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Mark Antony lived so much on the surface of things that he never imagined there was a strong party pushing the “Young Augustus” forward.

Finally Antony became impatient with the importuning young man, and threatened to send him on his way with a guard at his heels to see that he did not return.

At once a storm broke over the head of Antony. It came from a seemingly clear sky–Antony had to flee, not Octavius.

The soldiers of the Great Caesar had been remembered in his will with seventy-five drachmas to every man, and the will must stand or fall as an entirety. Caesar had provided that Octavius should be his successor–this will must be respected. Cicero was the man who made the argument. The army was with the will of the dead man, rather than with the ambition of the living.

Antony fled, but gathered a goodly army as he went, intending to return.

After some months of hard times passion cooled, and Antony, Octavius and Lepidus, the chief general of Octavius, met in the field for consultation. Swayed by the eloquence of Antony, who was still full of the precedents of the Great Caesar, a Triumvirate was formed, and Antony, Octavius and Lepidus coolly sat down to divide the world between them.

One strong argument that Antony used for the necessity of this partnership was that Brutus and Cassius were just across in Macedonia, waiting and watching for the time when civil war would so weaken Rome that they could step in and claim their own.

Brutus and his fellow conspirators must be punished.

In two years from that time, they had performed their murderous deed; Cassius was killed at his own request by his servant, and Brutus had fallen on his sword to escape the sword of Mark Antony.

In the stress of defeat and impending calamity, Mark Antony was a great man; he could endure anything but success.

But now there were no more enemies to conquer: unlike Caesar the Great he was no scholar, so books were not a solace; to build up and beautify a great State did not occur to him. His camp was turned into a place of mad riot and disorder. Harpers, dancers, buffoons and all the sodden splendor of the East made the nights echo with “shouts, sacrifices, songs and groans.”

When Antony entered Ephesus the women went out to meet him in the undress of bacchanals, while troops of naked boys representing cupids, and men clothed like satyrs danced at the head of the procession. Everywhere were ivy crowns, spears wreathed with green, and harps, flutes, pipes, and human voices sang songs of praise to the great god Bacchus–for such Antony liked to be called.

Antony knew that between Cleopatra and Caesar there had been a tender love. All the world that Caesar ruled, Antony now ruled–or thought he did. In the intoxication of success he, too, would rule the heart that the great Caesar had ruled. He would rule this proud heart or he would crush it beneath his heel.

He dispatched Dellius, his trusted secretary, to Alexandria, summoning the Queen to meet him at Cilicia, and give answer as to why she had given succor to the army of Cassius.

The charge was preposterous, and if sincere, shows the drunken condition of Antony’s mind. Cleopatra loved Caesar–he was to her the King of Kings, the one supreme and god-like man of earth. Her studious and splendid mind had matched his own; this cold, scholarly man of fifty-two had been her mate–the lover of her soul. Scarcely five short years before, she had attended him on his journey as he went away, and there on the banks of the Nile as they parted, her unborn babe responded to the stress of parting, no less than she.

Afterward she had followed him to Rome that he might see his son, Caesario.

She was in Rome when Brutus and Cassius struck their fatal blows, and had fled, disguised, her baby in her arms–refusing to trust the precious life in the hands of hirelings.