CLEOPATRA 



1417 



CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLES 



Spain. It was he, too, who reconciled the 

 great Henry IV of France with the Church. 



Clement XIV, the last of the name, was Pope 

 from 1769 to 1774. Because of his support of 

 the Jesuits he met with determined opposition 

 in most of the Roman Catholic countries of 

 Europe and finally was compelled to sign a 

 brief suppressing the Order. He was not only a 

 statesman of ability, but a scholar as well, and 

 was the founder of the Clementine Museum in 

 the Vatican. G.W.M. 



CLEOPATRA, klee o pay ' tra, the name 

 borne by several Egyptian queens, most 

 famous of whom was CLEOPATRA VI, daughter 

 of Ptolemy Auletes and one of the most cele- 

 brated rulers the world has ever seen. Her 

 beauty influenced the policies of the greatest 

 men of her day. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), in 

 Thoughts, said, "If the nose of Cleopatra had 

 been shorter, the whole face of the earth 

 would have been changed." 



She was born in 69 or 68 B. c., and in 51 B. c. 

 came to the throne on the death of her father. 

 Her brother, Ptolemy, then twelve years old, 

 was made joint ruler with her, and his advisers 

 soon succeeded in seizing all the power and 

 driving Cleopatra from the kingdom. She col- 

 lected an army in Syria, but met with no suc- 

 cess until Caesar, visiting Alexandria and fall- 

 ing a victim to her personal charms, took up 

 her battles for her. Her brother was defeated 

 and killed, and a younger brother, also called 

 Ptolemy, was placed on the throne with her. 

 In 46 B. c. Cleopatra went to Rome, and she 

 remained there as Caesar's mistress until his 

 death in 44 B.C. 



On her return to Egypt she had her brother 

 put to death that her son by Caesar, Caesarion, 

 might become her heir. In 42 B. c., after the 

 Battle of Philippi, she had her momentous 

 first meeting with Mark Antony at Tarsus. She 

 had arrayed herself for conquest, and Antony 

 promptly fell in love with her and followed 

 her back to Egypt. There he lived for some 

 time, and although obliged to return to Rome, 

 he hastened back to Alexandria as soon as pos- 

 sible and gave himself up to pleasure and 

 revelry with her. He divorced his wife Octavia, 

 sister of Octavius, for her, and thus hastened 

 the war with Octavius which culminated in the 

 Battle of Actium. 



Cleopatra had brought her fleet to aid An- 

 tony, but believing that he was being defeated 

 she fled with her ships, and Antony followed 

 her. She let the report reach him, on the ap- 

 proach of Octavius, that she had committed 



suicide, and he took his own life; but she 

 tried to make herself safe, as she had done 

 before, by bringing Octavius under the spell 

 of her fascinations. This time she was unsuc- 

 cessful, and rather than be led in triumph to 

 Rome she killed herself, by what method is 

 not known, though tradition declares that she 

 placed an asp on her arm and died of its bite. 

 Historians doubt the truth of this, for such a 

 death would have disfigured her skin, and her 

 vanity would have revolted at an end which 

 could mar her beauty. Poisons were plentiful 

 and their effects well understood; the best 

 opinion declares such a means probably was 

 employed. A.MC c. 



Consult Mahaffy's The Empire of the Ptole- 

 mies. The life of Antony by Plutarch is con- 

 sidered the best authority relating to Cleopatra, 

 and on this Shakespeare based his tragedy, 

 Antony and Cleopatra. 



CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLES, the name given 

 to two magnificent Egyptian obelisks of red 

 syenite which were presented in 1877 by Is- 

 mail Pasha, the khedive of Egypt, to the 

 governments of Great Britain and the United 

 States, respect- 

 ively. One was 

 set up on the 

 London embank- 

 ment in 1878; the 

 other stands in 

 Central Park, 

 New York, hav- 

 ing been trans- 

 ported to the 

 United States in 

 1880. The latter 

 is sixty-nine feet 

 high and seven 

 and one-half feet 

 thick at the base, 

 and weighs 200 

 tons. It rests on 

 four bronze bases, 

 the originals of 

 which are in the 

 M e tropolitan 

 Museum of Art, 

 a few rods to the 

 east. The sides 



of the obelisk are CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE 

 covered with In Central Park, New York 

 hieroglyphics and ( 



bear inscriptions of Thothmes III (about 

 1500 B. c.) and Rameses II. These obelisks 

 originally stood before the temple of the Sun 



