Ptolemy II extends Alexandria, which is rapidly becoming the literary and scientific center of the Hellenistic world, and wins renown as a great patron of the arts and sciences.

Zenon, the confidential business manager of Philadelphus' chief minister, is in 259 sent to Palestine and Syria, where his master has commercial interests.

His letters speak particularly of a trade in slaves, especially of young girls for prostitution, in whom there appears to have been a brisk trade, with export to Egypt.

Zenon's records also testify to a considerable trade in cereals, oil and wine.

Egypt's victories in the First Syrian War have solidified the kingdom's position as the undisputed naval power of the eastern Mediterranean; Ptolemy’s fleet (one hundred and twelve ships) bears the most powerful naval siege units of all time, guaranteeing the king access to the coastal cities of his empire.

The Ptolemaic sphere of power extends over the Cyclades to Samothrace, and the harbors and coast towns of Cilicia Trachea, Pamphylia, Lycia and Caria.

Antiochus II Theos, king of the Seleukid realms, launches the Second Syrian War against Ptolemy to avenge his father's losses in Phoenicia and Anatolia.

A Jewish diaspora grows, as cities like Alexandria, the Ptolemid capital, begin to acquire a substantial Jewish population.

Hellenistic Jews at Alexandria produce the Septuagint, the first version of the Hebrew Bible in Greek, the lingua franca throughout the region. (The name Septuagint, from the Latin septuaginta, “seventy”, is a later derivation from the legend that there were seventy-two translators, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, who worked in separate cells, translating the whole, and ultimately all their versions were identical. There are in fact large differences in style and usage between the Septuagint's translation of the Torah and its translations of the later books in the Old Testament. A tradition that translators were sent to Alexandria by Eleazar, the chief priest at Jerusalem, at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, a patron of literature, first appeared in the Letter of Aristeas, an unreliable source.)

Analysis of the language has established that the Torah, or Pentateuch, was translated near the middle of the third century BCE and that the rest of the Old Testament was translated in the second century BCE.

Gonatus, almost immediately after the war, joins forces with the Seleucid king Antiochus II Theos, who had succeeded his father, Antiochus I, in 260 BCE, against their common enemy Ptolemy II Philadelphus, ruler of Hellenistic Egypt.

Hamilcar continues south to Camarina, in Syracusan territory, presumably with the intent to persuade the Syracusans to rejoin the Carthaginian side.

Hannibal Gisco had been recalled, but his fall from favor had not lasted not very long.

In 258, he is sent to Sardinia, which he has to defend against the Romans.

However, he is no match for the Roman commander Gaius Sulpicius Paterculus, who defeats him at the small-scale battle of Sulci, in which the Carthaginian loss was negligible.

Having lost the confidence of his peers, however, Hannibal Gisco is subsequently executed for incompetence shortly afterwards, together with other defeated Punic generals.

According to some references, he was crucified by his own men.

The Romans are able to regain the initiative in the next year, 258 BCE, by retaking Enna and …

…Camarina.

The Romans forces in central Sicily take the town of Mytistraton, which they have attacked twice previously.

The Romans also move in the north by marching across the northern coast toward Panormus, but are not able to take the city.