Cleopatra VII of Egypt

“ I learned afterwards that it had been his desire to confide the princesses wholly to my parents' care. But an invincible power opposed this. Though Greeks might be permitted to instruct the royal children in knowledge, the Egyptians would not yield the right to their religious education. The leech Olympus—you know the good old man—had insisted that the delicate Cleopatra must spend the coldest winter months in Upper Egypt, where the sky was never clouded, and the summer near the sea in a shady garden. The little palace at Kanopus was devoted to this purpose. ”

“ It was not enough that Cæsar for love of Cleopatra had not reduced Egypt to a Roman province; not enough that he had installed this foreigner in Rome, in his villa on the banks of the Tiber, and that he lavished on her every mark of honor and every testimony of love;—now he dedicated, in the temple of a national divinity, the statue of this prostitute of Alexandria, this barbarous queen of the land of magicians, of thaumaturgy [wonder-working] , of eunuchs, of servile dwellers by the Nile, these worshipers of stuffed birds and gods with the heads of beasts. ”

“ This was a crucial moment in Cleopatra's life. She had sacrificed all that a woman has to give; but she had not done so from any love of pleasure or from wantonness. She was queen of Egypt, and she had redeemed her kingdom and kept it by her sacrifice. One should not condemn her too severely. ”

“ The first act of Cæsar on reëntering Alexandria was solemnly to recognize Cleopatra as Queen of Egypt. In order, however, to humor the ideas of the Egyptians he determined that she should espouse her second brother, Ptolemy Neoteras, and share the sovereignty with him. As, however, Dion remarks, this union and this sharing were equally visionary; the young prince, who was only fifteen, could be neither king nor even husband to the queen; apparently Cleopatra was the wife of her29 brother, and his partner on the throne; in reality she reigned solely, and continued the mistress of Cæsar. ”

“ Ay, back to Abouthis, and from Abouthis to Alexandria, and from Alexandria to the Throne of thy fathers, Harmachis! Listen, now; things are thus: Thou knowest how Cleopatra, the Queen, fled into Syria when that false eunuch Pothinus set the will of her father Aulêtes at naught and raised her brother Ptolemy to the sole lordship of Egypt. ”

“ On August 13th, 14th, and 15th of the same year three great Triumphs were celebrated, the first day being devoted to the European conquests, the second to Actium, and the third to the Egyptian victory. A statue of Cleopatra, the asp clinging to her arm, was dragged through the streets of the capital, and the Queen’s twin children, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, were made to walk in captivity in the procession. Images representing Nilus and Egypt were carried along, and an enormous quantity of interesting loot was heaped up on the triumphal cars. ”

“ Twenty thousand good and leal men are sworn to wait upon thy word, and at thy signal to rise as one, to put the Grecian to the sword, and with their blood and substance to build thee a throne set more surely on the soil of Khem than are its ancient pyramids—such a throne as shall even roll the Roman legions back. And for the signal, it shall be the death of that bold harlot, Cleopatra. Thou must compass her death, Harmachis, in such fashion as shall be shown to thee, and with her blood anoint the Royal throne of Egypt. ”

“ On the monuments the queen is always treated as an official personage, she shares the king’s honors and her name, like her husband’s, is enclosed in a cartouch. We know more of her public than of her private life.
As a rule, to which there were exceptions, the king had but one legal wife, of high or royal birth, the daughter of “the god,” as the late king was called, and hence she was in many instances, [17] in the strange Egyptian fashion, her husband’s sister. One needs surely a different standard from the Christian to judge of the morals of Egypt. ”

“ The young Ptolemy, backed by the eunuch Potheinos, the rhetorician Theodotos, and the soldier Achillas, set himself up as sole sovereign of Egypt; and Cleopatra was obliged to fly for her life into Syria. ”

“ A statue of Ti bears the same likeness as the figure in the tomb. It is that of a fine young man, with regular features, and the statue of his wife Nofre-hoteps, grand-daughter of a Pharaoh, was also found.
As has been said before, the women in Egypt had no such separate and secluded life as those in the Eastern countries, they appear to have mingled freely with their male relatives, and the queens acted as regents during the absence of their husbands, or the minority of their sons, or sometimes ruled in their own right, from the earliest times. ”

