19 - Beacon Lights of History - Ancient Achievements by John Lord

In the third installment of the Beacon Lights of History series, Lord delves into the remarkable achievements of the ancient world, exploring pivotal developments in law, the fine arts, and science. He brings to life iconic figures such as Cicero and Cleopatra, revealing their enduring impact on history. Summary by KHand.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section nineteen of Beacon Lights of History, Volume three, Ancient
Achievements by John Lord. This LibriVox recording is in the
public domain recording by k Hand Cleopatra Part two, Thus perished,
the Great Triumvir, dying like a Roman whose blinded but
persistent love, Whatever words elements ever shall make his name memorable.

(00:24):
All the ages will point to him as a man
who gave the world away for the caresses of a woman,
and a woman who deceived and ruined him. As for her,
this selfish, heartless sorceress, gifted and beautiful as she was,
what does she do when she sees her lover dead
dying for her? Does she share his fate? Not she?

(00:46):
What selfish woman ever killed herself for love? Some natural
tears she shed, but wiped them soon. She may have
torn her clothes and beaten her breast, and disfigured her face,
and given vent to mourning and lamentations. But she does
not seek death, nor surrender herself to grief, nor court despair.
She renews her strength. She reserves her arts for another victim.

(01:09):
She hopes to win Octavius, as she has won Julius
in Antony. For she was only thirty nine and still
a queen, and for what that she might retain her
own sovereignty or the independence of Egypt, still the most
fertile of countries, rich, splendid, and with grand traditions which
went back thousands of years, the oldest and once the

(01:29):
most powerful monarchies. Her love was ever subservient to her interests.
Antony gave up ambition for love. Whatever that love was,
it took possession of his whole being, not pure and tender,
but powerful, strange, doubtless a mad infatuation, and perhaps something more,
since it never passed away admiration allied with the desire

(01:52):
the worship of dazzling gifts, though not of moral virtues.
Would such a love have been permanent? Probably not, since
the object of it did not shine in the beauty
of the soul, but rather in the graces and adornments
of the body, intensified indeed by the luster of bewitching
social qualities and the brightness of a cultivated intellect. It
is hard to analyze a passionate love between highly gifted

(02:15):
people who have an intense development of both the higher
and the lower natures, and still more difficult when the
idol is a venus polyhemnia, rather than a venus urania.
But the love of Antony, whether unwise or mysterious or unfortunate,
was not feigned or forced. It was real, and it
was irresistible. He could not help it. He was enslaved,

(02:38):
bound hand and foot. His reason may have rallied to
his support, but his will was fettered. He may have had,
at times dark and gloomy suspicions that he was played with,
that he was cheated, that he would be deserted, that
Cleopatra was false and treacherous. And yet she reigned over him.
He could not live without her. She was all in

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all to him, so long as the infatuation lasted, and
it had lasted fourteen years, with increasing force, in spite
of duty and pressing labors, the cause of ambition and
the lust of power. In this consuming an abandoned passion
for fourteen years, so strange and inglorious, and for a
woman so unworthy, even if he were no better than she,

(03:20):
we see one of the greatest mysteries of our complex nature.
Not uncommon but insoluble. I have no respect for Antony,
and but little admiration. I speak of such mad infatuation
as a humiliating exhibition of human weakness. Anyone under its
fearful spell is an object of pity. But I have
more sympathy for him than for Cleopatra. Although she was

(03:42):
doubtless a very gifted woman, he was her victim. She
was not his. If extravagant and reckless and sensual, he
was frank, generous, eloquent, brave, and true to her. She
was artful, designing, and selfish, and used him for her
own ends, although we do not know that she was
per phidias and false to him. But for her he

(04:03):
would have ruled the world. He showed himself capable of
an enormous sacrifice. She made no sacrifices for him. She
could even have transferred her affections, since she afterwards sought
to play her blandishments upon his rival. Conceive of Antony
if you can as loving any one else than her,
who led him on to ruin. In the very degradation

(04:26):
of love, we see its sacredness. In his fidelity, we
find some palliation. Nor does it seem that Octavia, the
slighted wife of Antony, gave way to vengeance. Her sense
of injury was overshadowed by her pity. This lofty and
dignified matron even took his six surviving children, three of
whom were Cleopatras, and brought them up in her own

(04:48):
house as her own. Can paganism show a greater magnanimity.
The fate of Cleopatra was tragic. Also, She too destroyed herself,
not probably by the bite of asps, as is the
pipe fular opinion, but by some potent and subtle poison
that she ever carried with her, and which had the
effect of benumbing the body and making her insensible to pain.

