Hath nobly held; our sever’d navy too
Have knit again, and fleet, threatening most sea-like.
(III. xiii. 169.)
Whether this be fact or illusion, it shows that in his own eyes at least some hope remains: but in the hour of defeat he was quite unmanned and seemed to give up all thought of prolonging the struggle. When for the first time after his reverse we meet him in Alexandria, he prays his followers to “take the hint which his despair proclaims” (iii. xi. 18), and to leave him, with his treasure for their reward. This circumstance Shakespeare obtained from Plutarch, but in Plutarch it is not quite the same. There the dismissal takes place at Taenarus in the Peloponnesus, the first stopping-place at which Antony touches in his flight, and apparently is dictated by the difficulty of all the fugitives effecting their escape. At any rate he was very far even then from despairing of his cause, for in the previous sentence we read that he “sent unto Canidius, to returne with his army into Asia, by Macedon”; and some time later we find him, still ignorant of the facts, continuing to act on the belief “that his armie by lande, which he left at Actium, was yet whole.”[209] Here on the other hand he has succeeded in reaching his lair, and it is as foolish as it is generous to throw away adherents and resources that might be of help to him at the last. But he is too despondent to think even of standing at bay. He tells his friends:
I have myself resolved upon a course
Which has no need of you.
(III. xi. 9.)
That course was to beseech Octavius by his schoolmaster,
To let him breathe between the heavens and earth,
A private man in Athens.