The queen’s forces shortly marched against the army of Euergetes that was entering Egypt under the command of Hegelochus; but the Egyptian army was beaten on the Syrian frontier.  Marsyas was sent prisoner to Euergetes; and the king then showed the only act of mercy which can be mentioned to his praise, and spared the life of a prisoner whom he thought he could make use of.  Cleopatra then sent to Syria, to her son-in-law Demetrius, to ask for help, which was at first readily granted, but Demetrius was soon called home again by a rising in Antioch.  But great indeed must be the cruelty which a people will not bear from their own king rather than call in a foreign master to relieve them.

[Illustration:  249.jpg OBELISK AT HELIOPOLIS]

The return of the hated and revengeful Euergetes was not dreaded so much by the Alexandrians as the being made a province of Syria.  Cleopatra received no help from Demetrius, but she lost the love of her people by asking for it, and she was soon forced to fly from Alexandria.  She put her treasures on board a ship, and joined her son Ptolemy and her son-in-law Demetrius in Syria, while Euergetes regained his throne.  As soon as Euergetes was again master of Egypt, it was his turn to be revenged upon Demetrius; and he brought forward Zabbineus, a young Egyptian, the son of Protarchus, a merchant, and sent him into Syria with an army to claim the throne under the name of Alexander, the adopted son of Antiochus.  Alexander easily conquered and then put to death Demetrius, but, when he found that he really was King of Syria, he would no longer receive orders from Egypt; and Euergetes found that the same plots and forces were then wanted to put down this puppet, which he had before used to set him up.  He began by making peace with his sister Cleopatra, who was again allowed to return to Egypt; and we find her name joined with those of Euergetes and his second queen in one of the public acts of the priests.  He then sent an army and his daughter Tryphaena in marriage to Antiochus Grypus, one of the sons of Demetrius, who gladly received his help, and conquered Alexander and gained the throne of his father.

We possess a curious inscription upon an obelisk that once stood in the island of Philae, recording, as one of the grievances that the villagers smarted under, the necessity of finding supplies for the troops on their marches, and also for all the government messengers and public servants, or those who claimed to travel as such.  The cost of this grievance was probably greater at Philae than in other places, because the traveller was there stopped in his voyage by the cataracts on the Nile, and he had to be supplied with labourers to carry his luggage where the navigation was interrupted.  Accordingly the priests at Philae petitioned the king that their temple might be relieved from this heavy and vexatious charge, which they said lessened their power of rightly performing their appointed sacrifices; and they further begged to be allowed to set up a monument to record the grant which they hoped for.  Euergetes granted the priests’ prayer, and accordingly they set up a small obelisk; and the petition and the king’s answer were carved on the base of this monument.