The tidings of her death were borne to Antony.  It changed his anger to grief and despair.  His mind, in fact, was now wholly lost to all balance and control, and it passed from the dominion of one stormy passion to another with the most capricious facility.  He cried out with the most bitter expressions of sorrow, mourning, he said, not so much Cleopatra’s death, for he should soon follow and join her, as the fact that she had proved herself so superior to him in courage at last, in having thus anticipated him in the work of self-destruction.

He was at this time in one of the chambers of the palace, whither he had fled in despair, and was standing by a fire, for the morning was cold.  He had a favorite servant named Eros, whom he greatly trusted, and whom he had made to take an oath long before, that whenever it should become necessary for him to die, Eros should kill him.  This Eros he now called to him, and telling him that the time was come, ordered him to take the sword and strike the blow.

Eros took the sword while Antony stood up before him.  Eros turned his head aside as if wishing that his eyes should not see the deed which his hands were about to perform.  Instead, however, of piercing his master with it, he plunged it into his own breast, fell down at Antony’s feet, and died.

Antony gazed a moment at the shocking spectacle, and then said, “I thank thee for this, noble Eros.  Thou hast set me an example.  I must do for myself what thou couldst not do for me.”  So saying, he took the sword from his servant’s hands, plunged it into his body, and staggering to a little bed that was near, fell over upon it in a swoon.  He had received a mortal wound.

The pressure, however, which was produced by the position in which he lay upon the bed, stanched the wound a little, and stopped the flow of blood.  Antony came presently to himself again, and then began to beg and implore those around him to take the sword and put him out of his misery.  But no one would do it.  He lay for a time suffering great pain, and moaning incessantly, until, at length, an officer came into the apartment and told him that the story which he had heard of Cleopatra’s death was not true; that she was still alive, shut up in her monument, and that she desired to see him there.  This intelligence was the source of new excitement and agitation.  Antony implored the by-standers to carry him to Cleopatra, that he might see her once more before he died.  They shrank from the attempt; but, after some hesitation and delay, they concluded to undertake to remove him.  So, taking him in their arms, they bore him along, faint and dying, and marking their track with his blood, toward the tomb.