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Ptolemy I, Soter - 2
Muses, and, at that time, the largest library. Thus he was popular and wise and had a reputation for generosity and fair dealing.
To make use of a paraphrase, Ptolemy I was great in war, great in peace, and beloved by his countrymen. For the Egyptians he was the founder of a new dynasty of Pharaohs. When aged eighty-two he passed on his power to his and Berenice's (No. 51) favorite son, Ptolemy II, Philadelphus (No. 52), to the detriment of Ptolemy Ceraunus (Thunderbolt), his elder son by his first wife, Eurydice. Ptolemy Ceraunus took refuge in Macedonia and here in 281/0 killed Seleucus I (see No. 49), when the latter tried to enter and conquer Macedonia. Ptolemy I lived to the age of eighty-four, the only one of the diadochs to die a natural death. Ptolemy II, Philadelphus, erected shrines and instituted a festival with games for his deified father. Ptolemy I and Berenice became saviour gods, though for the Egyptians the Pharaoh Ptolemy I had already been a god during his lifetime.
A statue of Ptolemy I, carved in gold and ivory like the chryselephantine statues of various gods, perhaps the same one that Theocritus in his Idyll in praise of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (XVII, 123-125) mentions, stood in the temple of Ptolemy I in Alexandria, which Ptolemy II had built. Other statues stood before the entrance to the theater of Dionysus at Athens (Pausanias, I, 8,6) and at Olympia (Pausanias VI, 15,6). Many more statues must have been erected in the cities founded by him in Egypt.
The portraits of Ptolemy I on his coins (Pl. XCVII, 5, 2) which began to issue in 305/4 and which were retained on the coins of all his successors, show the great and clever founder of the Greek dynasty of Pharaohs as a robust and vigorous personality. The heavy hair strands are arranged around the vertex in a starlike, almost Polyclitan design, only much more lively. The curved ends of the strands lie in all directions and some slip over the borders of the diadem. A group of parallel curved strands lies over the temples and another row of such curved strands lies on the nape of the neck. The forehead curves strongly backward in the upper part and strongly forward in the lower part. Under the heavy brows the small eyes are deeply set, and the nose curves like an eagle's beak. The mouth and the protruding, short, rounded chin betray energy. He, like Alexander, wears the Aegis of Zeus, 438 and 455
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