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Trygonion sniffed. “I shudder to imagine what they did over the murder of a popular queen!”
    “You anticipate the story,” said Dio, slipping into his lecturing voice. “Alexander II then announced a rise in taxes so that he could repay his Roman backers. That was the final spark. Nineteen days after he ascended the throne, the new king was dragged from the royal palace and murdered by the mob. They tore Win limb from limb.”
    It was tales such as this which Romans like to cite to make themselves feel proud of the relative civility of our republic. As a young man I had admired the Alexandrians’ passion for polities, though 1 could never accustom myself to their propensity for sudden, extreme violence. Alexandrian healers peddle a poultice with the Egyptian name “cure-for-a-human-bite-which-draws-blood,” and most households keep a supply on hand—a fact which says much about the Alexandrians.
    “Now we come to the beginnings of the current crisis—the Egyptian situation, as you call it, Gordianus. After the brief and inglorious reign of their cousin Alexander II, two of Soter’s bastards came forward to press their claim for the throne.”
    “Brave men!” quipped Trygonion.
    “One bastard took Cyprus. The other took Egypt, and has sine reigned for twenty years—proof that a man cankeep himself on a throne without possessing a single kingly virtue. His full name in the Greek”—Dio took an orator’s breath—“is Ptolemaios Theos Philopator Philadelphos Neos Dionysos.”
    “Ptolemy, God: Father-Lover, Brother-Lover, the New Dionysus,” I translated.
    Dio curled his lip. “In Alexandria, we simply call him Ptolemy Auletes—the Flute-Player.”
    “The Piper!” Trygonion laughed.
    “Yes, King Ptolemy the Piper,” said Dio grimly, “whose only known accomplishment is his skill on the flute, which he loves to play day and night, sober or drunk. He stages choruses in the royal palace and plays the accompaniment. He debuts his own compositions at diplomatic diners. He organizes contests and pits his talent against common musicians. How did Egypt ever deserve such a ruler? He epitomizes and exaggerates all the baser qualities of his decrepit line—indolent, self-indulgent, luxury-loving, licentious, lazy . . .”
    “He should have been a gallus rather than a king,” laughed Trygonion.
    Dio looked at him sidelong. “I am compelled to agree with you.”
    “I remember something Cicero said about him in a speech,” I said. “ ‘Nearly everyone agrees that the man who occupies the throne of Egypt today neither by birth nor in spirit is like a king.’ And there are those who say the Piper’s reign is illegitimate and always has been, because of a will that was made by his unfortunate predecessor.”
    “Ah, yes, and there you put your finger upon the heart of the matter,” said Dio. “Shortly after the death of Alexander II at the hands of the mob, from the very start of King Ptolemy’s reign, a rumor began to circulate to the effect that Alexander II had left a will, bequeathing all of Egypt to the Senate and people of Rome.”
    Trygonion raised his eyebrows. “A splendid prize! Thegranaries! The treasure house! The crocodiles! But surely no one could believe such a tale. Such generosity is preposterous.”
    Dio sighed, exasperated. “You show your ignorance of both politics and history, gallus. Preposterous as such an idea may be, it is not without precedent. Attalus of Pergamum bequeathed his kingdom to Rome over seventy years ago; it became a province of the empire and to this day supplies the people of this city with subsidized grain. Forty years ago Apion left Cyrene to Rome; Apion was a Ptolemy and Cyrene was once a part of Egypt. And less than twenty years ago Bithynia was left to Rome by its last king.”
    “But why would any king do such a thing?” asked Trygonion.
    “To save his country from the bloodshed of a disputed succession; to spite his presumptive heirs; to protect his