Bki:Xxxvii Cleopatra

Now’s the time for drinking deep, and now’s the time to beat the earth with unfettered feet, the time to set out the gods’ sacred couches, my friends, and prepare a Salian feast. It would have been wrong, before today, to broach the Caecuban wines from out the ancient bins, while a maddened queen was still plotting the Capitol’s and the empire’s ruin, with her crowd of deeply-corrupted creatures sick with turpitude, she, violent with hope of all kinds, and intoxicated by Fortune’s favour. But it calmed her frenzy that scarcely a single ship escaped the flames, and Caesar reduced the distracted thoughts, bred by Mareotic wine, to true fear, pursuing her close as she fled from Rome, out to capture that deadly monster, bind her, as the sparrow-hawk follows the gentle dove or the swift hunter chases the hare, over the snowy plains of Thessaly. But she, intending to perish more nobly, showed no sign of womanish fear at the sword, nor did she even attempt to win with her speedy ships to some hidden shore. And she dared to gaze at her fallen kingdom with a calm face, and touch the poisonous asps with courage, so that she might drink down their dark venom, to the depths of her heart, growing fiercer still, and resolving to die: scorning to be taken by hostile galleys, and, no ordinary woman, yet queen no longer, be led along in proud triumph.