Cleopatra - Jacob Abbott (top books of all time txt) 📗

sent a messenger to Egypt to Cleopatra, summoning her to appear before him. There were charges, he said, against her of having aided Cassius and Brutus in the late war instead of rendering assistance to him. Whether there really were any such charges, or whether they were only fabricated by Antony as pretexts for seeing Cleopatra, the fame of whose beauty was very widely extended, does not certainly appear. However this may be, he sent to summon the queen to come to him. The name of the messenger whom Antony dispatched on this errand was Dellius. Fulvia, Antony's wife, was not with him at this time. She had been left behind at Rome.

Dellius proceeded to Egypt and appeared at Cleopatra's court. The queen was at this time about twenty-eight, but more beautiful, as was said, than ever before. Dellius was very much struck with her beauty and with a certain fascination in her voice and conversation, of which her ancient biographers often speak as one of the most irresistible of her charms. He told her that she need have no fear of Antony. It was of no consequence, he said, what charges there might be against her. She would find that, in a very few days after she had entered into Antony's presence, she would be in great favor. She might rely, in fact, he said, on gaining, very speedily, an unbounded ascendency over the general. He advised her, therefore, to proceed to Cilicia without fear; and to present herself before Antony in as much pomp and magnificence as she could command. He would answer, he said, for the result.

Cleopatra determined to follow this advice. In fact, her ardent and impulsive imagination was fired with the idea of making, a second time, the conquest of the greatest general and highest potentate in the world. She began immediately to make provision for the voyage. She employed all the resources of her kingdom in procuring for herself the most magnificent means of display, such as expensive and splendid dresses, rich services of plate, ornaments of precious stones and of gold, and presents in great variety and of the most costly description for Antony. She appointed, also, a numerous retinue of attendants to accompany her, and, in a word, made all the arrangements complete for an expedition of the most imposing and magnificent character. While these preparations were going forward, she received new and frequent communications from Antony, urging her to hasten her departure; but she paid very little attention to them. It was evident that she felt quite independent, and was intending to take her own time.

At length, however, all was ready, and Cleopatra set sail. She crossed the Mediterranean Sea, and entered the mouth of the River Cydnus. Antony was at Tarsus, a city upon the Cydnus, a small distance above its mouth. When Cleopatra's fleet had entered the river, she embarked on board a most magnificent barge which she had constructed for the occasion, and had brought with her across the sea. This barge was the most magnificent and highly-ornamented vessel that had ever been built. It was adorned with carvings and decorations of the finest workmanship, and elaborately gilded. The sails were of purple, and the oars were inlaid and tipped with silver. Upon the deck of this barge Queen Cleopatra appeared, under a canopy of cloth of gold. She was dressed very magnificently in the costume in which Venus, the goddess of Beauty, was then generally represented. She was surrounded by a company of beautiful boys, who attended upon her in the form of Cupids, and fanned her with their wings, and by a group of young girls representing the Nymphs and the Graces. There was a band of musicians stationed upon the deck. This music guided the oarsmen, as they kept time to it in their rowing; and, soft as the melody was, the strains were heard far and wide over the water and along the shores, as the beautiful vessel advanced on its way. The performers were provided with flutes, lyres, viols, and all the other instruments customarily used in those times to produce music of a gentle and voluptuous kind.

[Illustration: MEETING OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY.]

In fact, the whole spectacle seemed like a vision of enchantment. Tidings of the approach of the barge spread rapidly around, and the people of the country came down in crowds to the shores of the river to gaze upon it in admiration as it glided slowly along. At the time of its arrival at Tarsus, Antony was engaged in giving a public audience at some tribunal in his palace, but everybody ran to see Cleopatra and the barge, and the great triumvir was left consequently alone, or, at least, with only a few official attendants near him. Cleopatra, on arriving at the city, landed, and began to pitch her tents on the shores. Antony sent a messenger to bid her welcome, and to invite her to come and sup with him. She declined the invitation, saying that it was more proper that he should come and sup with her. She would accordingly expect him to come, she said, and her tents would be ready at the proper hour. Antony complied with her proposal, and came to her entertainment. He was received with a magnificence and splendor which amazed him. The tents and pavilions where the entertainment was made were illuminated with an immense number of lamps. These lamps were arranged in a very ingenious and beautiful manner, so as to produce an illumination of the most surprising brilliancy and beauty. The immense number and variety, too, of the meats and wines, and of the vessels of gold and silver, with which the tables were loaded, and the magnificence and splendor of the dresses worn by Cleopatra and her attendants, combined to render the whole scene one of bewildering enchantment.

