The child proved to be a boy; and the delighted father thus found himself the parent of a son and heir who was at once accepted by the Egyptians as the legitimate child of the union of their Queen with the god Amon, who had appeared in the form of Cæsar. He was named Cæsar, or more familiarly Cæsarion, a Greek diminutive of the same word; but officially, of course, he was known also as Ptolemy, and ultimately was the sixteenth and last of that name. A bilingual inscription now preserved at Turin refers to him as “Ptolemy, who is also called Cæsar,” this being often seen in Egyptian inscriptions in the words Ptolemys zed nef Kysares, “Ptolemy called Cæsar.”

The Dictator waited no longer in Egypt. For the last few months he had put Roman politics from his thoughts and had not even troubled to write any despatches to the home Government.[45] But now he had to create the world-monarchy of which his winter with Cleopatra had led him to dream; and first there were campaigns to be fought on the borders of the Mediterranean; there was Parthia to be subdued; and finally India was to be invaded and conquered. Then, when all the known world had become dependent upon him, and only Egypt and her tributaries were still outside Roman dominion, he would, by one bold stroke, announce his marriage to the Queen of that country, incorporate her lands and her vast wealth with those of Rome, and declare himself sole monarch of the earth. It was a splendid ambition, worthy of a great man; and, as we shall presently see, there can be very little question that these glorious dreams would have been converted into actual realities had not his enemies murdered him on the eve of their realisation. Modern historians are unanimous in declaring that Cæsar had wasted his time in Egypt, and had devoted to a love intrigue the weeks and months which ought to have been spent in regulating the affairs of the world. Actually, however, these nine months, far from being wasted, were spent in the very creation of the Roman Empire. True, Cæsar’s schemes were frustrated by the knives of his assassins; but, as will be seen in the sequel, his plans were carried on by Cleopatra with the assistance of Antony, and finally were put into execution by Octavian.

As Cæsar sailed out of the Great Harbour of Alexandria he must have turned his keen grey eyes with peculiar interest upon the splendid buildings of the Palace, which towered in front of the city, upon the Lochias Promontory; and that quiet, whimsical expression must have played around his close-shut lips as he thought of the change that had been wrought in his mental attitude by the months spent amidst its royal luxuries. Enthusiasm for the work which lay before him must have burnt like a fire within him; but stamped upon his brain there must have been the picture of a darkened room in which the wild, happy-go-lucky, little Queen of Egypt, now so subdued and so gentle, lay clasping to her breast the new-born Cæsar, the sole heir to the kingdom of the whole world.

CHAPTER VIII.
CLEOPATRA AND CÆSAR IN ROME.

Cæsar’s movements during the year after his departure from Egypt do not, for the purpose of this narrative, require to be recorded in detail. From Alexandria, which he may have left at about the middle of the first week in July, he sailed in a fast-going galley across the 500 miles of open sea to Antioch, arriving at that city a few days before the middle of that month.[46] There he spent a day or two in regulating the affairs of the country, and presently sailed on to Ephesus, some 600 miles from Antioch, which he probably reached at the end of the third week of July. At Antioch he heard that one of his generals, Domitius Calvinus, had been defeated by Pharnakes, the son of Mithridates the Great, and had been driven out of Pontus, and it seems that he at once sent three legions to the aid of the beaten troops with orders to await in north-western Galatia or Cappadocia for his coming. After a day or two at Ephesus, Cæsar travelled with extreme rapidity to the rendezvous, taking with him only a thousand cavalry; and arriving at Zela, 500 miles from Ephesus, on or before August 2nd, at once defeated the rebels. It had been his custom in Gaul to travel by himself at the rate of a hundred miles a day, and even with a heavily laden army he covered over forty miles a day, as for example in his march from Rome to Spain, which he accomplished in twenty-seven days, and he may thus have joined his main army and commenced his preparations for the battle of Zela as early as the last days of July. The crushing defeat which he inflicted on the enemy so shortly after taking over the command was thus a feat of which he might justly be proud, and it so tickled his vanity that in writing to a friend of his in Rome, named Amantius, he described the campaign in the three famous words, Veni, vidi, vici, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” which so clearly indicate that he was beginning to regard himself as a sort of swift-footed, irresistible demigod.

