by the reflection of his having removed the statue of Diana out of the temple, to which he imputed her death.

Though Arsinoe was older than Ptolemy, he retained a constant and tender affection for her to the last; and at her death, he rendered all imaginable honours to her memory. He gave her name to several cities, and by many remarkable actions testified his affectionate regard for her. Pliny states, that he formed a design of erecting a temple to her memory, with a dome rising above it, the concave part of which was to be lined with adamant, in order to keep an iron statue of the queen suspended in the air. This design was the invention of Dinocrates, a famous architect of antiquity; and the moment he proposed it to Ptolemy, orders were given to commence the work. But the project failed, for Ptolemy and the architect died within a short time after it was resolved

upon.

Ptolemy Philadelphus survived his beloved Arsinoe but a short period. He was naturally, says Athenæus, of a tender constitution, and the luxurious life he led contributed to the decay of health. His affliction, also, for the loss of his consort, seemed to hasten his end. He died, B. c. 247, in the sixty-third year of his age, and the thirty-eighth of his reign.

Although this prince had many excellent qualities, he cannot be proposed as a model of a good king. His resentment against Demetrius Phalereus will ever remain as a stain upon his character; and the luxuries and effeminate pleasures (the usual concomitants of such high fortunes) in which he indulged to excess, do not evince a noble mind. Nevertheless, his love of the arts and sciences, and his generosity to learned men, reflect no small honour upon his memory. The fame

of these liberalities brought several illustrious poets to his court, among whom we may enumerate Callimachus, Lycophron, and Theocritus, the latter of whom celebrated Ptolemy's fame in his poems. His taste for books has been noticed; he also always retained a peculiar taste for the sciences, and in order to perpetuate it among his subjects, he erected public schools and academies at Alexandria, where they flourished for many ages. He loved to converse with men of learning, and as the greatest masters in every kind of science were emulous to obtain his favour, he possessed an enviable advantage of obtaining wisdom. Happy are those princes who follow his footsteps in this particular, who know how to use the opportunity of acquiring, in agreeable conver

sations, knowledge whereby they may learn how to govern a people wisely.

The intercourse of Philadelphus with learned men, and his care to give due honour to the arts, may be considered as the source of those measures he pursued, to make commerce flourish in his dominions, in which he so happily succeeded, as his history testifies. It has been already observed, that he built cities in order to protect and facilitate traffic; that he opened a canal through the arid desert; and that he maintained a navy in each of the two seas, merely for the defence of his merchants. His principal aim was to secure to strangers safety, convenience, and freedom in his ports, without fettering trade, or endeavouring to turn it from its proper channel, in order to make it subservient to his own interest. He was persuaded that commerce resembled those springs that cease to flow when diverted from their natural course.

These were views worthy of a great prince, and a consummate politician; and their effects were highly beneficial to his kingdom. Their effects have, indeed, continued to the present day, strengthened by the principles of the first establishment, after a duration of above two thousand years; pouring a perpetual flow of new riches, and new commodities of every kind into all nations; drawing continually from them a return of voluntary contributions; uniting the east and west by the mutual supply of their respective wants; and establishing on this basis a commerce that has supported itself from age to age without interruption. Conquerors and heroes, whom the world has applauded so much, have scarcely left behind them any traces of the acquisitions they have made for aggrandizing their empires; or, if they have, the revolutions to which the most potent states are subject, divest them of their conquests in a few short years, and transfer them to others. contrary, the commerce of Egypt, established thus by Philadelphus, instead of being shaken by time, has rather increased through a long succession of ages, and become daily more useful to all nations. If we trace commerce, therefore, up to its true source, we shall be sensible that this prince was not only the benefactor of Egypt, but of mankind in general, to the latest posterity. About this epoch we may, at least, date the extension of that trade with India, by which the products of the great Asiatic peninsula, and of Ceylon, were more generally diffused over the western world. The origin of the trade between the Indian peninsula and Arabia and Eastern Africa, belongs to a period anterior to any history; and this com

On the

merce has probably never been totally interrupted at any period. since its commencement. That the coast of Africa had been navigated long before this, may be seen in the history of the Carthaginians, where it is stated that Hanno explored its western coasts, and, according to Dr. Vincent, as far as Quiloa on the southern coast.

The most essential duty of kings, and the most grateful pleasure they can enjoy, amidst the splendours of a throne, is to gain the love of mankind, by making their goverment desirable. This appears to have been the policy of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He was sensible that the only expedient for extending his dominions without any act of violence, was to multiply his subjects, and attach them to his government by their interest and inclination; to cause the land to be cultivated; to make arts and manufactures flourish; and to augment, by judicious measures, the power of a prince and his kingdom, whose strength, humanly speaking, consists in the multitude of his subjects. Hence it was, that so many from different nations transplanted themselves into Egypt during his reign, preferring a residence in a foreign land to their native soil. This is a favourable trait in the character of this prince, and cannot be too closely imitated by those who bear rule among the nations of the earth.

