The procession seems to have set out in the sunshine of the morning from the Royal Palace on the Lochias Promontory, and to have skirted the harbour as far as the temple of Neptune. It then travelled probably through the Forum, past the stately buildings and luxuriant gardens of the Regia, and so out into the Street of Canopus at about the point where the great mound of the Paneum rose up against the blue sky, its ascending pathway packed with spectators. Turning now to the west, the procession moved slowly along this broad paved street, the colonnades on either side being massed with sightseers. On the right-hand side the walls of the Sema, or Royal Mausoleum, were passed, where lay the bones of Alexander the Great; and on the left the long porticos of the Gymnasium and the Law Courts formed a shaded stand for hundreds of people of the upper classes. On the other side of the road the colonnades and windows of the Museum were crowded, I suppose, with the professors and students who had come with their families to witness the spectacle. Some distance farther along, the procession turned to the south, and proceeded along the broad Street of Serapis, at the end of which, on high ground, stood the splendid building of the Serapeum. Here Cleopatra and her court, together with the high functionaries of Alexandria, were gathered, while the priests and priestesses of Serapis were massed on either side of the street and upon the broad steps which led up to the porticos of the temple. At this point Antony dismounted from his chariot; and probably amidst the shouts of the spectators and the shaking of hundreds of systra, he ascended to the temple to offer the prescribed sacrifice to Serapis, as in Rome he would have done to Jupiter Capitolinus. This accomplished he returned to the court in front of the sacred building, where a platform had been erected, the sides of which were plated with silver. On this platform, upon a throne of gold, sat Cleopatra, clad in the robes of Isis or Venus; and to her feet Antony now led the royal captives of Armenia, all hot and dusty from their long walk, and dejected by the continuous booing and jeering of the crowds through which they had passed. Artavasdes was no barbarian: he was a refined and cultured man, to whose sensitive nature the ordeal must have been most terrible. He was something of a poet, and in his time had written plays and tragedies not without merit. He was now told to abase himself before Cleopatra, and to salute her as a goddess; but this he totally refused to do, and, in spite of some rough handling by his guards, he persisted in standing upright before her and in addressing her simply by her name. In Rome it was customary at the conclusion of a Triumph to put to death the royal captives who had been exhibited in the procession; and now that he had openly insulted the Queen of Egypt he could not have expected to see another sun rise. Antony and Cleopatra, however, appear to have been touched at his dignified attitude; and neither he nor his family were harmed. Instead, they were treated with some show of honour,[103] and thereafter were held as state prisoners in the Egyptian capital.