23. Auletes endeavoured by his last testament to insure the kingdom to his posterity, nominating as his successor, under the superintendence of the Roman nation, his two elder children. Ptolemy Dionysos, then thirteen years old, and Cleopatra, seventeen, who were to be united in wedlock: his two younger children, Ptolemy Neoteros and Arsinoe, he recommended to the Roman senate. Notwithstanding these measures, Egypt would not have escaped her fate upwards of twenty years longer, had not the impending calamities been diverted by the internal posture of affairs at Rome, and still more by the charms and policy of Cleopatra, who through her alliance with Caesar and Antony not only preserved but even aggrandized her kingdom. From this time, however, the history of Egypt is most closely implicated with that of Rome. Feuds between Cleopatra and her brother, excited and fomented by the eunuch Pothinus, in whose hands the administration was: they lead to open war: Cleopatra, driven out, flees to Syria, where she levies troops: Caesar in pursuit of the conquered Pompey arrives at Alexandria, and in the name of Rome, assumes the part of arbitrator between the king and queen, but suffers himself to be guided by the artifices of Cleopatra, 48. Violent sedition in Alexandria, and Caesar besieged in Bruchium, the malcontent Pothinus having brought Achillas, the commander of the royal troops into the city. The hard struggle in which Caesar was now engaged, demonstrates not only the bitterness of the long rankling grudge of the Alexandrines against Rome, but shows also how decisive, to the whole of Egypt, were the revolutions of the capital. Ptolemy Dionysos having fallen in the war, and Caesar being victorious, the crown fell to Cleopatra, 47, upon condition of marrying her brother, when he should be of age: but as soon as the prince grew to manhood, and had been crowned at Memphis, she removed him by poison, 44. 24. During the life of Caesar, Cleopatra remained under his protection, and consequently in a state of dependence. Not only was a Roman garrison stationed in the capital city, but the queen herself, together with her brother, were obliged to visit him at Rome. After the assassination of Caesar, she took the side of the triumviri, not without endangering Egypt, threatened by Cassius who commanded in Syria; and after the death of her brother, succeeded in getting them to acknowledge as king, Ptolemy Caesarion, a son whom she pretended to have had by Caesar.--But the ardent passion conceived by Antony for her person, soon after the discomfiture of the republican party, now attached her inseparably to his fortunes; which, after vainly attempting to win over the victorious Octavius, she at last shared.