these lofty hopes. A tinge of scorn coloured her remarks concerning him
at that time, but here also her heart had its share.

"Pompey, to whom her father owed his restoration to the throne, she
considered a lucky man, rather than a great and wise one. Of Julius
Caesar, on the contrary, long before she met him, she spoke with ardent
enthusiasm, though she knew that he would gladly have made Egypt a Roman
province. The greatest deed which she expected from the energetic Julius
was that he would abolish the republic, which she hated, and soar upward
to tyrannize over the arrogant rulers of the world--only she would fain
have seen Antony in his place. How often in those days she used magic
art to assure herself of his future! Her father was interested in these
things, especially as, through them, and the power of the mighty Isis, he
expected to obtain relief from his many and severe sufferings.

"Cleopatra's brothers were still mere boys, completely dependent upon
their guardian, Pothinus, to whom the King left the care of the
government, and their tutor, Theodotus, a clever but unprincipled
rhetorician. These two men and Achillas, the commander of the troops,
would gladly have aided Dionysus, the King's oldest male heir, to obtain
the control of the state, in order afterwards to rule him, but the flute-
player baffled their plans. You know that in his last will he made
Cleopatra, his favourite child, his successor, but her brother Dionysus
was to share the throne as her husband. This caused much scandal in
Rome, though it was an old custom of the house of Ptolemy, and suited the
Egyptians.

"The flute-player died. Cleopatra became Queen, and at the same time
the wife of a husband ten years old, for whom she did not even possess
the natural gift of sisterly tenderness. But with the obstinate child