Текст книги "Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1"

Автор книги: Isaac Asimov

 
// beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle
The heart of Antony, Octavia is
A blessed lottery to him.
 

—Act II, scene ii, lines 247-49

 
Thy daemon …
 

Antony pledges himself to Octavia, but on leaving her and Octavius Caesar, he encounters the soothsayer, who has apparently accompanied his train to Italy. Antony asks whose fortune will rise higher, his own or Octavius Caesar's. The soothsayer answers:

 
Caesar's.
Therefore,
O Antony, stay not by his side.
Thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee, is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
Where Caesar's is not. But near him thy angel
Becomes afeared, as being o'erpow'red: therefore
Make space enough between you.
 

—Act II, scene iii, lines 18-24

The Greeks came to believe that with each individual was associated a divine spirit through which the influence of the gods could make itself felt. It was when this influence was most strongly felt that a man could attain heights otherwise impossible to him. Where a particular spirit was most continually effective, the man himself would be of unusual power and ability. In some cases, this belief was elaborated to the point where each individual was thought to have two such spirits, one for good and one for evil, the two continually fighting for mastery.

To the Greeks, such a spirit was a "daimon" (meaning "divinity") and in the Latin spelling this became "daemon." To the later Christians these daemons, being of pagan origin, could only be evil, and therefore we get our present "demon," meaning an evil spirit However, the Greek notion lives on with but a change of name, and. we still speak of guardian angels and we sometimes even envisage an individual as being influenced by his better or worse nature.

The soothsayer is saying that though Octavius Caesar's daemon is inferior to Antony's it can nevertheless win over the latter. In present parlance, we might say that Octavius Caesar plays in luck whenever he encounters Mark Antony. And yet this is hard to accept. It wasn't luck that kept Octavius Caesar on top through all a long life, but ability.

The Latin equivalent, by the way, of the Greek daimon was "genius" (see page I-118).

 
I'th'East…
 

The soothsayer, in warning Antony to stay far away from Octavius Caesar, is but telling Antony what he wants to hear. (This is the supreme art of the soothsayer in all ages and places.) Antony therefore says, after the soothsayer leaves:

 
I will to Egypt:
And though I make this marriage for my peace,
I'th'East my pleasure lies.
 

—Act II, scene iii, lines 39-4la

Eventually, yes, but right now he can't. There are problems he must attend to and until those are resolved, he must remain married to Octavia and must stay out of Egypt

And some of the problems are in the East and won't wait for his personal presence. His general, Ventidius, comes on scene, and Antony says:

 
O, come, Ventidius,
You must to Parthia. Your commission's ready:
Follow me, and receive't.
 

—Act II, scene iii, lines 41b-43

 
… be at Mount
 

If the Parthians must be dealt with, so must Sextus Pompeius. He was the nearer and the more immediate menace.

The new agreement between the triumvirs and, in particular, Antony's betrayal of his earlier moves toward an alliance had embittered Sextus, and he now escalated his own offensive. In the whiter of 40-39 b.c. Sextus' hand about Rome's throat tightened. Virtually no food entered the capital city and famine threatened. When the triumvirs tried to calm the populace, they were stoned.

They had no choice but to try to come to an agreement with Sextus and to allow him to enter the combine. This would make four men (a quad-rumvirate) in place of three. To discuss this, the triumvirs agreed to come to Misenum, Sextus' stronghold, to confer with him.

Shakespeare skips over the hard winter, passing directly from Antony's marriage to Octavia to the moment when the triumvirs are leaving for Misenum. Lepidus, Maecenas, and Agrippa come on scene in a whirlwind of activity, and Maecenas says:

 
We shall
As I conceive the journey, be at
Mount Before you, Lepidus.
 

—Act II, scene iv, lines 5-7

The "Mount" is the Misenum promontory where the meeting with Sextus will take place.

