Makers of Rome

Shakespeare kept this book at his elbow. The barge coming up the river Cydnus, its poop of gold and its purple sails, silver oars keeping stroke to flutes, Cleopatra sitting under a canopy dressed as Venus while the whole city empties out to look at her: that scene is Plutarch's, and Thomas North's English of it was so fine that Shakespeare lifted it into verse almost word for word.