Background
Ptolemy was born in Cos in 308 or 309 BC, the younger son of Ptolemy I by his favorite wife, Berenice.
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Ptolemy was born in Cos in 308 or 309 BC, the younger son of Ptolemy I by his favorite wife, Berenice.
Ptolemy inherited Palestine and resisted the attempts of Antiochus I, the Seleucid king of Syria, to wrest it from him. Ptolemy's ships controlled the eastern Mediterranean, and he was master of Cyprus, the Phoenician coast, and part of northern Syria.
After the defeat of Pyrrhus in 275 B. C. , Ptolemy concluded a treaty with Rome to which he remained faithful during the Punic Wars.
Ptolemy II was an able administrator and a farseeing statesman. At home he had two main problems: to integrate the Greeks into the essentially alien environment of the ancient land of Egypt and to increase the kingdom's productivity and prosperity. Like his father, he took pains to make himself acceptable to the Egyptian priesthood. His marriage to his sister, which scandalized the Greeks, was in the pharaonic tradition. He founded a ruler cult, deifying members of the dynasty and instituting priesthoods in their honor.
Ptolemy encouraged learning and built the great library at Alexandria, making the city a brilliant center of art and learning; the city's lighthouse, the Pharos, became known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. In order to promote commerce, Ptolemy established a network of trading posts on the coasts of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and East Africa and redug the ancient canal joining the Nile to the Red Sea.
Ptolemy also undertook great schemes of land reclamation, especially in the Fayyum, where he planted Greek colonists in new towns. New methods of agriculture were introduced and the growing of vines and olives encouraged, and livestock was improved by the introduction of new breeds. Trade in many commodities became a royal monopoly, from which the Crown gained large revenues. The luxury and profligacy of his court were unparalleled in the world of his time.
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Ptolemy was first married to Arsinoë I, daughter of Lysimachus, who was the mother of his legitimate children; after her repudiation he married his sister Arsinoë II.