“ But he was able to be of but little use to her in return for her favours, as his fleet was soon defeated by Octavianus.
Cæsar had left behind him, in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, a large body of Roman troops, in the pay and nominally under the orders of Cleopatra, but in reality to keep Egypt in obedience. There they lived as if above all Egyptian law or Roman discipline, indulging in the vices of that luxurious capital. When some of them in a riot, in the year 45 B.C., killed two sons of Bibulus the consul, Cleopatra was either afraid or unable to punish the murderers ”

“ The Princess Arsinoe, who had walked the streets of Rome in Cæsar’s Triumph and had been released after that event, was now residing either at Miletus or Ephesus,88 where she had received sanctuary amongst the priests and priestesses attached to the temple of Artemis. The High Priest235 treated her kindly, and even honoured her as a queen, a fact which suggests that he had definitely placed himself upon her side in her feud with Cleopatra. She seems to have been a daring and ambitious woman, who, throughout her short life, struggled vainly to obtain the throne of Egypt for herself ”

“ The royal tutor, Theodotos, an objectionable Greek rhetorician, also exercised considerable influence in the court, and a third intimate of the King was an unscrupulous soldier of Egyptian nationality named Achillas, who commanded the troops in the palace. These three men very soon obtained considerable power, and, acting in the name of their young master, they managed to take a large portion of the government62 into their own hands. Cleopatra, meanwhile, seems to have suffered something of an eclipse. ”

“ The view from the top of the propylon tower at Philæ, of all beyond the island, is far finer than the view of Philæ itself from any point.” [33] Philæ is outside the natural boundary and proper frontier of Egypt; [34] and although enriched with a temple dedicated to Isis, its ruins date back no further than the last of the Pharaohs. The Temple of Isis was founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and bears the cartouche of Cleopatra; whilst its completion is due to the Roman emperors. ”

“ The former sovereigns of Egypt, Cleopatra's ancestors, had generally, as has already been shown, devoted the immense revenues which they extorted from the agriculturalists of the valley of the Nile to purposes of ambition. Cleopatra seemed now disposed to expend them in luxury and pleasure. They, the Ptolemies, had employed their resources in erecting vast structures, or founding magnificent institutions at Alexandria, to add to the glory of the city, and to widen and extend their own fame. ”

“ He anchored his vessels in the port, landed his troops, and established himself in the city. These two events, the assassination of one of the great Roman generals on the eastern extremity of the coast, and the arrival of the other, at the same moment, at Alexandria, on the western, burst suddenly upon Egypt together, like simultaneous claps of thunder. The tidings struck the whole country with astonishment, and immediately engrossed universal attention. At the camps both of Cleopatra and Ptolemy, at Pelusium, all was excitement and wonder. ”

“ Rarely, if ever, had woman accomplished so much in a single interview. She must have been elated with triumph and renewed confidence in her powers. Yet Caesar did not attempt to make her sole monarch; he lost his heart, so to speak, but not his head, as Antony subsequently did. He decreed that the will of Auletes should be carried out, restored Cyprus to Egypt and proposed that the younger brother and sister, Ptolemy and Arsinoe, should be made its governors. He even insisted that the money Cleopatra’s father had pledged to Rome should be paid. ”

“ This queen had the recklessness of the courtesan; women of gallantry might have considered her their august and tragic ancestress. She only lived for love, pomp, and magnificence; wherefore, when her lover was slain, her beauty marred, her wealth lost, and her crown shattered, she found, to face death, the masculine courage which had failed her in life.
No, Cleopatra was not a great queen. But for her connection with Antony, she would be forgotten with Arsinoë or Berenice. If her renown is immortal, it is because she is the heroine of the most dramatic love-story of antiquity. ”

