reign, and made librarian of
the museum on the death of Eratosthenes. But he did not long enjoy that
honour. He was already old, and shortly afterwards died at the age of
ninety.

[Illustration: 210.jpg A DESERT ROAD BETWEEN EGYPT AND SYRIA.]

The coins of this king are known by the glory or rays of sun which
surround his head, and which agrees with his name, Epiphanes,
illustrious, or as it is written in the hieroglyphics, "light bearing."
On the other side is the cornucopia between two stars, with the name of
"King Ptolemy." No temples, and few additions to temples, seem to have
been built in Upper Egypt during this reign, which began and ended in
rebellion. We find, however, a Greek inscription at Philas, of "King
Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra, gods Epiphanes, and Ptolemy their son, to
Asclepius," a god whom the Egyptians called Imothph the son of Pthah.

Cyprus and Cyrene were nearly all that were left to Egypt of its
foreign provinces. The cities of Greece, which had of their own wish
put themselves under Egypt for help against their nearer neighbours, now
looked to Rome for that help; part of Asia Minor was under Seleu-cus,
the son of Antiochus the Great; Cole-Syria and Phoenicia, which had been
given up to Epiphanes, had been again soon lost; and the Jews, who in
all former wars had sided with the Kings of Egypt, as being not only the
stronger but the milder rulers, now joined Seleucus. The ease with which
the wide-spreading provinces of this once mighty empire fell off from
their allegiance, showed how the whole had been upheld by the warlike
skill of its kings, rather than by a deep-rooted hold in the habits
of the people. Instead of wondering that the handful of Greeks in
Alexandria, on whom the power rested, lost those wide provinces, we
should rather wonder that they were ever able to hold them.

After the death of Antiochus the Great, Ptolemy again proposed to
enforce his rights over Ccele-Syria, which he had given up only in the
weakness of his minority; and he is said to have been asked by one of
his generals, how he should be able to pay for the large forces which
he' was getting together for that purpose; and he playfully answered,
that his treasure was in the number of his friends. But his joke was
taken in earnest; they were afraid of new taxes and fresh levies on
their estates; and means were easily taken to poison him. He died in
the twenty-ninth year of his age, after a reign of twenty-four years