I. THE KINGS’ REGISTER
THE smallest but richest morsel of Alexander’s legacy was allotted to the ablest and wisest of his generals. With characteristic loyalty—perhaps as a visible sanction of his authority—Ptolemy, son of Lagus, brought the body of the dead king to Memphis, and had it entombed in a sarcophagus of gold.* He brought with him also Alexander’s occasional mistress Thais, married her, and had by her two sons. He was a plain, blunt soldier, capable both of generous feeling and of realistic thinking. While other inheritors of Alexander’s realm spent half their lives in war, and dreamed of undivided sovereignty, Ptolemy devoted himself to consolidating his position in an alien country, and to promoting Egyptian agriculture, commerce, and industry. He built a great fleet, and made Egypt as secure against naval attack as nature had made it almost unassailable by land. He helped Rhodes and the Leagues to preserve their independence of Macedon, and so won the title of Soter. Only when, after eighteen years of labor, he had firmly organized the political and economic life of his new realm did he call himself king (305). Through him and his successor Greek Egypt established its rule over Cyrene, Crete, the Cyclades, Cyprus, Syria, Palestine, Phoenicia, Samos, Lesbos, Samothrace, and the Hellespont. In his old age he found time to write astonishingly truthful commentaries on his campaigns, and to establish, about 290, the Museum and Library that were to make the fame of Alexandria. In 285, feeling his eighty-two years, he appointed his second son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, to the throne, yielded the government to him, and took his place as a subject in the young king’s court. Two years later he died.
Already the fertile valley and delta had poured great wealth into the royal treasury. Ptolemy I, to give a dinner to his friends, had had to borrow their silver and rugs; Ptolemy II spent $2,500,000 on the feast that climaxed his coronation.2 The new Pharaoh was a convert to the philosophy of Cyrene, and was resolved to enjoy each monochronos hedone—every pleasure that the moment gave. He ate himself into obesity, tried a variety of mistresses, repudiated his wife, and finally married his sister Arsinoë.3 The new queen ruled the Empire and managed its wars while Ptolemy II reigned among the chefs and scholars of his court. Following and improving upon the example of his father, he invited to Alexandria as his guests famous poets, savants, critics, scientists, philosophers, and artists, and made his capital beautiful with architecture in the Greek style. During his long reign Alexandria became the literary and scientific capital of the Mediterranean, and Alexandrian literature flourished as it would never do again. Nevertheless Philadelphus was unhappy in his old age; his gout and his cares increased with the extent of his wealth and his power. Looking out from his palace window he saw and envied a beggar who lay at ease in the sun on the harbor dunes, and he mourned, “Alas, that I was not born one of these!”4 Haunted by the fear of death, he sought in the lore of Egyptian priests the magic elixir of eternal life.5
He had so enlarged and lavishly financed the Museum and Library that later history named him as their founder. In 307 Demetrius of Phalerum, expelled from Athens, had taken refuge in Egypt. Ten years later we find him at the court of Ptolemy I. It was he, apparently, who suggested to Ptolemy Soter that the capital and the dynasty might be made illustrious by establishing a Museum—i.e., a House of the Muses—i.e., of the arts and sciences—which would rival the universities of Athens. Inspired, probably, by Aristotle’s industry in collecting and classifying books, knowledge, animals, plants, and constitutions, Demetrius appears to have recommended the erection of a group of buildings capable not only of sheltering a great collection of books, but also of housing scholars who would devote their lives to research. The plan appealed to the first two Ptolemies; funds were provided, and the new university slowly took form near the royal palaces. There was a general mess hall, where the scholars seem to have had their meals; there was an exedra, or lecture hall, a court, a cloister, a garden, an astronomical observatory, and the great Library. The head of the entire institution was technically a priest, since it was formally dedicated to the Muses as actual goddesses. Living in the Museum were four groups of scholars: astronomers, writers, mathematicians, and physicians. All of these men were Greeks, and all received a salary from the royal treasury. Their function was not to teach, but to make researches, studies, and experiments. In later decades, as students multiplied about the Museum, its members undertook to give lectures, but the Museum remained to the end an Institute for Advanced Studies rather than a university. It was, so far as we know, the first establishment ever set up by a state for the promotion of literature and science. It was the distinctive contribution of the Ptolemies and Alexandria to the history of civilization.
Ptolemy Philadelphus died in 246, after a long and largely beneficent reign. Ptolemy III Euergetes (Well-Doer) was another Thothmes III, intent on conquering the Near East; he took Sardis and Babylon, marched as far as India, and so effectually disorganized the Seleucid Empire that it crumbled at the touch of Rome. We shall not follow the record of his wars, for though there is drama in the details of strife, there is a dreary eternity in its causes and results; such history becomes a menial attendance upon the vicissitudes of power, in which victories and defeats cancel one another into a resounding zero. Euergetes’ young wife Berenice gave thanks for his successes by dedicating a lock of her hair to the gods; the poets celebrated the story, and the astronomers lauded her to the skies by naming one of the constellations Coma Berenices—Berenice’s Hair.
Ptolemy IV Philopator so loved his father that he imitated his wars and his triumphs. But his victory over Antiochus III at Raphia (217) had been won with native troops—their first use by any Ptolemy; and the Egyptians, now armed and conscious of their strength, began from this time onward to break down the authority of the Greeks on the Nile. Philopator gave himself to amusement, spent much time on his spacious pleasure boat, introduced the Bacchanalia into Egypt, and half persuaded himself that he was descended from Dionysus. In 205 his wife was killed by his mistress; and shortly afterward Philopator himself passed away. In the ensuing chaos Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus III of Seleucia were about to dismember and absorb Egypt when Rome—with which the second Ptolemy had made a treaty of friendship—entered upon the scene, defeated Philip, sent Antiochus packing, and made Egypt a Roman protectorate (205).