Ptolemy

Ptolemy X. Alexander II., entering Alexandria under Roman patronage, married, and within twenty days assassinated, his elderly cousin and stepmother. He was at once killed by the enraged people and with him the Ptolemaic family in the legitimate male line became extinct. Ptolemy Apion meanwhile, dying in 96, had bequeathed the Cyrenaica to Rome. The Alexandrian people now chose an illegitimate son of Soter II. to be their king, Ptolemy Xi. Philopator Philadelphus Neos Dionysus, nicknamed Auletes, the flute-player (80-51), setting his brother as king in Cyprus. The rights of these kings were doubtful, not only because of their illegitimate birth, but because it was claimed in Rome that Alexander II. had bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people. Two Seleucid princes, children of Soter's sister Selene, appeared in Rome in 73 to urge their claim to the Ptolemaic throne. Ptolemy Auletes was thus obliged to spend his reign in buying the support of the men in power in Rome. Cyprus was annexed by Rome in 58, its king committing suicide. From 58 to 55 Auletes was in exile, driven out by popular hatred, and worked by bribery and murder in Rome to get himself restored to Roman power. His daughter Berenice meanwhile reigned in Alexandria, a husband being found for her in the Pontic prince Archelaus. In 55 Auletes was restored by the proconsul of Syria, Aulus Gabinius. He killed Berenice and, dying in 51, bequeathed the kingdom to his eldest son, aged ten years, who was to take as wife his sister Cleopatra, aged seventeen. In the reign of Ptolemy XiI. Philopator (51-47) and Cleopatra Philopator, Egyptian history coalesces with the general history of the Roman world, owing to the murder of Pompey off Pelusium in 48 and the Alexandrine War of Julius Caesar (48-47). In that war the young king perished and a still younger brother, Ptolemy XiII. Philopator, was associated with Cleopatra till 44, when he died, probably by Cleopatra's contriving. From then till her death in 30, her son, born in 47, and asserted by Cleopatra to be the child of Julius Caesar, was associated officially with her as Ptolemy XiV. Philopator Philometor Caesar; he was known popularly as Caesarion. (For the incidents of Cleopatra's reign see Cleo Patra, Arsinoe.) After her death in 30 and Caesarion's murder Egypt was made a Roman province. Cleopatra's daughter by Antony (Cleopatra Selene) was married in 25 to Juba II. of Mauretania. Their son Ptolemy, who succeeded his father (A.D. 23-40), left no issue.2 See Mahaffy, The Empire of the Ptolemies (1895) and Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (1899); Strack, Die Dynastie der Ptolemcier  (1897); Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire des Lagides (1904, 1907); Meyer, Das Heerwesen der Ptolemder and Reimer (Leipzig, 1900).

(E. R. B.)