CLEOPATRA'S CONQUEST OF CÆSAR AND ANTONY B.C. 51-30 JOHN P. MAHAFFY (Several Egyptian princesses of the line of the Ptolemies bore the name of Cleopatra, but history, romance, and tragedy are all illumined with the story of oneCleopatra the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes.

Ptolemy Auletes, when dying, had taken great care not to bequeath his mortgaged kingdom to his Roman creditors.

Cæsar adjudicated the throne according to the will of Auletes; he even restored Cyprus to Egypt, and proposed to send the younger brother and his sister Arsinoë to govern it; but he also insisted on a repayment, in part at least, of the enormous outstanding debt of Auletes to him and his party.

Cæsar adjudicated the throne according to the will of Auletes; he even restored Cyprus to Egypt, and proposed to send the younger brother and his sister Arsinoë to govern it; but he also insisted on a repayment, in part at least, of the enormous outstanding debt of Auletes to him and his party.

Cæsar completes his conquest of Gaul. Cleopatra, on the death of her father, Ptolemy Auletes, becomes queen of Egypt.

From thence the goods were transported to the city of Coptus, and afterwards to Alexandria, which became rich and famous, through its trade with India, beyond any other city in the world; insomuch that it is asserted that the customs of Alexandria yielded every year to Ptolemy Auletes, the father of Cleopatra, seven millions and a half of gold, though the traffic had then scarcely subsisted in that direction for twenty years.

At length Lathyrus died, and left the kingdom to his son, Ptolemy Auletes, who was the great Cleopatra's father.

We can not soften the picture which is exhibited to our view in the history of this celebrated family, by regarding the mother of Auletes, in the masculine and merciless traits and principles which she displayed so energetically throughout her terrible career, as an exception to the general character of the princesses who appeared from time to time in the line.

Ptolemy Auletes, Cleopatra's father, was perhaps, in personal character, the most dissipated, degraded, and corrupt of all the sovereigns in the dynasty.

They thought that the sons were too young to attempt to reign in such an emergency, as it was very probable that Auletes, the father, would attempt to recover his kingdom.

In the mean time, Auletes, the father, went on toward Rome.

He remembered the efforts which he himself had made for the cause of Ptolemy Auletes, at Rome, and the success of those efforts in securing that monarch's restorationan event through which alone the young Ptolemy had been enabled to attain the crown.

He claimed the six thousand talents which Ptolemy Auletes had formerly promised him for procuring a treaty of alliance with Rome, and he called upon Pothinus to pay the balance due.

He told them that he did not pretend to any right to judge between Cleopatra and Ptolemy as their superior, but only in the performance of the duty solemnly assigned by Ptolemy Auletes, the father, to the Roman people, whose representative he was.

The original will which Ptolemy Auletes had executed had been deposited in the public archives of Alexandria, and carefully preserved there.

Besides Cleopatra and Ptolemy, there were two other children of Ptolemy Auletes in the royal family at this time.

Some of them were Roman soldiers, men who had come with the army of Mark Antony from Syria when Ptolemy Auletes, Cleopatra's father, was reinstated on the throne, and had been left in Egypt, in Ptolemy's service, when Antony returned to Rome.

They had sent one army into Egypt before, under the command of Mark Antony, under the pretense of restoring Ptolemy Auletes to the throne.

He dealt largely in the stock of the tax-companies; he lent money to cities in several provinces; he lent money to Ptolemy Auletes, King of Egypt, both before he was expelled from his kingdom by sedition, and afterwards when he was in Rome in 59 and 58, intriguing to induce the senate to have him restored.

[Footnote 51: This is a younger brother of that Ptolemy Auletes who was expelled from Egypt and subsequently restored (see chapter 55), and is the same one mentioned in Book Thirty-eight, chapter 30.]