 
… his sword Phillipan
 

Back in Alexandria during that same whiter, Cleopatra spends a moody, restless time. She longs for the period of happiness she had experienced with Antony and says, in reminiscence, to Charmian:

 
/ laughed him out of patience; and that night
I laughed him into patience; and next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;
Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
I wore his sword Philippan.
 

—Act II, scene v, lines 19-23

Cleopatra may laugh with delight as she remembers, but the picture of Antony drunk by midafternoon (the ninth hour of a twelve-hour day would be about 3 p.m.) and snoring red-faced while wearing women's clothes was undoubtedly the sort of thing Octavian propaganda was scattering all over Rome to the scandal of all good citizens.

It was the fashion of warriors in medieval legend to give names to their swords. The best-known example is that of King Arthur's Excalibur. Mark Antony's sword, Philippan, is named for the Battle of Philippi– Antony's greatest victory.

 
… a Fury crowned with snakes
 

Clearly, Cleopatra has not heard the news about Octavia and a frightened Messenger comes in to deliver it.

The Messenger begins by assuring Cleopatra that Antony is well, but he hesitates and the Queen senses that something is wrong. Yet he does not seem sufficiently distraught to be bringing news of death at that. She says to him, concerning his news:

 
// not well,
Thou shouldst come like a
Fury crowned with snakes,
 

—Act II, scene v, lines 39-40

The Greeks included in their myths three terrible goddesses, the Erinyes ("angry ones"), whose task it was to pursue and madden those who were guilty of particularly terrible crimes, such as the slaying of close kinsmen. They were depicted and described as so ferocious in appearance that the mere sight was maddening. They carried snakes in their hands, or else their hair was made up of living, writhing snakes. (Perhaps they symbolized the raging of conscience.)

To avoid offending them, the Greeks sometimes spoke of them by the euphemistic term "Eumenides" ("the kindly ones"). Aeschylus wrote a powerful play by that name, dealing with part of the Agamemnon myth. Agamemnon (see page I-89) is killed by his wife Clytemnestra on his return from Troy. To avenge his father, Agamemnon's son, Orestes, kills his mother and is pursued by the Erinyes in consequence.

The Romans called these fell goddesses "Furiae," from their word for raging madness, and the word is "Furies" in English.

 
… the feature of Octavia …
 

The Messenger finally blurts out the news of Antony's marriage to Octavia. Cleopatra falls into a towering rage and beats the Messenger, shouting horrible imprecations upon him:

 
Hence,
Horrible villain! Or I'll spurn thine eyes
Like balls before me: I'll unhair thy head,
Thou shalt be whipped with wire and stewed in brine,
Smarting in ling'ring pickle.
 

—Act II, scene v, lines 62-66

The whole scene, properly done, shows Cleopatra in a spitting, fantastic fury, and one can only feel that such rage would make Cleopatra the more attractive to Antony ("vilest things become themselves in her"). Compared with that, the gentle and modest Octavia must have seemed utterly pallid and insipid to Antony, in bed as well as out.

(I cannot resist repeating the story of the two respectable English matrons who were viewing a showing of Antony and Cleopatra a century ago, in the reign of Queen Victoria. When this scene passed its shattering course upon the stage, one of the matrons turned to the other and whispered in a most shocked manner: "How different from the home life of our own dear Queen!")

But Cleopatra's rage does not entirely wipe out her shrewdness. She questions the trembling Messenger yet again to make sure there is no possibility of mistake and says to him bitterly when the news is confirmed again and yet again:

 
Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me
Thou wouldst appear most ugly.
 

—Act II, scene v, lines 96-97

Narcissus is, of course, the lovely youth, irresistible to women, who fell in love with his own reflection (see page I-10).

With that settled, and the Messenger retiring, Cleopatra ponders her next step. She orders a courtier to go after the Messenger and question him further:

 
Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him
Report the feature of Octavia; her years,
Her inclination, let him not leave out
The color of her hair.
 

