people, it is said, of the busts of Hercules. He was lavish, like Cæsar, but, like him, sought popularity, and cared but little what it cost. It is probable that Cicero painted him, in his famous philippics, in darker colors than he deserved, because he aimed to be Cæsar's successor, as he probably would have been but for his infatuation for Cleopatra. Cæsar sent him to Rome as master of the horse, a position next in power to that of dictator. When Cæsar was assassinated, Antony was the most powerful man of the empire. He was greater than any existing king; he was almost supreme. And after Cæsar's death, when he divided his sovereignty of the world with Octavius and Lepidus, he had the fairest chance of becoming imperator. He had great military experience, the broad Orient as his domain, and half the legions of Rome under his control.

It was when this great man was Triumvir, sharing with only two others the empire of the world, and likely to overpower them, when he was in Asia consolidating and arranging the affairs of his vast department, that he met the woman who was the cause of all his calamities. He was then in Cilicia, and, with all the arrogance of a Roman general, had sent for the Queen of Egypt to appear before him and answer to an accusation of having rendered assistance to Cassius before the fatal battle of Philippi. He had already known and admired Cleopatra in Rome, and it is not improbable

that she divined the secret of his judicial summons. His envoy, struck with her beauty and intelligence, advised her to appear in her best attire. Such a woman scarcely needed such a hint. So, making every preparation for her journey, money, ornaments, gifts, - a kind of Queen of Sheba, a Zenobia in her pride and glory, a Queen Esther when she had invited the king and his minister to a banquet, she came to the Cydnus, and ascended the river in a magnificent barge, such as had never been seen before, and prepared to meet her judge, not as a criminal, but as a conqueror, armed with those weapons that few mortals can resist.

"The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water, which they beat, to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion (cloth-of-gold of tissue)
O'er-picturing that Venus, where we see

The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With diverse-color'd fans.

Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes.
... At the helm

A seeming mermaid steers.

. . From the barge

...

A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharves. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthron'd i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to th' air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,

And made a gap in nature."

-

On the arrival of this siren queen, Antony had invited her to supper, - the dinner of the Romans, but she, with woman's instinct, had declined, till he should come to her; and he, with the urbanity of a polished noble, for such he probably was,-complied, and found a banquet which astonished even him, accustomed as he was to senatorial magnificence, and which, with all the treasures of the East, he could not rival. From that fatal hour he was enslaved. She conquered him, not merely by her display and her dazzling beauty, but by her wit. Her very tones were music. So accomplished was she in languages, that without interpreters she conversed not only with Greeks and Latins, but with Ethiopians, Jews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, and Parthians. So dazzled and bewitched was Antony, that, instead of continuing the duties of his great position, he returned with Cleopatra to Alexandria, there to keep holiday and squander riches, and, still worse, his precious time, to the shame and scandal of Rome, inglorious and without excuse, a Samson at the feet of Delilah, or a Hercules throwing away his club to

--

seize the distaff of Omphale, confessing to the potency of that mysterious charm which the sage at the court of an Eastern prince pronounced the strongest power on earth. Never was a strong man more enthralled than was Antony by this bewitching woman, who exhausted every art to please him. She played at dice with him, drank with him, hunted with him, rambled with him, jested with him, angled with him, flattering and reproving him by turn, always having some new device of pleasure to gratify his senses or stimulate his curiosity. Thus passed the winter of 41-40, and in the spring he was recalled to Rome by political dissensions there.

At this stage, however, it would seem that ambition was paramount with him, not love; for his wife Fulvia having died, he did not marry Cleopatra, but Octavia, sister of Octavius, his fellow-triumvir and general rival. It was evidently from political considerations that he married Octavia, who was a stately and noble woman, but tedious in her dignity, and unattractive in her person. And what a commentary on Roman rank! The sister of a Roman grandee seemed to the ambitious general a greater match than the Queen of Egypt. How this must have piqued the proud daughter of the Ptolemies, that she, a queen, with all her charms, was not the equal in the eyes of Antony to the sister of Cæsar's heir! But she knew her power, and stifled her

resentment, and waited for her time. She, too, had a political end to gain, and was too politic to give way to anger and reproaches. She was anything but the impulsive woman that some suppose, — but a great actress and artist, as some women are when they would conquer, even in their loves, which, if they do not feign, at least they know how to make appear greater than they are. For about three years Antony cut loose from Cleopatra, and pursued his military career in the East, as the rival of Octavius might, having in view the sovereignty that Cæsar had bequeathed to the strongest man.

But his passion for Cleopatra could not long be suppressed, neither from reasons of state nor from the respect he must have felt for the admirable conduct of Octavia, who was devoted to him, and who was one of the most magnanimous and reproachless women of antiquity. And surely he must have had some. great qualities to call out the love of the noblest and proudest woman of the age, in spite of his many vices. and his abandonment to a mad passion, 'forgetful alike both of fame and duty. He had not been two years in Athens, the headquarters of his Eastern Department, before he was called upon to chastise the Parthians, who had thrown off the Roman yoke and invaded other Roman provinces. But hardly had he left Octavia, and set foot again in Asia, before he sent for his Egyptian mistress, and loaded her with presents; not