One of these factions drove Cleopatra from the throne and from her capital at Alexandria, leaving the "triple Uræus crown," with its mystic lotus adornments, on the head of baby Ptolemy alone.
The crown was the only fragment of actual kingship the child possessed. The power and the graft lay in the hands of a trio of industriously grasping Greek adventurers.
Cleopatra, meantime, out in the cold, schemed to regain her place on the double throne, and, even at that early age, amused herself in the interim by planning the tortures she would wreak on little Ptolemy when her turn should come.
While she was casting about for means to outwit the Greeks, and seeking means to buy up a mercenary army of invasion, she learned that Julius Cæsar, an elderly Roman of vast repute as a conqueror, had come to Alexandria at the head of a few legions, on a mission of diplomacy.
Cleopatra may have known little of men's strength, but already she was a profound student of their weaknesses.
She began to ask questions about Cæsar. Brushing away (as immaterial if true), her scared native attendants' statements that he had the body of an elephant, the head of a tiger, and the claws of a dragon, and that he fed on prisoners served raw, she pumped one or two exiled Romans and gleaned an inkling of the conqueror's history.
With the details of Cæsar's Gallic invasion, his crushing of Pompey, and his bullying of semihostile fellow Romans, she did not in the least concern herself. What most interested Cleopatra were the following domestic revelations:
He had been married at least four times, and three of his wives were still living. Cossutia, the wife of his youth, he had divorced by law because he had been captivated by the charms of one Cornelia, whom he had forthwith married, and who had died before he had had time to name her successor.
Next in order he had wed Pompeia; and, on the barest rumor of indiscretion on her part, had announced dramatically: "Cæsar's wife must be above suspicion!" and had divorced her to marry his present spouse, Calpurnia.
The interstices between these unions had been garnished with many a love episode. Adamant as he was toward men, Cæsar was far from being an anchorite where women were concerned; and he had the repute of being unswervingly loyal to the woman whom he, at the time, chanced to love.