ot an enemy, and yet he conducted himself
toward them in an overbearing and insolent manner. He had agreed to make
arrangements for supplying them with food, and he did this by procuring
damaged provisions of a most wretched quality; and when the soldiers
remonstrated, he said to them, that they who lived at other people's
cost had no right to complain of their fare. He caused wooden and
earthen vessels to be used in the palace, and said, in explanation, that
he had been compelled to sell all the gold and silver plate of the royal
household to meet the exactions of Caesar. He busied himself, too, about
the city, in endeavoring to excite odium against Caesar's proposal to
hear and decide the question at issue between Cleopatra and Ptolemy.
Ptolemy was a sovereign, he said, and was not amenable to any foreign
power whatever. Thus, without the courage or the energy to attempt any
open, manly, and effectual system of hostility, he contented himself
with making all the difficulty in his power, by urging an incessant
pressure of petty, vexatious, and provoking, but useless annoyances.
Caesar's demands may have been unjust, but they were bold, manly, and
undisguised. The eunuch may have been right in resisting them; but the
mode was so mean and contemptible, that mankind have always taken part
with Caesar in the sentiments which they have formed as spectators of the
contest.

With the very small force which Caesar had at his command, and shut up as
he was in the midst of a very great and powerful city, in which both the
garrison and the population were growing more and more hostile to him
every day, he soon found his situation was beginning to be attended with
very serious danger. He could not retire from the scene. He probably
would not have retired if he could have done so. He remained, therefore,
in the city, conducting himself all the time with prudence and
circumspection, but yet maintaining, as at first, the same air of
confident self-possession and superiority which always characterized his
demeanor. He, however, dispatched a messenger forthwith into Syria, the
nearest country under the Roman sway, with orders that several legions
which were posted there should be embarked and forwarded to Alexandria
with the utmost possible celerity.

CHAPTER VI.

CLEOPATRA AND Caesar.

Cleopatra's perplexity.--She resolves To go to Alexandria.--Cleopatra's
message to Caesar.--Caesar's reply.--Apollodorus's stratagem.--Cleopatra