In the very midst of the white wall with its bastions and ramparts,
which formed the fortifications of Memphis, stood the old palace of the
kings, a stately structure built of bricks, recently plastered, and with
courts, corridors, chambers and halls without number, and veranda-like
out-buildings of gayly-painted wood, and a magnificent pillared
banqueting-hall in the Greek style. It was surrounded by verdurous
gardens, and a whole host of laborers tended the flower-beds and shady
alleys, the shrubs and the trees; kept the tanks clean and fed the fish
in them; guarded the beast-garden, in which quadrupeds of every kind,
from the heavy-treading elephant to the light-footed antelope, were to
be seen, associated with birds innumerable of every country and climate.
A light white vapor rose from the splendidly fitted bath-house, loud
barkings resounded from the dog-kennels, and from the long array of open
stables came the neighing of horses with the clatter and stamp of hoofs,
and the rattle of harness and chains. A semicircular building of new
construction adjoining the old palace was the theatre, and many large
tents for the bodyguard, for ambassadors and scribes, as well as others,
serving as banqueting-halls for the various court-officials, stood both
within the garden and outside its enclosing walls. A large space leading
from the city itself to the royal citadel was given up to the soldiers,
and there, by the side of the shady court-yards, were the houses of the
police-guard and the prisons. Other soldiers were quartered in tents
close to the walls of the palace itself. The clatter of their arms and
the words of command, given in Greek, by their captain, sounded out at
this particular instant, and up into the part of the buildings occupied
by the queen; and her apartments were high up, for in summer time
Cleopatra preferred to live in airy tents, which stood among the
broad-leaved trees of the south and whole groves of flowering shrubs,
on the level roof of the palace, which was also lavishly decorated with
marble statues. There was only one way of access to this retreat,
which was fitted up with regal splendor; day and night it was fanned by
currents of soft air, and no one could penetrate uninvited to disturb
the queen’s retirement, for veteran guards watched at the foot of the
broad stair that led to the roof, chosen from the Macedonian “Garde
noble,” and owing as implicit obedience to Cleopatra as to the king
himself. This select corps was now, at sunset, relieving guard, and the
queen could hear the words spoken by the officers in command and
the clatter of the shields against the swords as they rattled on the
pavement, for she had come out of her tent into the open air, and stood
gazing towards the west, where the glorious hues of the sinking sun
flooded the bare, yellow limestone range of the Libyan hills, with
their innumerable tombs and the separate groups of pyramids; while the
wonderful coloring gradually tinged with rose-color the light silvery
clouds that hovered in the clear sky over the valley of Memphis, and
edged them as with a rile of living gold.
The queen stepped out of her tent, accompanied by a young Greek
girl--the fair Zoe, daughter of her master of the hunt Zenodotus, and
Cleopatra’s favorite lady-in-waiting--but though she looked towards the
west, she stood unmoved by the magic of the glorious scene before her;
she screened her eyes with her hand to shade them from the blinding
rays, and said:
“Where can Cornelius be staying! When we mounted our chariots before the
temple he had vanished, and as far as I can see the road in the quarters
of Sokari and Serapis I cannot discover his vehicle, nor that of Eulaeus
who was to accompany him. It is not very polite of him to go off in this
way without taking leave; nay, I could call it ungrateful, since I had
proposed to tell him on our way home all about my brother Euergetes, who
has arrived to-day with his friends. They are not yet acquainted, for
Euergetes was living in Cyrene when Publius Cornelius Scipio landed in
Alexandria. Stay! do you see a black shadow out there by the vineyard
at Kakem; That is very likely he; but no--you are right, it is only some
birds, flying in a close mass above the road. Can you see nothing more?
No!--and yet we both have sharp young eyes. I am very curious to know
whether Publius Scipio will like Euergetes. There can hardly be two
beings more unlike, and yet they have some very essential points in
common.”
“They are both men,” interrupted Zoe, looking at the queen as if she
expected cordial assent to this proposition.