The next day, Antony invited Cleopatra to come and return his visit; but, though he made every possible effort to provide a banquet as sumptuous and as sumptuously served as hers, he failed entirely in this attempt, and acknowledged himself completely outdone. Antony was, moreover, at these interviews, perfectly fascinated with Cleopatra's charms. Her beauty, her wit, her thousand accomplishments, and, above all, the tact, and adroitness, and self-possession which she displayed in assuming at once so boldly, and carrying out so adroitly, the idea of her social superiority over him, that he yielded his heart almost immediately to her undisputed sway.

The first use which Cleopatra made of her power was to ask Antony, for her sake, to order her sister Arsinoë to be slain. Arsinoë had gone, it will be recollected, to Rome, to grace Caesar's triumph there, and had afterward retired to Asia, where she was now living an exile. Cleopatra, either from a sentiment of past revenge, or else from some apprehensions of future danger, now desired that her sister should die. Antony readily acceded to her request. He sent an officer in search of the unhappy princess. The officer slew her where he found her, within the precincts of a temple to which she had fled, supposing it a sanctuary which no degree of hostility, however extreme, would have dared to violate.

Cleopatra remained at Tarsus for some time, revolving in an incessant round of gayety and pleasure, and living in habits of unrestrained intimacy with Antony. She was accustomed to spend whole days and nights with him in feasting and revelry. The immense magnificence of these entertainments, especially on Cleopatra's part, were the wonder of the world. She seems to have taken special pleasure in exciting Antony's surprise by the display of her wealth and the boundless extravagance in which she indulged. At one of her banquets, Antony was expressing his astonishment at the vast number of gold cups, enriched with jewels, that were displayed on all sides. "Oh," said she, "they are nothing; if you like them, you shall have them all." So saying, she ordered her servants to carry them to Antony's house. The next day she invited Antony again, with a large number of the chief officers of his army and court. The table was spread with a new service of gold and silver vessels, more extensive and splendid than that of the preceding day; and at the close of the supper, when the company was about to depart, Cleopatra distributed all these treasures among the guests that had been present at the entertainment. At another of these feasts, she carried her ostentation and display to the astonishing extreme of taking off from one of her ear-rings a pearl of immense value and dissolving it in a cup of vinegar,[1] which she afterward made into a drink, such as was customarily used in those days, and then drank it. She was proceeding to do the same with the other pearl, when some of the company arrested the proceeding, and took the remaining pearl away.

[Footnote 1: Pearls, being of the nature of _shell_ in their
composition and structure, are soluble in certain acids.]

In the mean time, while Antony was thus wasting his time in luxury and pleasure with Cleopatra, his public duties were neglected, and every thing was getting into confusion. Fulvia remained in Italy. Her position and her character gave her a commanding political influence, and she exerted herself in a very energetic manner to sustain, in that quarter of the world, the interests of her husband's cause. She was surrounded with difficulties and dangers, the details of which can not, however, be here particularly described. She wrote continually to Antony, urgently entreating him to come to Rome, and displaying in her letters all those marks of agitation and distress which a wife would naturally feel under the circumstances in which she was placed. The thought that her husband had been so completely drawn away from her by the guilty arts of such a woman, and led by her to abandon his wife and his family, and leave in neglect and confusion concerns of such momentous magnitude as those which demanded his attention at home, produced an excitement in her mind bordering upon frensy. Antony was at length so far influenced by the urgency of the case that he determined to return. He broke up his quarters at Tarsus and moved south toward Tyre, which was a great naval port and station in those days. Cleopatra went with him. They were to separate at Tyre. She was to embark there for Egypt, and he for Rome.

At least that was Antony's plan, but it was not Cleopatra's. She had determined that Antony should go with her to Alexandria. As might have been expected, when the time came for the decision, the woman gained the day. Her flatteries, her arts, her caresses, her tears, prevailed. After a brief struggle between the sentiment of love on the one hand and those of ambition and of duty combined on the other, Antony gave up the contest. Abandoning every thing else, he surrendered himself wholly to Cleopatra's control, and went with her to Alexandria. He spent the winter there, giving himself up with her to every species of sensual indulgence that the most remorseless license could tolerate, and the most unbounded wealth procure.

There seemed, in fact, to be no bounds to the extravagance and infatuation which Antony displayed during the winter in Alexandria. Cleopatra devoted herself to him incessantly, day and night, filling up every moment of time with some new form of pleasure, in order that he might have no time to think of his absent wife, or to listen to the reproaches of his conscience. Antony, on his part, surrendered himself a willing victim to these wiles, and entered with all his heart into the thousand plans of gayety and merry-making which Cleopatra devised. They had