Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
And in the theatre, which they call Odeum, there are statues, in the
entrance, of the Egyptian kings. Their names are all Ptolemy alike,
but each has another distinguishing name also. Thus they call one
Philometor, and another Philadelphus, and the son of Lagus Soter, a
name the Rhodians gave him. Philadelphus is the one whom I have before
made mention of as one of the Eponymi. And near him is also a statue of
his sister Arsinoe.
CHAPTER IX.
Now the Ptolemy called Philometor is the eighth in descent from
Ptolemy the son of Lagus, and he got his name in irony; for none of
these kings that we know of was so hated by their mother as he was;
for though he was the eldest of her sons she would not allow them to
call him to the kingdom, but got him banished to Cyprus by his father
previously. Now of this dislike of Cleopatra to her son they allege
other motives, but especially this one, that she thought Alexander, the
younger of her sons, would be more obsequious to her. And therefore she
urged the Egyptians to choose Alexander for their king. And when the
people opposed her in this, she sent Alexander to Cyprus, nominally
as general, but really because she wished through him to make herself
more formidable to Philometor. And at last having mutilated those of
the eunuchs whom she thought most friendly, she brought them before the
populace, and pretended that she was plotted against by Philometor,
and that the eunuchs had been treated in that shameful manner by
him. And the Alexandrians were eager to kill Philometor, but, as he
got on shipboard and escaped them, they made Alexander king on his
return from Cyprus. But Cleopatra was punished eventually for her
getting Philometor banished by being slain by Alexander, whom she had
got appointed king over the Egyptians. And the crime being detected,
and Alexander fleeing from fear of the citizens, Philometor quietly
returned from exile and a second time held Egypt, and warred against
the Thebans who had revolted. And having reduced them in the third
year after the revolt, he punished them so severely that there was no
vestige left them of their ancient prosperity, which had reached such
a pitch that they excelled in wealth the wealthiest of the Greeks,
even the treasures of the temple at Delphi and the Orchomenians. And
Philometor not long after meeting the common fate, the Athenians
who had been well treated by him in many respects that I need not
enumerate, erected a brazen statue both of him and Berenice, his only
legitimate child. And next to the Egyptian kings are statues of Philip
and his son Alexander. They performed greater exploits than to be mere
appendages to an account of something else. To the other Egyptian kings
gifts were given as being of real merit and benefactors, but to Philip
and Alexander more, from the flattery of the community towards them,
for they also honoured Lysimachus by a statue, not so much out of good
will as thinking him useful under existing circumstances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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