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Excerpt from Cleopatra: A Study Ptolemy XI. (auletes) died in July, 51 B. C. He left four children. By his will be appointed to succeed him on the throne his eldest daughter Cleopatra and his eldest son Ptolemy, and according to the custom of Egyyt the brother was to marry the sister. At her father's death Cleopatra was sixteen and Ptolemy thir teen years old. The tutor of young Ptolemy, the eunuch Pothinus, was an ambitious man, and, being complete master of the mind of his pupil, be 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 con. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.