n an emerald. Mithridates
was soon afterwards conquered by the Romans; and it was only by skilful
embassies and well-timed bribes that Lathyrus was able to keep off
the punishment which seemed to await him for having thus disobeyed the
orders of Sulla. Egypt was then the only kingdom, to the west of Persia,
that had not yet bowed its neck under the Roman yoke.

The coins of Lathyrus are not easily or certainly known from those of
the other Ptolemies; but those of his second wife bear her head on the
one side, with the name of "Queen Selene," and on the other side the
eagle, with the name of "King Ptolemy."

[Illustration: 280.jpg COIN OF Ptolemy Lathyrus AND SELENE.]

He had before reigned ten years with his mother, and after his brother's
death he reigned six years and a half more, but, as he counted the years
that he had reigned in Cyprus, he died in the thirty-seventh year of
his reign. He left a daughter named Berenice, and two natural sons, each
named Ptolemy, one of whom reigned in Cyprus, and the other, nicknamed
Auletes, _the piper_, afterwards gained the throne of Egypt.

On the death of Lathyrus, or Ptolemy Soter II., his daughter Cleopatra
Berenice, the widow of Ptolemy Alexander, mounted the throne of Egypt
in B.C. 80; but it was also claimed by her stepson, the young Alexander,
who was then living in Rome. Alexander had been sent to the island of
Cos, as a place of safety, when his grandmother Cleopatra Cocce followed
her army into Coele-Syria. But, as the Egyptians had lost the command of
the sea, the royal treasure in Cos was no longer out of danger, and the
island was soon afterwards taken by Mithridates, King of Pontus, who
had conquered Asia Minor. Among the treasures in that island the
Alexandrians lost one of the sacred relics of the kingdom, the chlamys
or war-cloak which had belonged to Alexander the Great, and which they
had kept with religious care as the safeguard of the empire. It then
fell into the hands of Mithridates, and on his overthrow it became
the prize of Pompey, who wore it in his triumph at the end of the
Mithridatic war. With this chlamys, as had always been foretold by the
believers in wonders, Egypt lost its rank among nations, and the command
of the world passed to the Romans, who now possessed this time-worn
symbol of sovereignty.

Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of Mithridates; but he
afterwards escaped, and reached the army of Sulla, under whose care he
li