the gods Adelphi, of the gods Euergetæ, of the gods Philopatores, of the god Epiphanes himself, of Berenice Euergetis, of Arsinoë Philadelphus, and of Arsinoë Philopator. The preamble mentions with gratitude the services Discov. Rosetta and of the king, or rather of his wise minister Aristomenes; the enactment orders that the statue of the king shall be worshipped in every temple of Egypt, and be carried out in the processions with those of the gods of the country; and lastly, that the decree shall be carved at the foot of every statue of the king, in sacred, in common, and in Greek writing. It is to this stone, with its three kinds of Young's Hierogl. letters, and to the skill and industry of Dr. Young, that we now owe our knowledge of hieroglyphics. The Greeks of Alexandria, and after them the Romans, who might have learned how to read this kind of writing if they had wished, seem never to have taken the trouble; it fell into disuse on the rise of Christianity in Egypt; and it was left for an Englishman to unravel the hidden meaning after it had been forgotten for nearly thirteen centuries. (75) The preamble of this decree tells us that during the minority of the king the taxes were lessened; the crown debtors were forgiven; those who were found in prison charged with crimes against the state were released; the allowance from government for upholding the splendour of the temples was continued, as was the rent from the glebe or land belonging to the priests; the firstfruits, or rather the coronation money, a tax paid by the priests to the king on the year of his coming to the throne, which was by custom allowed to be less than what the law ordered, was not increased; the priests were relieved from the heavy burden of making a yearly voyage to do homage at Alexandria; there was a stop put to the pressing of men for the navy, which had been felt as a great cruelty by an inland people whose habits and religion alike made them hate the sea; and this was a boon which was the more easily granted, as the navy of Alexandria, which was built in foreign dockyards and steered by foreign pilots, had very much fallen off in the reign of Philopator. The duties on linen cloth, which was the chief manufacture of the kingdom, and, after corn, the chief article exported, were lessened; the priests, who manufactured linen for the king's own use, probably for the clothing of the army, and the sails for the navy, were not called upon for so large a part of what they made as before; and the royalties on the other linen manufactures, and the duties on the samples or patterns, both of which seem to have been |
