CLEOPATRA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 299, 18 December 1935, Page 18

CLEOPATRA.

Cleopatra was the last queen of Egypt. At the age of seventeen she married her lialf-brother, and they reigned together until he tried to gain sole power. She determined to appeal to Julius Caesar, and it is said that, not daring to go openly, she caused a servant to carry her on his back in a roll of carpet, and that when this was unrolled the beautiful girl sprang out, and, throwing herself at the feet of the Roman general, begged him to 'take her part. By his influence she was for a time reconciled to her husband, Ptolemy, but he renewed the contest anil was defeated and drowned in the Nile. Cleopatra assumed the sole government B.C. 43, and her death 13 years later ended the Ptolemy dynasty, and Egypt became a Roman province. Tennyson has thus drawn her portrait in his "Dream of Fair Women":— I, turning, saw, throned on a flowery rise, One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled; A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes, Brow-bound witli burning gold, _