The monster Physcon lived, it is true, two or three generations before the great Cleopatra; but the character of the intermediate generations, until the time of her birth, continued much the same.  In fact, the cruelty, corruption, and vice which reigned in every branch of the royal family increased rather than diminished.  The beautiful niece of Physcon, who, at the time of her compulsory marriage with him, evinced such an aversion to the monster, had become, at the period of her husband’s death, as great a monster of ambition, selfishness, and cruelty as he.  She had two sons, Lathyrus and Alexander.  Physcon, when he died, left the kingdom of Egypt to her by will, authorizing her to associate with her in the government whichever of these two sons she might choose.  The oldest was best entitled to this privilege, by his priority of birth; but she preferred the youngest, as she thought that her own power would be more absolute in reigning in conjunction with him, since he would be more completely under her control.  The leading powers, however, in Alexandria, resisted this plan, and insisted on Cleopatra’s associating her oldest son, Lathyrus, with her in the government of the realm.  They compelled her to recall Lathyrus from the banishment into which she had sent him, and to put him nominally upon the throne.  Cleopatra yielded to this necessity, but she forced her son to repudiate his wife, and to take, instead, another woman, whom she fancied she could make more subservient to her will.  The mother and the son went on together for a time, Lathyrus being nominally king, though her determination that she would rule, and his struggles to resist her intolerable tyranny, made their wretched household the scene of terrible a perpetual quarrels.  At last Cleopatra seized a number of Lathyrus’s servants, the eunuchs who were employed in various offices about the palace, and after wounding and mutilating them in a horrible manner, she exhibited them to the populace, saying that it was Lathyrus that had inflicted the cruel injuries upon the sufferers, and calling upon them to arise and punish him for his crimes.  In this and in other similar ways she awakened among the people of the court and of the city such an animosity against Lathyrus, that they expelled him from the country.  There followed a long series of cruel and bloody wars, between the mother and the son in the course of which each party perpetrated against the other almost every imaginable deed of atrocity and crime.  Alexander, the youngest son was so afraid of his terrible mother, that he did not dare to remain in Alexandria with her, but went into a sort of banishment of his own accord.  He, however, finally returned to Egypt.  His mother immediately supposed that he was intending to disturb her possession of power, and resolved to destroy him.  He became acquainted with her designs, and, grown desperate by the long-continued pressure of her intolerable tyranny, he resolved to bring the anxiety and terror in which he lived to an end by killing her.  This he did, and then fled the country.  Lathyrus, his brother, then returned, and reigned for the rest of his days in a tolerable degree of quietness and peace.  At length Lathyrus died, and left the kingdom to his son, Ptolemy Auletes, who was the great Cleopatra’s father.