Livy,

his kingdom by the help of the Romans. The kings of Egypt and Syria, the two greatest kingdoms in the world, were at the same time asking to be heard at the bar of the Roman senate, Lud were claiming the thrones of their fathers at the hands of men who could make and unmake kings at their pleasure. (15) As soon as the senate heard that Philometor was in Rome, they lodged him at the cost of the state in a manner becoming his high rank, and soon sent him lib. xlvi. 22. back to Egypt, with orders that Euergetes should reign in Cyrene, and that the rest of the kingdom should belong to Philometor. This happened in the seventeenth year Porphyrius, of Philometor and the sixth of Euergetes, which was ap. Scalig. the last year that was named after the two kings. Eckhel, Cassius Longinus, who was next year consul at vol. v. 167. Rome, was most likely among the ambassadors who replaced Philometor on the throne; for he put the Ptolemaic eagle and thunderbolt on his coins, as though to claim the sovereignty of Egypt for the senate.

B.C. 164.

Livy,

Legat. 113.

(16) To these orders Euergetes was forced to yield; but the next year he went himself to Rome to complain to the senate that they had made a very unfair division lib. xlvi. 32. of the kingdom, and to beg that they would add the Polybius, island of Cyprus to his share. After hearing the ambassadors from Philometor, who were sent to plead on the other side, the senate granted the prayer of Euergetes, and sent ambassadors to Cyprus, with orders to hand that island over to Euergetes, and to make use of the fleets and armies of the republic if these orders were disobeyed.

(17) Euergetes, during his stay in Rome, if we may believe Plutarch, made an offer of marriage to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but this offer of a throne Plutarch. could not make the high-minded matron quit her children and her country.

Gracchus.

(18) He left Italy with the Roman ambassadors, and in passing through Greece he raised a large body of mercenaries to help him to wrest Cyprus from his Polybius, Legat. 115. brother, as it would seem that the governor, faithful to his charge, would not listen to the commands of Rome. But the ambassadors had been told to conquer Cyprus, if necessary, with the arms of the republic only, and they therefore made Euergetes disband his levies. They sailed for

Legat. 117.

Alexandria to enforce their orders upon Philometor, and sent Euergetes home to Cyrene. Philometor received the Roman ambassadors with all due honours; he sometimes gave them fair promises, and sometimes put them off till another day; and tried to spin out the time without saying either yes or no to the message from the senate. Euergetes sent to Alexandria to ask if they had gained their point; but though they threatened to return to Rome if they were not at once obeyed, Philometor, by his kind treatment and stillkinder words, kept them more than forty days longer at Alexandria. (19) At last the Roman ambassadors left Egypt, and on Polybius, their way home they went to Cyrene, to let Euergetes Legat. 116. know that his brother had disobeyed the orders of the senate, and would not give up Cyprus; and Euergetes then sent two ambassadors to Rome to beg them to revenge their affronted dignity and to enforce their orders by arms. The senate of course declared the peace with Egypt at an end, and ordered the ambassadors from Philometor to quit Rome within five days, and sent their own ambassadors to Cyrene to tell Euergetes of their decree. (20) But while this was going on, the state of Cyrene had risen in arms against Euergetes; his vices and cruelty had made him hated, they had gained for him the nicknames of Kakergetes, or mischief-maker, and Physcon, or bloated; and while wishing to gain Cyprus he was in danger of losing his own kingdom. When Legat. 132. he marched against the rebels he was beaten and wounded, either in the battle or by an attack upon his life afterwards, and his success was for some time doubtful. When he had at last put down this rising he sailed for Rome, to urge his complaints against Philometor, upon whom he laid the blame of the late rebellion, and to ask for help. The senate, after hearing both sides, sent a small fleet with Euergetes, not large enough to put him on the throne of Cyprus, but gave him, what they had before refused, leave to levy an army of his own, and to enlist their allies in Greece and Asia as mercenaries under his standard. (21) The Roman troops seem not to have helped Euergetes; but he landed in Cyprus with his own mercenaries, and was there met by Philometor, who had brought over the Egyptian army in person. Euergetes, however,

Legat. 115.

Virtut. xxxi.

was beaten in several battles, he was soon forced to shut himself up in the city of Lapitho, and at last to lay down his arms before his elder brother.

(22) If Philometor had upon this put his brother to death, the deed would have seemed almost blameless after the family murders at which we have already shuddered in this history. But, with a goodness of heart which is rarely met with in the history of kings, and which, if we looked up to merit as much as we do to success, would throw the warlike virtues of his forefathers into the shade, he a second time forgave his brother all that had passed, he replaced him on the throne of Cyrene, and promised to give him his daughter in marriage. We are not told whether the firmness and forgiving mildness of Philometor had turned the Roman senate in his Diod. Sic. favour, but their troops seemed wanted in other Excerpt. quarters; at any rate they left off trying to enforce their decree; Philometor kept Cyprus, and sent to Euergetes a yearly gift of corn from Alexandria.

334.

