who had great influence with Caesar, they commenced a disturbance.  For a time the princess had urged her claim against her brother through others who were in Caesar’s presence, but as soon as she discovered his disposition (which was very susceptible, so that he indulged in amours with a very great number of women at different stages of his travels), she sent word to him that she was being betrayed by her friends and asked that she allowed to plead her case in person.  She was a woman of surpassing beauty, especially conspicuous at that time because in the prime of youth, with a most delicious voice and a knowledge of how to make herself agreeable to every one.  Being brilliant to look upon and to listen to, with the power to subjugate even a cold natured or elderly person, she thought that she might prove exactly to Caesar’s tastes and reposed in her beauty all her claims to advancement.  She begged therefore for access to his presence, and on obtaining permission adorned and beautified herself so as to appear before him in the most striking and pitiable guise.  When she had perfected these devices she entered the city from her habitation outside, and by night without Ptolemy’s knowledge went into the palace. [-35-] Caesar upon seeing her and hearing her speak a few words was forthwith so completely captivated that he at once, before dawn, sent for Ptolemy and tried to reconcile them, acting as an advocate for the same woman whose judge he had previously assumed to be.  For this reason and because the sight of his sister within the royal dwelling was so unexpected, the boy was filled with wrath and rushed out among the people crying out that he had been betrayed, and at last he tore the diadem from his head and cast it down.  In the mighty tumult which thereupon arose Caesar’s soldiers seized the prince who had caused the commotion; but the Egyptian mob was in upheaval.  They assaulted the palace by land and sea together and would have taken it without difficulty (for the Romans had no force present sufficient to cope with the foreigners, because the latter had been regarded as friends) but for the fact that Caesar, alarmed, came out before them and standing in a safe place promised to do for them whatsoever they wished.  Then he entered an assembly of theirs and producing Ptolemy and Cleopatra read their father’s will, in which it was directed that they should live together according to the customs of the Egyptians and rule in common, and that the Roman people should exercise a guardianship over them.  When he had done this and had added that it belonged to him as dictator, holding all the power of the people, to have an oversight of the children and to fulfill the father’s wishes, he bestowed upon them both the kingdom and granted Cyprus to Arsinoe and Ptolemy the Younger, a sister and a brother of theirs.  So great fear possessed him that he not only laid hold on none of the Egyptian domain, but actually gave the inhabitants in addition some of what was his.