The Life and Times of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt / A Study in the Origin of the Roman Empire - Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

During the latter part of the reign of Octavian, or Augustus, as one must call him, the influence of Alexandria upon the life of Rome began to be felt in an astonishing degree; and so greatly did Egyptian thought alter the conditions in the capital that it might well be fancied that the spirit of the dead Cleopatra was presiding over that throne which she had striven to ascend. Ferrero goes so far as to suggest that the main ideas of splendid monarchic government and sumptuous Oriental refinement which now developed in Rome were due to the direct influence of Alexandria, and perhaps to the fact that the new emperors were primarily Kings of Egypt. Alexandrian artists and artisans swarmed over the sea to Italy, and the hundreds of Romans who had snatched estates for themselves in Egypt travelled frequently to that country on business, and unconsciously familiarised themselves with its arts and crafts. Alexandrian sculpture and painting was seen in every villa, and the poetry and literature of the Alexandrian school were read by all fashionable persons. Every Roman wanted to employ Alexandrians to decorate his house, everybody studied the manners and refinements of the Græco-Egyptians. The old austerity went to pieces before the buoyancy of Cleopatra’s subjects, just as the aloofness of London has disappeared under the Continental invasion of the last few years.

Thus it may be said that the Egypto-Roman Empire of Cleopatra’s dreams came to be founded in actual fact, with this difference, that its monarchs were sprung from the line of Octavian, Cæsar’s nephew, and not from that of Cæsarion, Cæsar’s son. But while Egypt and Alexandria thus played such an important part in the creation of the Roman monarchy, the memory of Cleopatra, from whose brain and whose influence the new life had proceeded, was yearly more painfully vilified. She came to be the enemy of this Orientalised Rome, which still thought itself Occidental; and her struggle with Octavian was remembered as the evil crisis through which the party of the Cæsars had passed. Abuse was heaped upon her, and stories were invented in regard to her licentious habits. It is upon this insecure basis that the world’s estimate of the character of Cleopatra is founded; and it is necessary for every student of these times at the outset of his studies to rid his mind of the impression which he will have obtained from these polluted sources. Having shut out from his memory the stinging words of Propertius and the fierce lines of Horace, written in the excess of his joy at the close of the period of warfare which had endangered his little country estate, the reader will be in a position to judge whether the interpretation of Cleopatra’s character and actions, which I have laid before him, is to be considered as unduly lenient, and whether I have made unfair use of the merciful prerogative of the historian, in behalf of an often lonely and sorely tried woman, who fought all her life for the fulfilment of a patriotic and splendid ambition, and who died in a manner “befitting the descendant of so many kings.”

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

GENEALOGY OF THE PTOLEMIES.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Dickens.