In the winter of 39 B. C. the war of Persia recalled Antony into Italy. Through ambition or resentment against Octavius, and also, says Plutarch, through jealousy, Fulvia his wife had fomented this war. She hoped that these disturbances would compel Antony to leave Cleopatra, in order to defend his power threatened in Rome. Fulvia had succeeded but too well. Antony, it is true, was sailing towards Brundusium with two hundred sail, but the victorious Octavius was all-powerful in Italy, his adversaries dispersed or proscribed; she herself had fled and was dying, without a hope of again seeing her husband. Antony heard of her death while touching at a port in Sicily. This, in the end, made a peace easy. Antony had taken no part in the war of Persia; Fulvia alone, aided by her father-in-law, had excited it; her death rendered an accommodation possible between Antony and Octavius. Cocceius Nerva, Pollio, and Mecænas contrived an interview at Brundusium. They were reconciled and made a new division of the empire: Octavius took the West, as far as the Adriatic; Antony, the East; and Lepidus had to be content with the Roman possessions in Africa. The treaty of Brundusium gave great satisfaction at Rome, where, after so much dissension and bloodshed, peace was ardently desired. To secure the fulfilment of it, the friends of the Triumvirs sought to unite them by family ties, and they proposed a marriage between Antony, who had just lost his wife, and Octavia, sister of Octavius, the widow of Marcellus. This noble woman, who to the rarest qualities added great beauty of person, could not fail, they thought, to secure and fix the love of Antony; she would thus maintain harmony between the brothers-in-law, to the great advantage of both and the good of the state. Octavius gladly accepted the project, and notwithstanding the passion he still entertained for Cleopatra, Antony, in view of the political advantages of this union, took good care not to refuse. The marriage was forthwith celebrated. The law forbade widows to marry before the tenth month, but the senate granted a dispensation to the sister of Octavius.