The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0001/00014.txt

Text File | 1992-08-14 | 39KB | 600 lines

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$Title{History Of Cleopatra, Queen Of Egypt
Chapter XII: The End Of Cleopatra}
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$Author{Abbott, Jacob}
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$Date{1900}
$Log{Hear Cleopatra*44170018.aud
See The Raising Of Antony*0001401.scf
}
Title:       History Of Cleopatra, Queen Of Egypt
Book:        Cleopatra
Author:      Abbott, Jacob
Date:        1900

Chapter XII: The End Of Cleopatra

     The case of Mark Antony affords one of the most extraordinary examples of
the power of unlawful love to lead its deluded and infatuated victim into the
very jaws of open and recognized destruction that history records.  Cases
similar in character occur by thousands in common life; but Antony's, though
perhaps not more striking in itself than a great multitude of others have
been, is the most conspicuous instance that has ever been held up to the
observation of mankind.

[Hear Cleopatra]
From Shakespeare's Antony And Cleopatra

     In early life, Antony was remarkable, as we have already seen, for a
certain savage ruggedness of character, and for a stern and indomitable
recklessness of will, so great that it seemed impossible that any thing human
should be able to tame him.  He was under the control, too, of an ambition so
lofty and aspiring that it appeared to know no bounds; and yet we find him
taken possession of, in the very midst of his career, and in the height of his
prosperity and success, by a woman, and so subdued by her arts and
fascinations as to yield himself wholly to her guidance, and allow himself to
be led about by her entirely at her will.  She displaces whatever there might
have been that was noble and generous in his heart, and substitutes therefor
her own principles of malice and cruelty.  She extinguishes all the fires of
his ambition, originally so magnificent in its aims that the world seemed
hardly large enough to afford it scope, and instead of this lofty passion,
fills his soul with a love of the lowest, vilest, and most ignoble pleasures.
She leads him to betray every public trust, to alienate from himself all the
affections of his countrymen, to repel most cruelly the kindness and
devotedness of a beautiful and faithful wife, and, finally, to expel this wife
and all of his own legitimate family from his house; and now, at last, she
conducts him away in a most cowardly and ignoble flight from the field of his
duty as a soldier - he knowing, all the time, that she is hurrying him to
disgrace and destruction, and yet utterly without power to break from the
control of his invisible chains.

     The indignation which Antony's base abandonment of his fleet and army at
the battle of Actium excited, over all that part of the empire which had been
under his command, was extreme.  There was not the slightest possible excuse
for such a flight.  His army, in which his greatest strength lay, remained
unharmed, and even his fleet was not defeated.  The ships continued the combat
until night, notwithstanding the betrayal of their cause by their commander.
They were at length, however, subdued.  The army, also, being discouraged, and
losing all motive for resistance, yielded too.  In a very short time the whole
country went over to Octavius's side.

     In the mean time, Cleopatra and Antony, on their first return to Egypt,
were completely beside themselves with terror.  Cleopatra formed a plan for
having all the treasures that she could save, and a certain number of galleys
sufficient for the transportation of these treasures and a small company of
friends, carried across the isthmus of Suez and launched upon the Red Sea, in
order that she might escape in that direction, and find some remote
hiding-place and safe retreat on the shores of Arabia or India, beyond the
reach of Octavius's dreaded power.  She actually commenced this undertaking,
and sent one or two of her galleys across the isthmus; but the Arabs seized
them as soon as they reached their place of destination, and killed or
captured the men that had them in charge, so that this desperate scheme was
soon abandoned.  She and Antony then finally concluded to establish themselves
at Alexandria, and made preparation, as well as they could, for defending
themselves against Octavius there.

     Antony, when the first effects of his panic subsided, began to grow mad
with vexation and resentment against all mankind.  He determined that he would
have nothing to do with Cleopatra or with any of her friends, but went off in
a fit of sullen rage, and built a hermitage in a lonely place on the island of
Pharos, where he lived for a time, cursing his folly and his wretched fate,
and uttering the bitterest invectives against all who had been concerned in
it.  Here tidings came continually in, informing him of the defection of one
after another of his armies, of the fall of his provinces in Greece and Asia
Minor, and of the irresistible progress which Octavius was now making toward
universal dominion.  The tidings of these disasters coming incessantly upon
him kept him in a continual fever of resentment and rage.

     At last he became tired of his misanthropic solitude, a sort of
reconciliation ensued between himself and Cleopatra, and he went back again to
the city.  Here he joined himself once more to Cleopatra, and, collecting
together what remained of their joint resources, they plunged again into a
life of dissipation and vice, with the vain attempt to drown in mirth and wine
the bitter regrets and the anxious forebodings which filled their souls. They
joined with them a company of revelers as abandoned as themselves, and strove
very hard to disguise and conceal their cares in their forced and unnatural
gayety.  They could not, however, accomplish this purpose. Octavius was
gradually advancing in his progress, and they knew very well that the time of
his dreadful reckoning with them must soon come; nor was there any place on
earth in which they could look with any hope of finding a refuge in it from
his vindictive hostility.

     Cleopatra, warned by dreadful presentiments of what would probably at
last be her fate, amused herself in studying the nature of poisons - not
theoretically, but practically - making experiments with them on wretched
prisoners and captives whom she compelled to take them in order that she and
Antony might see the effects which they produced.  She made a collection of
all the poisons which she could procure, and administered portions of them
all, that she might see which were sudden and which were slow in their
effects, and also learn which produced the greatest distress and suffering,
and which, on the other hand, only benumbed and stupefied the faculties, and
thus extinguished life with the least infliction of pain.  These experiments
were not confined to such vegetable and mineral poisons as could be mingled
with the food or administered in a potion.  Cleopatra took an equal interest
in the effects of the bite of venomous serpents and reptiles.  She procured
specimens of all these animals, and tried them upon her prisoners, causing the
men to be stung and bitten by them, and then watching the effects.  These
investigations were made, not directly with a view to any practical use which
she was to make of the knowledge thus acquired, but rather as an agreeable
occupation, to divert her mind, and to amuse Antony and her guests.  The
variety in the forms and expressions which the agony of her poisoned victims
assumed - their writhings, their cries, their convulsions, and the distortions
of their features when struggling with death, furnished exactly the kind and
degree of excitement which she needed to occupy and amuse her mind.

     Antony was not entirely at ease, however, during the progress of these
terrible experiments.  His foolish and childish fondness for Cleopatra was
mingled with jealously, suspicion, and distrust; and he was so afraid that
Cleopatra might secretly pois