Ptolemy took the name of Soter II., though he is more often called Lathyrus, from a stain upon his face in the form of an ivy-leaf, pricked into his skin in honour of Osiris.  He was also called Philometor; and we learn from an inscription on a temple at Apollinopolis Parva, that both these names formed part of the style in which the public acts ran in this reign; it is dedicated by “the Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy, gods Philometores, Soteres, and his children,” without mentioning his wife.  Here, as in Persia and Judaaa, the king’s mother often held rank above his wife.  The name of Philometor was given to him by his mother, because, though he had reached the years of manhood, she wished to act as his guardian; but her unkindness to him was so remarkable that historians have thought that it was a nickname.  The mother and the son were jointly styled sovereigns of Egypt; but they lived apart, and in distrust of one another, each surrounded by personal friends; while Cleopatra’s stronger mind and greater skill in kingcraft gained for her the larger share of power, and the effective control of Egypt.

Cleopatra, the daughter, put away by her husband at the command of her mother, soon made a treaty of marriage with Antiochus Cyzicenus, the friend of her late husband, who was struggling for the throne of Syria with his brother, Antiochus Grypus, the husband of her sister Tryphaana; and on her way to Syria she stopped at Cyprus, where she raised a large army and took it with her as her dower, to help her new husband against his brother and her sister.

With this addition to his army Cyzicenus thought his forces equal to those of his brother; he marched against him and gave him battle.  But he was beaten, and he fled with his wife Cleopatra; and they shut themselves up in the city of Antioch.  Grypus and Tryphaana then laid siege to the city, and the astute Tryphaana soon took her revenge on her sister for coming into Syria to marry the brother and rival of her husband.  The city was taken; and Tryphaana ordered her sister to be torn from the temple into which she had fled, and to be put to death.  In vain Grypus urged that he did not wish his victory to be stained by the death of a sister; that Cleopatra was by marriage his sister as well as hers; that she was the aunt of their children; and that the gods would punish them if they dragged her from the altar.  But Tryphaana was merciless and unmoved; she gave her own orders to the soldiers, and Cleopatra was killed as she clung with her arms to the statue of the goddess.  This cruelty, however, was soon overtaken by punishment:  in the next battle Cyzicenus was the conqueror, and he put Tryphaana to death, to quiet, as was said, the ghost of her murdered sister.

In the third year of her reign Cleopatra Cocce gave the island of Cyprus to her younger son, Alexander, as an independent kingdom, thinking that he would be of more use to her there, in upholding her power against his brother Lathyrus, than he could be at Alexandria.