[52] Ad Atticum, xv. 15.
[53] I think this fact may be regarded as an argument in favour of the opinion that Cleopatra had been in Rome already several weeks.
[54] Venus and Isis were identified in Rome also.
[55] As, for example, when the actor Diphilus alluded to Pompey in the words “Nostra miseria tu es—Magnus” (Cicero, Ad Att. ii. 19).
[56] I use the words of Oman.
[57] Pliny (vi. 26) says that some £400,000 in money was conveyed to India each year in exchange for goods which were sold for one hundred times that amount.
[58] Horace, Od. 1, 2.
[59] Ferrero writes: “The Queen of Egypt plays a strange and significant part in the tragedy of the Roman Republic.... She desired to become Cæsar’s wife, and she hoped to awaken in him the passion for kingship.” But this is a passing comment.
[60] No Englishman is troubled by the knowledge that the mother of his king is a Dane, and no Spaniard is worried by the thought that his sovereign has married an Englishwoman. The kinship between Roman and Greek was as close as these.
[61] Porphyry, writing several generations later, states that he died by Cleopatra’s treachery; but he is evidently simply quoting Josephus. Porphyry says that he died in the eighth year of Cleopatra’s reign and the fourth year of his own reign. This is confirmed by an inscription which I observed in Prof. Petrie’s collection and published in ‘Receuil de Traveaux’. This records an event which took place “In the ninth year of the reign of Cleopatra ...