Cleopatra

TRANSLATED BY M. E. POINDEXTER
BY CLAUDE FERVAL
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
Cleopatra, that curiously perverse figure, that incarnation of fatal passion, what was she like? A combination of pride and frailty, adored and despised. Plutarch said that Her charm entered into men's very souls, and Horace thanked the gods for delivering the earth from that Fatale Monstrum .
It is not the gigantic outlines graven on the dusty walls of the temple at Dendera that will reveal the mystery of Cleopatra; nor yet those bronze medals from Syracuse, with their curious hieratic profiles; disguised by these gross images who would recognize the intelligence, the passion, the daring, the flame, the storm, the witchery, that were united in that serpent of old Nile ?
If only some masterpiece of Greek sculpture had been preserved! If we possessed that statue made at Cæsar's orders by the sculptor, Timomachus! or that cherished treasure which a rich citizen of Alexandria offered Cæsar Augustus two thousand talents to leave untouched! But all these portraits have disappeared.
Poor as we are in material we can only divine what she really was in appearance and in character. It is not certain that she was beautiful, at least not of that sensuous type of beauty which has been generally attributed to her. But, if tradition which has come down the ages has any weight, with her burning mouth, her radiant eyes, her slender body, which her country's fiery sun had polished till it shone like gilded marble, what creature born of woman was ever more fitted to inspire delight and adoration?
The kings who crossed her threshold died from excess of love.
But physical beauty alone could not have so ensnared and deprived of reason such warriors as Cæsar and Antony, brave, indefatigable, honourable men, who fell at her feet, forgetting duty, honour, the very memory of their country, for love of her.