The plan of Cleopatra the
The plan of Cleopatra the mother, after her husband's death, was to make
her son the king of Egypt, and to govern herself, as regent, until he
should become of age. The friends and adherents of Physcon, however,
formed a strong party in _his_ favor. They sent for him to come to
Alexandria to assert his claims to the throne. He came, and a new civil
war was on the point of breaking out between the brother and sister,
when at length the dispute was settled by a treaty, in which it was
stipulated that Physcon should marry Cleopatra, and be king; but that he
should make the son of Cleopatra by her former husband his heir. This
treaty was carried into effect so far as the celebration of the marriage
with the mother was concerned, and the establishment of Physcon upon the
throne. But the perfidious monster, instead of keeping his faith in
respect to the boy, determined to murder him; and so open and brutal
were his habits of violence and cruelty, that he undertook to perpetrate
the deed himself, in open day. The boy fled shrieking to the mother's
arms for protection, and Physcon stabbed and killed him there,
exhibiting the spectacle of a newly-married husband murdering the son of
his wife in her very arms!
It is easy to conceive what sort of affection would exist between a
husband and a wife after such transactions as these. In fact, there had
been no love between them from the beginning. The marriage had been
solely a political arrangement. Physcon hated his wife, and had murdered
her son, and then, as if to complete the exhibition of the brutal
lawlessness and capriciousness of his passions, he ended with falling in
love with her daughter. The beautiful girl looked upon this heartless
monster, as ugly and deformed in body as he was in mind, with absolute
horror. But she was wholly in his power. He compelled her, by violence,
to submit to his will. He repudiated the mother, and forced the daughter
to become his wife.
