II.
Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city. Whilst the cities of Upper Egypt and Heptanomis had preserved the national character, in the Delta the Hellenic civilization had been grafted on the Egyptian, or rather they went side by side. The laws and decrees were written in both languages; the priesthood, the government, the police, the tribunals, the whole administration belonged equally to both; the army was composed of Greek and Gallic mercenaries, of Cilician robbers, of fugitive Roman slaves. In Alexandria, where for more than two centuries unnumbered colonies had settled, the native race dwelt together in the ancient Egyptian city of Rhakotis, but they composed at the most only one-third of the population. The Jews, who inhabited a distinct quarter where they had their ethnarch and their Sanhedrim, were in the proportion of one to three. From the Pharos to the Serapium, from the gate of the Necropolis to the Canopic gate were seen as many foreigners as Egyptians. They composed a noisy and variegated crowd of Greeks, Jews, Syrians, Italians, Arabs, Illyrians, Persians, and Phenicians. In the streets and on the wharves every language was spoken, in the temples every god was worshiped. Into this Babel each race brought its own passions. The population of Alexandria, which amounted to three hundred and twenty thousand exclusive of the slaves, was as turbulent as that of the other Egyptian cities was tranquil and resigned, and during the reigns of the latter Lagidæ the Alexandrian populace always seconded the revolutions of the palace, hoping under new sovereigns to find more liberty and less taxes.
Ptolemy XI. (Auletes) died in July, 51 B. C. He left four children. By his will he appointed to succeed him on the throne his eldest daughter Cleopatra and his eldest son Ptolemy, and according to the custom of Egypt the brother was to marry the sister. At her father’s death Cleopatra was sixteen and Ptolemy thirteen years old. The tutor of young Ptolemy, the eunuch Pothinus, was an ambitious man, and, being complete master of the mind of his pupil, he calculated to rule Egypt under the new reign; but he soon found that Cleopatra would permit neither him nor Ptolemy to govern the kingdom. Proud and headstrong, Cleopatra was likewise skillful, intelligent, and very learned; she spoke eight or ten languages, among them Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. How is it possible to think that this woman, so haughty and so gifted, would abandon her share of the sovereignty in favor of a child governed by a eunuch? Either she would get rid of her brother, or if she consented to live with the young king she would soon acquire an absolute supremacy over him. Pothinus realized this, and he devoted all his energies to accomplish the ruin of the queen. He began by provoking jealousies among the ministers and the high officers of the crown; then, when the dissension between the partisans of the king and those of Cleopatra was at its height he aroused the people of Alexandria against the young queen. He accused her of desiring to reign alone, even should she have to call in the armed intervention of the Romans. He declared that she had made this plan in conjunction with the eldest son of the great Pompey, Cn. Pompey, who, on his way through Alexandria in 49, had then become her lover. The riot reached even to the gates of the palace, and the connivance of Pothinus and the young king could not escape the perspicacity of Cleopatra. She quitted Alexandria, accompanied by a few faithful attendants. The fugitive, however, did not regard herself as vanquished; she would not so easily renounce that crown which she had already worn for three years. It was soon known that Cleopatra had raised an army on the confines of Egypt and Arabia, and that she was marching on Pelusium. The young king collected his forces and advanced to meet her.
The brother and sister, the husband and wife, were face to face with their armies in the neighborhood of Pelusium when the illustrious victim of Pharsalia came to seek an asylum in Egypt. Pompey supposed he might reckon on the gratitude of the children of Ptolemy Auletes, for it was at his instigation that seven years previously Gabienus, pro-consul of Syria, had replaced that king on his throne. It is true that after the battle of Pharsalia Pompey was helpless and Cæsar all-powerful, and in assisting a fugitive from whom nothing more could be hoped for, the anger of Cæsar might be provoked. Pothinus and the other ministers of the young king did not hesitate; they welcomed Pompey; but it was to murder him as soon as he set foot on Egyptian territory. His head, embalmed with the learned art of the Egyptians, was presented to Cæsar when the latter, who was pursuing Pompey, landed at Alexandria. Cæsar turned his eyes from the ghastly trophy, and warmly reproached Pothinus and Achillas with their crime. Doubtless the two wretches cared but little for his reproaches; they considered that they had done Cæsar a great service in ridding him of his most powerful adversary, and they knew enough of mankind to understand that, Pompey being dead, it was easy for Cæsar to be magnanimous.
Cæsar soon learned the contentions of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, the flight of the latter in consequence of the threats of the populace, and the battle about to take place between the two armies assembled at Pelusium. It had always been the Roman policy to intermeddle in the private dissensions of nations. This policy of intervention was still more in order for Cæsar with regard to Egypt, because during his first consulate Ptolemy Auletes had been declared the ally of Rome, and in his will had conjured the Roman people to have his last wishes executed. Another motive, which he does not mention in his “Commentaries,” induced Cæsar to intermeddle in the affairs of Egypt. With little expense he had made himself the creditor of the late king, and he had to call upon the heirs for a large amount. This was no less than seven millions fifty thousand sesterces which remained due of the thirty-three thousand talents which Ptolemy had promised to pay Cæsar and Pompey if by the assistance of the Romans he should recover his crown.
Pothinus, however, thought he had done enough for Cæsar in offering him the head of Pompey. He urged him, therefore, to reëmbark and to go whither he was called by much more important matters than the disputes of Ptolemy and Cleopatra: to Pontus, whence Pharnaces was driving his lieutenant Domitius, to Rome where Cœlius was exciting the plebeians. To the claims of Cæsar, he replied that the treasury was empty; to his offers of arbitration between the heirs of Ptolemy, he objected that it was not proper for a foreigner to interfere in this quarrel, that such an interference would rouse all Egypt. In support of his words, he reminded him that the people of Alexandria, regarding the fasces borne before Cæsar as an outrage on the royal dignity, were enraged at it; that daily new riots arose, that every night Roman soldiers were assassinated, that the Alexandrian population was very numerous, and that the army of Cæsar (numbering only three thousand two hundred legionaries and eight hundred cavalry) was very small.
But his refusals, his counsels, his implied menaces availed nought against the will of Cæsar. His prayers exhausted, he commands. Pothinus is ordered formally to invite in his name Ptolemy and Cleopatra to disband their armies and to present themselves before his consular tribunal to settle their differences. The eunuch was forced to yield, but, as cunning as Cæsar was persistent, he hoped to turn this intervention, which he at first dreaded, to secure the success of his designs. With this purpose he sent to Cleopatra Cæsar’s command to disband her troops, but without telling her she was expected at Alexandria, and he wrote to Ptolemy to repair at once to Cæsar but still to keep his soldiers under arms. Pothinus calculated by these means to free himself from Cleopatra’s army and to secure to the young king the favor of Cæsar, since Ptolemy alone of the two heirs of Auletes summoned by the consul paid due attention to his invitation. A few days after, Ptolemy actually arrived in Alexandria. He offered to Cæsar the warmest protestations of friendship, in which he was joined by Pothinus, Achillas, and the other ministers; he explained the disputes between himself and Cleopatra, laying all the blame on her. Cæsar, however, was not so easily duped. Pothinus had supposed that the absence of Cleopatra would irritate Cæsar against her, but Cæsar could not believe that the young queen had, through contempt, declined his invitation to repair to Alexandria. He thought it more probable that some machination of Pothinus had prevented her coming. In order to satisfy himself of this he secretly despatched a messenger to Cleopatra, whom he knew to be still at Pelusium.