of Auletes, to the intermarried brother and sister Cleopatra and Ptolomoreus Dionysus, and further gave unasked the kingdom of Cyprus—­cancelling the earlier act of annexation—­as the appanage of the second-born of Egypt to the younger children of Auletes, Arsinoe and Ptolemy the younger.  But a storm was secretly preparing.  Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city as well as Rome, hardly inferior to the Italian capital in the number of its inhabitants, far superior to it in stirring commercial spirit, in skill of handicraft, in taste for science and art:  in the citizens there was a lively sense of their own national importance, and, if there was no political sentiment, there was at any rate a turbulent spirit, which induced them to indulge in their street riots regularly and heartily.  We may conceive their feeling when they saw the Roman general ruling in the palace of the Lagids, and their kings accepting the award of his tribunal.  Pothinus and the boy-king, both, as may be conceived, very dissatisfied at once with the peremptory requisition of all debts and with the intervention in the throne-dispute which could only issue, as it did, in the favour of Cleopatra, sent—­in order to pacify the Roman demands—­the treasures of the temple and the gold plate of the king with intentional ostentation to be melted at the mint; with increasing indignation the Egyptians—­who were pious even to superstition, and who rejoiced in the world-renowned magnificence of their court as if it were a possession of their own—­beheld the bare walls of their temples and the wooden cups on the table of their king.  The Roman army of occupation also, which had been essentially denationalised by its long abode in Egypt and the many intermarriages between the soldiers and Egyptian women, and which moreover numbered a multitude of the old soldiers of Pompey and runaway Italian criminals and slaves in its ranks, was indignant at Caesar, by whose orders it had been obliged to suspend its action on the Syrian frontier, and at his handful of haughty legionaries.  The tumult even at the landing, when the multitude saw the Roman axes carried into the old palace, and the numerous instances in which his soldiers were assassinated in the city, had taught Caesar the immense danger in which he was placed with his small force in presence of the exasperated multitude.  But it was difficult to return on account of the northwest winds prevailing at this season of#the year, and the attempt of embarkation might easily become a signal for the outbreak of the insurrection; besides, it was not the nature of Caesar to take his departure without having accomplished his work.  He accordingly ordered up at once reinforcements from Asia, and meanwhile, till these arrived, made a show of the utmost self-possession.  Never was there greater gaiety in his camp than during this rest at Alexandria, and while the beautiful and clever Cleopatra was not sparing of her charms in general and least of all towards her judge, Caesar