(23) At a time when so few great events cross the stage, we must not let the fall of Macedonia pass unnoticed, nor fail to point out the rapid rise of Rome. We have seen the conquests in Europe, Asia, and Africa, by Macedonian valour under Alexander the Great, and on his death the Egyptian and other great kingdoms founded by his generals. We have since seen the Macedonian phalanx routed at Cynocephalæ; and lastly, in this reign, Macedonia was conquered by the Romans, the king led in triumph to Rome, and, in the insulting decree of the senate, the people declared free. But the Macedonians had never learned to govern themselves. The feelings which in a commonwealth would be pride of country, in a monarchy are entwined round the throne, as in an army round the standard, and when these are lost they are not easily regained. At any rate we never again meet with Macedonia on the page of history.

(24) About the same time the Romans entered on the third Punic war, and on the Achaian war; and before the end of this reign the city of Carthage, and the Achaian league, or the free states of Greece, both sunk under their victorious arms. But these conquests were not won with equal ease, nor with equal glory to the Roman generals; and while Mummius is never spoken of without blame for having

warred against art, and overthrown Corinth with its temples, statues, and pictures, the younger Scipio, who warred against commerce, is praised for having burned to the very ground the trading city of Carthage.

1. 1; vii. 10.

(25) During the wars in Syria between Philometor and Josephus, Antiochus Epiphanes, at the beginning of this reign, Bell, Jud. the Jews were divided into two parties, one favouring Antiq. xiii. the Egyptians and one the Syrians. At last the 3. Syrian party drove their enemies out of Jerusalem ; and Quias, the high-priest, with a large body of Jews, fled to Egypt. There they were well received by Philometor, who allowed them to dwell in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis, perhaps on the very spot which had been given to their forefathers when they entered Egypt under Jacob; and he gave them leave to build a temple and ordain priests for themselves. Onias built his temple at On or Onion, a city about twenty-three miles from Memphis, once the capital of the district of Heliopolis. It was on the site of an old Egyptian temple of the goddess Pasht, which had fallen into disuse and decay; most likely that very temple in which the wife of Joseph upwards of twelve centuries earlier had worshipped with her father Poti-phera, the priest and governor of that city. It was built after the model of the temple of Hieronym. Jerusalem, and though by the Jewish law there was in Dan. xi. to be no second temple, yet Onias defended himself by quoting some words of prophecy as if written by Isaiah, saying that in that day there shall be an altar to Ch. xix. 19. the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt. The building of this temple, and the celebrating the Jewish feasts there, as in rivalry to the temple of Jerusalem, were a neverfailing cause of quarrel between the Hebrew and the Greek Jews. One party or the other altered the words of the Bible to make it speak their own opinions about it. The Hebrew Bible now says that the new temple was in the City of Destruction, and the Greek Bible says that it was in the City of Righteousness. The leaders of the Greek party wished the Jews to throw aside the character of strangers and foreign traders, to be at home and to become owners of the soil. "Hate not laborious work," says the son of Ch. vil. 14. Sirach; "neither husbandry, which the Most High hath ordained."

(26) About the same time the Jews brought before Ptolemy, as a judge, their quarrel with the Samari- Josepbus, tans, as to whether, according to the law of Moses, Antiq. xiii. the temple ought to have been built at Jerusalem, or

3, 4.

4.

30.

on Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans built their temple, or on Mount Ebal, where the Hebrew Bible says that it should be built; and as to which nation had altered Deut. xxvii. their copies of the Bible in the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy. This dispute had lately Josh. viii. been the cause of riots and rebellion. Ptolemy seems to have decided the question for political reasons, and to please his own subjects the Alexandrian Jews; Deuteron. and without listening to the arguments as to what xxvii. 12. the law ordered, he was content with the proof that ch. xi. 29. the temple had stood at Jerusalem for above eight hundred years, and he put to death the two Samaritan pleaders, who had probably been guilty of some outrage against the Jews in zeal for Mount Gerizim, and for which they might then have been on their trial.

Esther, cho xi. 1.

B.C. 177.

(27) Onias, the high-priest, was much esteemed by Philometor, and bore high offices in the government; as Josephus, also did Dositheus, another Jew, who had been very in Apion. ii. useful in helping the king to crush a rebellion. Dositheus called himself a priest and a Levite, though his title to that honour seems to have been doubted by his countrymen. He had brought with him into Egypt the book of Esther, written in Greek, which he said had been translated out of the Hebrew in Jerusalem by Lysimachus. It contained some additions not in our Bible. But as he did not publish the Hebrew, these chapters were viewed rather distrustfully. They were, however, added to the Greek Bible; and, as the Hebrew has never been brought forward, we now place them among the doubtful books of the Apocrypha.

Recherches.

(28) Since the Ptolemies had found themselves too weak to hold Ethiopia, they had placed a body of soldiers Inscript. on the border of the two countries, to guard Egypt Letronne from the inroads of the enemy. This station, twelve miles to the south of Syene, had by degrees grown into a city, and was called Parembole, or The Camp; and, as most of the soldiers were Greek mercenaries, it was natural