e succeeding Ptolemies, Euergetes and Philopator
were both very able men, though the later was a bad one; he murdered his
father, and perpetrated many horrors in Alexandria. Epiphanes,
succeeding his father when only five years old, was placed by his
guardians under the protection of Rome, thus furnishing to the ambitious
republic a pretence for interfering in the affairs of Egypt. The same
policy was continued during the reign of his son Philometor, who, upon
the whole, was an able and good king. Even Physcon, who succeeded in
B.C. 146, and who is described as sensual, corpulent, and cruel--cruel,
for he cut off the head, hands, and feet of his son, and sent them to
Cleopatra his wife--could not resist the inspirations to which the
policy of his ancestors, continued for nearly two centuries, had given
birth, but was an effective promoter of literature and the arts, and
himself the author of an historical work. A like inclination was
displayed by his successors, Lathyrus and Auletes, the name of the
latter indicating his proficiency in music. The surnames under which all
these Ptolemies pass were nicknames, or titles of derision imposed upon
them by their giddy and satirical Alexandrian subjects. The political
state of Alexandria was significantly said to be a tyranny tempered by
ridicule. The dynasty ended in the person of the celebrated Cleopatra,
who, after the battle of Actium, caused herself, as is related in the
legends, to be bitten by an asp. She took poison that she might not fall
captive to Octavianus, and be led in his triumph through the streets of
Rome.

If we possessed a complete and unbiased history of these Greek kings, it
would doubtless uphold their title to be regarded as the most
illustrious of all ancient sovereigns. Even after their political power
had passed into the hands of the Romans--a nation who had no regard to
truth and to right--and philosophy, in its old age, had become
extinguished or eclipsed by the faith of the later Caesars, enforced by
an unscrupulous use of their power, so strong was the vitality of the
intellectual germ they had fostered, that, though compelled to lie
dormant for centuries, it shot up vigorously on the first occasion that
favouring circumstances allowed.

[Sidenote: They patronize literature as well as science.]

This Egyptian dynasty extended its protection and patronage to
literature as well as to science. Thus Philadelphus did not consider it
beneath him to c