“ The eyes of him who looks upon the fires of the mid-day sun are blind to all beside, and thus this sudden vision of thy glory, royal Egypt, overwhelmed my mind, and left me helpless and unwitting of all things else."
"Of a truth, noble Dellius," answered Cleopatra, "they teach a pretty school of flattery yonder in Cilicia."
"How goes the saying here in Alexandria?" replied the courtly Roman: "'The breath of flattery cannot waft a cloud,' [*] does it not? But to my task. Here, royal Egypt, are letters under the hand and seal of the noble Antony treating of certain matters of the State. ”

“ But [50] whether Hypsicrates finally swallowed the fatal potion, or by what death she passed from the world, historians have not told us.
Cleopatra, the beautiful and ambitious queen of Egypt, was at all times desirous to acquire renown as a great warrior. But she possessed neither the courage nor the prudence necessary for those who seek the laurel-wreath. She was too fond of her ease to take the command of an expedition, unless the occasion was one which rendered her presence absolutely necessary. ”

“ Story has given his heroine something of the Egyptian type, thereby forsaking the arbitrary rule that decreed the Greek type only to be admissible in sculpture; and, if he has lost in mere physical beauty, he has amply gained in power. In his Cleopatra, he has not given us the voluptuous woman, but the captive queen, brooding over the fall of her sovereignty, looking into futurity with gloomy apprehension; for she sees her empire enslaved, her nationality wiped out, her dynasty forgotten. ”

“ On the later coins we find the head of Antony joined with hers, as king and queen, and he is styled “the emperor” and she “the young goddess.” Cleopatra was perhaps the last Greek sovereign that bore the title of god. Nor did it seem unsuitable to her, so common had the Greeks of Asia and Egypt made that epithet, by giving it to their kings, and even to their kings’ families and favourites. But the use of the word made no change in their religious opinions; they never for a moment supposed that the persons whom they so styled had any share in the creation and government of the world. ”

“ According to the accepted view of historians, both ancient and modern, the great Dictator is supposed to have been led astray by the voluptuous Egyptian, and to have been detained in Alexandria, against his better judgment, by the wiles of this Siren of the East. At this time, however, as will be seen in due course, Cleopatra, “the stranger for whom the Roman half-brick was never wanting,”2 was actually an unmarried girl of some twenty-one years of age, against whose moral character not one shred of trustworthy evidence can be advanced ”

“ OF THE COMING BACK OF HARMACHIS; OF THE GREETING OF CHARMION; AND OF THE ANSWER OF CLEOPATRA TO QUINTUS DELLIUS, THE AMBASSADOR OF ANTONY THE TRIUMVIR
Presently I lifted myself, and, laying the head of Egypt’s Queen upon my knee, strove to call her back to life. How fair she seemed, even in her disarray, her long hair streaming down her breast! how deadly fair she seemed in the faint light—this woman the story of whose beauty and whose sin shall outlive the solid mass of the mighty pyramid that towered over us! ”

“ Octavius already considered himself the master of Egypt—and of the world. He feared but little the broken sword in the hand of Antony, still less the shattered remains of the army of Cleopatra and the wrecks of her navy. But there were two things still beyond his power—all-powerful emperor as he was—the immense treasures of Cleopatra, on which he had reckoned to pay his legionaries, and Cleopatra herself, whom he wished to grace his triumph; she might escape the Roman by death and her treasure by fire. Traitors and spies were not lacking in Alexandria ”

“ This ancient talisman, which bringeth good fortune and victory to its possessor, containeth a property which is unknown to the wise men of our generation, though when Cleopatra reigned in Egypt the hidden force was well known and freely utilised. ”

“ They change according to the pleasure of the supreme will. Instead of four, the Egyptians, as you know, have but three; in the palaces on the Nile they are countless. What is the meaning of this sudden entry of summer? Winter would have pleased me better."
The Queen—Iras knew not why—had changed her arrangements for Barine's reception. This vexed her, and her features assumed a gloomy, threatening expression as the young beauty, casting aside her cloak and kerchief, stood awaiting Cleopatra in a white robe of fine material and perfect fit. ”