Submissive to these caprices Antony allowed himself to be represented in paintings and groups of statuary under the figures of Osiris and Bacchus, seated beside Cleopatra Isis and Cleopatra Selene. It seemed that bewitched by his mistress he renounced his country for her. He accepted the office of grand-gymnasiarch of Alexandria. He commanded that the effigy of the Egyptian queen should be engraved on the back of his imperial coins; he even dared to inscribe the name of Cleopatra on the shields of his legionaries. He permitted, by a shameless inversion of parts, that the queen should go about Alexandria seated in a curule chair, whilst he, carrying a scimeter and wearing a purple robe with jeweled clasps, accompanied her on foot surrounded by Egyptian officers and the base troop of eunuchs.
By deposing Lepidus, Octavius had changed the triumvirate into a duumvirate, and the empire became divided between himself and Antony. But the domination of the East satisfied the pride of Antony no better than the domination of the West sufficed for the ambition of Octavius. Though twice deferred, the civil war remained inevitable. In his extreme caution, Octavius would still have delayed it; in his folly, Antony precipitated it. He despised Octavius as a general; his flatterers and his soldiers, who adored him, predicted victory to his arms; Cleopatra, who retained the angry recollection of the insolent reception by the Romans, burned to avenge it, and confiding in the sword of Antony, she already swore “By the justice which she would soon dispense at the Capitol.”[11]
Antony began by overwhelming Octavius with reproaches and dark threats. His clients, who were numerous in Rome, his friends, his emissaries sent from Egypt, made themselves busy in enhancing with the people his grievances, real and supposed. Octavius, said they, has robbed Sextus Pompey of Sicily without dividing the spoils with his colleague: he has not even restored the hundred and twenty triremes borrowed for that war; he has deposed Lepidus and retained for himself alone the provinces, the legions, and the ships of war that had been assigned to that triumvir; he has distributed to his own soldiers nearly all the public lands of Italy, without keeping any for the veterans of Antony. Every act of the government of Octavius was criticized and incriminated. The people were reminded that he was crushing Italy under the weight of taxes; he was accused of aiming at sovereign power. They even went the length of saying that the true heir of Cæsar was not Octavius, his nephew, but Cæsar’s own son Cæsarion, and that a second will of the Dictator would some day be forthcoming. According to Dion Cassius, Antony, by his formal recognition of Cæsarion as the legitimate son of Cæsar, had raised to a climax the uneasiness and anger of Octavius.