essentially Greek in her features, her language, and her manners. There
was nothing African about her, as we understand the term African, except
that her complexion may have been darkened by the intermarriage of the
Ptolemies; and I have often wondered why so learned and classical a man
as Story should have given to this queen, in his famous statue, such
thick lips and African features, which no more marked her than Indian
features mark the family of the Braganzas on the throne of Brazil. She
was not even Coptic, like Athanasius and Saint Augustine. On the ancient
coins and medals her features are severely classical.
Nor is it probable that any of the peculiarities of the ancient Egyptian
kings marked the dynasty of the Ptolemies. No purely Egyptian customs
lingered in the palaces of Alexandria. The old deities of Isis and
Osiris gave place to the worship of Jupiter, Minerva, and Venus. The
wonders of pristine Egypt were confined to Memphis and Thebes and the
dilapidated cities of the Nile. The mysteries of the antique Egyptian
temples were no more known to the learned and mercantile citizen of
Alexandria than they are to us. The pyramids were as much a wonder then
as now. The priests and jugglers alike mingled in the crowd of Jews,
Syrians, Romans, Greeks, Parthians, Arabs, who congregated in this
learned and mercantile city.
So we have a right to presume that Cleopatra, when she first appeared
upon the stage of history as a girl of fourteen, was simply a very
beautiful and accomplished Greek princess, who could speak several
languages with fluency, as precocious as Elizabeth of England, skilled
in music, conversant with history, and surrounded with eminent masters.
She was only twenty-one when she was an object of attraction to Caesar,
then in the midst of his triumphs. How remarkable must have been her
fascinations if at that age she could have diverted, even for a time,
the great captain from his conquests, and chained him to her side! That
refined, intellectual old veteran of fifty, with the whole world at his
feet, loaded down with the cares of government, as temperate as he was
ambitious, and bent on new conquests, would not have been chained and
enthralled by a girl of twenty-one, however beautiful, had she not been
as remarkable for intellect and culture as she was for beauty. Nor is it
likely that Cleopatra would have devoted herself to this weather-beaten
old general, had she not hoped to gain something from him besides
caresses,--namely, the confirmation of her authority as queen. She also
may have had some patriotic motives touching the political independence
of her country. Left by her father's will at the age of eighteen joint
heir of the Egyptian throne with her brother Ptolemy, she soon found
herself expelled from the capital by him and the leading generals of the
army, because they did not relish her precocious activity in
government. Her gathered adherents had made but little advance towards
regaining her rights when, in August, 48, Caesar landed in pursuit of
Pompey, whom he had defeated at Pharsalia. Pompey's assassination left
Caesar free, and he proceeded to Alexandria to establish himself for the
winter. Here the wily and beautiful young exile sought him, and won his
interest and his affection. After some months of revelry and luxury,
Caesar left Egypt in 47 to chastise an Eastern rebel, and was in 46
followed to Rome by Cleopatra, who remained there in splendid state
until the assassination of Caesar drove her back to Egypt. Her whole
subsequent life showed her to be as cunning and politic as she was
luxurious and pleasure-seeking. Possibly she may have loved so
interesting and brilliant a man as the great Caesar, aside from the
admiration of his position; but he never became her slave, although it
was believed, a hundred years after his death, that she was actually
living in his house when he was assassinated, and was the mother of his
son Caesarion. But Froude doubts this; and the probabilities are that he
is correct, for, like Macaulay, he is not apt to be wrong in facts, but
only in the way he puts them.
Cleopatra was twenty-eight years of age when she first met Antony,--"a
period of life," says Plutarch, "when woman's beauty is most splendid,
and her intellect is in full maturity." We have no account of the style
of her beauty, except that it was transcendent,--absolutely
irresistible, with such a variety of expression as to be called
infinite. As already remarked, from the long residence of her family in
Egypt and intermarriages with foreigners, her complexion may have been
darker than that of either Persians or Greeks. It probably resembled
that of Queen Esther more than that of Aspasia, in that dark richness
and voluptuousness which to some have such attractions; but in grace and
vivacity she was purely Grecian,--not like a "blooming Eastern bride,"
languid and passive and effeminate, but bright, witty, and intellectual.
Shakspeare paints her as full of lively sallies, with the power of
adapting herself to circumstances with tact and good nature, like a
Madame Récamier or a Maintenon, rather than like a Montespan or a
Pompadour, although her nature was passionate, her manner enticing, and
her habits luxurious. She did not weary or satiate, like a mere
sensual beauty.
"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety."
