great occasion.

[Illustration: 219.jpg TEMPLE OF HERMONTHIS.]

The unhappy quarrels between the Egyptian kings soon broke out again;
and, as the party of Euergetes was the stronger, Philometor was driven
from his kingdom, and he fled to Rome for safety and for help. He
entered the city privately, and took up his lodgings in the house of
one of his own subjects, a painter of Alexandria. His pride led him
to refuse the offers of better entertainment which were made to him by
Demetrius, the nephew of Antiochus, who, like himself, was hoping to
regain his kingdom by the help of the Romans. The Kings of Egypt and
Syria, the two greatest kingdoms in the world, were at the same time
asking to be heard at the bar of the Roman senate, and were claiming the
thrones of their fathers at the hands of men who could make and unmake
kings at their pleasure.

As soon as the senate heard that Philometor was in Rome, they lodged him
at the cost of the state in a manner becoming his high rank, and soon
sent him back to Egypt, with orders that Euergetes should reign in
Cyrene, and that the rest of the kingdom should belong to Philometor.
This happened in the seventeenth year of Philometor and the sixth of
Euergetes, which was the last year that was named after the two kings.
Cassius Longinus, who was next year consul at Rome, was most likely
among the ambassadors who replaced Philometor on the throne; for he put
the Ptolemaic eagle and thunderbolt on his coins, as though to claim the
sovereignty of Egypt for the senate.

To these orders Euergetes was forced to yield; but the next year he
went himself to Rome to complain to the senate that they had made a
very unfair division of the kingdom, and to beg that they would add
the island of Cyprus to his share. After hearing the ambassadors from
Philometor, who were sent to plead on the other side, the senate granted
the prayer of Euergetes, and sent ambassadors to Cyprus, with orders to
hand that island over to Euergetes, and to make use of the fleets and
armies of the republic if these orders were disobeyed.

Euergetes, during his stay in Rome, if we may believe Plutarch, made an
offer of marriage to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but this offer
of a throne could not make the high-minded matron quit her children and
her country. He left Italy with the Roman ambassadors, and, in passing
through Greece, he raised a large body of mercenaries to help him to
wrest Cyprus from his brothe