his reign, leaving four
children, namely, Cleopatra, Arsinoe, and two Ptolemies.

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CHAPTER VII--CLEOPATRA AND HER BROTHERS

_Pompey, Caesar, and Antony in Egypt--Cleopatra's extravagance and
intrigues--Octavianus annexes Egypt--Retrospect._

Ptolemy Neus Dionysus had by his will left his kingdom to Cleopatra and
Ptolemy, his elder daughter and elder son, who, agreeably to the custom
of the country, were to marry one another and reign with equal power.
He had sent one copy of his will to Rome, to be lodged in the public
treasury, and in it he called upon the Roman people, by all the gods and
by the treaties by which they were bound, to see that it was obeyed.
He had also begged them to undertake the guardianship of his son. The
senate voted Pompey tutor to the young king, or governor of Egypt; and
the Alexandrians in the third year of his reign sent sixty ships of war
to help the great Pompey in his struggle against Julius Caesar for the
chief power in Rome. But Pompey's power was by that time drawing to an
end, and the votes of the senate could give no strength to the weak:
hence the eunuch Pothinus, who had the care of the elder Ptolemy, was
governor of Egypt, and his first act was to declare his young pupil
king, and to set at nought the will of Auletes, by which Cleopatra was
joined with him on the throne.

Cleopatra fled into Syria, and, with a manly spirit which showed what
she was afterwards to be, raised an army and marched back to the borders
of Egypt, to claim her rights by force of arms. It was in the fourth
year of her reign, when the Egyptian troops were moved to Pelusium to
meet her, and the two armies were within a few leagues of one another,
that Pompey, who had been the friend of Auletes when the king wanted a
friend, landed on the shores of Egypt in distress, and almost alone. His
army had just been beaten at Pharsalia, and he was flying from Caesar,
and he hoped to receive from the son the kindness which he had shown
to the father. But gratitude is a virtue little known in palaces, and
Ptolemy had been cradled in princely selfishness. In this civil war
between Pompey and Caesar, the Alexandrians would have been glad to be
the friends of both, but that was now out of the question; Pompey's
coming made it necessary for them to choose which they should join, and
Ptolemy's council, like cowards, only wished to side with the strong.

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