On hearing of her approach Antony had seated himself upon the public tribunal in the market-place, expecting that she would land at once and come to pay her respects to him in official manner. But Cleopatra had no intention of playing a part which might in any way be interpreted as that of a vassal or suppliant; and she therefore seems to have remained on board her ship at a distance from the shore, as though in no haste to meet Antony.
Meanwhile reports began to spread of the magnificence of the Queen’s vessels, and it was said that preparations were being made on board for the reception of the Triumvir. The crowds surrounding the tribunal thereupon hurried from the market-place to join those upon the quays, and soon Antony was left alone with his retinue. There he sat waiting for some time, till, losing patience, he sent a message to the Queen inviting her to dine with him. To this she replied by asking him to bring the Roman and local magnates to dine with her instead; and Antony, not wishing to stand upon ceremony with his old friend, at once accepted the invitation. At dusk, therefore, Cleopatra appears to have ordered her vessel to be brought across the lake to the city, and to be moored at the crowded quay, where already Antony was waiting to come on board; and the burly Roman, always a lover of theatrical display, must then have been entertained by a spectacle more stirring than any he had known before.
Across the water, in which the last light of the sunset was reflected, the royal galley was rowed by banks of silver-mounted oars, the great purple sails hanging idly in the still air of evening. The vessel was steered by two oar-like rudders, controlled by helmsmen who stood in the stern of the ship under a shelter constructed in the form of an enormous elephant’s head of shining gold, the trunk raised aloft.[84] Around the helmsmen a number of beautiful slave-women were grouped in the guise of sea-nymphs and graces; and near them a company of musicians played a melody upon their flutes, pipes, and harps, for which the slow-moving oars seemed to beat the time. Cleopatra herself, decked in the loose, shimmering robes of the goddess Venus, lay under an awning bespangled with gold, while boys dressed as Cupids stood on either side of her couch, fanning her with the coloured ostrich plumes of the Egyptian court. Before the royal canopy brazen censers stood upon delicate pedestals, sending forth fragrant clouds of exquisitely prepared Egyptian incense, the marvellous odour of which was wafted to the shore ere yet the vessel had come to its moorings.[85]