Thence he sailed at last for Italy, and reached Rome at the end of September, almost exactly a year after his arrival in Egypt. He remained in Rome not more than two and a half months, and about the middle of December he set out for North Africa, where Cato, Scipio, and other fugitive friends of Pompey had established a provisional government with the assistance of Juba, King of Numidia, and were gathering their forces. Arriving at Hadrumetum on December 28th, he at once began the war, which soon ended in the entire defeat and extermination of the enemy at Thapsus on April 6th. Of the famous Pompeian leaders, Faustus Sulla, Lucius Africanus, and Lucius Julius Cæsar were put to death; and Lucius Manlius Torquatus, Marcus Petreius, Scipio, and Cato committed suicide; while, according to Plutarch, some fifty thousand men were slain in the rout. Arriving once more in Rome on July 25th, B.C. 46, Cæsar at once began to prepare for his Triumph which was to take place in the following month; and it would seem that he had already sent messengers to Cleopatra, who had spent a quiet year of maternal interests in Alexandria, to tell her to come with their baby to Rome.

According to Dion, the Queen arrived shortly after the Triumph, but several modern writers[47] are of opinion that she reached the capital in time for that event. I am disposed to think that she made the journey to Italy in company with the Egyptian prisoners who were to be displayed in the procession, Princess Arsinoe, the eunuch Ganymedes,[48] and others, whom Cæsar probably sent for in the late spring of this year soon after the battle of Thapsus. Cleopatra could not have been averse to witnessing the Triumph, for she must have regarded the late warfare in Alexandria not so much as a Roman campaign against the Egyptians as an Egypto-Roman suppression of an Alexandrian insurrection. The serious part of the campaign could be interpreted as having been waged by Cæsar on behalf of herself and her brother, Ptolemy XIV., against the rebels Achillas and Ganymedes, and later against this same Ptolemy who had gone over to the enemy; and the victory might thus be celebrated both by her and by her Roman champion. It would therefore be fitting that she should be a spectator of the degradation of Arsinoe and Ganymedes; and her presence in Rome at this time would obviously be desirable to her as indicating that she and her country had suffered no defeat. Cæsar, on his part, must have desired her presence that she might witness the dramatic demonstration of his power and popularity. He had just been made Dictator for the third time, and this appointment no doubt led him to feel the security of his position and the imminence of that rise to monarchical power in which Cleopatra and their son were to play so essential a part. He was beginning to regard himself as above criticism; and his two great victories, in Pontus and Numidia, following upon his nine months of regal life in Egypt, had somewhat turned his head, so that he no longer considered the advisability of delaying his future consort’s introduction to the people of Rome. He had yet much to accomplish before he could ascend with her the throne of the world, but there can be no question whatsoever that he now desired Cleopatra to begin to make herself known in the capital; and, this being so, it seems to me to be highly probable that he would wish her to refute, by her presence as a witness of his Triumph, any suggestion that she herself was to be included in that conquered Egypt[49] about which he was so continuously boasting.

The Queen of Egypt’s arrival in Rome must have caused something of a sensation. Cartloads of baggage, and numerous agitated eunuchs and slaves doubtless heralded her approach and followed in her train. Her little brother, Ptolemy XV., now eleven or twelve years of age, whom she had probably feared to leave alone in Alexandria lest he should follow the family tradition and declare himself sole monarch, had been forced to accompany her, and now added considerably to the commotion of her arrival. The one-year-old heir of the Cæsars and of the Ptolemies, surrounded by guards and fussing nurses, must, however, have been the cynosure of all eyes; for every Roman guessed its parentage, knowing as they did the peculiarities of their Dictator. Cleopatra and her suite were accommodated in Cæsar’s transtiberini horti, where a charming house stood amidst beautiful gardens on the right bank of the Tiber, near the site of the modern Villa Panfili; and it is to be presumed that his legal wife Calpurnia was left as mistress of another establishment within the city.