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Updated: May 21, 2025
Cæsar had announced that he intended to examine the title of the young monarch to the undivided crown, and make him show cause why he had expelled Cleopatra. This the will of Ptolemæus Auletes had enjoined the Roman government to do; for in it he had commissioned his allies to see that his oldest children shared the inheritance equally. But Pothinus came to Alexandria, and trouble came with him.
Pothinus the Martyr was succeeded as bishop at Lyons by St. Irenaeus, the most learned, most judicious, and most illustrious of the early heads of the Church in Gaul.
Her father was interested in these things, especially as, through them, and the power of the mighty Isis, he expected to obtain relief from his many and severe sufferings. "Cleopatra's brothers were still mere boys, completely dependent upon their guardian, Pothinus, to whom the King left the care of the government, and their tutor, Theodotus, a clever but unprincipled rhetorician.
Pothinus the eunuch, Achillas, the Egyptian commander of the army, and Theodotus, a "rhetoric teacher," whose real business was to spin, not words, but court intrigues, had plotted together to place the young King Ptolemæus in sole power. The conspiracy ran its course.
Irenaeus wrote his work against heresies about the year 180, a little after he had succeeded Pothinus as Bishop of Lyons, and was martyred at the beginning of the next century . Clement of Alexandria, the date of whose birth or death is uncertain, flourished long before the end of the second century, for he became head of the catechetical school of Alexandria about the year 190.
Instead of thinking of a battle, both parties were wholly occupied in speculating on the results which were likely to accrue, to one side or to the other, under the totally new and unexpected aspect which public affairs had assumed. Of course the thoughts of all were turned toward Alexandria. Pothinus immediately proceeded to the city, taking with him the young king.
He thought of Pothinus, the ninety-years-old bishop of Lyons, who, in answer to the legate's question, "Who is the God of the Christians?" boldly answered, "If thou art worthy, thou shalt know," and was tortured so severely that he died in prison.
He took Achillas as the commander of the troops, and the young Ptolemy as the nominal sovereign; while he, as the young king's guardian and prime minister, exercised the real power. The troops of Pothinus advanced to Pelusium. Here they met the forces of Cleopatra coming from the east. The armies encamped not very far from each other, and both sides began to prepare for battle.
Pothinus and the boy-king, both as may be conceived very dissatisfied at once with the peremptory requisition of old debts and with the intervention in the throne- dispute which could only issue, as it did, in favour of Cleopatra, sent in order to pacify the Roman demands the treasures of the temples and the gold plate of the king with intentional ostentation to be melted at the mint; with increasing indignation the Egyptians who were pious even to superstition, and who rejoiced in the world-renowned magnificence of their court as if it were a possession of their own beheld the bare walls of their temples and the wooden cups on the table of their king.
In 177, in Lyons, when S. Pothinus and others were arrested, thrown into prison, tortured and killed for the Faith, there was one of the martyrs who caused offence to the rest because "he had long been used to a very austere life, and to live entirely on bread and water.
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