.
Onias the Jew defended the city for Cleopatra; but a peace was soon made
by the help of Thermus, the Roman ambassador, and on this the gates of
Alexandria were opened. It was agreed that Euergetes should be king, and
marry Cleopatra, his sister and his brother's widow. We may take it for
granted that one article of the treaty was that her son should reign on
the death of his uncle; but Euergetes, forgetting that he owed his own
life to Philometor, and also disregarding the Romans who were a party to
the treaty, had the boy put to death on the day of the marriage.

The Alexandrians, after the vices and murders of former kings, could not
have been much struck by the behaviour of Euergetes towards his family;
but he was not less cruel towards his people. Alexandria, which he
had entered peaceably, was handed over to the unbridled cruelty of the
mercenaries, and blood flowed in every street. The anger of Euergetes
fell more particularly on the Jews for the help which they had given to
Cleopatra, and he threatened them with utter destruction. The threat
was not carried into execution; but such was the Jews' alarm, that they
celebrated a yearly festival in Alexandria for several hundred years, in
thankfulness for their escape from it. The population of the city, who
looked upon it less as a home than as a place of trade in which they
could follow their callings with the greatest gain, seemed to quit
Alexandria as easily as they had come there under Ptolemy Soter; and
Euergetes, who was afraid that he should soon be left to reign over a
wilderness, made new laws in favour of trade and of strangers who would
settle there.

In the lifetime of Philometor he had never laid aside his claim to the
throne of Egypt, but had only yielded to the commands of Rome and to his
brother's forces, and he now numbered the years of his reign from his
former seizing of Alexandria. He had reigned six years with his brother,
and then eighteen years in Cyrene, and he therefore called the first
year of his real reign the twenty-fifth.

In the next year he went to Memphis to be crowned; and, while the pomps
and rites were there being performed, his queen and sister bore him a
son, whom, from the place and to please the people, he named Memphites.
But his queen was already in disgrace; and some of those very friends
who on his brother's death had marched with him against Alexandria were
publicly put to death for speaking ill of his mistress Irene.