Coin of Cleopatra: Museum, Room 3.
Portrait of Cleopatra (?): Museum, Room 12.
Death of Cleopatra in Plutarch, Shakespeare and Dryden: Appendix p. [214].
Inscription to Antony: Museum, Room 6.
Colossus of Antony: Museum, Garden Court.
Site of Caesareum: p. [161].
Shrine of Pompey (?): p. [155].
Departure of the God Hercules: p. [98].
Thus the career of the Greco-Egyptian city closes, as it began, in an atmosphere of Romance. Cleopatra is of course a meaner figure than Alexander the Great. Ambition with her is purely selfish; with Alexander it was mystically connected with the welfare of mankind. She knows nothing beyond the body and so shrinks from discomfort and pain: Alexander attained the strength of the hero. Yet for all their differences, the man who created and the woman who lost Alexandria have one element in common: monumental greatness; and between them is suspended, like a rare and fragile chain, the dynasty of the Ptolemies. It is a dynasty much censored by historians, but the Egyptians, who lived under it, were more tolerant. For it had one element of greatness: it did represent the complex country that it ruled. In Upper Egypt it carried on the tradition of the Pharaohs: on the coast it was Hellenistic and in touch with Mediterranean culture. After its extinction, the vigour of Alexandria turns inwards. She is to do big things in philosophy and religion. But she is no longer the capital of a kingdom, no longer Royal.