at last lifted in at the window, but died soon afterwards.  By this time the city was in the power of Octavianus; he had not found it necessary to storm the walls, for Antony’s troops had all joined him, and he sent in Gallus to endeavour to take Cleopatra alive.  This he succeeded in doing by drawing her into conversation at the door of her monument, while three men scaled the window and snatched out of her hand the dagger with which she would have stabbed herself.

Octavianus, henceforth called Augustus, began by promising his soldiers two hundred and fifty drachmas each as prize money, for not being allowed to plunder Alexandria.  He soon afterwards entered the city, not on horseback armed at the head of his victorious legions, but on foot, leaning on the arm of the philosopher Arius; and, as he wished to be thought as great a lover of learning as of mercy, he gave out that he spared the place to the prayers of his Alexandrian friend.  He called the Greek citizens together in the gymnasium, and, mounting the tribunal, promised that they should not be hurt.  Cleopatra’s three children by Antony, who had not the misfortune to be of the same blood with the conqueror, were kindly treated and taken care of; while Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar, who was betrayed by his tutor Rhodon while flying towards Ethiopia, was put to death as a rival.  The flatterers of the conqueror would of course say that Caesarion was not the son of Julius, but of Ptolemy, the elder of the two boys who had been called Cleopatra’s husbands.  The feelings of humanity might have answered that, if he was not the only son of the uncle to whom Octavianus owed everything, he was at least helpless and friendless, and that he never could trouble the undisputed master of the world; but Augustus, with the heartless cruelty which murdered Cicero, and the cold caution which marked his character through life, listening to the remark of Arius, that there ought not to be two Caesars, had him at once put to death.

Augustus gave orders that Cleopatra should be carefully guarded lest she should put an end to her own life; he wished to carry her with him to Rome as the ornament of his triumph.  He paid her a visit of condolence and consolation.  He promised her she should receive honourable treatment.  He allowed her to bury Antony.  He threatened that her children should be punished if she hurt herself; but she deceived her guards and put herself to death, either by poison, or, as was more commonly thought, by the bite of an asp brought to her in a basket of fruit.  She was thirty-nine years of age, having reigned twenty-two years, of which the last seven were in conjunction with Antony; and she was buried in his tomb with all regal splendour.