—Act II, scene v, lines 111-14

 
Thou dost o'ercount me…
 

The scene shifts to Misenum, where the triumvirs meet with Sextus. There is an exchange of hostages, threats, harsh language from either side.

Mark Antony tells Sextus that on land the triumvirs "o'ercount" (outnumber) him. Sextus responds sardonically:

 
At land indeed
Thou dost o'ercount me of my father's house:
 

—Act II, scene vi, lines 26-27

Here the word "o'ercount" is used in an alternate sense, meaning "cheat." The reference is to a house Antony had bought of Pompey the Great once and had then never paid for, since the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar intervened. Civil wars always end in enrichment for the victors at the expense of the losers.

 
… wheat to Rome
 

Octavius Caesar, however, coldly keeps his temper, and his steady urging of the real point causes Sextus Pompeius to bring up a suggested compromise. Sextus says:

 
You have made me offer
Of Sicily, Sardinia; and I must
Rid all the sea of pirates; then, to send
Measures of wheat to Rome;
 

—Act II, scene vi, lines 34-37

In actual fact, the offer was rather more generous than that. Sextus Pompeius already had Sicily, but to it was added not only Sardinia, but Corsica also, and these three large islands half encircle Italy. In addition, since all these were taken from Octavius Caesar's share of the realm, Sextus was to have Greece as well, so that Antony had to pocket a share of the loss.

In return for becoming the fourth man of the group, Sextus would have to take his hand from Rome's throat.

 
… Apollodorus carried
 

Sextus Pompeius accepts the compromise and all the parties fall to shaking hands and expressing affection, though Antony, as always, finds he must be the target of a continual lewd curiosity on the part of the others concerning Cleopatra.

Sextus brings up the famous story of how Cleopatra first met Julius Caesar. He says:

 
And I have heard Apollodorus carried-
 

—Act II, scene vi, line 68

It had been Apollodorus, a Sicilian Greek, who had delivered the rolled-up carpet containing Cleopatra (possibly nude) to Julius Caesar. Clearly, to bring up tales of Cleopatra's earlier amours could scarcely be calculated to please Antony, and Enobarbus manages to quiet Sextus and head him off.

 
Thy father, Pompey. ..
 

Not everyone is satisfied. When the chief characters leave, Menas, one of Sextus' captains, remains behind with Enobarbus. Menas mutters to himself:

 
Thy father, Pompey, would ne'er have made this treaty.
 

—Act II, scene vi, lines 82-83

The implication is that Sextus' father, Pompey the Great, would have had too much military and political sense to give up the trump card (starving Rome) for so little, but would have driven a much harder bargain. In this respect, Menas was being more sentimental than accurate, for Pompey the Great had been a poor politician and would undoubtedly have agreed to such a treaty or a worse one.

Later, Menas is frank enough to put the matter even more strongly to Enobarbus:

 
For my part, I am sorry it is turned to a drinking.
Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.
 

—Act II, scene vi, lines 104-5

The accuracy of Menas' judgment would make itself evident soon enough.

 
… holy, cold and still. ..
 

But then Menas too starts probing for information about Cleopatra and is thunderstruck when Enobarbus tells him Antony is married to Octavia. Surely, this can only be a marriage of convenience.

Enobarbus agrees:

 
I think so, too. But you shall find the band that seems to tie
their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity:
Octavia is of a holy, cold and still conversation.
 

—Act II, scene vi, lines 120-23

Clearly, Enobarbus doesn't think this is the sort of thing that will hold a man like Antony. He says, confidently:

 
He will to his Egyptian dish again.
 

