Famous Beauties
And like another Helen, fired another Troy.—Dryden.
Cleopatra
What was her inner character? A voluptuous woman of the East, say the Romans, eager to enchain any master of a Roman army by the foulest arts; the Roman oligarchy not only hated but dreaded Cleopatra. To them she was the representative of that “regal” sway, that rule by volition instead of by traditional order, which, with their statesmanlike instinct, they saw the triumphant aristocrat whom their system tended to produce would ultimately desire. They cursed her as the greatest of Asiatic harlots, whereas she was more of a Greek, and much more like Mary Stuart as her enemies have painted her, a woman unscrupulous in gratifying her fancies, careless even of murder when needful—Cleopatra murdered her brother-husband, just as Mary murdered her cousin-husband—but who used her charms chiefly as instruments to attain her ends, which were, first of all, the empire of the East, which her ancestors had striven to acquire—and very nearly acquired. She always selected as a lover the head of the invading Roman army, and always used him to help her in founding, as she hoped, the empire of the East. Her attractive power was probably not her beauty. Her coins do not reveal a beautiful woman, but a broad-browed, thoughtful queen; and Plutarch, in describing her, evidently speaks on the authority of men whose fathers had studied her face. He says,—
“Her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible: the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching. It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter; in most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians and many others, whose language she had learned.”