Charmian's letter, too, was even better calculated to curb Dion's
increasing desire to return home than the fisherman's warning.

True, the beginning contained good news of Barine's relatives, and then
informed Dion that his uncle, the Keeper of the Seal, was fairly
revelling in bliss. His inventive gifts were taxed more than ever.
Every day brought a festival, every night magnificent banquets. One
spectacle, excursion, or hunting party followed another. In the
theatres, the Odeum, the Hippodrome, no more brilliant performances,
races, naval battles, gladiatorial struggles, and combats between beasts
had been given, even before Actium. Dion himself had formerly attended
the entertainments of those who belonged to the court circle, the society
of "Inimitable Livers." It had been revived again, but Antony called
them the "Comrades of Death." This was significant. Every one knows
that the end is drawing near, and imitates the Pharaoh to whom the oracle
promised six years of life, and who convicted it of falsehood and made
them twelve by carousing during the night also.

The Queen's meeting with her husband, which she had previously reported,
had been magnificent. "At that time," she wrote, "we hoped that a more
noble life would begin, and Mark Antony, awakened and elevated by his
rekindled love, would regain his former heroic power; but we were
mistaken; Cleopatra, it is true, toiled unceasingly, but her lover with
his enormous bunch of roses gave the signal for the maddest revelry which
the imagination of the wildest devotee of pleasure could conceive. The
performances of the Inimitable Livers were far surpassed by those of the
"Comrades of Death."

"Antony is at their head, and he, whose giant frame resists even the most