She certainly had the power of retaining the conquests she had
won,--which rarely happens except with those who are gifted with
intellectual radiance and freshness. She held her hold on Antony for
eleven years, when he was burdened with great public cares and duties,
and when he was forty-two years of age. Such a superior man as he was
intellectually, and, after Caesar, the leading man of the empire,--a
statesman as well as soldier,--would not have been enslaved so long by
Cleopatra had she not possessed remarkable gifts and attainments, like
those famous women who reigned in the courts of the Bourbons in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and who, by their wit and social
fascinations, gathered around their thrones the most distinguished men
of France, and made them friends as well as admirers. The Pompadours of
the world have only a brief reign, and at last become repulsive. But
Cleopatra, like Maintenon, was always attractive, although she, could
not lay claim to the virtues of the latter. She was as politic as the
French beauty, and as full of expedients to please her lord. She may
have revelled in the banquets she prepared for Antony, as Esther did in
those she prepared for Xerxes; but with the same intent, to please him
rather than herself, and win, from his weakness, those political favors
which in his calmer hours he might have shrunk from granting. Cleopatra
was a politician as well as a luxurious beauty, and it may have been her
supreme aim to secure the independence of Egypt. She wished to beguile
Antony as she had sought to beguile Caesar, since they were the masters
of the world, and had it in their power to crush her sovereignty and
reduce her realm to a mere province of the empire. Nor is there
evidence that in the magnificent banquets she gave to the Roman general
she ever lost her self-control. She drank, and made him drink, but
retained her wits, "laughing him out of patience and laughing him into
patience," ascendant over him by raillery, irony, and wit.
And Antony, again, although fond of banquets and ostentation, like other
Roman nobles, and utterly unscrupulous and unprincipled, as Roman
libertines were, was also general, statesman, and orator. He grew up
amid the dangers and toils and privations of Caesar's camp. He was as
greedy of honors as was his imperial master. He was a sunburnt and
experienced commander, obliged to be on his guard, and ready for
emergencies. No such man feels that he can afford to indulge his
appetites, except on rare occasions. One of the leading peculiarities of
all great generals has been their temperance. It marked Caesar,
Charlemagne, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederic the Great, Cromwell, and
Napoleon. When Alexander gave himself up to banquets, his conquests
ended. Even such a self-indulgent, pleasure-seeking man as Louis XIV.
always maintained the decencies of society amid his dissipated
courtiers. We feel that a man who could discourse so eloquently as
Antony did over the dead body of Caesar was something more than a
sensualist or a demagogue. He was also the finest-looking man in Rome,
reminding the people, it is said, of the busts of Hercules. He was
lavish, like Caesar, but, like him, sought popularity, and cared but
little what it cost. It is probable that Cicero painted him, in his
famous philippics, in darker colors than he deserved, because he aimed
to be Caesar's successor, as he probably would have been but for his
infatuation for Cleopatra. Caesar sent him to Rome as master of the
horse,--a position next in power to that of dictator. When Caesar was
assassinated, Antony was the most powerful man of the empire. He was
greater than any existing king; he was almost supreme. And after
Caesar's death, when he divided his sovereignty of the world with
Octavius and Lepidus, he had the fairest chance of becoming imperator.
He had great military experience, the broad Orient as his domain, and
half the legions of Rome under his control.
It was when this great man was Triumvir, sharing with only two others
the empire of the world, and likely to overpower them, when he was in
Asia consolidating and arranging the affairs of his vast department,
that he met the woman who was the cause of all his calamities. He was
then in Cilicia, and, with all the arrogance of a Roman general, had
sent for the Queen of Egypt to appear before him and answer to an
accusation of having rendered assistance to Cassius before the fatal
battle of Philippi. He had already known and admired Cleopatra in Rome,
and it is not improbable that she divined the secret of his judicial
summons. His envoy, struck with her beauty and intelligence, advised her
to appear in her best attire. Such a woman scarcely needed such a hint.
So, making every preparation for her journey,--money, ornaments,
gifts,--a kind of Queen of Sheba, a Zenobia in her pride and glory, a
Queen Esther when she had invited the king and his minister to a
banquet,--she came to the Cydnus, and ascended the river in a
magnificent barge, such as had never been seen before, and prepared to
meet her judge, not as a criminal, but as a conqueror, armed with those
weapons that few mortals can resist.
"The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, which they beat, to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion (cloth-of-gold of tissue)
O'er-picturing that Venus, where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With diverse-color'd fans....
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes.
... At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers....
... From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharves. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to th' air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature."
