My latter part of life.
(IV. vi. 35.)
And this too is most natural. Antony’s generosity restores to him his old impression of Antony’s magnificence which he had lost in these last sorry days. With that returns his old enthusiasm, and with that awakes the sense of his own transgression against such greatness. He is ready now in expiation to sacrifice the one thing that in the end made him still shrink from treason. He had tried to steady himself, as we have seen, with the thought that the glory of loyalty would be his, if he remained faithful to the last. Now he demands the brand of treachery for his name, though he fain would have Antony’s pardon for himself:
O Antony,
Nobler than my revolt is infamous,
Forgive me in thine own particular:
But let the world rank me in register
A master-leaver and a fugitive.
(IV. ix. 18.)
Thus he dies heart-broken and in despair. Personal attachment to an individual, the one ethical motive that lingers in a world of self-seekers to give existence some dignity and worth, is the inspiration of his soul. But even this he cannot preserve unspoiled: on accepted assumptions he is forced to deny and desecrate it. He succumbs less through his own fault than through the fault of the age; and this is his grand failure. When he realises what it means, there is no need of suicide: he is killed by “swift thought,” by the consciousness that his life with this on his record is loathsome and alien, a “very rebel to his will,” that only “hangs on him” (iv. ix. 14).