Calling for a goblet of "slaves' wine"--a species of vinegar--the queen dropped into it the largest pearl of Egypt's royal treasury, a gem appraised at four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The treasure dissolved under the vinegar's sharp acid; and Cleopatra--to a gasp of horror from the more frugal onlookers--drained the goblet. Such banquets staggered Egypt's resources. So did other jolly extravagances. Rumors of Antony's strange infatuation reached Rome. Rome was used to Antony's love affairs, and Rome knew Cleopatra of old. So Rome merely grinned and shrugged its shoulders. But when the big revenues that Antony had promised to wring from the conquered country failed to arrive, Rome--sorely wounded in the pocketbook--began to protest. Antony's friends at home pointed out to him what capital the crafty Octavius would try to make of this new-born dissatisfaction against his colleague. In a momentary gleam of sanity, Antony left the weeping Cleopatra and hastened back to Rome to face his enemies. There, all too briefly, the man's old genius flamed up. He appeased the populace, won his former ascendency over the disapproving Senate, blocked Octavius' plot to hurl him from power, and sealed his campaign of inspired diplomacy by marrying his rival's sister, Octavia. At a stroke, Antony had won back all he had lost Octavius was checkmated, the people were enthusiastic, and once more Antony had world rulership within his easy reach. But in busy, iron-hard Rome, he fell to remembering the lazy sunshine of Egypt. The primly gentle Octavia was hopelessly insipid by contrast with the glowing super-woman. Memory tugged, ever harder and harder. Even if this story were fiction, instead of prosy fact, you would foresee just what was bound to happen. Back to Egypt, on some flimsy pretext, fled Antony. He turned his back on Rome, on his wife, on Octavius, on friend, on foe, on future. He was to see none of them again. Nor was there to be a second outflash of his old genius. The rest was--Cleopatra. The reunited lovers flew from bliss to bliss, from one mad extravagance to another. Statecraft, regal dignity--common sense--all went by the board. At Rome, the effect of Antony's whirlwind reinstatement campaign gradually wore off. Revenues did not flow in from Egypt. But all sorts of wild stories did. And the wilder they were, the truer they were. Rome at large did not bother its brutal head over Antony's morals. But all Rome stormed and howled over the fact that the boundlessly rich kingdom of Egypt was bringing in practically no more money to the coffers of Rome. It was as if men who had invested a fortune in a thirty-story office building should find that the superintendent was holding back all the rents and losing tenants every day.