As a rule the Ptolemies during the intervals of peace left the Jews of Palestine largely to themselves, as long as they paid the heavy tribute that was exacted.

The long-continued rule of the Ptolemies in Egypt is one of the most astonishing phenomena in this remarkable period in human history.

The barrenness of discovery from Hipparchus to Ptolemy,the Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer in the second century of the Christian era,in spite of the patronage of the royal Ptolemies of Egypt, was owing to the want of instruments for the accurate measure of time (like our clocks), to the imperfection of astronomical tables, and to the want of telescopes.

Under the successor of the enervated Egyptian king, Ptolemy V., a child five years old, Antiochus the Great retrieved the disaster at Raphia, and in 199 won a victory over Scopas the Egyptian general, in consequence of which Judaea, with Phoenicia and Coele-Syria, passed from the Ptolemies to the Seleucidae.

The taxes laid upon the people of Egypt to supply the Ptolemies with funds were, in fact, so heavy, that only the bare means of subsistence were left to the mass of the agricultural population.