The plan of Cleopatra the mother, after her husband’s death, was to make her son the king of Egypt, and to govern herself, as regent, until he should become of age.  The friends and adherents of Physcon, however, formed a strong party in his favor.  They sent for him to come to Alexandria to assert his claims to the throne.  He came, and a new civil war was on the point of breaking out between the brother and sister, when at length the dispute was settled by a treaty, in which it was stipulated that Physcon should marry Cleopatra, and be king; but that he should make the son of Cleopatra by her former husband his heir.  This treaty was carried into effect so far as the celebration of the marriage with the mother was concerned, and the establishment of Physcon upon the throne.  But the perfidious monster, instead of keeping his faith in respect to the boy, determined to murder him; and so open and brutal were his habits of violence and cruelty, that he undertook to perpetrate the deed himself, in open day.  The boy fled shrieking to the mother’s arms for protection, and Physcon stabbed and killed him there, exhibiting the spectacle of a newly-married husband murdering the son of his wife in her very arms!

It is easy to conceive what sort of affection would exist between a husband and a wife after such transactions as these.  In fact, there had been no love between them from the beginning.  The marriage had been solely a political arrangement.  Physcon hated his wife, and had murdered her son, and then, as if to complete the exhibition of the brutal lawlessness and capriciousness of his passions, he ended with falling in love with her daughter.  The beautiful girl looked upon this heartless monster, as ugly and deformed in body as he was in mind, with absolute horror.  But she was wholly in his power.  He compelled her, by violence, to submit to his will.  He repudiated the mother, and forced the daughter to become his wife.

Physcon displayed the same qualities of brutal tyranny and cruelty in the treatment of his subjects that he manifested in his own domestic relations.  The particulars we can not here give, but can only say that his atrocities became at length absolutely intolerable, and a revolt so formidable broke out, that he fled from the country.  In fact he barely escaped with his life, as the mob had surrounded the palace and were setting it on fire, intending to burn the tyrant himself and all the accomplices of his crimes together.  Physcon, however, contrived to make his escape.  He fled to the island of Cyprus, taking with him a certain beautiful boy, his son by the Cleopatra whom he had divorced; for they had been married long enough before the divorce, to have a son.  The name of this boy was Memphitis.  His mother was very tenderly attached to him, and Physcon took him away on this very account, to keep him as a hostage for his mother’s good behavior.  He fancied that, when he was gone, she might possibly attempt to resume possession of the throne.