hematical work published in the name of the queen, called the Canon
of Cleopatra.

Didymus was another of the writers that we hear of at that time. He was
a man of great industry, both in reading and writing; but when we are
told that he wrote three thousand five hundred volumes, or rolls, it
rather teaches us that a great many rolls of papyrus would be wanted to
make a modern book, than what number of books he wrote. These writings
were mostly on verbal criticism, and all have long since perished except
some notes or scholia on the Hiad and Odyssey which bear his name, and
are still printed in some editions of Homer.

Dioscorides, the physician of Cleopatra, has left a work on herbs and
minerals, and on their uses in medicine; also on poisons and poisonous
bites. To these he has added a list of prescriptions. His works
have been much read in all ages, and have only been set aside by the
discoveries of the last few centuries. Serapion, another physician, was
perhaps of this reign.

[Illustration: 333.jpg RUINS OF HERMONTHIS]

He followed medicine rather than surgery; and, while trusting chiefly to
his experience gained in clinical or bedside practice, was laughed at by
the surgeons as an empiric.

The small temple at Hermonthis, near Thebes, seems to have been built
in this reign, and it is dedicated to Mandoo, or the sun, in the name
of Cleopatra and Cassation. It is unlike the older Egyptian temples in
being much less of a fortress; for what in them is a strongly walled
courtyard, with towers to guard the narrow doorway, is here a small
space between two double rows of columns, wholly open, without walls,
while the roofed building is the same as in the older temples. Near it
is a small pool, seventy feet square, with stone sides, which was used
in the funerals and other religious rites.

The murder of Caesar did not raise the character of the Romans, or make
them more fit for self-government. It was followed by the well-known
civil war; and when, by the battle of Philippi and the death of Brutus
and Cassius, his party was again uppermost, the Romans willingly bowed
their necks to his adopted son Octavianus, and his friend Mark Antony.

It is not easy to determine which side Cleopatra meant to take in
the war between Antony and the murderers of Caesar; she did not openly
declare herself, and she probably waited to join that which fortune
favoured. Allienus had been sent to her by Dolobella to ask for such
troop