How could terms,
dictated on the one side and agreed to on the other by base passion, be
aught but shameful and humiliating?
Caesar in the west, and the Roman legions far away, Cleopatra paid no
more regard to the treaty between them than if it had never been made.
Such a violation of contract the Romans never forgave; and Mark Antony,
who had striven to rise to the supreme power after the assassination of
Julius Caesar, as soon as he had leisure from his other ambitious
schemes, bent his steps toward Egypt, to punish the faithless queen.
Again she had recourse to her personal charms. The stern but vicious
general, though in name a conqueror, became an easy victim of her wiles;
and was himself in fact the conquered one. If Cleopatra had been Mark
Antony's most bitter foe, she could not more surely have lured him on to
utter, hopeless ruin.
At last, the crisis came. Augustus Caesar had arrived upon the shores
of Egypt to avenge his sister's wrongs. Mark Antony's fate was sealed.
Once more the wretched woman tried her powers of fascination; but youth
and sprightliness were gone. She failed to captivate Augustus by her
winning manners, or move him by a display of her distress. Her power,
she realized at last, was gone; but grace his triumph in Rome she was
determined she would not. As a crowned queen she had lived; as one she
would die.
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