The death of Cleopatra was hailed at Rome as a relief from a sad disgrace by others besides the flatterers of the conqueror.  When governed by Julius Caesar, and afterwards by Antony, the Romans sometimes fancied they were receiving orders from the barbarian queen to whom their master was a slave.  When Antony was in arms against his countrymen, they were not without alarm at Cleopatra’s boast that she would yet make her power felt in the Capitol; and many feared that even when Antony was overthrown the conqueror might himself be willing to wear her chains.  But the prudent Augustus was in no danger of being dazzled by beauty.  He saw clearly all that was within his reach; he did not want her help to the sovereignty of Egypt; and from the day that he entered the empty palace in Alexandria, his reign began as sole master of Rome and its dependent provinces.

While we have in this history been looking at the Romans from afar, and only seen their dealings with foreign kings, we have been able to note some of the changes in their manners nearly as well as if we had stood in the Forum.  When Epiphanes, Philometor, and Euergetes II. owed their crowns to Roman help, Rome gained nothing but thanks, and that weight in their councils which is fairly due to usefulness:  the senate asked for no tribute, and the citizens took no bribes.  But with the growth of power came the love of conquest and of its spoils.  Macedonia was conquered in what might be called self-defence; in the reign of Cleopatra Cocce, Cyrene was won by fraud, and Cyprus was then seized without a plea.  The senators were even more eager for bribes than the senate for provinces.  The nobles who governed these wide provinces grew too powerful for the senate, and found that they could heap up ill-gotten wealth faster by patronising kings than by conquering them; and the Egyptian monarchy was left to stand in the reigns of Auletes and Cleopatra, because the Romans were still more greedy than when they seized Cyrene and Cyprus.  And, lastly, when the Romans were worn out by quarrels and the want of a steady government, and were ready to obey any master who could put a stop to civil bloodshed, they made Octavianus autocrat of Rome; he then gained for himself whatever he seized in the name of the republic, and he at once put an end to the Egyptian monarchy.

Thus fell the family of the Ptolemies, a family that had perhaps done more for arts and letters than any that can be pointed out in history.  Like other kings who have bought the praises of poets, orators, and historians, they may have misled the talents which they wished to guide, and have smothered the fire which they seemed to foster; but, in rewarding the industry of the mathematicians and anatomists, of the critics, commentators, and compilers, they seem to have been highly successful.  It is true that Alexandria never sent forth works with the high tone of philosophy, the lofty moral aim and the pure taste which mark the writings of Greece in its best ages,