d not so much
perhaps for the murder of his mother as for the cruelties which he had
been guilty of, or at least had to bear the blame of, while he reigned
with her. His own soldiers turned against him, and he was forced to seek
his safety by flying on board a vessel in the harbour, and he left Egypt
with his wife and daughter. He was followed by a fleet under the command
of Tyrrhus, but he reached Myrse, a city of Lycia, in safety; and
afterwards, in crossing over to Cyprus, he was met by an Egyptian fleet
under Chaereas, and killed in battle.

Though others may have been guilty of more crimes, Alexander had perhaps
the fewest good qualities of any of the family of the Lagidaa. During
his idle reign of twenty years, in which the crimes ought in fairness to
be laid chiefly to his mother, he was wholly given up to the lowest and
worst of pleasures, by which his mind and body were alike ruined. He was
so bloated with vice and disease that he seldom walked without crutches;
but at his feasts he could leap from his raised couch and dance with
naked feet upon the floor with the companions of his vices. He was
blinded by flattery, ruined by debauchery, and hated by the people.

His coins are not easily known from those of the other kings, which also
bore the name of "Ptolemy the king" round the eagle. Some of the coins
of his mother have the same words round the eagle on the one side,
while on the other is her head, with a helmet formed like the head of an
elephant, or her head with the name of "Queen Cleopatra" There are other
coins with the usual head of Jupiter, and with two eagles to point out
the joint sovereignty of herself and son.

Few buildings or parts of buildings mark the reign of Ptolemy Alexander;
but his name is not wholly unknown among the sculptures of Upper Egypt.
On the walls of the temple of Apollinopolis Magna he is represented
as making an offering to the god Horus. There the Egyptian artist has
carved a portrait of this Greek king, whom he perhaps had never seen,
clothed in a dress which he never wore, and worshipping a god whom he
may have hardly known by name.

History has not told us who was the first wife of Alexander, but he left
a son by her named after himself Ptolemy Alexander, whom we have seen
sent by his grandmother for safety to the island of Cos, the fortress
of the family, and a daughter whom he carried with him in his flight
to Lycia. His second wife was Cleopatra Berenice, the daughte