Andy and Cleopatra Songtext
von Andy Griffith

Now class, today
Today we′re going to talk about Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile
Now I know how you've all heard how she was a beautiful woman
Well now, she wasn′t a beautiful woman
She wasn't a beautiful woman at all
I mean, she was all right
But she wasn't beautiful
Now you′re going to ask me, "If she wasn′t beautiful
How come Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony
And everybody went so crazy over her?"
Well, you'll have to remember that Julius Caesar
And Mark Anthony were soldiers and overseas
Now, now how Julius Caesar met her
How Julius Caesar met her
He used to go down to Egypt every Fourth of July
See, and he was down there spending the holidays
And he was just sitting around in his
Tent one night, by himself, lonely
Reading prescriptions
And she come walking in


And he was so struck by her that he just got up and give her his seat
And he says, he says, he says, "Ars
Mutatis, longa vita, mutandis brevis"
And that means, "As sure as a vine twines around
The stump, you are my darling sugar lump"
Even, even in high school he was good at verses
And anyhow, they got to fooling around after supper
And he asked her to marry him
And they did, they got married
And he took her on back to Rome
And everybody got mad at him for marrying her
The senators there in Rome, they finally
Got so mad at him that they killed him
They caught him in an alley one night
And stabbed him right in his toga
And that′s when Caesar said that famous line, just as he was dying
That famous line you might remember
He said to Brutus, he says, "Et tu, Brute?"
And Brutus says, "Yeah, me too!"
Now, it happened, it happened
There was this fellow Mark Anthony that was living there at that time
And he was an old army buddy of Julius Caesar's
And he was a pretty big man with the civil service
Now he killed all the senators
And it happened—you know, to get revenge
And it happened that he was going to go down to Egypt anyhow
And while he was there, he thought he′d just stop in on Cleopatra
And he told her how he had killed all the senators
And she said how much she appreciated it
And they got to liking one another
And first thing you know, they's dating
They was, they was riding around on
Camels and sailing around on her barge
And fooling around back of the pyramid
In fact—I appreciate it
In fact, somebody wrote on one of the
Pyramid walls, "Anthony loves Cleopatra"
It was right next to where somebody else wrote, "Pharaoh was here"
And, and everything, everything was going good for them
Everything was going real good
But Mark Anthony had a wife in Rome
And she wouldn′t give him a divorce
And it happened that her brother had just been elected emperor of Rome
And he come in one day and he says, "Sister
" He says, "you know what I'm going to do?"
She says, "What?"
He says, "I'm going down there and
Declare war on Mark Anthony and Cleopatra"
And she says, "Would you?"
And he did, he went down there and was
Just a-whooping the fire out of them
There′s dead Egyptians laying everywhere
Streets was full, tombs was full
And he went all over Egypt looking for
Somebody to run him through with his sword
And everybody looked at him like he was a nut, and he was peculiar
Couldn′t find anybody to do it, so he
Run himself through and he expired
And Cleopatra, she heard of it and she had this snake
Just a little old bitty thing, but poison
And that thing bit her and her maid run in, her handmaiden
And says, "Mistress, mistress, what happened?"
And she says, "Snake bite"
And she says, "What you do, you cut it
Where it bit you and suck the poison out"
She says, "No, I meant to"
And she says, "Why, oh mistress, why?"
And she says, "In articulo mortis"
Now, that's that famous saying
In articulo mortis
And children, I hope all of you remember what that means
′Cause I certainly don't