—Act II, scene vi, line 126

 
… the flow o'th'Nile
 

 The quadrumvirs are on Sextus' galley off Misenum, having a grand time, and are hilarious over their wine. Antony is in his element; he can carry his liquor better than any of them and, as an expert on Egypt, a strange and exotic land, he can regale the others with wonders. He says:

 
Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o'th'Nile
By certain scales i'th'pyramid. They know
By th'height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth
Or foison [plenty] follow. The higher Nilus swells,
The more it promises…
 

—Act II, scene vii, lines 17-21

Antony is correct here. The Egyptian priesthood kept a careful watch on the changes in the level of the Nile and through long records had learned to forecast from early variations what the final flood level would be and from that what the likelihood of a particularly poor harvest might be. Such studies had also made the Egyptians aware of the 365-day cycle of the seasons very early in their history and had given them an accurate solar calendar, while other civilizations of the time had struggled with the much more complicated lunar calendars.

The pyramids were not, however, used as scales for the level of the Nile. Throughout history, people have wondered at the uses of the pyramids and have been reluctant to accept the fact that those monstrous piles were merely elaborate tombs. They have been accused of every other purpose but that, and some moderns have considered them the repository of the wisdom of the ages, a means of forecasting the future, and an early method of launching spaceships. But they are tombs, just the same, and nothing more.

 
Your serpent of Egypt.. .
 

Lepidus is gloriously drunk; drunk enough to wish to shine as an Egyptian authority himself. He says with enormous gravity:

 
Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud
by the opera tion of your sun; so is your crocodile.
 

—Act II, scene vii, lines 26-28

This represents the ancient belief in "spontaneous generation," the thought that unwanted or noxious species of plants or animals arise of themselves from dead or decaying matter. (How else explain the prevalence of these species despite human efforts to wipe them out.)

Antony humors the drunken Lepidus by agreeing with him, but it is quite certain that the Egyptians knew that serpents and crocodiles developed from eggs laid by the adult female. The eggs were quite large enough to see.

The situation was less certain with creatures that laid eggs small enough to overlook. It was not until half a century after Shakespeare's death that it was shown that maggots did not arise from dead meat, but from tiny eggs laid on that dead meat by flies. And it wasn't till the mid-nineteenth century that it was shown that microscopic creatures did not arise from dead matter but only from other living microscopic creatures.

Lepidus goes on to deliver a piece of egregious patronization. He says:

 
… I have heard the Ptolemies' pyramises
are very goodly things; without contradiction
I have heard that.
 

—Act II, scene vii, lines 35-37

Of course, they were not the Ptolemies' pyramises (or pyramids, as we would say) except in the sense that they were to be found in the land ruled by them. They were built by native Egyptian Pharaohs who ruled more than two thousand years before the first Ptolemy mounted the Egyptian throne. They were as ancient to the Ptolemies as the Ptolemies are to us.

And "goodly things"? Yes indeed. Considering the technology of the tune, the pyramids are the most colossal labors of man the planet has seen, with the possible exception of the Great Wall of China. They impress us now even in their rains as mere piles of huge granite blocks. When they were new, they had white limestone facings that gleamed smoothly and brightly in the sun and were surrounded by enormous temple complexes.

The Greeks, who notoriously admired no culture but their own, humbly included these non-Greek structures among their Seven Wonders of the World; and of all the Seven Wonders only the pyramids still remain.

Antony cannot resist poking fun at the besotted Lepidus, describing the crocodile in grave but non-informative phrases, ending in the portentous:

 
… and the tears of it are wet.
 

—Act II, scene vii, line 51

Any mention of crocodiles would irresistibly bring tears to mind, for the most famous (but thoroughly untrue) legend concerning the crocodile is that it sheds tears over its prey while swallowing it. Hence the expression "crocodile tears" for hypocritical sorrow.

 
… lord of all the world
 

Menas, meanwhile, has been whispering to Sextus Pompeius and pulling at his sleeve. Sextus, who is enjoying the nonsense at the table, is unwilling to leave and follows Menas only with reluctance.

Once to one side, Menas whispers:

 
Wilt thou be lord of all the world?
 

