Antony

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.