The reigns of Ptolemy Soter, Philadelphus, and Euergetes, with their brilliant queens, mark the golden age of Alexandria. In Ptolemy IV., Philopator, we notice the curious and rapid change of the great family of the Lagidae into debauchees, dilettanti, drunkards, dolts. This sovereign was a feeble and colorless personage who was completely under the control of his minister Sosibius, whom Polybius speaks of as "a wily old baggage and most mischievous to the kingdom; and first he planned the murder of Lysimachus, who was the son of Arsinoe, daughter of Lysimachus, and of Ptolemy; secondly, of Magas, the son of Ptolemy and Berenice, daughter of Magas; thirdly, of Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy and mother of Philopator; fourthly, of Cleomenes the Spartan; and fifthly, of Arsinoe, daughter of Berenice, the king's sister and wife." Surely a criminal of the deepest dye, at whose hands the princesses of Alexandria suffered untold horrors! During his later years, the king was under complete subjection to his mistress Agathoclea and her brother Agathocles. The Queen Arsinoe, the mother of the infant heir to the throne, who was young and vigorous, was regarded throughout Egypt as the natural protectress and regent of the young Ptolemy when his father's life was on the wane; but Agathocles and his sister secretly murdered her, and, when the king died, presented the prince to the populace and read a forged will in which they themselves were made his guardians during his minority. But the people learned of the sad fate of Queen Arsinoe, and her ill treatment roused the indignation of the populace; thereupon followed one of the mob riots for which Alexandria was noted. Polybius gives a dramatic description of the great riot and tells how the wicked regent Agathocles, his sister Agathoclea, and his mother Oenanthe, were seized by the multitude and torn in pieces, limb by limb, while yet they lived. When the young King Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, grew up, he took for his queen Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus III., the Great, and sister of Antiochus IV., Epiphanes. Now for the first time, with this Syrian princess, enters the name of Cleopatra in the annals of Egypt. Previous queens have been named either Berenice or Arsinoe, and from this time on the three names appear in almost inextricable confusion, Cleopatra prevailing and being applied at times even to sisters of the same house. The first Cleopatra was a great and good queen, and after the death of her husband, whose reign was short and uneventful, and of her elder son, who seems to have died soon after his accession, she became regent of her second son, Ptolemy VI., Philometor, who was not seven years old when he began to reign, Philometor married his sister, Cleopatra II., and was the last of the Ptolemies who could in any sense be called good. His later years were clouded by the rivalry of his wicked brother Physcon, who sought the throne.