ANTONY. 18.3 vants was beforehand with his divers, and fixed upon his hook a salted fish from Poutus. Antony, feeling his line give, drew up the )rey, and when, as may be imagined, great laughter ensued, '•' Leave," said Cleopatra, ' the fish- ing-rod, general, to us poor sovereigns of Pharos and Canopus ; your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms." Whilst he was thus diverting himself and engaged in this boys' play, two despatches arrived ; one from Rome, that his brother Lucius and his wife Fulvia, after many quarrels among themselves, had joined in war against Ctesar, and, having lost all, had fled out of Italy j the other bringing little better news, that Labienus, at the head of the Parthians, was overrunning Asia, from Euphrates and Syria as far as Lydia and Ionia. So, scarcely at last rousing himself from sleep, and shaking oif the fumes of wine, he set out to attack the Parthians, and went as far as Phoenicia ; but, upon the receipt of lamentable letters from Fulvia, turned his course with two hundred ships to Italy. Aiad, in his way, receiving such of his friends as fled from Italy, he was given to understand that Fulvia was the sole cause of the war, a woman of a restless spirit and very bold, and withal her hopes were that commotions in Italy would force Antony from Cleopatra. But it happened that Fulvia, as she was coming to meet her husband, fell sick by the way, and died at Sicyon, so that an accommodation was the more easily made. For when he reached Italy, and Csesar showed no intention of laying any thing to his chai'ge, and he on his part shifted the blame of every thing on Fulvia, those that were friends to them would not suffer that the time should be spent in looking narrowly into the plea, but made a reconciliation first, and then a partition of the empire between them, taking as their boundary the Ionian Sea, the eastern provinces falling to Antonj^, to Caesar the western, and Africa being left to Lepidus. And au
