Cæsar’s astonishment when the bundle was untied in his presence, revealing the dishevelled little Queen, must have been unbounded; and Plutarch tells us that he was at once “captivated by this proof of Cleopatra’s bold wit.” One pictures her bursting with laughter at her adventure, and speedily winning the admiration of the susceptible Roman, who delighted almost as keenly in deeds of daring as he did in feminine beauty. All night long they were closeted together, she relating to him her adventures since she was driven from her kingdom, and he listening with growing interest, and already perhaps with awakening love. And here it will be as well to leave them while some description is given of the appearance and character of the man who now found himself looking forward to the ensuing days of his holiday in Alexandria with an eagerness which it must have been difficult for him to conceal.
When Cæsar thus made the acquaintance of the adventurous young Queen of Egypt he was a man of advanced middle age. He had already celebrated his fifty-fourth birthday, having been born on July 12, B.C. 102, and time was beginning to mark him down. The appalling dissipations of his youth to some extent may have added to the burden of his years; and, though he was still active and keen beyond the common measure, his face was heavily lined and seamed, and his muscles, I suppose, showed something of that tension to which the suppleness of early manhood gives place. Yet he remained graceful and full of the quality of youth, and he carried himself with the air of one conscious of his supremacy in the physical activities of life. He was a lightly-built man, of an aristocratic type which is to be found indiscriminately throughout Europe, and which nowadays, by a convention of thought, is usually associated in the mind with the cavalry barracks or the polo-ground. He appeared to be, and was, a perfect horseman. It is related of him that in Gaul he bred and rode a horse which no other man in the army dared mount; and it was his habit to demonstrate the firmness of his seat by clasping his hands behind his back and setting the horse at full gallop. Though by no means a small man, he must have scaled under ten stone, and in other days and other climes he might have been mistaken for a gentleman jockey. He was an extremely active soldier, a clever, graceful swordsman, a powerful swimmer, and an excellent athlete. In battle he had proved himself brave, gallant, and cool-headed; and in his earlier years he had been regarded as a dashing young officer who was neither restrained in the performance of striking deeds of bravery nor averse to receiving a gallery cheer for his pains. Already at the age of twenty-one he had won the civic crown, the Victoria Cross of that period, for saving a soldier’s life at the storming of Mytelene. In action he exposed himself bare-headed amongst his men, cheering them and encouraging them by his own fine spirits; and it is related how once he laid hands on a distraught standard-bearer who was running to cover, turned him round, and suggested to him that he had mistaken the direction of the enemy.
