Herself utterly cold and callous, insensitive by nature to the
flame of true devotion, Cleopatra was one of those women gifted
with an unerring instinct for all the various roads to men's
affections. She could be the shrinking, modest girl, too shy to
reveal her half-unconscious emotions of jealousy and depression
and self-abandonment, or a woman carried away by the sweep of a
fiery and uncontrollable passion. She could tickle the esthetic
sensibilities of her victims by rich and gorgeous festivals, by
the fantastic adornment of her own person and her palace, or by
brilliant discussions on literature and art; she could conjure up
all their grossest instincts with the vilest obscenities of
conversation, with the free and easy jocularity of a woman of the
camps.

These last words are far too strong, and they represent only
Ferrero's personal opinion; yet there is no doubt that she met
every mood of Antony's so that he became enthralled with her at
once. No such woman as this had ever cast her eyes on him before.
He had a wife at home--a most disreputable wife--so that he cared
little for domestic ties. Later, out of policy, he made another
marriage with the sister of his rival, Octavian, but this wife he
never cared for. His heart and soul were given up to Cleopatra,
the woman who could be a comrade in the camp and a fount of
tenderness in their hours of dalliance, and who possessed the keen
intellect of a man joined to the arts and fascinations of a woman.

On her side she found in Antony an ardent lover, a man of vigorous
masculinity, and, moreover, a soldier whose armies might well
sustain her on the throne of Egypt. That there was calculation