Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookmurdered by her orders in less than four years, after which she was sole queen, in name as well as in reality. We thus see that the Ptolemy here mentioned may be either of Cleopatra's brothers of that name; but it is more likely that Chaucer refers to the elder of them. Shakespeare also uses the expression 'queen of Ptolemy'; Ant. i. 4. 6. 583. _On a tyme_; viz. not long after the battle of Philippi, which took place in B.C. 42. 'Antonius, going to make war with the Parthians, sent to command Cleopatra to appear personally before him when he came into Cilicia, to answer unto such accusations as were laid against her, being this: that she had aided Cassius and Brutus in their war against him ... Cleopatra on the other side ... guessing by the former access and credit she had with Julius Cæsar and C. Pompey (the son of Pompey the Great) only for her beauty, she began to have good hope that she might more easily win Antonius. For Cæsar and Pompey knew her when she was but a young thing, and knew not then what the world meant; but now she went to Antonius at the age when a woman's beauty is at the prime, and she also of best judgment.'--Sh. Plut. p. 174. Almost immediately after this passage follows the celebrated description of Cleopatra in her barge upon the Cydnus, familiar to all in the words of Shakespeare; Ant. and Cleop. ii. 2. 196. 591. 'Octavius Cæsar reporting all these things unto the Senate, and oftentimes accusing him to the whole people and assembly in Rome, he thereby stirred up all the Romans against him.'--Sh. Plut. p. 202. 592. After the death of his first wife, Fulvia, Antony had married Octavia, sister of Octavianus (better known to us as Augustus). But in a few years he deserted her, and surrendered himself wholly to the charms of Cleopatra. Cf. Ant. and Cleop. iii. 6. 597. Cf. Sh. Plut. p. 192; Ant. and Cleop. i. 4. 55. 605. _Sterve_, to die. See _Starve_, in Trench, Sel. Glossary. 624. _Octovian_, Octavianus. 'Now for Cæsar, he had 250 ships of war, 80,000 footmen, and well near as many horsemen as his enemy Antonius'; Sh. Plut. p. 207. 634. See the account of the battle of Actium, B.C. 31; in Sh. Plut. p. 210. The vivid description here given by Chaucer resembles the parallel passage in the Kn. Tale, A 2600-20, which should be compared. 'The soldiers fought with their pikes, halbards and darts, and threw halbards and darts with fire. Antonius' ships, on the other side, bestowed among them, with their crossbows and engines of battery, great store of shot from their high towers of wood that were set upon their ships.'--Sh. Plut. p. 211. There is some description of the hostile fleets and of the battle in Florus (see note to l. 655), who tells us that, whilst Octavius had 400 ships against the 200 ships of Antony, the latter were nearly double the size of the former; so that the fleets were thus of equal strength. 637. Bell says this is 'a ludicrous anachronism'; but it is nothing of the kind. The word _gonne_ is here used in the sense of 'shot' or 'missile'; and the line means--'with terrible sound out rushes the huge missile,' being hurled from one of the 'engines of battery' mentioned in the last note. It is the missile, not the engine, that 'out goth'; as a moment's reflection would have informed the commentator, whose remark was needless. The use of _gonne_ in the sense of 'missile' is curious, but not unexampled; for, in the Avowynge of Arthur, st. 65, we read that 'there come fliand a _gunne_,' i.e. there came flying along a missile. I believe it is also used in the sense of missile in Sir Ferumbras, 5176, though the passage is not decisive. Even if this were not the case, there is no 'anachronism'; for _gonne_ was originally used in the sense of 'catapult,' as may be seen by consulting the Prompt. Parvulorum, where the Latin for it is _petraria_, and _mangonale_. The _grisly soun_ alludes to the whizzing of the ponderous missile through the air; Barbour says of a great stone, hurled from a catapult, that 'It flaw out, quhedirand, with a rout,' i.e. it flew out, whirring, with a great noise. See The Bruce, xvii. 684. On the other hand, in Ho. Fame, 1643, Chaucer certainly uses _gonne_ in the sense of 'cannon'; but that does not affect the sense of the present passage. 638. _Hurtlen_, push, dash, ram one against the other; cf. Kn. Ta., A 2616. 'Somtyme they _hurtled_ to-gyder that they felle grovelyng on the ground'; Morte Arthure; by Sir T. Malory, bk. vii. c. 12. _Heterly_, vehemently, fiercely, occurs frequently in the Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat (E. E. T. S.) Compare Vergil's description of the battle, in Æn. viii. 689, &c.: 'Una omnes ruere.' 640. _In goth_, in there go. _Goth_ is singular in form, because of its position in the sentence; but it has two nominatives, viz. 'grapnel' and 'shearing-hooks.' The former was a contrivance for clutching the ropes, and the latter for severing them. 642. This is wonderfully graphic. A boarder bursts in with a pole-axe; a sailor, on the defence, flees behind the mast, then dashes forward again, and drives the assailant overboard. 646. _Rent_, rendeth; the present tense. 648. By pouring hard peas upon the hatches, they became so slippery that the boarders could not stand. 649. Some carried pots full of quicklime, which they threw into the eyes of their enemies. See Notes and Queries, 5 S. x. 188. The English did this very thing, when attacking a French fleet, in the time of Henry III. Strutt (Manners and Customs, 1774, ii. 11) quotes from Matthew Paris to this effect:--'Calcem quoque vivam et in pulverém subtilem reductam, in altum projicientes, vento illam ferente, Francorum oculos excaecaverunt.' Cf. Æn. viii. 694. 652. _Put_, short for _putteth_, puts; pres. tense. 653. _To-go_, disperse themselves; pres. tense. The prefix _to_ has the same force as the Lat. _dis-_, i.e. 'in different directions.' We even find _to-ga_ used as a past tense in Barbour's Bruce (viii. 351, ix. 263, 269, xvii. 104, 575), with the sense 'fled in different directions,' or 'fled away.' Cf. 'the wlcne _to-gað_,' the clouds part asunder; Morris; Spec. of Eng. pt. I. p. 7, l. 169. And again, 'thagh the fourme of brede _to-go_,' though the form of bread disappear; Shoreham's Poems, p. 29. _That best go mighte_, each in the way he could best go; each made the best of his way to a safe place. 'Sauve qui peut.' 655. 'Suddenly they saw the threescore ships of Cleopatra busily about their yard-masts, and hoising sail to fly'; Sh. Plut. p. 212. Cf. Ant. and Cleop. iii. 10. 10; Vergil, Æn. viii. 707-8. The remark about Cleopatra's 'purple sails' may remind us of Plutarch's description of Cleopatra on the Cydnus, already referred to above (note to l. 583):--'the poop [of her barge] was of gold, _the sails of purple_'; Sh. Plut. p. 174; Ant. and Cleop. ii. 2. 198. The truth is, however, that (as Bech points out) Chaucer has borrowed this and a few other incidents from L. Annaeus Florus, who wrote an Epitom |