In a gleam of reason, the last perhaps that this warrior-statesman ever knew, Antony saw clearly the dire results of his carrying out the demand of his fierce mistress. Quivering with excitement he tried to ward off the coming tragedy.
"We must be cautious. What demon of jealousy possesses you? The astounding rupture that you are asking me to make will in no way affect our mutual relations. All my life is yours, and only yours. I have no thought but to serve you!"
But Cleopatra was too enraged to listen to reason. With her long, snake-like eyes, her luscious scarlet mouth, her body curled in a corner of her divan, she seemed like an impregnable fortress.
"I will not yield. I have had enough of hearing the Romans call Octavia your wife and me your concubine. I desire that by a solemn, official deed you proclaim me, Cleopatra, as your only lawful wife."
The struggle this time was neither so long nor so violent as the one of three years before when Antony, moved by the tender devotion of Octavia, had defended her against his mistress. To-day, far away, given over to a life of uninteresting virtue, she had less power to hold his affection. Cleopatra's insatiable passion won the victory and led to that entire subjugation of will in which a man is no longer a man. His spirit as well as his flesh was conquered. He was as wax in her hands, and when she asserted that Octavia had always been the secret ally of her brother, and that both at Tarentum and at Rome Antony had been their plaything, he made no protest and his silence was like acquiescence. But that was not enough. To gain all she wanted it was necessary to rouse in Antony a passionate hatred, and as this would not have been possible against the tender, loving wife who had been so faithful to him, she brought up the name of Octavius to awaken all the fierce animosity in his soul. To a man of his temperament, impressionable, weak, but devoured with ambition, she held up the poltroon Octavius as the man who was seizing the supreme power.
"So you will be content with our little eastern kingdom," she sneered, "while he holds dominion over all the countries from Illyria to the Pillars of Hercules!"
Antony's cheeks blanched. This vision of his colleague's outranking him, possessing greater power, master of vaster territories than his own, sent a shiver through his whole being. Such hatred must have an outlet. Twice already these rivals had been at the point of flying at each other's throats; of destroying each other; twice the tiny hand of a woman had intervened. To-day it was again a woman's hand that slipped in between them, but this time to stir up anger, to corrupt, to embitter, and this time war was inevitable.
IX
ACTIUM
Octavius had just come, as he did every few days, to see his sister. Although there was always an affectionate intimacy between them, to-day their voices were raised in a manner that suggested a difference of opinion, if not a sharp disagreement. The subject under discussion was the usual one, and the more Octavius accused Antony the more Octavia defended him.