CHAPTER I.

Makers of History

CLEOPATRA

BY

JACOB ABBOTT

[Illustration: CLEOPATRA.]

PREFACE

Of all the beautiful women of history, none has left us such convincing

proofs of her charms as Cleopatra, for the tide of Rome's destiny, and,

therefore, that of the world, turned aside because of her beauty. Julius

Caesar, whose legions trampled the conquered world from Canopus to the

Thames, capitulated to her, and Mark Antony threw a fleet, an empire and

his own honor to the winds to follow her to his destruction. Disarmed at

last before the frigid Octavius, she found her peerless body measured by

the cold eye of her captor only for the triumphal procession, and the

friendly asp alone spared her Rome's crowning ignominy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE VALLEY OF THE NILE

II. THE PTOLEMIES

III. ALEXANDRIA

IV. CLEOPATRA'S FATHER

V. ACCESSION TO THE THRONE

VI. CLEOPATRA AND CAESAR

VII. THE ALEXANDRINE WAR

VIII. CLEOPATRA A QUEEN

IX. THE BATTLE OF PHILIPPI

X. CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY

XI. THE BATTLE OF ACTIUM

XII. THE END OF CLEOPATRA

ILLUSTRATIONS

CLEOPATRA

MEETING OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY

CLEOPATRA TESTING THE POISON UPON THE SLAVES

[Illustration: Map--'Scene of CLEOPATRA'S HISTORY']

CHAPTER I.

THE VALLEY OF THE NILE.

The parentage and birth of Cleopatra.--Cleopatra's residence in

Egypt.--Physical aspect of Egypt.--The eagle's wings and

science.--Physical peculiarities of Egypt connected with the laws of

rain.--General laws of rain.--Causes which modify the quantity of

rain.--Striking contrasts.--Rainless regions.--Great rainless region of

Asia and Africa.--The Andes.--Map of the rainless region.--Valley of the

Nile.--The Red Sea.--The oases.--Siweh.--Mountains of the Moon.--The

River Nile.--Incessant rains.--Inundation of the Nile.--Course of the

river.--Subsidence of the waters.--Luxuriant vegetation.--Absence of

forests.--Great antiquity of Egypt.--Her monuments.--The Delta of the

Nile.--The Delta as seen from the sea.--Pelusiac mouth of the Nile.--The

Canopic mouth.--Ancient Egypt.--The Pyramids.--Conquests of the Persians

and Macedonians.--The Ptolemies.--Founding of Alexandria.--The Pharos.

The story of Cleopatra is a story of crime. It is a narrative of the

course and the consequences of unlawful love. In her strange and

romantic history we see this passion portrayed with the most complete

and graphic fidelity in all its influences and effects; its

uncontrollable impulses, its intoxicating joys, its reckless and mad

career, and the dreadful remorse and ultimate despair and ruin in which

it always and inevitably ends.

Cleopatra was by birth an Egyptian; by ancestry and descent she was a

Greek. Thus, while Alexandria and the Delta of the Nile formed the scene

of the most important events and incidents of her history, it was the

blood of Macedon which flowed in her veins. Her character and action are

marked by the genius, the courage, the originality, and the

impulsiveness pertaining to the stock from which she sprung. The events

of her history, on the other hand, and the peculiar character of her

adventures, her sufferings, and her sins, were determined by the

circumstances with which she was surrounded, and the influences which

were brought to bear upon her in the soft and voluptuous clime where the

scenes of her early life were laid.

Egypt has always been considered as physically the most remarkable

country on the globe. It is a long and narrow valley of verdure and

fruitfulness, completely insulated from the rest of the habitable world.

It is more completely insulated, in fact, than any literal island could

be, inasmuch as deserts are more impassable than seas. The very

existence of Egypt is a most extraordinary phenomenon. If we could but

soar with the wings of an eagle into the air, and look down upon the

scene, so as to observe the operation of that grand and yet simple

process by which this long and wonderful valley, teeming so profusely

with animal and vegetable life, has been formed, and is annually

revivified and renewed, in the midst of surrounding wastes of silence,

desolation, and death, we should gaze upon it with never-ceasing

admiration and pleasure. We have not the wings of the eagle, but the

generalizations of science furnish us with a sort of substitute for

them.

