people of Bologna, for joining
in the association with the rest of Italy to support his cause, because
they had, in former times, been under the protection of the family of the
Antonii. And not long afterwards he defeated him in a naval engagement
near Actium, which was prolonged to so late an hour, that, after the
victory, he was obliged to sleep on board his ship. From Actium he went
to the isle of Samoa to winter; but being alarmed with the accounts of a
mutiny amongst the soldiers he had selected from the main body of his
army sent to Brundisium after the victory, who insisted on their being
rewarded for their service and discharged, he returned to Italy. In his
passage thither, he encountered two violent storms, the first between the
promontories of Peloponnesus and Aetolia, and the other about the
Ceraunian mountains; in both which a part of his Liburnian squadron was
sunk, the spars and rigging of his own ship carried away, and the rudder
broken in pieces. He remained only twenty-seven days at Brundisium,
until the demands of the soldiers were settled, and then went, by way of
Asia and Syria, to Egypt, where laying siege to Alexandria, whither
Antony had fled with Cleopatra, he made himself master of it in a short
time. He drove Antony to kill himself, after he had used every effort to
obtain conditions of peace, and he saw his corpse [126]. Cleopatra he
anxiously wished to save for his triumph; and when she was supposed to
have been bit to death by an asp, he sent for the Psylli [127] to (82)
endeavour to suck out the poison. He allowed them to be buried together
in the same grave, and ordered a mausoleum, begun by themselves, to be
completed. The eldest of Antony's two sons by Fulvia he commanded to be
taken by force from the statue of Julius Caesar, to which he had fled,
after many fruitless supplications for his life, and put him to death.
The same fate attended Caesario, Cleopatra's son by Caesar, as he
pretended, who had fled for his life, but was retaken. The children
which Antony had by Cleopatra he saved, and brought up and cherished in a
manner suitable to their rank, just as if they had been his own
relations.

XVIII. At this time he had a desire to see the sarcophagus and body of
Alexander the Great, which, for that purpose, were taken out of the cell
in which they rested [128]; and after viewing them for some time, he paid
honours to the memory of that prince, by offering a golden crown, and