Cleopatra: A Study. Henry Houssaye
presented a pediment sculptured in Parian marble; there an Egyptian temple, vast, squat, mysterious, showed its granite mass whose quadrangular pillars bore on the four faces of their cubic capitals the head of the god Hathor. On terraces covered with beds of roses, and shaded by sycamores, mimosas, and palms, rose palaces surrounded by porticos supported by columns of lotus form, alleys of pylons, pavilions in the form of conic towers, open kiosks, tribunes supported by caryatides. In the squares, at the junction of the streets, before the great edifices arose sculptured heads of Mercury, Osirian colossi, statues of the Greek gods, altars, heroums, dominated at intervals by lofty obelisks and tall masts fixed in the ground whose many colored flags fluttered in the breeze.
Among these endless monuments would first be noticed, at the extremity of the cape, the temple of Isis Lochias, and a noble royal villa; then before the Closed Port of the Kings the shipyards and the arsenal buildings. There began the Bruchium. Enclosed by lofty walls and hanging gardens the Bruchium was a city within the city—the City of the Ptolemies. Each of the Lagidæ had built a palace, erected a temple, opened gushing fountains, planted groves of acacias and sycamores, created ponds where bloomed water-lilies, and the blue lotus flower. Strabo applied to the monuments of the Bruchium the line of the Odyssey: “One produces the other.” Near the various palaces of the kings and their vast appurtenances arose the temple of Chronos, the temple of Isis Pelusia, the lesser Serapium, the temple of Poseidon [Neptune], the gymnasium with its porticos of a stadium in extent, the theater, the covered gallery, the library containing seven hundred thousand volumes.
Finally the Soma, the immense mausoleum in which Alexander’s body rested in a coffin of solid gold, afterwards replaced by one of glass. One other edifice of the Bruchium attracted the eye by its vast proportions and its epistyle crowned by a dome. It was the celebrated museum of Alexandria, at once a school, a monastery, and an academy.
Grammarians, poets, philosophers, and astronomers lived there together at the expense of the Ptolemies, and it was maliciously called the Cage of the Muses—a splendid cage, however, in which sang Theocritus, Callimachus, Apollonius, and whence arose the noble voice of the Alexandrian philosophy.
Beyond the temple of Poseidon the quays inflected in a broken line towards the southwest. There also edifice succeeded to edifice—the exchange, the temple of Bendis, the temple of Arsinoë, and the immense Apostasia in which was gathered the merchandise of the whole world. Beyond the Heptastadium was the old port with its great shipbuilding yards, and farther to the west, outside the walls, the suburb of the Necropolis, the funeral quarter of the embalmers.
II.
Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city. Whilst the cities of Upper Egypt and Heptanomis had preserved the national character, in the Delta the Hellenic civilization had been grafted on the Egyptian, or rather they went side by side. The laws and decrees were written in both languages; the priesthood, the government, the police, the tribunals, the whole administration belonged equally to both; the army was composed of Greek and Gallic mercenaries, of Cilician robbers, of fugitive Roman slaves. In Alexandria, where for more than two centuries unnumbered colonies had settled, the native race dwelt together in the ancient Egyptian city of Rhakotis, but they composed at the most only one-third of the population. The Jews, who inhabited a distinct quarter where they had their ethnarch and their Sanhedrim, were in the proportion of one to three. From the Pharos to the Serapium, from the gate of the Necropolis to the Canopic gate were seen as many foreigners as Egyptians. They composed a noisy and variegated crowd of Greeks, Jews, Syrians, Italians, Arabs, Illyrians, Persians, and Phenicians. In the streets and on the wharves every language was spoken, in the temples every god was worshiped. Into this Babel each race brought its own passions. The population of Alexandria, which amounted to three hundred and twenty thousand exclusive of the slaves, was as turbulent as that of the other Egyptian cities was tranquil and resigned, and during the reigns of the latter Lagidæ the Alexandrian populace always seconded the revolutions of the palace, hoping under new sovereigns to find more liberty and less taxes.
Ptolemy XI. (Auletes) died in July, 51 BC He left four children. By his will he appointed to succeed him on the throne his eldest daughter Cleopatra and his eldest son Ptolemy, and according to the custom of Egypt the brother was to marry the sister. At her father’s death Cleopatra was sixteen and Ptolemy thirteen years old. The tutor of young Ptolemy, the eunuch Pothinus, was an ambitious man, and, being complete master of the mind of his pupil, he calculated to rule Egypt under the new reign; but he soon found that Cleopatra would permit neither him nor Ptolemy to govern the kingdom. Proud and headstrong, Cleopatra was likewise skillful, intelligent, and very learned; she spoke eight or ten languages, among them Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. How is it possible to think that this woman, so haughty and so gifted, would abandon her share of the sovereignty in favor of a child governed by a eunuch? Either she would get rid of her brother, or if she consented to live with the young king she would soon acquire an absolute supremacy over him. Pothinus realized this, and he devoted all his energies to accomplish the ruin of the queen. He began by provoking jealousies among the ministers and the high officers of the crown; then, when the dissension between the partisans of the king and those of Cleopatra was at its height he aroused the people of Alexandria against the young queen. He accused her of desiring to reign alone, even should she have to call in the armed intervention of the Romans. He declared that she had made this plan in conjunction with the eldest son of the great Pompey, Cn. Pompey, who, on his way through Alexandria in 49, had then become her lover. The riot reached even to the gates of the palace, and the connivance of Pothinus and the young king could not escape the perspicacity of Cleopatra. She quitted Alexandria, accompanied by a few faithful attendants. The fugitive, however, did not regard herself as vanquished; she would not so easily renounce that crown which she had already worn for three years. It was soon known that Cleopatra had raised an army on the confines of Egypt and Arabia, and that she was marching on Pelusium. The young king collected his forces and advanced to meet her.
The brother and sister, the husband and wife, were face to face with their armies in the neighborhood of Pelusium when the illustrious victim of Pharsalia came to seek an asylum in Egypt. Pompey supposed he might reckon on the gratitude of the children of Ptolemy Auletes, for it was at his instigation that seven years previously Gabienus, pro-consul of Syria, had replaced that king on his throne. It is true that after the battle of Pharsalia Pompey was helpless and Cæsar all-powerful, and in assisting a fugitive from whom nothing more could be hoped for, the anger of Cæsar might be provoked. Pothinus and the other ministers of the young king did not hesitate; they welcomed Pompey; but it was to murder him as soon as he set foot on Egyptian territory. His head, embalmed with the learned art of the Egyptians, was presented to Cæsar when the latter, who was pursuing Pompey, landed at Alexandria. Cæsar turned his eyes from the ghastly trophy, and warmly reproached Pothinus and Achillas with their crime. Doubtless the two wretches cared but little for his reproaches; they considered that they had done Cæsar a great service in ridding him of his most powerful adversary, and they knew enough of mankind to understand that, Pompey being dead, it was easy for Cæsar to be magnanimous.
Cæsar soon learned the contentions of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, the flight of the latter in consequence of the threats of the populace, and the battle about to take place between the two armies assembled at Pelusium. It had always been the Roman policy to intermeddle in the private dissensions of nations. This policy of intervention was still more in order for Cæsar with regard to Egypt, because during his first consulate Ptolemy Auletes had been declared the ally of Rome, and in his will had conjured the Roman people to have his last wishes executed. Another motive, which he does not mention in his “Commentaries,” induced Cæsar to intermeddle in the affairs of Egypt. With little expense he had made himself the creditor of the late king, and he had to call upon the