"You are confounding this jealous and most unamiable and ill-tempered
tyrant of the universe with the Absolute of Aristotle!" cried Euergetes;
"he stigmatises most of what you and I and all rational Greeks require
for the enjoyment of life as sin--sin upon sin. And yet if my easily
persuadable brother governed at Alexandria, I believe the shrewd priests
might succeed in stamping him as a worshipper of that magnified
schoolmaster, who punishes his untutored brood with fire and torment."

"I cannot deny," replied Cleopatra, "that even to me the doctrine of the
Jews has something very fearful in it, and that to adopt it seems to me
tantamount to confiscating all the pleasures of life.--But enough of such
things, which I should no more relish as a daily food than you do.
Let us rejoice in that we are Hellenes, and let us now go to the banquet.
I fear you have found a very unsatisfactory substitute for what you
sought in coming up here."

"No--no. I feel strangely excited to-day, and my work with Aristarchus
would have led to no issue. It is a pity that we should have begun to
talk of that barbarian rubbish; there are so many other subjects more
pleasing and more cheering to the mind. Do you remember how we used to
read the great tragedians and Plato together?"

"And how you would often interrupt our tutor Agatharchides in his
lectures on geography, to point out some mistake! Did you prosecute
those studies in Cyrene?"

"Of course. It really is a pity, Cleopatra, that we should no longer
live together as we did formerly. There is no one, not even Aristarchus,
with whom I find it more pleasant and profitable to converse and discuss
than with you. If only you had lived at Athens in the time of Pericles,