Antony

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language

Antony's grandfather was the orator Antony, whom Marius put to death for having sided with Sulla's faction, and his father was Antony called Creticus, a man not so distinguished or brilliant in politics, but honest and good, and in particular generous when it came to giving, as one might learn from a single deed of his.

For possessing not much property, and for that reason being hindered by his wife from indulging his generosity, when one of his acquaintances came to him needing money, he had no money, but ordered a slave-boy to bring water in a silver cup; and when it was brought, as if he were about to shave, he wetted his chin.

Then, when the boy had gone off on some other pretext, he gave the cup to his friend and told him to make use of it; and when a great search was made among the servants, seeing his wife angry and wanting to interrogate everyone one by one, he confessed, begging her pardon.

Julia, a member of the Caesar family and a rival to the noblest and most virtuous women of her day, was his mother. Antony was brought up by her after his father died, when she remarried to Cornelius Lentulus, the man Cicero executed as one of Catiline's co-conspirators. This appears to be why Antony harbored such fierce hatred for Cicero.

Antony himself claims that Lentulus's body was withheld from them until his mother pleaded with Cicero's wife. Yet this claim is plainly untrue, since nobody executed by Cicero at that time was refused burial.

But once Antony blossomed into a brilliant youth, Curio's friendship and closeness fastened onto him like a curse, people say — for Curio had grown reckless in indulging his own appetites, and, wanting to bend Antony to greater compliance, he drew him into drink, women, and lavish spending without restraint. As a result a crushing debt, far too great for a man his age, piled up against him: two hundred and fifty talents.

When Curio had gone security for all of this, his father, learning of it, drove Antony out of the house. He then attached himself for a brief time to the following of Clodius, the most reckless and foul of the demagogues of that day, who was throwing everything into turmoil; but quickly, having had his fill of that man's madness, and fearing those banding together against Clodius, he departed from Italy for Greece, and spent his time there training his body for military contests and practicing oratory.

He employed the so-called Asiatic style of oratory, which was then flourishing most of all at that time, and which bore great resemblance to his own life — being boastful and blustering, and full of empty vaunting and uneven ambition.

When Gabinius, a man of consular rank, was sailing to Syria and was trying to persuade him to set out on the campaign, he said he would not go along as a private citizen; but on being appointed commander of the cavalry he served with the army. And first, being sent against Aristobulus, who was inciting the Jews to revolt, he himself was the first to mount the largest of the fortifications, and drove that man from all of them; then, joining battle and routing, with the few men he had, forces many times more numerous, he killed them all except a few; and Aristobulus himself was taken captive along with his son.

After this, when Ptolemy was trying to persuade Gabinius, for ten thousand talents, to join in an invasion of Egypt with him and restore him to the kingship, most of the commanders were opposed, and Gabinius himself had some hesitation about the war, though he had been thoroughly enslaved by the ten thousand talents; but Antony, both because he longed for great deeds and because he wished to gratify Ptolemy, who was pleading with him, persuaded Gabinius and set him in motion for the campaign,

and when they feared the road to Pelusium more than the war itself, since their march would go through deep, waterless sand alongside the Ekregma and the Serbonian marshes, which the Egyptians call the exhalations of Typhon, and which seem to be a backflow and seepage of the Red Sea, where it is separated from the inner sea by a very narrow isthmus,

Antony, sent ahead with the cavalry, not only seized the narrow passes but also took Pelusium, a great city, and overpowered its garrison, thereby both making the road safe for the army and securing for the general a firm hope of victory. Even the enemy profited from his ambition for honor. For when Ptolemy, upon entering Pelusium, was moved by anger and hatred to slaughter the Egyptians, Antony stood in his way and prevented it.

In the battles and the great and frequent contests that followed, he displayed many deeds of daring and of a commander's foresight, most conspicuously by encircling the enemy and coming around behind them, thereby granting victory to those fighting them in front, for which he received the prizes and honors befitting valor. Nor did his kindness toward the dead Archelaus escape the notice of the many:

for having become his friend and guest-companion, he had fought against him of necessity while he lived, but upon his falling he sought out his body, adorned it royally, and gave it burial. By these actions he left behind him the greatest renown among the Alexandrians, and to the Romans on campaign he seemed to be a most splendid man.

He also had a certain noble dignity of form; and a beard not without nobility, a broad forehead, and an aquiline nose seemed to have the same virile look as the faces of Heracles drawn and sculpted. There was also an old tradition that the Antonii were Heraclids, descended from Anton, a son of Heracles.

This tradition, he thought, was confirmed both by his bodily shape, already described, and by how he dressed. For always, whenever he was to be seen by a larger crowd, he girded his tunic to the thigh, wore a great sword at his side, and put on a heavy soldier's cloak. Moreover, things that seemed vulgar to others — great boasting, joking, drinking openly from the cup, sitting beside a man who was eating, and eating standing at a soldier's table — produced in his soldiers a marvelous degree of goodwill and longing toward him.

There was also, in some way, something not unattractive in his amorousness; indeed by this too he won over many, joining in with lovers and not unpleasantly enduring being teased about his own love affairs. His generosity, and his giving to soldiers and friends with no stinting or sparing hand, provided him at first with a splendid road toward power, and once he had become great, raised his power still further, even as it was being overturned by countless other faults. I will relate one example of his lavish giving.

He ordered that twenty-five myriads be given to one of his friends: this the Romans call a decies. When his steward, in astonishment, in order to show him the amount, laid the money out in the open, Antony, passing by, asked what this was. When the steward said it was what he had ordered to be given, Antony, perceiving his pettiness, said, "I thought the decies was more than this; this is a small amount: so add as much again to it."

These things, however, belong to a later time. When Rome's affairs were torn in two directions — the aristocratic faction clinging to Pompey, who was on hand, while the popular faction called for Caesar, then under arms in Gaul — Curio, Antony's friend, having changed sides to serve Caesar's cause, brought Antony over to him; and having great influence from his speaking before the people, and spending money without stint from what Caesar supplied, he had Antony appointed tribune, and then one of the priests concerned with augury, whom they call Augurs.

As soon as he entered office he was of no small service to those working politically on Caesar's behalf. But first, when Marcellus the consul was instructing Pompey to take command of the soldiers already gathered and giving him leave to levy others, he stood in the way, drafting a decree that the gathered force should sail to Syria and go to the aid of Bibulus, who was at war with the Parthians, and that those whom Pompey was levying should not obey him;

and second, when the senators would not receive Caesar's letters nor allow them to be read, he himself, exercising the power of his office, read them, and won many over in their opinion, since what Caesar had written appeared just and moderate.

Finally, when two questions were put in the senate, one whether it seemed good for Pompey to disband his forces, the other whether Caesar should, and when they voted that Pompey should lay down his arms only in the case of a few, but that Caesar should in the case of almost all, Antony stood up and asked whether it seemed good for both Pompey and Caesar together to lay down their arms and disband their forces. This proposal all received with acclaim, and with a shout of praise for Antony they demanded it be put to the vote. But since the consuls were unwilling, Caesar's friends again put forward other demands that seemed reasonable, to which Cato objected, and Lentulus, then consul, expelled Antony from the senate. He, as he went out, heaped many curses upon them, and taking a servant's dress and hiring a carriage with Cassius Quintus, set out for Caesar; and as soon as they were seen they cried out that the affairs at Rome no longer had any order left, since not even tribunes had freedom of speech, but every man who spoke on behalf of justice was driven out and endangered.

Following this, Caesar marched his army into Italy as an invader. It was for this reason that Cicero, in the Philippics, claimed Antony was to the civil war what Helen had been to the Trojan War — its cause — though this is plainly false.

For Gaius Caesar was not so rash, nor so easily swept off his calculated course by rage, that he would have hurled his country into war on a sudden impulse, without long since having settled on that course already, simply because he saw Antony and Cassius, shabbily dressed, fleeing to him in a hired carriage,

but rather these events furnished him, long in need of a pretext, with a fair appearance and rationale for the war. What drove him against all mankind was the same thing that had earlier driven Alexander, and Cyrus before him: an insatiable passion for power and a mad craving to be first and greatest — which could not be attained unless Pompey were overthrown.

When, then, he had marched in, taken control of Rome, and forced Pompey out of Italy, he resolved first to turn against Pompey's forces in Spain, and then, having thus prepared a fleet, to cross over against Pompey; and he entrusted Rome to Lepidus, then praetor, and the armies and Italy to Antony, who was tribune.

Antony was at once beloved by the soldiers, exercising with them, sharing their manner of living for the most part, and giving gifts from what he had, but he was burdensome to others. For out of laziness he neglected those who were wronged, listened with irritation to petitioners, and had a bad reputation regarding other men's wives.

And in general his friends charged that Caesar's rule, which appeared to be anything rather than a tyranny because of the man himself, and Antony, who was thought to have committed the greatest offenses from his very great power, bore the greatest share of the blame.

Nevertheless, when Caesar returned from Spain he overlooked the charges against him, and in employing him for the war as an energetic, brave, and commanding man he was in no way mistaken. He himself, then, crossing the Ionian sea from Brundisium with few men, sent the ships back, instructing Gabinius and Antony to embark the forces and cross over speedily into Macedonia.

But when Gabinius, frightened by the difficulty of the voyage in the season of winter, led the army by the long land route instead, Antony, fearing for Caesar, who was cut off among many enemies, drove off Libo, who was blockading the mouth of the harbor, by surrounding his triremes with many light boats, and then, embarking eight hundred cavalry and twenty thousand infantry on the ships, put out to sea.

The enemy caught sight of him and gave chase, yet he slipped free of that peril when a bright south wind whipped up a great swell and rough sea around their triremes; but carried by the current toward cliffs and steep ravines, he had no hope of safety.

Then suddenly a strong west wind blew out of the gulf, and the surge poured from the land out to open sea; turning away from the shore and sailing on boldly, he saw the beach strewn with wrecks. For the wind had cast up there the triremes that had been pursuing him, and not a few were destroyed. Antony took possession of many men and much property, captured Lissus, and gave Caesar great confidence, arriving in time with so considerable a force.

In the many continuous engagements that followed he distinguished himself in all of them, and twice, meeting Caesar's men fleeing headlong, he turned them back and forced them to stand and join battle again with their pursuers, and won. So after Caesar he was the man most talked of in the camp.

Caesar made clear what opinion he held of him. For when the final, decisive battle at Pharsalus was at hand, he himself commanded the right wing, while entrusting the left to Antony, judging him the most warlike man serving under him.

After the victory, having been proclaimed dictator, he himself pursued Pompey, and choosing Antony as Master of Horse, dispatched him to Rome in that capacity. Whenever the dictator is present, this post ranks just below him, but in his absence it stands nearly alone at the top; for the tribunate continues to function, while every other magistracy is suspended for as long as a dictator holds power.

Nevertheless, at that time Dolabella, then tribune, a young man reaching for revolutionary measures, was proposing the cancellation of debts, and was persuading Antony, who was his friend and always wished to please the multitude, to cooperate and share in the policy. But when Asinius and Trebellius urged the opposite course, a terrible suspicion by chance fell upon Antony, that he was being wronged by Dolabella in respect of his marriage.

Taking the matter badly, he drove his wife from the house — she was his cousin, being the daughter of Gaius Antonius, who had been consul with Cicero — and, taking the side of Asinius and his friends, made war on Dolabella. For Dolabella had seized the forum, intending to ratify his law by force. Antony, the senate having voted that arms were needed against Dolabella, attacked him and joined battle, killing some of his men and losing some of his own.

By these actions he made himself hated by the multitude, and to the respectable and moderate men he was not pleasing either, because of the rest of his life, as Cicero says, but was detested, they being disgusted by his untimely drinking bouts, his oppressive expenditures, and his wallowing among loose women, and by the fact that by day he slept and wandered about dazed and hungover, while by night he spent his time at revels, theaters, and the wedding-feasts of mimes and buffoons.

It is said, at any rate, that once, having been entertained at the wedding of Hippias the mime and having drunk through the night, then, once dawn came and the crowd called for him at the forum, he came forward still stuffed with food and vomited, one of his friends holding out his cloak for him. Sergius the mime was also among those with the greatest influence over him, and Cytheris, a little woman from the same wrestling-school, was beloved by him, whom indeed he carried about with him in a litter when visiting the cities, and the litter was attended by no fewer people than that of his own mother.

People were also distressed by the sight of golden drinking-cups carried about on his travels as if in processions, by the roadside pitching of tents, by the arrangement of costly breakfasts by groves and rivers, by lions yoked to chariots, and by the houses of respectable men and women being requisitioned for harlots and harp-girls.

For they thought it a terrible thing that Caesar himself should be camping out of doors outside Italy, clearing up with great toil and danger what remained of the war, while others, because of him, were living in luxury and insulting the citizens.

These things seem both to have increased the discontent and to have let the soldiery loose into terrible outrages and greed. Hence when Caesar returned he pardoned Dolabella, and being chosen consul for the third time, took not Antony but Lepidus as his colleague.

Antony bought Pompey's house, which was for sale, but when payment was demanded of him he was indignant, and he himself says that it was for this reason that he did not take part in Caesar's African campaign, having received no repayment for his earlier successes. Caesar, however, seems to have removed much of his foolishness and profligacy, not receiving his misdeeds without notice.

For giving up that mode of life he turned to marriage, taking Fulvia, who had been the wife of Clodius the demagogue — a woman with no interest in spinning wool or housekeeping, nor satisfied with governing an ordinary man, but bent on ruling one who himself ruled and giving orders to one who himself gave orders — so that Cleopatra really owed Fulvia a teacher's fee for schooling Antony in obedience to women, since she took him over already thoroughly tamed and trained from the start to obey women.

Nevertheless Antony tried, by playful teasing and boyish pranks, to make even her more cheerful — as, for instance, once when crowds of people were streaming out to welcome Caesar back from his Spanish triumph, he too joined the crowd going out. Then suddenly a rumor fell upon Italy that the enemy were advancing and Caesar was dead, and he turned back to Rome. Taking a servant's clothing, he came to the house by night, and saying that he was bringing a letter to Fulvia from Antony, he was admitted to her, muffled up.

Then she, overcome with anxiety, did not even take the letter before asking if Antony still lived; but he, silently holding out the letter, as she began to unwrap and read it, threw his arms around her and kissed her. These few incidents, out of many, we have brought forward as a sample.