On the arrival of this siren queen, Antony had invited her to
supper,--the dinner of the Romans,--but she, with woman's instinct, had
declined, till he should come to her; and he, with the urbanity of a
polished noble,--for such he probably was,--complied, and found a
banquet which astonished even him, accustomed as he was to senatorial
magnificence, and which, with all the treasures of the East, he could
not rival. From that fatal hour he was enslaved. She conquered him, not
merely by her display and her dazzling beauty, but by her wit. Her very
tones were music. So accomplished was she in languages, that without
interpreters she conversed not only with Greeks and Latins, but with
Ethiopians, Jews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, and Parthians. So dazzled
and bewitched was Antony, that, instead of continuing the duties of his
great position, he returned with Cleopatra to Alexandria, there to keep
holiday and squander riches, and, still worse, his precious time, to the
shame and scandal of Rome, inglorious and without excuse,--a Samson at
the feet of Delilah, or a Hercules throwing away his club to seize the
distaff of Omphale, confessing to the potency of that mysterious charm
which the sage at the court of an Eastern prince pronounced the
strongest power on earth. Never was a strong man more enthralled than
was Antony by this bewitching woman, who exhausted every art to please
him. She played at dice with him, drank with him, hunted with him,
rambled with him, jested with him, angled with him, flattering and
reproving him by turn, always having some new device of pleasure to
gratify his senses or stimulate his curiosity. Thus passed the winter of
41-40, and in the spring he was recalled to Borne by political
dissensions there.
At this stage, however, it would seem that ambition was paramount with
him, not love; for his wife Fulvia having died, he did not marry
Cleopatra, but Octavia, sister of Octavius, his fellow-triumvir and
general rival. It was evidently from political considerations that he
married Octavia, who was a stately and noble woman, but tedious in her
dignity, and unattractive in her person. And what a commentary on Roman
rank! The sister of a Roman grandee seemed to the ambitious general a
greater match than the Queen of Egypt. How this must have piqued the
proud daughter of the Ptolemies,--that she, a queen, with all her
charms, was not the equal in the eyes of Antony to the sister of
Caesar's heir! But she knew her power, and stifled her resentment, and
waited for her time. She, too, had a political end to gain, and was too
politic to give way to anger and reproaches. She was anything but the
impulsive woman that some suppose,--but a great actress and artist, as
some women are when they would conquer, even in their loves, which, if
they do not feign, at least they know how to make appear greater than
they are. For about three years Antony cut loose from Cleopatra, and
pursued his military career in the East, as the rival of Octavius might,
having in view the sovereignty that Caesar had bequeathed to the
strongest man.
But his passion for Cleopatra could not long be suppressed, neither from
reasons of state nor from the respect he must have felt for the
admirable conduct of Octavia, who was devoted to him, and who was one of
the most magnanimous and reproachless women of antiquity. And surely he
must have had some great qualities to call out the love of the noblest
and proudest woman of the age, in spite of his many vices and his
abandonment to a mad passion, forgetful alike both of fame and duty. He
had not been two years in Athens, the headquarters of his Eastern
Department, before he was called upon to chastise the Parthians, who had
thrown off the Roman yoke and invaded other Roman provinces. But hardly
had he left Octavia, and set foot again in Asia, before he sent for his
Egyptian mistress, and loaded her with presents; not gold, and silver,
and precious stones, and silks, and curious works of art merely, but
whole provinces even,--Phoenicia, Syria, Cilicia, and a part of Judea
and Arabia,--provinces which belonged not to him, but to the Roman
Empire. How indignant must have been the Roman people when they heard of
such lavish presents, and presents which he had no right to give! And
when the artful Cleopatra feigned illness on the approach of Octavia,
pretending to be dying of love, and wasting her body by fasting and
weeping by turns, and perhaps tearing her hair in a seeming paroxysm of
grief,--for an actress can do even this,--Antony was totally disarmed,
and gave up his Parthian expedition altogether, which was treason to the
State, and returned to Alexandria more submissive than ever. This
abandonment of duty and official trust disgusted and incensed the
Romans, so that his cause was weakened. Octavius became stronger every
day, and now resolved on reigning alone. This meant another civil war.
How strong the party of Antony must have been to keep together and
sustain him amid such scandals, treasons, and disgrace!
Antony, perceiving a desperate contest before him, ending in his
supremacy or ruin, put forth all his energies, assisted by the
contributions of Cleopatra, who furnished two hundred ships and twenty
thousand talents,--about twenty million dollars. He had five hundred
war-vessels, beside galleys, one hundred thousand foot and twelve
thousand horse,--one of the largest armies that any Roman general had
ever commanded,--and he was attended by vassal kings from the East. The
forces of Octavius were not so large, though better disciplined; nor was
he a match for Antony in military experience. Antony with his superior
forces wished to fight upon the land, but against his better judgment
was overruled by Cleopatra, who, having reinforced him with sixty
galleys, urged him to contend upon the sea. The rivals met at Actium,
where was fought one of the great decisive battles of the world. For a
while the fortunes of the day were doubtful, when Cleopatra, from some
unexplained motive, or from panic, or possibly from a calculating
policy, was seen sailing away with her ships for Egypt. And what was
still more extraordinary, Antony abandoned his fleet and followed her.
