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Cleopatra — Volume 02

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About This Book

The novel dramatizes power, passion, and political maneuvering at a Hellenistic Mediterranean court, centering on a charismatic queen whose personal entanglements with ambitious foreign commanders determine the destinies of individuals and states. Through shifting perspectives—courtiers, relatives, scholars, and soldiers—it alternates intimate domestic scenes and public ceremonies, blending vivid atmosphere with rhetorical duels and battlefield stakes. Recurring themes include the collision of private desire with public duty, the use of charm and spectacle as instruments of policy, and the vulnerability of human relationships amid imperial rivalry.

"This ruler, who would have seemed to any one who beheld his meeting with his children a warm-hearted man and a tender father, at that time would have put half Alexandria to the sword, had not Antony interposed. He forbade the bloodshed, and honoured Berenike's dead husband by a stately funeral.

"As the steed bore him away, he turned back towards Cleopatra; he could not have saluted Arsinoe, for she had rushed into the garden, and her swollen face betrayed that she had shed burning tears.

"From that hour she bitterly hated Cleopatra.

"On the day appointed, the King brought the princesses to the city with regal splendour. The Alexandrians joyously greeted the royal sisters, as, seated on a golden throne, over which waved ostrich-feathers, they were borne in state down the Street of the King, surrounded by dignitaries, army commanders, the body-guard, and the senate of the city. Cleopatra received the adulation of the populace with gracious majesty, as if she were already Queen. Whoever had seen her as, with floods of tears, she bade us all farewell, assuring us of her gratitude and faithful remembrance, the sisterly affection she showed me—I had just been elected commander of the Ephebi—" Here Archibius was interrupted by a slave, who announced the arrival of the messenger, and, rising hurriedly, he went to Leonax's workshop, to which the man had been conducted, that he might speak to him alone.

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