[Illustration:  176.jpg COIN OF BERENICE, WIFE OF PTOLEMY III.]

Though trade and agriculture still enriched the country, though arts and letters did not quit Alexandria, we have from this time forward to mark the growth only of vice and luxury, and to measure the wisdom of Ptolemy Soter by the length of time that his laws and institutions were able to bear up against the misrule and folly of his descendants.

Ptolemy, the eldest son of Euergetes, inherited the crown of his forefathers, but none of the great qualities by which they had won and guarded it.  He was then about thirty-four years old.  His first act was to call together his council, and to ask their advice about putting to death his mother Berenice and his brother Magas.  Their crime was the being too much liked by the army; and the council was called upon to say whether it would be safe to have them killed.  Cleomenes, the banished King of Sparta, who was one of the council, alone raised his voice against their murder, and wisely said that the throne would be still safer if there were more brothers to stand between the king and the daring hopes of a traitor.  The minister Sosibius, on the other hand, said that the mercenaries could not be trusted while Magas was alive; but Cleomenes remarked to him, that more than three thousand of them were Peloponnesians, and that they would follow him sooner than they would follow Magas.

Berenice and Magas were, however, put to death, but the speech of Cleomenes was not forgotten.  If his popularity with the mercenaries could secure their allegiance, he could, when he chose, make them rebel; from that time he was treated rather as a prisoner than as a friend, and by his well-meaning but incautious observation he lost all chance of being helped to regain his kingdom.  Nothing is known of the death of Euergetes, the late king, and there is no proof that it was by unfair means.  But when his son began a cruel and wicked reign by putting to death his mother and brother, and by taking the name of Philopator, or father-loving, the world seems to have thought that he was the murderer of his father, and had taken this name to throw a cloak over the deed.  By this murder of his brother, and by the minority both of Antiochus, King of Syria, and of Philip, King of Macedonia, Philopator found himself safe from enemies either at home or abroad, and he gave himself up to a life of thoughtlessness and pleasure.  The army and fleet were left to go to ruin, and the foreign provinces, which had hitherto been looked upon as the bulwarks of Egypt, were only half-guarded; but the throne rested on the virtues of his forefathers, and it was not till his death that it was found to have been undermined by his own follies and vice.