The coins of Lathyrus are not easily or certainly known from those of the other Ptolemies; but those of his second wife bear her head on the one side, with the name of "Queen Selene," and on the other side the eagle, with the name of "King Ptolemy." [Illustration: 280.jpg COIN OF Ptolemy Lathyrus AND SELENE.] He had before reigned ten years with his mother, and after his brother's death he reigned six years and a half more, but, as he counted the years that he had reigned in Cyprus, he died in the thirty-seventh year of his reign. He left a daughter named Berenice, and two natural sons, each named Ptolemy, one of whom reigned in Cyprus, and the other, nicknamed Auletes, _the piper_, afterwards gained the throne of Egypt. On the death of Lathyrus, or Ptolemy Soter II., his daughter Cleopatra Berenice, the widow of Ptolemy Alexander, mounted the throne of Egypt in B.C. 80; but it was also claimed by her stepson, the young Alexander, who was then living in Rome. Alexander had been sent to the island of Cos, as a place of safety, when his grandmother Cleopatra Cocce followed her army into Coele-Syria. But, as the Egyptians had lost the command of the sea, the royal treasure in Cos was no longer out of danger, and the island was soon afterwards taken by Mithridates, King of Pontus, who had conquered Asia Minor. Among the treasures in that island the Alexandrians lost one of the sacred relics of the kingdom, the chlamys or war-cloak which had belonged to Alexander the Great, and which they had kept with religious care as the safeguard of the empire. It then fell into the hands of Mithridates, and on his overthrow it became the prize of Pompey, who wore it in his triumph at the end of the Mithridatic war. With this chlamys, as had always been foretold by the believers in wonders, Egypt lost its rank among nations, and the command of the world passed to the Romans, who now possessed this time-worn symbol of sovereignty. Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of Mithridates; but he afterwards escaped, and reached the army of Sulla, under whose care he lived for some time in Rome. The Alexandrian prince hoped to gain the throne of his father by means of the friendship of one who could make and unmake kings at his pleasure; and Sulla might have thought that the wealth of Egypt would be at his command by means of his young friend. To these reasons Alexander added the bribe which was then becoming common with the princes who held their thrones by the help of Rome, he made a will, in which he named the Roman people as his heirs; and the senate then took care that the kingdom of Egypt should be a part of the wealth which was afterwards to be theirs by inheritance. After Berenice, his stepmother, had been queen about six months, they sent him to Alexandria, with orders that he should be received as king; and, to soften the harshness of this command, he was told to marry Berenice, and reign jointly with her.