E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Terry Gilliland, and Project Gutenberg
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Makers of History
[Illustration: CLEOPATRA.]
Of all the beautiful women of history, none has left us such convincingproofs of her charms as Cleopatra, for the tide of Rome's destiny, and,therefore, that of the world, turned aside because of her beauty. JuliusCaesar, whose legions trampled the conquered world from Canopus to theThames, capitulated to her, and Mark Antony threw a fleet, an empire andhis own honor to the winds to follow her to his destruction. Disarmed atlast before the frigid Octavius, she found her peerless body measured bythe cold eye of her captor only for the triumphal procession, and thefriendly asp alone spared her Rome's crowning ignominy.
[Illustration: Map—'Scene of CLEOPATRA'S HISTORY']
The parentage and birth of Cleopatra.—Cleopatra's residence inEgypt.—Physical aspect of Egypt.—The eagle's wings andscience.—Physical peculiarities of Egypt connected with the laws ofrain.—General laws of rain.—Causes which modify the quantity ofrain.—Striking contrasts.—Rainless regions.—Great rainless region ofAsia and Africa.—The Andes.—Map of the rainless region.—Valley of theNile.—The Red Sea.—The oases.—Siweh.—Mountains of the Moon.—TheRiver Nile.—Incessant rains.—Inundation of the Nile.—Course of theriver.—Subsidence of the waters.—Luxuriant vegetation.—Absence offorests.—Great antiquity of Egypt.—Her monuments.—The Delta of theNile.—The Delta as seen from the sea.—Pelusiac mouth of the Nile.—TheCanopic mouth.—Ancient Egypt.—The Pyramids.—Conquests of the Persiansand Macedonians.—The Ptolemies.—Founding of Alexandria.—The Pharos.
The story of Cleopatra is a story of crime. It is a narrative of thecourse and the consequences of unlawful love. In her strange andromantic history we see this passion portrayed with the most completeand graphic fidelity in all its influences and effects; itsuncontrollable impulses, its intoxicating joys, its reckless and madcareer, and the dreadful remorse and ultimate despair and ruin in whichit always and inevitably ends.
Cleopatra was by birth an Egyptian; by ancestry and descent she was aGreek. Thus, while Alexandria and the Delta of the Nile formed the sceneof the most important events and incidents of her history, it was theblood of Macedon which flowed in her veins. Her character and action aremarked by the genius, the coura