Ptolemy IV Philopator

Ptolemy IV Philopator ruled Egypt from 221 to 204 BC, won the greatest battle of his dynasty, and is generally blamed for beginning its decline. His accession was accompanied by the murder of most of his close relatives, including his mother and his brother, arranged by the courtiers Sosibius and Agathocles, who then ran the kingdom while he occupied himself elsewhere. Antiochus III invaded Ptolemaic Syria in the Fourth Syrian War, and the crisis forced a decision with long consequences: to match the Seleucid army the Ptolemies armed and trained twenty thousand native Egyptians as a phalanx, something they had always avoided. At Raphia in 217 BC, one of the largest battles of the Hellenistic age, Ptolemy won, and the Egyptian troops decided it. They then knew it. A native revolt broke out in the Thebaid within two years and held Upper Egypt under its own pharaohs for twenty years. He built the Tessarakonteres, a ceremonial ship of forty banks of oars that was probably unusable, and a temple to Homer. Polybius, who despised him, described a king given over to festivals and favourites. He and his wife Arsinoe III both died in 204, hers certainly by murder, and their deaths were concealed while the courtiers arranged the succession of their five-year-old son. The Rosetta Stone's decree honours his son and refers back to the settlement of the revolt his reign began. His fleet and the temple building programme continued, and Ptolemaic Egypt remained wealthy, but it was never again able to take the field against a Seleucid army without help. Antiochus III returned within two years of his death and took Syria for good.

• Lived: 244 BCE – 204 BCE
• Nationality: Egyptian
• Roles: ruler