(05:09):
Yet she does not kill herself because she cannot survive
the death of Antony, but because she is too proud
to be carried to Rome to grace the triumph of
the new Caesar. She will not be led a captive
princess up the Capitoline hill. She has an overbearing pride. No, Sir,
she says to Procilus, that I will not wait pinioned
at your master's court, nor once be chastised with the

(05:31):
sober eye of dull Octavia. Rather a ditch in Egypt
be gentle grave to me. But whether pride or whether
shame was the more powerful motive in committing suicide. I
do not read that she was a victim of remorse.
She had no moral sense, nor did she give way
to sentimental grief on the death of Antony. Her grief
was blended with the disappointment and rage. Nor did she

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hide her head, but wore a face of brass. She
used all her arts to win Octavius. Her resources did
not fail her, but she expended them on one of
the coldest, most politic, most astute men that ever lived.
In the disappointment that followed her defeat, that she could
not enslave another conqueror was greater than the grief for Antony.

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Nor during her whole career do we see any signs
of that sorrow and humility which it would seem should
mark a woman who has made so great and fatal
a mistake, cut off hopelessly from the respect of the
world and the peace of her own soul. We see grief, rage,
despair in her miserable end, as we see pride and
shamefacedness in her gilded life, but not remorse or shame.

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And when she dies by her own hand, it is
not in madness but to escape humiliation. Suicide was one
of the worst features of pagan antiquity. It was a
base and cowardly reluctance to meet the evils of life,
as much as indifference to the future and blunted moral sense.
So much for the woman herself, her selfish spirit, her
vile career. But as Cleopatra is one of the best

(06:59):
known and most striking examples of a pagan woman with
qualities and in circumstances peculiarly characteristic of Paganism, I must
make a few remarks on these points. One of the
most notable of these is that immoralities seems to have
been no bar to social position. Some of those who
were most attractive and sought after were notoriously immoral. Aspasia,

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whom Socrates and Pericles equally admired, and whose house was
the resort of poets, philosophers, statesmen, and artists, and who
is said to have been one of the most cultivated
women of antiquity, bore a sullied name. Sapho, who was
ever exalted by Grecian poets for the sweetness of her verses,
attempted to reconcile a life of pleasure with a life

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of letters, and threw herself into the sea because of
a disappointed passion. Lais, a professional courtesan, was the associate
of kings and sages, as well as the idol of
poets and priests. Agrippina, whose very name is infamy, was
the admiration of courtiers and statesmen. Lucilla, who armed her
assassins against her own brother, seems to have ruled the

(08:05):
court of Marcus Aurelius. And all these women, and more
who could be mentioned, were, like Cleopatra, cultivated, intellectual, and brilliant.
They seemed to have reigned for their social fascinations as
much as by their physical beauty. Hence, that class of
women who with us are shunned and excluded from society,
were not only flattered and honored, but the class itself

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seems to have been recruited by those who were the
most attractive for their intellectual gifts as well as for
physical beauty. No woman, if bright, witty and beautiful, was
avoided because she was immoral. It was the immoral women
who often aspired to the highest culture. They sought to
reign by making their homes attractive to distinguished men. Their
houses seemed to have been what the salons of noble

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and fascinating duchesses were in France in the last two centuries.
The homes of virtuous and domestic women were dull and wearisome.
In fact, the modest wives and daughters of most men
were confined to monotonous, domestic, dearth duties. They were household slaves.
They saw but little of what we now call society.
I do not say that virtue was not held in honor.

(09:08):
I know of no age, however, corrupt, when it was
not prized by husbands and fathers. I know of no
age when virtuous women did not shine at home and
exert a healthful influence upon men, and secure the proud
regard of their husbands. But these were not the women
whose society was most sought. The drudgeries and slaveries of
domestic life among the ancients made women unattractive to the world.

