Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/680

 668 CLEOPATRA troops he had brought with him, was very hard pressed; but he conquered. Ptolemy, who had escaped from the palace to join the Egyptian army, fell in a battle on the Nile near Memphis ; and Cleopatra was again made queen, her only surviving brother, a child of six years, being nominally associated with her. The country was now quiet, and the remaining months of Caesar's life in Egypt were given up to revelry and luxury, which Cleopatra pre- pared for him with all the resources of her riches and ingenuity ; but he was soon com- pelled to abandon this course of brilliant festivals and the idleness of Alexandria for the East, where Pharnaces, the king of Bosporus, was in dangerous revolt. He left Egypt in 47, and a few months after his departure Cleopatra bore him a son. Even before his going he had agreed that Cleopatra should go to Rome on his return, and he had no sooner reached that city after conquering Pharnaces than he pre- pared to carry out the plan. In 46, with her little son Caesarion, she set sail from Alexan- dria, and made her entry into Rome with great splendor ; ostensibly coming to ask alliance from the senate, but recognized by every one as the acknowledged mistress of Caesar, who installed her in a palace near the Tiber. Here she held her court like a rightful queen of Rome, flattered by the chief men of the time for the sake of the dictator's favor, but hated by them and by the people, who saw in Caasar's open relations with a foreign woman a disgrace which Romans felt with special keen- ness. For a time she seemed to have reached the summit of her ambition, for the dictator treated her with every favor and seemed about to make her his companion in power; when suddenly his assassination (44) destroyed all her hopes and plans at a blow. A short time after the murder she returned to her own capital. During the civil war which followed she preserved a neutral attitude, having much to dread, whichever side conquered. One of her generals, Serapion, assisted Cassius, con- trary to her wish, and was afterward punished for his action. Another of her leaders was also induced to join Cassius ; but in the main her neutrality was well preserved until the battle of Philippi (42), the event which placed the triumvirate in power, and made Mark Antony the ruler over the East. Cleopatra now saw the necessity for action, and, relying upon the same power of personal fascination that had won Caesar, she prepared to meet the conqueror. After spending a little time in Athens, Antony had begun a journey into Asia, and had finally established a brilliant court at Tarsus, where the various eastern potentates were already thronging to do him homage. Cleopatra alone did not appear ; such a delay as should stimulate Antony's im- patience to see her was a part of her plan. For the successful triumvir was not now to meet her, as Caesar had done under similar circumstances, for the first time. Antony had seen and admired her in Rome, and she ap- pears to have known that among all the rulers of his eastern dominions, the famous queen was the one for whose coming he was most anxious. Instead of summoning her peremptori- ly, he sent an ambassador to tell her that she had nothing to fear from him, and to beg that she would visit him at Tarsus ; and he followed this message by several letters of the same pur- port before Cleopatra believed that she had sufficiently aroused his impatience, and at last obeyed (41 B. C.). As he sat enthroned in the market place of the town, it was announced that the Egyptian queen was approaching up the Cydnus, in that splendid progress pictured in sufficiently glowing prose by Plutarch, but made famous for all time by the description of Shakespeare. When Antony sent messengers to ask that she would come to him, she replied that she had hoped to see him first her guest ; and the triumvir visited her as soon as she had landed. The beautiful queen's conquest was immediate and complete ; with this meeting began that unbridled life of the two lovers that has formed ever since a favorite theme with his- torians, romancers, and poets; and "from this moment," says Appian, " the before untiring energy of Antony began to grow dull ; only that happened which Cleopatra desired, with- out long inquiry as to what was right and sacred." When Cleopatra returned to Egypt, it was with the promise of another meet- ing ; and Antony, as soon as he could make the most necessary disposition of his troops and his affairs, followed her to Alexan- dria. The winter of 41-40 passed in revelry of every kind, and only the complications which arose in Rome, and which soon grew too formidable to be neglected, called him from her in the spring. While at the seat of the war against the Parthiuns, in Asia, he re- ceived the news that his party, headed by his wife Fulvia, to whose ambition and desire to distract his thoughts from Cleopatra the out- break of the conflict in Italy was chiefly due, had been defeated at Perusia. He hastened to Athens on his way westward, and there meet- ing Fulvia, who had fled thither, he arranged his plans, and sailed for Italy. But the de- cisive contest was this time averted. Fulvia, left behind in Sicyon, and neglected and thrust aside by her husband, died, overwhelmed in grief and anger. A reconciliation between Octavius and Antony was arranged at Brun- dusium, and the sister of the former, Octavia, became Antony's wife. Cleopatra had now to endure three years of separation from the man whom she thought she had success- fully attached to her for life; and we have descriptions from several writers of her rage and jealousy on hearing of his new marriage. But her hold upon him was stronger than she knew. For two winters Antony lived in com- parative quiet with Octavia in Athens ; the summers were full of activity among the con- stant complications, quarrels, and reconcilia-