The citizens and the soldiers were the same body of men; they at the same time held the force, and had the spirit to use it.  But they had no senate, no body of nobles, no political constitution which might save their freedom in after generations from the ambitious grasp of the sovereign, or from their own degeneracy.  While claiming to be equal among themselves they were making themselves slaves; and though at present the government so entirely bore the stamp of their own will that they might fancy they enjoyed a democracy, yet history teaches us that the simple paternal form of government never fails to become sooner or later a cruel tyranny.  The building of Alexandria must be held the master-stroke of policy by which Egypt was kept in obedience.  Here, and afterwards in a few other cities, such as Ptolemais in the Thebaid and Parembole in Nubia, the Greeks lived without insulting or troubling the Egyptians, and by their numbers held the country like so many troops in garrison.  It was a wise policy to make no greater change than necessary in the kingdom, and to leave the Egyptians under their own laws and magistrates, and in the enjoyment of their own religion; and yet it was necessary to have the country garrisoned with Greeks, whose presence in the old cities could not but be extremely galling to the Egyptians.  This was done by means of these new Greek cities, where the power by which Egypt was governed was stronger by being united, and less hateful by being out of sight.  Seldom or never was so great a monarchy founded with so little force and so little crime.

Ptolemy, however, did not attempt the difficult task of uniting the two races, and of treating the conquered and the conquerors as entitled to the same privileges.  From the time of Necho and Psammetichus, many of the Greeks who settled in Egypt intermarried with the natives, and very much laid aside their own habits; and sometimes their offspring, after a generation or two, became wholly Egyptian.  By the Greek laws the children of these mixed marriages were declared to be barbarians; not Greeks but Egyptians, and were brought up accordingly.  They left the worship of Jupiter and Juno for that of Isis and Osiris, and perhaps the more readily for the greater earnestness with which the Egyptian gods were worshipped.  We now trace their descendants by the form of their skulls, even into the priestly families; and of one hundred mummies covered with hieroglyphics, taken up from the catacombs near Thebes, about twenty show a European origin, while of those from the tombs near Memphis, seventy out of every hundred have lost their Koptic peculiarities.  It is easy to foresee that an important change would have been wrought in the character of the people and in their political institutions, if the Greek laws had been humane and wise enough to grant to the children of mixed marriages the privileges, the education, and thereby the moral feelings of the more favoured parent; and it is not too much to suppose, if the Greek law of marriage had been altered by Ptolemy, that within three centuries above half the nation would have spoken the Greek language, and boasted of its Greek origin.