—Act II, scene vii, line 63

The half-drunken Sextus stares in surprise and Menas is forced to explain:

 
These three world-sharers, these competitors,
Are in thy vessel. Let me cut the cable;
And when we are put off, fall to their throats.
All there is thine.
 

—Act II, scene vii, lines 72-75

Sextus, sobered by the suggestion, is tempted, but then says, sorrowfully:

 
Ah, this thou shouldst have done,
And not have spoke on't.
In me 'tis villainy,
In thee't had been good service.
 

—Act II, scene vii, lines 75-77

This story is told by Plutarch and yet I wonder if it can be true. It is conceivable that the thought would have occurred to Menas and that

Sextus might have shrunk from the perfidiousness of the deed. But is it conceivable that the triumvirs would have placed themselves in Sextus' grasp without taking precautions against just such an act? If Lepidus were too stupid to foresee the possibility and Antony too careless, I would not believe it of Octavius. He would not step into the lion's jaw without some sort of rod so placed as to hold that jaw firmly open.

However, the story is a good one, true or false, and I would hate to lose it, particularly since it displays so neatly the exact moment when Sextus Pompeius reached and passed the peak of his power.

 
… my brave emperor
 

Octavius Caesar is the only one who is reluctant to drink. He cannot carry his liquor well and he does not enjoy losing his iron control of himself. The rough Enobarbus says to him with some irony:

 
Ha, my brave emperor!
Shall we dance now the
Egyptian bacchanals
And celebrate our drink?
 

—Act II, scene vii, lines 105-7

The word "emperor" is from the Latin imperator, meaning "commander." It was a title given a successful general by his troops. It was one of the titles granted Julius Caesar by the Senate. He was not merely one of many imperators; he was the imperator of the Roman armies as a whole– the generalissimo.

Octavius Caesar eventually received the title too, and since control of the army was, at bottom, the secret of the control of the Roman state, his position as "Roman Imperator" was crucial. Through distortion we know the title as "Roman Emperor," and the state became the "Roman Empire."

Enobarbus uses the term "emperor" in its less exalted but more accurate aspect as "commander." Both Octavius Caesar and Mark Antony are referred to now and then throughout the play as "emperor."

 
… darting Parthia…
 

While Sextus Pompeius is being alcoholically neutralized in the West, Parthia is being defeated outright in the East. Leaving Antony in Italy, Ventidius sailed to Asia Minor, where in 39 b.c. he drove the Roman renegade Labienus into the eastern mountains and there defeated and killed him.

The Parthian army, under Pacorus, the son of King Orodes, still occupied Syria and Judea, however. In 38 b.c. Ventidius took his army to Syria and defeated the Parthians in three separate battles (and it was only after this was done that Herod could take his throne in Jerusalem).

In the last of the three victories over Parthia, Pacorus himself was slain. That last battle was fought (according to the story) on the fifteenth anniversary of the fateful day on which Crassus had lost his army at the Battle of Carrhae.

The third act opens, then, a year after the gay celebration at Misenum, with Ventidius returning in triumph from these wars. The dead body of the Parthian prince is being carried along with the army and Ventidius says:

 
Now, darting Parthia, art thou struck; and now
Pleased fortune does of Marcus Crassus' death
Make me revenger. Bear the King's son's body
Before our army. Thy Pacorus, Orodes,
Pays this for Marcus Crassus.
 

—Act III, scene i, lines 1-5

Parthia is called "darting" because of its reliance on archers in its battles. The Parthian arrows were their most effective weapon.

 
… Media, Mesopotamia…
 

Ventidius' aide, Silius, eagerly urges the general to pursue the enemy, to follow up the victory crushingly, and put an end to the Parthian menace forever. He says:

 
Spur through Media,
Mesopotamia, and the shelters whither
The routed fly.
 

