ENOBARBUS              The poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that

The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water which they beat to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,

It beggared all description. She did lie

In her pavilion—cloth of gold, of tissue—

O’er-picturing that Venus where we see

The fancy outwork nature.  (2.2.191-200)

 

Even more than the burnished, gilded barge itself, part of it—the poop, the raised platform in the stern, the rear, its most elevated and prestigious part—was made of actual gold, beaten (alliteratively, to echo the burning barge). But Enobarbus mentions this almost in passing, as he describes the barge’s next feature—purple the sails, purple, the colour of royalty and luxury, the most expensive dye—but that’s not all, the sails too (and alliteratively, again) were perfumed, so perfumed, so intensively, excessively, and not simply perfumed but perfumèd, so that the accent falls on its second syllable, fumed, as if the scent itself was visible as smoke—so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them. These luxurious sails billow sensually in the mind’s eye, as if caressed by the breeze, suggestively swelling. Another staggering detail, almost in passing—the oars were silver, no elaboration—which to the tune of flutes kept stroke (so now hearing is engaged, with sight and smell; also, the stroke would usually be given by a drum, so this was far gentler and less martial) and those silver oars made the water which they beat to follow faster as amorous of their strokes. There’s a visual play between the silver oars and the silvery water, splashing and streaming from the oars as if the water was trying to keep up with the oars, to cling to them and follow them, besotted and seduced; stroke here is not just the beat of oars but another caress. These oars stroke water, rather than merely beating it.

 

For her own person, it beggared all description. STILL not naming Cleopatra, and beginning by saying, well of course I can’t even begin to describe her; how could I do justice to her, how could mere words? (Textbook example of the topos, the rhetorical commonplace of inexpressibility, complimenting someone or something by saying there would be no way of describing them.) She did lie in her pavilion, under a canopy, made from cloth of gold, of tissue, silk woven with golden thread, light and gleaming, and she o’er-pictured that Venus where we see the fancy outwork nature. She looked even better, even more amazing, than paintings of the goddess of love, where the artist has improved on reality, painted a fantasy rather than a real woman. But she was real, this fantasy, glimpsed beneath that silken, golden canopy, through the haze of perfume, the splash of water, the sparkle of gold and silver, the dazzle of light, to the sound of flutes. The oars beat, and the hearts of the listeners beat faster, panting as they strain to picture this love-goddess, projecting their own fantasies, their own forbidden, exotic sex symbols into this hazy, dreamy, overloaded space.