The excitement in the city of Alexandria was intense and universal when the Roman army entered it to reinstate Cleopatra’s father upon his throne.  A very large portion of the inhabitants were pleased with having the former king restored.  In fact, it appears, by a retrospect of the history of kings that when a legitimate hereditary sovereign or dynasty is deposed and expelled by a rebellious population, no matter how intolerable may have been the tyranny, or how atrocious the crimes by which the patience of the subject was exhausted, the lapse of a very few years is ordinarily sufficient to produce a very general readiness to acquiesce in a restoration; and in this particular instance there had been no such superiority in the government of Berenice, during the period while her power continued, over that of her father, which she had displaced, as to make this case an exception to the general rule.  The mass of the people, therefore—­all those, especially, who had taken no active part in Berenice’s government—­were ready to welcome Ptolemy back to his capital.  Those who had taken such a part were all summarily executed by Ptolemy’s orders.

There was, of course, a great excitement throughout the city on the arrival of the Roman army.  All the foreign influence and power which had been exercised in Egypt thus far, and almost all the officers, whether civil or military, had been Greek.  The coming of the Romans was the introduction of a new element of interest to add to the endless variety of excitements which animated the capital.

The restoration of Ptolemy was celebrated with games, spectacles, and festivities of every kind, and, of course, next to the king himself, the chief center of interest and attraction in all these public rejoicings would be the distinguished foreign generals by whose instrumentality the end had been gained.

Mark Antony was a special object of public regard and admiration at the time.  His eccentric manners, his frank and honest air, his Roman simplicity of dress and demeanor, made him conspicuous; and his interposition to save the lives of the captured garrison of Pelusium, and the interest which he took in rendering such distinguished funeral honors to the enemy whom his army had slain in battle, impressed the people with the idea of a certain nobleness and magnanimity in his character, which, in spite of his faults, made him an object of general admiration and applause.  The very faults of such a man assume often, in the eyes of the world, the guise and semblance of virtues.  For example, it is related of Antony that, at one time in the course of his life, having a desire to make a present of some kind to a certain person, in requital for a favor which he had received from him, he ordered his treasurer to send a sum of money to his friend—­and named for the sum to be sent an amount considerably greater than was really required under the circumstances of the case—­acting thus, as he often did, under the influence of a blind