P. 175]

AN EGYPTIAN COUNTRY HOUSE.

Much the same as in Cleopatra's time. About an hour's ride from Karnak.

The meeting of Antony and Cleopatra in Cilicia has become a proverb of the luxury and splendour and dissipation of the last days of the Egyptian Kingdom and the Roman Republic. Plutarch's pages glow with it; Shakespeare was inspired by it.

Acting upon Dellius's hints, Cleopatra did not hurry to Antony or approach him as a suppliant, but made herself as covetable as she could with wealth and splendour and every meretricious device for the enhancement of her beauty. At last she reached the mouth of the river Cydnus, twelve miles below Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, where Antony lay. This is how Plutarch, as quoted by Mr. Sergeant, describes her progress up the river:

"Cleopatra, as if in mockery, sailed up the river in a vessel with a gilded stern, with sails of purple outspread, and with silver oars moving in time to the sound of flutes and pipes and harps. She herself, decked like Aphrodite in a picture, lay under an awning bespangled with gold, while boys like painted cupids stood on either side fanning her. At the helm and by the rigging stood her most beautiful slavewomen in the guise of Nereids and Graces. Marvellous odours from many censers spread to the banks, along which some of the multitude followed her from the river-mouth, others coming down from the city to gaze upon the spectacle. As the crowd from the market-place also poured forth, at last Antony was left sitting alone upon the tribunal, while the rumour spread about that Aphrodite was come to feast with Dionysos for the common good of Asia."

And Athenæus, as quoted by Mr. Sergeant, thus describes the famous banquet:

"A royal entertainment, in which every dish was golden and inlaid with precious stones, wonderfully chased and embossed. The walls were hung with cloths embroidered in purple and gold. And she had twelve triple couches laid, and invited Antony to a banquet, and desired him to bring with him whatever companions he pleased. And he, being astonished at the magnificence of the sight, expressed his surprise; and she, smiling, said she made him a present of

everything he saw, and invited him to sup with her again the next day and to bring his friends and captains with him, Then she prepared a banquet far more splendid than the former one, so as to make the first appear contemptible; and again she presented to him everything that there was on the table. And she desired each of his captains to take for his own the couch on which he lay and the goblets which were set before each couch. And when they were departing she gave to all those of the highest rank litters, with slaves as litter-bearers; and to the rest she gave horses, adorned with gold trappings; and to every one she gave Ethiopian boys to bear torches before them. And on the fourth day she paid more than a talent (nearly £250) for roses; and the floor of the chamber for the men was strewn a cubit deep, nets being spread over the blooms."

And we have the authority of Appian for knowing that Antony was amazed at her wit as well as her beauty, and became her captive as if he were a young man, although he was forty years of age.

From this day forward, till, eight years later, Antony and Octavian fought for the possession of the world at the Battle of Actium, Antony sank deeper and deeper in the flood of his passion for Cleopatra. From time to time he was rescued from it, or strove for a little to keep his head above water, but he always sank back. Cleopatra's behaviour at the Battle of Actium is not likely ever to be absolutely cleared up. Mahaffy, in his history of the Ptolemies, inclines to the view that Cleopatra's intuition warned her that Octavian with his great commander Agrippa to conduct his campaigns for him, and his own cold-blooded sagacity to dictate his policy, was certain in the end to triumph over Antony; that even in the present campaign Antony was sure to be defeated. If the power of Egypt was shattered in fighting for Antony, only suicide would save her from being put in chains, and carried to Rome to grace the triumph of Octavian. But if, at the cost of betraying Antony, she could save the forces of Egypt intact, she might be able to make terms with Octavian. Mr. Sergeant's view I give below. Professor Mahaffy does

not see any argument against this in her subsequent fidelity to Antony as a lover, explaining that as a strong blast of passion, which warped her judgment.

The death of Cleopatra has been so immortally described by Plutarch and Shakespeare, and so gorgeously and faithfully presented to the public by Sir H. Beerbohm Tree, that I need say little about it. Mr. Sergeant's account of it, the most up-to-date which we have, practically bears out the actor's presentation of it. The temple of Isis Lochias, near which Cleopatra built her tomb, was at the eastern end of the eastern harbour, where Fort Silsileh stands to-day.

Antony, when he first returned to Alexandria after his unsuccessful attempt to win back the fidelity of the four legions he had left in the province of Cyrenaica, the modern Tripoli, at first shut himself up on an island in the harbour, living like a hermit, and upbraiding the treachery of friends and the ingratitude of the world. He called the island the Timonium, and compared himself to the Timon of Athens who furnished the subject of Shakespeare's play.

At last Cleopatra persuaded him to come and spend the last few days of his life with her in the old debauchery and splendour. They founded a sort of club called the Synapothanoumenoi-the people who are about to die together, and Cleopatra began her famous experiments in poisons upon her slaves to find out the easiest way of dying. She decided in favour of snake-bite, with the results which the world knows.

Antony's last hope lay in his garrison's holding out in the strong fortress of Pelusium, the key of Egypt, against a force advancing from the east, not very far from the modern Port Said. But the garrison, whether because they thought his cause hopeless, or for another reason, made terms with the enemy. The end came on much the same battle-ground as Abercromby fought on when he sealed the fate of France in Egypt on the second day of Aboukir, three years after that first great day at Aboukir, on which Nelson destroyed the fleets of France, and withered Napoleon's hope of ever reaching India. It is noteworthy that though one is reckoning

the calendar in the old style and the other in the new, the final battle between Antony and Octavian was, like the battle of the Nile, fought on August 1.

On this last day Antony showed his old courage and dash, as he had in the victorious cavalry action on the night before; but his soldiers and sailors had nothing to fight for. It was civil war; Octavian was a Roman as much as he; and nothing could prevent the final success of Octavian. But Antony fought well, and went from the battle to death by his own hand, because he had heard that Cleopatra was already dead. From this point forward there is nothing to add to the splendid picture which the dramatist and the actor (Sir H. B. Tree) have given us.

But I must say a few words about the asp story, which Mr. Sergeant has not attempted to explain more than earlier writers, though it really has such a simple explanation, based on natural-history facts.

The asp has been identified by most writers with the Egyptian cobra. But the Egyptian cobra is a large snake: a full-grown one is a couple of yards in length, and could not therefore be introduced in a basket of figs, even if a boy could be found brave enough to carry it about. But I do not see any insuperable natural-history difficulty in the story. I see in it rather the stupidity of commentators. There was no scientific nomenclature for serpents in the days of Plutarch; so there is on the one hand no proof that the Egyptian cobra was the asp of the tradition, while, on the other hand, modern investigations have a tendency to prove that obstinate traditions generally have a basis in fact. Common sense suggests that the asp should have been identified, not with the cobra, but with the highly venomous little Cerastes, or horned viper of Egypt, which when fullgrown is only between a foot and two feet in length. All the descriptions, all the pictures, all the statues of the death of Cleopatra suggest the Cerastes, and if the Cerastes had been put in a bag, it could have been carried in the basket of figs, without any danger to any one, except the person who was rash enough to put it into the bag. I am convinced that it