(09:30):
The women who were most attractive were those who gave
or attended sumptuous banquets and indulged in pleasures that were demoralizing.
Not domestic women, but bright women carried away those prizes
which it turned the brain. Those who shown were those
that attached themselves to men through their senses and possibly
through their intellects. And who were themselves strong in proportion
as men were weak. For a woman to appear in

(09:52):
public assemblies with braided and decorated hair and ostentatious dress,
and especially if she displayed any gifts of eloquence or culture,
was to proclaim herself one of the immoral, leisurely educated,
dissolute class. This gives point to Saint Paul's strict injunctions
to the women of Corinth to dress soberly, to keep
silence in the assemblies, et cetera. The modest woman was

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to be in subjection. Those pagan converts to the New
Way were to avoid even the appearance of evil. Thus,
under Paganism, the general influence of women was to pull
men down rather than to elevate them, especially those who
are attractive in society. Virtuous and domestic women were not
sufficiently educated to have much influence except in a narrow circle.

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Even they, in a social point of view, were slaves.
They could be given in marriage without their consent. They
were restricted in their intercourse with men. They were confined
to their homes. They had but few privileges. They had
no books. They led a life of terror from the
caprices of their lords, and masters, and hence inspired no veneration.
The wives and daughters of the rich tyrannized over their servants,

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decked themselves with costly ornaments, and were merely gilded toys
whose society was vapid and uninteresting. The wives and daughters
of the poor were drudges and menials, without attraction or influence,
noisy quarrelsome garrulous women who said the least when they
talked to the most. Hence, under paganism, home had none
of those attractions which in Christian countries invested with such charms.

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The home of the poor was squalid and repulsive. The
home of the rich was gaudy and tinseled enough, but
was dull and uninspiring. What is home when women are ignorant, stupid,
and slavish? What glitter or artistic splendor can make home
attractive when women are mere butterflies or slaves with gilded fetters.
Deprive women of education and especially of that respect which

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Christian chivalry inspires, and they cannot rise to be the
equal companions of men. They are simply their victims or
their slaves. What is a home where women are treated
as inferiors? Paganism never recognized their equality with men, and
if they ever ruled men, it was by a healing
to their lower qualities, or resorting to arts and devices
which are subversive of all dignity of character. When their

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personal beauty fled, their power also departed. A faded or
homely woman without intelligence or wit was a forlorn object
in a pagan home, to be avoided, derided, despised, a
melancholy object of pity or neglect. So far as companionship goes.
She may have been valued as a cook or drudge,
but she was only a menial. Of all those sins

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of omission which paganism is accused, the worst was that
it gave to women no mental resources to assist them
in poverty or neglect or isolation when beauty or fortune
deserted them. No home can be attractive where women have
no resources, and women can have no resources outside of
domestic duties, unless educated to some art or something calculated

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to draw out their energies and higher faculties by which
they win their respect and admiration, not of men only,
but of their own sex. It was this lack of
education which paganism withheld from women, which not only destroyed
the radiance of the home, but which really made women
inferior to men? All writers, poets, and satirists alike speak

(13:11):
of the inferiority of women to men, not physically only,
but even intellectually, and some authors made them more vicious
than men in natural inclination. And when the mind was
both neglected and undervalued, how could respect and admiration be
kindled or continue after sensual charms had passed away. Paganism
taught the inequality of the sexes and produced it. And

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when this inequality is taught, or believed in, or insisted upon,
then farewell to the glory of homes, to all unbought charms,
to the graces of domestic life, to everything that guilds
our brief existence with the radiance of imperishable joy. Nor
did paganism offer any consolations to the down trodden, injured, neglected,
uninteresting woman of antiquity. She could not rise above the

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condition in which she was born. No sympathetic priests directed
her thoughts to an other and higher and endless life.
Nobody wiped away her tears, Nobody gave encouragement to those
visions of beauty and serenity for which the burdened spirit
will under any oppressions, sometimes aspire to enjoy. No one
told her of immortality and a god of forgiveness, who

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binds up the bleeding heart and promises a future peace
and bliss. Paganism was merciful only in this That it
did not open wounds it could not heal, That it
did not hold out hopes and promises it could not fulfill.
That it did not remind the afflicted of miseries from
which they could not rise. That it did not let
in a vision of glories which could never be enjoyed.

