The most prominent figure in the long and involved list of Ptolemy queens, next to that of the famed Cleopatra, is Arsinoe II, daughter of Sotor and Berenike, and sister and wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus. She is spoken of on the Mendes stele, now at Gizeh, as “the charming princess, the most attractive, lovely and beautiful, the crowned one, who has received the double diadem, whose splendor fills the palace, the friend of the sacred Ram and his priestess Uta Utaba, the king’s sister and wife who loves him, the queen Arsinoe.” And of no other queen do we find so many monuments in various parts of the Greek world.
To the day of Arsinoe’s death she seems to have had the strongest hold upon her husband’s affections and no token of honor and respect was too great to lavish upon her while living, or to eulogize her merits after her decease. The early part of her life was a tragic story, but she survived the cruel sorrows which might have killed a woman of less toughness of fibre than that which distinguished all the female members of the Ptolemy race, and lived through a prosperous and successful middle life, turning her back on the bitterness of the past and making the most of the honors and dignity which came to her in the course of years.
Arsinoe.
In placing his younger son on the throne, instead of the elder, who would usually have been considered the rightful heir, Ptolemy Sotor may have been influenced by the personal character of the two, as well as by other motives. The elder bore the name of Ptolemy Keraunos, a soubriquet or nick-name meaning gloomy or violent, and was “of fiery temper and unsteady life.” Mahaffy suggests that the thunderbolt added to the Ptolemy coins at the time of his birth possibly gave rise to the nick-name. History does not chronicle details, but there may have been actual quarrels between father and son, a state of affairs not unknown in modern times. Be this as it may, the younger was preferred before the elder. Neither succession perhaps could have prevented subsequent bitterness of feeling and strife. Yet peace was outwardly observed during the life of the old king. Keraunos submitted and left Egypt with his mother, brothers and sister, while Berenike’s son was made king, co-ruler with his father (who virtually abdicated in 285-4) with feasts and rejoicing.
Ptolemy the younger was “fair haired and delicate” in youth, resembling his father, but with more regular features, and the thick neck characteristic of many members of the family. His manners were gentle as well as popular and probably he had already shown an appreciation of his father’s policy and a taste for intellectual and scientific pursuits. Few fathers would not take[364] more pleasure in the succession of a son likely to carry out their views, than in one who seemed disposed to change and alter all their arrangements.
Gorgeous pageants celebrated the advent of the new king. His father, it may be said, had in a certain measure slipped into power; not so with the son, his successor. It was a matter of direct inheritance and in Egypt at least his claim was not disputed. Whatever assistance Ptolemy Keraunos secured was from foreign aid and not from partizans at home. The banqueting hall was decorated with sculpture and painted and carpeted with flowers, the gold and silver vessels, crown treasures, were carried in the grand procession. There were fruits of all sorts displayed and droves of camels, elephants and other wild animals. Elephants were then much in favor as battle chargers with the kings of this period, and though the Ptolemies made less use of them in this respect, they too had large numbers of them. Their popularity, however, soon declined and in later wars they were no longer deemed available. Ptolemy Sotor presented the victors in the games at his son’s coronation with twenty crowns, Queen Berenike with twenty-three.
Historical and allegorical tableaux were interspersed and eighty thousand troops of cavalry and infantry took part. It must have been a combination of the circus processions of modern times, with less tinsel and more of solid value, with a fine military parade. It delighted the people from morning till evening and showed to all[365] strangers the wealth and power of the Ptolemy House.
Spite of gentle seeming, as soon as his father’s death left him in possession of the regal power, the new king made it quite clear he would tolerate no rival and meant to keep possession of all he had gained. Like his father, perhaps, he had no special taste for the shedding of blood; indeed he is said to have deplored what he considered the necessity of pursuing this policy, none the less did he hesitate to do so to secure his throne, and several people were put to death whom he thought might give him trouble. Probably his elder brother would have been among these could he have laid his hand on him. It was mortal strife between them, and Ptolemy Keraunos was now in another country doing his best to unseat the young king.
Some years before her brother’s accession the young Arsinoe, a girl of sixteen, first child of Ptolemy Sotor and Berenike, had married, or rather been married, to the elderly Lysimachus, King of Thrace (disparity of years was of course of no account in a political marriage), and had exchanged her sunny Egyptian home for the cooler and more rigorous climate of the mountainous regions of Northern Greece. Beautiful, clever and ambitious, as were most of the Ptolemy women, she was prominent among them and destined to have strong influence wherever she went, especially over two at least of the men with whom she was most closely associated. This marriage took place about 300 B. C.
