OCTAVIAN’S INVASION OF EGYPT AND THE DEATH OF ANTONY.
The historian must feel some reluctance in discrediting the romantic story of the attachment of Cleopatra and Antony at this period; but nevertheless the fact cannot be denied that they had now decided to live apart from one another, and there seems very little doubt that each regarded the other with distrust and suspicion. Antony had lived so long alone in his Timonium that he was altogether out of touch with his wife’s projects; and she, on her part, had not, for many a month, admitted him fully into her confidence. Their relationship was marked, on his side, by mistrust, and on hers, by disdainful pity; and I can find no indication of that romantic passage, hand-in-hand to their doom, which has come to be regarded as the grand finale of their tragic tale. In its place, however, I would offer the spectacle of the lonely and courageous fight made by the little Queen against her fate, which must surely command the admiration of all men. Her husband having so signally failed her, the whole burden of the government of her country and of the organisation of her defence seems to have fallen upon her shoulders. Day and night she must have been harassed by fearful anxieties, and haunted by the thought of her probable doom; yet she conducted herself with undaunted courage, never deigning to consider the question of flight, and never once turning from the pathway of that personal and dynastic ambition which seems to me hardly able to be distinguished from her real duty to her country.
When Octavian was preparing in Syria, during the month of June B.C. 30, to invade Egypt, both Cleopatra and Antony attempted to open negotiations with him. They sent a certain Greek named Euphronius, who had been a tutor to one of the young princes, to the enemy bearing messages from them both. Cleopatra asked that, in return for her surrender, her son Cæsarion might be allowed to retain the throne of Egypt; but Antony prayed only that he might be allowed to live the life of a private man, either at Alexandria or else in Athens. With this embassy Cleopatra sent her crown, her sceptre, and her state-chariot, in the hope that Octavian would bestow them again upon her son, if not upon herself. The mission, however, was a partial failure. Octavian would not listen to any proposals in regard to Antony; but to Cleopatra he sent a secret message, conveyed by one of his freedmen, named Thyrsus, indicating that he was well-disposed towards her, and would be inclined to leave her in possession of Egypt, if only she would cause Antony to be put to death. Actually, Octavian had no intention of showing any particular mercy to Cleopatra, and his suggestions were intended to deceive her. He seems to have made up his mind how to act. Antony would have to be murdered or made to take his own life: it would be awkward to have to condemn him to death and formally to execute him. Cæsarion, his rival, would also have to meet with a violent end. Cleopatra ought to be captured alive so that he might display her in his Triumph, after which she would be sent into exile, while her country and its wealth would fall into his hands, the loot serving for the payment of his troops. In all his subsequent dealings with the Queen we shall observe his anxiety to take her alive, while towards Antony he will be seen to show a relentless hostility.