Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/221

 ANTONY. 213 the least honorable places ; all which he bore very well, eeeking onl}^ an occasion of speaking with Antony. So, at supper, being told to .say what business he came about, he answered he would keep the rest for a .soberer hour, but one thing he had to say, whether full or fasting, that all would go weU if Cleopatra would return to Egypt. And on Antony showing his anger at it, *•' You have done well, Geminius," said Cleopatra, " to tell your secret with- out being put to the rack." So Geminius, after a few days, took occasion to make his escape and go to Rome. Many more of Antony's friends were driven from him by the insolent usage the}^ had from Cleoj^atra's flatterers, amongst whom were Marcus Silanus and Dellius the his- torian. And Dellius says he was afraid of liis hfe, and that Glaucus, the physician, informed him of Cleopatra's design against him. She was angry with him for having said that Antony's friends were served with sour wine, while at Rome Sarmentus, Caesar's little page (his delicia, as the Romans call it), drank Faleraian.* As soon as C«sar had completed his preparations, he had a decree made, declaring war on Cleopatra, and de- priving Antony of the authority which he had let a woman exercise in his place. Csssar added that he had drunk potions that had bereaved him of his senses, and that the generals they would have to fight with would be Mardion the eimuch, Pothinus, Iras, Cleopatra's hair- dressing girl, and Charmion, who were Antony's chief state-councill ors. These prodigies are said to have announced the war. one of the habitual amusements of deformed children, who were often Augustus to play and talk with kept by other great people in Rome children of this kind, who were as their playthings, so called, (/f/iWa Bought out for him chiefly in Syria or delicice, much in the same sense and Mauritania. They were spe- as the pet-bird of Catullus's mis- cially selected for their smallness ; tress, " Passer, deliciae meaj puellae."
 * Suetonius tells us that it was but he had no liking for dwarfs or