So anxious was Ptolemy Sotor to cement the[366] alliance between Lysimachus and himself, that marriage after marriage was arranged for and it might have been supposed that the two families were so closely united that peace among them had been secured. His step-daughter Lysandra was given to the Thracian Crown Prince Agathocles, thus making her at the same time sister and daughter-in-law of Arsinoe, who was probably the younger of the two, and not content with this, a marriage was arranged between the young king of Egypt and Arsinoe, daughter of Lysimachus, and half-sister of Agathocles, who thus became Queen Arsinoe I of Egypt.
She, too, was a person of spirit, decision and character, bloodshed marked her footsteps; she caused an illicit lover of her mother’s to be slain, and is said herself, young though she was, to have hastened on her marriage with the Egyptian king. One of policy rather than affection probably on both sides. It requires a clear head to follow out these complicated relationships. Arsinoe I had attained her ambition, but it was a position, in those unsettled times, involving quite as much peril as honor. She became the mother of several children, but whether her life was a happy one we may justly have our doubts. It held, however, less tragedy than that of her successor. Perhaps she was neither beautiful nor winning, certain it is that the courtesies which were subsequently paid to various queens, of putting their likeness on the coins and naming cities after them, were omitted in her case.
Ptolemy Philadelphus founded, it is said, four Berenikes in honor of his mother, eighteen Arsinoes,[367] in honor of his second wife, and three Philoteras, in honor of his sister, in Egypt and elsewhere. These last were out of regard to a favorite sister Philotera, who dwelt in single blessedness—shall we call it a rare privilege in those days?—and lived in great harmony with her brother and his queens. As to the queen, Arsinoe II, so to the maiden sister also poems were addressed by the versifiers of the times.
The Thracian Arsinoe I, notwithstanding her early self-assertion, seems to have made little mark either upon her husband or upon Egypt. The comparative neglect with which she was treated may have embittered her and made true the accusation brought against her of having conspired against the life of her husband. If it was true she was leniently dealt with. She was divorced about 277 B. C. in the eighth or ninth year of Ptolemy’s reign, and banished to Koptos, where she lived in some state and appears from certain records to have been accompanied or visited by her younger son. She kept up her intercourse, too, perhaps with some of her Thracian relatives; and built shrines to the gods. The very fact that her life did not pay the forfeit of her alleged crime seems to throw doubt upon it. Or possibly, though this seems less likely, Arsinoe II, her supplanter, who in general, her purpose accomplished, showed no desire for the shedding of blood, may have induced the king to spare her. We can only surmise.
Ptolemy Philadelphus was a prosperous and popular king; living in comparative peace in sunny Egypt with his Thracian wife, remote from[368] most of the wars which were carried on in his name and caring little what battles raged at a distance so that he preserved himself and his kingdom in relative quiet. There were wars and rebellions afar, there were times even when Egypt itself was threatened, but through it all, at home, Ptolemy was able to pursue a relatively peaceful way. He spent his time adorning his splendid city and enlarging and, so to call it, emphasizing the scope of his great museum, a combination of university, club and social gathering place. The early Ptolemies, especially, were patrons of learning and people of all nations met at their brilliant court. He gathered around him men of intellectual and scientific pursuits and enjoyed mental pleasures as well as those of a lower order. His courtiers lavished upon him unstinted adulation and he might well have walked the earth as proudly as the great Rameses II, his predecessor.
It is to him we owe the translation of the Bible called the Septuagent, from the seventy translators who were gathered together to accomplish the task. Manetho, of Sebennytus, a priest of Heliopolis, was also employed by the king to collect the fragments of Egyptian history, from the time of Menes 4455 B. C. to 322 B. C. which had lain hidden or neglected in the various temples, and prepare from them a consecutive narrative. But unfortunately only fragments of this also now remain to us, and it is from these, given by Josephus and other Jewish and Christian writers that we have obtained our earliest knowledge, in a literary form, of Egyptian history. This work enjoyed a high reputation.
[369]
The king himself must have had some literary ability, or at least a pretty turn for the use of the pen, for he wrote a history of Alexander’s conquests. That it was much celebrated and lauded goes without saying; even in modern times the literary productions of king or president are much in demand and widely read. But of its intrinsic merits we are unable to judge, since it too is lost to us, an unfortunate fact, as it could not fail to have been of interest, whatever its method of treatment or literary value.
Ptolemy made wise laws and so far as he could, combined with his own personal advantage, wrought in every way for the internal improvement of his kingdom. Notwithstanding the modern assertions of liberty, equality and fraternity, it may be doubted whether in all ages and at all times man is not more or less a slave to circumstance and environment, but certainly the slaves of the early Ptolemies might have contrasted favorably both with those that who came before and those who came after. Less trampled upon and oppressed than in the reigns of the Pyramid builders, the great Rameses, or the Persian line, they appear also to have been better off and more peaceful than under the later Ptolemy rulers.
