ABSTRACT
PTOLEMY VI., PHILOMETOR (r8r-145 B.C.) FOR the second time within twenty-one years-another of those accidents which bring great dynasties to the groundthe king of Egypt was a child. The elder of the two sons of Ptolemy Epiphanes was only five or six at his father's premature death.1 But it seemed fortunate that this time there was a regent-other than an ambitious courtier-to take up the reins, the queen-mother, Cleopatra. In these Macedoni an houses, as we have seen, a woman is the equal of a man. Cleopatra's position at the Ptolemaic court had perhaps been a difficult one, when the policy of the court had taken a turn so hostile to the house of Seleucus; but if it had been hoped at Antioch, when she was married, that she would act as an agent for the Seleucids at Alexandria, there must have been disappointment in that quarter, for Cleopatra, we are told, remembered rather that she was wife of Ptolemy and queen of Egypt, than that she was the daughter of Antiochus " the Great" and the sister of Seleucus IV.
