place of deposit.  The custodians who had it in charge replied to Octavius, when he demanded it, that they would not give it to him, but if he wished to take it they would not hinder him.  Octavius then took the will, and read it to the Roman Senate.  It provided, among other things, that at his death, if his death should happen at Rome, his body should be sent to Alexandria to be given to Cleopatra; and it evinced in other ways a degree of subserviency and devotedness to the Egyptian queen which was considered wholly unworthy of a Roman chief magistrate.  Antony was accused, too, of having plundered cities and provinces, to make presents to Cleopatra; of having sent a library of two hundred thousand volumes to her from Pergamus, to replace the one which Julius Caesar had accidentally burned; of having raised her sons, ignoble as their birth was, to high places of trust and power in the Roman government, and of having in many ways compromised the dignity of a Roman officer by his unworthy conduct in reference to her.  He used, for example, when presiding at a judicial tribunal, to receive love-letters sent him from Cleopatra, and then at once turn off his attention from the proceedings going forward before him to read the letters.[1]

[Footnote 1:  These letters, in accordance with the scale of expense and extravagance on which Cleopatra determined that every thing relating to herself and Antony should be done, were engraved on tablets made of onyx, or crystal, or other hard and precious stones.]

Sometimes he did this when sitting in the chair of state, giving audience to embassadors and princes.  Cleopatra probably sent these letters in at such times under the influence of a wanton disposition to show her power.  At one time, as Octavius said in his arguments before the Roman Senate, Antony was hearing a cause of the greatest importance, and during a time in the progress of the cause when one of the principal orators of the city was addressing him, Cleopatra came passing by, when Antony suddenly arose, and, leaving the court without any ceremony, ran out to follow her.  These and a thousand similar tales exhibited Antony in so odious a light, that his friends forsook his cause, and his enemies gained a complete triumph.  The decree was passed against him, and Octavius was authorized to carry it into effect; and accordingly, while Antony, with his fleet and army, was moving westward from Samos and the Aegean Sea, Octavius was coming eastward and southward down the Adriatic to meet him.

In process of time, after various maneuvers and delays, the two armaments came into the vicinity of each other at a place called Actium, which will be found upon the map on the western coast of Epirus, north of Greece.  Both of the commanders had powerful fleets at sea, and both had great armies upon the land.  Antony was strongest in land troops, but his fleet was inferior to that of Octavius, and he was himself inclined to