+22.+ These proceedings were very offensive to the other members of the
court; and, therefore, they watched everything he did with a jealous
eye, and conceived a detestation for his insolence, which they began to
compare unfavourably with the character of Sosibius. For the latter was
considered to show more wisdom in his guardianship of the king than his
age gave reason to expect; and, in his dealings with other persons, to
maintain the dignity proper to his high trust, which was the royal seal
and person. Just at this time, Ptolemy, the son of Sosibius, returned
from his mission to Philip. Before he left Alexandria on his voyage, he
had been full of foolish pride, partly from his own natural disposition
and partly from his father’s success. But upon landing in Macedonia,
and mixing with the young men at court, he conceived the notion that
the virtue of the Macedonians consisted in the better fashion of their
boots and clothes; he therefore came home, got up in imitation of
all these peculiarities, and fully persuaded that his foreign tour
and association with Macedonians had made a man of him. He therefore
immediately began showing jealousy of Tlepolemus, and inveighing
against him; and as all the courtiers joined him, on the ground that
Tlepolemus was treating the business and revenue of the state as
though he were its heir and not its guardian, the quarrel quickly
grew. Meanwhile Tlepolemus, being informed of certain unfriendly
speeches, originating in the jealous observation and malignity of the
courtiers, at first turned a deaf ear to them and affected to despise
them; but when at length they ventured to hold a meeting and openly
express their disapproval of him in his absence, on the ground of his
maladministration of the government of the kingdom, he grew angry; and,
summoning the council, came forward and said that “they brought their
accusations against him secretly and in private, but he judged it right
to accuse them in public and face to face.”...
After making his public speech, Tlepolemus deprived Sosibius of
the custody of the seal also, and having got that into his hands,
thenceforth conducted the administration exactly as he chose....
THE WAR IN COELE-SYRIA
[Sidenote: B.C. 332.]
[Sidenote: B.C. 201. Valour of the people of Gaza.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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