You know that in his last will he made Cleopatra, his favourite child, his successor, but her brother Dionysus was to share the throne as her husband.

This caused much scandal in Rome, though it was an old custom of the house of Ptolemy, and suited the Egyptians.
"The flute-player died.

Cleopatra became Queen, and at the same time the wife of a husband ten years old, for whom she did not even possess the natural gift of sisterly tenderness.

But with the obstinate child who had been told by his counsellors that the right to rule should be his alone, she also married the former governors of the country.
"Then began a period of sore suffering.

Her life was a perpetual battle against notorious intrigues, the worst of which owed their origin to her sister.