Ptolemy XI Alexander II
king of Hellenistic Egypt
112 BCE to 80 BCE
Ptolemy XI Alexander II is a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty who rules Egypt for a few days in 80 BCE.
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The twelve-year-old future king Ptolemy XI Alexander II is sent, with substantial treasure, to the Aegean island of Cos for safekeeping during the war with the Seleucid kingdom conducted by his grandmother Queen Cleopatra III and his father, Ptolemy X Alexander.
His nine-year-old half-brother, a son of Ptolemy IX Soter II (the identity of his mother is not certain), accompanies him him.
Ptolemy Alexander II, together with his younger half-brother, is captured around the time of his father's death in 88 by Mithridates, who has just routed a Roman general and seized Cos, among other territories.
Mithridates IV has treated Alexander II well and even educated him, but the Ptolemid prince, now thirty, flees to Sulla during a battle between the Romans and Mithridates in 85 BCE, when the war is clearly lost.
Mithridates makes peace with Sulla in the Treaty of Dardanus, abandoning his conquests, surrendering his fleet, and paying a heavy fine in exchange for retaining his kingship.
Order is restored in Asia and Greece, and Mithridates again becomes a vassal of the Romans.
Berenice III reigns over Egypt for about a year.
Ptolemy XI Alexander, who had been carried off to Rome, had been befriended by Sulla; he is now sent to Egypt to be married to his Berenice, who is his stepmother.
Neither the queen nor the people of Alexandria, who greatly admire her, have been consulted about the matter.
When Ptolemy realizes, after about nineteen days of joint rule, that Berenice is loath to surrender her accustomed authority, he unwisely arranges for the murder of the popular queen, for which the enraged Alexandrians kill him in revenge, thus eliminating the last fully legitimate member of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
As Ptolemy XI has died without a male heir, the only available male descendants of the Ptolemy I lineage are the illegitimate sons of Ptolemy IX by an unknown Greek concubine.
The boys had been living in exile in Sinope, at the court of Mithridates VI, King of Pontus.
As the eldest of the boys, Ptolemy XII is proclaimed king as Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos and marries his sister, Tryphaena.
However, Ptolemy XI had left the throne to Rome in his will, therefore Ptolemy XII is not the legitimate successor.
Nevertheless, Rome does not challenge the succession of Ptolemy XII because the Senate is unwilling to acquire an Egyptian expansion.
His precarious kingship depends heavily on Roman support.