When Caesar was returning from Spain, all the leading men went out to meet him many days' journey away, but Antony was honored by him conspicuously. For traveling by carriage through Italy, Caesar had Antony riding with him in the same vehicle, and behind, Brutus Albinus and the son of his niece, Octavian, who afterward was named Caesar and ruled the Romans for the longest time.

When Caesar was declared consul for the fifth time, he at once chose Antony as his colleague, but wished to resign the office and hand it over to Dolabella, and brought this proposal before the senate. Antony opposed it harshly, and after speaking many evil words against Dolabella and hearing no fewer in return, Caesar, then ashamed of the disorder, withdrew.

Afterward, coming forward to proclaim Dolabella, when Antony cried out that the omens were unfavorable, he yielded and gave up Dolabella, who was vexed. It seemed that Caesar too detested Antony no less. For it is said that when someone was denouncing them both together to him, he said that he did not fear these fat, long-haired men, but those pale and thin ones, pointing out Brutus and Cassius, by whom he was destined to be plotted against and destroyed.

And it was to those men that Antony, unwittingly, gave the most plausible pretext. For there was the festival of the Lycaea among the Romans, which they call the Lupercalia, and Caesar, adorned in triumphal dress and seated above the rostrum in the forum, was watching those who ran the course; many young men of noble birth and of the magistrates run in this race, anointed with oil, striking with strips of shaggy hide, in sport, those they meet.

Among these Antony was running, but he let the ancestral customs go, and, wreathing a diadem with a crown of laurel, ran up to the rostrum, and being lifted up by those running with him, placed it on Caesar's head, as though it were fitting for him to be king. Caesar, affecting reluctance and turning aside, the people, delighted, applauded.

And again Antony brought it forward, and again Caesar pushed it away. And as they contended thus for a long time, with only a few of Antony's friends supporting him in pressing it, but the whole people applauding Caesar with shouts as he refused it — a thing which was indeed remarkable, that while enduring in fact the condition of subjects under a king, they fled from the name of king as the destruction of their freedom.

So Caesar rose, vexed, from the rostrum, and drawing his cloak back from his neck, cried out that he offered his throat to whoever wished. But the crown, having been placed on one of his statues, certain tribunes tore down, and the people followed them with applause and acclamation, while Caesar deposed them from office.

These events emboldened the party of Brutus and Cassius; and as they listed the trustworthy among their friends for the deed, they took counsel about Antony. While the others were for admitting the man, Trebonius spoke against it; for he said that at the time when they had gone to meet Caesar returning from Spain, while Antony shared a tent and traveled with him, he had gently and cautiously broached the idea to him, and that Antony had understood but had not accepted the approach, yet had not reported it to Caesar either, but had faithfully kept silent about it.

After this they again deliberated whether, having killed Caesar, they should also dispatch Antony; but Brutus prevented it, insisting that the deed undertaken on behalf of the laws and justice should be sincere and pure of injustice. But fearing Antony's strength and the dignity of his office, they assigned some of the conspirators the task of keeping him occupied: as Caesar entered the senate house and the killing was on the point of happening, they were to draw Antony into conversation outside about some pressing matter and detain him there.

When these things had been carried out as planned, and Caesar had fallen in the senate, Antony at once dressed in a servant's clothes and went into hiding. But once word reached him that the killers were attacking no one else and had instead assembled on the Capitol, he induced them to descend by offering his own son as a hostage; and he himself gave Cassius dinner, while Lepidus entertained Brutus.

Calling together the senate, he himself spoke in favor of amnesty and of the distribution of provinces to Cassius and Brutus and their party, and the senate ratified this and voted to alter nothing of what had been done under Caesar. Antony left the senate the most brilliant of men, seeming to have put down civil war and to have handled matters of great difficulty and no ordinary turmoil with the greatest prudence and statesmanship.

Yet the popular opinion of the crowds quickly shook him out of these calculations, since he had first hoped that his own position would be firmly secure once Brutus was overthrown. Now it happened that, as Caesar's body was being carried out, as was the custom, he was delivering the funeral eulogy in the forum; and seeing the people extraordinarily moved and enchanted, he mixed with his praises at the same time pity and outrage at the deed, and at the end of his speech, brandishing the bloodied and sword-slashed tunics of the dead man,

and calling those who had done this murderers and assassins, he threw the people into such a rage that, gathering benches and tables, they burned Caesar's body in the forum, then grabbed blazing brands from the pyre and rushed off to the killers' houses to assault them.

Because of this, when Brutus's party had left the city, Caesar's friends banded together around Antony, and his wife Calpurnia, trusting him, deposited with him most of her property from the house — in all, four thousand talents.

He also took Caesar's papers, in which memoranda of his decisions and decrees had been recorded; and by inserting into them whatever names he wished, he appointed many men to magistracies, many to the senate, and some he even recalled from exile and released from prison, as though Caesar had decided these things.

For this reason the Romans mockingly called all these men "Charonites," since when challenged they took refuge in the memoranda of the dead man. And in everything else too Antony acted with absolute authority, himself holding the consulship while keeping his brothers as colleagues in office, Gaius holding the praetorship and Lucius serving as tribune of the plebs.

While matters stood thus, the young Caesar arrived in Rome — the son of the dead man's niece, as has been said, and left heir to his estate, who had been residing at Apollonia at the time Caesar was murdered. This youth at once greeted Antony as his father's friend and reminded him of the bequests; for Caesar owed each Roman citizen seventy-five drachmas, as he had written in his will.

At the outset Antony looked down on him as nothing more than a boy, saying he had lost his wits, and that lacking both judgment and friends he was shouldering, in accepting Caesar's inheritance, a load far heavier than he could bear; and when the youth would not be persuaded by this but demanded the money, Antony kept on saying and doing much to insult him. For he opposed him when he stood for the tribunate, and when the young man set up his father's golden chair, as had been voted, he threatened to have him carried off to prison unless he stopped his popular agitation.

When, however, the young man gave himself over to Cicero and to all the others who hated Antony, and through them won the goodwill of the senate while himself courting the people and gathering soldiers from the veteran colonies, Antony grew alarmed and met him for a parley on the Capitoline, where the two settled their quarrel. Then, sleeping that night, Antony had a strange dream: he seemed to see his own right hand struck by a thunderbolt.

And within a few days a rumor arose that Caesar was plotting against him. Caesar defended himself, but did not persuade him; and the enmity was again active, and as both men went about Italy, they raised, with great pay, the veterans already settled in the colonies, and each tried to get ahead of the other in winning over the troops still under arms.

Of those in the city, Cicero had the greatest power, and by stirring up everyone's hostility toward Antony he eventually got the senate to brand him an enemy of the state, to award Caesar the rods and remaining emblems belonging to a praetor, and to send Pansa and Hirtius out to push Antony beyond the borders of Italy. Both men then held the consulship, and when they clashed with Antony's forces near Mutina, with Caesar present and fighting alongside them, they defeated the enemy but themselves died.

As Antony fled, many hardships befell him, and hunger was the harshest of them all. Yet it was characteristic of him that misfortune brought out the best in him, and in adversity he most resembled a good man — for while it is common for people brought low by some want to perceive what virtue is, not all are strong enough amid such changes to imitate what they admire and avoid what they find repugnant; indeed some, weakened, give in all the more to their habits and have their judgment shattered.

Antony, at any rate, was at that time a marvelous example to his soldiers: from such luxury and extravagance he readily drank foul water and ate wild fruits and roots. Even bark was eaten, it is said, and men tasted creatures never eaten before as they crossed the Alps.

There was an eagerness to join the forces beyond, which Lepidus commanded — a man thought to be Antony's friend and to have enjoyed much benefit from Caesar's friendship through him. Coming and encamping nearby, when nothing friendly met him, Antony resolved to risk everything. His hair, unkempt, and a thick beard he had let grow immediately after his defeat; and taking a dark cloak he approached close to Lepidus's camp and began to speak.

As many were being moved both by his appearance and swayed by his words, Lepidus, taking fright, ordered the trumpets to sound together so as to drown out what could be heard of Antony. But the soldiers pitied him all the more and conferred with him in secret, sending Laelius and Clodius to him, who had put on the dress of camp-following women, and who urged Antony to attack the camp boldly; for there would be many to receive him, and to kill Lepidus too, if he wished.

Antony did not allow Lepidus to be harmed, but the next day, with his army, made trial of the river. He himself was first to wade in and push toward the far shore, and he could already see a good number of Lepidus's men reaching out their hands toward him while pulling apart the rampart. Entering and gaining mastery over all, he treated Lepidus most gently; for he greeted him and addressed him as father — though in fact he alone held mastery over everything, while he continued to preserve for Lepidus the name and honor of imperator.

This also made Munatius Plancus join him, though his camp, holding a sizable body of troops, lay only a short distance away. Restored in this way to great power once more, he crossed back over the Alps, leading into Italy seventeen legions of infantry with himself and ten thousand cavalry; besides these he had left six legions to garrison Gaul under a certain Varius, one of his intimates and drinking companions, whom they called Cotylon.

Caesar no longer paid attention to Cicero, seeing him devoted to liberty, and instead invited Antony through friends to a reconciliation. The three came together on a small island surrounded by a river and conferred there for three days. On other matters they came to reasonable agreement, and they divided up the entire empire between themselves as though it were their father's estate, but arguing over whose names should go on the death lists proved their hardest task, since each wanted his own enemies destroyed while his relatives were spared.

In the end, giving way to their anger against those they hated rather than to honor for kin or affection for friends, Caesar handed Cicero over to Antony, while Antony in exchange surrendered to him Lucius Caesar, his mother's brother; and Lepidus was granted leave to kill his brother Paulus — though some say that Lepidus yielded up Paulus to those very men when they asked that he be put to death.

I think nothing more savage or more brutal than this exchange has ever occurred. For in trading death for death they killed those they surrendered just as readily as those they received, but they were more unjust still toward their friends, whom they put to death without even hating them.

After this reconciliation, then, the soldiers stood around and demanded that Caesar bind the friendship further by a marriage, taking Clodia, the daughter of Fulvia, Antony's wife. When this too was agreed, three hundred men were put to death by them from the proscription lists.

When Cicero had been slaughtered, Antony ordered that his head be cut off, and his right hand as well, with which he had written his speeches against him. When they were carried to him, he studied them with delight, breaking into laughter over and over out of sheer pleasure; then, having had his fill, he ordered them set up above the rostra in the forum, as though he were insulting the corpse, while in fact displaying his own insolence toward fortune and his abuse of power.

His uncle, hunted down and chased, fled for safety to his own sister's house. When the killers reached her and attempted to push their way inside her room, she planted herself in the entrance, flung her arms wide, and shouted repeatedly: "You will not kill Lucius Caesar unless you first kill me, who bore the imperator." In this way she managed to hide and save her brother.

The rule of the three men was in most respects burdensome to the Romans, and the greater part of the blame fell upon Antony, since he was older than Caesar and more powerful than Lepidus, and since, as soon as he had shaken off the burden of affairs, he had again poured himself out into that life of pleasure and license.

To the general ill repute was added no small hatred on account of the house he lived in, which had belonged to Pompey the Great, a man admired no less for his moderation and for living in an orderly, unassuming manner than for his three triumphs. For people were vexed to see it so often closed to commanders, generals, and ambassadors, who were thrust away from its doors with insult, while it was full of mimes and conjurers and drunken flatterers, on whom the greater part of the money was squandered — money raised in the most violent and harsh manner.

For they not only sold off the property of those they murdered, framing their relatives and wives with false charges, but set in motion every kind of tax, and even, learning that certain deposits had been placed with the Vestal Virgins by both foreigners and citizens, went and seized them.

But since nothing was enough for Antony, Caesar demanded that the money be divided between them. They also divided the army, both marching against Brutus and Cassius into Macedonia, and entrusting Rome to Lepidus.

When, however, they had crossed over and engaged in war and encamped opposite the enemy, with Antony arrayed against Cassius and Brutus against Caesar, no great deed appeared to come from Caesar, but Antony was the one who won everything and succeeded in everything.

In the opening battle, Caesar suffered outright defeat at Brutus's hands, saw his camp fall, and barely got away from those chasing him; and as he himself has written in his memoirs, he withdrew before the battle because one of his friends had seen a dream.

Antony defeated Cassius; though some have written that Antony was not present at the battle but came up only afterward, already in pursuit. Cassius was killed, at his own request and command, by Pindarus, one of his trusted freedmen; for he did not know that Brutus had been victorious.

After a few days had passed they fought again; and Brutus, defeated, took his own life, while Antony bore off the greater share of the glory of the victory, since Caesar was in fact ill. Standing over Brutus's corpse, he reproached him only slightly for the death of his brother Gaius (for Brutus had killed him there in Macedonia in vengeance for Cicero), saying rather that he held Hortensius more to blame than Brutus for his brother's slaughter; he ordered Hortensius slain over the tomb, but he threw his own scarlet cloak, worth a great sum of money, over Brutus, and assigned one of his own former slaves the task of arranging the funeral rites. Later, learning that this man had not burned the cloak with the corpse and had embezzled much of the expense meant for the burial, he had him put to death.

After this Caesar was carried back to Rome, thought unlikely to survive long because of his illness, while Antony crossed over into Greece to collect money from all the provinces of the East, leading a large army; for having promised each soldier five thousand drachmas, they needed a more strenuous collection of funds and tribute.

To the Greeks, at any rate, he was at first neither strange nor burdensome in his dealings, but even turned his playful side toward attending the lectures of scholars, watching contests, and taking part in initiations, and was reasonable in his judgments, and was pleased to be called a lover of Greece, and still more to be addressed as a lover of Athens, and gave the city very many gifts.

When the Megarians, wishing to display something fine of their own in rivalry with Athens, asked him to view their council-house, he went up and looked at it, and when they inquired what he thought, he said, "Small, but rotten." And he measured the temple of the Pythian god as though intending to complete it; for this he had promised to the senate.

Once Antony had put Lucius Censorinus in command of Greece and gone across into Asia, and had gotten his hands on the riches to be found there, kings came flocking to his door, and the wives of kings vied with one another in gifts and in beauty to corrupt him, while in Rome Caesar was worn down by factions and wars, Antony himself, enjoying much leisure and peace, rolled back with his passions into his accustomed way of life.

Anaxenor the lyre-singer and Xuthus the flute-player and a certain Metrodorus the dancer, and other such a troop of Asiatic performers, who outdid even the plagues that came from Italy in shamelessness and buffoonery, poured in and took charge of the court; nothing was bearable, since everything was swept along toward these things.

