These follies did not turn the Alexandrians against the triumvir as much as might have been supposed. If they had little esteem for him, they liked him for his good humor, and the ease with which he was approached. They delighted to say: “Antony wears for the Romans a tragic mask, but here he lays it aside, and assumes for us the mask of comedy.” His intimate companions and his officers, who shared without scruple his voluptuous and unbridled excesses, were still less inclined to resent them, for, like himself, they yielded to the bewitching charm of Cleopatra. They loved, they admired her, they bore cheerfully her snubs and sarcasms, and were not shocked, even if in the midst of a feast, at a sign from Antony, she quitted the banquet hall with him, and returning after a short absence resumed her position on the couch of the triclinium. They studied to please and divert her, each strove to be the vilest toady to the queen—“humillimus assentator reginæ”—for a smile of Cleopatra they sacrificed all dignity. Once, L. Plancus, a man of consular dignity, crowned with rushes, a fish’s tail attached to his loins, and his naked body painted blue, actually performed in her presence the dance of Glaukos.
With Cæsar, Cleopatra had instinctively played the part of a crowned Aspasia, ever bewitching, but uniting dignity with grace, concealing the courtesan beneath the robe of a queen, ever equable in mood, expressing herself in the choicest language, talking politics, art, literature, her marvelous faculties rising without effort to the level of the lofty intelligence of the dictator: with Antony, Cleopatra, at first through policy, afterwards through love, played the part of a Laïs born by chance to a throne. Seeing at once that the inclinations of Antony were coarse and low, that his wit was commonplace and his language very loose, she immediately set herself to the same tone. She kept pace with this great drinker, remaining even till dawn with the foaming flagons and goblets continually replenished; she accompanied him by night into the suspicious streets of Rhakotis, the old portion of Alexandria; she jested cynically, sang amatory songs, recited licentious poems; she quarreled with him, provoking and returning both abuse and blows. Nothing delighted Antony like the sight of that ravishing little hand threatening and beating him, or to hear from those divine lips, fit for the choruses of Sophocles or the odes of Sappho, the same words that he had heard bandied among the guard of the Esquiline gate and in the unmentionable dens of the Suburra.
V.
In the winter of 39 B. C. the war of Persia recalled Antony into Italy. Through ambition or resentment against Octavius, and also, says Plutarch, through jealousy, Fulvia his wife had fomented this war. She hoped that these disturbances would compel Antony to leave Cleopatra, in order to defend his power threatened in Rome. Fulvia had succeeded but too well. Antony, it is true, was sailing towards Brundusium with two hundred sail, but the victorious Octavius was all-powerful in Italy, his adversaries dispersed or proscribed; she herself had fled and was dying, without a hope of again seeing her husband. Antony heard of her death while touching at a port in Sicily. This, in the end, made a peace easy. Antony had taken no part in the war of Persia; Fulvia alone, aided by her father-in-law, had excited it; her death rendered an accommodation possible between Antony and Octavius. Cocceius Nerva, Pollio, and Mecænas contrived an interview at Brundusium. They were reconciled and made a new division of the empire: Octavius took the West, as far as the Adriatic; Antony, the East; and Lepidus had to be content with the Roman possessions in Africa.
The treaty of Brundusium gave great satisfaction at Rome, where, after so much dissension and bloodshed, peace was ardently desired. To secure the fulfilment of it, the friends of the Triumvirs sought to unite them by family ties, and they proposed a marriage between Antony, who had just lost his wife, and Octavia, sister of Octavius, the widow of Marcellus. This noble woman, who to the rarest qualities added great beauty of person, could not fail, they thought, to secure and fix the love of Antony; she would thus maintain harmony between the brothers-in-law, to the great advantage of both and the good of the state. Octavius gladly accepted the project, and notwithstanding the passion he still entertained for Cleopatra, Antony, in view of the political advantages of this union, took good care not to refuse. The marriage was forthwith celebrated. The law forbade widows to marry before the tenth month, but the senate granted a dispensation to the sister of Octavius.
Antony remained at Rome during nearly the whole year 39 B. C. He lived in perfect accord with Octavius and shared with him the government of the empire; but although he had an equal part in authority and honors he felt that he was only second in Rome. In his justifiable pride as an old soldier, an accomplished warrior, the lieutenant of Cæsar at Pharsalia, and commander-in-chief at Philippi, he was indignant when he thought of the supremacy, acknowledged by all, of this almost beardless youth. A famous Egyptian soothsayer, whom probably Cleopatra herself had despatched to Rome, encouraged Antony in these ideas by his predictions and horoscopes. “Your tutelar genius dreads that of Octavius,” said he constantly. “Proud and lofty when alone, he loses power when you are with Octavius. Here your star is eclipsed; it is only away from Rome—it is in the East that it shines in full luster.” A new revolt of the Parthians gave Antony a pretext for leaving Rome. He set out with Octavia, and touched first at Athens. There he remained during the winter of 39–38 B. C., forgetting not only the Parthians (leaving his lieutenant Ventidius to conduct the war against them), but Alexandria, the “Life Inimitable,” and Cleopatra herself.[7] Doubtless he did not love his new wife, the beautiful Octavia, as ardently as he had loved Cleopatra, or in the same way, but assuredly he did love her. As feeble in will as powerful in body, Antony, the slave of woman, was easily dominated. Erewhile Fulvia had enslaved him, then Cleopatra had bewitched him, now he yielded to the quiet charm of Octavia.
At the close of the winter he undertook a brief campaign into Syria against Antiochus of Commagene, and soon after returned to Athens, where he remained two years. In 36, a new difficulty occurring between him and Octavius on the subject of the naval expedition against the pirates, in which he had refused to second the latter, civil war again became imminent. Antony planned a descent upon Italy, with three hundred vessels; Octavius, on his side, collected his legions; if blood did not yet flow, swords were half unsheathed. In the hope of preventing this unnatural war, Octavia entreated Antony to take her with him into Italy. The port of Brundusium having refused entrance to Antony’s fleet, his vessels moored before Tarentum. Informed of this, Octavius was leading his troops by forced marches against that city. Octavia desired to land alone. She went to meet Octavius on the way to Venosa; passing through the outposts and sentinels, she approached her brother, who was attended by Agrippa and Mecænas. She warmly pleaded the cause of Antony, and especially conjured Octavius not to reduce her from the happiest of women to the most miserable. “At this moment,” said she, “the eyes of the world are upon me, the wife of one of the rulers of Rome, and the sister of the other. Should the counsel of wrath prevail, should war be declared, it may be doubtful to which of you two Fate may give the victory, but it is certain to whichever it inclines I shall be in grief and desolation.” The ambitious Octavius was already coveting universal dominion, but he was a temporizer. He yielded to the prayers of Octavia, and for the second time this woman, who was the good genius of Antony, maintained the peace of the Roman world. The two triumvirs met on the shores of the Gulf of Tarentum, and after having lavished on each other various marks of affection they agreed to renew the triumvirate for five years. Octavius gave Antony two legions to reënforce his army of the East, and in return Antony gave up one hundred triremes with brazen rostra and twenty Liburnian galleys for his Mediterranean fleet. These were the vessels that were to conquer at Actium! From Tarentum, Octavia returned alone to Rome with the two children she had borne to Antony; he himself embarked for Asia Minor, whither he was summoned by the war with the Parthians. The pair agreed to meet again, the expedition over, either at Athens or at Rome, when Antony hoped to receive the honors of a triumph.