Each one of the triumvirate in this arrangement sacrificed some one of his friends to please the others. Thus, Octavian himself outraged all feelings of honor and justice by allowing Marcus Tullius Cicero, whose influence and advocacy had done great things in his behalf, to be put to death. This was a concession to Mark Antony,--or rather, to Mark Antony’s wife Fulvia, who, it is said, had cherished a bitter grudge against Cicero and now triumphantly and dramatically thrust a needle into the once eloquent tongue of the murdered man, when his bleeding head was exposed to view in the Forum. It was a horrible satisfaction of cruel spite! The combined forces of Octavian and Antony soon met those of Brutus and Cassius in the famous battle of Philippi in Macedonia, a city far away from Rome, but made more memorable later by the imprisonment and deliverance there of the Christian missionaries Paul and Silas. As the result of their humiliating defeat in that battle, both Brutus and Cassius committed suicide. This was in November, forty-two years before Christ. [Illustration: MARK ANTONY] Octavian returned to Italy to receive great honors at Rome, and Mark Antony remained to be the ostentatious ruler of the East. But the latter soon became infatuated with the notorious Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt. This woman played a large part in the case. She had come to Mark Antony at Tarsus in Cilicia to win him back from the wrath he had manifested because she had not sent aid to him and Octavian in their war against Brutus and Cassius. She made her appearance before him in the most sensational manner. In the summer of the year 41 B. C. she sailed up the river Cydnus in Asia Minor, on which the city of Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, was situated. She was reclining upon a gilded couch, under a stately canopy, upon the deck of her galley, which was propelled by silver oars and purple sails. She was personating the goddess Venus, attended by the Graces and fanned by Cupids. Pipes and lutes discoursed delightful music and the air was perfumed with sweet odors. The Apostle Paul, when he was a youth at Tarsus, doubtless heard related this strange incident that had taken place in his native city two generations before his time. Mark Antony disgracefully became Cleopatra’s complete slave and, carried away by her insidious allurements, he yielded to her capricious dictation in many atrocious acts of oppression and cruelty.