CLEOPATRA AND CÆSAR


The sole surviving daughter of the great King Ptolemy of Egypt,
Cleopatra was seventeen years old when her father died.

By his will the King made her joint heir to the throne with her
brother Ptolemy, several years her junior. And according to the custom
not unusual among royalty at that time, it was provided that Ptolemy
should become the husband of Cleopatra.

She was a woman—her brother a child.

She had intellect, ambition, talent. She knew the history of her own
country, and that of Assyria, Greece and Rome; and all the written
languages of the world were to her familiar. She had been educated by
the philosophers, who had brought from Greece the science of
Pythagoras and Plato. Her companions had been men—not women, or
nurses, or pious, pedantic priests.

Through the veins of her young body pulsed and leaped life, plus.

She abhorred the thought of an alliance with her weak-chinned brother;
and the ministers of State, who suggested another husband as a
compromise, were dismissed with a look.

They said she was intractable, contemptuous, unreasonable, and was
scheming for the sole possession of the throne.