The long series of patient, careful, and sagacious observations, which

have been continued now for two thousand years, bring us results, by

means of which, through our powers of mental conception, we may take a

comprehensive survey of the whole scene, analogous, in some respects, to

that which direct and actual vision would afford us, if we could look

down upon it from the eagle's point of view. It is, however, somewhat

humiliating to our pride of intellect to reflect that long-continued

philosophical investigations and learned scientific research are, in

such a case as this, after all, in some sense, only a sort of substitute

for wings. A human mind connected with a pair of eagle's wings would

have solved the mystery of Egypt in a week; whereas science, philosophy,

and research, confined to the surface of the ground, have been occupied

for twenty centuries in accomplishing the undertaking.

It is found at last that both the existence of Egypt itself, and its

strange insulation in the midst of boundless tracts of dry and barren

sand, depend upon certain remarkable results of the general laws of

rain. The water which is taken up by the atmosphere from the surface of

the sea and of the land by evaporation, falls again, under certain

circumstances, in showers of rain, the frequency and copiousness of

which vary very much in different portions of the earth. As a general

principle, rains are much more frequent and abundant near the equator

than in temperate climes, and they grow less and less so as we approach

the poles. This might naturally have been expected; for, under the

burning sun of the equator, the evaporation of water must necessarily go

on with immensely greater rapidity than in the colder zones, and all the

water which is taken up must, of course, again come down.

It is not, however, wholly by the latitude of the region in which the

evaporation takes place that the quantity of rain which falls from the

atmosphere is determined; for the condition on which the falling back,

in rain, of the water which has been taken up by evaporation mainly

depends, is the cooling of the atmospheric stratum which contains it;

and this effect is produced in very various ways, and many different

causes operate to modify it. Sometimes the stratum is cooled by being

wafted over ranges of mountains, sometimes by encountering and becoming

mingled with cooler currents of air; and sometimes, again, by being

driven in winds toward a higher, and, consequently, cooler latitude. If,

on the other hand, air moves from cold mountains toward warm and sunny

plains, or from higher latitudes to lower, or if, among the various

currents into which it falls, it becomes mixed with air warmer than

itself, its capacity for containing vapor in solution is increased, and,

consequently, instead of releasing its hold upon the waters which it has

already in possession, it becomes thirsty for more. It moves over a

country, under these circumstances, as a warm and drying wind. Under a

reverse of circumstances it would have formed drifting mists, or,

perhaps, even copious showers of rain.

It will be evident, from these considerations, that the frequency of the

showers, and the quantity of the rain which will fall, in the various

regions respectively which the surface of the earth presents, must

depend on the combined influence of many causes, such as the warmth of

the climate, the proximity and the direction of mountains and of seas,

the character of the prevailing winds, and the reflecting qualities of

the soil. These and other similar causes, it is found, do, in fact,

produce a vast difference in the quantity of rain which falls in

different regions. In the northern part of South America, where the land

is bordered on every hand by vast tropical seas, which load the hot and

thirsty air with vapor, and where the mighty Cordillera of the Andes

rears its icy summits to chill and precipitate the vapors again, a

quantity of rain amounting to more than ten feet in perpendicular height

falls in a year. At St. Petersburg, on the other hand, the quantity thus

falling in a year is but little more than one foot. The immense deluge

which pours down from the clouds in South America would, if the water

were to remain where it fell, wholly submerge and inundate the country.

As it is, in flowing off through the valleys to the sea, the united

torrents form the greatest river on the globe--the Amazon; and the

vegetation, stimulated by the heat, and nourished by the abundant and

incessant supplies of moisture, becomes so rank, and loads the earth

with such an entangled and matted mass of trunks, and stems, and twining

wreaths and vines, that man is almost excluded from the scene. The

boundless forests become a vast and almost impenetrable jungle,

abandoned to wild beasts, noxious reptiles, and huge and ferocious birds

of prey.

Of course, the district of St. Petersburg, with its icy winter, its low

and powerless sun, and its twelve inches of annual rain, must

necessarily present, in all its phenomena of vegetable and animal life,

a striking contrast to the exuberant prolificness of New Grenada. It is,

however, after all, not absolutely the opposite extreme. There are

certain regions on the surface of the earth that are actually rainless;

and it is these which present us with the true and real contrast to the

luxuriant vegetation and teeming life of the country of the Amazon. In

these rainless regions all is necessarily silence, desolation, and

death. No plant can grow; no animal can live. Man, too, is forever and

hopelessly excluded. If the exuberant abundance of animal and vegetable

life shut him out, in some measure, from regions which an excess of heat

and moisture render too prolific, the total absence of them still more

effectually forbids him a home in these. They become, therefore, vast

wastes of dry and barren sands in which no root can find nourishment,

and of dreary rocks to which not even a lichen can cling.

