E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://archive.org)

HISTORY
OF
CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT.

BY JACOB ABBOTT.

With Engravings.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.
1854.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and fifty-one, by
Harper & Brothers,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.

[Pg vii]

PREFACE.

In selecting the subjects for the successive volumes of this series, ithas been the object of the author to look for the names of those greatpersonages whose histories constitute useful, and not merely entertaining,knowledge. There are certain names which are familiar, as names, to allmankind; and every person who seeks for any degree of mental cultivation,feels desirous of informing himself of the leading outlines of theirhistory, that he may know, in brief, what it was in their characters ortheir doings which has given them so widely-extended a fame. Thisknowledge, which it seems incumbent on every one to obtain in respect tosuch personages as Hannibal, Alexander, Cæsar, Cleopatra, Darius, Xerxes,Alfred, William the Conqueror, Queen Elizabeth, and Mary, queen of Scots,it is the design and object of these volumes to communicate, in afaithful, and, at the same time, if possible, in an attractive manner.Consequently, great historical names alone are[Pg viii] selected; and it has beenthe writer’s aim to present the prominent and leading traits in theircharacters, and all the important events in their lives, in a bold andfree manner, and yet in the plain and simple language which is soobviously required in works which aim at permanent and practicalusefulness.

[Pg ix]

CONTENTS.