had done that work for the Gods that she had tried and been
unable to do. So she sailed away from Actium.

Julius Caesar in his day had married her; and young Caesarion
their son was his heir by Egyptian, but not by Roman, law. When,
in the days of Caesar's dictatorship, she brought the boy to
Rome, Caesar refused to recognise her as his wife, or to do the
right thing by Caesarion. To do either would have endangered his
position in Rome; where by that time he had another wife, the
fourth or fifth in the series. He feared the Romans; and they
feared Egypt and its Queen. It seemed very probably at that time
that the headship of the world might pass to Egypt; which
was still a sovereign power, and immensely rich, and highly
populated, and a compact kingdom;--whereas the Roman state was
everywhere ill-defined, tenebrous, and falling to pieces. At
this distance it is hard to see in Egypt anything of strength or
morale that would have enable it to settle the world's affairs;
as hard, indeed, as it is to see anything of the kind in Rome.
But Rome was haunted with the bogey idea; and terribly angry,
aftewards, with Anthony for his Egyptian exploits; and hugely
relieved when Actium put an end to the Egyptian peril. Egypt, it
was thought, if nothing else, might have starved Italy into
submission. But in truth the cycles were all against it:
Cleopatra was the only Egyptian that counted,--the lonely
Spacious Soul incarnate there.

When Octavian reached Alexandria, all he did was to refuse to be
influenced by the queen's wonderfully magnetic personality. He
appears to me to have been uncertain how to act: to have been
waiting for clear guidance from the source whence all his
guidance came. He also seems to have tried to keep her from
committing suicide. It is explained commonly on the supposition
that he intended she should appear in his triumph in Rome; and
that she killed herself to escape that humiliation. I think it
is one of those things whose explanation rests in the hands of
the Gods, and is not known to men. You may have a mass of
evidence, that makes all humanity certain on some point; and yet
the Gods, who have witnessed the realities of the thing, may know
that those realities were quite different.

Then her two elder children were killed; and no one has
suggested, so far as I know, that it was not by Octavians's
orders. It is easy, even, to supply him with a motive for it;
one in keeping with accept