Chapter 4

Here are the facts, —the legend at least; for at such a distance, and in such a twilight, history is legendary:—

There was a king of Egypt, named Ptolemy Euergetes, brother-in-law to Antiochus the god.

Let us mention it en passant, all these people were gods:—gods Soters, gods Euergetes, gods Epiphanes, gods Philometors, gods Philadelphi, gods Philopators. Translation: Gods saviours, gods beneficent, gods illustrious, gods loving their mother, gods loving their brothers, gods loving their father. Cleopatra was goddess Soter. The priests and priestesses of Ptolemy Soter were at Ptolemais. Ptolemy VI. was called “God-love-Mother” (Philometor), because he hated his mother, Cleopatra. Ptolemy IV. was “God-love-Father” (Philopator), because he had poisoned his father. Ptolemy II. was “God-love-Brothers” (Philadelphus), because he had killed his two brothers.

Let us return to Ptolemy Euergetes.

He was the son of the Philadelphus who gave golden crowns to the Roman ambassadors, —the same to whom the pseudo-Aristeus attributes by mistake the version of the Septuagint. This Philadelphus had much increased the library of Alexandria, which, during his lifetime, counted two hundred thousand volumes, and which, in the sixth century, attained, it is said, the incredible number of seven hundred thousand manuscripts.

This stock of human knowledge, formed under the eyes of Euclid, and by the care of Callimachus, Diodorus Cronos, Theodorus the Atheist, Philetas, Apollonius, Aratus, the Egyptian priest Manetho, Lycophron, and Theocritus, had for its first librarian, according to some, Zenodotus of Ephesus, according to others, Demetrius of Phalerum, to whom the Athenians had raised three hundred and sixty statues, which they took one year to put up and one day to destroy. Now, this library had no copy of Æschylus. One day the Greek Demetrius said to Euergetes, “Pharaoh has not Æschylus,”—exactly as, later on, Leidrade, archbishop of Lyons and librarian of Charlemagne, said to Charlemagne, “The Emperor has not Scæva Memor.”