Didymus was another of the writers that we hear of at that time.  He was a man of great industry, both in reading and writing; but when we are told that he wrote three thousand five hundred volumes, or rolls, it rather teaches us that a great many rolls of papyrus would be wanted to make a modern book, than what number of books he wrote.  These writings were mostly on verbal criticism, and all have long since perished except some notes or scholia on the Hiad and Odyssey which bear his name, and are still printed in some editions of Homer.

Dioscorides, the physician of Cleopatra, has left a work on herbs and minerals, and on their uses in medicine; also on poisons and poisonous bites.  To these he has added a list of prescriptions.  His works have been much read in all ages, and have only been set aside by the discoveries of the last few centuries.  Serapion, another physician, was perhaps of this reign.

[Illustration:  333.jpg RUINS OF HERMONTHIS]

He followed medicine rather than surgery; and, while trusting chiefly to his experience gained in clinical or bedside practice, was laughed at by the surgeons as an empiric.

The small temple at Hermonthis, near Thebes, seems to have been built in this reign, and it is dedicated to Mandoo, or the sun, in the name of Cleopatra and Cassation.  It is unlike the older Egyptian temples in being much less of a fortress; for what in them is a strongly walled courtyard, with towers to guard the narrow doorway, is here a small space between two double rows of columns, wholly open, without walls, while the roofed building is the same as in the older temples.  Near it is a small pool, seventy feet square, with stone sides, which was used in the funerals and other religious rites.

The murder of Caesar did not raise the character of the Romans, or make them more fit for self-government.  It was followed by the well-known civil war; and when, by the battle of Philippi and the death of Brutus and Cassius, his party was again uppermost, the Romans willingly bowed their necks to his adopted son Octavianus, and his friend Mark Antony.

It is not easy to determine which side Cleopatra meant to take in the war between Antony and the murderers of Caesar; she did not openly declare herself, and she probably waited to join that which fortune favoured.  Allienus had been sent to her by Dolobella to ask for such troops as she could spare to help Antony, and he led a little army of four Roman legions out of Egypt into Syria; but when there he added them to the force which Cassius had assembled against Antony.  Whether he acted through treachery to the queen or by her orders is doubtful, for Cassius felt more gratitude to Allienus than to Cleopatra.  Serapion also, the Egyptian governor of Cyprus, joined what was then the stronger side, and sent all the ships that he had in his ports to the assistance of Cassius.  Cleopatra herself was getting ready another large fleet,