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Updated: May 2, 2025
His second wife was Cleopatra Berenicê, the daughter of his brother Lathyrus, by whom he had no children, and who is called in the hieroglyphics his queen and sister. On the flight of Alexander, the Alexandrians sent an embassy to Cyprus to bring back Soter II., or Lathyrus, as he is called; and he entered Egypt without any opposition.
In this and in other similar ways she awakened among the people of the court and of the city such an animosity against Lathyrus, that they expelled him from the country. There followed a long series of cruel and bloody wars, between the mother and the son in the course of which each party perpetrated against the other almost every imaginable deed of atrocity and crime.
Ptolemy took the name of Soter II., though he is more often called Lathyrus, from a stain upon his face in the form of an ivy-leaf, pricked into his skin in honour of Osiris.
While Auletes had been thus pleading his cause at Rome and with the army, Cleopatra Tryphæna, the elder of the two queens, had died; and, as no one of the other children of Auletes was old enough to be joined with Berenicê on the throne, the Alexandrians sent to Syria for Seleucus, the son of Antiochus Grypus and of Selene, the sister of Lathyrus, to come to Egypt and marry Berenicê.
There were two ancient writers of this name born at Ephesus; the one to whom we have alluded, is supposed to have lived in the reign of Ptolemy Lathyrus, A.C. 169; by others he is brought down to A.C. 104.
The sovereignty of the latter formed a subject of contention between the widow of the last king Cleopatra , and his two sons Soter II Lathyrus and Alexander I ; which gave occasion to Cyprus also to separate itself for a considerable period from Egypt.
So they returned to Samaria, and shut them again within the wall, till they were forced to send for the same Antiochus a second time to help them, who procured about six thousand men from Ptolemy Lathyrus, which were sent them without his mother's consent, who had then in a manner turned him out of his government.
He sent six thousand men to his friend, Antiochus Cyzicenus, to be led against the Jews, but this force was beaten by the two sons of Hyrcanus, the high priest. By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will of the Jews of Lower Egypt, and hence Cleopatra again ventured to choose her own partner on the throne.
The legitimate descendants of Ptolemaeus son of Lagus had come to an end, when the king installed by Sulla after the death of Ptolemaeus Soter II Lathyrus Alexander II, a son of Alexander I was killed, a few days after he had ascended the throne, on occasion of a tumult in the capital . This Alexander had in his testament appointed the Roman community his heir.
By this movement Lathyrus was unable to keep his ground in Coele-Syria, and he took the bold step of marching towards Egypt. But he was quickly followed by Chelcias, and his army was routed, though Chelcias lost his life in the battle. Cleopatra, after taking Ptolemaïs, sent part of her army to help that which had been led by Chelcias; and Lathyrus was forced to shut himself up in Gaza.
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