For Cleopatra was never beautiful.  Signor Ferrero seems to think this fact to be discovery of his own, but it was set down by Plutarch in a very striking passage written less than a century after Cleopatra and Antony died.  We may quote here what the Greek historian said of her: 

Her actual beauty was far from being so remarkable that none could be compared with her, nor was it such that it would strike your fancy when you saw her first.  Yet the influence of her presence, if you lingered near her, was irresistible.  Her attractive personality, joined with the charm of her conversation, and the individual touch that she gave to everything she said or did, were utterly bewitching.  It was delightful merely to hear the music of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another.

Caesar had left Cleopatra firmly seated on the throne of Egypt.  For six years she reigned with great intelligence, keeping order in her dominions, and patronizing with discrimination both arts and letters.  But ere long the convulsions of the Roman state once more caused her extreme anxiety.  Caesar had been assassinated, and there ensued a period of civil war.  Out of it emerged two striking figures which were absolutely contrasted in their character.  One was Octavian, the adopted son of Caesar, a man who, though still quite young and possessed of great ability, was cunning, cold-blooded, and deceitful.  The other was Antony, a soldier by training, and with all a soldier’s bluntness, courage, and lawlessness.

The Roman world was divided for the time between these two men, Antony receiving the government of the East, Octavian that of the West.  In the year which had preceded this division Cleopatra had wavered between the two opposite factions at Rome.  In so doing she had excited the suspicion of Antony, and he now demanded of her an explanation.

One must have some conception of Antony himself in order to understand the events that followed.  He was essentially a soldier, of excellent family, being related to Caesar himself.  As a very young man he was exceedingly handsome, and bad companions led him into the pursuit of vicious pleasure.  He had scarcely come of age when he found that he owed the enormous sum of two hundred and fifty talents, equivalent to half a million dollars in the money of to-day.  But he was much more than a mere man of pleasure, given over to drinking and to dissipation.  Men might tell of his escapades, as when he drove about the streets of Rome in a common cab, dangling his legs out of the window while he shouted forth drunken songs of revelry.  This was not the whole of Antony.  Joining the Roman army in Syria, he showed himself to be a soldier of great personal bravery, a clever strategist, and also humane and merciful in the hour of victory.