Kleopatra Read Online Free Page B

over Egypt from the king, who took her into
     his lap and drank his wine as he unfolded the legend of the Ptolemies. The king allowed this privilege to Kleopatra alone,
     who stunned the court by gaining admission to the Royal Reception Room at will and jumping onto the person of the king without
     asking permission.
    The king told his daughter in his most serious voice that there were important things about her family that she had to know,
     crucial information about who she was and where she came from, so that no one would be able to challenge her claim to rule
     over the land. “Lagos was the father of Ptolemy I, so that Lagos is the official head of our clan,” the king explained. “When
     people say you are of the House of Lagid, you are not to correct them and say that you are of the House of Ptolemy.” The king
     looked down his nose at his daughter. “I warn you because I know how outspoken you can be. If you are going to be so, then
     at least be knowledgeable.”
    Lagos, the king said, had heard a rumor that his wife had been having an affair with her cousin Philip, king of Macedonia.
     Thinking that Ptolemy was really Philip’s child, Lagos ordered the infant exposed on a Macedonian mountaintop. An eagle, however,
     safely delivered him back into the arms of his mother. “We owe our kingdom to that eagle,” the king said to his little daughter,
     and then asked if she could tell him why.
    “Oh yes, Father,” she eagerly replied. She loved to please Auletes with her interest in family history. “King Philip of Macedonia
     was the father of Alexander the Great, and Ptolemy grew up to be Alexander’s friend and adviser and general. Maybe they were
     really half brothers and they knew it!” Kleopatra loved secrets that had to be kept. “Alexander conquered Egypt and he became
     the first Greek pharaoh. The people loved him because he saved them from the Persian oppressors, who were very bad to the
     Egyptians. When the high priest at Siwah read the oracle that Alexander was the son of Ra, the people accepted him as Pharaoh
     and God.”
    “And Alexander ruled over Egypt until he was a very old man, fathering many children and dying at eighty in his sleep,” the
     king said, taunting his daughter.
    “No, no, you are teasing me because you think I’m just a child. Alexander went off to claim the rest of the world for Macedonia,
     and he left Ptolemy in charge of Egypt while he was gone. But he died of a terrible fever in Babylon when he was only thirty-three.
     That’s when Ptolemy went to Memphis and became Pharaoh, because Egypt cannot be without Pharaoh.”
    “Very good, my little one. I see that even though I am a king and one of the very smartest men in the world, I cannot trick
     you.”
    “And when Ptolemy saw that the Egyptians wanted us to follow their customs, he married his son to his daughter, and they ruled
     after him, and then their sons and daughters ruled after them. And here we are now, more than two hundred fifty years later,
     sons and daughters of Ptolemy, on the throne of Egypt.” She finished her speech without taking a breath.
    Kleopatra had great pride in her family and was determined to prove wrong their detractors. She heard terrible things said
     about the Ptolemies by palace workers who did not know that she understood their language. The Ptolemies, she heard, were
     not even real Greeks, but mere descendants of the ferocious, ruddy-faced mountain barbarians of Macedonia. To that, her father
     instructed her to say that the Macedonians brought vigor and wile to a languishing Greek civilization. “Look at Alexandria—a
     city that exceeds Athens in its offerings of Knowledge and Art and Beauty. Not built by degenerate southern Greeks, but by
     Macedonians. Our Mouseion puts Plato’s Academy and the Lyceum of Aristotle to shame! Why, the Macedonians revitalized the
     Greek world, a world that would have died out with those tyrannical bastards who called for the death of