Pergamon’s king, Eumenes II, has just succeeded…

The official coronation of Ptolemy V takes place in 197.

Called Ptolemy Epiphanes, he proves an ineffectual ruler; during his minority Egypt had lost most of its foreign possessions to the Seleucid king Antiochos III and the domestic revolts of his father's reign continue.

Serious difficulties have arisen in the young king’s first decade of rule.

Native revolts in the south, sporadic in the second half of the third century, have now become serious and weakened the hold of the monarch on a vital part of the kingdom.

These revolts, which produce native claimants to the kingship, are generally attributed to the native Egyptians' realization of their potential power after their contribution to the victory at Raphia (217) that had won the Fourth Syrian War.

The twelve-year-old king directs the fighting against rebels in the Nile Delta, exhibiting great cruelty toward those leaders who capitulate.

Antiochus occupies the Ptolemaic Greek cities in Asia Minor in 197 BCE, conquering the entire coast of Anatolia from Cilicia to the Hellespont, while also attacking Pergamon in the interior.

Flamininus has made allies of most of Greece by spring 197 BCE.

When the Aetolian cavalry prevails against the isolated Philip's forces at Cynoscephalae in Thessaly, the single decisive battle of the war, in which the Macedonian phalanx of heavy infantry had shown that it was hard to beat if it kept its ranks but vulnerable if it did not, …

…the Romans hand over Dolopia, Phocis, and Eastern Locris to the Aetolians but withhold their former Thessalian possessions.

The Romans, having in the person of Flaminius outmaneuvered Philip both politically and strategically, have won the Second Macedonian War, in which Antiochus has refused to lend assistance.

The terms of peace include the loss of most of Philip's navy, payment of one thousand talents indemnity to Rome, and the loss of his territories outside of Macedonia.

In addition, he is compelled to deposit hostages at Rome, including his younger son, Demetrius, his only son by his legitimate wife, the elder brother Perseus being the son of a concubine.

The Thracian coastal area west of the Maritsa is annexed to the new Roman province of Macedonia.

Rome annexes no territory directly, the narrow oligarchy governing Rome has no desire to take on administrative responsibilities that might require extending the circle of those in power.

Nabis had acquired Argos from Philip of Macedon, who was then still at war with Rome; he retains it by coming to terms with Flamininus.

The seeds have been sown for the Romans' reentry into the East even before the Romans execute their planned withdrawal from Greece.

Antiochus sets out to recover the ancestral possessions of his kingdom on the western coast of Anatolia and in Thrace.

In response to the Roman demand that he stay out of Europe, the king attempts to negotiate.

Antiochus crosses the Hellespont in 196 BCE into Thrace, where he claims sovereignty over territory that the founding dynast, Seleucus I, had won in the year 281 BCE.

Ptolemy's concessions to the rebels and his eventual suppression of them are inscribed on a basalt tablet (later known as the Rosetta Stone) in a bilingual text dating from 196 in Greek and Egyptian (both hieroglyphic and demotic) and referring to known Greek names.

Made up of three translations of a single passage, written in two Egyptian language scripts (hieroglyphic and demotic), and in classical Greek, the Rosetta Stone is carved in a gesture of thanks to the priests for defeating Harmachis, about whose reign little is known as most of the relevant records were destroyed.

The text of the Rosetta Stone is a decree from Ptolemy V, describing the repealing of various taxes and instructions to erect statues in temples.

Discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta, a harbor on the Mediterranean coast in Egypt, it will contribute greatly to the decipherment of the principles of hieroglyphic writing in 1822 by the French scholar Jean-François Champollion.

Comparative translation of the stone will assist in understanding many previously undecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing.

The King, though at thirteen legally an adult, remains under the control of his guardians and advisers.

To forestall further insurrections in the south, he extends the authority of the governor of Thebes to include all Upper Egypt.

A great portion of the Ptolemaic overseas empire has been permanently lost by about 196.

To shore up and advertise the strength of the ruling house at home and abroad, the administration adopts a series of grandiloquent honorific titles for its officers.