Whose virtue and whose general graces speak
That which none else can utter.
(II. ii. 130.)
Mecaenas, too, pays his tribute to her “beauty, wisdom, modesty” (ii. ii. 246). And if the praises of the courtiers are suspect, they are not more so than the censures with which Cleopatra flatters herself or is flattered. But if we dismiss, or at least discount, both sets of overstatements, and with them Antony’s own phrase, “a gem of women,” uttered in the heat of jealous contrast, there are other conclusive evidences of the opinion in which she is held. Enobarbus speaks of her “holy, cold, and still conversation” (ii. vi. 131). Antony thinks of her as patient, even when he threatens Cleopatra with her vengeance by personal assault (iv. xii. 38). Cleopatra, with her finer intuition, even when recalling Antony’s threat, conjectures more justly what that vengeance would be:
Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes
And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour
Demuring upon me.
(IV. xv. 27.)
And elsewhere she asserts that she will not
once be chastised with the sober eye