inventory of her treasures to Octavian, and is charged by her steward
with dishonesty, shows her in uncivilized violence striking the man in
the face and bursting into indecent fury, such as an Athenian, still
less a Roman, matron would have been ashamed to exhibit. Nor is there
any reason to doubt the genuineness of this scene, though we must not be
weary of cautioning ourselves against the hostile witnesses who have
reported to us her life. They praise nothing in her but her bewitching
presence and her majestic death.

"After her repast Cleopatra sent to Caesar a letter which she had written
and sealed, and, putting everybody out of the monument but her two
women, she shut the doors. Caesar, opening her letter, and finding
pathetic prayers and entreaties that she might be buried in the same
tomb with Antony, soon guessed what was doing. At first he was going
himself in all haste; but, changing his mind, he sent others to see. The
thing had been quickly done. The messengers came at full speed, and
found the guards apprehensive of nothing; but on opening the doors they
saw her stone dead, lying upon a bed of gold, set out in all her royal
ornaments. Iras, one of her women, lay dying at her feet, and Charmion,
just ready to fall, scarce able to hold up her head, was adjusting her
mistress' diadem. And when one that came in said angrily, 'Was this well
done of your lady, Charmion?' 'Perfectly well,' she answered, 'and as
became the daughter of so many kings'; and as she said this she fell
down dead by the bedside."

Even the hostile accounts cannot conceal from us that both in physique
and in intellect she was a very remarkable figure, exceptional in her
own, exceptional had she been born in any other, age. She is a speaking
instance of the falsehood of a prevailing belief, that the intermarriage
of near relations invariably produces a decadence in the human race. The
whole dynasty of the Ptolemies contradicts this current theory, and
exhibits in the last of the series the most signal exception. Cleopatra
VI was descended from many generations of breeding-in, of which four
exhibit marriages of full brother and sister. And yet she was deficient
in no quality, physical or intellectual, which goes to make up a
well-bred and well-developed human being. Her morals were indeed those
of her ancestors, and as bad as could be, but I am not aware that it is
degeneration in this direction which is assumed by the theory in
question,