ranks of his armies with soldiers, and his new city with traders.
Instead of trying to govern against the will of the people, to thwart
or overlook their wishes and feelings, his utmost aim was to guide them,
and to make Alexandria a more agreeable place of settlement than the
cities of Asia Minor and Syria, for the thousands who were then
pouring out of Greece on the check given to its trading industry by the
overthrow of its freedom. Though every thinking man might have seen
that the new government, when it gained shape and strength, would be a
military despotism; yet his Greek subjects must have felt, while it was
weak and resting on their good-will rather than on their habits, that
they were enjoying many of the blessings of freedom. Had they then
claimed a share in the government, they would most likely have gained
it, and thereby they would have handed down those blessings to their
children.

Before the death of Ptolemy Soter, the habits of the people had so
closely entwined themselves round the throne, that Philadelphus was able
to take the kingdom and the whole of its wide provinces at the hands of
his father as a family estate. He did nothing to mar his father's wise
plans, which then ripened into fruit-bearing. Trade crowded the harbours
and markets, learning filled the schools, conquests rewarded the
discipline of the fleets and armies; power, wealth, and splendour
followed in due order. The blaze thus cast around the throne would by
many kings have been made to stand in the place of justice and mildness,
but under Philadelphus it only threw a light upon his good government.
He was acknowledged both at home and abroad to be the first king of
his age; Greece and its philosophers looked up to him as a friend and
patron; and though as a man he must take rank far below his father, by
whose wisdom the eminence on which he stood was raised, yet in all the
gold and glitter of a king Philadelphus was the greatest of his family.

The Egyptians had been treated with kindness by both of these Greek
kings. As far as they had been able or willing to copy the arts of
Greece they had been raised to a level with the Macedonians. The
Egyptian worship and temples had been upheld, as if in obedience to
the oft-repeated answer of the Delphic oracle, that the gods should
everywhere be worshipped according to the laws of the country. But
Euergetes was much more of an Egyptian, and while he was bringing back
the ancient splendour