Alexander also at that time fell into the hands of Mithridates; but he afterwards escaped, and reached the army of Sulla, under whose care he lived for some time in Rome.  The Alexandrian prince hoped to gain the throne of his father by means of the friendship of one who could make and unmake kings at his pleasure; and Sulla might have thought that the wealth of Egypt would be at his command by means of his young friend.  To these reasons Alexander added the bribe which was then becoming common with the princes who held their thrones by the help of Rome, he made a will, in which he named the Roman people as his heirs; and the senate then took care that the kingdom of Egypt should be a part of the wealth which was afterwards to be theirs by inheritance.  After Berenice, his stepmother, had been queen about six months, they sent him to Alexandria, with orders that he should be received as king; and, to soften the harshness of this command, he was told to marry Berenice, and reign jointly with her.

The orders of Sulla, the Roman dictator, were of course obeyed; and the young Alexander landed at Alexandria, as King of Egypt and the friend of Rome.  He married Berenice; and on the nineteenth day of his reign, with a cruelty unfortunately too common in this history, he put her to death.  The marriage had been forced upon him by the Romans, who ordered all the political affairs of the kingdom; but, as they took no part in the civil or criminal affairs, he seems to have been at liberty to murder his wife.  But Alexander was hated by the people as a king thrust upon them by foreign arms; and Berenice, whatever they might have before thought of her, was regretted as the queen of their choice.  Hence his crime met with its reward.  His own guards immediately rose upon him; they dragged him from the palace to the gymnasium, and there put him to death.

Though the Romans had already seized the smaller kingdom of Cyrene under the will of Ptolemy Apion, they could not agree among themselves upon the wholesale robbery of taking Egypt under the will which Alexander had made in their favour.  They seized, however, a paltry sum of money which he had left at Tyre as a place of safety; and it was a matter of debate for many years afterwards in Rome, whether they should not claim the kingdom of Egypt.  But the nobles of Rome, who sold their patronage to kings for sums equal to the revenues of provinces, would have lost much by handing the kingdom over to the senate.  Hence the Egyptian monarchy was left standing for two reigns longer.

On the death of Ptolemy Alexander, the Alexandrians might easily have changed their weak and wicked rulers, and formed a government for themselves, if they had known how.  The legitimate male line of the Ptolemies came to an end on the death of the young Alexander II.  The two natural sons of Soter II. were then the next in succession; and, as there was no other claimant, the crown fell to the elder.  He was