Plutarch tells the story thus: "But when they opened the doors they found Cleopatra stark dead, laid upon a bed of gold, attired and arrayed in her royal robes, and one of her two women, who was called Iris, dead at her feet, and the other woman (called Charmion) half dead, and trembling, trimming the diadem which Cleopatra wore upon her head.
"One of the soldiers, seeing her, angrily said to her, 'Is that well done, Charmion?' 'Very well,' said she again, 'and meet for a princess descended from the race of so many noble kings.' She said no more, but fell down dead, hard by the bed.
"Now Cæsar, though he was marvellous sorry for the death of Cleopatra, yet he wondered at her noble mind and courage, and therefore commanded that she should be nobly buried and laid by Antony."
Thus ends the story of these two famous lovers of old. Octavius, afterwards known as Cæsar Augustus, reigned sole emperor of Rome, and the republic was at an end. He was not formally proclaimed emperor, but liberty and independence were thereafter forgotten words in Rome. He ended the old era of Roman history by closing the Temple of Janus, for the third time since it was built, and by freely forgiving all the friends of Antony. He had nothing to fear and had no thirst for blood and misery. Base as he had shown himself in his youth, his reign was a noble one, and during it Rome reached its highest level of literary and military glory.
AN IMPERIAL MONSTER.
A being, half monster, half madman, had come to empire in Rome. This was Caius Cæsar, great-grandson of Augustus, who in his short career as emperor displayed a malignant cruelty unsurpassed by the worst of Roman emperors, and a mad folly unequalled by any. The only conceivable excuse for him is mental disease; but insanity which takes the form of thirst for blood, and is combined with unlimited power, is a spectacle to make the very gods weep. We describe his career as the most exaggerated instance on record of mingled folly and malignity.
Brought up in the camp, he was christened by the soldiers Caligula, from the soldier's boots (caligæ) which he wore. By shrewd dissimulation he preserved his life through the reign of Tiberius, and was left heir to the throne along with the emperor's grandson. But, deceiving the senate by his pretended moderation, he was appointed by that body sole emperor.