Drink and excitement had stolen Antony's senses, and he conceived the grotesque notion of ending the festival with a gigantic orgy and masquerade, where, disguised as Silenus, surrounded by a crowd of bacchanals, he would wander through the streets all night long. There is a legend that owing to an amethyst ring, given to her by one of her necromancers, Cleopatra never lost her presence of mind. She chose the moment when Antony was utterly intoxicated to add a final insult to those that had been heaped upon Rome during this festival of folly. Mimics, eunuchs, the lowest kind of actors, were mounted on curules, the ivory chairs of state reserved for the highest dignitaries, and, in ridicule of a revered Roman custom, the Queen ordered all the Romans then in Alexandria to file past this rabble. This scandal crowned the succession of orgies. When the news of it reached Octavius his heart quivered with delight! It supplied the means, which he had lacked the wit to devise, to undermine Antony's prestige. Careful and cunning, he suppressed his first instinct to make use of these outrages at once for his own advantage. It was not the right moment to attack an adversary who, in spite of blatant faults, had many warm partisans. Before beginning this assault he must win favour for himself and dispel the unflattering impressions that he had made in his youth. Versed in the trick of changing his policy, he effected such a complete alteration of standards that to this day it is uncertain which represented his real self: the cruel, suspicious, perfidious tyrant that he had seemed up to that time, or the gracious prince, the patron of art and letters, who has been known for so many centuries as Augustus Cæsar! Cheating and trickery unquestionably played a part in this sudden metamorphosis, but it is possible that, seeing the wisdom of honesty, he used it as an instrument for promoting his own interests. At all events, if he were not a better man, his conduct from that time gave every evidence of it. There was general astonishment on his return from Sicily. In place of the atrocious bloody reprisals which had stained Rome after the victory of Philippi, an amnesty was declared, with proposals of peace, a reduction of taxes, and various changes for the benefit of all classes of the people. Was not this the surest way to win favour? Instead of setting himself up in opposition to his rival, to give the people a season of wise moderation, as a contrast to the mad debauchery of Antony?