History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)Rappoport, A. S. (Angelo Solomon)
History
History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)
Rappoport, A. S. (Angelo Solomon)
Egypt -- History
The friendship of Philadelphus, indeed, was courted by all the
neighbouring states; the little island of Delos set up its statue to
him; and the cities of Greece vied with one another in doing him honour.
The Athenians named one of the tribes of their city and also one
of their public lecture-rooms by his name; and two hundred years
afterwards, when Cicero and his friend Atticus were learning wisdom and
eloquence from the lips of Antiochus in Athens, it was in the gymnasium
of Ptolemy.
Philadelphus, when young, had married Arsinoe, the daughter of
Lysimachus of Thrace, by whom he had three children, Ptolemy, who
succeeded him, Lysimachus, and Berenice; but, having found that his
wife was intriguing with Amyntas, and with his physician Chrysippus
of Rhodes, he put these two to death and banished the Queen Arsinoe to
Koptos in the Thebaid.
He then took Arsinoe, his own sister, as the partner of his throne. She
had married first the old Lysimachus, King of Thrace, and then Ceraunus,
her half-brother, when he was King of Macedonia. As they were not
children of the same mother, this second marriage was neither illegal
nor improper in Macedonia; but her third marriage with Philadelphus
could only be justified by the laws of Egypt, their adopted country.
They were both past the middle age, and whether Philadelphus looked
upon her as his wife or not, at any rate they had no children. Her
own children by Lysimachus had been put to death by Ceraunus, and she
readily adopted those of her brother with all the kindness of a mother.
She was a woman of an enlarged mind; her husband and her stepchildren
alike valued her; and Eratosthenes showed his opinion of her learning
and strong sense by giving the name of Arsinoe to one of his works,
which perhaps a modern writer would have named Table-talk.
[Illustration: 141.jpg Coin with the heads of Soter and Philadelphus and
Arsinoe]
This seeming marriage, however, between brother and sister did not
escape blame with the Greeks of Alexandria. The poet Sotades, whose
verses were as licentious as his life, wrote some coarse lines against
the queen, for which he was forced to fly from Egypt, and, being
overtaken at sea, he was wrapped up in lead and thrown overboard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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