lluring person and manners,
of a very noble and generous spirit, and of the very highest station. He
loved her, and she could not refrain from loving him in return. She
committed her cause entirely into his hands, confided to him all her
interests, and gave herself up wholly into his power.
Nor was the unbounded confidence which she reposed in him undeserved, so
far as related to his efforts to restore her to her throne. The legions
which Caesar had sent for into Syria had not yet arrived, and his
situation in Alexandria was still very defenseless and very precarious.
He did not, however, on this account, abate in the least degree the
loftiness and self confidence of the position which he had assumed, but
he commenced immediately the work of securing Cleopatra's restoration.
This quiet assumption of the right and power to arbitrate and decide
such a question as that of the claim to the throne, in a country where
he had accidentally landed and found rival claimants disputing for the
succession, while he was still wholly destitute of the means of
enforcing the superiority which he so coolly assumed, marks the immense
ascendency which the Roman power had attained at this time in the
estimation of mankind, and is, besides, specially characteristic of the
genius and disposition of Caesar.
Very soon after Cleopatra had come to him, Caesar sent for the young
Ptolemy, and urged upon him the duty and expediency of restoring
Cleopatra. Ptolemy was beginning now to attain an age at which he might
be supposed to have some opinion of his own on such a question. He
declared himself utterly opposed to any such design. In the course of
the conversation he learned that Cleopatra had arrived at Alexandria,
and that she was then concealed in Caesar's palace. This intelligence
awakened in his mind the greatest excitement and indignation. He went
away from Caesar's presence in a rage. He tore the diadem which he was
accustomed to wear in the streets, from his head, threw it down, and
trampled it under his feet. He declared to the people that he was
betrayed, and displayed the most violent indications of vexation and
chagrin. The chief subject of his complaint, in the attempts which he
made to awaken the popular indignation against Caesar and the Romans, was
the disgraceful impropriety of the position which his sister had assumed
in surrendering herself as she had done to Caesar. It is most probable,
however, unless his character was very
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