in his comedy of The Knights, he is the unscrupulous and shifty demagogue, always by lies and cajolery pandering to the worst passions of his master, the populace, filching from other men their glory, and resisting all the efforts of the peace party for his own selfish ends. But, besides the general mark which all public characters presented to the licence of the satirist, he had in this case his own private grudge against Cleon, who had laid a complaint before the Athenian senate that in his comedy called The Babylonians he had held up to ridicule the policy and institutions of his country before the eyes of foreigners, and this in the midst of a great national war. With all his real faults, it is likely that Cleon has had less than justice done to him in
such portraits of him as have come down to us.(w. l. c.)
CLEOPATRA (KAeoTrarpa), the name of several Egyp tian princesses of the house of the Ptolemies. The best known was the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, born 69 B.C. Her father left her, at the age of seventeen, heir to his king dom jointly with her younger brother Ptolemy, whose wife, in accordance with Egyptian custom, she was to become. A few years afterwards her brother, or rather her guar dians, deprived her of all royal authority. She withdrew into Syria, and there made preparation to recover her rights by force of arms. It was at this juncture that Julius Cassar followed Pompey into Egypt, resolved to settle there, if possible, the existing dispute as to the throne. The personal fascinations of Cleopatra, which she was not slow in bringing to bear upon him, soon won him entirely to her side ; and as Ptolemy and his advisers still refused to admit her to a share in the kingdom, Caesar undertook a war on her behalf, in which Ptolemy lost his life, and she was replaced on the throne in conjunction with a younger brother, to whom she was also contracted in marriage. Her relations with Caesar were matter of public notoriety, and soon after his return to Rome she joined him there, in company with her boy-husband (of whom, however, she soon rid herself by poison), but living openly with her Rom in lover, somewhat to the scandal of his fellow- citizens. After Caesar s assassination, aware of her unpopularity, she returned at once to her native country. But subsequently, during the civil troubles at Rome, she took the part of Antony, on whom she is said to have already made some impression in her earlier years, when he was campaigning in Egypt. When he was in Cilicia, she made a purpose journey to visit him, sailing up the Cydnus in a gorge ously-decked galley, arrayed in all the attractive splendour which Eastern magnificence could bring in aid of her personal charms. Antony became from that time forth her infatuated slave, followed her to Egypt, and lived with her there for some time in the most profuse and wanton luxury. They called themselves " Osiris " and " Isis," and claimed to be regarded as divinities. His marriage with Octavia broke this connection for a while, but it was soon renewed, and Cleopatra assisted him in his future campaigns both with money and supplies. This infatuation of his rival with a personage already so unpopular at Rome as Cleopatra, was taken advantage of by Octavianus Caesar (Augustus), who declared war against her personally. In the famous sea- fight at Actium, between the fleets of Octavianus and Antony, Cleopatra, who had accompanied him into action with an Egyptian squadron, took to flight while the issue was yet doubtful, and though hotly pursued by the enemy succeeded in escaping to Alexandria, where she was soon joined by her devoted lover. When the cause of Antony was irretrievably ruined, and all her attempts to strengthen herself against the Roman conqueror by means of foreign alliances had failed, she made overtures of submission. Octavianus suggested to her, as a way to his favour, the assassination of his enemy Antony. She seems to have entertained the base proposal, enticing him to join her in a mausoleum which she had built, in order that " they might die together," and where he fulfilled his part of the compact by committing suicide, in the belief that she had already done so. The charms which had succeeded so easily with Julius and with Antony failed to move the younger Caesar, though he at once granted her an interview ; and rather than submit to be carried by him as a prisoner to Rome, she put an end to her life by applying an asp to her bosom, according to the common version of the story in the thirty-ninth year of her age. With her ended the dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt. Besides her remark able charms of person, she had very considerable abilities, and unusual literary tastes. She is said to have been able to converse in seven languages. She had three children by Antony, and, as some say, a son, called Caesarion, by Julius Caesar.
(w. l. c.)
CLEPSYDRA (from Keirreiv, to steal, and r Swp, water), the chronometer of the Greeks and Romans, which measured time by the flow of water. In its simplest form it was a short-necked globe of known capacity, pierced at the bottom with several small holes, through which the water placed in it escaped or stole away. The instrument was employed to set a limit to the speeches in courts of justice, hence the phrases aquam dare, to give the advocates speaking time, and aqiiam perdere, to waste time ; it was also very generally used instead of the sun-dial. Its defects were first, that the flow of water varied with the temperature and pressure of the air, and secondly, that the rate of flow became less as the vessel emptied itself. The latter was remedied by keeping the level of the water in the clepsydra uniform, the volume of that discharged being noted. In the clepsydra or hydraulic clock of Ctesibius of Alexandria, made about 135 B.C., the movement of water- wheels caused the gradual rise of a little figure, which pointed out the hours on an index attached to the machine. The rate of the flow of water through an orifice being proportional to the square of the vertical distance of its upper surface from the orifice, a clepsydra of simple construction can be formed by making in the bottom of a glass cylinder an opening through which its contents can escape in twelve hours, and graduating the vessel into 144 ( ? 12 2 ) equal parts. A mark made at division 121 ( ? 11 2 ) from the bottom indicates the quantity of water remaining at the end of the first hour, and in like manner the squares of 10, 9, 8, and the lower numbers give the divisions to which the level of the water descends at the end of the second, third, fourth, and succeeding hours.
CLERC, Le. See Leclerc.
CLERGY, a collective term signifying the body of " clerks," that is, in English, men in holy orders. Clericus, however, has, both itself and its equivalents in the languages of the Catholic countries of the Continent, a wider ecclesiastical signification ; while in England a use of the word, originally abusive, but now so entirely accepted as to constitute a proper secondary meaning of the term, comprises in the class of persons signified by it all those employed in duties the discharge of which demands the acquirements of reading and writing, which were originally supposed to be the exclusive qualification of the clergy.
The word is derived from the Greek K-X^pos, which signi fies a lot ; but the authorities are by no means agreed in which sense the root is connected with the sense of the derivative, some conceiving that the original idea was that the clergy received the service of God as their lot or portion ; others that they were the portion of the Lord ; and others again, with, as Bingham (Orig. EccL, lib. i. cap. 5, sec. 9) seems to think, more reason, maintain that the word has reference to the choosing by lot, as was the case in early ages, cf those to whom public offices were to be entrusted.
