Page:Antony and Cleopatra (1921) Yale.djvu/146

134 he fell a victim to the charms of Cleopatra, in whose company he spent the winter in Alexandria. At length he was aroused by the Parthian invasion of Syria [by Labienus and Pacorus] and the report of an outbreak between Fulvia his wife and Lucius his brother, on the one hand, and Octavian on the other.' The Encyclopædia Britannica, 'Marcus Antonius.'

Rannius, Lucillius. These characters take no part in the dialogue and do not appear again in the play.

O! that I knew this husband, which, you say, must charge his horns with garlands. The soothsayer apparently has been saying that Charmian will deceive her husband when she gets him. This, in the current Elizabethan phrase, was to make a cuckold of him, to give him invisible horns. That the horns were to be wreathed with garlands is a reflection, perhaps, upon the guile of Charmian.

Herod of Jewry. The Herod of the New Testament, with a slanting reference in the context to the Three Kings from the East and their adoration of the infant Jesus.

Labienus. Labienus, a republican general and therefore opposed to Antony (cf. I. i. 12, note), had united with Pacorus (cf. III. i. 1–5, note) and his Parthians, and had harried Syria and Asia Minor.

The present pleasure, By revolution lowering, does become The opposite of itself. What is pleasure (in this case the hope that Fulvia might die) revolves and becomes the opposite.

the courser's hair. It was an old belief that a hair from a horse's tail or mane when thrown into water would sometimes take life and become a worm.

By the fire that quickens Nilus' slime. The reference is to the sun.