The young king Ptolemy VII is executed in 144 BCE, following his mother's marriage to his uncle, who then takes the throne as "Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II", the name deliberately recalling his ancestor Ptolemy III Euergetes, and has himself proclaimed as pharaoh.

He has meanwhile taken his revenge on the intellectuals of Alexandria who had opposed him, engaging in mass purges and expulsions that include Aristarchus of Samothrace and Apollodorus, leaving Alexandria a changed city.

In 145 BCE, "he expelled all intellectuals: philologists, philosophers, professors of geometry, musicians, painters, schoolteachers, physicians and others, with the result that these brought 'education to Greeks and barbarians elsewhere,' as mentioned by an author who may have been one of the king's victims" (Menecles of Barca, FGrHist 270 F 9).

Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, commonly abbreviated FGrHist or FGrH (Fragments of the Greek Historians), is a collection by Felix Jacoby of the works of those ancient Greek historians whose works have been lost, but of which we have citations, extracts or summaries.

It is mainly founded on Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller's previous Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (1841–1870).