About the middle of the spring of 30 B. C. news reached Alexandria that a Roman army had crossed the western frontier of Egypt. Antony collected a few troops and marched to meet the enemy. A battle was fought beneath the walls of the strong city of Prætonium, which was already in the hands of the Romans. Antony, with his handful of men, was repulsed. When he returned to Alexandria Octavius was within two days’ march of the city. Whilst his lieutenant, Cornelius Gallus, was penetrating into Egypt by Cyrenaica he himself had entered through Syria and had taken Pelusium, after a real or feigned resistance, in either case a very brief one. After the surrender of Pelusium, the last of the Romans who had remained faithful to Antony cried out treason, declaring that Seleucus had surrendered the city by the orders of Cleopatra herself. Is it true that the queen had given such instructions? It may be doubted; nevertheless, Cleopatra’s trouble of mind and her secret hopes give a color to these suspicions. To vindicate herself she gave up to Antony the wife and children of Seleucus, and proposed that he should put them to death. This was but a very doubtful proof of her innocence, but Antony had to be satisfied with it. His anger subsided before her protestations and tears, true or false; now was not the time for recriminations: he must fight. Octavius had pitched his camp on the heights about twenty stadia east of Alexandria. Antony, having led in person a strong reconnoitering body of cavalry in that direction, fell in, not far from the Hippodrome, with the whole body of the Roman cavalry. A furious battle was fought in which, notwithstanding their great superiority of numbers, the Romans were broken and utterly routed. Antony pursued them to their entrenchments; then he returned to the city, strengthened by this victory, of little importance indeed, but brilliant and of good augury. He sprang from his horse before the palace, and, without taking time to lay aside his armor, rushed, still wearing helmet and cuirass, and covered with the blood and sweat of the fight, to embrace Cleopatra. She, deceiving herself as to the importance of this skirmish, felt her love and her hopes at the same time revive. She had again found her Antony, her emperor, her god of war. She threw herself passionately on his neck, wounding her breasts against his cuirass. At this moment of sincere feeling she must have reproached herself grievously (if she had committed it) with the treason of Pelusium; and the confidences which she had accepted from the envoy of Octavius must have recurred to her as a bitter remorse. Cleopatra desired to review the troops. She made them a speech, and, having had the bravest of them pointed out to her, she gave him a complete armor of solid gold.