(III. v. 19.)
It suits the dramatist too to free his hero from complicity in such a deed, and exhibit him as receiving the news with generous indignation and regret. Yet such regret is very skin-deep. Even Antony’s chief complaint in regard to Pompey’s overthrow is that he gets none of the unearned increment; or, as Octavius says,
that, having in Sicily
Sextus Pompeius spoil’d, we had not rated him
His part o’ the isle.
(III. vi. 24.)
Higher still in our respect, if not in our affection, but even in our respect not very high, is Octavius at the head of his statesmen, politicians, men of the world, his Mecaenases, Agrippas and the rest, with their savoir faire and savoir vivre. They never let themselves go in thought or in deed; all their words and behaviour are disciplined, reserved, premeditated. Antony’s description of their principal is no doubt true, and it breathes the contempt of the born soldier, who has drunk delight of battle with his peers, for the mere deviser of calculations and combinations:
He at Philippi kept
His sword e’en like a dancer; while I struck
The lean and wrinkled Cassius; and ’twas I