Ptolemy was not a man to act decidedly against such a demonstration, or, in fact, to evince either calmness or courage in any emergency whatever.

The young Ptolemy, in the mean time, remained Caesar's prisoner, confused with the intricacies in which the quarrel had become involved, and scarcely knowing now what to wish in respect to the issue of the contest.

Ptolemy was a sovereign, he said, and was not amenable to any foreign power whatever.

After the death of Alexander, Ptolemy became king of Egypt, who by some was reputed to have been the bastard son of Philip, the father of Alexander: He, imitating the before named kings, Sesostris and Darius, caused dig a canal from the branch of the Nile which passed by Pelusium, now by the city of Damieta.

When Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, became governor of Egypt and, after the death of Alexander, subjected Palestine, he carried back to Alexandria many Jewish captives, and attracted others by the special privileges which he granted them.

Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe are his patrons, whose volumes he understands not but admires, and the rather because they are strangers, and so easier to be credited than controlled.