Cicero, govern the kingdom in her own name, but on his behalf; and sailed for Italy, taking with him the sixth legion, and the princess Arsinoë as his prisoner. While engaged in this petty warfare in Alexandria, Cæsar had been ad Att. xi. appointed dictator in Rome, where his power was exercised by Mark Antony, his master of the horse; and, for above six months, he had not written one letter home, as though ashamed to write about the foolish difficulty he had entangled himself in, until he had got out of it. 15, 17. Dion Cass. (16) On reaching Rome, Cæsar amused the people and himself with a grand triumphal show, in which, lib. xliii. among the other prisoners of war, the princess Arsinoë followed his car in chains; and, among the works of art and nature which were got together to prove to the gazing crowd the greatness of his conquests, was that remarkable African animal, the camelopard, then Florus, for the first time seen in Rome. In one chariot was a statue of the Nile-god; and in another, the Pharos lighthouse, having on the top a star or fire, with painted flames. Nor was this the last of Cæsar's triumphs; for soon afterwards Cleopatra, and her brother Ptolemy, then twelve years old, who was called her husband, came to Rome as his guests, and dwelt for some time with him in his house. lib. iv. 2. Cicero, XV. 15. (17) Although the history of Egypt, at this time, is almost lost in that of Rome, we must not be led too far out of our path. It is enough to say, that within five years of Cæsar's landing in Alexandria, and finding that, by the death of Pompey, he was master of the world, he paid his own life a the forfeit for crushing his country's liberty. The ad Atticum, queen of Egypt, with her infant son Cæsarion, xiv. 8, 20; about four years old, was then in Rome, living with Cæsar in his villa on the further side of the Tiber. On Cæsar's death, her first wish was to get the child acknowledged by the Roman senate, as her colleague on the throne of Egypt, and as a friend of the Roman people. With this view, she applied to Cicero for help, making him an offer of some books or works of art; but he was offended at her haughtiness, and refused her gifts. Besides, she was more likely to thwart than to help the cause for which he was struggling. He was alarmed at hearing that she was soon to give birth to another child. He did not want any more Cæsars. He hoped she would miscarry, as he wished she had before miscarried. So he bluntly refused to undertake her cause. On this, she thought herself unsafe in Rome; she fled privately, and reached Egypt in safety with Cæsarion; but we hear of no second child by Julius. Plutarch. Vit. Anton. (18) The Romans were now masters of Egypt, and Cleopatra could hardly hope to reign but by the help of one of the great generals, who were struggling for the sovereignty of the republic. Among these was the young Sextus Pompeius, whose large fleet made him for a time master of Sicily, and of the sea; and he was said to have been admitted by the queen of Egypt as a lover. But he was able to be of but little use to her in return for her favours, as his fleet was soon defeated by Octavianus. Valerius B.C. 45. (19) Cæsar had left behind him, in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, a large body of Roman troops, in the pay and nominally under the orders of Cleopatra, Max. iv. 1. but in reality to keep Egypt in obedience. There they lived, as if above all Egyptian law or Roman discipline, indulging in the vices of that luxurious capital. When some of them, in a riot, killed two sons of Bibulus the consul, Cleopatra was either afraid or unable to punish the murderers; the most she could do was to get them sent in chains into Syria to the grieving father, who, with true greatness of mind, sent them back to the Egyptian legions, saying that it was for the senate to punish them, not for him. (20) While Ptolemy, her second husband, was a boy, and could claim no share of the government, he was allowed to Porphyrius, ap. Scalig. live with all the outward show of royalty; but as soon as he reached the age of fifteen, at which he might call himself her equal, and would soon be her master, Cleopatra 44 Fig. 25. B.C. 44. had him put to death. She had then reigned four years with her elder brother, and four years with her younger brother; and from that time forward she reigned alone, calling her child by Cæsar her colleague on the throne (see Fig. 25). Pliny, lib. xviii. 57. (21) At a time when vice and luxury claimed the thoughts of all who were not busy in the civil wars, we cannot hope to find the fruits of genius in Alexandria; but the mathematics are plants of a hardy growth, and are not choked so easily as poetry and history. Sosigenes was then the first astronomer in Egypt; and Julius Cæsar was guided by his advice in setting right the Roman Calendar. He was a careful and painstaking mathematician, and, after fixing the length of the year at three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, he three times changed the beginning of the year, in his doubts as to the day on which the equinox fell; for the astronomer could then only make two observations in a year, with a view to learn the time of the equinox, by seeing when the sun shone in the plane of the equator. (22) Photinus, the mathematician, wrote both on arithmetic and geometry, and was usually thought the author Abul-Pha- of a mathematical work, published in the name of the queen, called the Canon of Cleopatra. ragius. (23) Didymus was another of the writers that we hear of at that time. He was a man of great industry, both Suidas. in reading and writing; but when we are told that he wrote three thousand five hundred volumes, or rolls, it rather teaches us that a great many rolls of papyrus would be wanted to make a modern book, than what number of books he wrote. These writings were mostly on verbal criticism, and all have long since perished, except some notes or Scholia on the Iliad and Odyssey which bear his name, and are still printed at the foot of the page in some editions of Homer. (24) Dioscorides, the physician of Cleopatra, has left a work on herbs and minerals, and on their uses in medicine; also on poisons and poisonous bites. To these he has added a list of prescriptions. His works have been much read in all ages, and have only been set aside by the discoveries of the last few centuries. (25) Serapion, another physician, was perhaps of this Celsus, lib. 1. reign. He followed medicine rather than surgery; and, while trusting chiefly to his experience, gained in clinical or bedside practice, was laughed at by the surgeons as an empiric. Wilkinson, Denon, pl. 51. (26) The small temple at Hermonthis, near Thebes, seems to have been built in this reign, and it is dedicated to Mandoo, or the sun, in the name of Cleopatra Thebes. and Cæsarion (see Fig. 26). It is unlike the older Egyptian temples, in being much less of a fortress; for what in them is a strongly-walled courtyard, with towers to guard the narrow doorway, is here a small space between two double rows of columns, wholly open, without walls, while the roofed building is the same as in the older temples. Near it is a small pool, seventy feet square, with stone sides, which was used in the funerals and other religious rites. Mandoo, the god of this temple, would seem to have belonged originally to Lower Egypt, though not unknown in Thebes in the time of Rameses II.; but it is only in these later days that we find temples built for his worship in the Upper country. We have before seen, that when Thebes fell from its high rank, Mandoo-Ra usurped the place of Amun-Ra on some of the monuments of that once proud city; and that at some later time the priests of Thebes were allowed to displace Mandoo, and give back to Amun-Ra his own honours. Now, again, we find the worship of Mandoo in the neighbourhood of Thebes, though not admitted into that city; and in the next reign we shall see a temple built for his worship in Nubia. (27) The murder of Cæsar did not raise the character of the Romans, or make them more fit for self-government. It was followed by the well-known civil war; and when, by the battle of Philippi and the death of Brutus and Cassius, his party was again uppermost, the Romans willingly bowed their necks to his adopted son Octavianus, and his friend Mark Antony. iv. (28) It is not easy to determine which side Cleopatra meant to take in the war between Antony and the murderers of Cæsar. She did not openly declare herself, and Appianus, she probably waited to join that which fortune Bell. Civ. favoured. Allienus had been sent to her by Dolobella to ask for such troops as she could spare to help Antony, and he led a little army of four Epist. xii. Roman legions out of Egypt into Syria; but when there, he added them to the force which Cassius had assembled against Antony. Whether he acted through treachery Cicero, 11. |