His mistress Agathoclea, her brother Agathocles, and their mother OEnanthe, held him bound by those chains which clever, worthless, and selfish favourites throw around the mind of a weak and debauched king.  Agathocles, who never left his side, was his adviser in matters of business or pleasure, and governed alike the army, the courts of justice, and the women.  Thus was spent a reign of seventeen years, during which the king had never but once, when he met Antiochus in battle, roused himself from his life of sloth.

The misconduct and vices of Agathocles raised such an outcry against him, that Philopator, without giving up the pleasure of his favourite’s company, was forced to take away from him the charge of receiving the taxes.  That high post was then given to Tlepolemus, a young man, whose strength of body and warlike courage had made him the darling of the soldiers.  Another charge given to Tlepolemus was that of watching over the supply and price of corn in Alexandria.  The wisest statesmen of old thought it part of a king’s duty to take care that the people were fed, and seem never to have found out that it would be better done if the people were left to take care of themselves.  They thought it moreover a piece of wise policy, or at any rate of clever kingcraft, to keep down the price of food in the capital at the cost of the rest of the kingdom, and even sometimes to give a monthly fixed measure of corn to each citizen.  By such means as these the crowd of poor and restless citizens, who swell the mob of every capital, was larger in Alexandria than it otherwise would have been; and the danger of riot, which it was meant to lessen, was every year increased.

Sosibius had made himself more hated than Agathocles; he had been the king’s ready tool in all his murders.  He had been stained, or at least reproached, with the murder of Lysimachus, the son of Philadelphus; then of Magas, the son of Euergetes, and Berenice, the widow of Euergetes; of Cleomenes, the Spartan; and lastly, of Arsinoe, the wife of Philopator.  For these crimes Sosibius was forced by the soldiers to give up to Tlepolemus the king’s ring, or what in modern language would be called the great seal of the kingdom, the badge of office by which Egypt was governed; but the world soon saw that a body of luxurious mercenaries were as little able to choose a wise statesman as the king had been.

[Illustration:  187.jpg TEMPLE OF HATHOR.]

With all his vices, Philopator had yet inherited the love of letters which has thrown so bright a light around the whole of the family; and to his other luxuries he sometimes added that of the society of the learned men of the museum.  When one of the professorships was empty he wrote to Athens, and invited to Alexandria, Sphaerus, who had been the pupil of Zeno.  One day when Sphaerus was dining with the king, he said that a wise man should never guess, but only say what he knows.  Philopator, wishing to tease him, ordered