The first years of the reign of his successor Cleopatra were also referred to her in common with her elder brother Ptolemy; and the following to other persons, for this reason: Ptolemy Neus Dionysus, [or Auletes], left at his death four children, two Ptolemies, and Cleopatra, and Arsinoe; appointing as his successors his two elder children, Ptolemy and Cleopatra; they were considered as joint sovereigns for four years, and would have remained so; but that Ptolemy, having departed from his father’s commands, and resolved to keep the whole power in his own hands, it was his fate to be slain in a sea fight near the coasts of Egypt, by Julius Caesar, who took part with Cleopatra. After the destruction of this Ptolemy, Cleopatra’s younger brother, also named Ptolemy, was placed on the throne with his sister, by Caesar’s decree, and the year was called the fifth of Cleopatra, and the first of Ptolemy: and this custom continued till his death, for two more years. But when he had been destroyed by the arts of Cleopatra, in his fourth year and in the eighth of his sister, the subsequent years were distinguished by the name of Cleopatra alone, as far as fifteen. The sixteenth was named also the first, since, after the death of Lysimachus, king of Chalcis in Syria, the “Autocrator” Marc Antony gave Chalcis and all the neighbouring country to Cleopatra; and from this time the remaining years of her reign, as far as the 22nd, which was the last, were reckoned in the same manner, with an additional number, the 22nd having been called also the 7th, [as the Armenian has very properly read, for the 27th]. From Cleopatra the government devolved to Octavius Caesar, called also Augustus, who overcame the power of Egypt in the battle of Actium, the second year of the CLXXXIVth Olympiad. And from the first year of the CXIth Olympiad, when Aridaeus Philippus [or rather Alexander], the son of Philip, took possession of the government, to the second of the CLXXXIVth, there are 73 Olympiads and a year, or 293 years. And so many are the years of the sovereigns that reigned in Alexandria, to the time of the death of Cleopatra. ii. _Blair’s Chronology of the Ptolemies._