Ptolemy V Epiphanes
Macedonian king of Egypt from 205 BC under whose rule Coele Syria and most of Egypt's other foreign possessions were lost.
After Sosibius, Ptolemy IV's corrupt minister, had murdered Ptolemy V's mother, the five-year-old king was officially elevated to the throne; Sosibius became his guardian. According to the 2nd-century BC Greek historian Polybius, all prominent officials were banished from Egypt while Sosibius' clique announced the young king's accession and the death of his parents. The rulers of Macedonia and of the Syrian-based Seleucid kingdom, however, realizing Egypt's weakness, conspired to partition that Kingdom's Asiatic and Aegean possessions.
When Sosibius retired about 202, Agathocles, another member of the clique, became Ptolemy's guardian. Soon, however, he provoked Tlepolemus, the governor of Pelusium (Egypt's eastern frontier city), who marched on Alexandria, where his supporters roused a mob, compelling Agathocles to resign in favour of another courtier. When the boy king, enthroned in the stadium while the mob clamoured for the murderers of his parents, nodded in confusion at the prompting of a courtier, the mob searched out and butchered Agathocles and his family. Tlepolemus, however, soon proved incompetent and was removed.
During the confusion in Egypt, Antiochus III, the Seleucid king, made serious inroads into Coele Syria. Ptolemy's forces mounted a counteroffensive, capturing Jerusalem; but in 201 the Seleucid king returned, defeating the Ptolemaic army and later seizing the Ptolemaic lands in Asia Minor. Roman diplomatic intervention finally halted the war; and in 194/193 BC, as part of the peace treaty, Cleopatra I, a daughter of Antiochus, was married to Ptolemy.