“So they are,” said Cleopatra proudly. “My brother is still so young
that, if he were not a king’s son, he would hardly have outgrown the
stage of boyhood, and would be a lad among other Epheboi,--[Youths above
18 were so called]--and yet among the oldest there is hardly a man who
is his superior in strength of will and determined energy. Already,
before I married Philometor, he had clutched Alexandria and Cyrene,
which by right should belong to my husband, who is the eldest of us
three, and that was not very brotherly conduct--and indeed we had other
grounds for being angry with him; but when I saw him again for the first
time after nine months of separation I was obliged to forget them all,
and welcome him as though he had done nothing but good to me and his
brother--who is my husband, as is the custom of the families of Pharaohs
and the usage of our race. He is a young Titan, and no one would be
astonished if he one day succeeded in piling Pelion upon Ossa. I know
well enough how wild he can often be, how unbridled and recalcitrant
beyond all bounds; but I can easily pardon him, for the same bold blood
flows in my own veins, and at the root of all his excesses lies power,
genuine and vigorous power. And this innate pith and power are just the
very thing we most admire in men, for it is the one gift which the gods
have dealt out to us with a less liberal hand than to men. Life indeed
generally dams its overflowing current, but I doubt whether this will be
the case with the stormy torrent of his energy; at any rate men such as
he is rush swiftly onwards, and are strong to the end, which sooner
or later is sure to overtake them; and I infinitely prefer such a wild
torrent to a shallow brook flowing over a plain, which hurts no one, and
which in order to prolong its life loses itself in a misty bog. He, if
any one, may be forgiven for his tumultuous career; for when he pleases
my brother’s great qualities charm old and young alike, and are as
conspicuous and as remarkable as his faults--nay, I will frankly say his
crimes. And who in Greece or Egypt surpasses him in grasp and elevation
of mind?”
“You may well be proud of him,” replied Zoe. “Not even Publius Scipio
himself can soar to the height reached by Euergetes.”
“But, on the other hand, Euergetes is not gifted with the steady, calm
self-reliance of Cornelius. The man who should unite in one person the
good qualities of those two, need yield the palm, as it seems to me, not
even to a god!”
“Among us imperfect mortals he would indeed be the only perfect one,”
replied Zoe. “But the gods could not endure the existence of a perfect
man, for then they would have to undertake the undignified task of
competing with one of their own creatures.”
“Here, however, comes one whom no one can accuse!” cried the young
queen, as she hastened to meet a richly dressed woman, older than
herself, who came towards her leading her son, a pale child of two
years old. She bent down to the little one, tenderly but with impetuous
eagerness, and was about to clasp him in her arms, but the fragile
child, which at first had smiled at her, was startled; he turned away
from her and tried to hide his little face in the dress of his nurse--a
lady of rank-to whom he clung with both hands. The queen threw herself
on her knees before him, took hold of his shoulder, and partly by
coaxing and partly by insistence strove to induce him to quit the
sheltering gown and to turn to her; but although the lady, his
wet-nurse, seconded her with kind words of encouragement, the terrified
child began to cry, and resisted his mother’s caresses with more and
more vehemence the more passionately she tried to attract and conciliate
him. At last the nurse lifted him up, and was about to hand him to his
mother, but the wilful little boy cried more than before, and throwing
his arms convulsively round his nurse’s neck he broke into loud cries.
In the midst of this rather unbecoming struggle of the mother against
the child’s obstinacy, the clatter of wheels and of horses’ hoofs rang
through the court-yard of the palace, and hardly had the sound reached
the queen’s ears than she turned away from the screaming child, hurried
to the parapet of the roof, and called out to Zoe:
“Publius Scipio is here; it is high time that I should dress for the
banquet. Will that naughty child not listen to me at all? Take him away,
Praxinoa, and understand distinctly that I am much dissatisfied with
you. You estrange my own child from me to curry favor with the future
king. That is base, or else it proves that you have no tact, and are
incompetent for the office entrusted to you. The office of wet-nurse you
duly fulfilled, but I shall now look out for another attendant for the
boy. Do not answer me! no tears! I have had enough of that with the
child’s screaming.” With these words, spoken loudly and passionately,
she turned her back on Praxinoa--the wife of a distinguished Macedonian
noble, who stood as if petrified--and retired into her tent, where
branched lamps had just been placed on little tables of elegant
workmanship. Like all the other furniture in the queen’s dressing-tent
these were made of gleaming ivory, standing out in fine relief from the
tent-cloth which was sky-blue woven with silver lilies and ears of corn,
and from the tiger-skins which covered all the cushions, while white
woollen carpets, bordered with a waving scroll in blue, were spread on
the ground.
