it would not have been possible to govern in Rome an empire so immeasurably enlarged in the Orient.  Everything therefore induces to the belief that this question was at least discussed in the coterie of the friends of Caesar; and it was a serious question, because in it the traditions, the aspirations, the interests of Italy were in irreconcilable conflict with a supreme necessity of state which one day or other would impose itself, if some unforeseen event did not intervene to solve it.

In the light of these considerations, the conduct of Antony becomes very clear.  The marriage at Antioch, by which he places Egypt under the Roman protectorate, is the decisive act of a policy that looks to transporting the centre of his government toward the Orient, to be able to accomplish more securely the conquest of Persia.  Antony, the heir of Caesar, the man who held the papers of the Dictator, who knew his hidden thoughts, who wished to complete the plans cut off by his death, proposes to conquer Persia; to conquer Persia, he must rely on the Oriental provinces that were the natural basis of operations for the great enterprise; among these, Antony must support himself above all on Egypt, the richest and most civilised and most able to supply him with the necessary funds, of which he was quite in want.  Therefore he married the Cleopatra whom, it was said at Rome, Caesar himself had wished to marry—­with whom, at any rate, Caesar had much dallied and intrigued.  Does not this juxtaposition of facts seem luminous to you?  In 36 B.C., Antony marries Cleopatra, as a few years before he had married Octavia, the sister of the future Augustus, for political reasons—­in order to be able to dispose of the political subsidies and finances of Egypt, for the conquest of Persia.  The conquest of Persia is the ultimate motive of all his policy, the supreme explanation of his every act.

However, little by little, this move, made on both sides from considerations of political interest, altered its character under the action of events, of time, through the personal influence of Antony and Cleopatra upon each other, and above all, the power that Cleopatra acquired over Antony:  here is truly the most important part of all this story.  Those who have read my history know that I have recounted hardly any of the anecdotes, more or less odd or entertaining, with which ancient writers describe the intimate life of Antony and Cleopatra, because it is impossible to discriminate in them the part that is fact from that which was invented or exaggerated by political enmity.  In history the difficulty of recognising the truth gradually increases as one passes from political to private life; because in politics the acts of men and of parties are always bound together by either causes or effects of which a certain number is always exactly known; private life, on the other hand, is, as it were, isolated and secret, almost invariably impenetrable.  What a great man of state does in his own house, his valet knows better than the historians of later times.