r body after death,
and word was sent out that she was already dead.

When these false tidings were brought to Antony all his anger against
the fair traitress was replaced by a flood of his old tenderness. In
despair he stabbed himself, bidding his attendants to lay his body
beside that of Cleopatra.

Still living, he was borne to the queen's retreat, where, moved by pity,
she had him drawn up by cords into an upper window. Here she threw
herself in agony on his body, bathed his face with her tears, and
continued to bemoan his fate until he was dead.

She afterwards consented to receive Octavius. He spoke her fairly, but
she was wise enough to see that all her charms were lost on him, and
that he proposed to degrade her by making her walk as a captive in his
triumph.

With a cunning greater than his own, Cleopatra promised to submit. She
had no apparent means of taking her life in the cell, every dangerous
weapon was removed by his orders, and he left her, as he supposed, a
safe victim of his wiles.

He did not know Cleopatra. When his messengers returned, at the hour
fixed, to conduct her away, they found only the dead body of Cleopatra
stretched upon her couch, and by her side her two faithful attendants,
Iris and Charmion. It is said that she died from the bite of an asp, a
venomous Egyptian serpent, which had been secretly conveyed to her
concealed in a basket of fruit; but this story remains unconfirmed.

Plutarch tells the story thus: "But when they opened the doors they
found Cleopatra stark dead, laid upon a bed of gold, attired and arrayed
in her royal robes, and one of her two women, who was called Iris, dead
at her feet, and the other woman (called Charmion) half dead, and
trembling, trimming the diadem which Cleopatra wore upon her head.

"One of the soldiers, seeing her, angrily said to her, 'Is that well
done, Charmion?' 'Very well,' said she again, 'and meet for a princess
descended from the race of so many noble kings.' She said no more, but
fell down dead, hard by the bed.

"Now Caesar, though he was marvellous sorry for the death of Cleopatra,
yet he wondered at her noble mind and courage, and therefore commanded
that she should be nobly buried and laid by Antony."

Thus ends the story of these two famous lovers of old. Octavius,
afterwards known as Caesar Augustus, reigned sole emperor of Rome, and
the republic was at an end. He was not formally proclaimed emperor, but
liberty and independe