Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/663

Rh you would be the conqueror; but my fate either way, would be miserable. This discourse wrought so powerfully on Cæsar, that he went to Tarentum quite pacified, and the interview between him and Antony was attended with a thousand protestations of inviolable friendship.

Antony returning to the east, left Octavia in Italy. Some time after this, resolving to make him a visit, she set out on her journey for that purpose, but on the road met with letters from him, desiring her to stay at Athens for him, which she accordingly did; but finding it in vain, returned to Rome, and would not be prevailed on to quit his palace, but took the same care of every thing as if he had been the best of husbands. She would by no means consent, that the injurious treatment she met with from Antony should occasion a civil war. In this disposition she remained in the house till she was ordered to leave it by Antony himself, who at the same time sent her a divorce; then indeed she burst into tears, because she saw she should be considered as one of the causes of the war; since Augustus had consented to her going into the east after Antony, in the hopes that she would meet with some signal ill usage from him, which he knew would be considered by the Roman people as a just cause for him to renew the war. The admiration in which they beheld Octavia's glorious conduct in doing all the good offices in her power to her husband's children and friends, without shewing the least resentment for his base usage of her, was of great prejudice to him; and thus, even against her will, she exposed him prodigiously to the animosity of the Romans, who both hated and despised him, when they saw him prefer to her a woman of Cleopatra's abandoned character. His infatuation was the more surprising to those who