Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent OratorsHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators
Hubbard, Elbert
Orators
After some months of hard times passion cooled, and Antony, Octavius and
Lepidus, the chief general of Octavius, met in the field for
consultation. Swayed by the eloquence of Antony, who was still full of
the precedents of the Great Caesar, a Triumvirate was formed, and Antony,
Octavius and Lepidus coolly sat down to divide the world between them.
One strong argument that Antony used for the necessity of this
partnership was that Brutus and Cassius were just across in Macedonia,
waiting and watching for the time when civil war would so weaken Rome
that they could step in and claim their own.
Brutus and his fellow conspirators must be punished.
In two years from that time, they had performed their murderous deed;
Cassius was killed at his own request by his servant, and Brutus had
fallen on his sword to escape the sword of Mark Antony.
In the stress of defeat and impending calamity, Mark Antony was a great
man; he could endure anything but success.
But now there were no more enemies to conquer: unlike Caesar the Great
he was no scholar, so books were not a solace; to build up and beautify
a great State did not occur to him. His camp was turned into a place of
mad riot and disorder. Harpers, dancers, buffoons and all the sodden
splendor of the East made the nights echo with "shouts, sacrifices,
songs and groans."
When Antony entered Ephesus the women went out to meet him in the
undress of bacchanals, while troops of naked boys representing cupids,
and men clothed like satyrs danced at the head of the procession.
Everywhere were ivy crowns, spears wreathed with green, and harps,
flutes, pipes, and human voices sang songs of praise to the great god
Bacchus--for such Antony liked to be called.
Antony knew that between Cleopatra and Caesar there had been a tender
love. All the world that Caesar ruled, Antony now ruled--or thought he
did. In the intoxication of success he, too, would rule the heart that
the great Caesar had ruled. He would rule this proud heart or he would
crush it beneath his heel.
He dispatched Dellius, his trusted secretary, to Alexandria, summoning
the Queen to meet him at Cilicia, and give answer as to why she had
given succor to the army of Cassius.
The charge was preposterous, and if sincere, shows the drunken condition
of Antony's mind. Cleopatra loved Caesar--he was to her the King of
Kings, the one supreme and god-like man of earth. Her studious and
splendid mind had matched his own; this cold, scholarly man of fifty-two
had been her mate--the lover of her soul. Scarcely five short years
before, she had attended him on his journey as he went away, and there
on the banks of the Nile as they parted, her unborn babe responded to
the stress of parting, no less than she.
Afterward she had followed him to Rome that he might see his son,
Caesario.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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