Of the adjacent wharves. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to th' air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature."
Antony was completely fascinated with her charms. Her beauty, her wit, and, above all, the tact, adroitness, and self-possession which she displayed in consenting thus to appear before him, forced him to yield his heart almost immediately to her undisputed sway. Cleopatra remained at Tarsus for some time, in an incessant round of gayety and revelry, and by her flatteries and caresses she prevailed on Antony, forgetful of his wife Fulvia and his duty as a Roman, to spend the winter at Alexandria, where the pair engaged in continual feastings, spectacles, and sports, as well as in every species of riot, irregularity, and excess. It is not our purpose to follow the well-known career of Cleopatra during these years of turmoil, or to dwell on the circumstances that caused her to prove the destruction of Antony's hopes at the battle of Actium; neither shall we describe in detail those closing days when both committed suicide rather than suffer the consequences of humiliation and defeat.
The case of Mark Antony is the most conspicuous example in history of the complete subjugation by the arts and fascinations of a woman of a will stern and indomitable, if reckless, and of a heart that was naturally generous and noble. Cleopatra led him to betray every public trust, to alienate from himself the affections of all his countrymen, to repel most cruelly the kindness and devotedness of a beautiful and faithful wife; and at last she led him away in a most cowardly and ignoble flight from the field of duty as a soldier, he knowing full well that she was hurrying him on to disgrace and destruction, and yet being utterly without power to break from the control of her irresistible charms.
Yet they were lovers--lovers who sacrificed wealth, ambition, duty, honor, on the altar of Aphrodite. It was a love which brought destruction; still, we may charitably account for the weakness exhibited by each as the natural consequence of that romantic love, than which history has given us no greater example.
Dire was the fate of Cleopatra. Hopes all frustrated,--Antony dying in her arms,--Octavius impervious to all her allurements,--rather than grace the conqueror's triumph, the most fascinating of Greek women ended her days, according to the prevailing tradition, by the bite of an asp, in her thirty-ninth year.