Tarsus was now to be amused by the costly follies and extravagances of Cleopatra.  As an initial display, soon after landing, she invited Antony and his generals to a dinner, at which the whole of the dishes placed before them were of gold, set with precious stones, and the room and the twelve couches were ornamented with purple and gold.  On his praising the splendour of the sight, as passing anything he had before seen, she said it was a trifle, and begged that he would take the whole of it as a gift from her.  The next day he again dined with her, and brought a larger number of his friends and generals, and was of course startled to see a costliness which made that of the day before seem nothing; and she again gave him the whole of the gold upon the table, and gave to each of his friends the couch upon which he sat.

These costly and delicate dinners were continued every day; and one evening, when Antony playfully blamed her wastefulness, and said that it was not possible to fare in a more costly manner, she told him that the dinner of the next day should cost ten thousand ses-tertia, or three hundred thousand dollars.  This he would not believe, and laid her a wager that she would fail in her promise.  When the day came the dinner was as grand and dainty as those of the former days; but when Antony called upon her to count up the cost of the meats and wines, she said that she did not reckon them, but that she should herself soon eat and drink the ten thousand sestertia.  She wore in her ears two pearls, the largest known in the world, which, like the diamonds of European kings, had come to her with her crown and kingdom, and were together valued at that large sum.

[Illustration:  338.jpg EGYPTIAN PICTURE OF CLEOPATRA]

On the servants removing the meats, they set before her a glass of vinegar, and she took one of these earrings from her ear and dropped it into the glass, and when dissolved drank it off.  Plancus, one of the guests, who had been made judge of the wager, snatched the other from the queen’s ear, and saved it from being drunk up like the first, and then declared that Antony had lost his bet.  The pearl which was saved was afterwards cut in two and made into a pair of earrings for the statue of Venus in the Pantheon at Rome; and the fame of the wager may be said to have made the two half pearls at least as valuable as the two whole ones.

The beauty, sweetness, and gaiety of this young queen, joined to her great powers of mind, which were all turned to the art of pleasing, had quite overcome Antony; he had sent for her as her master, but he was now her slave.  Her playful wit was delightful; her voice was as an instrument of many strings; she spoke readily to every ambassador in his own language; and was said to be the only sovereign of Egypt who could understand the languages of all her subjects:  Greek, Egyptian, Ethiopie, Troglodytic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac.  With these charms, at the age of