So saying, he commanded Tryphena
So saying, he commanded Tryphena to say no more upon the subject, for he
would on no account consent that Cleopatra should suffer any injury
whatever.
This refusal on the part of her husband to comply with her request only
inflamed Tryphena's insane resentment and anger the more. In fact, the
earnestness with which he espoused her sister's cause, and the interest
which he seemed to feel in her fate, aroused Tryphena's jealousy. She
believed, or pretended to believe, that her husband was influenced by a
sentiment of love in so warmly defending her. The object of her hate,
from being simply an enemy, became now, in her view, a rival, and she
resolved that, at all hazards, she should be destroyed. She accordingly
ordered a body of desperate soldiers to break into the temple and seize
her. Cleopatra fled in terror to the altar, and clung to it with such
convulsive force that the soldiers cut her hands off before they could
tear her away, and then, maddened by her resistance and the sight of
blood, they stabbed her again and again upon the floor of the temple,
where she fell. The appalling shrieks with which the wretched victim
filled the air in the first moments of her flight and her terror,
subsided, as her life ebbed away, into the most awful imprecations of
the judgments of Heaven upon the head of the unnatural sister whose
implacable hate had destroyed her.
Notwithstanding the specimens that we have thus given of the character
and action of this extraordinary family, the government of this dynasty,
extending, as it did, through the reigns of thirteen sovereigns and over
a period of nearly three hundred years, has always been considered one
of the most liberal, enlightened, and prosperous of all the governments
of ancient times. We shall have something to say in the next chapter in
respect to the internal condition of the country while these violent men
were upon the throne. In the mean time, we will here only add, that
whoever is inclined, in observing the ambition, the selfishness, the
party spirit, the unworthy intrigues, and the irregularities of moral
conduct, which modern rulers and statesmen sometimes exhibit to mankind
in their personal and political career, to believe in a retrogression
and degeneracy of national character as the world advances in age, will
be very effectually undeceived by reading attentively a full history of
this celebrated dynasty, and reflecting, as he reads, that the narrative
presents, on the whole, a fair and honest exhibition of the general
character of the men by whom, in ancient times, the world was governed.
