the other streets the
populace showed a foreign aspect. Instead of peaceful citizens, Roman
soldiers in full armour were met everywhere. Instead of Greek, Egyptian,
and Syrian faces, fair and dark visages of alien appearance were seen.

The city seemed transformed into a camp. Here he met a cohort of
fair-haired Germans; yonder another with locks of red whose home he did
not know; and again a vexil of Numidian or Pannonian horsemen.

At the Temple of the Dioscuri he was stopped. A Hispanian maniple had
just seized Antony's son Antyllus and, after a hasty court-martial,
killed him. His tutor, Theodotus, had betrayed him to the Romans, but the
infamous fellow was being led with bound hands after the corpse of the
hapless youth, because he was caught in the act of hiding in his girdle a
costly jewel which he had taken from his neck. Before his departure for
the island Gorgias heard that the scoundrel had been sentenced to
crucifixion.

At last he succeeded in forcing a passage to the tomb, which he found
surrounded on all sides by Roman lictors and the Scythian guards of the
city, who, however, permitted him, as the architect, to pass.

The numerous obstacles by which he had been delayed spared him from
becoming an eye-witness of the most terrible scenes of the tragedy which
had just ended; but he received a minute description from the Queen's
private secretary, a well-disposed Macedonian, who had accompanied the
wounded Antony, and with whom Gorgias had become intimately acquainted
during the building of the mausoleum.

Cleopatra had fled to the tomb as soon as the fortune of war turned in
favour of Octavianus. No one was permitted to accompany her except
Charmian and Iras, who had helped her close the heavy brazen door of the
massive building. The false report of her death, which had induced Antony
to put an end to his life, had perhaps arisen from the fact that the
Queen was literally in the tomb.

When, borne in the arms of his faithful servants, he reached the
mausoleum, mortally wounded, the Queen and her attendants vainly
endeavoured to open the heavy brazen portal. But Cleopatra ardently
longed to see her dying lover. She wished to have him near to render the
last services, assure him once more of her devotion, close his eyes, and,
if it was so ordered, die with him.

So she and her attendants had searched the place, and when Iras spoke of
the windlass which stood on the scaffold to raise the heavy brass pl