oblique and
half-closed perturbed sages, demons even, with whom, Michelet has
suggested, they were perhaps akin. Cleopatra lacked that insidiousness.
Semi-Greek, a daughter of the Ptolomies, she had the charm of the Hellenic
hetaira. To aptitudes natural and very great, she added a varied
assortment of accomplishments. It is said that she could talk to any one
in any tongue. That is probably an exaggeration. But, though a queen, she
was ambitious; though a girl, she was lettered; succinctly, she was
masterful, a match for any man except Caesar.

Cleopatra must have been very heady. Caesar knew how to keep his head. He
could not have done what he did, had he not known. Dissolute, as all men
of that epoch had become, he differed from all of them in his
epicureanism. Like Epicurus, he was strictly temperate. He supped on dry
bread. Cato said that he was the first sober man that had tried to
overthrow the republic. But, then, he had been to school, to the best of
schools, which the world is. His studies _in anima vili_ had taught him
many things, among them, how to win and not be won. Cleopatra might almost
have been his granddaughter. But he was Caesar. His eyes blazed with
genius. Besides, he was the most alluring of men. Tall, slender, not
handsome but superb--so superb that Cicero mistook him for a fop from whom
the republic had nothing to fear--at seventeen he had fascinated pirates.
Ever since he had fascinated queens. In the long list, Cleopatra was but
another to this man whom the depths of Hither Asia, the mysteries that lay
beyond, the diadems of Cyrus and Alexander, the Vistula and the Baltic
claimed. There were his ambitions. They were immense. So were also
Cleopatra's. What he wanted, she wanted for him, and for herself as well.
She wanted him sovereign of the world and herself its empress.

These views, in so far as they concerned her, did not interest him very
greatly. His lack of interest he was, however, too well bred to display.
He solidified her throne, which at the time was not stable, left her a son
for souvenir, went away, forgot her, remembered her, invited her to Rome,
where, presumably with Calpurnia's permission, he put her up at his house,
and again forgot her. He was becoming divine, what is superior, immortal.
Even when dead, his name, adopted by the emperors of Rome, survived in
Czars and Kaisers. His power too, coextensive with Rome, persisted.
Severed as it was like his heart when he fell, th