For all of Asia, just like that city of Sophocles, was at once full of incense and full of paeans and groans together. When he entered Ephesus, women arrayed as Bacchants led the way, and men and boys as Satyrs and Pans, and the whole city overflowed with ivy, thyrsus-wands, harps, pipes, and flutes together, as they called upon him as Dionysus the Giver of Joy and the Gentle.

For indeed he was such a god to some, but to the greater number a savage and terrible one. For he stripped wellborn men of their property to gratify scoundrels and flatterers. Some, on the pretense that men still living were dead, asked for and received their estates. He gave the house of a man of Magnesia to a cook, for winning acclaim, so it is said, over a single dinner.

Finally, when he laid a second tribute upon the cities, Hybreas dared to speak on behalf of Asia, saying — in a manner suited to the marketplace and not unpleasing to Antony's own taste for wit — "If you can take tribute twice in one year, you must be able to make us two summers and two autumns as well," and then, gathering the matter up forcefully and boldly, that Asia had given two hundred thousand talents, he said, "If it never reached you, go ask the men who took it for it; but if you did take it and no longer have it, then we are ruined."

This turned Antony sharply about; for he was ignorant of most of what was going on, not so much through carelessness as because, out of simplicity, he trusted those around him. For there was in his character a simplicity, and a slowness of perception, but once he did perceive his errors he felt strong repentance, and made confession to those he had wronged; and he was great both in his rewards and in his punishments. Yet he seemed to exceed due measure more in acts of kindness than in acts of punishment.

As for the insolence in his jesting and mockery, it carried its own remedy within it. For one could jest back and answer insolence with insolence, and he enjoyed being laughed at no less than laughing. And this ruined a great many of his affairs. For, not supposing that men who spoke freely with him in jest were flattering him in earnest, he was easily caught by their praises,

not knowing that some, mixing frankness with flattery like a sharp seasoning, thereby removed its cloying sweetness, contriving through boldness and free talk over the wine-cup that their yielding and agreement in matters of business should not appear to be done to please him, but rather as men overcome by his good judgment.

Such, then, being Antony's nature, the love of Cleopatra came upon him as the final evil, rousing and rousing to frenzy many of the passions still hidden and quiet within him, and it destroyed and corrupted utterly whatever good and saving quality still held out. He was caught in this manner. As he was setting about the Parthian war, he sent to her, ordering her to meet him in Cilicia to answer the charge of having given much aid to Cassius and his party and contributing to the war.

Dellius, who was sent, as soon as he saw her appearance and had observed the cleverness and cunning of her speech, understood immediately that a man like Antony would never even consider harming a woman such as this, and that she instead would hold the greatest sway over him; and so he turned to courting and urging on the Egyptian queen, in that Homeric phrase, to come to Cilicia "having well adorned herself," and not to fear Antony, a commander as agreeable and humane as any.

She, persuaded by Dellius, and judging from the encounters she had had earlier, from the flower of her youth, with Caesar and with Gnaeus, the son of Pompey, hoped the more easily to bring Antony under her sway. For those men had known her when she was only a young girl, still unschooled in the world, but she would meet this one at just the time when women reach their most brilliant bloom and stand at the peak of their intellectual powers.

She therefore prepared many gifts and sums of money and adornment, such as it was fitting to bring from great affairs and a prosperous kingdom, but she came relying for her greatest hopes on herself and on the charms and love-spells that were her own.

Though she received many letters both from him and from his friends calling her, she so despised and mocked the man that she took a barge with a gilded stern up the Cydnus river, its purple sails unfurled, while the oars were silver and moved to the music of a flute blended with pipes and lyres.

She herself reclined beneath a gold-spangled canopy, dressed to resemble a painted Aphrodite, while boys got up to look like painted Erotes flanked her on both sides, cooling her with fans. In the same fashion her serving-women, the loveliest among them, dressed as Nereids and Graces, took their places, some at the rudders, others at the sail-ropes. Wondrous scents from many kinds of incense filled the riverbanks.

Of the people, some at once ran along the riverbanks on either side following her, while others came down from the city to see the sight. As the crowd from the marketplace poured out, at last Antony himself was left alone, sitting upon the tribunal. And a rumor went about among all that Aphrodite was come in revel to Dionysus, for the good of Asia. So he sent, inviting her to dinner; but she thought it fitter that he should come to her instead.

At once, then, wishing to display a certain graciousness and friendliness, he agreed and came. There he met with preparations beyond description, and was most struck by the multitude of the lights. For so many, it is said, were let down and made to appear on every side at once, arranged and set together in such patterns and combinations, in squares and circles, that the sight became one of the few truly wondrous and beautiful things to behold.

On the next day, entertaining her in turn, he was ambitious to surpass her splendor and elegance, but, falling short in both and being outdone at his own game, he was the first to mock the poverty and rusticity of his own arrangements. Cleopatra, seeing in Antony's jesting much that was soldierly and coarse, herself now met him on that ground too, freely and boldly.

For her beauty, as they say, taken by itself, was not so incomparable as to strike those who saw her with wonder, but to actually spend time in her company was to fall under a spell no one could resist; and the character of her looks, together with the persuasiveness of her conversation, and the charm that surrounded every word and action, had something stimulating about it.

Pleasure attended even the sound of her voice, and her tongue, like some many-stringed instrument, she turned with ease to whatever language she pleased, so that she conversed with only a very few barbarians through an interpreter, but to most she gave her answers herself, in their own tongue — for instance to Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabs, Syrians, Medes, and Parthians.

She is said to have learned the languages of many other peoples besides, although the kings before her had not even deigned to take up the Egyptian tongue, and some of them had even let go of speaking Macedonian.

In this way, then, she so seized hold of Antony that, while his wife Fulvia was at war with Caesar in Rome on his behalf, and a Parthian army was hovering about Mesopotamia — where the king's generals, having proclaimed Labienus Parthian Imperator, were about to invade Syria — he let himself be carried off by her to Alexandria, and there, living the leisure of a young man amid pastimes and amusements, he spent and squandered, as Antiphon said, the most costly of expenditures — time.

For they had a certain company they called the "Inimitable Livers": each day they entertained one another, making the extravagance of what was spent almost past belief. Philotas of Amphissa, our grandfather Lamprias used to tell us, was at that time in Alexandria studying medicine, and, having become friendly with one of the royal cooks, was persuaded, being a young man, to go and see the extravagance and preparation of the dinner.

So he was brought into the kitchen, and when he saw, among the great abundance of other things, eight wild boars roasting, he marveled at the number of the diners. But the cook laughed and said that the diners were not many, only about twelve; but that every dish set before them had to be at its perfect point, and a moment of time could spoil it. For it might happen that Antony would want dinner at once, or shortly after, or, if it so chanced, would put it off, asking for a cup or falling into some conversation.

"For this reason," he said, "not one dinner but many are prepared together, since the right moment is hard to hit." This is what Philotas used to tell, and, as time went on, he said, he came to serve among the staff of Fulvia's son, Antony's eldest, and would join him and the rest of his companions at dinner fairly often, whenever the young man did not dine with his father.

Once, then, a doctor who was being overbold and giving them much trouble at dinner was silenced by the young man with this piece of sophistry: "To one who is somewhat feverish, cold water should be given; but everyone who is feverish is feverish in some manner; therefore cold water should be given to every feverish person." The man, struck dumb and silenced, the boy laughed with delight and said, "All this, Philotas, I give to you as a present," pointing to a table laden with many great drinking-cups.

Philotas accepted the gesture gladly, yet never imagined that a child of such an age could actually be entitled to bestow so lavish a gift; but shortly after, one of the slaves brought the cups to him in a vessel and told him to put his seal upon it. When he hesitated and was afraid to take them, the man said, "What, wretch, are you hesitating? Do you not know that the one giving them is the son of Antony, who has the right to give away so much gold?

Still, take my advice, and exchange it all with us for money; for perhaps the father might miss some of the pieces, being old and highly valued works of craftsmanship." This, then, is what our grandfather used to tell us Philotas related each time.

Cleopatra, dividing flattery not fourfold, as Plato says, but into many kinds, and always bringing some new pleasure and charm to him whether he was engaged in serious business or in play, kept Antony under her tutelage, giving him no rest by night or day. She diced alongside him, shared his cups, joined his hunts, and stood by to watch him drill under arms; and at night, when he stood at the doors and windows of ordinary citizens and mocked those within, she would wander about with him and share the game, taking on the dress of a serving-girl herself,

for he too would try to disguise himself in the same way. From this he would come back having reaped a harvest of jibes, and often of blows as well, though most people suspected who he was. Still, the Alexandrians took delight in his buffoonery and joined in the game with no lack of wit or grace, being fond of him and saying that he used the tragic mask toward the Romans, but the comic mask toward them.

It would be great foolishness to relate the many things he did in jest; but once, when he was fishing and having bad luck, he was vexed that Cleopatra was present, and ordered the fishermen secretly to dive down and fasten to his hook fish they had already caught before, and, hauling up two or three, he did not escape the notice of the Egyptian queen. Pretending to be amazed, she recounted the trick to her friends, and asked them to come along and watch the next day.

Many had gotten into the fishing boats, and Antony had let down his line, when she ordered one of her own men to slip ahead of him, swim underwater, and spear a salted Pontic fish onto his hook. When Antony, believing he had caught something, hauled it up, there was laughter, as one might expect, and she said, "Hand the rod over to us, Imperator — to the fishermen of Pharos and Canopus. Yours is a different sort of catch: cities, kingdoms, and whole continents."

While Antony was trifling and playing the boy like this, two messages reached him. The first came from Rome, reporting that Fulvia his wife and Lucius his brother, after first quarreling between themselves, had then joined forces to make war against Caesar, only to be defeated and driven out of Italy. The second, no more welcome, told how Labienus, with Parthian forces at his side, was conquering Asia, sweeping from the Euphrates through Syria all the way to Lydia and Ionia.

So at last, as if roused from sleep and shaking off his drunkenness, he set out against the Parthians and pushed forward as far as Phoenicia; yet once Fulvia's letters arrived, full of complaints, he changed course and headed back toward Italy, bringing with him two hundred ships. During the crossing he picked up the friends who had fled Italy, and from them he discovered that the war's true cause had been Fulvia — a woman naturally meddlesome and bold, who had hoped, if any disturbance arose in Italy, to draw Antony away from Cleopatra.

As it happened, Fulvia, while sailing to join him, fell ill and died at Sicyon; this made reconciliation with Caesar all the more timely. For when he reached Italy and it was plain that Caesar was bringing no charge against him, while he himself laid off onto Fulvia the blame for what he was accused of, their friends would not let the pretext be examined further,

but reconciled the two men and divided the empire between them, making the Ionian Sea the boundary: the eastern parts they assigned to Antony, the western to Caesar, while letting Lepidus keep Libya, and arranging that the consulship, whenever they themselves did not care to hold it, should go in turn to friends of each.

This arrangement, which seemed satisfactory, needed a stronger pledge of trust, and fortune supplied one. Octavia was Caesar's sister, older than him but not by the same mother — she had been born of Ancharia, he later of Atia. He loved his sister extraordinarily, she having proved, as is said, a wonder among women.

She had recently been widowed by the death of her husband Gaius Marcellus. Antony, likewise, with Fulvia now dead, was regarded as free to remarry; he did not deny his liaison with Cleopatra, yet he also refused to acknowledge any marriage to her — still contesting that point, at least in word, against his love for the Egyptian woman. Everyone urged this marriage, hoping that Octavia, possessing beauty joined with dignity and good sense, once brought together with Antony and loved by him — as such a woman was likely to be loved — would prove the salvation and blending together of all their affairs.

So once the two men had come to terms, they traveled to Rome, where Octavia's marriage was celebrated, even though custom forbade a widow to wed inside ten months of losing her husband; but a decree of the senate relaxed the time limit for them.

Since Sextus Pompeius held Sicily and was ravaging Italy, and with his many pirate ships, commanded by the pirate Menas and by Menecrates, had made the sea impassable, while he was thought to have dealt kindly with Antony (for he had received Antony's mother when she fled together with Fulvia), it was decided to come to terms with him as well.

They met together at the promontory and mole at Misenum, Pompey's fleet riding at anchor there, while the infantry of Antony and Caesar were drawn up along the shore. When they had agreed that Pompey should keep Sardinia and Sicily free of pirates, clear the sea of piracy, and send a fixed quantity of grain to Rome, they invited one another to dinner.

By lot it fell to Pompey to entertain them first. When Antony asked him where they would dine, he said, "Here," pointing to his flagship, a six-banked vessel — "for this is the only ancestral house left to Pompey." He said this as a reproach aimed at Antony, since Antony held the house that had belonged to Pompey's father. He moored the ship at anchor, bridged a gangway from the promontory, and received them eagerly.

When the party was at its height and jests about Cleopatra and Antony were flourishing, Menas the pirate came up to Pompey where the others could not hear and said, "Shall I slip the ship's mooring lines and hand you dominion — not merely over Sicily and Sardinia, but over the whole Roman empire?"

Pompey, hearing this, was silent with himself a short while, then said, "You should have done this, Menas, without telling me beforehand. As it is, let us be content with what we have — breaking my word is not my way." So, having been entertained in turn by both of the others, he sailed back to Sicily.

After the reconciliation, Antony sent Ventidius ahead into Asia to check the Parthians' further advance, while he himself, to please Caesar, was appointed priest of the elder Caesar; and in other matters, great and public, they acted together as friends. But the rivalries in their games always vexed Antony, since he was continually getting the worse of it against Caesar.

There was with him a certain man skilled in divination, from Egypt, one of those who cast horoscopes, who — whether to please Cleopatra or speaking the truth — spoke frankly to Antony, telling him that his fortune, however great and dazzling, was overshadowed by Caesar's, and urging him to put as much distance as he could between himself and the young man. "For your guardian spirit," he said, "fears his: proud and lofty when alone, it grows lower and meaner once his draws near."

And indeed events seemed to bear out the Egyptian. For it is said that whenever, in sport, they cast lots for something or played at dice, Antony came off worse. Often too, when they matched fighting cocks, and often fighting quails, Caesar's would win. Antony, secretly troubled by this and paying more heed to the Egyptian, left Italy, entrusting his household affairs to Caesar; he took Octavia as far as Greece, a little daughter having been born to them.

