Of all love stories that are known to human history, the love story ofAntony and Cleopatra has been for nineteen centuries the mostremarkable. It has tasked the resources of the plastic and the graphicarts. It has been made the theme of poets and of prose narrators. Ithas appeared and reappeared in a thousand forms, and it appeals as muchto the imagination to-day as it did when Antony deserted his almostvictorious troops and hastened in a swift galley from Actium in pursuitof Cleopatra.
The wonder of the story is explained by its extraordinary nature. Manymen in private life have lost fortune and fame for the love of woman.Kings have incurred the odium of their people, and have cared nothingfor it in comparison with the joys of sense that come from thelingering caresses and clinging kisses. Cold-blooded statesmen, such asParnell, have lost the leadership of their party and have gone down inhistory with a clouded name because of the fascination exercised uponthem by some woman, often far from beautiful, and yet possessing themysterious power which makes the triumphs of statesmanship seem slightin comparison with the swiftly flying hours of pleasure.
But in the case of Antony and Cleopatra alone do we find a man flingingaway not merely the triumphs of civic honors or the headship of astate, but much more than these—the mastery of what was practicallythe world—in answer to the promptings of a woman's will. Hence thestory of the Roman triumvir and the Egyptian queen is not like anyother story that has yet been told. The sacrifice involved in it was sooverwhelming, so instantaneous, and so complete as to set thisnarrative above all others. Shakespeare's genius has touched it withthe glory of a great imagination. Dryden, using it in the finest of hisplays, expressed its nature in the title "All for Love."
The distinguished Italian historian, Signor Ferrero, the author of manybooks, has tried hard to eliminate nearly all the romantic elementsfrom the tale, and to have us see in it not the triumph of love, butthe blindness of ambition. Under his handling it becomes almost asordid drama of man's pursuit of power and of woman's selfishness. Letus review the story as it remains, even after we have taken fullaccount of Ferrero's criticism. Has the world for nineteen hundredyears been blinded by a show of sentiment? Has it so absolutely beenmisled