The battle of Philippi freed Cleopatra from her anxiety on the score of the republicans; but she had still to fear the penalty of her apparent desertion of the Triumvirs. After his victory over Brutus, Antony overran Greece and Asia Minor for the purpose of levying tribute, and was everywhere received as a conqueror. Cities and kings vied with each other in adulation, heaped up honors and lavished gifts on him to secure immunity for the succor they had afforded, willingly or by force, to the vanquished party. At Athens, Megara, Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tarsus embassies and royal visits followed each other. To preserve to their kingdoms a quasi-autonomy, every petty sovereign of Asia hastened to obtain from the powerful triumvir a new investiture of his crown. Cleopatra alone, whether from queenly pride or womanly art, remained in Egypt and sent no ambassador; she seemed to pretend to ignore that the victory at Philippi had rendered Antony the master of the East. The silence of Cleopatra surprised and irritated Antony. Perhaps wounded pride was not the only sentiment in the soul of the triumvir. When he was commanding the cavalry of Gabinius he had seen Cleopatra, then fifteen years old; he had seen her again at Rome, the year of Cæsar’s death. Without agreeing wholly with Appian, that Antony was already in love with the queen of Egypt, it may be credited that her beauty and her attractions had made on him a deep impression. He remembered the “Siren of the Nile,” and amid the visits of so many kings and powers it was, above all, hers that he awaited, but awaited in vain. In the position of Antony, however, to speak was to be obeyed. He commanded Cleopatra to repair to Tarsus, to vindicate before his tribunal her ambiguous conduct during the civil war. Antony enjoyed in advance this deliciously cruel pleasure: the beautiful Cleopatra, the haughty queen of Egypt, the woman at whose feet he had seen the divine Julius, coming to him as a suppliant.