While he was wintering at Athens, the first news of Ventidius's successes was reported to him: that in battle he had defeated the Parthians and killed Labienus, and Pharnapates, the most capable of King Hyrodes's generals. On this news he gave a feast for the Greeks and served as gymnasiarch for the Athenians, and, leaving at home the insignia of his command, went about with the gymnasiarch's rods, in a cloak and slippers, and, taking the young men by the neck, wrestled them down.

Just before setting out for the campaign, he took a wreath cut from the sacred olive, and, following the instructions of an oracle, drew water into a vessel from the Clepsydra spring, which he carried along with him. Meanwhile Ventidius met Pacorus, the king's son, who was again advancing on Syria with a great Parthian army, and routed him in Cyrrhestica, destroying very great numbers, Pacorus himself falling among the first.

This exploit, ranked among the most famous, at last made the Romans whole after the calamities they had endured under Crassus, and drove the Parthians back within Media and Mesopotamia, having been defeated in three battles in succession, each decisively. Ventidius decided against pursuing the Parthians any farther, fearing Antony's jealousy, but marched against those who had revolted and subdued them, and besieged Antiochus of Commagene in the city of Samosata.

When Antiochus asked to give a thousand talents and to do whatever was ordered by Antony, Ventidius directed him instead to Antony, since Antony was by then drawing near and refused to let Ventidius settle matters with Antiochus himself; Antony wanted at least this single success credited to him, unwilling to let Ventidius be the author of everything.

But as the siege dragged on, and those inside, once they had given up hope of terms, turned to resistance, Antony, having gained nothing and now embarrassed with regret, was content in the end to settle with Antiochus for a payment of three hundred talents; then, after arranging a handful of affairs in Syria, he went back to Athens, where he gave Ventidius the honors he had earned and dispatched him home to celebrate his triumph.

He is, to this day, the only man to have celebrated a triumph over the Parthians — a man obscure by birth, who, by enjoying Antony's friendship, gained the means to great achievements, and by using them most excellently confirmed the saying current about Antony and Caesar, that they were more fortunate acting through others than through themselves.

For indeed Sossius, Antony's general in Syria, accomplished much, and Canidius, left behind by Antony in Armenia, defeated its people and the kings of the Iberians and Albanians, advancing as far as the Caucasus. From these deeds the name and fame of Antony's power grew great among the barbarians.

He himself, again provoked against Caesar by certain slanders, sailed with three hundred ships toward Italy; but the inhabitants of Brundisium refused his fleet entry, so he steered it instead to anchor off Tarentum. It was there that, at her own asking, he sent Octavia — who had made the voyage from Greece at his side — back to her brother — she being pregnant, and already having a second daughter by him.

She met Caesar on the road, and, taking along his friends Agrippa and Maecenas, pleaded with him at length and with many entreaties not to let her, from being the happiest of women, become the most wretched. For now, she said, all men looked to her, wife of one commander and sister of the other:

"But if the worse course prevails," she said, "and war comes, it is unclear which of you is fated to conquer and which to be conquered, but my lot either way is wretched." Caesar, moved by this, came peaceably to Tarentum, and those present beheld a most beautiful sight: a great army on land keeping quiet, many ships lying still by the shore, and the two men themselves, with their friends, exchanging visits and courtesies.

Antony gave the feast first, Caesar granting this to his sister. Once the terms were fixed — Caesar to furnish Antony two legions for the Parthian campaign, and Antony to furnish Caesar a hundred bronze-prowed ships — Octavia, besides what had been agreed, asked for her brother twenty light galleys from her husband, and for her husband a thousand soldiers from her brother.

Having thus parted from one another, Caesar at once occupied himself with the war against Pompey, being set on Sicily, while Antony, leaving Octavia and the children by her, along with the children by Fulvia, in his charge, crossed over into Asia.

But the terrible affliction that had long lain sleeping — his love for Cleopatra — which seemed to have been lulled and charmed away by better reasonings, blazed up again and grew bold once more as he drew near Syria. And at last, as Plato says of the unruly and unchastened beast of the soul, kicking away all that was good and salutary, he sent Fonteius Capito to bring Cleopatra into Syria.

When she arrived, he bestowed on her, and added, no small or slight gift, but Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, much of Cilicia, and further the part of Judaea that bears the balsam, and as much of Nabataean Arabia as inclines toward the outer sea. These gifts most of all vexed the Romans. And yet he bestowed on many private persons tetrarchies and kingdoms of great nations, while from many he took kingdoms away, as from Antigonus the Jew, whom he even led forth and beheaded — no other king before having been so punished.

But the shame of it was the most galling part of the honors given to Cleopatra. He increased the scandal by acknowledging twin children by her, and naming them Alexander and Cleopatra, with the surnames Sun and Moon. Yet since he was skilled at putting a fine face on shameful things, he was fond of remarking that Roman greatness could be measured not by what it seized but by what it bestowed, and that noble lineages grow far and wide when many kings, generation after generation, father children.

In this way, he said, Heracles, from whom his own family sprang, had likewise refused to limit his offspring to one wife's womb, nor did he dread statutes such as Solon's or the penalties attached to fathering children, but allowed nature freely to sow the many roots and origins of noble houses.

When Phraates had killed his father Hyrodes and seized the kingdom, and not a few other Parthians were fleeing, Monaeses too, a distinguished and powerful man, came fleeing to Antony, comparing his own fortune to that of Themistocles, and setting his own wealth and magnanimity beside that of the Persian kings; and Antony granted him three towns — Larissa, Arethusa, and the city once known as Bambyce but now called Hierapolis.

But when the king of the Parthians sent a pledge of safety to Monaeses, Antony gladly sent him back, having resolved to deceive Phraates by holding out the prospect of peace, while demanding the return of the standards captured at the defeat of Crassus and of the surviving prisoners. He himself, having sent Cleopatra off to Egypt, marched through Arabia and Armenia,

where, once his forces and the allied kings had joined him — and there were very many of these, the greatest of all being Artavasdes of Armenia, who supplied six thousand cavalry and seven thousand infantry — he reviewed the army. Of the Romans themselves there were sixty thousand infantry and the cavalry attached to the Roman forces, ten thousand Iberians and Celts, and from the other nations thirty thousand more, counting cavalry and light-armed troops together.

Yet they say that so vast a mustering of force, one that alarmed even the Indians beyond Bactria and set all Asia trembling, came to nothing on Cleopatra's account. For, eager as he was to pass the winter at her side, he opened the campaign too soon and managed the whole affair in disorder, no longer his own master but, as though drugged or bewitched, continually turning his thoughts back to her, more concerned with a swift return than with defeating his enemy.

In the first place, though he ought to have wintered in Armenia and given his army rest — worn out as the men were after covering eight thousand stadia on foot — and ought to have held off stirring the Parthians from their winter quarters until spring had begun, and then to have invaded Media, he could not endure the delay, but immediately led his forces on, keeping Armenia on his left, and touching Atropatene, laid waste the country.

Then, since the siege engines necessary for a siege were being brought up on three hundred wagons, among them a battering ram eighty feet long — none of which, if destroyed, could be replaced in time, since the upper country produces no timber suitable in length or strength — he left them behind as hindrances to his speed, setting a guard over the wagons under Statianus's command, while turning himself to besiege Phraata, a large city where the king of Media's wives and children were being kept.

But the need for the siege engines, once he had left them behind, immediately exposed how badly he had erred, for he pressed close upon the city and began to raise a mound, slowly and with great labor. Meanwhile Phraates, coming down with a large army, on hearing of the abandonment of the wagons carrying the engines, sent many of his cavalry against them; and Statianus, surrounded by them, was killed, and ten thousand of those with him died as well. The barbarians captured and destroyed the engines, and took very many prisoners, among them King Polemon.

This distressed all of Antony's men, as was natural, struck as they were unexpectedly at the very outset; and Artavasdes the Armenian, despairing of Roman success, went off with his own army, even though he had been most responsible for the war.

When the Parthians appeared in force before the besiegers and used their threats to insult them, Antony, unwilling to let despondency and terror settle in and spread among his idle troops, marched out with ten legions, three cohorts of the praetorian heavy infantry, and the whole body of cavalry, ostensibly to forage for grain, calculating that this maneuver was most likely to draw the enemy into open battle.

Having advanced a single day's march, when he saw the Parthians pouring around him in a circle and seeking to fall upon him along the road, he displayed the signal for battle in the camp, and took down the tents as though he did not mean to fight but to withdraw, and passed along the enemy's line, which was drawn up in a crescent, having ordered that when the front ranks seemed within reach of the heavy infantry, the cavalry should charge against them.

To the Parthians, drawn up opposite, the order of the Romans seemed beyond description, and they watched them passing by at equal intervals, without disorder or noise, shaking their spears as they went. Yet once the signal went up and the cavalry turned about, charging with a shout, the Parthians stood firm and drove them back, though the enemy came within bowshot at once; and when the heavy infantry closed in together with shouting and the clashing of arms, the Parthians' horses shied in terror, and the men themselves fled before coming to close quarters.

Antony pressed the chase eagerly, confident that this single engagement had decided the entire conflict, or at least its larger share. But when the pursuit had gone fifty stadia for the infantry, and three times that for the cavalry, and they counted the enemy's dead and captured, they found only thirty prisoners and eighty dead; and helplessness and despondency fell upon them all, for they reckoned it a terrible thing that, winning, they killed so few, while, losing, they would be deprived of as many men as they had lost around the wagons.

On the next day they packed up and advanced toward Phraata and the camp. Along the road they met a handful of the enemy at first, and then increasing numbers, until at last they were assailed and provoked from all directions by what looked like a force still unbeaten and untired, they made their way back to camp with great difficulty and hardship.

When the Medes made a sortie against the mound and terrified the men fighting in front, Antony, in anger, applied to the cowards the so-called decimation. Dividing the men into groups of ten, he put to death one man chosen by lot from each group, and ordered the rest to be issued barley instead of wheat.

The war was harsh for both sides, and its future course still more fearsome — for Antony, in the expectation of famine, since it was no longer possible to gather provisions without wounds and many deaths; while Phraates, knowing that the Parthians could endure anything rather than hardship and open-air exposure in winter, feared that the Romans, by holding out and remaining, might wear him down, now that the air was already thickening after the autumn equinox.

So he devised the following trick. The most eminent of the Parthians, in their encounters during foraging expeditions and other meetings, treated the Romans more gently, letting them take some supplies and praising their courage as men most warlike and justly admired even by their own king.

After this, riding closer and letting their horses mingle quietly with the Romans, they reviled Antony, saying that though Phraates wished to make peace and spare such numerous and excellent men, he gave no opening for it, but sat waiting for enemies harsher and greater — famine and winter — through which it would be hard even to escape while being escorted by the Parthians. When many reported this to Antony, he was softened by the hope it offered, but nevertheless did not send heralds to the Parthian king until he had learned from those friendly barbarians whether they spoke with the king's approval.

When they affirmed this and urged him not to fear or distrust, he sent some of his companions again, demanding the return of the standards and the prisoners, so that it might not be thought that he was altogether content merely to be saved and to escape. The Parthian king told him to let those matters rest, but said that as soon as he departed there would be peace and safety; and within a few days, having packed up, Antony broke camp.

Although he was, beyond anyone of his time, persuasive in addressing the people and in leading an army by speech, he himself, from shame and dejection, omitted to encourage the multitude, and ordered Domitius Ahenobarbus to do it instead. Some were indignant at being disregarded, but most were moved and understood the reason; and for that they thought they ought all the more to respect and obey their general.

When he was about to lead the army back by the same road, which was level and treeless, a man of Mardian race, well acquainted with Parthian ways, who had already shown the Romans his loyalty during the fight over the baggage train and siege engines, came to Antony and urged him to make his retreat with the mountains kept on his right hand, rather than expose a heavily armed and burdened army on open, bare roads to so great a force of cavalry and archers,

which was precisely what Phraates was contriving in order to draw him off the siege by friendly agreements; he himself, the Mardian said, would be guide along a shorter route, one better supplied with provisions. Hearing this, Antony deliberated; he did not wish to appear distrustful of the Parthians after a truce, but, won over by how short the route was and by the fact that it ran past settled villages, he demanded that the Mardian give some guarantee of his good faith.

The man offered to be bound until he brought the army safely into Armenia, and, once bound, guided them for two peaceful days. It was on the third day, however, once Antony had stopped worrying about the Parthians altogether and was marching along carelessly in his confidence, the Mardian noticed a dam at a river's mouth that had recently been broken open, letting a great flow of water pour toward the road

along which they had to travel, and grasped that the Parthians were behind it, having diverted the river across their path to hinder and slow them down; and he told Antony to watch and be on guard, since the enemy was near. Just as Antony was drawing up his forces in order and preparing, with their help, a sortie of javelin-men and slingers against the enemy, the Parthians appeared and rode around as if to encircle and throw the whole army into confusion from every side.

When the light-armed troops ran out against them, giving many blows with their bows but receiving no fewer from the leaden bullets and javelins, they withdrew; then they advanced again, until the Celts wheeled their horses about and charged, scattering them, so that they made no further attempt that day.

Learning from this what he had to do, Antony strengthened not only the rearguard but each of the flanks with many javelin-men and slingers, and led the army in a hollow square, and ordered the cavalry, when attacked, to turn and repel the enemy, but, having repelled them, not to pursue far; so that for the next four days the Parthians accomplished nothing more than they suffered, and grew duller for it, and began, using the winter as their pretext, to think of leaving.

On the fifth day Flavius Gallus, an officer both combative and vigorous, approached Antony asking to be given additional light-armed troops drawn from the rear guard, plus some cavalry taken from the vanguard, intending to accomplish some great success. Given them, he beat back the enemy in his attacks, not, as before, retreating step by step toward the heavy infantry, but standing his ground and engaging more recklessly.

The commanders of the rearguard, seeing him being cut off, called him back by sending messengers; but he would not obey. Titius the quaestor, they say, seized hold of the standards and turned them back, and reviled Gallus for destroying so many good men. Gallus reviled him in return and urged those with him to stand firm; so Titius withdrew, but Gallus, being pushed forward among those facing him, was, without his knowing it, surrounded from behind by many of the enemy.

Struck from every side, he called out, sending for help. Those in charge of bringing the heavy infantry forward, Canidius among them — a figure who carried more weight with Antony than almost anyone — appear to have blundered seriously. For whereas they ought to have wheeled the whole phalanx around at once, instead they sent small groups one after another to help, and when these too were beaten, sent others still, and so came close, without realizing it, to filling the whole camp with defeat and flight — had not Antony himself quickly come up from the front with his forces to meet the danger, and had not the third legion quickly pushed its way through the fleeing men against the enemy and checked the further pursuit.

