The rule bore accordingly in Egypt a far different character than in the rest of the domain of Greek and Roman civilisation embraced under the imperial government. In the latter the community administers throughout; the ruler of the empire is, strictly taken, only the common president of the numerous more or less autonomous bodies of burgesses, and alongside of the advantages of self-administration its disadvantages and dangers everywhere appear. In Egypt the ruler is king, the inhabitant of the land is his subject, the administration that of a domain. This administration, in principle as haughtily and absolutely conducted as it was directed to the equal welfare of all subjects without distinction of rank and of estate, was the peculiarity of the Lagid government, developed probably more from the Hellenising of the old Pharaonic rule than from the urban organisation of the universal empire, as the great Macedonian had conceived it, and as it was most completely carried out in the Syrian New-Macedonia (p. 120). The system required a king not merely leading the army in his own person, but engaged in the daily labour of administration, a developed and strictly disciplined hierarchy of officials, scrupulous justice towards high and low; and as these rulers, not altogether without ground, ascribed to themselves the name of benefactor (εὐεργέτης), so the monarchy of the Lagids may be compared with that of Frederick, from which it was in its principles not far removed. Certainly Egypt had also experienced the reverse side, the inevitable collapse of the system in incapable hands. But the standard remained; and the Augustan principate alongside of the rule of the senate was nothing but the intermarriage of the Lagid government with the old urban and federal development. [Sidenote: Egypt and the imperial administration.]