The most extensive and remarkable rainless region on the earth is a vast

tract extending through the interior and northern part of Africa, and

the southwestern part of Asia. The Red Sea penetrates into this tract

from the south, and thus breaks the outline and continuity of its form,

without, however, altering, or essentially modifying its character. It

divides it, however, and to the different portions which this division

forms, different names have been given. The Asiatic portion is called

Arabia Deserta; the African tract has received the name of Sahara; while

between these two, in the neighborhood of Egypt, the barren region is

called simply _the desert_. The whole tract is marked, however,

throughout, with one all-pervading character: the absence of vegetable,

and, consequently, of animal life, on account of the absence of rain.

The rising of a range of lofty mountains in the center of it, to produce

a precipitation of moisture from the air, would probably transform the

whole of the vast waste into as verdant, and fertile, and populous a

region as any on the globe.

[Illustration: VALLEY OF THE NILE]

As it is, there are no such mountains. The whole tract is nearly level,

and so little elevated above the sea, that, at the distance of many

hundred miles in the interior, the land rises only to the height of a

few hundred feet above the surface of the Mediterranean; whereas in New

Grenada, at less than one hundred miles from the sea, the chain of the

Andes rises to elevations of from ten to fifteen thousand feet. Such an

ascent as that of a few hundred feet in hundreds of miles would be

wholly imperceptible to any ordinary mode of observation; and the great

rainless region, accordingly, of Africa and Asia is, as it appears to

the traveler, one vast plain, a thousand miles wide and five thousand

miles long, with only one considerable interruption to the dead monotony

which reigns, with that exception, every where over the immense expanse

of silence and solitude. The single interval of fruitfulness and life is

the valley of the Nile.

There are, however, in fact, three interruptions to the continuity of

this plain, though only one of them constitutes any considerable

interruption to its barrenness. They are all of them valleys, extending

from north to south, and lying side by side. The most easterly of these

valleys is so deep that the waters of the ocean flow into it from the

south, forming a long and narrow inlet called the Red Sea. As this inlet

communicates freely with the ocean, it is always nearly of the same

level, and as the evaporation from it is not sufficient to produce rain,

it does not even fertilize its own shores. Its presence varies the

dreary scenery of the landscape, it is true, by giving us surging waters

to look upon instead of driving sands; but this is all. With the

exception of the spectacle of an English steamer passing, at weary

intervals, over its dreary expanse, and some moldering remains of

ancient cities on its eastern shore, it affords scarcely any indications

of life. It does very little, therefore, to relieve the monotonous

aspect of solitude and desolation which reigns over the region into

which it has intruded.

The most westerly of the three valleys to which we have alluded is only

a slight depression of the surface of the land marked by a line of

_oases_. The depression is not sufficient to admit the waters of the

Mediterranean, nor are there any rains over any portion of the valley

which it forms sufficient to make it the bed of a stream. Springs issue,

however, here and there, in several places, from the ground, and,

percolating through the sands along the valley, give fertility to little

dells, long and narrow, which, by the contrast that they form with the

surrounding desolation, seem to the traveler to possess the verdure and

beauty of Paradise. There is a line of these oases extending along this

westerly depression, and some of them are of considerable extent. The

oasis of Siweh, on which stood the far-famed temple of Jupiter Ammon,

was many miles in extent, and was said to have contained in ancient

times a population of eight thousand souls. Thus, while the most

easterly of the three valleys which we have named was sunk so low as to

admit the ocean to flow freely into it, the most westerly was so

slightly depressed that it gained only a circumscribed and limited

fertility through the springs, which, in the lowest portions of it,

oozed from the ground. The third valley--the central one--remains now to

be described.

The reader will observe, by referring once more to the map, that south

of the great rainless region of which we are speaking, there lie groups

and ranges of mountains in Abyssinia, called the Mountains of the Moon.

These mountains are near the equator, and the relation which they

sustain to the surrounding seas, and to currents of wind which blow in

that quarter of the world, is such, that they bring down from the

atmosphere, especially in certain seasons of the year, vast and

continual torrents of rain. The water which thus falls drenches the

mountain sides and deluges the valleys. There is a great portion of it

which can not flow to the southward or eastward toward the sea, as the

whole country consists, in those directions, of continuous tracts of

elevated land. The rush of water thus turns to the northward, and,

pressing on across the desert through the great central valley which we

have referred to above, it finds an outlet, at last, in the

Mediterranean, at a point two thousand miles distant from the place

where the immense condenser drew it from the skies. The river thus

created is the Nile. It is formed, in a word, by the surplus waters of a

district inundated with rains, in their progress across a rainless

desert, seeking the sea.

