Ptolemaic Egypt in 218 B.C.

Ptolemaic Egypt — Spring 218 BC · The Fourth Syrian War.

The kingdom of the Ptolemies — a Macedonian house ruling Egypt as pharaohs from Alexandria, the greatest city of the world. In 218 BC it is the wealthiest state of the age: the Nile’s grain, Nubian gold and royal monopolies fund a great fleet and a chain of overseas possessions from Cyrene to the Hellespont. But a boy-king sits the throne, and Antiochus III has fallen on Coele-Syria — the Fourth Syrian War is on, and Egypt arms in secret for the reckoning at Raphia.

Ptolemy IV Philopator, crowned in 221 at about twenty, leaves rule to his minister Sosibius and gives himself to pleasure and the cults of Dionysus. When Antiochus III invaded Coele-Syria in 219, Egypt was unready — so Sosibius spins out a truce while secretly raising and drilling a new army, and for the first time arms tens of thousands of native Egyptians as phalangites. The gamble will be vindicated at Raphia in 217 — and the armed, victorious machimoi will not forget their strength.