Ptolemy XI. (Auletes) died in July, 51 B. C. 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.