part of Africa where the coast turns eastward. Here he was stopped by
his ships wanting repair. The only knowledge that he brought back for us
is, that the natives of that western coast were of nearly the same race
as the Ethiopians on the eastern coast. He was able to sail only part
of the way back, and he reached Mauritania with difficulty by land. He
thence returned home, where he met with the fate not unusual to early
travellers. His whole story was doubted; and the geographers at home did
not believe that he had ever visited the countries that he attempted to
describe.

The people of Lower Egypt were, as we have seen, of several races; and,
as each of the surrounding nations was in its turn powerful, that race
of men was uppermost in Lower Egypt. Before the fall of Thebes the Kopts
ruled in the Delta; when the free states of Greece held the first rank
in the world, even before the time of Alexander's conquests, the Greeks
of Lower Egypt were masters of their fellow-countrymen; and now that
Judaea, under the bravery of the Maccabees, had gained among nations a
rank far higher than what its size entitled it to, the Egyptian Jews
found that they had in the same way gained weight in Alexandria.
Cleopatra had given the command of her army to two Jews, Chelcias and
Ananias, the sons of Onias, the priest of Heliopolis; and hence, when
the civil war broke out between the Jews and Samaritans, Cleopatra
helped the Jews, and perhaps for that reason Lathyrus helped the
Samaritans. He sent six thousand men to his friend, Antiochus Cyzicenus,
to be led against the Jews, but this force was beaten by the two sons of
Hyrcanus, the high priest.

By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will of the Jews of Lower
Egypt, and hence Cleopatra again ventured to choose her own partner on
the throne. She raised a riot in Alexandria against him, in the tenth
year of their reign, on his putting to death some of her friends, or
more likely, as Pausanias says, by showing to the people some of her
eunuchs covered with blood, who she said were wounded by him; and she
forced him to fly from Egypt. She took from him his wife, Selene, whom
she had before thrust upon him, and who had borne him two children; and
she allowed him to withdraw to the kingdom of Cyprus, from which place
she recalled her favourite son, Alexander, to reign with her in Egypt.

[Illustration: 268.jpg TEMPLE PORTICO AT CONTRA-LATOPOLI]

During these years the building w