No fewer than three thousand had died, and five thousand wounded were carried back to the tents; among them was Gallus, pierced through by four opposing arrows. He did not survive his wounds, but Antony went around visiting the others, encouraging them with tears and deep feeling. And they, cheerful, took hold of his right hand and urged him to go and look after himself and not distress himself, calling him imperator and saying that they would be saved if he were well.

For altogether, it seems no other imperator of that age had gathered together an army more brilliant in courage, endurance, and youthful vigor; and the reverence and obedience joined with goodwill that all showed toward their commander, and the fact that all alike—the distinguished and the obscure, officers and private soldiers—preferred the honor and favor that came from Antony above their own safety and security, left no room even for the old Romans of former days to surpass.

There were several causes for this, as we have said before: his noble birth, his power of speech, his simplicity, his generosity and lavishness in giving, his wit in games and social gatherings. And at that time, by laboring and grieving alongside those who suffered, and by sharing whatever anyone needed, the ill and injured found themselves spurred on even beyond the healthy.

As for the enemy, though already worn down and exhausted, this victory so lifted them up, and they held the Romans in such contempt, that they even camped for the night near the army, expecting to plunder the abandoned tents and goods at any moment as the Romans fled.

At daybreak far more of them gathered, and they are said to have numbered no fewer than forty thousand cavalry, the king having sent even those always stationed about his own person, as though for a certain and assured success—for he himself was present at no battle. Antony, wishing to address the soldiers, asked for a dark cloak, so that he might appear more piteous. When his friends objected, he came forward in his general's scarlet cloak instead and delivered a speech, praising those who had fought well and rebuking those who had fled.

Some of the soldiers urged him to take courage, others offered themselves up, saying he might decimate them or punish them in some other way if he wished—only they begged him to stop grieving and being distressed. In response he raised his hands and prayed to the gods that if indeed some retribution were now pursuing his past good fortune, it should fall upon him alone, and grant safety and victory to the rest of the army.

The next day, having fortified themselves better, they advanced; and the Parthians, when they attacked, met with a great surprise. For they had thought they were riding out for plunder and pillage, not battle, but then, encountering many missiles and seeing the Romans strong and fresh in spirit, they again grew weary.

When the Parthians attacked them as they came down from certain sloping hills and shot at them as they slowly withdrew, the shield-bearers wheeled about and enclosed the light-armed troops within their weapons, while they themselves knelt down and held their shields before them; those behind held their shields over them, and others in turn over those. The formation, resembling roof-tiling, presents a theatrical appearance and is the most impenetrable of defenses against arrows, which slide off it.

The Parthians, however, thinking that the Romans' kneeling posture was a sign of exhaustion and giving up, laid down their bows, and taking up their lances closed in near. But the Romans, raising a sudden shout together, leapt up, and striking with their javelins at close range killed the foremost and put all the rest to flight. This happened on the other days as well, though they made little progress along the road.

Famine now gripped the army, since grain was procured in small quantity and only through fighting, and there was no ready supply of equipment for grinding it. Most of it had been left behind, some with the pack animals that died, some with those carrying men who were ill or hurt. Reportedly a single Attic choenix of wheat went for fifty drachmas, while barley loaves sold at the price of an equal weight in silver.

Turning to vegetables and roots, they found few of the kinds they knew, and being forced to try even those they had never tasted, some took hold of a certain herb that led to death through madness. For the one who ate it remembered and recognized nothing else, but had only one occupation: to move and turn over every stone, as though accomplishing some task of great importance.

The plain was full of men bent down to the ground, digging up and shifting stones about; in the end they died vomiting bile, since even the one remedy, wine, had run out. As many perished and the Parthians would not relent, they say that Antony often cried out, "O ten thousand!"—marveling at those who had marched with Xenophon, because although they had come down a longer road from Babylonia and fought against far more numerous enemies, they had come through safely.

The Parthians, unable to break through the army or scatter its formation, and having now been defeated and put to flight many times, once again began mingling peaceably with those going out for fodder or grain, and showing the strings of their bows slackened, said that they themselves were withdrawing, and that this marked the end of their hostility, but that a few of the Medes would still follow for one or two more days' march without giving any trouble, only guarding the more distant villages.

Along with these words came embraces and expressions of friendliness, so that the Romans took heart again, and Antony, on hearing this, was more inclined toward the route through the plains, since word had it that no water could be found anywhere along the mountain road. While he was about to do this, a man came to the camp from the enemy named Mithridates, cousin of that Monaeses who had come over to Antony and received the three cities as a gift. He asked that someone able to converse in Parthian or Syrian come out to him.

When Alexander of Antioch, who was on familiar terms with Antony, came forward, the man, having first said who he was and reminding him of the favor owed to Monaeses, asked Alexander whether he saw a continuous range of high hills in the distance. When he said he saw them, the man said, "Beneath those hills the Parthians lie in ambush for you with their whole army."

"For the great plains extend from these hills, and they expect that you, deceived by them, will turn that way, abandoning the route through the mountains. That route indeed involves thirst and hardship you are used to, but if Antony goes this way, let him know that the fortune of Crassus awaits him."

Having said this, he departed. Antony, hearing it and greatly disturbed, called together his friends and the guide of the march, Mardus, who himself thought no differently. For even apart from the enemy he knew that the trackless routes through the plains were difficult and hard to determine, while he pointed out that the rugged path presented only one hardship—going without water for a single day.

So he turned to that route and led the army along it by night, having ordered water to be carried. But most of the men lacked vessels; so they filled their helmets with water and carried it, others taking it up in leather skins. As they were already advancing, word was brought to the Parthians, and, contrary to their custom, they pursued even in the night. At sunrise they overtook the rearmost, who were in bad condition from lack of sleep and exertion—for they had covered two hundred and forty stadia in the night—and the fact that they had not expected the enemy to come upon them so quickly caused despondency.

And the fighting increased their thirst, for they had to defend themselves as they advanced. Those marching in front came upon a river with cold, clear water, but salty and noxious—drinking it at once caused pains from a griping stomach and inflamed the thirst further. Though Mardus warned them of this, they nonetheless forced their way past those trying to hold them back and drank.

Antony went around begging them to hold out a little longer, for there was another river not far off with drinkable water, and after that the remaining stretch was impassable to horses and rough, so that it would turn the enemy back altogether. At the same time he called back those who were fighting and gave the signal to make camp, so that the soldiers might at least get some shade.

As the tents were being pitched, and the Parthians immediately withdrawing, as was their custom, Mithridates came again, and when Alexander came forward he advised that the army rest a little and then rise up and hurry to the river, since the Parthians would not cross it, though they would pursue as far as it. Alexander reported this to Antony, and brought out from him a great many golden cups and bowls, of which the man, taking as much as he could hide in his clothing, rode off.

While daylight still remained, they struck camp and set out on the march, unmolested by the enemy, yet the night that followed proved the cruelest and most terrifying of the whole ordeal, and by their own hands at that. For those who had silver or gold, men were killing and robbing them, and snatching the money from the pack animals; finally they attacked Antony's own baggage carriers and cut up and divided among themselves the costly drinking cups and tables.

As much confusion and disorder gripped the whole army—for they thought the enemy had fallen upon them and that a rout and scattering had occurred—Antony called one of his freedmen who served as his bodyguard, named Rhamnus, and made him swear that whenever he gave the order, he would run him through with his sword and cut off his head, so that he might neither be captured alive by the enemy nor be recognized once dead.

As his friends wept, Mardus encouraged Antony, saying the river was near; for a certain breeze, moist and cooler, was blowing toward them and making their breathing easier, and he said that the time of the march also confirmed his estimate, since not much of the night now remained.

At the same time others reported that the disturbance arose from wrongdoing and greed among themselves toward one another. Wishing therefore to restore the multitude to order out of their confusion and scattering, he ordered the signal for making camp to be given.

Day was already beginning to dawn, and as the army began to gain some order and quiet, the arrows of the Parthians fell upon those in the rear, and the signal for battle was given to the light-armed troops. The heavy infantry again, in like manner, covered one another with their shields and held out against those shooting at them, who did not dare to close in near.

As those in front withdrew gradually in this way, the river came into view; and Antony, drawing up the cavalry beside it facing the enemy, brought the weak across first. By now even those still fighting had freedom and ease to drink. Once the Parthians caught sight of the river, they loosened their bowstrings, urged the Romans to cross without fear, and heaped praise on their bravery.

So they crossed at their leisure and rested themselves, then continued the march, not altogether trusting the Parthians. On the sixth day after the last battle they came to the river Araxes, which marks the boundary between Media and Armenia. It appeared difficult both in depth and roughness, and a rumor went around that the enemy lay in ambush there to attack them as they crossed.

But when they had crossed safely and set foot on Armenian soil, as though they had just now sighted that land after being at sea, they fell down and did obeisance, and turned to tears and embraces of one another out of joy. But as they advanced through a prosperous country and indulged themselves in everything without restraint, after such great want, they fell into dropsical and intestinal ailments.

There, holding a review of them, Antony found that twenty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry had been lost, not all by the enemy, but more than half by sickness. The march from Phraata had taken twenty-seven days, and during it eighteen separate clashes had ended in defeat for the Parthians, yet these triumphs yielded neither firm strength nor real safety, because each pursuit of the beaten foe was carried out only partially and half-heartedly.

It was Artavasdes the Armenian who most clearly deprived Antony of the outcome of that war. For if the sixteen thousand cavalry he had led away from Media had been present, equipped in the same manner as the Parthians and accustomed to fighting against them, while the Romans routed those who stood and fought and the Armenians caught those who fled, the Parthians could not, after being beaten, have rallied and dared to attack so many times over.

Everyone therefore, in anger, urged Antony to punish the Armenian. But he, reasoning it through, neither reproached him for the betrayal nor withdrew his usual friendliness and honor toward him, since he had grown weak in his army and short of resources.

Later, however, invading Armenia again, and by many promises and invitations persuading him to come into his hands, he seized him, and bringing him in chains down to Alexandria, celebrated a triumph. This above all grieved the Romans, that he was granting the fine and solemn things of his homeland to the Egyptians for Cleopatra's sake. This, however, took place later.

At that time, pressed by heavy winter and unceasing snowstorms, he lost eight thousand men along the way. He himself, with only a few companions, went down toward the coast, at a place lying between Berytus and Sidon called White Village, and waited for Cleopatra. As she delayed, he grew distressed and wandered off, giving himself quickly to drinking and getting drunk,

unable to stay reclining, but rising up amid the drinking parties and often jumping up to look out, until she sailed in, bringing a great store of garments and coin meant for the troops. Some say he accepted the garments from her yet paid out the coin from his own treasury, letting it pass as if it were her gift.

A quarrel arose between the king of the Medes and Phraates the Parthian, said to have started over division of the plunder taken from the Romans, though it left the Mede fearful and suspicious that he might lose his throne. For this reason he sent and summoned Antony, promising to join the war with his own forces.

Antony, then, coming to have great hope — for it seemed that only cavalry and archers had been lacking to complete the conquest of the Parthians, and he saw this now being added to him as a favor rather than something he had begged for — was preparing to go up again through Armenia, and, joining with the Mede around the river Araxes, to set the war in motion in that way.

In Rome, when Octavia wished to sail to Antony, Caesar permitted it, as most say, not to gratify her but so that, being treated with contempt and neglect, she might furnish him a fair pretext for war. She came to Athens and there received letters from Antony ordering her to wait there and telling her about his expedition.

She, though grieved and understanding the pretext, nevertheless wrote asking where he ordered the things she was bringing to be sent. She was bringing a great quantity of military clothing, many pack animals, money, and gifts for the commanders and friends around him; besides these, two thousand picked soldiers equipped for elite cohorts with splendid full armor. This a certain Niger, a friend of Antony's sent by her, reported, adding the praises she deserved and that were fitting.

When Cleopatra perceived that Octavia was coming to grapple with her directly, and feared that if Octavia's dignity of character, combined with Caesar's power, were added to the pleasure of her company and attentiveness toward Antony, she would become unbeatable and gain complete mastery of the man, she herself pretended to be in love with Antony, and wasted her body away with a meager diet. Her look, when he approached, seemed struck with wonder, and when he departed, seemed to melt and grow humble.

Taking pains often to be seen weeping, she would quickly wipe away and hide her tears, as though wishing it to go unnoticed by him. This she did while the man was about to go up from Syria to the Mede. And the flatterers, working eagerly on her behalf, reviled Antony as hard-hearted and unfeeling, destroying a poor woman who was devoted to him alone.

For Octavia, they said, had come together with him for practical reasons, for her brother's sake, and enjoyed only the name of wife; but Cleopatra, ruling over so many people, was called Antony's beloved, and neither shunned nor scorned the name, as long as she was able to look upon him and remain at his side; yet should she ever be torn from that, she would not go on living.

In the end, then, they so melted and unmanned the fellow that, fearing Cleopatra might take her own life, he returned to Alexandria and put off the Mede until summer, although the Parthians were said to be in a state of civil discord. Nevertheless, going up again later, he brought this king into friendship, and having taken one of Cleopatra's sons and betrothed him to one of the Mede's daughters, still very young, he returned, now turned toward the civil war.

Caesar, thinking Octavia had been insulted, when she returned from Athens ordered her to live in her own house. She said she would not leave her husband's house, but instead — unless he had already decided to make war on Antony for some other reason — she begged him to let her situation be, since it was not even good to hear it said that of the two greatest commanders, one had brought the Romans into civil war for love of a woman, the other out of jealousy.

By what she said she confirmed this all the more by her actions. For she kept his house as though he were present, and cared for his children beautifully and generously, not only her own but also those born of Fulvia; and receiving those of Antony's friends sent out to some office or business, she helped them obtain whatever they required from Caesar. Yet without meaning to, she damaged Antony's own cause by these very acts, since he came to be despised for mistreating so admirable a wife.

He was hated too because of the distribution he made to his children in Alexandria, which appeared theatrical, arrogant, and hateful to Rome. For filling the gymnasium with a crowd and setting up two golden thrones on a silver platform, one for himself, one for Cleopatra, and lower ones for the children,

he first proclaimed Cleopatra ruler of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya, and Coele Syria, sharing the throne with Caesarion — the boy who was thought to have been born to Cleopatra by the elder Caesar, who had left her pregnant. Second, he proclaimed the sons born of himself and Cleopatra kings of kings, and assigned to Alexander Armenia and Media and the Parthian territory, once it should be subdued, and to Ptolemy Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia.

