“By all the dwellers on Olympus!  By the whole rabble of gods and beasts that live in the temples by the Nile!” cried the new-comer, again laughing so heartily that not only his fat cheeks but his whole immensely stout young frame swayed and shook.  “By your pretty little feet, Cleopatra, which could so easily be hidden, and yet are always to be seen—­by all your gentle virtues, Philometor, I believe you are trying to outdo the great Philadelphus or our Syrian uncle Antiochus, and to get up a most unique procession; and in my honor!  Just so!  I myself will take a part in the wonderful affair, and my sturdy person shall represent Eros with his quiver and bow.  Some Ethiopian dame must play the part of my mother Aphrodite; she will look the part to perfection, rising from the white sea-foam with her black skin.  And what do you think of a Pallas with short woolly hair; of the Charities with broad, flat Ethiopian feet; and an Egyptian, with his shaven head mirroring the sun, as Phoebus Apollo?”

With these words the young giant of twenty years threw himself on the vacant couch between his brother and sister, and, after bowing, not without dignity, to the Roman, whom his brother named to him, he called one of the young Macedonians of noble birth who served at the feast as cup-bearers, had his cup filled once and again and yet a third time, drinking it off quickly and without setting it down; then he said in a loud tone, while he pushed his hands through his tossed, light brown hair, till it stood straight up in the air from his broad temples and high brow: 

“I must make up for what you have had before I came.—­Another cup-full Diocleides.”

“Wild boy!” said Cleopatra, holding up her finger at him half in jest and half in grave warning.  “How strange you look!”

“Like Silenus without the goat’s hoofs,” answered Euergetes.  “Hand me a mirror here, Diocleides; follow the eyes of her majesty the queen, and you will be sure to find one.  There is the thing!  And in fact the picture it shows me does not displease me.  I see there a head on which besides the two crowns of Egypt a third might well find room, and in which there is so much brains that they might suffice to fill the skulls of four kings to the brim.  I see two vulture’s eyes which are always keen of sight even when their owner is drunk, and that are in danger of no peril save from the flesh of these jolly cheeks, which, if they continue to increase so fast, must presently exclude the light, as the growth of the wood encloses a piece of money stuck into a rift in a tree-or as a shutter, when it is pushed to, closes up a window.  With these hands and arms the fellow I see in the mirror there could, at need, choke a hippopotamus; the chain that is to deck this neck must be twice as long as that worn by a well-fed Egyptian priest.  In this mirror I see a man, who is moulded out of a sturdy clay, baked out of more unctuous and solid stuff than other folks; and if the fine creature there on the bright