Ptolemy Ceraunus was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty and briefly king of Macedon.
16 Facts About Ptolemy Ceraunus
2.
Ptolemy Ceraunus fled to King Lysimachus of Thrace and Macedon where he was involved in court intrigue that led to the fall of that kingdom in 281 BC to Seleucus I, whom he then assassinated.
3.
Ptolemy Ceraunus then seized the throne of Macedon, which he ruled for seventeen months before his death in battle against the Gauls in early 279 BC.
4.
Ptolemy Ceraunus was the eldest son of Ptolemy Ceraunus I Soter, King of Egypt, and his first wife Eurydice, daughter of Antipater, regent of Macedon.
5.
Ptolemy Ceraunus was thus responsible for the death of the last surviving successor of Alexander the Great.
6.
However, Hollstein has argued that these were coins of Ptolemy Ceraunus, intended to present him as the legitimate heir of Lysimachus and in possession of a formidable force of elephants.
7.
The issue was very small; Ptolemy Ceraunus never issued coins in his own name.
8.
Justin reports that Ptolemy Ceraunus provided Pyrrhus with a large number of troops: 5,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, and 50 elephants, and says that the alliance was sealed by the marriage of a daughter of Ptolemy Ceraunus to Pyrrhus.
9.
Ptolemy Ceraunus entered into negotiations with Arsinoe II and proposed to marry her, even though she was his half-sister.
10.
Ptolemy Ceraunus agreed on the condition that her young sons were kept safe.
11.
Ptolemy Ceraunus was next attacked by a son of Lysimachus and an Illyrian king called Monunius.
12.
Diodorus Siculus reports that the impetuous Ptolemy Ceraunus refused to wait for his full force to arrive before attacking Bolgius' army, while Justin reports that he rudely rebuffed diplomatic overtures from Bolgius.
13.
Ptolemy Ceraunus rudely refused help from a force of 20.000 Dardanians, offered by a Dardanian king.
14.
Ptolemy Ceraunus' death brought anarchy, as the Gauls streamed through the rest of Greece and into Asia Minor.
15.
Ptolemy Ceraunus apparently had a daughter, who married Pyrrhus in late 281 or 280 BC.
16.
Ptolemy Ceraunus agreed to marry Lysimachus' widow Arsinoe II, his own half-sister, in late 281 or early 280 BC, as part of a plot to seize the city of Cassandreia and murder her children.