At the same time he brought forward his children, Alexander in Median dress with a tiara and upright headdress, Ptolemy adorned with boots, a mantle, and a broad-brimmed hat bearing a diadem. For this was the attire of the kings descended from Alexander, that other the dress of the Medes and Armenians.

When the children had embraced their parents, Alexander was surrounded by a bodyguard of Armenians, Ptolemy by one of Macedonians. Cleopatra, both then and at other times, when going out among the crowds, wore the sacred robe of Isis and went by the title New Isis.

Caesar, bringing these things before the senate and often denouncing Antony before the people, incited the multitude against him. Antony too sent countercharges against him. The greatest of his accusations were, first, that having taken Sicily from Pompey he had not given him a share of the island; second, that ships borrowed from him to fight the war had never been given back; third, that having expelled his co-ruler Lepidus from office and disgraced him, he himself kept the army, territory, and revenues that had been assigned to Lepidus,

and above all, that he had allotted nearly all of Italy to his own soldiers, leaving nothing for Antony's men. In answer to these charges Caesar pleaded that he had removed Lepidus from office for his outrageous conduct, and that what he had won by war he would divide with Antony once Antony likewise shared Armenia with him; and that his soldiers had no claim on Italy, for they had Media and Parthia, which they had won for the Romans by fighting well alongside their commander.

Antony, staying in Armenia, heard these things, and at once commanded Canidius to march sixteen legions down toward the coast. He himself took Cleopatra and went to Ephesus. There the fleet gathered from every direction, eight hundred ships including transports, of which Cleopatra supplied two hundred, along with twenty thousand talents and provisions for the whole army for the war.

Antony, won over by Domitius and some others, told Cleopatra to sail back to Egypt and wait there for the war's outcome. She, fearing again his reconciliation through Octavia, persuaded Canidius with large sums of money to speak to Antony on her behalf, arguing that it was unjust to banish from the campaign a woman contributing resources of such magnitude,

nor would it help matters to discourage the Egyptian troops, who made up so much of the naval force; and besides, she said, one could not see in what respect Cleopatra's judgment fell short of any of the kings taking part in the campaign, since she had for a long time governed by herself so great a kingdom, and for a long time had been with him and had learned to handle great affairs. This view prevailed — for all things had to fall out to Caesar's advantage — and when the forces had assembled, they sailed to Samos and spent their time in pleasures.

For just as kings, potentates, tetrarchs, nations, and every city between Syria and the Maeotic Sea, Armenia, and Illyria had all been directed to furnish and deliver provisions for the campaign, so all the artists devoted to Dionysus were required to gather at Samos; and while nearly the whole inhabited world round about was full of lamentation and groaning, one single island rang for many days on end with the sound of pipes and lyres, its theaters packed and its choruses vying with one another.

Every city joined in the sacrifices, sending an ox, and kings vied with one another in receptions and gifts. So that a saying went about: what will the victors be like at the victory celebrations, when the preparations for the war are being celebrated with such extravagance?

Having finished with these things, he gave Priene as a dwelling place to the artists of Dionysus, and himself sailed to Athens, where he again gave himself over to games and theaters. Cleopatra, jealous of the honors paid to Octavia in that city — for Octavia had been especially beloved by the Athenians — tried to win over the populace with many acts of generosity.

The Athenians, having voted her honors, sent envoys to her house bringing the decree, among whom was Antony, acting as though he were an Athenian citizen; and indeed, standing before her, he delivered a speech on behalf of the city. He also sent men to Rome to drive Octavia out of his house.

They say she left taking with her all of Antony's children except the eldest of those by Fulvia, who was with his father, weeping and distressed that she too would seem to have become one of the causes of the war. The Romans pitied not her but Antony, and especially those who had seen Cleopatra, who was no match for Octavia either in beauty or in youthful bloom.

Caesar, hearing of the speed and scale of the preparations, was thrown into alarm, fearing he might be forced to fight the war out that very summer. For much was lacking, and the people were distressed by the exactions of money: forced to pay, some a quarter of their produce, freedmen an eighth of their property, they cried out against him, and disturbances from this held all of Italy in their grip.

For this reason they count the delay of the war among Antony's greatest mistakes. Indeed it gave Caesar time to prepare and dissolved the unrest among the people. For while measures were still being carried out, men grew savage, but once they were carried out and the money given, they quieted down. Titius and Plancus, friends of Antony among the ex-consuls, were subjected to abuse by Cleopatra—for they had most strongly opposed her taking part in the campaign—and so they fled and went off to Caesar, and became informers concerning Antony's will, since they knew what was written in it.

It had been left in the keeping of the Vestal Virgins, and when Caesar sent to request it, the priestesses refused to hand it over; instead they told him that he must come in person if he meant to obtain it. So he came and took it. First he read through the contents privately by himself and marked certain passages that would make for easy accusation; then he gathered the senate and read it aloud, though most of the senators were displeased.

It struck people as monstrous and unjust that a living man could be judged for instructions meant to take effect only once he was dead. What people fastened on most in the will was the clause about his burial. For he ordered that his body, even if he died in Rome, should be carried in procession through the forum and sent to Alexandria to Cleopatra.

Calvisius, a companion of Caesar's, also brought forward these charges against Antony regarding Cleopatra: that he had given her the Pergamum library collection, some two hundred thousand separate scrolls; that during a crowded banquet he had risen from his couch to massage her feet, in fulfillment of some bet or private arrangement between them; that he had allowed the Ephesians, in his presence, to salute Cleopatra as "mistress";

that often, while sitting in judgment on tetrarchs and kings, he received from her little tablets of onyx and crystal containing love messages, and read them there on the tribunal; and that on one occasion, while Furnius, a highly esteemed man and the most skilled orator among the Romans, was addressing the court, Cleopatra happened to be borne through the forum in her litter, and Antony, as soon as he saw her, jumped up from the trial and left it, and hanging on to her litter escorted her along.

Yet it was thought that Calvisius had fabricated most of these charges. Antony's friends went about Rome pleading with the people, and among their number they dispatched Geminius to beg Antony not to let himself be stripped of office by vote and declared an enemy of Rome.

Geminius sailed to Greece, where he was regarded with suspicion by Cleopatra as acting on behalf of Octavia; and being constantly mocked at dinner and insulted with dishonorable seating, he put up with it, waiting for an opportunity to speak with Antony. When he was told to state, there at dinner, why he had come, he said that the rest of his message required a sober hearing, but there was one thing he knew well whether sober or drunk: that all would be well if Cleopatra went off to Egypt.

At this Antony grew angry, and Cleopatra said, "Well spoken, Geminius—admitting the truth without needing the rack to force it out of you." So Geminius, a few days later, fled away to Rome. And many of the other friends were driven out by Cleopatra's flatterers, since they could not endure their drunken insolence and coarse jesting,

among them Marcus Silanus and Dellius the historian. This man says he even feared a plot against him from Cleopatra, after Glaucus the physician told him of it. He had offended Cleopatra at dinner by remarking that they were being poured sour wine while, back in Rome, Sarmentus got to drink Falernian. Sarmentus, it should be noted, was one of Caesar's young pages, of the sort the Romans call "pets."

When Caesar had made sufficient preparation, he arranged for the people to vote war on Cleopatra, and to take from Antony the power he had handed over to a woman's control. Caesar further declared that Antony, under the influence of drugs, no longer even governed himself, and that the real conduct of the war on their side lay with the eunuch Mardion, and Pothinus, and Iras, Cleopatra's hairdresser, and Charmion, by whom the greatest affairs of the government were managed.

Before the war, it is said, the following signs occurred. Pisaurum, a city of Antony's, a colony settled near the Adriatic, was swallowed up when chasms opened beneath it. From one of Antony's stone statues near Alba, sweat oozed out for many days, and did not stop even though people kept wiping it away. While he was staying at Patrae, the temple of Heracles was struck by lightning and burned; and at Athens the Dionysus in the Gigantomachy was shaken loose by the winds and hurled down into the theater.

Antony claimed kinship with Heracles through his lineage, and with Dionysus through his manner of life, as has been said, being called the New Dionysus. The same storm, falling upon the colossal statues of Eumenes and Attalus at Athens which were inscribed as Antonys, overturned those alone out of many others. And Cleopatra's flagship was called the Antonias, and a dreadful sign appeared about it: swallows had built a nest under its stern, but other swallows came and drove them out and destroyed the nestlings.

As the forces assembled, Antony mustered at least five hundred warships, including a good number of eights and tens, decked out with pomp and splendor, and a hundred thousand infantry and twelve thousand cavalry. Subject kings fought as his allies: Bocchus ruling the Libyans, Tarcondemus over upper Cilicia, Archelaus over Cappadocia, Philadelphus over Paphlagonia, Mithridates over Commagene, and Sadalas over Thrace.

These were present in person; but Polemon sent troops from Pontus, and Malchus sent his from Arabia, and Herod the Jewish king sent his own, and further still Amyntas, king of the Lycaonians and Galatians; and there was also help sent from the king of the Medes. Caesar had two hundred and fifty ships fit for battle, eighty thousand infantry, and cavalry roughly equal in number to the enemy's.

Antony's territory stretched from the Euphrates and Armenia across to the Ionian Sea and Illyria, while Caesar's domain ran from Illyria out to the western ocean and then curved back to the Tyrrhenian and Sicilian waters. In Libya, the portion facing Italy fell to Caesar, together with Gaul and Iberia all the way out to the Pillars of Heracles, whereas Antony controlled the stretch running from Cyrene down to Ethiopia.

Such was his subjection to her by now that, despite commanding a far larger force of infantry, he preferred the outcome to be settled at sea, purely to please Cleopatra—and this though he could see that for lack of crews the trierarchs were dragging together, from a Greece that had already suffered much, travelers, muleteers, harvesters, and youths, and even so were unable to fill out the ships, most of which sailed undermanned and in poor condition.

Caesar, on the other hand, kept his fleet gathered at Tarentum and Brundisium, ships not built for display of height and bulk but easily maneuverable, swift, and precisely manned; and he sent word to Antony urging him not to waste time but to come with his forces: he himself would provide unhindered anchorages and harbors for Antony's fleet, and would withdraw his infantry from the coast a horse's ride back from the sea, until Antony had safely disembarked and made camp.

In answer to this bravado, Antony challenged Caesar himself to single combat, even though he was the older man; and if Caesar declined this, Antony proposed that they fight it out at Pharsalus with their armies, just as Caesar and Pompey had done long before. But Caesar got there first: while Antony lay at anchor off Actium, where Nicopolis now stands, Caesar crossed the Ionian Sea and seized a place in Epirus called Toryne. When Antony's men were thrown into confusion at this—for their infantry was still behind—Cleopatra mocked them, saying, "What is so terrible if Caesar sits on a ladle (torynē)?"

At daybreak, as the enemy sailed against them, Antony, fearing that his ships would be captured empty of marines, armed the rowers and stationed them on the decks for the sake of appearance, and raised the oar-blades of the ships, fanning them out on both sides like wings near the entrance to the gulf of Actium, with the bows all pointed seaward, so that they looked as though they were fully manned and ready to defend themselves.

And Caesar, thus outmaneuvered, withdrew. Antony also cleverly managed, by enclosing the water supply with certain works, to deprive the enemy of it, since the surrounding country had little water and that of poor quality. He also treated Domitius generously, against Cleopatra's wishes. For when Domitius, already ill with fever, boarded a skiff and crossed over to Caesar's side, Antony, stung though he was, still had his baggage, retinue, and companions sent along after him.

And Domitius, as though changing sides had only served to expose his faithlessness and betrayal rather than hide it, died soon after. There were also defections of kings, Amyntas and Deiotarus, to Caesar. The fleet, faring badly in every respect and lagging behind in every kind of support, again forced Antony to turn his attention to the infantry. Canidius too, the commander of the infantry, changed his opinion in the face of danger, and advised sending Cleopatra away, withdrawing into Thrace or Macedonia, and deciding the issue by a land battle.

Dicomes, ruler of the Getae, had pledged to bring him substantial reinforcements; and Canidius argued there was no shame in ceding the sea to Caesar, a man seasoned by his Sicilian campaign, yet it would be disgraceful if Antony, most experienced of all in land battles, failed to make use of the strength and equipment of so many infantry, distributing and squandering his forces among ships instead.

Nevertheless Cleopatra prevailed, that the war be decided by the ships, since she was already looking toward flight, and was arranging her own affairs not with a view to where she might be useful for victory, but to where she could most easily get away once things were being lost. Long walls ran from the camp down to the naval station, and along this route Antony habitually walked without any thought of danger.

A slave informed Caesar that Antony could be captured as he passed along these walls, and Caesar dispatched a party to set an ambush. They came so close to success that they seized the man walking ahead of him, having risen up too soon; Antony himself barely escaped by running.

When it had been decided to fight at sea, he burned all his other ships except sixty of the Egyptian ones, and manned the best and largest, from triremes up to ten-bank ships, putting aboard twenty thousand heavy infantry and two thousand archers. It is said that there, as Antony was passing by, one of the infantry officers, a man who had fought very many battles under Antony and whose body was scarred all over, wept aloud and said:

"General, why put your trust in miserable planks of wood instead of these wounds and this sword? Leave sea-fighting to Egyptians and Phoenicians, but grant us solid ground, the element we know how to hold, whether to fall or to overcome our foes." Antony answered him nothing, but only by a gesture of hand and face, as though bidding the man take heart, passed on—though he himself had no good hopes, since he even forced the helmsmen, who wished to leave their sails behind, to take them aboard and carry them, saying that none of the enemy should escape by flight.

On that day and for three days following, the sea, tossed by a strong wind, held off the battle; but on the fifth day, when there came a calm without wind and an unrippled stillness, the two fleets engaged, with Antony and Publicola commanding the right, Coelius commanding the left, and Marcus Octavius together with Marcus Insteius stationed in the center.

Caesar stationed Agrippa on the left and kept the right for himself. Of the infantry, Canidius drew up Antony's, and Taurus Caesar's, along the shore, and both stayed quiet. As for the commanders themselves, Antony went about everywhere in a rowboat, urging his soldiers, weighed down by the size of their ships, to fight as though standing firm on land,

and instructing the helmsmen to receive the enemy's charges as though the ships were riding at anchor undisturbed, keeping their position at the narrow mouth of the gulf. It is said that Caesar, while still going around in the dark from his tent to the ships, met a man driving a donkey, and asked him his name; the man recognized him and said, "My name is Eutychus (Fortunate), and my donkey's name is Nicon (Victor)." For this reason, when Caesar later adorned the site with the ships' beaks, he set up a bronze donkey and man.

