Cleopatra | Page 9

in the end, the most
abominable and terrible tyrants that the principle of absolute and irresponsible power ever
produced. There was one vice in particular, a vice which they seem to have adopted from
the Asiatic nations of the Persian empire, that resulted in the most awful consequences.
This vice was incest.
The law of God, proclaimed not only in the Scriptures, but in the native instincts of the
human soul, forbids intermarriages among those connected by close ties of consanguinity.
The necessity for such a law rests on considerations which can not here be fully
explained. They are considerations, however, which arise from causes inherent in the
very nature of man as a social being, and which are of universal, perpetual, and
insurmountable force. To guard his creatures against the deplorable consequences, both
physical and moral, which result from the practice of such marriages, the great Author of
Nature has implanted in every mind an instinctive sense of their criminality, powerful
enough to give effectual warning of the danger, and so universal as to cause a distinct
condemnation of them to be recorded in almost every code of written law that has ever
been promulgated among mankind. The Persian sovereigns were, however, above all law,
and every species of incestuous marriage was practiced by them without shame. The
Ptolemies followed their example.
One of the most striking exhibitions of the nature of incestuous domestic life which is
afforded by the whole dismal panorama of pagan vice and crime, is presented in the
history of the great-grandfather of the Cleopatra who is the principal subject of this
narrative. He was Ptolemy Physcon, the seventh in the line. It is necessary to give some
particulars of his history and that of his family, in order to explain the circumstances
under which Cleopatra herself came upon the stage. The name Physcon, which afterward
became his historical designation, was originally given him in contempt and derision. He
was very small of stature in respect to height, but his gluttony and sensuality had made
him immensely corpulent in body, so that he looked more like a monster than a man. The
term Physcon was a Greek word, which denoted opprobriously the ridiculous figure that
he made.
The circumstances of Ptolemy Physcon's accession to the throne afford not only a striking
illustration of his character, but a very faithful though terrible picture of the manners and
morals of the times. He had been engaged in a long and cruel war with his brother, who

was king before him, in which war he had perpetrated all imaginable atrocities, when at
length his brother died, leaving as his survivors his wife, who was also his sister, and a
son who was yet a child. This son was properly the heir to the crown. Physcon himself,
being a brother, had no claim, as against a son. The name of the queen was Cleopatra.
This was, in fact, a very common name among the princesses of the Ptolemaic line.
Cleopatra, besides her son, had a daughter, who was at this time a young and beautiful
girl. Her name was also Cleopatra. She was, of course, the niece, as her mother was the
sister, of Physcon.
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,