CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.
CLEOPATRA VI.
We have shown how the Persian rule in Egypt was followed by that of the Ptolemies, and at first the union between prince and people was close and satisfactory. From Ptolemy I to Cleopatra VI the rulers identified themselves with the interests, and especially with the religion of the nation, with whom they were not allied by blood, built cities and temples and, the earlier members of the dynasty at least, wrought for the general good. In the case of most of the later kings, however, they were more cruel and oppressive, and revolts were more common than at first.
The architecture, especially the portrait sculpture of the Ptolemy period, was inferior to some of earlier date, but in the encouragement of literature, the building of libraries and other public edifices, and the extending of commerce the race distinguished itself.
As regents or independent rulers their queens held sway. The family intermarried to an extent shocking to Christian ideas, and Ptolemy after Ptolemy took his sister or other near relatives, usually called Arsinoe, Berenike or Cleopatra, to wife. These close relationships, however, did not seem to strengthen the family affections—it is a blood-stained history, and the murders were almost as numerous as the unions. Various towns were built and called after the queens, Arsinoe and Berenike, but though Cleopatra seems to have been a favorite name, and there were, six or seven of them in succession, this name was not so often used as the cognomen of a town.
There are a few names in the world’s history that stand alone. Many may share in the same, but to speak them is to call up one dominating image. In this sense there was but one Caesar, but one Washington, but one Eve, but one Semiramis, and to this class belongs Cleopatra. There are others, such as Helen or Troy and Mary Stuart, who have shared with these high reputation, but in these cases further identification is needed than the single name. Cleopatra stands among the few daughters of Eve pre-eminent for wit, charm, power and perhaps beauty, and to this must be added ambition and vice.
“The laughing queen who held the world’s great hands,” having won the heart of the world’s greatest rulers, yet lays her magic touch upon the centuries. Artists and writers have never tired of limning her personal charms and special characteristics. No colors have been too bright, none too dark to be used. Shakespeare, has pictured her with his immortal genius, and hundreds of others, with more or less skill, have attempted the same task. Protean in shape, no two perhaps resemble each other. In the conception of some, she is slender, graceful, exquisitely beautiful, and at the other extreme, as in the old tapestry in the New York Museum, she is like a fat Dutch woman, a decadence from Rubens’ overblown beauties; so each land has pictured her according to its own ideal.
Some have denied her pre-eminent beauty and the conventional portrait of her which still exists upon the wall at Denderah, as well as her face upon the few battered coins of her time which have come down to us, scarcely suggest it. But the woman who made men her slaves at a single interview surely lacked no charm that nature could bestow. Unbridled both in passions and ambitions, she knew no limit to either and grasped at universal empire.
The greatest men of her time bowed at her feet, and she changed the fate of battle with the turning of her vessel’s prow. She was over twenty when she captivated Caesar, over thirty when Antony became her slave. Of her numerous lovers, Antony was the chosen of that wayward, passionate heart. She refused to survive his defeat and death and perished by her own hand. Though not, strictly speaking, Egyptian queens, the Ptolemy race were yet queens of Egypt—and thus ended the long line of female royalties, extending from the dim ages of mythology to the Roman period.