The capture of the queen being reported to Octavius, he appointed an officer to take her into close custody.  This officer was charged to treat her with all possible courtesy, but to keep a close and constant watch over her, and particularly to guard against allowing her any possible means or opportunity for self-destruction.

In the mean time, Octavius took formal possession of the city, marching in at the head of his troops with the most imposing pomp and parade.  A chair of state, magnificently decorated, was set up for him on a high elevation in a public square; and here he sat, with circles of guards around him, while the people of the city, assembled before him in the dress of suppliants, and kneeling upon the pavement, begged his forgiveness, and implore him to spare the city.  These petitions the great conqueror graciously condescended to grant.

Many of the princes and generals who had served under Antony came next to beg the body of their commander, that they might give it an honorable burial.  These requests, however, Octavius would not accede to, saying that he could not take the body away from Cleopatra.  He, however, gave Cleopatra leave to make such arrangements for the obsequies as she thought fit, and allowed her to appropriate such sums of money from her treasures for this purpose as she desired.  Cleopatra accordingly made the necessary arrangements, and superintended the execution of them; not, however, with any degree of calmness and composure, but in a state, on the contrary, of extreme agitation and distress.  In fact, she had been living now so long under the unlimited and unrestrained dominion of caprice and passion, that reason was pretty effectually dethroned, and all self-control was gone.  She was now nearly forty years of age, and, though traces of her inexpressible beauty remained, her bloom was faded, and her countenance was wan with the effects of weeping, anxiety, and despair.  She was, in a word, both in body and mind, only the wreck and ruin of what she once had been.

When the burial ceremonies were performed, and she found that all was over—­that Antony was forever gone, and she herself hopelessly and irremediably ruined—­she gave herself up to a perfect frensy of grief.  She beat her breast, and scratched and tore her flesh so dreadfully, in the vain efforts which she made to kill herself, in the paroxysms of her despair, that she was soon covered with contusions and wounds, which, becoming inflamed and swelled, made her a shocking spectacle to see, and threw her into a fever.  She then conceived the idea of pretending to be more sick than she was, and so refusing food and starving herself to death.  She attempted to execute this design.  She rejected every medical remedy that was offered her, and would not eat, and lived thus some days without food.  Octavius, to whom every thing relating to his captive was minutely reported by her attendants, suspected her design.  He was very unwilling that she should die, having