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That it did not provoke the soul to indulge in
a bitterness in view of evils for which there was
no remedy. That it did not educate the mind for
enjoyments which could never be reached. That it did not
kindle a discontent with a condition from which there is
no escape. If one cannot rise above debasement or misery,
there is no use in pointing it out. If the
pagan woman was not seemingly aware of the degradation which

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kept her down and from which it was impossible to rise,
Paganism did not add stings to her misery by presenting
it as an accident which it was easy to surmount.
There would be no contentment or submission among animals if
they were endowed with the reason of men. Give to
a healthy, but ignorant, coarse, uncultivated country girl, surrounded only
with pigs and chickens, almost without neighbors, a glimpse of

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the glories of cities, the wonders of arts, the charms
of social life, the triumphs of the mind, the capacities
of the soul. And would she be any happier if
obliged to remain for life in her rustic obscurity and labor,
and with no possible chance of improving her condition. Such
was woman under paganism. She could rise only so far
as men lifted her up, and they lifted her up

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only further to consummate her degradation. But there was another
thing which kept women in degradation. Paganism did not recognize
the immaterial and immortal soul. It only had regard to
the wants of the body. Of course, there were exception.
There were sages and philosophers among the men, who speculated
on the grandest subjects, which could elevate the mind to

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the regions of immortal truth, like Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius.
Even as there were women who rose above all the
vile temptations which surrounded them, and were poets, heroines, and benefactors,
like Tealessa, who saved Argos by her courage, and Volumina,
who screened Rome from the vengeance of her angry son,

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and Lucretia, who destroyed herself rather than to survive the
dishonor of her house. There are some people who rise
in triumph over every kind of oppression and injury. Under paganism,
there was the possibility of the emancipation of the soul,
but not the probability. Its genius was directed to the
welfare of the body, to utilitarian ends of life, to
ornaments and riches, to luxury and voluptuousness, to the pleasures

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which are brief, to the charms of physical beauty and grace.
It could stimulate ambition and inculcate patriotism and sing of
love if it coupled the praises of Venus with the
praises of wine. But everything it praised or honored had
reference to this life and to the mortal body. It
may have recognized the mind, but not the soul, which
is greater than the mind. It had no aspirations for

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future happiness. It had no fears of future misery, hence
the frequency of suicide under disappointment or ennuy or satiated desire,
or fear of poverty or disgrace or pain. And thus
as paganism did not take cognizance of the soul and
its future existence. It disregarded man's highest aspirations. It did
not cultivate his graces. It set but a slight value

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on moral beauty. It thought little of affections, its burned
gentleness and passive virtues. It saw no luster in the
tender eye. It heard no music in the tones of sympathy.
It was hard and cold that which constitutes the richest
beatitudes of love. It could not see and did not
care for ethereal blessedness. It despised that which raises woman highest.

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It was indifferent too. The cold atmos sphere of paganism
froze her soul and made her callous to wrongs and sufferings.
It destroyed enthusiasm and poetic ardor and the graces which
shine in misfortune. Woman was not kindled by lofty sentiments,
since no one believed in them. The harmonies of home
had no poetry and no inspiration, and they disappeared. This

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face of woman was not lighted by supernatural smiles, Her
caresses had no spiritual fervor, and her benedictions were unmeaning platitudes.
Take away the soul of woman, and what is she?
Rob her of divine enthusiasm, and how vapid and commonplace
she becomes? Destroy her yearnings to be a spiritual solace,
and how limited is her sphere? Take away the holy

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dignity of the soul, And how impossible is a lofty
friendship Without the amenities of the soul. There can be
no real society. Crush the soul of a woman, and
you extinguish her life and shed darkness on all who
surround her. She cannot rally from pain, or labor or
misfortune if her higher nature is ignored. Paganism ignored what
is grandest and truest in a woman, and she withered

(19:02):
like a stricken tree. She succumbed before the cold blasts
that froze her noblest impulses and sunk sullenly into obscurity. Oh,
what a fool a man is to make woman a slave.
He forgets that though he may succeed in keeping her down,
chained and fettered by drudgeries, she will be revenged that
though powerless, she will instinctively learn to hate him, and

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if she cannot defy him, she will scorn him. For
not even a brute animal will patiently submit to cruelty.
Still less a human soul become reconciled to injustice. And
what is the possession of a human body without the
sympathy of a living soul. And hence, women under paganism,
having no hopes of future joy, no recognition of their
diviner attributes, no true scope for energies, no field of usefulness,

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but in adreury home, no ennobling friendships, no high encouragements,
no education, no lofty companionship, utterly unappreciated in what most
distinguishes them, and valued only as household slaves or victims
of guilty pleasure, adorned and bedecked with trinkets, all to
show off the graces of the body alone, and with

(20:08):
nothing to show their proud equality with men in influence,
if not in power, in mind as well as heart,
took no interest in what truly elevates society. What schools
did they teach or even visit? What hospitals did they enrich?
What miseries did they relieve? What charities did they contribute to?
What churches did they attend? What social gatherings did they enliven?

