Thus fell Ptolemy Philometor in the forty-second year of his age.  His reign began in trouble; before he reached the years of manhood the country had been overrun by foreigners, and torn to pieces by civil war; but he left the kingdom stronger than he found it, a praise which he alone can share with Ptolemy Soter.  He was alike brave and mild; he was the only one of the race who fell in battle, and the only one whose hands were unstained with civil blood.  At an age and in a country when poison and the dagger were too often the means by which the king’s authority was upheld, when goodness was little valued, and when conquests were thought the only measure of greatness, he spared the life of a brother taken in battle, he refused the crown of Syria when offered to him; and not only no one of his friends or kinsmen, but no citizen of Alexandria, was put to death during the whole of his reign.  We find grateful inscriptions to his honour at the city of Citium in Cyprus, in the island of Therse, and at Methone in Argolis.

Philometor had reigned thirty-five years in all; eleven years alone, partly while under age, then six years jointly with his brother, Euergetes II., and eighteen more alone while his brother reigned in Cyrene.  He married his sister Cleopatra, and left her a widow, with two daughters, each named Cleopatra.  The elder daughter we have seen offered to Euergetes, then married to Alexander Balas, and lastly to Demetrius.  The younger daughter, afterwards known by the name of Cleopatra Cocce, was still in the care of her mother.  He had most likely had three sons.  One perhaps had been the pupil of Aristarchus, and died before his father; as the little elegy by Antipator of Sidon, which is addressed to the dead child, on the grief of his father and mother, would seem to be meant for a son of Philometor.  A second son was murdered, and a third lived in Syria.

On the death of Philometor, his widow, Cleopatra, and some of the chief men of Alexandria proclaimed his young son king, most likely under the name of Ptolemy Eupator; but Euergetes, whose claim was favoured by the mob, marched from Cyrene to Alexandria to seize the crown of Egypt.  Onias the Jew defended the city for Cleopatra; but a peace was soon made by the help of Thermus, the Roman ambassador, and on this the gates of Alexandria were opened.  It was agreed that Euergetes should be king, and marry Cleopatra, his sister and his brother’s widow.  We may take it for granted that one article of the treaty was that her son should reign on the death of his uncle; but Euergetes, forgetting that he owed his own life to Philometor, and also disregarding the Romans who were a party to the treaty, had the boy put to death on the day of the marriage.