If the surplus of water upon the Abyssinian mountains had been constant

and uniform, the stream, in its passage across the desert, would have

communicated very little fertility to the barren sands which it

traversed. The immediate banks of the river would have, perhaps, been

fringed with verdure, but the influence of the irrigation would have

extended no farther than the water itself could have reached, by

percolation through the sand. But the flow of the water is not thus

uniform and steady. In a certain season of the year the rains are

incessant, and they descend with such abundance and profusion as almost

to inundate the districts where they fall. Immense torrents stream down

the mountain sides; the valleys are deluged; plains turn into morasses,

and morasses into lakes. In a word, the country becomes half submerged,

and the accumulated mass of waters would rush with great force and

violence down the central valley of the desert, which forms their only

outlet, if the passage were narrow, and if it made any considerable

descent in its course to the sea. It is, however, not narrow, and the

descent is very small. The depression in the surface of the desert,

through which the water flows, is from five to ten miles wide, and,

though it is nearly two thousand miles from the rainy district across

the desert to the sea, the country for the whole distance is almost

level. There is only sufficient descent, especially for the last

thousand miles, to determine a very gentle current to the northward in

the waters of the stream.

Under these circumstances, the immense quantity of water which falls in

the rainy district in these inundating tropical showers, expands over

the whole valley, and forms for a time an immense lake, extending in

length across the whole breadth of the desert. This lake is, of course,

from five to ten miles wide, and a thousand miles long. The water in it

is shallow and turbid, and it has a gentle current toward the north. The

rains, at length, in a great measure cease; but it requires some months

for the water to run off and leave the valley dry. As soon as it is

gone, there springs up from the whole surface of the ground which has

been thus submerged a most rank and luxuriant vegetation.

This vegetation, now wholly regulated and controlled by the hand of man,

must have been, in its original and primeval state, of a very peculiar

character. It must have consisted of such plants only as could exist

under the condition of having the soil in which they grew laid, for a

quarter of the year, wholly under water. This circumstance, probably,

prevented the valley of the Nile from having been, like other fertile

tracts of land, encumbered, in its native state, with forests. For the

same reason, wild beasts could never have haunted it. There were no

forests to shelter them, and no refuge or retreat for them but the dry

and barren desert, during the period of the annual inundations. This

most extraordinary valley seems thus to have been formed and preserved

by Nature herself for the special possession of man. She herself seems

to have held it in reserve for him from the very morning of creation,

refusing admission into it to every plant and every animal that might

hinder or disturb his occupancy and control. And if he were to abandon

it now for a thousand years, and then return to it once more, he would

find it just as he left it, ready for his immediate possession. There

would be no wild beasts that he must first expel, and no tangled forests

would have sprung up, that his ax must first remove. Nature is the

husbandman who keeps this garden of the world in order, and the means

and machinery by which she operates are the grand evaporating surfaces

of the seas, the beams of the tropical sun, the lofty summits of the

Abyssinian Mountains, and, as the product and result of all this

instrumentality, great periodical inundations of summer rain.

For these or some other reasons Egypt has been occupied by man from the

most remote antiquity. The oldest records of the human race, made three

thousand years ago, speak of Egypt as ancient then, when they were

written. Not only is Tradition silent, but even Fable herself does not

attempt to tell the story of the origin of her population. Here stand

the oldest and most enduring monuments that human power has ever been

able to raise. It is, however, somewhat humiliating to the pride of the

race to reflect that the loftiest and proudest, as well as the most

permanent and stable of all the works which man has ever accomplished,

are but the incidents and adjuncts of a thin stratum of alluvial

fertility, left upon the sands by the subsiding waters of summer

showers.

The most important portion of the alluvion of the Nile is the northern

portion, where the valley widens and opens toward the sea, forming a

triangular plain of about one hundred miles in length on each of the

sides, over which the waters of the river flow in a great number of

separate creeks and channels. The whole area forms a vast meadow,

intersected every where with slow-flowing streams of water, and

presenting on its surface the most enchanting pictures of fertility,

abundance, and beauty. This region is called the Delta of the Nile.

The sea upon the coast is shallow, and the fertile country formed by the

deposits of the river seems to have projected somewhat beyond the line

of the coast; although, as the land has not advanced perceptibly for the

last eighteen hundred years, it may be somewhat doubtful whether the

whole of the apparent protrusion is not due to the natural conformation

of the coast, rather than to any changes made by the action of the

river.

