Antony (see ANTONIUS). Their connexion was highly unpopular at Rome, and
Octavian (see AUGUSTUS) declared war upon them and defeated them at
Actium (31 B.C.). Cleopatra took to flight, and escaped to Alexandria,
where Antony joined her. Having no prospect of ultimate success, she
accepted the proposal of Octavian that she should assassinate Antony,
and enticed him to join her in a mausoleum which she had built in order
that "they might die together." Antony committed suicide, in the
mistaken belief that she had already done so, but Octavian refused to
yield to the charms of Cleopatra who put an end to her life, by applying
an asp to her bosom, according to the common tradition, in the
thirty-ninth year of her age (29th of August, 30 B.C.). With her ended
the dynasty of the Ptolemies, and Egypt was made a Roman province.
Cleopatra had three children by Antony, and by Julius Caesar, as some
say, a son, called Caesarion, who was put to death by Octavian. In her
the type of queen characteristic of the Macedonian dynasties stands in
the most brilliant light. Imperious will, masculine boldness, relentless
ambition like hers had been exhibited by queens of her race since the
old Macedonian days before Philip and Alexander. But the last Cleopatra
had perhaps some special intellectual endowment. She surprised her
generation by being able to speak the many tongues of her subjects.
There may have been an individual quality in her luxurious profligacy,
but then her predecessors had not had the Roman lords of the world for
wooers.

For the history of Cleopatra see ANTONIUS, MARCUS; CAESAR, GAIUS
JULIUS; PTOLEMIES. The life of Antony by Plutarch is our main
authority; it is upon this that Shakespeare's _Antony and Cleopatra_
is based. Her life is the subject of monographs by Stahr (1879, an
_apologia_), and Houssaye, _Aspasie, Cleopatre_, &c. (1879).

CLEPSYDRA (from Gr. [Greek: klheptein], to steal, and [Greek: hudor],
water), the chronometer of the Greeks and Romans, which measured time by
the flow of water. In its simplest form it was a short-necked
earthenware globe of known capacity, pierced at the bottom with several
small holes, through which the water escaped or "stole away." The
instrument was employed to set a limit to the speeches in courts of
justice, hence the phrases _aquam dare_, to give the advocate speaking
time, and _aquam perdere_, to waste time. Smaller clepsydrae of glass
were very early used i