Ptolemy, ably seconded by his favorite wife, was devoted to the service of the temples and favorable to the priests, a policy which helped to strengthen his place and power. He built and restored temples both to the gods of Greece and Egypt. These last were approached in solemn procession, and were not merely, like the Greeks, to hold images of the gods, or like the later[370] Christian places of worship to accommodate a congregation. They had a holy of holies, into which only the high priest entered. Through the avenue of sphinxes, which frequently gave entrance to the temples, the long line would wind from their gaily decorated boats on the Nile, while the sacred lakes and the sacred grove were generally within the enclosure. The pylons or entrances were most imposing and an open court and a great hall beyond, with colonnades and columns, adorned with sculpture and paintings, gave entrance to this highest sanctuary, containing the symbol of the god or sacred animal.
No traces remain of the temple building of Ptolemy Philadelphus beyond the beautiful island of Philae; but at many other points ruins and fragments are to be found. Those of the temple of Isis in Hebt are near the present Mausura. These are of red and grey granite, with columns and architraves. There are figures of the king making offerings to Isis and among others an inscription which reads “Isis, Mistress of Hebit, who lays everything before her royal brother.” Of the portrait statues of the Egyptian kings and queens Dr. Lepsius says: “They wear the same character of monumental repose as the gods themselves and yet without the possibility of their human individuality being confounded with the universally typical features of the divine images.”
But intellectual, or so called religious pursuits, not alone shared Ptolemy’s heart and attention. His was a pleasure-loving nature; beautiful women thronged his court, sought his favor and beamed upon him with smiles and blandishments.[371] No claim of legal wife, not even the true and devoted affection which he showed so plainly that he felt for his latest spouse, prevented his indulging in baser connections. He was the king—if no other man—the king at least might do as he pleased, there was none to criticise, none to prevent. Then, too, he amused himself with his goldsmith’s work, bench and tools doubtless occupied some favorite nook in the palace, and since this fancy is matter of record, we may judge that he turned out some creditable specimens of work, was no mean craftsman and perhaps adorned with his own skill the favorite of the hour, or the plumb and beautiful form of his beloved Arsinoe II.
To the personal history of this same princess, the subject of the present sketch, we turn once more. Like Roxane, wife of Alexander, she in a measure deserved and prepared the way for her own subsequent misfortunes. She was queen of Thrace, a distinguished and honorable position, but obtained at the cost of the honor, feelings and probably affections of the previous queen. Lysimachus had lived at Sardis, apparently in harmony with a noble Persian wife, Amestris. But, probably for political reasons alone, he sent her away, and married the young daughter of Ptolemy Sotor.
The new queen of Thrace resembled her mother Berenike in her ambition and tact. She, too, acquired great influence over an old husband, as far as in her lay, ousted her step-children from their natural rights, and secured all she could for her own. She obtained from the king the session[372] of several valuable towns, but was not contented. Again like her mother before her she wished to supplant the elder members of the family. At this crisis Ptolemy Keraunos, “the Embroiler,” arrived at the Thracian court, and instead of, as might have been expected, siding with his own sister Lysandra, who had married the Crown Prince, Agathocles, calumniated him to the king, showing how completely the old man was under Arsinoe’s powerful influence, and succeeded in having the prince put to death. None of which shows Arsinoe in a very amiable light, but she doubtless thought one must fight for one’s self, by whatever means, or be driven to the wall.
There were other allies, Magas, King of Cyrene and half brother of Ptolemy Keraunos, seems to have leaned to his side, in the contest which the latter was waging for his rights, and been ready to throw off the yoke of Egypt. These were stirring times, men and women too, whether they would or not must lead “the strenuous life.” Seleukos, King of Syria, lent aid to Ptolemy Keraunos, and attacked Lysimachus, who lost his life in battle, but instead of proceeding further to place Keraunos on the throne of Egypt, as the latter expected, he suddenly determined to go back to his old home in Macedonia. Disappointed and enraged, Keraunos secured the murder of Seleukos and proclaimed himself king in his place. That he could have succeeded in this gigantic scheme, Mahaffy considers, shows him to have had many fellow conspirators.
His Egyptian projects had now to be abandoned,[373] as Antiochus, son of Seleukos, was already hastening to avenge the death of his father. So Keraunos, nothing loth probably, seized upon the throne of Thrace, the king and his eldest son both being dead. Grabbing a Kingdom seems to have been comparatively easy—the pastime of adventurers in those days—but it was frequently “light come and light go”—there was seldom any real stability in these self-made royalties.
Again Arsinoe, the Egyptian born, appears in an unfavorable light (though how far independence of action or any other course was possible to her we cannot judge) for she married this murderer of kings, the son ............