This is not the place for giving a history of the successive Ptolemies,
but I may remark that the assimilating faculty exercised by the Greeks
over other nations was potent in Egypt; particularly as the result of the
powerful influence of Alexandria, the capital founded by Alexander, which
developed with wonderful rapidity to be one of the most splendid centres
of Hellenic culture and of Hellenic art and science.

Long before the united rule of the hostile brothers Ptolemy Philometor
and Euergetes--whose violent end will be narrated to the reader of this
story--Greek influence was marked in every event and detail of Egyptian
life, which had remained almost unaffected by the characteristics of
former conquerors--the Hyksos, the Assyrians and the Persians; and, under
the Ptolemies, the most inhospitable and exclusive nation of early
antiquity threw open her gates to foreigners of every race.

Alexandria was a metropolis even in the modern sense; not merely an
emporium of commerce, but a focus where the intellectual and religious
treasures of various countries were concentrated and worked up, and
transmitted to all the nations that desired them. I have resisted the
temptation to lay the scene of my story there, because in Alexandria the
Egyptian element was too much overlaid by the Greek, and the too splendid
and important scenery and decorations might easily have distracted the
reader's attention from the dramatic interest of the persons acting.

At that period of the Hellenic dominion which I have described, the kings
of Egypt were free to command in all that concerned the internal affairs
of their kingdom, but the rapidly-growing power of the Roman Empire
enabled her to check the extension of their dominion, just as she chose.

Philometor himself had heartily promoted the immigration of Israelites