He banished his brother to Cyrenaica and repeatedly prevented him from using that as a springboard to taking Cyprus, despite substantial Roman intervention in Ptolemy VIII's favour.

The early reign of Ptolemy V was dominated by the Fifth Syrian War (204–198 BC) against the Seleucid king Antiochus III, who completely defeated the Ptolemaic forces, annexed Coele-Syria and Judaea to his empire, and reduced Egypt to a subordinate position.

His father advertised Ptolemy VI's position as heir within Egypt and to the wider world, for example by entering a chariot team under his name in the Panathenaic Games of 182 BC.

[9] The couple were incorporated into the Ptolemaic dynastic cult as the Theoi Philometores ('the Mother-loving Gods'), named in honour of the deceased Cleopatra I.

[11] The unsettled situation empowered the warhawks in the Ptolemaic court, and Eulaeus and Lenaeus were unable or unwilling to resist them, with Cleopatra I no longer alive.

[27][28] Antiochus IV responded by placing Alexandria under siege, but he was unable to take the city and withdrew from Egypt in September 169 BC, as winter approached, leaving Ptolemy VI as his puppet king in Memphis and retaining a garrison in Pelusium.

The restored government repudiated the agreement that Ptolemy VI had made with Antiochus IV, and began to recruit new troops from Greece.

[34] However, the Ptolemies had appealed to Rome for help over the winter; a Roman embassy led by Gaius Popillius Laenas confronted Antiochus IV at the town of Eleusis and forced him to agree to a settlement, bringing the war to an end.

[38] In 165 BC, Dionysius Petosarapis, a prominent courtier who appears to have been of native Egyptian origin, attempted to exploit the conflict in order to take control of the government.

Ptolemy VI managed to convince his younger brother that the charges were untrue and the two kings appeared together in the stadium, defusing the crisis.

[40][41][38] Another, apparently unrelated, rebellion broke out simultaneously in the Thebaid, the latest in a series of native Egyptian uprisings against Ptolemaic rule.

[44] A new branch of government, the Idios Logos (Special Account), was established to manage estates that had become royal property as a result of confiscation or abandonment.

This system of co-rule, which would be the norm for most of the rest of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was inaugurated by an amnesty decree and a royal visit to Memphis to celebrate the Egyptian new year festival.

Titus Manlius Torquatus and Gnaeus Cornelius Merula were sent as envoys to force Ptolemy VI to concede this, but he procrastinated and obfuscated.

[54] In 158 or 154 BC, Ptolemy VI's governor of Cyprus, Archias, attempted to sell the island to Demetrius I for 500 talents, but he was caught and hanged himself before this plot came to fruition.

The Senate agreed to send a second embassy led by Gnaeus Cornelius Merula and Lucius Minucius Thermus, equipped with troops, in order to enforce the transfer of Cyprus to his control.

[59] He persuaded Ptolemy VIII to withdraw from Cyprus, in exchange for continued possession of Cyrenaica, an annual payment of grain, and a promise of marriage to one of his infant daughters (probably Cleopatra Thea) once she came of age.

At age fourteen, in spring 152 BC, Ptolemy Eupator was promoted to full co-regent alongside his parents, but he died in autumn of the same year.

John Grainger proposes that Ptolemy VI provided Alexander with financial backing, naval transport, and secured Ptolemais Akko as a landing base for him.

[63] There is however no explicit evidence for this, and Boris Chrubasik presents Alexander's initial successes as accomplished without any Ptolemaic involvement, and challenges the identification of Ammonius as an Egyptian in particular.

In practice, Ptolemy VI's intervention came at a heavy cost; he took control of all the Seleucid cities along the coast, including Seleucia Pieria.

However, fearing that a unification of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms would lead to Roman intervention, Ptolemy VI decided to abandon the title.

[73] By late 145, Demetrius II had expelled all Ptolemaic troops from Syria and reasserted Seleucid control by leading his own forces all the way down to the Egyptian border.

[76] Like his predecessors, Ptolemy VI fully embraced his role as pharaoh and maintained a mutually beneficial relationship with the traditional Egyptian priesthood.

[47] In summer 161 BC, Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II gathered a synod of all the priests of Egypt in order to pass a decree granting tax relief and other benefactions to the priests in exchange for cultic honours in Egyptian temples – part of a series of decrees that had been issued under each of his predecessors, going back to Ptolemy III.

In September 157 BC, Ptolemy VI affirmed the grant of all the tax revenue from the Dodecaschoenus region to the Temple of Isis at Philae, first made by his predecessor.

By Ptolemy VI's reign, Jews had long been incorporated into the Ptolemaic army, and they enjoyed various privileges comparable to those possessed by Greeks and Macedonians in Egypt.

This achievement is heavily advertised at the Temple of Isis at Philae, which was granted the tax revenues of the Dodecaschoenus region in 157 BC.

The aforementioned inscription regarding the priests of Mandulis shows that some Nubian leaders at least were paying tribute to the Ptolemaic treasury in this period.

In order to secure the region, the strategos of Upper Egypt, Boethus, founded two new cities, named Philometris and Cleopatra in honour of the royal couple.