That was not by any means the end of these Parthians, however. We have seen how they fought--charging down on the legions, shooting a flight of arrows, then off again, and again coming back to perform the same manœuvres. Just as they did in each particular battle of a war, so they did in the war itself, as a whole. If the war went against them, away they went, over the Euphrates and as far east as the Romans cared to pursue. They must have known that the Romans would not go on pursuing for ever, farther and farther from their base. And the Parthians had all Asia to retreat into. So they retreated, and left Judæa and Herod in {210} peace, but a very few years later they were making trouble again, and this time Antony himself led an army against them, into Parthia itself, and met with a disastrous defeat. And now Octavius, who had been making his own power very firm in Rome and Italy all this while, thought the time was come when he might declare war against Antony--his brother-in-law, and until lately his friend. Antony had given him much cause. You will remember that Queen Cleopatra whom Cæsar had put on the Egyptian throne beside Ptolemy. Cæsar had fallen in love with her. Antony fell in love with her too. For her sake he divorced and sent back Octavia, his wife, to her brother, Octavius, at Rome. He assumed all the airs of an Eastern despotic ruler, with Cleopatra as his queen. A great many of his own people and friends and servants were disgusted by this. Probably the support that they had given him was not given very whole-heartedly. Certainly Octavius could easily find an excuse for making war on him, for Antony's ideas of government were not at all such as agreed with the Romans' idea of how government should be conducted by a Roman citizen. The deciding battle between the two was a sea-fight off Actium. Cleopatra was there, but even she does not seem to have fought very bravely for Antony. She turned out of the fight before it was really decided, and fled, with her ships, to Egypt. Her flight probably did decide the result, and Antony, with such ships as could escape, went to Egypt after her. Octavius did not pursue them at once, but a year later he went to Egypt, and, rather than face his coming, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide. [Sidenote: Octavius victorious] Several years before this, Octavius had dealt with {211} the other man of the Triumvirate, Lepidus. Lepidus, like Antony, seems to have acted just as if he wished Octavius to have a good excuse for getting rid of him, or of his power. He came to Sicily from Africa, apparently at Octavius' bidding; and when he tried, or was accused of trying, to gain possession of Sicily for himself, Octavius replied by defeating his forces, taking Lepidus himself to Italy, and, with more magnanimity than conquerors often show, allowing him to retain his high office of Pontifex Maximus.