enteenth and eighteenth centuries, and who, by their wit and social
fascinations, gathered around their thrones the most distinguished men
of France, and made them friends as well as admirers. The Pompadours of
the world have only a brief reign, and at last become repulsive. But
Cleopatra, like Maintenon, was always attractive, although she, could
not lay claim to the virtues of the latter. She was as politic as the
French beauty, and as full of expedients to please her lord. She may
have revelled in the banquets she prepared for Antony, as Esther did in
those she prepared for Xerxes; but with the same intent, to please him
rather than herself, and win, from his weakness, those political favors
which in his calmer hours he might have shrunk from granting. Cleopatra
was a politician as well as a luxurious beauty, and it may have been her
supreme aim to secure the independence of Egypt. She wished to beguile
Antony as she had sought to beguile Caesar, since they were the masters
of the world, and had it in their power to crush her sovereignty and
reduce her realm to a mere province of the empire. Nor is there
evidence that in the magnificent banquets she gave to the Roman general
she ever lost her self-control. She drank, and made him drink, but
retained her wits, "laughing him out of patience and laughing him into
patience," ascendant over him by raillery, irony, and wit.

And Antony, again, although fond of banquets and ostentation, like other
Roman nobles, and utterly unscrupulous and unprincipled, as Roman
libertines were, was also general, statesman, and orator. He grew up
amid the dangers and toils and privations of Caesar's camp. He was as
greedy of honors as was his imperial master. He was a sunburnt and
experienced commander, obliged to be on his guard, and ready for
emergencies. No such man feels that he can afford to indulge his
appetites, except on rare occasions. One of the leading peculiarities of
all great generals has been their temperance. It marked Caesar,
Charlemagne, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederic the Great, Cromwell, and
Napoleon. When Alexander gave himself up to banquets, his conquests
ended. Even such a self-indulgent, pleasure-seeking man as Louis XIV.
always maintained the decencies of society amid his dissipated
courtiers. We feel that a man who could discourse so eloquently as
Antony did over the dead body of Caesar was something more than a
sensualist or a demagogue. He was also the finest-looking