—Act III, scene i, lines 7-9

Mesopotamia ("between the rivers") is the name given by the Greeks to the upper portion of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. It was the area within which Crassus had fought and died. The Romans struggled to grasp and hold it for centuries after Crassus' time, and from time to time succeeded. Nearly seven centuries went by before the region passed definitively out of their hands.

Media lay immediately to the east of Mesopotamia. It had been controlled by the Persians, conquered by Alexander the Great, and ruled by the early Seleucids, but at no time, then or later, could Roman force extend itself so far.

 
I have done enough…
 

Ventidius resists the temptation to continue the war. He might argue that a limited victory is safest. History is full of generals who could have gained greatly through initial victories and then went on to grasp for too much and to lose all. Adolf Hitler of Germany is only the latest example of this.

There have been exceptions, of course; Alexander the Great being the most notorious. It is hard to say how many generals have been lured to destruction by the specter of Alexander and by the fact that they themselves were not the military genius he was.

Ventidius does not advance such reasonable military grounds. He prefers instead to answer with the wisdom of the practical politician.

 
O Silius, Silius
I have done enough: a lower place, note well,
May make too great an act. For learn this, Silius,
Better to leave undone, than by our deed
Acquire too high a fame when him we serve's away.
 

—Act III, scene i, lines 11-15

Perhaps this is true in Antony's case, and if so it is another weakness of his. Since military valor was Antony's great recommendation, he could not endure having his subordinates display too much of it, lest people decide they can do without Antony.

Octavius Caesar had no difficulty of this sort. He was no military man, but he was a political genius. His generals could cover themselves with glory in his name for all he, or anyone, would care-as long as they followed his orders and left the political machinations to him.

 
… to Athens …
 

As the Parthian menace is ended, at least temporarily, in victory, so the difficulties with Sextus Pompeius are ended, at least temporarily, in compromise. The quadrumvirs are separating and Mark Antony must go east again to look after his affairs. But still not to Alexandria. He must yet maintain peace with Octavius Caesar and that means maintaining the marriage with Octavia.

In Syria the victorious Ventidius has heard of Antony's move. He says to Silius:

 
He [Antony] purposeth to Athens…
 

—Act III, scene i, line 35

Athens was no longer the great warlike power it had been in the time of Alcibiades and Timon (see page I-140) four centuries before. While its fleet had been in being, it was a city to be reckoned with, but its last fleet had been destroyed at the Battle of Amorgos (an island in the Aegean Sea) in 322 b.c.

After that, it was at the mercy of the Macedonians and could at best only wriggle a bit when Macedon was in trouble. In 146 b.c. all of Greece, including Athens, came under direct Roman control as the province of Achaea, and the last vestige of Athenian independence was gone.

Yet Athens could, and did, make one last gamble. In 88 b.c. the kingdom of Pontus in the northeastern stretches of Asia Minor under its able king, Mithradates VI, attacked Rome. Rome was having internal troubles and was caught flat-footed. The Pontine blitz captured all of Asia Minor. For a wild moment, Greece thought that the Greek-speaking Pontines would lead the way to Greek freedom once more. Athens declared for Pontus and moved into opposition against Rome.

Rome, however, sent its able and ruthless general, Sulla, eastward. He laid siege to Athens, quite without regard to its past glories, and Mithradates of Pontus was utterly unable to send help. In 86 b.c. Athens was taken and sacked and that was the final end. Never again, throughout ancient times, was Athens ever to take any independent political or military action. It settled down to the utter quiet of a university town and for two and a half centuries it was to know complete peace at the price of complete stagnation.

It is to somnolent Athens that Antony now comes and it is there he will stay, with Octavia, for over two years.

This is too long a time for the purposes of the play, of course, since Shakespeare is anxious to show the love affair between Antony and Cleopatra to follow an absolutely irresistible course. He must therefore give the impression that Antony's connection with Octavia is fleeting.

To do this, there is a scene, following that which involves Ventidius, which shows Antony leaving with Octavia for Athens, and then, immediately afterward, one which shows Cleopatra still questioning the Messenger who brought her news of the marriage.

