ery year in the reign of
Ramses II.

As Auletes felt himself hardly safe upon the throne, his first wish was
to get himself acknowledged as king by the Roman senate. For this end he
sent to Rome a large sum of money to buy the votes of the senators,
and he borrowed a further sum of Rabirius Posthumus, one of the richest
farmers of the Roman taxes, which he spent on the same object. But
though the Romans never tried to turn him out of his kingdom, he did not
get the wished-for decree before he went to Rome in the twenty-fourth
year of his reign. But we know nothing of the first years of his reign.
A nation must be in a very demoralised state when its history disproves
the saying, that the people are happy while their annals are short.
There was more virtue and happiness, and perhaps even less bloodshed,
with the stir of mind while Ptolemy Soter was at war with Antigonus than
during this dull, un-warlike, and vicious time. The king gave himself up
to his natural bent for pleasure and debauchery. At times when virtue is
uncopied and unrewarded it is usually praised and let alone; but in this
reign sobriety was a crime in the eyes of the king, a quiet behaviour
was thought a reproach against his irregularities. The Platonic
philosopher Demetrius was in danger of being put to death because it
was told to the king that he never drank wine, and had been seen at the
feast of Bacchus in his usual dress, while every other man was in the
dress of a woman. But the philosopher was allowed to disprove the charge
of sobriety, or at least to make amends for his fault; and, on the king
sending for him the next day, he made himself drunk publicly in the
sight of all the court, and danced with cymbals in a loose dress of
Tarentine gauze. But so few are the deeds worth mentioning in the
falling state that we are pleased even to be told that, in the one
hundred and seventy-eighth Olympiad, Strato of Alexandria conquered in
the Olympic games and was crowned in the same day for wrestling, and
for _pancratium_, or wrestling and boxing joined, these sports being
considered among the most honourable in which athletes could contend.

In the thirteenth year of this reign (B.C. 68), when the war against the
pirates called for the whole naval force of Rome, Pompey sent a fleet
under Lentulus Marcellinus to clear the coast and creeks of Egypt from
these robbers. The Egyptian government was too weak to guard its own
trade; and Lentulus in his consuls