| 16 The Book of Famous Queens
length one murdered the other in jealous hate. Such was the bloody and shocking family record which the world-renowned Cleopatra inherited, together with the throne of one of the most powerful and remarkable nations of the earth.
Her father followed in the same bloody footsteps. Having been dethroned by his subjects, who hated him on account of his atrocious vices for this Ptolemy Auletes was one of the most dissipated and corrupt of all the sovereigns of that dynastyóhe fled to Rome to obtain aid to recover his throne. The Egyptian people, meanwhile, had made his eldest daughter, Berenice, queen. Auletes, having at length raised an army with the help of Pompey, the Roman general, who espoused his cause, returned to Alexandria, defeated the Egyptians, and recovered his throne; and immediately thereupon put his eldest daughter. Berenice, to death.
The most famous Cleopatraóthe sixth or seventh of her nameówas born just before the Christian eraóabout 69 B. c. When she was about eighteen years of age her father died, having left a will by which the throne of Egypt was to be held by Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy, who were to marry each other and reign conjointly.
Such a union, which is regarded with just abhorrence in our days. was a customary practice among Egyptian monarchs; and in their mythology their gods and goddesses were also represented as marrying brothers and sisters. As both Cleopatra and her brother were too young to govern Egypt, they only reigned in name, while the government was administered by two ministers, named Pothinus and Achillas. As these
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