While tremendous events are transpiring in the outside world-a year of campaigning in Parthia and Syria, a year of negotiation in Italy-it is yet the same day in Cleopatra's palace. She is still planning to win Antony back from Octavia, and the Messenger, well knowing what is expected of him, gladly describes Octavia as short, round-faced, with a low forehead and a shambling walk.

 
New wars 'gainst Pompey…
 

Antony's establishment of his capital in Athens is, in itself, an invitation to more trouble. It was part of the compromise agreement with Sextus that the latter be given Greece as one of his provinces. Antony never lived up to that part of the bargain and may have deliberately come to Athens to make sure that Greece remained his.

Once Sextus realized that Antony was not going to keep his part of the treaty, he was naturally infuriated, and once again began his offensive against Rome's food supply. The pact of Misenum was in ruins before it really got a chance to work.

Shakespeare mentions none of this. When he turns to Antony's house in Athens, he pictures Antony as infuriated at events in Italy and placing all the blame for the renewed trouble on Octavius Caesar. Antony is saying angrily to Octavia, concerning her brother:

 
… he hath waged
New wars 'gainst Pompey; made his will, and read it
To public ear; Spoke scantly of me …
 

—Act III, scene iv, lines 3-6

Naturally, Octavius must fight Sextus again; when Sextus begins to stop the grain shipments, Octavius has no choice but to regard it as an invitation to war.

Since Sextus' pretext is the withholding of Greece, which is Antony's act, Octavius Caesar can scarcely keep from suspecting that Antony is behind Sextus; that the two have an understanding. He therefore renews the propaganda offensive against Antony ("spoke scantly of me").

Furthermore, Octavius Caesar shored up his own popularity with the Romans by preparing a will donating money and property to the people in case of his death. He carefully let that will be made public. (Mark Antony once read Julius Caesar's will to the public, see page I-295, and he knows well how powerful a weapon a proper will can be.)

Antony might not have been so angry if Octavius Caesar's struggle with Sextus Pompeius had gone badly for the former. The situation had changed from what it was before, however. When Sextus closed off Rome's life line he found out why Menas had been opposed to the compromise agreement at Misenum. Octavius had used the respite to stock Rome and to fill its storehouses. It would take a long time before it could be choked once more and meanwhile Octavius could strike back. Sextus found that while Antony and Octavius could easily undo their part of the agreement, he could not undo his; he could not withdraw the food he had allowed into Rome.

It was still necessary to fight Sextus, however, even if Rome was not starving. Octavius Caesar twice sent out ships to fight Sextus, and twice Sextus' hardened sea fighters won.

Octavius Caesar therefore set to work in earnest. He placed Agrippa in charge and ordered him to build a fleet. Through the whole of 38 and 37 b.c., Agrippa was hard at work on this project, and Antony did not like it. The last thing he wanted was an Octavian victory at sea, for that would mean that Octavius Caesar would be free to turn to the East and would have a fleet to do it with.

Antony's impulse, then, is to engage in open hostilities, now, while Sextus can still be his ally and while Octavius is still without real power at sea. (Antony himself can always have the Egyptian fleet at his disposal, in addition to his own ships.)

 
Yourself shall go between's. ..
 

Now conies time for the purpose of the marriage of Octavia to show itself. Octavia pleads for peace between husband and brother and urges Antony to let her serve as peacemaker. Antony agrees, saying:

 
… as you requested,
Yourself shall go between's: the meantime, lady,
I'll raise the preparation of a war
Shall stain your brother.
 

—Act III, scene iv, lines 24-27

Octavia may try to make the peace, then, but if she fails, Antony will make war. Actually, she succeeded. She met her brother and managed to arrange another meeting between Antony and Octavius Caesar at Tarentum in southern Italy in 37 b.c. Peace between them continued.