Cleopatra yielded less submissively to fate. Attacked in the crisis of danger by a fainting courage to which Antony was an utter stranger, the immediate danger past she recovered all her powers. With her exalted imagination she could not despair either wholly or even for very long. She learned that the vessels she had had transported to the Red Sea had been burned by the Arabs, and thus her flight prevented. She at once prepared for determined resistance. Whilst Antony was losing his time playing the misanthrope, the queen raised fresh forces, furnished new vessels, formed new alliances, repaired the fortifications of Pelusium and Alexandria, distributed arms to the people, and to encourage the Alexandrians to the determined defense of their city, she inscribed the name of her son, Cæsarion, in the rolls of the militia. Antony could not but admire the courage and energy of Cleopatra, and, entreated by his friends besides being weary of his solitude, he resumed his residence at the palace. The queen received him as in the happy days of his return from Cilicia or Armenia. They again enjoyed with the friends of the last hour banquets, festivals, orgies—only “The Inimitables” changed their appellation, and called themselves “The Inseparables in Death”: οἱ συναποθανουμéνοι. The choice of this funereal name, assumed as much from resignation as bravado, sufficiently reveals the state of mind of the lovers. Antony, it seems, had lost all hope; Cleopatra still hoped, but with intervals of gloomy discouragement. At such times she would descend to the crypts of the palace, near the prisons of the condemned; slaves would drag them, a few at a time, from their cells to test on them the effects of different poisons. Cleopatra watched with a curiosity, more painful even than cruel, the dying agonies of the victims. The experiments were frequently repeated, for the queen could not discover the poison of her dreams—a poison that slays instantly without pain and without shock. She noticed that violent poisons killed swiftly but with frightful torture, and that less active ones inflicted lingering agonies; then she studied the bites of serpents, and after new experiments she discovered that the venom of an Egyptian viper, called in Greek “Aspis,” caused neither convulsion nor any painful sensation, and led by a constantly increasing drowsiness to a gentle death, like a sleep. As for Antony, like Cato and Brutus, he had his sword.