square miles of land!

The History and Legend of Antony and Cleopatra

In the history of Rome figures of women are rare, because only men
dominated there, imposing everywhere the brute force, the roughness,
and the egoism that lie at the base of their nature: they honoured the
_mater familias_ because she bore children and kept the slaves
from stealing the flour from the bin and drinking the wine from the
_amphore_ on the sly. They despised the woman who made of her beauty
and vivacity an adornment of social life, a prize sought after and
disputed by the men. However, in this virile history there does
appear, on a sudden, the figure of a woman, strange and wonderful, a
kind of living Venus. Plutarch thus describes the arrival of Cleopatra
at Tarsus and her first meeting with Antony:

She was sailing tranquilly along the Cydnus, on a bark with a
golden stern, with sails of purple and oars of silver, and the
dip of the oars was rhythmed to the sound of flutes, blending
with music of lyres. She herself, the Queen, wondrously
clad as Venus is pictured, was lying under an awning gold
embroidered. Boys dressed as Cupids stood at her side, gently
waving fans to refresh her; her maidens, every one beautiful
and clad as a Naiad or a Grace, directed the boat, some at
the rudder, others at the ropes. Both banks of the stream were
sweet with the perfumes burning on the vessel.

Posterity is yet dazzled by this ship, refulgent with purple and
gold and melodious with flutes and lyres. If we are spellbound by
Plutarch's description, it does not seem strange to us that Antony
should be--he who could not only behold in person that wonderful
Venus, but could dine with her _tete-a-tete_, in a splendour of
torches indescribable. Surely this is a setting in no wise improbable
for the beginning of the famous romance of the love of Antony and
Cleopatra, and its development as probable as its beginning; the
follies committed by Antony for the seductive Queen of the Orient,
the divorce of Octavia, the war for love of Cleopatra, kindled in the
whole Empire, and the miserable catastrophe. Are there not to be seen
in recent centuries many men of power putting their greatness to risk
and sometimes to ruin for love of a woman? Are not the love letters
of great statesmen--for instance, those of Mirabeau and
of Gambetta--admitted to the semi-official part of modern
history-writing? And so also Antony