Caesar espoused her cause, and decided that she and Ptolemy should jointly occupy the throne.
[Sidenote: Resistance of Ptolemy.] [Sidenote: The Alexandrine war.] Ptolemy and his partisans were determined not to submit to this award.
The consequence was, a violent and protracted war.

Ptolemy was not only incensed at being deprived of what he considered his just right to the realm, he was also half distracted at the thought of his sister's disgraceful connection with Caesar.

His excitement and distress, and the exertions and efforts to which they aroused him, awakened a strong sympathy in his cause among the people, and Caesar found himself involved in a very serious contest, in which his own life was brought repeatedly into the most imminent danger, and which seriously threatened the total destruction of his power.

He, however, braved all the difficulty and dangers, and recklessly persisted in the course he had taken, under the influence of the infatuation in which his attachment to Cleopatra held him, as by a spell.
[Sidenote: The Pharos.] [Sidenote: Great splendor of the Pharos.] The war in which Caesar was thus involved by his efforts to give Cleopatra a seat with her brother on the Egyptian throne, is called in history the Alexandrine war.

It was marked by many strange and romantic incidents.