Did the queen seek to play the indifferent by leaving Antony without tidings, or, as Plutarch insinuates and Shakspeare declares, did she, during these three years, overwhelm him with dolorous appeals and burning messages of love? According to Josephus, her voluptuous temperament was ever leading her into transient amours. Besides Cneius Pompey, Cæsar, Dellius, Antony, and Herod, king of the Jews, the five lovers who are accredited or attributed to her, the queen of Egypt had many flirtations and anonymous entanglements. Is this calumny? It is rather a slander. Be this as it may, the accusation is no proof that Cleopatra no longer loved Antony. These riddles of the heart and the senses are, after all, no enigma.
As for Antony, it seems that he had indeed forgotten Cleopatra. Not only during the three years that he had passed with Octavia at Athens and Rome; not only on his return from the expedition against Antiochus of Commagene had he not visited Egypt, but even on his way from Tarentum to Laodicea he had not touched at Alexandria, which was almost directly in his course. He sailed straight for Syria. By a singular fatality, scarcely had he set foot in Asia when he felt his passion rekindle with the utmost violence. He established himself at Laodicea, and at once despatched his friend Fonteius Capito into Egypt to conduct Cleopatra to Syria. The queen, enchanted, had no thought of delaying her departure in order to make herself the more desired, as she had done five years before. She embarked at once, and was received at Laodicea by her lover with transports of joy. To prove otherwise than by caresses his unspeakable happiness at seeing her again, he gave her, not jewels, but kingdoms: Chalcedon, Phœnicia, Cœolo-Syria, a great part of Cilicia, Genesereth in Judea, noted for its balm, and Nabathae in Arabia. Antony had no right to dispose of these territories, which belonged to the _Roman people_; but mad with pride as much as with love he declared that “The glory of Rome was displayed much less in her conquests and possessions than in the gifts she bestowed.”[9]
A few days after they were again compelled to part, with the promise, however, of meeting again in the spring at Alexandria. Antony passed with his army into Armenia; Cleopatra returned to Egypt, passing through Apamea, Damascus, and Petrea. She desired to settle with the kings of Judea and Arabia the amount of the tribute which these rulers were to pay yearly for the portions of territory which Antony had bestowed. The king of Arabia promised three hundred talents (sixteen hundred and sixty thousand francs); the tribute of the king of the Jews was greater. This king was Herod, whom the protection of Antony had a few years before placed on the throne. He went to Damascus to meet Cleopatra. According to Josephus, Herod, who was remarkably handsome, repulsed the shameless advances of the queen, even proposing to put her to death whilst she was in his power in order to deliver Antony from her fatal influence; but his counselors dissuaded him from this crime, telling him that from that moment he would incur the terrible vengeance of Antony.