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Unluckily, Egyptian records contain nothing which could have much weight in estimating the character of Cleopatra, though we have likenesses representing the Queen alone, or with her son Caesarion. The upper part of the female figure is in a state of tolerable preservation, and shows a young and attractive face.
"In battle and mortal peril, amid blood and the clank of arms, Caesar and Cleopatra spent half a year ere they were permitted to pluck the fruit of their common labour. The dictator now made her Queen of Egypt, and gave her, as co-regent, her youngest brother, a boy not half her own age. To Arsinoe he granted the life she had forfeited, but sent her to Italy. "Peace followed the victory.
All these men I worked upon with doubtful words, sapping their loyalty; and I caused many to fall away, and yet none could bear an evil report of what I had said. Also, Cleopatra sent me to Memphis, there to move the Priests and Governors that they should gather men in Upper Egypt for the defence of Alexandria.
Word reached Rome that these children of Cleopatra were being trained as if they were to rule the world perhaps it was so to be! Octavius Cæsar scowled. For Antony to wed his sister, and then desert her, and bring up a brood of barbarians to menace the State, was a serious offense. An order was sent commanding Antony to return requests and prayer all having proved futile and fruitless.
Finally the Imperator determined to force a crisis. To leave Egypt without humbling Pothinus meant a great lowering of prestige. He sent off a private message to Palestine that Cleopatra should come to Alexandria.
Of their children Antyllus was slain immediately, though he was betrothed to the daughter of Caesar, and had taken refuge in his father's hero-shrine which Cleopatra had built. Caesarion was fleeing to Ethiopia, but was overtaken on the road and murdered. Cleopatra was married to Juba the son of Juba.
The longing of the awakening heart, the burning ambition which already kindled the soul of the child, had alike found satisfaction, and the world beheld how the mortal woman, Cleopatra, for her lover and herself, could steep this meagre life with the joys of the immortals.
The descendant of that other his ancestral Alcides, late offshoot of the god whom he loved and who so long was loth to leave him, is here as in history the visible one man revealed who could grapple for a second with very Rome and seem to throw it, more lightly than he could cope with Cleopatra.
True, the architect had to wage a daily battle with the old philosopher, who termed it an abuse of hospitality to remain so long at his friend's with his whole family; but thus far Gorgias had won the victory, even against Berenike, who wished to take her father and his household to her own home. Cleopatra had purchased the house and garden of Didymus at thrice their value, the architect added.
The great rationalist hero who first conquered Britain, whether or no he was the detached demigod of "Cæsar and Cleopatra," was certainly a Latin of the Latins, and described these islands when he found them with all the curt positivism of his pen of steel. But even Julius Cæsar's brief account of the Britons leaves on us something of this mystery, which is more than ignorance of fact.
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