PTOLEMY II

This article appears in Volume V22, Page 617 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PRE-PYR

PTOLEMY II . Philadelphus (309-246), was of a delicate constitu-
tion, no Macedonian warrior-

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

of the old style. His brother

Ptolemy

PTOLEMY (
CLAUDIUS
PTOLEMAEUS)

Ceraunus found compensation by becoming king in
Macedonia in 281, and perished in the Gallic invasion of 280-79
(see

BRENNUS

BRENNUS

Ptolemy

PTOLEMY (
CLAUDIUS
PTOLEMAEUS)

II. maintained a splendid court in
Alexandria. Not that Egypt held aloof from wars. Magas of
Cyrene opened war on his half-brother (274), and Antiochus I.,
the son of Seleucus, desiring Palestine, attacked soon after.
Two or three years of war left Egypt the dominant naval power
of the eastern Mediterranean; the Ptolemaic sphere of power
extended over the

Cyclades

CYCLADES

to Samothrace, and the harbours
and coast towns of Cilicia Trachea (" Rough Cilicia "), Pam-
phylia, Lycia and

Caria

CARIA

were largely in Ptolemy's hands (Theoc.
Idyll. xvii. 86 seq.). The victory won by Antigonus, king of
Macedonia, over his

fleet

FLEET

at Cos (between 258-56; see Beloch,
p. 428 seq.) did not long interrupt his command of the
Aegean. In a second war with the Seleucid kingdom, under
Antiochus II. (after 26o), Ptolemy sustained losses on the sea-
board of Asia

Minor

and agreed to a peace b; which Antiochus
married his daughter Berenice (250?). Ptolemy's first wife,
Arsinoe (I.), daughter of Lysimachus, was the mother of his
legitimate children. After her repudiation he married, probably
for political reasons, his full-sister Arsinoe (II.), the widow of
Lysimachus, by an Egyptian custom abhorrent to Greek
morality. The material and literary splendour of the Alexan-
drian court was at its height under Ptolemy II. Pomps and
gay religions flourished. Ptolemy deified his parents as the
8eoi & X4iol, and his sister-wife, after her death (270), as Phila-
delphus. This surname was used in later generations to distin-
guish Ptolemy II. himself, but properly if belongs to Arsinoe
only, not to the king. Callimachus, made keeper of the library,
Theocritus, and a host of lesser poets, glorified the Ptolemaic
family. Ptolemy himself was eager to increase the library and
to patronize scientific research. He hau the strange beasts of far-off lands sent to Alexandria. But, an enthusiast for Hellenic culture, he seems to have shown but little

interest

INTEREST

in the native religion. The tradition which connects the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament into Greek with his name is not historical. Ptolemy had many brilliant mistresses, and his court, magnificent and dissolute, intellectual and artificial, has been justly compared with the

Versailles

VERSAILLES

of Louis XIV.

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