Having inspected the remainder of the line, Caesar had himself rowed over to the right wing, and wondered at the enemy's fleet standing motionless within the strait; for they had the appearance of ships riding at anchor. Convinced of this for a long time, he kept his own ships back, about eight stades from the enemy. It was now the sixth hour, and as a wind rose from the sea, Antony's men, growing impatient at the delay, and confident that the tall bulk of their own vessels made them invincible, they got the left wing moving.

Caesar saw this and was delighted, and backed water on his right wing, wanting to draw the enemy still further out of the gulf and the straits, and, circling round with his own ships, which were easy to row, to grapple with vessels that, because of their bulk and the shortage of their crews, were sluggish and slow.

When the battle began to come to close quarters, there was no ramming or shattering of ships: for Antony's ships, being heavy, had no speed, which is what chiefly makes the blows of the rams effective, while Caesar's ships not only avoided meeting prow to prow against those solid, rough bronze plates, but did not even dare to ram them broadside.

For the rams broke off easily whenever they struck against hulls made of great squared timbers bound together with iron. So the battle was more like a land fight, or to speak more truly, a siege of walls. For three or four ships at once clustered around a single one of Antony's, using wicker shields, spears, poles, and fire-throwers, while Antony's men shot from wooden towers as well, using catapults.

When Agrippa extended his other wing to encircle the enemy, Publicola, being forced to move against him in turn, was pulled apart from the center. While these were in confusion and locked in struggle with the forces of Arruntius, and the sea battle still stood undecided and general, suddenly Cleopatra's sixty ships were seen hoisting their sails for departure and fleeing straight through the combatants; for they had been stationed behind the large ships, and in bursting through they caused confusion.

The enemy watched in astonishment, seeing them running before the wind and making for the Peloponnese. Then indeed Antony showed himself to be governed neither as a commander, nor as a man, nor at all by his own reasoning, but — as someone said in jest — the soul of the lover lives in another's body: grown fast to her, he let himself be towed off in her wake, swept along wherever she went.

For no sooner had he seen her ship sailing away than, forgetting everything, abandoning and deserting the men fighting and dying for him, he transferred to a five-banked ship, with only Alexas the Syrian and Scellius going aboard with him, and chased after the very woman whose doing had already been his ruin and whose doing would ruin him yet more.

She, recognizing him, raised a signal from her ship; and thus brought alongside and taken aboard, neither did he look upon her nor did her eyes meet his; instead he made his way to the bow unaccompanied, and there he sat apart, wordless, his head buried in his two hands.

Meanwhile light Liburnian galleys were seen pursuing from Caesar's fleet. Antony ordered the ship turned prow-on to face them, and this checked the others, but Eurycles the Laconian pressed on boldly, brandishing a spear from the deck as though about to hurl it at him. When Antony stood at the prow and said, "Who is this pursuing Antony?" he answered, "I am Eurycles, son of Lachares, who by Caesar's fortune avenges my father's death."

This Lachares had been charged by Antony with piracy and beheaded. But Eurycles did not ram Antony's ship; rather he struck one of the two flagships (there were two) with his bronze beak and spun it around, and captured this one as it fell broadside, and also one of the other ships, in which there were costly furnishings for daily use.

When Eurycles had gone off, Antony again sank down into the same posture and kept still; and after spending three days by himself at the prow, whether out of anger or out of shame before her, he put in at Taenarum. There the women who usually attended them first brought the two together to talk with each other, then persuaded them to dine and sleep together.

By now not a few of the round transport ships, and some of their friends, were gathering to them out of the rout, reporting that the fleet had perished, though they trusted the land forces were still intact. Antony dispatched couriers to Canidius, instructing him to lead the army back through Macedonia and on into Asia with utmost haste,

while he himself, intending to cross from Taenarum to Libya, picked out one merchant ship that carried much coin and possessions of great value in silver and gold from the royal stores, and gave it to his friends in common, telling them to divide it and save themselves. When they refused it, weeping, he comforted and pleaded with them very kindly and affectionately, and sent them off,

writing to Theophilus, his agent at Corinth, to keep the men safe and concealed until terms of peace with Caesar could be reached. This Theophilus fathered Hipparchus, the freedman who stood higher in Antony's regard than any other and who was also the first among Antony's freedmen to desert to Caesar, afterward making his home in Corinth.

So much, then, for Antony's part. At Actium the fleet held out against Caesar for a long time, and though greatly damaged by the high waves that struck it head-on, it barely gave up the fight about the tenth hour. The dead numbered no more than five thousand, yet Caesar's own record put the number of captured ships at three hundred.

Word of Antony's flight reached only a few, and those who did hear it at first found the story impossible to credit — that, leaving behind nineteen legions of undefeated infantry and twelve thousand cavalry, he was gone, as if he had not often experienced fortune turning both ways, and had not been schooled by countless struggles and shifts of war.

His soldiers felt a longing and an expectation that he would soon appear from somewhere; and they showed such loyalty and courage that even after his flight had become plain, for seven days they stayed united, ignoring Caesar's repeated attempts to win them over. Only when Canidius, their commander, slipped away by night and left the camp behind, finding themselves stripped of every ally and abandoned by their own officers, did they finally cross over to the victorious side.

After this Caesar sailed to Athens, and having reconciled himself with the Greeks, distributed the grain left over from the war to the cities, which were in a wretched state, stripped of money, slaves, and pack animals. Nicarchus, my own great-grandfather, would relate that every one of the citizens were forced to carry down on their shoulders a fixed measure of wheat to the sea near Anticyra, driven on by whips;

and how they brought one such load in this way, and were already measured out for a second and about to shoulder it, when word came that Antony had been defeated, and this alone saved the city; for at once, since Antony's officials and soldiers fled, the citizens divided up the grain among themselves.

Antony, having reached Libya and sent Cleopatra on ahead to Egypt from Paraetonium, himself enjoyed abundant solitude, wandering aimlessly with two friends, Aristocrates the Greek rhetorician and Lucilius the Roman, about whom we have written elsewhere, that at Philippi, to allow Brutus to escape, he gave himself up to the pursuers as though he were Brutus, and having been saved by Antony for this reason, remained loyal and steadfast to him to the very end.

But when the man entrusted with his forces in Libya caused them to revolt, he set out to kill himself, but his friends stopped him and carried him instead to Alexandria, where he came upon Cleopatra engaged in a daring and ambitious scheme. The isthmus dividing the Red Sea from the waters off Egypt, held to mark the border between Asia and Libya, narrows at one point to its slenderest breadth, pressed in on both sides by sea — three hundred stadia — she attempted, having drawn her fleet up, to haul it overland,

and, lowering the ships into the Arabian Gulf along with much money and a force of men, to settle outside, escaping slavery and war. But when the Arabs around Petra burned the first of the ships as they were being hauled up, and Antony still believed the army at Actium held together, she gave up the attempt, and kept guard over the entrances instead.

Antony, leaving the city and his companionship with friends, built for himself a dwelling out over the sea near Pharos, throwing out a mole into the water, and there he lived as an exile from human company, and said he was embracing and emulating the life of Timon, as though he had suffered the same things; for he too had been wronged by friends and treated with ingratitude, and for this reason distrusted and was disgusted with all mankind.

This Timon was an Athenian, and his life fell mostly in the era of the Peloponnesian War, a fact one can infer from the comedies of Aristophanes and from Plato's dialogues. In these he is mocked as ill-natured and a hater of mankind; yet, while shunning and repelling every encounter, he embraced and warmly kissed Alcibiades, who was then young and bold. When Apemantus expressed surprise and asked the reason, he said he loved the young man because he knew he would be the cause of many evils for the Athenians.

He would admit only Apemantus to his company, as being like himself and emulating his way of life; and on one occasion, during the Feast of Pitchers, the pair dined together alone; when Apemantus said, "How fine our banquet is, Timon," he replied, "It would be, if you weren't here." The story goes that on one occasion, while the Athenians were meeting in assembly, he climbed up onto the speaker's platform, and produced a silence and a great expectation because of the strangeness of it;

then he said: "I have a small plot of land, men of Athens, and there grows on it a fig tree from which not a few citizens have already hanged themselves. Since I intend to build on the site, I wished to announce this publicly, so that, if any of you wish to, before the fig tree is cut down, you may hang yourselves." When he died and was buried at Halae by the sea, the projecting part of the shore slipped away, and the wave came round it and made his tomb unreachable and inaccessible to anyone.

It bore this inscription: "Here, having torn away my ill-fated soul, I lie. You will not learn my name; but may you wretches perish wretchedly." This, they say, he composed himself while still alive; but the one that circulates is by Callimachus: "Timon the man-hater dwells here. But pass on; curse as much as you like, only pass on."

So much, from many things, concerning Timon. To Antony came Canidius in person bearing news that the forces at Actium were lost, and word came too that Herod the Jew, together with certain legions and cohorts, had defected to Caesar, and that the remaining rulers likewise were deserting him, and that nothing abroad still held together for him.

None of this troubled him greatly; rather, as if gladly setting aside hope, so as to set aside care as well, he left that dwelling by the sea which he called the Timoneion, and, being received back by Cleopatra into the palace, turned the city to dinners, drinking-parties, and largesses, enrolling among the ephebes Cleopatra's son by Caesar,

and putting on Antyllus, Fulvia's son, the purple-bordered and unadorned toga of manhood; on account of which for many days banquets, revels, and festivities held Alexandria in their grip. They themselves dissolved that former society of the "Inimitable Livers," and formed another, in no way inferior to it in elegance, luxury, and extravagance, which they called "Those Who Will Die Together." For their friends enrolled themselves as men who would die together, and passed their days pleasurably in a round of dinners.

Cleopatra was gathering together all kinds of deadly poisons, and, to test which of them was painless, tried each on those under sentence of death who were kept in confinement. When she saw that the quick-acting ones brought the sharpness of death together with pain, while the milder ones lacked speed, she made trial of wild creatures, watching as they were set one against another.

He did this every day: and in almost every case he found that the bite of the asp brought on, without spasm or groan, a sleepy torpor and a heaviness, with a gentle sweating of the face, and a dulling of the senses that slipped away easily and objected to being roused or sat up, just like people who are sleeping deeply.

At the same time they also sent envoys to Caesar in Asia, she asking for the rule of Egypt for her children, he asking to be allowed to live as a private citizen at Athens, if it did not seem good for him to remain concerned with Egypt. Because of the shortage and untrustworthiness of friends, owing to the desertions, the children's tutor Euphronius was sent as envoy.

For Alexas of Laodicea, who had become known at Rome through Timagenes and had wielded more influence than any other Greek, and who had become the most violent of Cleopatra's instruments against Antony and the overturner of whatever considerations stood on Octavia's behalf within him, had been sent to keep King Herod firm in his allegiance,

but he stayed there and betrayed Antony, and dared to come into Caesar's presence, trusting in Herod. But Herod did him no good at all; instead he was at once imprisoned and brought back to his own homeland in chains, and there, on Caesar's order, put to death. Such was the penalty Alexas paid to Antony, while Antony still lived, for his treachery.

Caesar would not tolerate the pleas made on Antony's behalf, but he answered Cleopatra that she would suffer nothing improper if she put Antony to death or drove him out. He also sent along with his own messengers one of his freedmen, Thyrsus, a man not without sense and not unpersuasive when speaking, on behalf of a young commander, to a woman who was proud and thought amazingly highly of herself on account of her beauty.

This man, in conversing with her at greater length than the others and being honored above the rest, gave Antony grounds for suspicion, and he had him seized and whipped, and afterward returned him to Caesar bearing a letter, explaining that the fellow's arrogance and disdain had roused his anger, since he was a man easily provoked by his misfortunes. "But you," he said, "if you do not bear the matter with moderation, you have my freedman Hipparchus: hang him up and whip him, so that we may be even."

After this Cleopatra, in order to clear herself of the charges and suspicions, courted him with extraordinary attentions: and whereas she had kept her own birthday modestly, in keeping with her circumstances, she celebrated his with a splendor and extravagance surpassing all bounds, so that many of those invited to the dinner arrived poor and left rich. Caesar, meanwhile, was repeatedly summoned back from Rome by Agrippa, who wrote that affairs there longed for his presence.

So the war was then suspended for a time: but when winter had passed he advanced again through Syria, while his generals came through Libya. A rumor arose, once Pelusium fell, that Seleucus had given it up with Cleopatra's tacit approval. She, however, allowed Antony to put to death Seleucus's wife and children, while she herself had tombs and monuments constructed with extraordinary care for both beauty and height, which she had built adjoining the temple of Isis,

and there she gathered together the royal possessions of greatest worth — gold, silver, emerald, pearl, ebony, ivory, cinnamon — and on top of all this a great quantity of pine-torch wood and tow, so that Caesar, fearing for the money, lest the woman in despair should destroy and burn up the wealth, kept dispatching to her, while he moved his troops toward the city, repeated messages full of reassuring hope.

When he had established himself near the hippodrome, Antony sallied out and fought brilliantly, and routed Caesar's cavalry, and pursued them all the way to their camp. Exalted by the victory, he went into the palace, and kissed Cleopatra still in his armor, and presented to her the soldier who had fought most eagerly of all. She gave him as a prize a golden breastplate and helmet. That man, however, having taken these, deserted by night over to Caesar.

Again Antony sent to Caesar, challenging him to single combat. When Caesar answered that Antony had many roads open to death, Antony, realizing that there was no death better for him than one in battle, resolved to make his attempt by land and sea together. And at dinner, it is said, he ordered his household servants to pour freely and to feast him more lavishly than usual,

for it was uncertain whether they would still be doing this tomorrow, or would be serving other masters instead, while he himself would lie a skeleton and a thing become nothing. Watching his friends weep over this, he told them he would not bring them out into a fight where what he himself sought was a splendid death, not safety or triumph.

On that night, it is said, at about midnight, while the city sat silent and downcast, gripped by dread and anticipation of what lay ahead, all at once a blend of music from every kind of instrument rang out, together with a crowd's roar of victory shouts and satyr-like capering, as though a band of revelers were parading off, and not quietly:

the procession appeared to cut straight across the city's center toward the gate facing the enemy on the outside, where the clamor swelled to its peak before erupting and fading away. To those who reasoned about the sign it seemed that the god whom Antony had all along most likened and attached himself to was abandoning him.

