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Ptolemy II....
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Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309-246 BC), was of a delicate
constitution, no Macedonian warrior-chief of the old style.
His brother Ptolemy Ceraunus found compensation by becoming king in
Macedonia in 281 BC, and perished in the Gallic invasion of 280-79 .He began his reign as co-regent with his parents Ptolemy I and Berenice I from 288 BC-285 BC.
Ptolemy II maintained a splendid court in
Alexandria. Not that
Egypt held
aloof from wars. Magas of Cyrene opened war on his half-brother (274 BC),
and Antiochus I Soter, the son of Seleucus, desiring Palestine, attacked
soon after. Two or three years of war left Egypt the dominant naval power of
the eastern Mediterranean; the Ptolemaic sphere of power extended over the Cyclades to Samothrace, and the harbours and coast towns of Cilicia Trachea
("Rough Cilicia"), Pamphylia, Lycia and Caria were largely in Ptolemy's
hands. |
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The victory won by Antigonus, king of
Macedonia, over his
fleet at Cos (between 258 and 256) did not long interrupt his command of the
Aegean. In a second war with the Seleucid kingdom, under Antiochus II Theos
(after 260), Ptolemy sustained losses on the seaboard of Asia Minor and
agreed to a peace by which Antiochus married his daughter Berenice (ca.
250). |
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Ptolemy's first wife, Arsinoë I, daughter of Lysimachus,
was the mother of his legitimate children. After her repudiation he married,
probably for political reasons, his full-sister Arsinoë II, the widow of
Lysimachus, by an Egyptian custom abhorrent to
Greek morality.
The material and literary splendour of the Alexandrian court was at its
height under Ptolemy II. Pomps and gay religions flourished.
Ptolemy deified
his parents and his sister-wife, after her death (270), as Philadelphus.
This surname was used in later generations to distinguish Ptolemy II.
himself, but properly it belongs to Arsinoë only, not to the king. |
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Callimachus, made keeper of the library, Theocritus, and
a host of lesser poets, glorified the Ptolemaic family.
Ptolemy himself was
eager to increase the library and to patronize scientific research. He had
the strange beasts of far off lands sent to Alexandria. But, an enthusiast
for Hellenic culture, he seems to have shown but little interest in the
native religion.
The tradition preserved in the pseudepigraphical Letter of Aristeas which
connects the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament into
Greek with his
patronage is probably not historical. Ptolemy had many brilliant mistresses,
and his court, magnificent and dissolute, intellectual and artificial, has
been justly compared with the Versailles of Louis XIV. |
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