bassadors
in grand state, and on the next day gave them an audience. But their
arguments for peace carried no weight with him; and he denied that his
father, Antiochus the Great, had ever given Coele-Syria as a dower
with his daughter Cleopatra to Epiphanes. To gain time he promised
the ambassadors that he would give them an answer as soon as his own
ambassadors returned from Alexandria; and in the meanwhile he carried
his army down the Nile to Naucratis, and thence marched to the capital
to begin the siege.

Antiochus, however, was defeated in his first assault upon Alexandria,
and finding that he should not soon be able to bring the siege to an
end, he sent off an embassy to Rome with a hundred and fifty talents of
gold, fifty as a present to the senate, and the rest to be divided among
the states of Greece, whose help he might need. At the same time, also,
an embassy from the Rhodians arrived in the port of Alexandria, to
attempt to restore peace to the country of their old allies. Antiochus
received the Rhodian ambassadors in his tent, but would not listen to
the long speech with which they threatened him, and shortly told them
that he came as the friend of his elder nephew, the young Philometor,
and if the Alexandrians wished for peace they should open the gates
to their rightful king. Antiochus was, however, defeated in all his
assaults on the city, and he at last withdrew his army and returned
to Syria. He left Euergetes, King of the Greeks, at Alexandria, and
Philometor at Memphis, King of the rest of Egypt. But he kept Pelusium,
where he placed a strong garrison that he might be able easily to
re-enter Egypt whenever he chose.

Ptolemy Macron, the Alexandrian governor of Cyprus, added to the
troubles of the country by giving up his island to Antiochus. But he
met with the usual fate of traitors, he was badly rewarded; and when he
complained of his treatment, he was called a traitor by the very men who
had gained by his treachery, and he poisoned himself in the bitterness
of his grief. Antiochus, like most invaders, carried off whatever
treasure fell into his hands. Egypt was a sponge which had not lately
been squeezed, and his court and even his own dinner-table then shone
with a blaze of silver and gold unknown in Syria before this inroad into
Egypt.

By these acts, and by the garrison left in Pelusium, the eyes of
Philometor were opened, and he saw that his uncle had not entered Egypt
for his sake, but to