The queen threw herself on a seat in front of her dressing-table, and
sat staring at herself in a mirror, as if she now saw her face and her
abundant, reddish-fair hair for the first time; then she said, half
turning to Zoe and half to her favorite Athenian waiting-maid, who stood
behind her with her other women:
“It was folly to dye my dark hair light; but now it may remain so, for
Publius Scipio, who has no suspicion of our arts, thought this color
pretty and uncommon, and never will know its origin. That Egyptian
headdress with the vulture’s head which the king likes best to see me
in, the young Greek Lysias and the Roman too, call barbaric, and so
every one must call it who is not interested in the Egyptians. But
to-night we are only ourselves, so I will wear the chaplet of golden
corn with sapphire grapes. Do you think, Zoe, that with that I could
wear the dress of transparent bombyx silk that came yesterday from Cos?
But no, I will not wear that, for it is too slight a tissue, it hides
nothing and I am now too thin for it to become me. All the lines in
my throat show, and my elbows are quite sharp--altogether I am much
thinner. That comes of incessant worry, annoyance, and anxiety. How
angry I was yesterday at the council, because my husband will always
give way and agree and try to be pleasant; whenever a refusal is
necessary I have to interfere, unwilling as I am to do it, and odious
as it is to me always to have to stir up discontent, disappointment, and
disaffection, to take things on myself and to be regarded as hard
and heartless in order that my husband may preserve undiminished the
doubtful glory of being the gentlest and kindest of men and princes. My
son’s having a will of his own leads to agitating scenes, but even that
is better than that Philopator should rush into everybody’s arms. The
first thing in bringing up a boy should be to teach him to say ‘no.’ I
often say ‘yes’ myself when I should not, but I am a woman, and yielding
becomes us better than refusal--and what is there of greater importance
to a woman than to do what becomes her best, and to seem beautiful?
“I will decide on this pale dress, and put over it the net-work of gold
thread with sapphire knots; that will go well with the head-dress. Take
care with your comb, Thais, you are hurting me! Now--I must not chatter
any more. Zoe, give me the roll yonder; I must collect my thoughts a
little before I go down to talk among men at the banquet. When we have
just come from visiting the realm of death and of Serapis, and have
been reminded of the immortality of the soul and of our lot in the next
world, we are glad to read through what the most estimable of human
thinkers has said concerning such things. Begin here, Zoe.”
Cleopatra’s companion, thus addressed, signed to the unoccupied
waiting-women to withdraw, seated herself on a low cushion opposite the
queen, and began to read with an intelligent and practised intonation;
the reading went on for some time uninterrupted by any sound but the
clink of metal ornaments, the rustle of rich stuffs, the trickle of oils
or perfumes as they were dropped into the crystal bowls, the short
and whispered questions of the women who were attiring the queen, or
Cleopatra’s no less low and rapid answers.
All the waiting-women not immediately occupied about the queen’s
person--perhaps twenty in all, young and old-ranged themselves along the
sides of the great tent, either standing or sitting on the ground or
on cushions, and awaiting the moment when it should be their turn to
perform some service, as motionless as though spellbound by the mystical
words of a magician. They only made signs to each other with their eyes
and fingers, for they knew that the queen did not choose to be disturbed
when she was being read to, and that she never hesitated to cast aside
anything or anybody that crossed her wishes or inclinations, like a
tight shoe or a broken lutestring.
