ul struggle of eighteen years, when so many of their
nearer neighbours had joined the enemy. They begged that if the senate
felt called upon to undertake a war against Philip, who, though no
friend to the Egyptians, had not yet taken arms against them, it might
cause no breach in the friendship between the King of Egypt and the
Romans. In answer to this embassy, the Alexandrians, rushing to their
own destruction, sent to Rome a message, which was meant to place
the kingdom wholly in the hands of the senate. It was to beg them to
undertake the guardianship of the young Ptolemy, and the defence of the
kingdom against Philip and Antiochus during his childhood.

The Romans, in return, gave the wished-for answer; they sent ambassadors
to Antiochus and Philip, to order them to make no attack upon Egypt,
on pain of falling under the displeasure of the senate; and they sent
Marcus Lepidus to Alexandria, to accept the offered prize, and to govern
the foreign affairs of the kingdom, under the modest name of tutor to
the young king. This high honour was afterwards mentioned by Lepidus,
with pride, upon the coins struck when he was consul, in the eighteenth
year of this reign. They have the city of Alexandria on the one side,
and on the other the title of "Tutor to the king," with the figure
of the Roman in his toga, putting the diadem on the head of the young
Ptolemy.

The haughty orders of the senate at first had very little weight with
the two kings. Antiochus conquered Phoenicia and Coele-Syria; and he was
then met by a second message from the senate, who no longer spoke in the
name of their ward, the young King of Egypt, but ordered him to give up
to the Roman people the states which he had seized, and which belonged,
they said, to the Romans by the right of war.

[Illustration: 196.jpg ROMAN COIN, ISSUED UNDER PTOLEMY V.]

On this, Antiochus made peace with Egypt by a treaty, in which he
betrothed his daughter Cleopatra to the young Ptolemy, and added the
disputed provinces of Phoenicia and Ccele-Syria as a dower, which were
to be given up to Egypt when the king was old enough to be married.

Philip marched against Athens and the other states of Greece which had
heretofore held themselves independent and in alliance with Egypt; and,
when the Athenian embassy came to Alexandria to beg for the usual help,
Ptolemy's ministers felt themselves so much in the power of the senate
that they sent to Rome to ask whether they should