In the following year, B.C. 48, when Cleopatra was twenty-one years of age and her co-regnant brother fourteen, important events occurred in Alexandria of which history has left us no direct record. It would appear that the brother and sister quarrelled, and that the palace divided itself into two opposing parties. The young Ptolemy, backed by the eunuch Potheinos, the rhetorician Theodotos, and the soldier Achillas, set himself up as sole sovereign of Egypt; and Cleopatra was obliged to fly for her life into Syria. We have no knowledge of these momentous events: the struggle in the palace, the days in which the young queen walked in deadly peril, the adventurous escape, and the flight from Egypt. We know only that when the curtain is raised once more upon the royal drama, the young Ptolemy is King of Egypt, and, with his army, is stationed on the eastern frontier to prevent the incursion of his exiled sister, who has raised an expeditionary force in Syria and is marching back to her native land to seize again the throne which she had lost. There is something which appeals very greatly to the imagination in the thought of this spirited young Queen’s rapid return to the perilous scenes from which she had so recently escaped; and the historian feels at once that he is dealing with a powerful character in this woman who could so speedily raise an army of mercenaries, and could dare to march back in battle array across the desert towards the land which had cast her out.
THE DEATH OF POMPEY AND THE ARRIVAL OF CÆSAR IN EGYPT.
The fortress of Pelusium, near which the opposing armies of Ptolemy and Cleopatra were arrayed, stood on low desert ground overlooking the sea, not far east of the modern Port Said. It was the most easterly port and stronghold of the Delta; and, being built upon the much-frequented highroad which skirted the coast between Egypt and Syria, it formed the Asiatic gateway of the Ptolemaic kingdom. The young Ptolemy XIV. had stationed himself, with his advisers and his soldiers, in this fortress, in order to oppose the entrance of his sister Cleopatra, who, as we have already seen, had marched with a strong army back to Egypt from Syria, whither she had fled. On September 28th, B.C. 48, when Cleopatra’s forces, having arrived at Pelusium, were preparing to attack the fortress, and were encamped upon the sea-coast a few miles to the east of the town, an event occurred which was destined to change the whole course of Egyptian history. Round the barren headland to the west of the little port a Seleucian galley hove into sight, and cast anchor a short distance from the shore. Upon the deck of this vessel stood the defeated Pompey the Great and Cornelia his wife, who, flying from the rout of Pharsalia, had come to claim the hospitality of the Egyptian King. The young monarch appears to have been warned of his approach, for Pompey had touched at Alexandria, and there hearing that Ptolemy had gone to Pelusium, had probably sent a messenger to him overland and himself had sailed round by sea. The greatest flurry had been caused in the royal camp by the news, and for the moment the invasion of Cleopatra and the impending battle with her forces were quite forgotten in the excitement of the arrival of the man who for so long had been the mighty patron of the Ptolemaic Court.