sums of money spent on the feast of Osiris, or Adonis as he was sometimes called by the Greeks.  Theocritus, who was there, wrote a poem on the day, and tells us of the crowds in the streets, of the queen’s gifts to the temple, and of the beautiful tapestries, on which were woven the figures of the god and goddess breathing as if alive; and he has given a free translation of the Maneros, the national poem in which the priests each year consoled the goddess Isis for the death of Osiris, which was sung through the streets of Alexandria by a Greek girl in the procession.  One of the chief troubles in the reign of Philadelphus was the revolt of Cyrene.  The government of that part of Africa had been entrusted to Magas, the half-brother of the king, a son of Berenice by her former husband.  Berenice, who had been successful in setting aside Ceraunus to make room for her son Philadelphus on the throne of Egypt, has even been said to have favoured the rebellious and ungrateful efforts of her elder son Magas to make himself King of Cyrene.  Magas, without waiting till the large armies of Egypt were drawn together to crush his little state, marched hastily towards Alexandria, in the hopes of being joined by some of the restless thousands of that crowded city.  But he was quickly recalled to Cyrene by the news of the rising of the Marmaridas, the race of Libyan herdsmen that had been driven back from the coast by the Greek settlers who founded Cyrene.  Philadelphus then led his army along the coast against the rebels; but he was, in the same way, stopped by the fear of treachery among his own Gallic mercenaries.  With a measured cruelty which the use of foreign mercenaries could alone have taught him, he led back his army to the marshes of the Delta, and, entrapping the four thousand distrusted Gauls* on one of the small islands, he hemmed them in between the water and the spears of the phalanx, and they all died miserably, by famine, by drowning, or by the sword.

* It is not known for certain from what part of the world these Gauls were recruited.  The race known as Gallic was at one time spread over a wide district from Gallicia in the East to Gallia in the West.

Magas had married Apime, the daughter of Antiochus Soter, King of Syria; and he sent to his father-in-law to beg him to march upon Coele-Syria and Palestine, to call off the army of Philadelphus from Cyrene.  But Philadelphus did not wait for this attack:  his armies moved before Antiochus was ready, and, by a successful inroad upon Syria, he prevented any relief being sent to Magas.

After the war between the brothers had lasted some years, Magas made an offer of peace, which was to be sealed by betrothing his only child, Berenice, to the son of Philadelphus.  To this offer Philadelphus yielded; as by the death of Magas, who was already worn out by luxury and disease, Cyrene would then fall to his own son.  Magas, indeed, died before the marriage took place; but, notwithstanding the efforts made by his widow to break the agreement, the treaty was kept, and on this marriage Cyrene again formed part of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt.