| Cleopatra 15
birthday arrived, it was celebrated with great magnificence, and many guests were assembled at the palace; at which time a large box was brought in as a present to the queen. It was opened in the presence of the guests, as all supposed that some neighboring monarch had sent some costly gift. As the cover was lifted, what was the horror of the queen and her friends to behold the head and hands of her beautiful boy, whom Physcon had taken with him! These bloody relics were placed amid a heap of the fragments of the body in such manner that the mother might recognize her son, and the fiend-like monster, in sending this ghastly gift, had commanded that it should be presented to his former wife as a birthday token, and that it should only be opened in the presence of her guests. Such were some of the shocking deeds performed by members of the family of the famous Cleopatra. No wonder that her nature, inherited from such inhuman monsters, was not free from barbarous instincts.
The father of the illustrious Cleopatra was little better than his revolting predecessors. Blood, murder, and intrigue, and all crimes and vices formed his inheritance, handed down by his grandfather, the fiendish Physcon. The younger Cleopatra, whom Physcon married for his second wife, became such an inhuman being of atrocity and crime that she was put to death by one of her sons, whose destruction she had planned in order to seize the throne. The mother of Auletes, the father of the great Cleopatra, was merciless and wicked, like the rest of the line, disregarding every virtuous principle and family tie. Her daughters were worthy followers of her atrocious example, and at
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