of ivory and gold;
on one was a golden crown, on another a golden cornucopia, and on the
throne of Ptolemy Soter was a crown worth ten thousand _aurei_, or
nearly thirty thousand dollars; then three thousand two hundred golden
crowns, twenty golden shields, sixty-four suits of golden armour; and
the whole was closed with forty waggons of silver vessels, twenty
of golden vessels, eighty of costly Eastern scents, and fifty-seven
thousand six hundred foot soldiers, and twenty-three thousand two
hundred horse. The procession began moving by torchlight before day
broke in the morning, and the sun set in the evening before it had all
passed on its way.

[Illustration: 106.jpg BRONZE COSMETIC HOLDER]

It went through the streets of Alexandria to the royal tents on the
outside of the city, where, as in the procession, everything that was
costly in art, or scarce in nature, was brought together in honour of
the day. At the public games, as a kind of tax or coronation money,
twenty golden crowns were given to Ptolemy Soter, twenty-three to
Berenice, and twenty to their son, the new king, beside other costly
gifts; and two thousand two hundred and thirty-nine talents, or one
million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, were spent on the
amusements of the day. For the account of this curious procession we are
indebted to Callixenes of Rhodes, who was then travelling in Egypt, and
who wrote a history of Alexandria.

Ptolemy Soter lived two years after he had withdrawn himself from the
cares of government; and the weight of his name was not without its
use in adding steadiness to the throne of his successor. Instead of
parcelling out his wide provinces among his sons as so many kingdoms, he
had given them all to one son, and that not the eldest; and on his death
the jealousy of those who had been disinherited and disappointed broke
out in rebellion.

It is with peculiar interest that we hear in this reign for the
first time that the bravery and rising power of the Romans had forced
themselves into the notice of Philadelphus. Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus,
had been beaten by the Romans, and driven out of Italy; and the King of
Egypt thought it not beneath him to send an ambassador to the senate, to
wish them joy of their success, and to make a treaty of peace with the
republic. The embassy, as we might suppose, was received in Rome with
great joy; and three ambassadors, two of the proud name of Fabius, with
Quintus Ogulnius, w