9-th, 2004 - 10: 1   (Posted By: Webmaster)
Cleopatra

Cleopatra
EXEMPLAR OF FEMININE FASCINATION THROUGHOUT THE AGES (69-30 B.C.)

CLEOPATRA VII, Queen of Egypt, has come down to us through twenty centuries as the perfect example of the seductive art in woman. With her beauty, learning, and culture she fascinated and held two successive masters of the world.
The first, Julius Caesar, was debonair, elegant in manners and movement, a great swimmer, a swordsman, a beloved ruler, and able orator, and one of the world's greatest writers.

In the arts of love, he was unique, excelling in licentiousness whether his amour was a woman or a young man. For any woman to hold him longer than a day was exceedingly difficult. The second, Caesar's friend and successor, Mark Antony, was tall, well built, and with the muscles of a gladiator. Generous, impulsive, and a bon vivant, he was a matchless orator of whom it was said, "There was no man of his time like him for addressing a multitude or for carrying soldiers with him by the force of his words." Irresistible to women, he made full use of his powers. He had no intention, he would say, of confining his hopes of progeny to any one woman, but like his ancestor Hercules, he intended to let nature have her will with him. This, he thought, was the best way of circulating noble blood throughout the world and thus begetting personally in every country a new line of kings. Such were the two giants Cleopatra held enslaved. She on her side, if not the most beautiful woman of her time, was perhaps the most captivating, the most learned, and the most witty. It is said that she spoke Greek, Egyptian, Latin, Ethiopian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syrian fluently, as well as several African dialects.

Dion Cassius, wrote of her, "She was splendid to see, and was capable of conquering the hearts which had resisted more obstinately the influence of love, and those which had been frozen by age. Her charm of speech was such that she won all who listened to her." Plutarch, who lived a century after her, said, "She had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and her character, which was somewhat diffused in her behavior towards others, had something stimulating about it. There was a sweetness, also, in the tones of her voice and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could really turn to whatever language she pleaded. She talked to her many subjects in all their languages, not needing an interpreter."

Ambitious to save her country, this girl of seventeen planned to lift Egypt up again to its past grandeur and be a ruler of which history would ever speak. As the first step she decided to get rid of her nine-year-old brother Ptolemy, who, according to the custom of the times, was her husband and shared the throne with her. She was opposed by her brother's three counsellors: Photion, the eunuch; Theodosius, the regent; and Achillas, commander of the army. They stirred up the people against her and forced her to take refuge with her sister Arsinoe, Queen of Syria. With an army gathering in Syria, she was returning to Alexandria to give battle when she heard startling news. Pompey, her father's friend, had been defeated by Julius Caesar at Pharsalia and had come to Alexandria to seek her brother's

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