On his return to Egypt, he showed his hatred of the nation by his treatment of the Jews in Alexandria.  He made a law that they should lose the rank of Macedonians, and be enrolled among the class of Egyptians.  He ordered them to have their bodies marked with pricks, in the form of an ivy leaf, in honour of Bacchus; and those who refused to have this done were outlawed, or forbidden to enter the courts of justice.  The king himself had an ivy leaf marked with pricks upon his forehead, from which he received the nickname of Gallus.  This custom of marking the body had been forbidden in the Levitical law:  it was not known among the Kopts, but must always have been in use among the Lower Egyptians.  It was used by the Arab prisoners of Ramses, and is still practiced among the Egyptian Arabs of the present day.

He also ordered the Jews to sacrifice on the pagan altars, and many of them were sent up to Alexandria to be punished for rebelling against his decree.  Their resolution, however, or, as their historian asserts, a miracle from heaven changed the king’s mind.  They expected to be trampled to death in the hippodrome by furious elephants; but after some delay they were released unhurt.  The history of their escape, however, is more melancholy than the history of their danger.  No sooner did the persecution cease than they turned with Pharisaical cruelty against their weaker brethren who had yielded to the storm; and they put to death three hundred of their countrymen, who in the hour of danger had yielded to the threats of punishment, and complied with the ceremonies required of them.

The Egyptians, who, when the Persians were conquered by Alexander, could neither help nor hinder the Greek army, and who, when they formed part of the troops under the first Ptolemy, were uncounted and unvalued, had by this time been armed and disciplined like Greeks; and in the battle of Raphia the Egyptian phalanx had shown itself not an unworthy rival of the Macedonians.  By this success in war, and by their hatred of their vicious and cruel king, the Egyptians were now for the first time encouraged to take arms against the Greek government.  The Egyptian phalanx murmured against their Greek officers, and claimed their right to be under an Egyptian general.  But history has told us nothing more of the rebellion than that it was successfully put down.  The Greeks were still the better soldiers.  The ships built by Philopator were more remarkable for their unwieldy size, their luxurious and costly furniture, than for their fitness for war.  One was four hundred and twenty feet long and fifty-seven feet wide, with forty banks of oars.  The longest oars were fifty-seven feet long, and weighted with lead at the handles that they might be the more easily moved.  This huge ship was to be rowed by four thousand rowers, its sails were to be shifted by four hundred sailors, and three thousand soldiers were to stand in ranks upon deck.  There were seven beaks in front, by which it was to