Ptolemy Philadelphus was succeeded in his kingdom by his eldest son,

PTOLEMY EVERGETES.

The first act of Ptolemy Euergetes, was to revenge the wrongs of his sister. This princess had been repudiated by Antiochus Theos as soon as he heard of the death of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and Laodice and her children had been recalled to his court. Laodice caused Antiochus to be poisoned, and she concerted measures with Seleucus Callinicus, her son, who had ascended his father's throne, to destroy Berenice and her son also. But Berenice being informed of their design, escaped with her son to Daphne, where she shut herself up in the asylum built by Seleucus Nicator. Thither Ptolemy Euergetes hastened, but before he arrived, Berenice had been betrayed by the perfidy of those who besieged her in her place of retreat, and had been murdered, with her son, and all her Egyptian attendants, by order of Laodice.

The cities of Asia Minor, touched with pity at the misfortunes of Berenice, had also sent a body of troops to her relief.

These now joined those of Egypt, and Ptolemy, who com manded the whole army, made war upon Seleucus Callinicus. He soon had his revenge. The criminal proceeding of Laodice, and of Seleucus, had alienated the affection of the people from them; and Ptolemy not only caused Laodice to suffer death, but made himself master of all Syria and Cilicia; after which he passed the Euphrates, and conquered all the country as far as Babylon and the Tigris. If the progress of his arms had not been interrupted by a sedition, which obliged him to return to Egypt, it is probable he would have subdued all the provinces of the Syrian empire. He left Antiochus, one of the generals, to govern the provinces he had gained on this side of Mount Taurus, and Xanthippus was intrusted with those that lay beyond it. Ptolemy then marched back to Egypt laden with the spoils he had acquired by his conquests. These events occurred B. c. 246.

The spoils which Ptolemy collected in this expedition were 40,000 talents of silver, (about six million pounds sterling,) a large quantity of gold and silver vessels, and 2,500 statues, Part of these statues were Egyptian idols, which Cambyses, after his conquest of that kingdom, had transported into Persia; and Ptolemy gained the affections of his subjects by replacing them in their ancient temples. The Egyptians, indeed, who were more devoted to their superstitious idolatry than the rest of mankind, thought they could not sufficiently express their gratitude and veneration to Ptolemy for the restoration of their gods. They gave him the title of Euergetes, which signifies "a benefactor," as a token of their gratitude; a tittle which it were to be wished he had merited by some nobler action than the perpetuating idolatry, since it is infinitely preferable to all appellations which conquerors have assumed from a false idea of glory.

It may here be observed, that all the facts that have been related proved an exact accomplishment of what the prophet Daniel had foretold. Foreseeing the result of the marriage of the "daughter of the south," with "the king of the north," as before noticed, he says of the former. "But she shall not retain the power of the arm; neither shall he stand, nor his arm but she shall be given up, and they that brought her, and he that begat her, and he that strengthened her in these times." He discovered that the issue of this princess, notwithstanding all the express precautions in the treaty for securing their succession to the crown, in the exclusion of the children by a former marriage, were so far from ascending

the throne, that they were entirely exterminated; and that the new queen herself was delivered up to her rival, who caused her to be destroyed with all her officers who had conducted her out of Egypt and Syria, and who, till then, had been her strength and support.

The prophet next describes the conquests of Euergetes: "But out of a branch of her roots shall one stand up in his estate [her brother, Euergetes,] which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the fortress [or the fenced cities] of the king of the north, and shall deal against them and shall prevail: and shall also carry captives into Egypt their gods, with their princes, and with their precious vessels of silver and of gold; and he shall continue more years than the king of the north. So the king of the south shall come into his kingdom, [that is, the kingdom of Seleucus of the north,] and shall return into his own land," [into Egypt,] Dan. xi. 7-9.

The remarkable precision with which this prediction was accomplished cannot fail to strike every reader. Porphyry has, indeed, discerned the resemblance between the prediction and the accomplishment, and, strange to relate, at the expense of truth, he has asserted that the prophecy was written after the several events to which it refers had occurred; to such miserable artifices will the infidel resort, in order to falsify God's holy word. But all his endeavours are vain.

"All flesh is grass,

And all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth:

Because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it:

Surely the people is grass.

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth:

But the word of our God shall stand for ever."-Isa. xl. 6-8.

To return to the narrative. When Ptolemy Euergetes set out on this expedition, his queen Berenice, being apprehensive of the dangers to which he would be exposed in the war, made a vow to consecrate her hair if he should return in safety. This was a sacrifice of no mean kind, since it was esteemed by all ancient nations before all other personal ornaments. Accordingly, when she saw him return, her first care was the accomplishment of her promise. She caused her hair to be cut off, and then dedicated it to the gods, in the temple which Ptolemy Philadelphus had founded in honour of his beloved Arsinoe, on Zephyrion, a promontory in Cyprus, under the name of the Zephyrian Venus. This consecrated hair was lost soon after, and Ptolemy was ex