wife, and to
take, instead, another woman, whom she fancied she could make more
subservient to her will. The mother and the son went on together for a
time, Lathyrus being nominally king, though her determination that she
would rule, and his struggles to resist her intolerable tyranny, made
their wretched household the scene of terrible a perpetual quarrels. At
last Cleopatra seized a number of Lathyrus's servants, the eunuchs who
were employed in various offices about the palace, and after wounding
and mutilating them in a horrible manner, she exhibited them to the
populace, saying that it was Lathyrus that had inflicted the cruel
injuries upon the sufferers, and calling upon them to arise and punish
him for his crimes. In this and in other similar ways she awakened among
the people of the court and of the city such an animosity against
Lathyrus, that they expelled him from the country. There followed a long
series of cruel and bloody wars, between the mother and the son in the
course of which each party perpetrated against the other almost every
imaginable deed of atrocity and crime. Alexander, the youngest son was
so afraid of his terrible mother, that he did not dare to remain in
Alexandria with her, but went into a sort of banishment of his own
accord. He, however, finally returned to Egypt. His mother immediately
supposed that he was intending to disturb her possession of power, and
resolved to destroy him. He became acquainted with her designs, and,
grown desperate by the long-continued pressure of her intolerable
tyranny, he resolved to bring the anxiety and terror in which he lived
to an end by killing her. This he did, and then fled the country.
Lathyrus, his brother, then returned, and reigned for the rest of his
days in a tolerable degree of quietness and peace. 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 trails 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. In ambition, selfishness, unnatural and reckless cruelty, and
utter disregard of every virtuous principle and of every domestic tie,
she was but the type and representative of all