Her features were irregular and sharp, her cheekbones too strongly
developed, and the lips, behind which her teeth gleamed pearly
white-though too widely set--were too full; still, so long as she
exerted her great powers of concentration, and listened with flashing
eyes, like those of a prophetess, and parted lips to the words of Plato,
her face had worn an indescribable glow of feeling, which seemed to have
come upon her from a higher and better world, and she had looked far
more beautiful than now when she was fully dressed, and when her women
crowded round leer--Zoe having laid aside the Plato--with loud and
unmeasured flattery.
Cleopatra delighted in being thus feted, and, in order to enjoy the
adulation of a throng, she would always when dressing have a great
number of women to attend her toilet; mirrors were held up to her on
every side, a fold set right, and the jewelled straps of her sandals
adjusted.
One praised the abundance of her hair, another the slenderness of her
form, the slimness of her ankles, and the smallness of her tiny
hands and feet. One maiden remarked to another--but loud enough to
be heard--on the brightness of her eyes which were clearer than the
sapphires on her brow, while the Athenian waiting-woman, Thais, declared
that Cleopatra had grown fatter, for her golden belt was less easy to
clasp than it had been ten days previously.
The queen presently signed to Zoe, who threw a little silver ball into a
bowl of the same metal, elaborately wrought and decorated, and in a few
minutes the tramp of the body-guard was audible outside the door of the
tent.
Cleopatra went out, casting a rapid glance over the roof--now brightly
illuminated with cressets and torches--and the white marble statues
that gleamed out in relief against the dark clumps of shrubs; and then,
without even looking at the tent where her children were asleep, she
approached the litter, which had been brought up to the roof for her by
the young Macedonian nobles. Zoe and Thais assisted her to mount into
it, and her ladies, waiting-women, and others who had hurried out of
the other tents, formed a row on each side of the way, and hailed their
mistress with loud cries of admiration and delight as she passed by,
lifted high above them all on the shoulders of her bearers. The diamonds
in the handle of her feather-fan sparkled brightly as Cleopatra waved a
gracious adieu to her women, an adieu which did not fail to remind them
how infinitely beneath her were those she greeted. Every movement of
her hand was full of regal pride, and her eyes, unveiled and untempered,
were radiant with a young woman’s pleasure in a perfect toilet, with
satisfaction in her own person, and with the anticipation of the festive
hours before her.
The litter disappeared behind the door of the broad steps that led up to
the roof, and Thais, sighing softly, said to herself, “If only for once
I could ride through the air in just such a pretty shell of colored and
shining mother-of-pearl, like a goddess! carried aloft by young men, and
hailed and admired by all around me! High up there the growing Selene
floats calmly and silently by the tiny stars, and just so did she
ride past in her purple robe with her torch-bearers and flames
and lights-past us humble creatures, and between the tents to the
banquet--and to what a banquet, and what guests! Everything up here
greets her with rejoicing, and I could almost fancy that among those
still marble statues even the stern face of Zeno had parted its lips,
and spoken flattering words to her. And yet poor little Zoe, and the
fair-haired Lysippa, and the black-haired daughter of Demetrius, and
even I, poor wretch, should be handsomer, far handsomer than she, if we
could dress ourselves with fine clothes and jewels for which kings would
sell their kingdoms; if we could play Aphrodite as she does, and ride
off in a shell borne aloft on emerald-green glass to look as if it were
floating on the waves; if dolphins set with pearls and turquoises served
us for a footstool, and white ostrich-plumes floated over our heads,
like the silvery clouds that float over Athens in the sky of a fine
spring day. The transparent tissue that she dared not put on would well
become me! If only that were true which Zoe was reading yesterday, that
the souls of men were destined to visit the earth again and again in new
forms! Then perhaps mine might some day come into the world in that of
a king’s child. I should not care to be a prince, so much is expected of
him, but a princess indeed! That would be lovely!”
