ABSTRACT
Cleopatra’s situation was at this moment terrible in the extreme. The blood-stained body of her husband lay stretched upon the bed, covered by her torn garments which she had thrown over it. Charmion and Iras, her two waiting-women, were probably huddled in the corner of the room, beating their breasts and wailing as was the Greek habit at such a time. Below the open window a few Romans and Egyptians appear to have gathered in the sun-baked courtyard; and, I think, the ladders still rested against the wall where they had been placed by those who had helped to raise Antony up to the Queen. It must now have been early afternoon, and the sunlight of the August day, no doubt, beat into the room, lighting the disarranged furniture and revealing the wet blood-stains upon the tumbled carpets over which the dying man’s heavy body had been dragged. From the one side the surge of the sea penetrated into the chamber; from the other the shouts of Octavian’s soldiers and the clattering of their arms came to Cleopatra’s ears, telling her of the enemy’s arrival in the Palace. She might expect at any moment to be asked to surrender, and more than probably an attempt would be made to capture her by means of an entry through the window. She had determined, however, never to be made prisoner in this manner, and she had, no doubt, given it to be clearly understood that any effort to seize her would be her signal for firing the funeral pyre which had been erected in the adjoining room and destroying herself upon it. To be made a captive probably meant her degradation at Octavian’s Triumph and the loss of her throne; but to surrender by mutual arrangement might assure her personal safety and the continuity of her dynasty. With this in view, it seems likely that she now armed her two women to resist any assault upon the windows, and told them to warn all who attempted to climb the ladders that she, with her priceless jewellery and treasures, would be engulfed in the flames before ever they had reached to the level of her place of refuge.
