This outraged the Romans, who had entered into hostilities with Antiochus III partially on Ptolemy V's behalf, and after their victory they distributed the old Ptolemaic territories in Asia Minor to Pergamum and Rhodes rather than returning them to Egypt.

In his last years, Ptolemy V began manoeuvering for renewed warfare with the Seleucid empire, but these plans were cut short by his sudden death in 180 BC, allegedly poisoned by courtiers worried about the cost of the war.

Ptolemy V's reign saw greatly increased prominence of courtiers and the Egyptian priestly elite in Ptolemaic political life, a pattern that would continue for most of the rest of the kingdom's existence.

Arthur Eckstein has argued that this collapse sparked the "power transition crisis" that led to the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean.

Pelops, governor of Cyprus, was sent to Antiochus III to ask him to continue to respect the peace treaty made with Ptolemy IV at the end of the Fourth Syrian War.

This unpopularity was exacerbated by the widespread belief that they had been responsible for the death of Arsinoe III and a string of extrajudicial murders of prominent courtiers.

In October 203 BC,[3] when Agathocles gathered the palace guard and army to hear a proclamation in advance of the royal coronation, the assembled troops began to insult him and he barely escaped alive.

Popular opinion soon turned against Tlepolemus, who was considered to spend too much time sparring and drinking with the soldiers and to have given too much money to embassies from the cities of mainland Greece.

[17] At some point over the winter, Tlepolemus was replaced as regent by Aristomenes, a member of the bodyguard who had been instrumental in the seizure of young Ptolemy V from Agathocles.

[20] A Roman embassy made an ineffectual attempt to broker a peace between Ptolemy V and Antiochus III, but largely abandoned the Egyptians to their fate.

[24][18] A revolt had broken out in Upper Egypt under the native pharaoh Hugronaphor (Horwennefer) in the last years of Ptolemy IV's reign and Thebes had been lost in November 205 BC.

The next year, however, a second group of rebels in the Nile Delta, who were linked to Ankhmakis in some way that is not entirely clear, captured the city of Lycopolis near Busiris and invested themselves there.

The rebel leaders were taken to Memphis and publicly executed on 26 March 196 BC, during the feast celebrating Ptolemy V's coronation as pharaoh.

Around October or November 197 BC, the Ptolemaic governor of Cyprus, Polycrates of Argos, came to Alexandria, and arranged for Ptolemy V to be declared an adult with a ceremony known as an anacleteria, even though he was only thirteen years old.

Polybius writes that Ptolemy V's courtiers "thought that the kingdom would gain a certain degree of firmness and a fresh impulse towards prosperity, if it were known that the king had assumed the independent direction of the government.

In his view, the priests asserted their right to the remission of taxes, aware that Ptolemy V was relying more heavily on their support than his predecessors had, and he had no choice but to concede.

[31] After the Romans decisively defeated Philip V at the Battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BC, they turned their attention to Antiochus III, whose troops had crossed the Hellespont and entered Thrace.

Symbolically, Antiochus held the wedding that sealed his conquest of Coele-Syria at Raphia, the site of his great defeat at the hands of Ptolemy IV.

In return for the southern Egyptian city of Syene, Adikhalamani provided some sort of aid which enabled Ankhmakis to recapture Thebes by autumn 195 BC.

To prevent further revolts in the south, a new military governorship of Upper Egypt, the epistrategos, was created, with Comanus serving in the role from 187 BC.

Trusting this, they voluntarily went to Sais in October 185 BC, where they were stripped naked, forced to drag carts through the city, and then tortured to death.

[25] After the end of the Fifth Syrian War, Ptolemy V made an effort to reassert Ptolemaic power on the world stage and to claw back some of the territories lost to the Seleucids, with very little success.

[37] At the end of the war in 188 BC, when the Romans imposed the Treaty of Apamea on Antiochus III, which forced him to give up all his territory in Asia Minor, they did not return the former Ptolemaic holdings in the region to Ptolemy V, but awarded them to Pergamum and Rhodes instead.

[38][39] When Antiochus III died in 187 BC and was succeeded by his son Seleucus IV, Ptolemy V began preparations for a renewed war to recapture Coele-Syria.

The ancient historians allege that he was poisoned by his courtiers, who believed that he intended to seize their property in order to fund his new Syrian war.

Probably at the Ptolemaia festival in 199 BC, Ptolemy V was proclaimed to be the Theos Epiphanes Eucharistos (Manifest, Beneficent God) and his name was added to the title of the Priest of Alexander.

When he married Cleopatra I in 194–3 BC, the royal couple were deified as the Theoi Epiphaneis (Manifest Gods) and the Priest of Alexander's full title was modified accordingly.

The decree's description of Ptolemy V's victory over the Lycopolis rebels and of his coronation draws heavily on traditional imagery that presented the pharaoh as a new Horus, receiving the kingship from his dead father, whom he avenges by smiting the enemies of Egypt and restoring order.

[46] Ptolemy V's predecessors, since the time of Alexander the Great, had pursued a wide-ranging policy of temple construction, designed to ensure the support of the priestly elite.

What construction was carried out under Ptolemy V was focussed in the northern part of the country, particularly the sanctuary of the Apis Bull and the temple of Anubis at Memphis.