The comforts of the Alexandrian Palace, and the pleasures of Cleopatra’s brilliant society, must have come to Antony as an entrancing change after the rigours of his campaign; and the remainder of the winter, no doubt, slipped by in happy ease. The stern affairs of life, however, seem to have checked any repetition of the frivolities of his earlier stay in the Egyptian capital; and we now hear nothing of the Inimitable Livers or of their prodigious entertainments. Antony wrote a long letter to Rome, giving a more or less glowing account of the war, and stating that in many respects it had been very successful. Early in the new year, B.C. 35, Sextus Pompeius attempted to open negotiations with the Egyptian court; but the envoys whom he sent to Alexandria failed to secure any favourable response. Antony, on the other hand, learnt from them that Sextus was engaged in a secret correspondence with the Parthians, and was attempting to corrupt Domitius Ahenobarbus, his lieutenant in Asia. Thereupon he and Cleopatra determined to capture this buccaneering son of the great Pompey and to put him to death. The order was carried out by a certain Titius, who effected the arrest in Phrygia; and Sextus was executed in Miletus shortly afterwards. This action was likely to be extremely ill received in Rome, for the outlaw, in the manner of a Robin Hood, had always been immensely popular; and for this reason Antony never seems to have admitted his responsibility for it, the order being generally said to have been signed by his lieutenant, Plancus.
Shortly after this the whole course of events was suddenly altered by the arrival in Alexandria of no less a personage than the King of Pontus, who, it will be remembered, had been captured by the Parthians[99] at the outset of Antony’s late campaign, and had been held prisoner by the King of Media. The latter now sent him to Egypt with the news that the lately allied kingdoms of Media and Parthia had come to blows; and the King of Media proposed that Antony should help him to overthrow his rival. This announcement caused the greatest upheaval in Cleopatra’s palace. Here was an unexpected opportunity to conquer the terrible Parthians with comparative ease; for Media had always been their powerful ally, and the Roman arms had come to grief on former occasions in Median territory. Cleopatra, however, fearing the duplicity of these eastern monarchs, and having set her heart on the immediate overthrow of Octavian, whose power was now so distinctly on the increase, tried to dissuade her husband from this second campaign, and begged him to take no further risks in that direction. As a tentative measure Antony sent a despatch to Artavasdes, the King of Armenia, who had deserted him after his defeat in Media, ordering him to come to Alexandria without delay, presumably to discuss the situation. Artavasdes, however, showed no desire to place himself in the hands of his overlord whom he had thus betrayed, and preferred to seek safety, if necessary, in his own hills or to throw in his lot with the Parthians.