Cleopatra was twenty-eight years of age when she first met Antony,--"a period of life," says Plutarch, "when woman's beauty is most splendid, and her intellect is in full maturity." We have no account of the style of her beauty, except that it was transcendent,--absolutely irresistible, with such a variety of expression as to be called infinite. As already remarked, from the long residence of her family in Egypt and intermarriages with foreigners, her complexion may have been darker than that of either Persians or Greeks. It probably resembled that of Queen Esther more than that of Aspasia, in that dark richness and voluptuousness which to some have such attractions; but in grace and vivacity she was purely Grecian,--not like a "blooming Eastern bride," languid and passive and effeminate, but bright, witty, and intellectual. Shakspeare paints her as full of lively sallies, with the power of adapting herself to circumstances with tact and good nature, like a Madame Récamier or a Maintenon, rather than like a Montespan or a Pompadour, although her nature was passionate, her manner enticing, and her habits luxurious. She did not weary or satiate, like a mere sensual beauty.
"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety."
She certainly had the power of retaining the conquests she had won,--which rarely happens except with those who are gifted with intellectual radiance and freshness. She held her hold on Antony for eleven years, when he was burdened with great public cares and duties, and when he was forty-two years of age. Such a superior man as he was intellectually, and, after Caesar, the leading man of the empire,--a statesman as well as soldier,--would not have been enslaved so long by Cleopatra had she not possessed remarkable gifts and attainments, like those famous women who reigned in the courts of the Bourbons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and who, by their wit and social fascinations, gathered around their thrones the most distinguished men of France, and made them friends as well as admirers. The Pompadours of the world have only a brief reign, and at last become repulsive. But Cleopatra, like Maintenon, was always attractive, although she, could not lay claim to the virtues of the latter. She was as politic as the French beauty, and as full of expedients to please her lord. She may have revelled in the banquets she prepared for Antony, as Esther did in those she prepared for Xerxes; but with the same intent, to please him rather than herself, and win, from his weakness, those political favors which in his calmer hours he might have shrunk from granting. Cleopatra was a politician as well as a luxurious beauty, and it may have been her supreme aim to secure the independence of Egypt. She wished to beguile Antony as she had sought to beguile Caesar, since they were the masters of the world, and had it in their power to crush her sovereignty and reduce her realm to a mere province of the empire. Nor is there evidence that in the magnificent banquets she gave to the Roman general she ever lost her self-control. She drank, and made him drink, but retained her wits, "laughing him out of patience and laughing him into patience," ascendant over him by raillery, irony, and wit.