Meanwhile Octavius bided his time; his preparations for war were not complete, and Antony was still popular in Rome, where he maintained very many clients, protected by Octavia his wife. She, in spite of the insult inflicted by Antony, was still wholly devoted to him; in vain, on her return from Greece, had Octavius besought her to forget her husband and to quit his dwelling; she had utterly refused to do so. She continued to reside in that famous mansion, once the property of the great Pompey, there educating with equal care and tenderness her own children by Antony and those of his first wife. The clients of Antony and the friends he sent from Alexandria were sure of finding support and assistance from Octavia; she even obtained favors for them from Octavius, irritated though he might be; finally she incessantly assumed in his presence the defense of Antony, excusing both faults and follies, and declaring that it was a hateful thing for two great emperors to incite Romans to slay each other, the one to avenge personal wrongs, the other for the love of a foreign woman. Octavius, who took for his motto: “That which is well done is done quickly enough,” _sat celeriter feri quidquid fiat satis bene_, appeared to give way to the prayers of Octavia; but if he made no haste to declare war he was preparing it slowly, and preparing also public opinion. He made the most of Antony’s disgraceful life in Egypt—his enslavement by Cleopatra. It was said in the senate, in the army, among the people, “Antony is no longer a Roman; he is the slave of the queen of Egypt, the incestuous daughter of the Lagidæ: his country is Alexandria and thither he would transfer the capital of the empire; his gods are Knouph with the ram’s head, Ra of the vulture beak, the dog-headed Anubis—latrans Anubis; his counselors are the eunuch Mardion, Charmion, and Iras, the tire-woman of that Cleopatra on whom he has promised to bestow Rome.” These idle tales inspired the Romans with a sentiment of horror which still survives in the verses of the poets of that period: “Among our eagles,” says Horace, “the sun beholds, O infamy, the base standard of an Egyptian woman.... Romans sold to a woman blush not to bear arms for her.... In the intoxication of her success and the madness of her hopes, this monster—_monstrum illud_—dreams the fall of the Capitol, and is preparing with her troops of despicable slaves and eunuchs the funeral rites of the empire.” “Thus,” writes Propertius, “this royal prostitute—_meretrix regina_—eternal disgrace of the blood of Philip, would force the Tiber to endure the menaces of the Nile, and thrust aside the Roman trumpets to make way for the shrieking sistra (Egyptian timbrels).”[12]