Of all love stories that are known to human history, the love
story of Antony and Cleopatra has been for nineteen centuries the
most remarkable. It has tasked the resources of the plastic and
the graphic arts. It has been made the theme of poets and of prose
narrators. It has appeared and reappeared in a thousand forms, and
it appeals as much to the imagination to-day as it did when Antony
deserted his almost victorious troops and hastened in a swift
galley from Actium in pursuit of Cleopatra.

The wonder of the story is explained by its extraordinary nature.
Many men in private life have lost fortune and fame for the love
of woman. Kings have incurred the odium of their people, and have
cared nothing for it in comparison with the joys of sense that
come from the lingering caresses and clinging kisses. Cold-blooded
statesmen, such as Parnell, have lost the leadership of their
party and have gone down in history with a clouded name because of
the fascination exercised upon them by some woman, often far from
beautiful, and yet possessing the mysterious power which makes the
triumphs of statesmanship seem slight in comparison with the
swiftly flying hours of pleasure.

But in the case of Antony and Cleopatra alone do we find a man
flinging away not merely the triumphs of civic honors or the
headship of a state, but much more than these--the mastery of what
was practically the world--in answer to the promptings of a
woman's will. Hence the story of the Roman triumvir and the
Egyptian queen is not like any other story that has yet been told.
The sacrifice involved in it was so overwhelming, so
instantaneous, and so complete as to set this narrative above all