eraunus, they
began to form plans for invading the dominions of Lysimachus, and
avenging the cruel death of Agathocles. Seleucus was very easily
induced to enter into these plans, and war was declared.

Lysimachus did not wait for his enemies to invade his dominions; he
organized an army, crossed the Hellespont, and marched to meet
Seleucus in Asia Minor. The armies met in Phrygia. A desperate battle
was fought. Lysimachus was conquered and slain.

Seleucus now determined to cross the Hellespont himself, and,
advancing into Thrace and Macedon, to annex those kingdoms to his own
domains. Ptolemy Ceraunus accompanied him. This Ptolemy, it will be
recollected, was the son of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, by his wife
Eurydice; and, at first view, it might seem that he could have no
claim whatever himself to the crown of Macedon. But Eurydice, his
mother, was the daughter of Antipater, the general to whom Macedon had
been assigned on the original division of the empire after Alexander's
death. Antipater had reigned over the kingdom for a long time with
great splendor and renown, and his name and memory were still held in
great veneration by all the Macedonians. Ptolemy Ceraunus began to
conceive, therefore, that he was entitled to succeed to the kingdom as
the grandson and heir of the monarch who was Alexander's immediate
successor, and whose claims were consequently, as he contended,
entitled to take precedence of all others.

Moreover, Ptolemy Ceraunus had lived for a long time in Macedon, at
the court of Lysimachus, having fled there from Egypt on account of
the quarrels in which he was involved in his father's family. He was a
man of a very reckless and desperate character, and, while a young man
in his father's court, he had shown himself very ill able to brook the
preference which his father was disposed to accord to Berenice and to
her children over his mother Eurydice and him. In fact, it was said
that one reason which led his father to give Berenice's family the
precedence over that of Eurydice, and to propose that _her_ son
rather than Ptolemy Ceraunus should succeed him, was the violent and
uncontrollable spirit which Ceraunus displayed. At any rate, Ceraunus
quarreled openly with his father, and went to Macedon to join his
sister there. He had subsequently spent some considerable time at the
court of Lysimachus, and had taken some active part in public affairs.
When Agathocles was poisoned, he fled with Lysandra to