n Asia, and resumed
her sway. The general of one hundred battles became effeminated by his
voluptuous dalliance, so that his Parthian campaign was a failure, even
though he led an army of one hundred thousand men. He was obliged to
retreat, and his retreat was disastrous. It was while he was planning
another campaign that Octavia, his wife, and the sister of his rival,--a
woman who held the most dignified situation in the world,--brought to his
camp both money and troops, and hoped to allay the jealousies of her
husband, and secure peace between him and her brother. But Antonius
heartlessly refused to see this noble-minded woman, while he gave
provinces to Cleopatra. At Alexandria this abandoned profligate plunged,
with his paramour, into every excess of extravagant debauchery, while she
who enslaved him only dreamed of empire and domination. She may have loved
him, but she loved power more than she did debauchery. Her intellectual
accomplishments were equal to her personal fascinations, and while she
beguiled the sensual Roman with costly banquets, her eye was steadily
directed to the establishment of her Egyptian throne.

The rupture which Octavia sought to prevent between her brother and her
husband--for, with the rarest magnanimity she still adhered to him in spite
of his infatuated love for Cleopatra--at last took place, when Octavius was
triumphant over Sextus, and Antonius was unsuccessful in the distant East.
Octavius declared war against the queen of Egypt, and Antonius divorced
Octavia. Throughout the winter of B.C. 31, both parties prepared for the
inevitable conflict, for Rome now could have but one master. The fate of
the empire was to be settled, not by land forces, but a naval battle, and
that was fought at Actium, not now with equal forces, for those of
Antonius had been weakened by desertions. Moreover, he rejected the advice
of his ablest generals, and put himself under the guidance of his
mistress, while Octavius listened to the counsels of Agrippa.

The battle had scarcely begun before Cleopatra fled, followed by Antonius.
The destruction of the Antonian fleet was the consequence. This battle,
B.C. 31, gave the empire of the world to Octavius, and Antonius fled to
Alexandria with the woman who had ruined him. And it was well that the
empire fell into the hands of a politic and profound statesman, who sought
to consolidate it and preserve its peace, rather than into those of a
debauched general, with