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What missions of benevolence did they embark in? What were
these to women who did not know what was the
most precious thing they had, or when this precious thing
was allowed to run to waste. What was there for
a woman to do with an unrecognized soul but gird
herself with ornaments and curiously braid her hair, and ransacked
shops for new cosmetics, and hunt for new perfumes, and

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recline on luxurious couches, and issue orders to attendant slaves,
and join in seductive dances, and indulge in frivolouscous and
entice by the display of sensual charms. Her highest aspiration
was to adorn a perishable body, and vanity became the
spring of life, and the men without the true sanctities
and beatitudes of married life, without the tender companionship which

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cultivated women give, without the hallowed friendships which the soul
alone can keep alive. Despising women who were either toys
or slaves, fled from their dull monotonists and dreary homes
to the circus and the theater in the banqueting hall
for excitement or self forgetfulness. They did not seek society,
for there can be no high society where women do
not preside and inspire and guide. Society is a Christian institution.

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It was born among our German ancestors amid the inspiring
glories of chivalry. It was made for women as well
as men of social cravings and aspirations, which have their
seat in what Paganism ignored. Society under Paganism was confined
to men at banquets or symposia, where women seldom entered
unless for the amusement of men, never for their improvement,

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and still less for their restraint. It was not until
Christianity permeated the old pagan civilization and destroyed its idols,
that the noble Paullus and Marcellus and Fabiolus arose to
dignify human friendships and give fascination to reunions of cultivated
women and gifted men, that the seeds of society were so.
It was not until the natural veneration which the Gothic

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nations seemed to have had for women even in their
native forests, had ripened into devotion and gallantry under the
teachings of Christian priests, that the true position of women
was understood, and after their equality was recognized in the
feudal castles of the Middle Ages, the salons of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries established their claims as the inspiring
geniuses of what we call society. Then, and not until

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then did physical beauty pale before the brilliancy of the
mind and the radiance of the soul at last recognized
as the highest charm of women. The leaders of society
became not the ornamented and painted heretae which had attracted
Grecian generals and statesmen and men of letters, but the
witty and the genial and the dignified matrons, who are

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capable of instructing and inspiring men superior to themselves, with
eyes beaming with intellectual radiance and features changing with perpetual variety.
Modern society created by Christianity, since only Christianity recognizes what
is most truly attractive and ennobling among women, is a
great advance over the banquets of imperial Romans and the
symposia of gifted Greeks. But even this does not satisfy woman.

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In her loftiest aspiration. The soul which animates and inspires
her is boundless. Its wants cannot be fully met, even
in an assemblage of wits and beauties. The soul of
Madame de stel pined amid all her social triumphs. The
soul craves friendships, intellectual banquetings, and religious aspirations. And unless

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the emancipated soul of woman can have these wants gratified,
she droops even amid the glories of society. She is killed,
not as a hero perishes on a battlefield, but she
dies as Madame de Maintanan said that she died amid
the imposing splendors of Versailles. It is only the teachings
and influences of that divine religion which made Bethany the

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center of true social banquetings to the wandering and isolated
man of sorrows, which can keep the soul alive amid
the cares, the burdens, and the duties which bend down
every son and daughter of Adam. However, gilded may be
the outward life. How grateful, then, should women be to
that influence which has snatched them from the pollutions and
the heartless slaveries of paganism, and given dignity to their

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higher nature. It is to them that it has brought
the greatest boon and made them triumphant over the evils
of life. And how thoughtless, how misguided, how ungrateful is
that woman who would exchange the priceless blessings which Christianity
has brought to her for those ornaments, those excitements, and
those pleasures which ancient paganism gave as the only solace

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for the loss and degradation of her immortal soul. Authorities
Plutarch's Lives Frauds Caesar, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Plato's Dialogs Horace,
marshal and juvenile, especially among the poets lords old Roman world,

(25:19):
Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars, Dion Cassius, Rollins's Ancient History,
Merivale's History of the Romans. Biographic Universeae Rhese's Encyclopedia has
a good article end of section nineteen