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Hence the Egyptian monarchy was left standing for two reigns longer. On the death of Ptolemy Alexander, the Alexandrians might easily have changed their weak and wicked rulers, and formed a government for themselves, if they had known how.
Hadrian now occupied the restored palace, not as an architect from Rome but as sovereign of the world; he had shown himself to the Alexandrians and had been received with rejoicings and an unheard-of display in his honor.
Alexandria was a spot in which Europe met Asia, and each wondered at the strangeness of the other. Of the Alexandrians themselves we receive a very unfavourable account from their countryman, Dion Chrysostom. With their wealth, they had those vices which usually follow or cause the loss of national independence. They were eager for nothing but food and horse-races.
Cleopatra as Queen, and Rome that is Caesar, the dictator, her friend, as guardian meant their removal from power, their destruction, and they resisted violently. "The Egyptians and even the Alexandrians supported them. The young King hated nothing more than the yoke of the unloved sister, who was so greatly his superior.
The fate of the town, which had ventured to thwart the plans of the master of the world and had brought him within a hair's-breadth of destruction, lay in Cæsar's hands; but he was too much of a ruler to be sensitive, and dealt with the Alexandrians as with the Massiliots.
'The old Pioneer is now dead, he told us, 'as dead as the Dodo or the Great Auk. 'No more need we shiver in our Kaffir blankets at Kaffir Stores 'fifty miles from the dead-ends of rail-less post-towns. "Le roi est mort." Malaria is dead or dying so far as Alexandra is concerned. We Alexandrians are now becoming wholesome Englishmen in a wholesome White Man's country.
Augustus threatened a severe punishment to the Alexandrians in the building of a new capital. Only four miles from the Canopic or eastern gate of Alexandria he laid out the plan of his new city of Meopolis, on the spot where he had routed Mark Antony's forces. Here he began several large temples, and removed to them the public sacrifices and the priesthood from the temples of Alexandria.
In the meantime he would rest a week or two, with the kind permission of the Alexandrians, and work upon his "Commentaries" no, he would not see either Cleopatra or Ptolemy: any information desired he would get through his trusted emissaries. In the service of Cleopatra was a Sicilian slave who had been her personal servant since she was a little girl.
Of the two former, whose writings have perished, we can indeed only conjecture this; respecting the poems of Catullus we can still form a judgment. He too depends in subject and form on the Alexandrians. We find in his collection translations of pieces of Callimachus, and these not altogether the very good, but the very difficult.
His score with the Alexandrians must be settled later, and it was in his power to make them atone with their blood and bitterly rue the deeds of this night.
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