e booty was divided
between Octavius, Lepidus, and Marc Antony.

Their triumvirate--duumvirate rather, Lepidus was nobody--matrimony
consolidated. Octavius married a relative of Antony and Antony married
Octavius' sister. Then the world was apportioned. Octavius got the
Occident, Antony the Orient. Rome became the capital of the one,
Alexandria that of the other. At the time Alexandria was Rome's rival and
superior. Rome, unsightly still with the atrocities of the Tarquins, had
neither art nor commerce. These things were regarded as the occupations of
slaves. Alexandria, purely Greek, very fair, opulent, and teeming, was the
universal centre of both, of learning too, of debauchery as well--elements
which its queen, a viper of the Nile, personified.

Before going there Antony made and unmade a dozen kings. Then, presently,
at Tarsus he ordered Cleopatra to come to him. Indolently, his subject
obeyed.

Caesar claimed descent from Venus. Antony's tutelary god was Bacchus, but
he claimed descent from Hercules, whom in size and strength he resembled.
The strength was not intellectual. He was an understudy of genius, a
soldier of limited intelligence, who tried to imitate Caesar and failed to
understand him, a big barbarian boy, by accident satrap and god.

At Rome he had seen Cleopatra. Whether she had noticed him is uncertain.
But the gilded galley with the purple sails, its silver oars, its canopy
of enchantments in which she went to him at Tarsus, has been told and
retold, sung and painted.

At the approach of Isis, the Tarsians crowded the shore. Bacchus, deserted
on his throne, sent an officer to fetch her to him. Cleopatra insisted
that he come to her. Antony, amused at the impertinence, complied. The
infinite variety of this woman, that made her a suite of surprises,
instantly enthralled him. From that moment he was hers, a lion in leash,
led captive into Alexandria, where, initiated by her into the inimitable
life, probably into the refinements of the savoir-vivre as well, Bacchus
developed into Osiris, while Isis transformed herself anew. She drank
with him, fished with him, hunted with him, drilled with him, played
tricks on him, and, at night, in slave's dress, romped with him in
Rhakotis--a local slum--broke windows, beat the watch, captivating the
captive wholly.[20]

Where she had failed with Caesar she determined to succeed with him, and
would have succeeded, had Antony been Caesar. Octavius was not Caes