“regions Caesar never knew.”

With none of Anthony’s soldiership, he had easily brought Anthony down.—­Why did Cleopatra lose Actium for Anthony?

We face the almost inexplicable again in the whole story of Octavian’s dealings with Cleopatra.  She is one of the characters history has most venomously lied about.  Mr. Wiegand has shown some part of the truth about her in his biography; but I do not think he has solved the whole problem; for he takes the easy road of making Octavian a monster.  Now Augustus, beyond any question, was one of the most beneficent forces that ever appeared in history; and no monster can be turned, by the mere circumstance of success achieved, into that.  Cleopatra had made a bid to solve the world-problem on an Egyptian basis:  first through Caesar, then through Anthony.  We may dismiss the idea that she was involved in passionate attachments; she had a grand game to play, with World-stakes at issue.  The problem was not to be solved through Caesar, and it was not to be solved through Anthony; but it had been solved by Octavian.  There was nothing more for her to do, but step aside and be no hindrance to the man who 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.