The Delta of the Nile is so level itself, and so little raised above the

level of the Mediterranean, that the land seems almost a continuation of

the same surface with the sea, only, instead of blue waters topped with

white-crested waves, we have broad tracts of waving grain, and gentle

swells of land crowned with hamlets and villages. In approaching the

coast, the navigator has no distant view of all this verdure and beauty.

It lies so low that it continues beneath the horizon until the ship is

close upon the shore. The first landmarks, in fact, which the seaman

makes, are the tops of trees growing apparently out of the water, or the

summit of an obelisk, or the capital of a pillar, marking the site of

some ancient and dilapidated city.

The most easterly of the channels by which the waters of the river find

their way through the Delta to the sea, is called, as it will be seen

marked upon the map, the Pelusiac branch. It forms almost the boundary

of the fertile region of the Delta on the eastern side. There was an

ancient city named Pelusium near the mouth of it. This was, of course,

the first Egyptian city reached by those who arrived by land from the

eastward, traveling along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. On

account of its thus marking the eastern frontier of the country, it

became a point of great importance, and is often mentioned in the

histories of ancient times.

The westernmost mouth of the Nile, on the other hand, was called the

Canopic mouth. The distance along the coast from the Canopic mouth to

Pelusium was about a hundred miles. The outline of the coast was

formerly, as it still continues to be, very irregular, and the water

shallow. Extended banks of sand protruded into the sea, and the sea

itself, as if in retaliation, formed innumerable creeks, and inlets, and

lagoons in the land. Along this irregular and uncertain boundary the

waters of the Nile and the surges of the Mediterranean kept up an

eternal war, with energies so nearly equal, that now, after the lapse of

eighteen hundred years since the state of the contest began to be

recorded, neither side has been found to have gained any perceptible

advantage over the other. The river brings the sands down, and the sea

drives them incessantly back, keeping the whole line of the shore in

such a condition as to make it extremely dangerous and difficult of

access to man.

It will be obvious, from this description of the valley of the Nile,

that it formed a country which was in ancient times isolated and

secluded, in a very striking manner, from all the rest of the world. It

was wholly shut in by deserts, on every side, by land; and the shoals,

and sand-bars, and other dangers of navigation which marked the line of

the coast, seemed to forbid approach by sea. Here it remained for many

ages, under the rule of its own native ancient kings. Its population was

peaceful and industrious. Its scholars were famed throughout the world

for their learning, their science, and their philosophy.

It was in these ages, before other nations had intruded upon its

peaceful seclusion, that the Pyramids were built, and the enormous

monoliths carved, and those vast temples reared whose ruined columns are

now the wonder of mankind. During these remote ages, too, Egypt was, as

now, the land of perpetual fertility and abundance. There would always

be corn in Egypt, wherever else famine might rage. The neighboring

nations and tribes in Arabia, Palestine, and Syria, found their way to

it, accordingly, across the deserts on the eastern side, when driven by

want, and thus opened a way of communication. At length the Persian

monarchs, after extending their empire westward to the Mediterranean,

found access by the same road to Pelusium, and thence overran and

conquered the country. At last, about two hundred and fifty years before

the time of Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, when he subverted the

Persian empire, took possession of Egypt, and annexed it, among the

other Persian provinces, to his own dominions. At the division of

Alexander's empire, after his death, Egypt fell to one of his generals,

named Ptolemy. Ptolemy made it his kingdom, and left it, at his death,

to his heirs. A long line of sovereigns succeeded him, known in history

as the dynasty of the Ptolemies--Greek princes, reigning over an

Egyptian realm. Cleopatra was the daughter of the eleventh in the line.

The capital of the Ptolemies was Alexandria. Until the time of

Alexander's conquest, Egypt had no sea-port. There were several

landing-places along the coast, but no proper harbor. In fact Egypt had

then so little commercial intercourse with the rest of the world, that

she scarcely needed any. Alexander's engineers, however, in exploring

the shore, found a point not far from the Canopic mouth of the Nile

where the water was deep, and where there was an anchorage ground

protected by an island. Alexander founded a city there, which he called

by his own name. He perfected the harbor by artificial excavations and

embankments. A lofty light-house was reared, which formed a landmark by

day, and exhibited a blazing star by night to guide the galleys of the

Mediterranean in. A canal was made to connect the port with the Nile,

and warehouses were erected to contain the stores of merchandise. In a

word, Alexandria became at once a great commercial capital. It was the

seat, for several centuries, of the magnificent government of the

Ptolemies; and so well was its situation chosen for the purposes

intended, that it still continues, after the lapse of twenty centuries

of revolution and change, one of the principal emporiums of the commerce

of the East.