Ptolemy V. (Surnamed Epiphanes)

King of Egypt from 205 to 182 B.C. He was a child of five when he came to the throne. The protracted struggle for the possession of Cœle-Syria and Palestine was now finally decided in favor of the Syrians. Antiochus the Great conquered the land (202); and the Egyptian general Scopas, who tried to retake it for Egypt, was defeated at the sources of the Jordan, his army being wholly destroyed at Sidon (Jerome on Dan. xi. 15). According to Josephus ("Ant." xii. 3, § 3), the Jews in Jerusalem aided Antiochus and even besieged the Egyptian garrison independently. This policy of the Jews appears to have been the result of the persecution experienced in the preceding reign; Daniel (xi. 14) appears to blame them for their attitude toward the Ptolemies, because the latter were at any rate preferable to the Seleucidæ. Ptolemy Epiphanes died from poison, as Jerome (on Dan. xi.) relates in the name of Porphyrius.

G. S. Kr.