ere sent back to seal the treaty. Philadelphus gave
them some costly gifts, probably those usually given to ambassadors;
but Rome was then young, her citizens had not yet made gold the end for
which they lived, and the ambassadors returned the gifts, for they could
receive nothing beyond the thanks of the senate for having done their
duty. This treaty was never broken; and in the war which broke out in
the middle of this reign between Rome and Carthage, usually called the
first Punic war, when the Carthaginians sent to Alexandria to beg for
a loan of two thousand talents, Philadelphus refused it, saying that he
would help them against his enemies, but not against his friends.

From that time forward we find Egypt in alliance with Rome. But we also
find that they were day by day changing place with one another: Egypt
soon began to sink, while Rome was rising in power; Egypt soon received
help from her stronger ally, and at last became a province of the Roman
empire.

At the time of this embassy, when Greek arts were nearly unknown to the
Romans, the ambassadors must have seen much that was new to them, and
much that was worth copying; and three years afterwards, when one of
them, Quintus Ogulnius, together with Caius Fabius Pictor, were chosen
consuls, they coined silver for the first time in Rome. With them begins
the series of consular denarii, which throws such light on Roman life
and history.

About the middle of this reign, Berenice, the mother of the king, died,
and it was most likely then that Philadelphus began to date from the
beginning of his own reign: he had before gone on like his father,
dating from the beginning of his father's reign. In the year after her
death, the great feast of Osiris, in the month of Mesore, was celebrated
at Alexandria with more than usual pomp by the Queen Arsinoe. Venus, or
Isis, had just raised Berenice to heaven; and Arsinoe, in return, showed
her gratitude by the sums of money spent on the feast of Osiris, or
Adonis as he was sometimes called by the Greeks. Theocritus, who was
there, wrote a poem on the day, and tells us of the crowds in the
streets, of the queen's gifts to the temple, and of the beautiful
tapestries, on which were woven the figures of the god and goddess
breathing as if alive; and he has given a free translation of the
Maneros, the national poem in which the priests each year consoled the
goddess Isis for the death of Osiris, which was sung through the street