pon
the stage, having been born sixty-nine years before Christ,--about a
century before the new revolutionary religion was proclaimed in Judea.
Her father was a Ptolemy, and she succeeded him on the throne of Egypt
when quite young,--the last of a famous dynasty that had reigned nearly
three hundred years. The Ptolemies, descended from one of Alexander's
generals, reigned in great magnificence at Alexandria, which was the
commercial centre of the world, whose ships whitened the
Mediterranean,--that great inland lake, as it were, in the centre of the
Roman Empire, around whose shores were countless cities and villas and
works of art. Alexandria was a city of schools, of libraries and
museums, of temples and of palaces, as well as a mart of commerce. Its
famous library was the largest in the world, and was the pride of the
age and of the empire. Learned men from all countries came to this
capital to study science, philosophy, and art. It was virtually a
Grecian city, and the language of the leading people was Greek. It was
rivalled in provincial magnificence only by Antioch, the seat of the old
Syrian civilization, also a Greek capital, so far as the governing
classes could make it one. Greece, politically ruined, still sent forth
those influences which made her civilization potent in every land.

Cleopatra, the last of the line of Grecian sovereigns in Egypt, was
essentially Greek in her features, her language, and her manners. There
was nothing African about her, as we understand the term African, except
that her complexion may have been darkened by the intermarriage of the
Ptolemies; and I have often wondered why so learned and classical a man
as Story should have given to this queen, in his famous statue, such
thick lips and African features, which no more marked her than Indian
features mark the family of the Braganzas on the throne of Brazil. She
was not even Coptic, like Athanasius and Saint Augustine. On the ancient
coins and medals her features are severely classical.

Nor is it probable that any of the peculiarities of the ancient Egyptian
kings marked the dynasty of the Ptolemies. No purely Egyptian customs
lingered in the palaces of Alexandria. The old deities of Isis and
Osiris gave place to the worship of Jupiter, Minerva, and Venus. The
wonders of pristine Egypt were confined to Memphis and Thebes and the
dilapidated cities of the Nile. The mysteries of the antique Egyptian
temples were no more known to th