graciously condescended to grant.

Many of the princes and generals who had served under Antony came next
to beg the body of their commander, that they might give it an honorable
burial. These requests, however, Octavius would not accede to, saying
that he could not take the body away from Cleopatra. He, however, gave
Cleopatra leave to make such arrangements for the obsequies as she
thought fit, and allowed her to appropriate such sums of money from her
treasures for this purpose as she desired. Cleopatra accordingly made
the necessary arrangements, and superintended the execution of them;
not, however, with any degree of calmness and composure, but in a state,
on the contrary, of extreme agitation and distress. In fact, she had
been living now so long under the unlimited and unrestrained dominion of
caprice and passion, that reason was pretty effectually dethroned, and
all self-control was gone. She was now nearly forty years of age, and,
though traces of her inexpressible beauty remained, her bloom was faded,
and her countenance was wan with the effects of weeping, anxiety, and
despair. She was, in a word, both in body and mind, only the wreck and
ruin of what she once had been.

When the burial ceremonies were performed, and she found that all was
over--that Antony was forever gone, and she herself hopelessly and
irremediably ruined--she gave herself up to a perfect frensy of grief.
She beat her breast, and scratched and tore her flesh so dreadfully, in
the vain efforts which she made to kill herself, in the paroxysms of her
despair, that she was soon covered with contusions and wounds, which,
becoming inflamed and swelled, made her a shocking spectacle to see, and
threw her into a fever. She then conceived the idea of pretending to be
more sick than she was, and so refusing food and starving herself to
death. She attempted to execute this design. She rejected every medical
remedy that was offered her, and would not eat, and lived thus some days
without food. Octavius, to whom every thing relating to his captive was
minutely reported by her attendants, suspected her design. He was very
unwilling that she should die, having set his heart on exhibiting her to
the Roman people, on his return to the capital, in his triumphal
procession. He accordingly sent her orders, requiring that she should
submit to the treatment prescribed by the physician, and take her food,
enforcing these his commands with a certain threat which