At daybreak he himself stationed his infantry on the hills before the city and watched his ships put out and bear down upon those of the enemy: and expecting to see some deed of theirs, he waited quietly. But when they came near, they saluted Caesar's men with their oars, and when those saluted back, they changed sides, and the whole fleet, becoming one, sailed toward the city bow-first against Antony.

Seeing this, Antony was at once abandoned by his cavalry, who went over, and being defeated with his infantry he pulled back within the city walls, shouting that Cleopatra had betrayed him to the very men against whom he had waged this war for her sake. She, fearing his anger and his desperation, fled for refuge into the tomb, and let down the portcullis gates, which were fitted with strong bolts and bars; and she sent messengers to Antony to announce that she was dead.

Believing this, and saying to himself, "Why do you still delay, Antony? Fortune has stripped away the last pretext I had for holding onto life," and with that he entered his chamber, and as he loosened and opened his breastplate, he said, "O Cleopatra, losing you does not grieve me, since I shall join you at the same destination before long: but I am grieved that, great commander as I am, I have been found inferior to a woman in courage."

He had a faithful servant named Eros. Him he had long ago made promise, should the need arise, to kill him, and now he demanded the fulfillment of that promise. Eros drew his sword and raised it as though to strike his master, but then, turning his face away, killed himself instead. As he fell at his feet, Antony said, "Well done, Eros, that though you were not able to do it yourself, you teach me what I must do": and he struck himself through the belly and let himself fall onto the couch.

The blow, however, did not bring an instant death. So when the flow of blood stopped, since he had been laid down, he came to himself and begged those present to finish him off. But they fled from the chamber as he shouted and writhed, until Diomedes, Cleopatra's secretary, came, having been ordered to bring him to her, into the tomb.

Learning that he was alive, he eagerly ordered his attendants to lift the body, and they bore it in their arms up to the chamber entrance. Cleopatra refused to unbar the doors, but appeared instead at some windows and let down cords and ropes. Antony was tied to these, and she herself, together with two women — the only companions she had allowed into the tomb with her — hauled him up.

Those present say that nothing more pitiable was ever seen than that. For, smeared with blood and in the throes of death, he was hauled up, stretching out his hands to her and lifting himself as best he could. For it was no easy task for women; but Cleopatra, clinging on with both hands and straining with her whole face, barely managed to draw up the rope, while those below cheered her on and shared her anguish.

Having received him thus and laid him down, she tore her robes over him, and beating and tearing her breast with her hands, and smearing her face with his blood, called him master and husband and commander: and she had all but forgotten her own troubles in pity for his. Antony, calming her grief, called for wine, whether from thirst or from a wish to hasten his release from life.

Once he had finished the wine, he urged her to secure her own safety in any way that would not bring shame, placing her greatest trust among Caesar's men in Proculeius; and rather than mourning him for this last reversal, she should count him fortunate for all that had come his way, seeing that he had risen to be the most renowned of men and had commanded the greatest power, and that now, defeated, it was one Roman yielding to another, with no disgrace in it.

He had scarcely breathed his last when Proculeius arrived from Caesar. For when Antony, having struck himself, was being carried to Cleopatra, a certain Dercetaeus, one of his bodyguards, took his dagger and, hiding it, slipped away, and running to Caesar was the first to announce Antony's death, and showed the sword, still bloody.

On hearing the news, Caesar retreated deeper into his tent and mourned a man who had once been kin to him through marriage, a fellow officeholder, and a companion through many hardships and joint ventures. Then, taking the letters, he called his friends and read them out, to show how reasonable and just were his own writings, and how coarse and arrogant Antony's replies had always been.

After this he sent Proculeius, ordering him, if possible, above all to take Cleopatra alive; for he was afraid for the treasure, and thought it would greatly add to his glory to lead her in his triumph. She, however, was unwilling to come into Proculeius's hands:

but conversation took place, he approaching the building from outside by way of the ground-level doors, which were securely barred but allowed a passage for the voice. And they talked, she asking that the kingdom be given to her children, he bidding her take courage and trust everything to Caesar.

When he had inspected the place and reported to Caesar, Gallus was sent again to negotiate with her: and coming to the doors he purposely drew out the conversation at length. Meanwhile Proculeius had a ladder raised and climbed in through the same window through which the women had drawn Antony up. And going straight to the very doors at which Cleopatra stood attending to Gallus, he came down, having with him two attendants.

When one of the women shut up with Cleopatra cried out, "Wretched Cleopatra, you are taken alive," she turned and, seeing Proculeius, made to stab herself; for she happened to have on her a kind of dagger such as brigands use. But Proculeius, running up quickly and seizing her with both hands, said, "You wrong yourself, Cleopatra, and you wrong Caesar, by robbing him of a great opportunity to display his kindness, and by making the gentlest of commanders appear faithless and implacable."

At the same time he took her sword from her, and shook out her clothing, lest it conceal some poison. Caesar also sent one of his freedmen, Epaphroditus, who was charged with guarding her alive and keeping close watch over her, while in everything else yielding to her ease and comfort.

Caesar himself rode into the city conversing with the philosopher Areius and holding his right hand, so that he might at once be an object of admiration and conspicuous honor among the citizens, seen to be distinguished by Caesar's favor. Entering the gymnasium and mounting a platform that had been built there, while the people, struck with terror, fell prostrate before him, he bade them rise and said that he released the people from all blame — first for the sake of their founder Alexander, second because he admired the beauty and size of the city, and third as a favor to his companion Areius.

This honor Areius obtained from Caesar, and he also begged pardon for many others, among whom was Philostratus, a man most capable of speaking extempore of all the sophists there ever were, but one who improperly attached himself to the Academy, without any real claim to it. For this reason Caesar, loathing his character, would not receive his petitions.

So this man, letting down a gray beard and wrapping himself in a dark cloak, followed behind Areius, continually declaiming this line: 'Wise men save wise men, if indeed they are wise.' Caesar, learning of this, and wishing to free Philostratus from fear rather than Areius from ill will, let him go.

Of Antony's children, Antyllus, the son by Fulvia, was handed over by his tutor Theodorus and put to death; and when the soldiers cut off his head, the tutor took a stone of great value that had been hanging from the boy's neck and stitched it inside his own belt. But when he denied having it and was caught out, he was crucified.

The children of Cleopatra, kept under guard along with those who reared them, had a life of freedom and comfort. Caesarion, reputed to be Julius Caesar's own son, was dispatched by his mother, together with a large sum of money, on a route through Ethiopia toward India; but another tutor like Theodorus, named Rhodon, persuaded him to turn back, saying that Caesar was calling him to a kingdom. While Caesar was deliberating what to do, they say Areius said: 'Too many Caesars is not a good thing.'

This boy Caesar afterward killed, after Cleopatra's death. As for Antony, though many, both kings and generals, asked to bury him, Caesar did not take the body away from Cleopatra, but it was buried by her own hands, lavishly and royally, she being given the use of everything she wished. And out of such great grief and anguish — for her breast had become inflamed from her beating it and had ulcerated, and fevers had set in — she welcomed this as a pretext, thinking that by abstaining from food on this account she might release herself from life unhindered.

She kept near her a physician, Olympus, to whom she confided everything honestly and whom she made her counselor and partner in plotting her own death, as Olympus himself has said, having published an account of these events. But Caesar, suspecting this, brought certain threats and fears to bear upon her concerning her children, by which she was undermined as though by siege engines, and she gave up her body to be tended and nourished by those who wished it.

He himself came, after letting a few days pass, to meet with her and offer consolation. She happened to be lying on a pallet in humble state, and when he entered, clad in a single tunic, she leapt up and threw herself at his feet, terribly disfigured in head and face, her voice trembling, her eyes wasted away. There were many visible marks of the violence done to her breast; and altogether her body seemed to be in no better condition than her soul.

Yet her charm and the daring quality of her beauty had not been altogether snuffed out; even now they somehow glowed from within and played across the movements of her face. When Caesar told her to lie back down and took a seat beside her, she ventured some defense of her own conduct, laying the blame on compulsion and her dread of Antony; but as Caesar refuted her point by point, she quickly shifted to pity and entreaty, as one who clung above all to life.

At last she handed him a written inventory of the sum of her money; and when a certain Seleucus, one of her stewards, charged that she was hiding and concealing some of it, she leapt up and, seizing him by the hair, rained many blows upon his face.

When Caesar smiled and tried to check her, she said: 'But is it not shameful, Caesar, that although you saw fit to visit me and address me even in the wretched condition you find me, my own slaves accuse me if I have set aside any of my women's things — not, surely, for myself, wretched as I am, but so that by giving small gifts to Octavia and your Livia I might find you more gracious and gentle toward me?'

At this Caesar was pleased, thinking that she was altogether clinging to life. So, saying that he entrusted these matters to her and that he would treat her in everything else more splendidly than she could hope, he went away, believing that he had deceived her, but rather having been deceived himself.

There was a certain Cornelius Dolabella, a distinguished young man among Caesar's companions. He was not indifferent toward Cleopatra; and now, doing her a favor at her request, he sent word secretly informing her that Caesar himself was setting out overland through Syria, and that he had decided to send her away with her children on the third day.

When she heard this, she first asked Caesar to allow her to pour libations for Antony; and when he consented, she was carried to the tomb and, falling upon the coffin together with the women who attended her, said: 'O dear Antony, I buried you but lately with hands still free, but now I pour libations as a captive, and am kept under guard so that I may not disfigure this enslaved body with blows of mourning or lamentation — this body that is being watched and kept for the triumph to be held over you.

Expect no other honors or libations from me: these are the last that Cleopatra can bring you, being led away as she is. For while we lived nothing separated us from each other, but in death we risk exchanging places: you, the Roman, lying here, and I, the unfortunate one, in Italy, receiving only so much of your country as that.

But if indeed the gods there have any strength or power — for the gods here have betrayed us — do not abandon your wife while she still lives, nor allow yourself to be triumphed over in my person, but hide me here with yourself and bury me with you, since of my countless troubles none is so great and terrible as this brief time that I have lived without you.'

Having lamented in this way, and having crowned the coffin and embraced it, she had a bath made ready for herself. Once she had bathed and taken her place at table, she ate a sumptuous meal. And someone came from the countryside carrying a certain basket; and when the guards asked what he was bringing, he opened it and, removing the leaves, showed them the vessel full of figs.

When they marveled at their beauty and size, he smiled and invited them to take some; and they, trusting him, told him to bring it in. After the meal, Cleopatra took a letter she had already written and sealed, dispatched it to Caesar, and, having dismissed everyone else apart from her two attendant women, she shut the doors.

Caesar, opening the tablet, when he came upon entreaties and lamentations from her begging to be buried together with Antony, quickly understood what had been done. At first he himself set out to help, but then sent men to investigate with all speed. The catastrophe had happened swiftly. For running at full speed, they found the guards perceiving nothing amiss, and opening the doors they found her dead, lying upon a golden couch, arrayed in royal splendor.

Among her women, one, named Iras, lay dying at her feet, and the other, Charmion, herself already unsteady and drooping, was setting straight the crown on her mistress's head. When someone said in anger, 'A fine deed this, Charmion,' she replied, 'Yes, very fine indeed, and fitting for the descendant of so many kings.' She said nothing more, but fell there beside the couch.

It is said the snake came in concealed among those figs, tucked under the leaves covering them, for Cleopatra had given orders to this effect, so that the creature might strike her body without her even realizing it; but when, removing some of the figs, she saw it, she said, 'So here it was after all,' and bared her arm to offer it to the bite.

Others claim the creature was confined inside a water vessel, and that once Cleopatra roused and provoked it with a golden distaff, it sprang forth and bit into her arm. Yet the true facts elude everyone; some also reported that she kept a poison concealed within a hollow hairpin case, hidden among her hair; yet no rash broke out on her body, nor any other sign of poison.

Nor indeed was the creature seen inside, though some claimed to have noticed a trail of its passing close to the water, on the side where the room had windows opening toward it. Some also said that Cleopatra's arm was seen to have two faint, slight puncture marks; and it seems Caesar himself gave credence to this. For in Cleopatra's triumph, an effigy of her was carried with the asp clinging to it. Such, then, is how these events are said to have happened.

Caesar, although vexed at the woman's death, admired her nobility of spirit, and ordered that her body be buried together with Antony's, splendidly and royally. Her women, too, received an honorable funeral by his command. Cleopatra died at the age of thirty-nine, having reigned twenty-two of those years, and having shared power with Antony for more than fourteen.

Antony, according to some accounts, was fifty-six; according to others, fifty-three. Antony's statues were pulled down, yet Cleopatra's were left standing, because Archibius, a friend of hers, paid Caesar two thousand talents to spare them Antony's fate.

Antony left behind seven children by three wives; the eldest, Antyllus, was put to death by Caesar alone among them. The rest Octavia took and raised together with her own children. Cleopatra, the daughter by Cleopatra, she married to Juba, the most graceful of kings; and Antony, the son by Fulvia, she made so great that, while Agrippa held the first place of honor with Caesar and Livia's sons the second, Antony was seen to hold the third.

Octavia had two daughters by Marcellus and one son, Marcellus; this son Caesar took as both adopted child and son-in-law, and one of his daughters he gave in marriage to Agrippa. But Marcellus died not long after the wedding, and Caesar found it difficult to pick, from the rest of his friends, someone he trusted equally to become his son-in-law, Octavia proposed that Agrippa should take Caesar's daughter, giving up her own.

Caesar was persuaded first, then Agrippa; and so, taking back her own daughter, she married her to Antony, while Caesar's daughter was married to Agrippa. Of the two daughters left by Antony and Octavia, Domitius Ahenobarbus took one, while Drusus, Livia's son and Caesar's stepson, took the other, Antonia, famous for her modesty and beauty. From these were born Germanicus and Claudius:

of whom Claudius later ruled, and of the children of Germanicus, Gaius, after ruling gloriously for no long time, was killed together with his child and wife; and Agrippina, having a son by Ahenobarbus, Lucius Domitius, married Claudius Caesar. Claudius adopted her son and renamed him Nero Germanicus. This man, ruling in our own time, killed his mother and very nearly, through madness and derangement, overturned the Roman empire, being the fifth in the line of succession counting from Antony.

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