Reign
He began his reign as co-regent with his father Ptolemy I from ca. 285 BCE to ca. 283 BCE, and maintained a splendid court in Alexandria.
Egypt was involved in several wars during his reign. Magas of Cyrene opened war on his half-brother (274 BCE), and the Seleucid king Antiochus I Soter, desiring Coele-Syria with Judea, attacked soon after in the First Syrian War. Two or three years of war followed. Egypt's victories solidified the kingdom's position as the undisputed naval power of the eastern Mediterranean; his fleet (112 ships) bore the most powerful naval siege units of all time, guaranteed the king access to the coastal cities of his empire. The Ptolemaic sphere of power extended over the Cyclades to Samothrace, and the harbours and coast towns of Cilicia Trachea, Pamphylia, Lycia and Caria.
The victory won by Antigonus II Gonatas, king of Macedonia, over the Egyptian fleet at Cos (between 258 BCE and 256 BCE) did not long interrupt Ptolemy's command of the Aegean Sea. In a Second Syrian War with the Seleucid kingdom, under Antiochus II Theos (after 260 BCE), Ptolemy sustained losses on the seaboard of Asia Minor and agreed to a peace by which Antiochus married his daughter Berenice (c. 250 BCE).
Read more about this topic: Ptolemy II Philadelphus
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“I am monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute;
From the center all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
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Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
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—William Cowper (1731–1800)
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—Earl Felton, and Richard Fleischer. Captain Nemo (James Mason)
“Nature seemed to have adorned herself for our departure with a profusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the bright tints of flowers, reflected in the water. But we missed the white water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers, its reign being over for this season.... Many of this species inhabit our Concord water.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)