some waxen pomegranates to be handed to him, and when Sphaerus bit one of them he laughed at him for guessing that it was real fruit.  But the stoic answered that there are many cases in which our actions must be guided by what seems probable.  None of the works of Sphaerus have come down to us.  Eratosthenes, of whom we have before spoken, was librarian of the museum during this reign; and Ptolemy, the son of Agesarchus, then wrote his history of Alexandria, a work now lost.

[Illustration:  188jpg COIN OF PTOLEMY PHILOPATER]

The want of moral feeling in Alexandria was poorly supplied by the respect for talent.  Philopator built there a shrine or temple to Homer, in which he placed a sitting figure of the poet, and round it seven worshippers, meant for the seven cities which claimed the honour of giving him birth.  Had Homer himself worshipped in such temples, and had his thoughts been raised by no more lofty views, he would not have left us an Iliad or an Odyssey.  In Upper Egypt there was no such want of religious earnestness; there the priests placed the name of Philopator upon a small temple near Medinet-Habu, dedicated to Amon-Ra and the goddess Hathor; his name is also seen upon the temple at Karnak, and on the additions to the sculptures on the temple of Thot at Pselcis in Ethiopia.

Some of this king’s coins bear the name of “Ptolemy Philopator,” while those of the queen have her name, “Arsinoe Philopator,” around the head.  They are of a good style of art.  He was also sometimes named Eupator; and it was under that name that the people of Paphos set up a monument to him in the temple of Venus.

The first three Ptolemies had been loved by their subjects and feared by their enemies; but Philopator, though his power was still acknowledged abroad, had by his vices and cruelty made himself hated at home, and had undermined the foundations of the government.  He began his reign like an Eastern despot; instead of looking to his brother as a friend for help and strength, he distrusted him as a rival, and had him put to death.  He employed the ministers of his vicious pleasures in the high offices of government; and instead of philosophers and men of learning, he brought eunuchs into the palace as the companions of his son.  In B.C. 204 he died, worn out with disease, in the seventeenth year of his reign and about the fifty-first of his age; and very few lamented his decease.

On the death of Philopator his son was only five years old.  The minister Agathocles, who had ruled over the country with unbounded power, endeavoured, by the help of his sister Agathoclea and the other mistresses of the late king, to keep his death secret; so that while the women seized the money and jewels of the palace, he might have time to take such steps as would secure his own power over the kingdom.

[Illustration:  189.jpg COIN OF ARSINOE PHILOPATE]

But the secret could not be long kept, and Agathocles called together the citizens of Alexandria to tell them of the death of Philopator, and to show them their young king.