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We have already remarked, that the strongest spirit of enterprize that distinguished Egypt existed in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus and Ptolemy Euergetes; that these monarchs pushed their discoveries, and extended their commercial connections much farther than any of their predecessors; and that therefore, if a direct and regular communication between Egypt and India did not take place in their reigns, we may be assured it was unknown to the Egyptians at the period of the Roman conquest.
And, whispered the daring Greek spirit, in the abode of the condemned, not in the Garden of Aalu, the Elysian Fields of the Egyptians, she would meet her father and mother and all her wicked ancestors down to Euergetes I., who was succeeded by the infamous Philopater.
At table Philometor promised to take up the cause of Philotas and his wife, both of whom he had known, and whose fate had much grieved him; still he begged his wife and the Roman not to bring Eulaeus to justice till Euergetes should have left Memphis, for, during his brother's presence, beset as he was with difficulties, he could not spare him; and if he might judge of Publius by himself he cared far more to reinstate the innocent in their rights, and to release them from their miserable lot a lot of which he had only learned the full horrors quite recently from his tutor Agatharchides than to drag a wretch before the judges to-morrow or the day after, who was unworthy of his anger, and who at any rate should not escape punishment.
"You know how disgraceful for us was the course of that enterprise, how Philometor was defeated near Pelusium, and by the advice of Eulaeus escaped with his treasure to Samothrace, how Philometor's brother Euergetes was set up as king in Alexandria, how Antiochus took Memphis, and then allowed his elder nephew to continue to reign here as though he were his vassal and ward.
We find, from Plutarch, that when Aratus was exerting himself to gain for the Achæan league the powerful alliance of Ptolemy Euergetes, he found no means so effectual in conciliating the good-will of the monarch, as the procuring for him some of the master-pieces of Pamphilus and Melanthius, the most renowned of the famous school of Sicyon; and the knowledge of the high estimation in which the arts were held, under the Egyptian kings, gives an additional value to the accounts given by Tatius of these treasures of a past age, his notices of which are the latest, in point of time, which have come down to us from an eyewitness.
Her fingers trembled as they held the lamp and her heart beat audibly as, with bated breath, she went through the cupolaed hall in which Ptolemy Euergetes 'the fat' was said, some years ago, to have murdered his own son, and in which even a deep breath roused an echo. But even in this room she did not forget to look to the right and left for her father.
Cleopatra had hissed rather than spoken these words, with her teeth set with rage, and had raised her small fist to threaten her brother; but Euergetes preserved a perfect composure till she had ceased speaking.
These were Euergetes' assassins they must be! Spellbound with terror and revulsion she stood quite still, fearing only that the ruffians might hear the beating of her heart, for she felt as if it were a hammer swung up and down in an empty space, and beating with loud echoes, now in her bosom and now in her throat.
I can easily reconcile myself to the idea of annihilation, as a man who knows how to value a dreamless sleep after a day brimful of enjoyment as a man who if he must cease to be Euergetes would rather spring into the open jaws of nothingness but as a philosopher, no, never!"
It was mainly by her advice and persuasion that the quarrel between the two brothers was for the time healed. On this treaty between the brothers the year was called the twelfth of Ptolemy Philometor and the first of Ptolemy Euergetes, and the public deeds of the kingdom were so dated.
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