he reached Rome his wife Fulvia was dead; and, wishing to strengthen his
party, he at once married Octavia, the sister of Octavianus and widow of
Marcellus.

In that year Herod passed through Egypt on his way to Rome to claim
Judaea as his kingdom. He came through Arabia to Pelusium, and thence
he sailed to Alexandria. Cleopatra, who wanted his services, gave him
honourable entertainment in her capital, and made him great offers in
order to persuade him to take the command of her army. But the Jewish
prince saw that a kingdom was to be gained by offering his services
to Antony and Octavianus; and he went on to Rome. There through the
friendship of Antony he was declared King of Judaea by the senate. He
then returned to Syria to collect an army and to win the kingdom which
had been granted to him; and by the help of Sosius, Antony's lieutenant,
he had conquered Jerusalem when the war broke out between Antony and
Octavianus.

In the next year (B.C. 38) Antony was himself in Syria, carrying on the
war which ended with the battle of Actium; and he sent to Alexandria to
beg Cleopatra to join him there. On her coming, he made her perhaps the
largest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress: he gave her the wide
provinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part of
Judaea, and part of Arabia Nabataea. These large gifts only made her ask
for more, and she begged him to put to death Herod, King of Judaea, and
Malichus, King of Arabia Nabataea, the former of whom had advised Antony
to break through the disgraceful ties which bound him to Cleopatra, as
the only means of saving himself from being crushed by the rising power
of Octavianus. She asked to have the whole of Arabia and Judaea given to
her. But Antony had not so far forgotten himself as to yield to these
commands; and he only gave her the balsam country around Jericho, and
a rent-charge of two hundred talents, or one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, a year, on the revenues of Judaea. On receiving this large
addition to her kingdom, and perhaps in honour of Antony, who had then
lost all power in Italy but was the real king of Egypt and its Greek
provinces, Cleopatra began to count the years of her reign afresh: what
was really the sixteenth of her reign, and had been called the sixteenth
of Ptolemy, her elder brother, she called the first of her own reign,
and she reckoned them in the same way till her death. Cleopatra had
accompanied Antony on his e