hrough the
vigour and ability with which Rome tried to thwart it; it is certain
that in the execution of the plan, Antony felt first in himself
the tragic discord between Orient and Occident that was so long to
lacerate the Empire; and of that tragic discord he was the first
victim. An enthusiastic admirer of Egypt, an ardent Hellenist, he is
lured by his great ambition to be king of Egypt, to renew the famous
line of the Ptolemies, to continue in the East the glory and the
traditions of Alexander the Great: but the far-away voice of his
fatherland still sounds in his ear; he recalls the city of his birth,
the Senate in which he rose so many times to speak, the _Forum_ of his
orations, the Comitia that elected him to magistracies; Octavia, the
gentlewoman he had wedded with the sacred rites of Latin monogamy; the
friends and soldiers with whom he had fought through so many countries
in so many wars; the foundation principles at home that ruled the
family, the state, morality, public and private.

Cleopatra's scheme, viewed from Alexandria, was an heroic undertaking,
almost divine, that might have lifted him and his scions to the
delights of Olympus; seen from Rome, by his childhood's friends,
by his comrades in arms, by that people of Italy who still so much
admired him, it was the shocking crime of faithlessness to his
country; we call it high treason. Therefore he hesitates long,
doubting most of all whether he can keep for the new Egyptian Empire
the Roman legions, made up largely of Italians, all commanded by
Italian officers. He does not know how to oppose a resolute _No_ to
the insistences of Cleopatra and loose himself from the fatal bond
that keeps him near her; he can not go back to live in Italy after
having dwelt as king in Alexandria. Moreover, he does not dare declare
his intentions to his Roman friends, fearing they will scatter; to the
soldiers, fearing they will revolt; to Italy, fearing her judgment of
him as a traitor; and so, little by little, he entangles himself
in the crooked policy, full of prevarications, of expedients, of
subterfuges, of one mistake upon another, that leads him to Actium.

I think I have shown that Antony succumbed in the famous war not
because, mad with love, he abandoned the command in the midst of the
battle, but because his armies revolted and abandoned him when they
understood what he had not dared declare to them openly: that he
meant to dismember the Empire of Rome to c