At length one of his ships, putting into the little port, seems to have brought him the news of events at Actium. After his flight the battered remnant of his fleet, having continued the fight until sunset, sailed back into the Gulf of Ambracia; and next day Octavian invited them and the army to surrender on easy terms. No one, however, would believe that Antony had fled, and the offer was refused. Next day, however, some of the vassal kings laid down their arms, and, after a week of suspense, Canidius fled. Part of the legions scattered into Macedonia, and on September 9th the remainder surrendered together with the fleet. Octavian then sailed round to Athens, and there received the submission of every city in Greece, with the exception of Corinth. He at once began a general massacre of Antony’s adherents, and, to save their skins, the townspeople in every district heaped honours upon the conqueror, erecting statues to him and decreeing him all manner of civic distinctions. Shortly after this a messenger reached Antony from the west stating that the legions left in North Africa had also gone over to Octavian; and thereupon he attempted to commit suicide. He was, however, restrained by his two faithful friends; and in the deepest dejection he was at last persuaded by them to sail for Alexandria, once more to comfort himself with the presence of Cleopatra.
Crushed and broken by her misfortunes, it might have been expected that Cleopatra would now give up the fight. She was not made, however, of ordinary stuff; and she could not yet bring herself to believe that her cause was hopeless. On her voyage across the Mediterranean she seems to have pulled herself together after the first shock of defeat; and, with that wonderful recuperative power, of which we have already seen many instances in her life, she appears, so to speak, to have regained her feet, standing up once more, eager and defiant, to face the world. The defeat of Antony, though it postponed for many years all chance of obtaining a footing in Rome, did not altogether preclude that possibility. He would now probably kill himself, and though the thought of his suicide must have been very distressing to her, she could but feel that she would be well rid of him. A drunken and discredited outlaw with a price upon his head was not a desirable consort for a Queen; and he had long since ceased to make an appeal to any quality in her, save to her pity. Octavian would hunt him down, and would not rest until he had driven him to the land of the shades; but she herself might possibly be spared and her throne be saved in recognition of the fact that she had been the great Dictator’s “wife.” Then, some chance occurrence, such as the death of Octavian, might give her son Cæsarion the opportunity of putting himself forward once more as Cæsar’s heir.