However, little by little, this move, made on both sides from
considerations of political interest, altered its character under the
action of events, of time, through the personal influence of Antony
and Cleopatra upon each other, and above all, the power that Cleopatra
acquired over Antony: here is truly the most important part of all
this story. Those who have read my history know that I have recounted
hardly any of the anecdotes, more or less odd or entertaining,
with which ancient writers describe the intimate life of Antony and
Cleopatra, because it is impossible to discriminate in them the part
that is fact from that which was invented or exaggerated by political
enmity. In history the difficulty of recognising the truth gradually
increases as one passes from political to private life; because in
politics the acts of men and of parties are always bound together by
either causes or effects of which a certain number is always exactly
known; private life, on the other hand, is, as it were, isolated and
secret, almost invariably impenetrable. What a great man of state does
in his own house, his valet knows better than the historians of later
times.

If for these reasons I have thought it prudent not to accept in my
work the stories and anecdotes that the ancients recount of Antony and
Cleopatra, without indeed risking to declare them false, it is, on the
contrary, not possible to deny that Cleopatra gradually acquired great
ascendency over the mind of Antony. The circumstance is of itself
highly probable. That Cleopatra was perhaps a Venus, as the ancients
say, or that she was provided with but a mediocre beauty, as declare
the portraits, matters little: it is, however, certain that she was
a woman of great cleverness and culture; as woman and queen of
the richest and most civilised realm of the ancient world, she was