CLEOPATRA, the regular name of the queens of Egypt in the Ptolemaic dynasty after Cleopatra, daughter of the Seleucid Antiochus the Great, wife of Ptolemy V., Epiphanes. The best known was the daughter of Ptolemy XIII. Auletes, born 69 (or 68) B.C. At the age of seventeen she became queen of Egypt jointly with her younger brother Ptolemy Dionysus, whose wife, in accordance with Egyptian custom, she was to become. A few years afterwards, deprived of all royal authority, she withdrew into Syria, and made preparation to recover her rights by force of arms. At this juncture Julius Caesar followed Pompey into Egypt. The personal fascinations of Cleopatra induced him to undertake a war on her behalf, in which Ptolemy lost his life, and she was replaced on the throne in conjunction with a younger brother, of whom, however, she soon rid herself by poison. In Rome she lived openly with Caesar as his mistress until his assassination, when, aware of her unpopularity, she returned at once to Egypt. Subsequently she became the ally and mistress of Mark Antony (see [Antonius]). Their connexion was highly unpopular at Rome, and Octavian (see [Augustus]) declared war upon them and defeated them at Actium (31 B.C.). Cleopatra took to flight, and escaped to Alexandria, where Antony joined her. Having no prospect of ultimate success, she accepted the proposal of Octavian that she should assassinate Antony, and enticed him to join her in a mausoleum which she had built in order that “they might die together.” Antony committed suicide, in the mistaken belief that she had already done so, but Octavian refused to yield to the charms of Cleopatra who put an end to her life, by applying an asp to her bosom, according to the common tradition, in the thirty-ninth year of her age (29th of August, 30 B.C.). With her ended the dynasty of the Ptolemies, and Egypt was made a Roman province. Cleopatra had three children by Antony, and by Julius Caesar, as some say, a son, called Caesarion, who was put to death by Octavian. In her the type of queen characteristic of the Macedonian dynasties stands in the most brilliant light. Imperious will, masculine boldness, relentless ambition like hers had been exhibited by queens of her race since the old Macedonian days before Philip and Alexander. But the last Cleopatra had perhaps some special intellectual endowment. She surprised her generation by being able to speak the many tongues of her subjects. There may have been an individual quality in her luxurious profligacy, but then her predecessors had not had the Roman lords of the world for wooers.
For the history of Cleopatra see [Antonius, Marcus]; [Caesar, Gaius Julius]; [Ptolemies]. The life of Antony by Plutarch is our main authority; it is upon this that Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is based. Her life is the subject of monographs by Stahr (1879, an apologia), and Houssaye, Aspasie, Cléopâtre, &c. (1879).
CLEPSYDRA (from Gr. κλἐπτειν, to steal, and ὕδωρ, water), the chronometer of the Greeks and Romans, which measured time by the flow of water. In its simplest form it was a short-necked earthenware globe of known capacity, pierced at the bottom with several small holes, through which the water escaped or “stole away.” The instrument was employed to set a limit to the speeches in courts of justice, hence the phrases aquam dare, to give the advocate speaking time, and aquam perdere, to waste time. Smaller clepsydrae of glass were very early used in place of the sun-dial, to mark the hours. But as the length of the hour varied according to the season of the year, various arrangements, of which we have no clear account, were necessary to obviate this and other defects. For instance, the flow of water varied with the temperature and pressure of the air, and secondly, the rate of flow became less as the vessel emptied itself. The latter defect was remedied by keeping the level of the water in the clepsydra uniform, the volume of that discharged being noted. Plato is said to have invented a complicated clepsydra to indicate the hours of the night as well as of the day. In the clepsydra or hydraulic clock of Ctesibius of Alexandria, made about 135 B.C., the movement of water-wheels caused the gradual rise of a little figure, which pointed out the hours with a little stick on an index attached to the machine. The clepsydra is said to have been known to the Egyptians. There was one in the Tower of the Winds at Athens; and the turret on the south side of the tower is supposed to have contained the cistern which supplied the water.
See Marquardt, Das Privatleben der Römer, i. (2nd ed., 1886), p. 792; G. Bilfinger, Die Zeitmesser der antiken Völker (1886), and Die antiken Stundenangaben (1888).
CLERESTORY, or Clearstory (Ital. chiaro piano, Fr. clairevoie, claire étage, Ger. Lichtgaden), in architecture, the upper storey of the nave of a church, the walls of which rise above the aisles and are pierced with windows (“clere” being simply “clear,” in the sense of “lighted”). Sometimes these windows are very small, being mere quatrefoils or spherical triangles. In large buildings, however, they are important objects, both for beauty and utility. The windows of the clerestories of Norman work, even in large churches, are of less importance than in the later styles. In Early English they became larger; and in the Decorated they are more important still, being lengthened as the triforium diminishes. In Perpendicular work the latter often disappears altogether, and in many later churches, as at Taunton, and many churches in Norfolk and Suffolk, the clerestories are close ranges of windows. The term is equally applicable to the Egyptian temples, where the lighting of the hall of columns was obtained over the stone roofs of the adjoining aisles, through slits pierced in vertical slabs of stone. The Romans also in their baths and palaces employed the same method, and probably derived it from the Greeks; in the palaces at Crete, however, light-wells would seem to have been employed.
CLERFAYT (or Clairfayt), FRANÇOIS SEBASTIEN CHARLES JOSEPH DE CROIX, Count of (1733-1798), Austrian field marshal, entered the Austrian army in 1753. In the Seven Years’ War he greatly distinguished himself, earning rapid promotion, and receiving the decoration of the order of Maria Theresa. At the conclusion of the peace, though still under thirty, he was already a colonel. During the outbreak of the Netherlands in 1787, he was, as a Walloon by birth, subjected to great pressure to induce him to abandon Joseph II., but he resisted all overtures, and in the following year went to the Turkish war in the rank of lieutenant field marshal. In an independent command Clerfayt achieved great success, defeating the Turks at Mehadia and Calafat. In 1792, as one of the most distinguished of the emperor’s generals, he received the command of the Austrian contingent in the duke of Brunswick’s army, and at Croix-sous-Bois his corps inflicted a reverse on the troops of the French revolution. In the Netherlands, to which quarter he was transferred after Jemappes, he opened the campaign of 1793 with the victory of Aldenhoven and the relief of Maestricht, and on March 18th mainly brought about the complete defeat of Dumouriez at Neerwinden. Later in the year, however, his victorious career was checked by the reverse at Wattignies, and in 1794 he was unsuccessful in West Flanders against Pichegru. In the course of the campaign Clerfayt succeeded the duke of Saxe-Coburg in the supreme command, but was quite unable to make head against the French, and had to recross the Rhine. In 1795, now field marshal, he commanded on the middle Rhine against Jourdan, and this time the fortune of war changed. Jourdan was beaten at Höchst and Mainz brilliantly relieved. But the field marshal’s action in concluding an armistice with the French not being approved by Thugut, he resigned the command, and became a member of the Aulic Council in Vienna. He died in 1798. A brave and skilful soldier, Clerfayt perhaps achieved more than any other Austrian commander (except the archduke Charles) in the hopeless struggle of small dynastic armies against a “nation in arms.”
See von Vivenot, Thugut, Clerfayt, und Würmser (Vienna, 1869).