By this act Lathyrus must have lost the good-will of the Jews of Lower Egypt, and hence Cleopatra again ventured to choose her own partner on the throne.  She raised a riot in Alexandria against him, in the tenth year of their reign, on his putting to death some of her friends, or more likely, as Pausanias says, by showing to the people some of her eunuchs covered with blood, who she said were wounded by him; and she forced him to fly from Egypt.  She took from him his wife, Selene, whom she had before thrust upon him, and who had borne him two children; and she allowed him to withdraw to the kingdom of Cyprus, from which place she recalled her favourite son, Alexander, to reign with her in Egypt.

[Illustration:  268.jpg TEMPLE PORTICO AT CONTRA-LATOPOLI]

During these years the building was going forward of the beautiful temple at the city, afterwards named by the Romans Contra-Latopolis, on the other side of the Nile from Latopolis or Esne.  Little now remains of it but its massive portico, upheld by two rows of four columns each, having the globe with outstretched wings carved on the overhanging eaves.  The earliest names found among the hieroglyphics with which its walls are covered are those of Cleopatra Cocce and her son, Ptolemy Soter, while the latest name is that of the Emperor Commodus.  Even under Cleopatra Cocce, who was nearly the worst of the family, the building of these great temples did not cease.

The two sons were so far puppets in the hands of their clever mother, that on the recall of Alexander no change was seen in the government beyond that of the names which were placed at the head of the public acts.  The former year was called the tenth of Cleopatra and Ptolemy Soter, and this year was called the eleventh of Cleopatra and eighth of Ptolemy Alexander; as Alexander counted his years from the time when he was sent with the title of king to Cyprus.  As he was, like his brother, under the guidance of his mother, he was like him in the hieroglyphical inscriptions called mother-loving.

While the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria were alike weakened by civil wars and by the vices of their kings, Judaea, as we have seen, had risen under the wise government of the Maccabees to the rank of an independent state; and latterly Aristobulus, the eldest son of Hyr-canus, and afterwards Alexander Jannseus, his second son, had made themselves kings.  But Gaza, Ptolemais, and some other cities, bravely refused to part with their liberty, and sent to Lathyrus, then King of Cyprus, for help.  This was not, however, done without many misgivings; for some were wise enough to see that, if Lathyrus helped them, Cleopatra would, on the other hand, help their king, Jannasus; and when Lathyrus landed at Sicaminos with thirty thousand men, the citizens of Ptolemais refused even to listen to a message from him.