Arsinoé II

Arsinoé Philadelphe is the girl of Ptolémée {{Ier}} '' Sôter '' and of Bérénice {{Ire}}. Its birth date is at the latest in -316 It is successively the wife of Lysimaque, Ptolémée Kéraunos (his/her half-brother) and of Ptolémée {{II}} (his/her brother). She dies in -270.

Genealogy

Biography

In -299, it marries Lysimaque, general of Alexandre Large the, king of Thrace since -304. Arsinoé is beautiful and the old king (much older than it), seems he insane in love, does not refuse anything to him. He offers several cities and even Éphèse to him which is renamed Arsinoé. From this union are born three wire, Ptolémée, Lysimaque and Philippe. But Lysimaque has already a heir apparent, Agathoclès, born from a first marriage. To ensure the succession the throne elder of its sons, Arsinoé claims that Agathocle plotted against his/her father, which does not hesitate to make it carry out in -282. Fearing the intrigues of Arsinoé, his/her half-sister, Ptolémée Kéraunos, which took refuge before at Agathoclès (he even husband of its sister Lysandra), is constrained to flee near Séleucos {{Ier}}.

This dynastic crime caused the fall of Lysimaque. Séleucos, king de Syrie, invade the Asia Mineure and decimate in -281 with Couroupédion the army of Lysimaque which finds death. Arsinoé flees and takes refuge with Cassandréia in Macedonia; it must agree to marry Ptolémée Kéraunos which, n the other hand, is committed adopting its nephews. But hardly entered Cassandreia, it makes kill two of wire that Arsinoé had had of the king Lysimaque, the Lysimaque young person, old of sixteen years and Philippe, thirteen years; only the elder one, Ptolémée {{III}}, escapes the massacre. Arsinoé flees again and is withdrawn with Samothrace before joining with Alexandria, in -279, his/her brother Ptolémée {{II}} and Arsinoé {{Ire}} his wife, girl of late Lysimaque.

Calumniating her sister-in-law, it obtains her banishment with Coptos in -278, and marries her brother in -277 (or -274), becoming thus queen of Egypt. It is this marriage which is worth in Ptolémée the epithet of Philadelphe , “that which loves his/her sister”. Its influence contributes to the glare of the life of court and the great expansion of the ptolémaïque power apart from Egypt, and it is déifiée of alive sound like her husband. She dies at the time of the fifteenth year of the reign of this one, in -270.

The worship of Arsinoé, associated with that of Aphrodite, goddess of the Beauty, attests grace of the queen. More prosaically, while imposing the worship of Arsinoé in the Egyptian temples, Ptolémée thus manages to take new subsidies directly versed in the royal treasure, this without revolts on behalf of the clergy.

Callimaque de Cyrène cried its death in one of its elegies.

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