These and such like were Thais’ dreams, while Zoe stood outside the tent
of the royal children with her cousin, the chief-attendant of prince
Philopator, carrying on an eager conversation in a low tone. The child’s
nurse from time to time dried her eyes and sobbed bitterly as she said:
“My own baby, my other children, my husband and our beautiful house
in Alexandria--I left them all to suckle and rear a prince. I have
sacrificed happiness, freedom, and my nights’-sleep for the sake of the
queen and of this child, and how am I repaid for all this? As if I were
a lowborn wench instead of the daughter and wife of noble men; this
woman, half a child still, scarcely yet nineteen, dismisses me from her
service before you and all her ladies every ten days! And why? Because
the ungoverned blood of her race flows in her son’s veins, and because
he does not rush into the arms of a mother who for days does not ask for
him at all, and never troubles herself about him but in some idle moment
when she has gratified every other whim. Princes distribute favor or
disgrace with justice only so long as they are children. The little one
understands very well what I am to him, and sees what Cleopatra is. If I
could find it in my heart to ill-use him in secret, this mother--who is
not fit to be a mother--would soon have her way. Hard as it would be to
me so soon to leave the poor feeble little child, who has grown as
dear to my soul as my own--aye and closer, even closer, as I may well
say--this time I will do it, even at the risk of Cleopatra’s plunging us
into ruin, my husband and me, as she has done to so many who have dared
to contravene her will.”
The wet-nurse wept aloud, but Zoe laid her hand on the distressed
woman’s shoulder, and said soothingly: “I know you have more to submit
to from Cleopatra’s humors than any of us all, but do not be overhasty.
Tomorrow she will send you a handsome present, as she so often has done
after being unkind; and though she vexes and hurts you again and again,
she will try to make up for it again and again till, when this year is
over, your attendance on the prince will be at an end, and you can go
home again to your own family. We all have to practise patience; we
live like people dwelling in a ruinous house with to-day a stone and
to-morrow a beam threatening to fall upon our heads. If we each take
calmly whatever befalls us our masters try to heal our wounds, but if
we resist may the gods have mercy on us! for Cleopatra is like a strung
bow, which sets the arrow flying as soon as a child, a mouse, a breath
of air even touches it--like an over-full cup which brims over if a
leaf, another drop, a single tear falls into it. We should, any one of
us, soon be worn out by such a life, but she needs excitement, turmoil
and amusement at every hour. She comes home late from a feast, spends
barely six hours in disturbed slumber, and has hardly rested so long as
it takes a pebble to fall to the ground from a crane’s claw before we
have to dress her again for another meal. From the council-board she
goes to hear some learned discourse, from her books in the temple to
sacrifice and prayer, from the sanctuary to the workshops of artists,
from pictures and statues to the audience-chamber, from a reception
of her subjects and of foreigners to her writing-room, from answering
letters to a procession and worship once more, from the sacred services
back again to her dressing-tent, and there, while she is being attired
she listens to me while I read the most profound works--and how she
listens! not a word escapes her, and her memory retains whole sentences.
Amid all this hurry and scurry her spirit must need be like a limb that
is sore from violent exertion, and that is painfully tender to every
rough touch. We are to her neither more nor less than the wretched flies
which we hit at when they trouble us, and may the gods be merciful to
those on whom this queen’s hand may fall! Euergetes cleaves with the
sword all that comes in his way. Cleopatra stabs with the dagger, and
her hand wields the united power of her own might and of her yielding
husband’s. Do not provoke her. Submit to what you cannot avert; just as
I never complain when, if I make a mistake in reading, she snatches the
book from my hand, or flings it at my feet. But I, of course, have only
myself to fear for, and you have your husband and children as well.”
Praxinoa bowed her head at these words in sad assent, and said:
“Thank you for those words! I always think only from my heart, and you
mostly from your head. You are right, this time again there is nothing
for me to do but to be patient; but when I have fulfilled the duties
here, which I undertook, and am at home again, I will offer a great
sacrifice to Asclepias and Hygiea, like a person recovered from a severe
illness; and one thing I know: that I would rather be a poor girl,
grinding at a mill, than change with this rich and adored queen who, in
order to enjoy her life to the utmost, carelessly and restlessly hurries
past all that our mortal lot has best to offer. Terrible, hideous to me
seems such an existence with no rest in it! and the heart of a mother
which is so much occupied with other things that she cannot win the love
of her child, which blossoms for every hired nurse, must be as waste as
the desert! Rather would I endure anything--everything--with patience
than be such a queen!”