Antony

But Geminius, after his voyage to Greece, was an object of suspicion to Cleopatra, who thought that he was acting in the interests of Octavia; he was always put upon with jokes at supper and insulted with places of no honour at table, but he endured all this and waited for an opportunity to confer with Antony. Once, however, at a supper, being bidden to tell the reasons for his coming, he replied that the rest of his communication required a sober head, but one thing he knew, whether he was drunk or sober, and that was that all would be well if Cleopatra was sent off to Egypt.

At this, Antony was wroth, and Cleopatra said: Thou hast done well, Geminius, to confess the truth without being put to the torture. Geminius, accordingly, after a few days, ran away to Rome. And Cleopatra’s flatterers drove away many of the other friends of Antony also who could not endure their drunken tricks and scurrilities.

Among these were Marcus Silanus and Dellius the historian. And Dellius says that he was also afraid of a plot against him by Cleopatra, of which Glaucus the physician had told him. For he had offended Cleopatra at supper by saying that while sour wine was served to them, Sarmentus, at Rome, was drinking Falernian. Now, Sarmentus was one of the youthful favourites of Caesar, such as the Romans call deliciae.

When Caesar had made sufficient preparations, a vote was passed to wage war against Cleopatra, and, to take away from Antony the authority which he had surrendered to a woman. And Caesar said in addition that Antony had been drugged and was not even master of himself, and that the Romans were carrying on war with Mardion the eunuch, and Potheinus, and Iras, and the tire-woman of Cleopatra, and Charmion, by whom the principal affairs of the government were managed.

The following signs are said to have been given before the war. Pisaurum, a city colonized by Antony situated near the Adriatic, was swallowed up by chasms in the earth. From one of the marble statues of Antony near Alba sweat oozed for many days, and though it was wiped away it did not cease. In Patrae, while Antony was staying there, the Heracleium was destroyed by lightning; and at Athens the Dionysus in the Battle of the Giants[*](One of the groups of figures at the south wall of the Acropolis dedicated by Attalus I. of Pergamum. See Pausanias, i. 25, 2, with Frazer’s notes.) was dislodged by the winds and carried down into the theatre.

Now, Antony associated himself with Heracles in lineage, and with Dionysus in the mode of life which he adopted, as I have said,[*](Chapters iv. 1 f. and xxiv. 3.) and he was called the New Dionysus.[*](As Cleopatra was called the New Isis (liv. 6).) The same tempest fell upon the colossal figures of Eumenes and Attalus at Athens, on which the name of Antony had been inscribed, and prostrated them, and them alone out of many. Moreover the admiral’s ship of Cleopatra was called Antonius, and a dire sign was given with regard to it. Some swallows, namely, made their nest under its stern; but other swallows attacked these, drove them out and destroyed their nestlings.