burdens, these new oppressions, heavier than those which they had endured before, and exacted for such a purpose too, was not to be endured.  To be compelled to see their country sold on any terms to the Roman people was sufficiently hard to bear; but to be forced to raise, themselves, and pay the price of the transfer, was absolutely intolerable.  Alexandria commenced a revolt.  Ptolemy was not a man to act decidedly against such a demonstration, or, in fact, to evince either calmness or courage in any emergency whatever.  His first thought was to escape from Alexandria to save his life.  His second, to make the best of his way to Rome, to call upon the Roman people to come to the succor of their ally!

Ptolemy left five children behind him in his flight The eldest was the Princess Berenice, who had already reached maturity.  The second was the great Cleopatra, the subject of this history.  Cleopatra was, at this time, about eleven years old.  There were also two sons, but they were very young.  One of them was named Ptolemy.

The Alexandrians determined on raising Berenice to the throne in her father’s place, as soon as his flight was known.  They thought that the sons were too young to attempt to reign in such an emergency, as it was very probable that Auletes, the father, would attempt to recover his kingdom.  Berenice very readily accepted the honor and power which were offered to her.  She established herself in her father’s palace, and began her reign in great magnificence and splendor.  In process of time she thought that her position would be strengthened by a marriage with a royal prince from some neighboring realm.  She first sent embassadors to make proposals to a prince of Syria named Antiochus.  The embassadors came back, bringing word that Antiochus was dead, but that he had a brother named Seleucus, upon whom the succession fell.  Berenice then sent them back to make the same offers to him.  He accepted the proposals, came to Egypt, and he and Berenice were married.  After trying him for a while, Berenice found that, for some reason or other, she did not like him as a husband, and, accordingly she caused him to be strangled.

At length, after various other intrigues and much secret management, Berenice succeeded in a second negotiation, and married a prince, or a pretended prince, from some country of Asia Minor, whose name was Archelaus.  She was better pleased with this second husband than she had been with the first, and she began, at last, to feel somewhat settled and established on her throne, and to be prepared, as she thought, to offer effectual resistance to her father in case he should ever attempt to return.

It was in the midst of the scenes, and surrounded by the influences which might be expected to prevail in the families of such a father and such a sister, that Cleopatra spent those years of life in which the character is formed.  During all these revolutions, and exposed to all these exhibitions of licentious wickedness, and of unnatural cruelty and crime, she was growing up in the royal palaces a spirited and beautiful, but indulged and neglected child.