This was the hero whose cunning and whose war genius had caused sceptered men to grovel at his feet, and had made stubborn republican Rome his cringing servant. But he was also the man whose weakness was an attractive woman. And on this weakness Cleopatra at once proceeded to play. Yet she speedily found that Cæsar's was but a surface weakness, and that beneath it lay iron. Gladly he consented to save her from her foes, and even in a measure to let her punish such of those foes as were of no use to him. But as for making her the undisputed Queen of Egypt and setting her triumphantly and independently on the throne of her ancestors, at Rome's expense--he had not the remotest idea of doing that. Nor could all her most bewildering blandishments wring such a foolish concession from him. He made love to her--ardent love; but he did not let love interfere in any way with politics. Instead of carrying her to the throne, through seas of her enemies' blood, he carried Cleopatra back to Rome with him and, to the scandal of the whole city, installed her in a huge marble villa there. And there, no secret being made of Cæsar's infatuation for her, Cleopatra remained for the next few years; indeed, until Cæsar's death. There, too, Cæsar's son, Cæsarion, was born; and with the boy's birth came to Cleopatra the hope that Cæsar would will to him all his vast estates and other wealth; which would have been some slight compensation for the nonrestoring of her throne. While Cleopatra abode in Rome, more than one man of world-fame bowed in homage before her. For example, Lepidus--fat, stupid, inordinately rich, fit dupe for cleverer politicians. Marcus Antonius, too, --Cæsar's protege, and at this time a swaggering, lovable, dissolute soldier-demagogue, whose fortunes were so undissolubly fastened to Cæsar's that he, the winner of a horde of women, dared not lift his eyes to the woman Cæsar loved. Among the rest--Marcus Brutus, snarling Casca, and the others--came one more guest to the villa--a hard-faced, cold-eyed youth whom Cleopatra hated. For he was Caius Octavius, Cæsar's nephew and presumptive heir; the man who was, years hence, to be the Emperor Augustus. At length, one day, Rome's streets surged with hysterical mobs and factions. And news came to the villa that Cæsar had been assassinated at the Forum. Speedily an angry crowd besieged Cleopatra's house. Now that the all-feared Cæsar no longer lived to protect her, the people were keen to wreak punishment on this foreign sorceress who had enmeshed the murdered man's brain, and had made him squander upon her so much of the public wealth that might better have gone into Roman pockets. Rome's new government, too, at once ordered her expulsion from the city.