PTOLEMY II  . Philadelphus (309-246), was of a delicate constitu- tion, no Macedonian warrior-chief of the old style . His brother Ptolemy Ceraunus found compensation by becoming king in Macedonia in 281, and perished in the Gallic invasion of 280-79 (see BRENNUS) . Ptolemy II. maintained a splendid court in Alexandria . Not that Egypt held aloof from wars . Magas of Cyrene opened war on his half-brother (274), and Antiochus I., the son of Seleucus, desiring Palestine, attacked soon after . Two or three years of war left Egypt the dominant naval power of the eastern Mediterranean; the Ptolemaic sphere of power extended over the Cyclades to Samothrace, and the harbours and coast towns of Cilicia Trachea (" Rough Cilicia "), Pam- phylia, Lycia and Caria were largely in Ptolemy's hands (Theoc . Idyll. xvii . 86 seq.) . The victory won by Antigonus, king of Macedonia, over his fleet at Cos (between 258-56; see Beloch, p . 428 seq.) did not long interrupt his command of the Aegean . In a second war with the Seleucid kingdom, under Antiochus II .

(after 26o), Ptolemy sustained losses on the

sea- board of Asia Minor and agreed to a peace b; which Antiochus married his daughter Berenice (250?) . Ptolemy's first wife, Arsinoe (I.), daughter of Lysimachus, was the mother of his legitimate children . After her repudiation he married, probably for political reasons, his full-sister Arsinoe (II.), the widow of Lysimachus, by an Egyptian custom abhorrent to Greek morality . The material and literary splendour of the Alexan- drian court was at its height under Ptolemy II . Pomps and gay religions flourished . Ptolemy deified his parents as the 8eoi & €X4iol, and his sister-wife, after her death (270), as Phila- delphus . This surname was used in later generations to distin- guish Ptolemy II. himself, but properly if belongs to Arsinoe only, not to the king . Callimachus, made keeper of the library, Theocritus, and a host of lesser poets, glorified the Ptolemaic family . Ptolemy himself was eager to increase the library and to patronize scientific research . He hau the strange beasts of far-off lands sent to Alexandria . But, an enthusiast for Hellenic culture, he seems to have shown but little interest in the native religion . The tradition which connects the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament into Greek with his name is not historical .

Ptolemy had many brilliant mistresses, and his court, magnificent and dissolute, intellectual and artificial, has been justly compared with the

Versailles of Louis XIV .