Had he been defeated on the sea, he still had superior forces on the
land, and was a match for Octavius. His infatuation ended in a weakness
difficult to comprehend in a successful Roman general. And never was
infatuation followed by more tragic consequences. Was this madness sent
upon him by that awful Power who controls the fate of war and the
destinies of nations? Who sent madness upon Nebuchadnezzar? Who blinded
Napoleon at the very summit of his greatness? May not that memorable
defeat have been ordered by Providence to give consolidation and peace
and prosperity to the Roman Empire, so long groaning under the
complicated miseries of anarchy and civil war? If an imperial government
was necessary for the existing political and social condition of the
Roman world,--and this is maintained by most historians,--how fortunate
it was that the empire fell into the hands of a man whose subsequent
policy was peace, the development of resources of nations, and a
vigorous administration of government!
It is generally conceded that the reign of Octavius--or, as he is more
generally known, Augustus Caesar--was able, enlightened, and efficient.
He laid down the policy which succeeding emperors pursued, and which
resulted in the peace and prosperity of the Roman world until vices
prepared the way for violence. Augustus was a great organizer, and the
machinery of government which he and his ministers perfected kept the
empire together until it was overrun by the New Germanic races. Had
Antony conquered at Actium, the destinies of the empire might have been
far different. But for two hundred years the world never saw a more
efficient central power than that exercised by the Roman emperors or by
their ministers. Imperialism at last proved fatal to genius and the
higher interests of mankind; but imperialism was the creation of Julius
Caesar, as a real or supposed necessity; it was efficiently and
beneficently continued by his grand-nephew Augustus; and its
consolidated strength became an established institution which the
civilized world quietly accepted.
The battle of Actium virtually settled the civil war and the fortunes of
Antony, although he afterwards fought bravely and energetically; but all
to no purpose. And then, at last, his eyes were opened, and Shakspeare
makes him bitterly exclaim,--
"All is lost!
This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me.
... Betray'd I am:
O this false soul of Egypt!"
And with his ruin the ruin of his paramour was also settled; yet her
resources were not utterly exhausted. She retired into a castle or
mausoleum she had prepared for herself in case of necessity, with her
most valuable treasures, and sent messengers to Antony, who reported to
him that she was dead,--that she had killed herself in despair. He
believed it all. His wrath now vanished in his grief. He could not live,
or did not wish to live, without her; and he fell upon his own sword.
The wound was mortal, but death did not immediately follow. He lived to
learn that Cleopatra had again deceived him,--that she was still alive.
Even amid the agonies of the shadow of death, and in view of this last
fatal lie of hers, he did not upbraid her, but ordered his servants to
bear him to her retreat. Covered with blood, the dying general was
drawn up by ropes and through a window--the only entrance to the queen's
retreat that was left unbarred--into her presence, and soon expired.
Shakspeare has Antony greet Cleopatra with the words, "I am dying,
Egypt, dying!" This suggestive theme has been enlarged in a modern song
of pathetic eloquence:--
I am dying, Egypt, dying,
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast,
And the dark Plutonian shadows
Gather on the evening blast;
Let thine arms, O Queen, enfold me,
Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear,
Listen to the great heart-secrets
_Thou_, and thou _alone_, must hear.
* * * * *
Should the base plebeian rabble
Dare assail my name at Rome,
Where my noble spouse Octavia
Weeps within her widow'd home,
Seek her; say the gods bear witness--
Altars, augurs, circling wings--
That her blood, with mine commingled,
Yet shall mount the throne of kings.
As for thee, star-ey'd Egyptian!
Glorious sorceress of the Nile!
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendors of thy smile
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.
* * * * *
Ah! no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell:
Isis and Osiris guard thee!
Cleopatra--Rome--farewell!
Thus perished the great Triumvir, dying like a Roman, whose blinded but
persistent love, whatever were its elements, ever shall make his name
memorable. All the ages will point to him as a man who gave the world
away for the caresses of a woman, and a woman who deceived and
ruined him.
As for her,--this selfish, heartless sorceress, gifted and beautiful as
she was,--what does she do when she sees her lover dead,--dying for her?
Does she share his fate? Not she. What selfish woman ever killed
herself for love?
"Some natural tears she shed, but wiped them soon."