When Aratus of Sicyon first laid a plot to free his country from its tyrant, who reigned by the help of the King of Macedonia, he sent to Philadelphus to beg for money.  He naturally looked to the King of Egypt for help when entering upon a struggle against their common rival; but the king seems to have thought the plans of this young man too wild to be countenanced.  Aratus, however, soon raised Sicyon to a level with the first states of Greece, and made himself leader of the Achaian league, under which band and name the Greeks were then struggling for freedom against Macedonia; and when, by his courage and success, he had shown himself worthy of the proud name which was afterwards given him, of the “Last of the Greeks,” Philadelphus, like other patrons, gave him the help which he less needed.  Aratus, as we have seen, bought his friendship with pictures, the gifts of all others the most welcome; and, when he went to Egypt, Philadelphus gave him one hundred and fifty talents, or forty-five thousand dollars, and joined the Achaian league, on the agreement that in carrying on the war by sea and land they should obey the orders from Alexandria.

The friendship of Philadelphus, indeed, was courted by all the neighbouring states; the little island of Delos set up its statue to him; and the cities of Greece vied with one another in doing him honour.  The Athenians named one of the tribes of their city and also one of their public lecture-rooms by his name; and two hundred years afterwards, when Cicero and his friend Atticus were learning wisdom and eloquence from the lips of Antiochus in Athens, it was in the gymnasium of Ptolemy.

Philadelphus, when young, had married Arsinoe, the daughter of Lysimachus of Thrace, by whom he had three children, Ptolemy, who succeeded him, Lysimachus, and Berenice; but, having found that his wife was intriguing with Amyntas, and with his physician Chrysippus of Rhodes, he put these two to death and banished the Queen Arsinoe to Koptos in the Thebaid.

He then took Arsinoe, his own sister, as the partner of his throne.  She had married first the old Lysimachus, King of Thrace, and then Ceraunus, her half-brother, when he was King of Macedonia.  As they were not children of the same mother, this second marriage was neither illegal nor improper in Macedonia; but her third marriage with Philadelphus could only be justified by the laws of Egypt, their adopted country.  They were both past the middle age, and whether Philadelphus looked upon her as his wife or not, at any rate they had no children.  Her own children by Lysimachus had been put to death by Ceraunus, and she readily adopted those of her brother with all the kindness of a mother.  She was a woman of an enlarged mind; her husband and her stepchildren alike valued her; and Eratosthenes showed his opinion of her learning and strong sense by giving the name of Arsinoe to one of his works, which perhaps a modern writer would have named Table-talk.