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We are informed by Strabo, that the revenue of Alexandria, in the worst of times, was 12,500 talents, equivalent to nearly two millions and a half sterling; and if this was the revenue under the last and most indolent of the Ptolemies, what must it have been under Ptolemy Philadelphus, or Ptolemy Euergetes?
And I have her proofs and her dowry!" After a silence in which she read the expression on his face, she rose and came near him with determination in her manner. "You will have the wisdom not to recognize her," she said, "lest I suddenly discover that you are not the Philadelphus I expected." He made rapid survey of her advantage over him, and submitted.
As they were not children of the same mother, this second marriage was neither illegal nor improper in Macedonia; but her third marriage with Philadelphus could only be justified by the laws of Egypt, their adopted country. They were both past the middle age, and whether Philadelphus looked upon her as his wife or not, at any rate they had no children.
Still later, in consideration of the dangers attending the port of Myos-Hormos, on account of flats and islands, Philadelphus sent an army into Troglodytica, where he constructed a haven called Berenice, in which the ships engaged in the Indian commerce took shelter, as a place of greater security.
He also invented that useful instrument, the water-clock, to tell the time after sunset. Among the best known of the men of letters who came to Alexandria to enjoy the patronage of Philadelphus was Theocritus.
The large temple at Talmis, in Nubia, was also then built, though not wholly finished; and we find the name of Augustus at Philæ, on some of the additions to the temple of Isis, which had been built in the reign of Philadelphus.
Beside his name of Neus Dionysus, the king is in the hieroglyphics sometimes called Philopator and Philadelphus; and in a Greek inscription on a statue at Philae he is called by the three names, Neus Dionysus, Philopator, Philadelphus. The coins which are usually thought to be his are in a worse style of art than those of the kings before him.
Ptolemy, the eldest son of Philadelphus, succeeded his father on the throne of Egypt, and after a short time was accorded the name of Euergetes. The new reign was clouded by dark occurrences, which again involved Egypt and Syria in war.
He meant to have continued it to the Red Sea; but desisted on the idea that the Red Sea was three cubits higher than the land of Egypt, and would have overflowed all the country, to its entire ruin. Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the year 277 before Christ, changed the direction of the Indian traffic.
In the century following the age of Alexander the Great, under the rule of the Ptolemies, the philosophy and literature of Athens were transferred to Alexandria. Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the third century B.C., completed the celebrated Alexandrian Library, formed for the most part of Greek books, and presided over by Greek librarians.
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