; but he found he was
altogether beaten in both, and was so well convinced of it that he was
himself the first to jest and mock at his poverty of wit and his rustic
awkwardness. She, perceiving that his raillery was broad and gross and
savored more of the soldier than the courtier, rejoined in the same
taste, and fell into it at once, without any sort of reluctance or
reserve, for her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so
remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could
see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if
you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her person,
joining with the charm of her conversation and the character that
attended all she said or did, was something bewitching. It was a
pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an
instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another;
so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an
interpreter. To most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians,
troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians, and many
others, whose language she had learned;[73] which was all the more
surprising, because most of the kings her predecessors scarcely gave
themselves the trouble to acquire the Egyptian tongue, and several of
them quite abandoned the Macedonian."

[Footnote 73: We have here the usual lies of courtiers.]

"Antony was so captivated by her that, while Fulvia, his wife,
maintained his quarrels in Rome against Caesar by actual force of arms,
and the Parthian troops, commanded by Labienus--the King's generals
having made him commander-in-chief--were assembled in Mesopotamia, and
ready to enter Syria, he could yet suffer himself to be carried away by
her to Alexandria, there to keep holiday, like a boy, in play and
diversion, squandering and fooling away in enjoyments that most costly,
as Antiphon says, of all valuables, time. They had a sort of company, to
which they gave a particular name, calling it that of the 'Inimitable
Livers.' The members entertained one another daily in turn, with an
extravagance of expenditure beyond measure or belief. Philotas, a
physician of Amphissa, who was at that time a student of medicine in
Alexandria, used to tell my grandfather Lamprias that, having some
acquaintance with one of the royal cooks, he was invited by him, being a
young man, to come and see the sumptuous preparations for din