<h3>CLEOPATRA.</h3>
<p class="heading">[BORN B.C. 68. DIED B.C. 29.]<br/>
MERIVALE.</p>
<p><ANTIMG src="images/ih.jpg" alt="H" width-obs="68" height-obs="70" class="floatl" />ER
personal talents were indeed of the most varied kind; she was an
admirable singer and musician; she was skilled in many languages, and
possessed intellectual accomplishments rarely found among the staidest
of her sex, combined with the archness and humour of the lightest. She
exerted herself to pamper her lover's [Antony's] sensual appetites, to
stimulate his flagging interests by ingenious surprises, nor less to
gratify the revival of his nobler propensities with paintings and
sculptures, and works of literature. She encouraged him to take his seat
as gymnasiarch, or director of the public amusements, and even to vary
his debauches with philosophy and criticism. She amused him by sending
divers to fasten salt-fish to the bait of his angling-rod; and when she
had pledged herself to consume the value of ten millions of sesterces at
a meal, amazed him by dissolving, in the humble cup of vinegar set
before her, a pearl of inestimable price.</p>
<p>Her lover attended upon her in the forum, at the theatre, and the
tribunals; he rode with her, or followed her chariot on foot, escorted
by a train of eunuchs; at night he strolled with her through the city,
in the garb of a slave, and encountered abuse and blows from the rabble
of the streets; by day he wore the loose Persian robe, and girded
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himself with the Median dagger, and he designated as his palace the
pr�torium or general's apartment. Painters and sculptors were charged to
group the illustrious pair together, and the coins of the kingdom bore
the heads and names of both conjointly. The Roman legionary, with the
name of Cleopatra inscribed upon his shield, found himself transformed
into a Macedonian body-guard. Masques were presented at the court, in
which the versatile Plancus sank into the character of a stage buffoon,
and enacted the part of the sea-god Glaucus in curt cerulean vestments,
crowned with the feathery heads of the papyrus, and deformed with the
tail of a fish.</p>
<p>But when Cleopatra arrayed herself in the garb and usurped the
attributes of Isis, and invited her paramour to ape the deity Osiris,
the portentous travesty assumed a deeper significance. It had been the
policy of the Macedonian sovereigns to form an alliance between the
popular superstitions of their Greek and Egyptian subjects. Ptolem�us
Soter had prevailed on the native priesthood to sanction the
consecration of a new divinity, Serapis, who, if not really of Grecian
origin, was confidently identified by the Greeks with their own Pluto,
or perhaps with Zeus. The Macedonians had admitted with little scruple
their great hero's claims to be the offspring of Ammon, the king of
gods, who was worshipped in the Oasis of the desert. The notion that a
mere man might become exalted into union with deity, favoured by the
rationalising explanations of their popular mythology already current
among the learned, had gradually settled into an indulgent admission of
the royal right of apotheosis. Antony had assumed the character of
Bacchus at Athens. In the metropolis of Grecian scepticism this could
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></SPAN></span>
only be regarded as a drunken whim; but when he came forward in
Alexandria as the Nile-God Osiris, the Bacchus or fructifying power of
the Coptic mythology, he claimed as a present deity the veneration of
the credulous Egyptians.</p>
<p>Another scene follows the death of Antony. When the ceremonies of
interment were finished, Cleopatra allowed herself to be led to the
palace of her ancestors. Exhausted with fever by the vehemence of her
passionate mourning, she refused the care of her physician, and declared
that she would perish by hunger. Octavius [the conqueror of Antony] was
alarmed at the avowal of this desperate resolution. He could only
prevail upon her to protract her existence by the barbarous threat of
murdering her children. He held out also the hope of a personal
interview, and again her vanity whispered to her not yet to despair. The
artless charms of youth which, as she at least deemed, had enchained the
great Julius at a single interview, had long since passed away; the more
mature attractions which experience had taught her to cultivate for the
conquest of her second lover, might fail under the disastrous ravages of
so many years of indulgence and dissipation; but time had not blighted
her genius; her distresses claimed compassion; and from pity, she well
knew, there is but one step to love. In the retirement of the women's
apartments she decked her chamber with sumptuous magnificence, and threw
herself on a silken couch in the negligent attire of sickness and woe.
She clasped to her bosom the letters of her earliest admirer, and
surrounded herself with his busts and portraits, to make an impression
on the filial piety of one who claimed to inherit his conquests and
sympathise with his dearest interests. When the expected visitor
entered, she sprang passionately to meet him, and threw herself at his
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></SPAN></span>
feet; her eyes were red with weeping, her whole countenance was
disordered, her bosom heaved, and her voice trembled with emotion. The
marks of blows inflicted on her breast were visible in the disorder of
her clothing. She addressed him as her lord, and sighed as she
transferred to a stranger the sovereign title she had so long borne
herself, and which she had first received from her conqueror's father.</p>
<p>The young Roman acknowledged the charms of female beauty, and had often
surrendered to them; but he knew also his own power of resisting them,
which he had already sternly practised, and he now guarded himself
against her seductions by fixing his eyes obdurately on the ground.
Despairing of conquest, she threw herself upon his mercy, handed to him
the list of her treasures, and pleaded piteously for bare life. A slave,
interrogated and threatened perhaps with torture, declaring that some of
her effects were still withheld, she flew at him and tore his face with
her nails. Cleopatra had tasked her powers of fascination, and she knew
that they had failed. She heard without surprise that even within three
days she was to be conveyed away with her children, to adorn the
conqueror's triumph. She formed her plan with secresy and decision. She
directed her attendants to make ready for the voyage, and repaired with
her female companions to Antony's mausoleum. She gave orders for a
banquet to be served, and in the meanwhile embraced the dead man's bier,
and mingled her tears with the wine she poured upon it. Soon after, she
commanded all her attendants to leave her except her two favourite
women, Iras and Charmion, and at the same time she sent a sealed packet
to be delivered to Octavius. It contained only a brief and passionate
request to be buried with her lover. His first impulse was to rush to
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></SPAN></span>
the spot and prevent the catastrophe it portended; but in the next
moment the suspicion of a trick to excite his sympathy flashed across
him, and he contented himself with sending persons to inquire. The
messengers made all haste; but they arrived too late; the tragedy had
been acted out, and the curtain was falling. Bursting into the tomb,
they beheld Cleopatra lying dead on a golden couch in royal attire. Of
her two women, Iras was dying at her feet, and Charmion, with failing
strength, was replacing the diadem on her mistress's brow. The manner of
Cleopatra's death was never certainly known.</p>
<div class="figcenter p4">
<ANTIMG src="images/i039.jpg" width-obs="230" height-obs="58" alt="Decoration" /></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></SPAN></span></p>
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