Eighteen years previous to these events, Cæsar, being ædile, had endeavored to have voted by a plebiscit the execution of the will of Alexander II., who had bequeathed Egypt to the Roman people. Now, Egypt was subjugated and Cæsar had but to say the word for this vast and rich country to become a Roman province. But in the year 63 Cleopatra was only just born; in the year 65 Cæsar had not felt the bite of the “Serpent of the Nile,” as Shakspeare calls her—the consul took good care not to remember the propositions of the ædile. The first act of Cæsar on reëntering Alexandria was solemnly to recognize Cleopatra as Queen of Egypt. In order, however, to humor the ideas of the Egyptians he determined that she should espouse her second brother, Ptolemy Neoteras, and share the sovereignty with him. As, however, Dion remarks, this union and this sharing were equally visionary; the young prince, who was only fifteen, could be neither king nor even husband to the queen; apparently Cleopatra was the wife of her brother, and his partner on the throne; in reality she reigned solely, and continued the mistress of Cæsar. During the eight months of the Alexandrian struggle Cæsar, shut up in the palace, had scarcely quitted Cleopatra, except for the fight, and this long honeymoon had seemed short to him. He loved the beautiful queen as fondly, and perhaps more so, than in the early days, and he could not resolve to leave her. In vain the gravest interests called him to Rome, where disorder reigned and blood was flowing, and where, since the December of the preceding year, not a letter had been received from him;[1] in vain, in Asia, Pharnaces, the conquerer of the royal allies of Rome and of the legions of Domitius, has seized on Pontus, Cappadocia, and Armenia; in vain, in Africa, Cato and the last adherents of Pompey have concentrated at Utica an immense army—fourteen legions, ten thousand Numidian horsemen, and one hundred and twenty elephants of war; in vain, in Spain, all minds are excited and revolt is brewing. Duty, interest, ambition, danger—Cæsar forgets everything in the arms of Cleopatra. Truly he is preparing to leave Alexandria, but it is to accompany the beautiful queen on a pleasure excursion up the Nile. By the orders of Cleopatra, one of those immense flat-bottomed pleasure vessels has been prepared, such as were used by the Lagidæ for sailing on the river, and called thalamegos (pleasure pinnace). It was a veritable floating palace, half a stadium long and forty cubits high above the water-line. The stories rose one above the other, surrounded by porticos and open galleries, and surmounted by belvederes sheltered from the sun by purple awnings. Within were numerous apartments, furnished with every convenience and every luxurious refinement of Greco-Egyptian civilization, vast saloons surrounded by colonnades, a banqueting-hall provided with thirteen couches, with a ceiling arched like a grotto, and sparkling with a