the zenith of his glory, when suddenly he was attacked by
a species of insanity, consisting of an indescribable fear of death.
Chemical artifices were practised in Egypt from the earliest times; and
hence Ptolemy took every imaginable pains to find the elixir of life;
but it was all in vain, for his strength was rapidly decreasing. Once,
like Louis XI., he was looking from a window of his palace upon the
seacoast, and seriously meditated upon the subject of his longing; it
must have been in winter-time, when the sand, exposed to the rays of the
sun, becomes very warm. He saw some poor boys burying themselves in the
warm sand and screaming with delight, and the aged king began bitterly
to cry, seeing the ragged urchins enjoying their life without any
apprehension of losing it; for he felt that with all his riches he could
not purchase that happiness, and that his end was very near at hand. He
died in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, and perhaps the sixty-first
of his age. He left the kingdom as powerful and more wealthy than when
it came to him from his father; and he had the happiness of having a son
who would carry on, even for the third generation, the wise plans of the
first Ptolemy.

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CHAPTER IV--PTOLEMY EUERGETES, PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR, AND PTOLEMY
EPIPHANES.

_The struggle for Syria--Decline of the dynasty--Advent of Roman
control._

Ptolemy, the eldest son of Philadelphus, succeeded his father on
the throne of Egypt, and after a short time was accorded the name of
Euergetes. The new reign was clouded by dark occurrences, which again
involved Egypt and Syria in war. It has been already related that when
peace was concluded between Antiochus and Philadelphus, the latter gave
to the former his daughter Berenice in marriage, stipulating that the
offspring of that union should succeed to the Syrian throne, though
Antiochus had, by his wife Laodice, a son, already arrived at the age of
manhood. The repudiated queen murdered her husband, and placed Seleucus
on the vacant throne; who, in order to remove all competition on the
part of Berenice and her child, made no scruple to deprive them both
of life. Euergetes could not behold such proceedings unmoved. Advancing
into Syria at the head of a powerful army, he took possession of the
greater part of the country, which seems not to have been defended,
the majority of the cities opening their gates at his approach. The
impor