CHAPTER XXII.

Dion, too, witnessed the departure of the troops. Gorgias, whom he had
found among the Ephebi, accompanied him and, like the Queen, they saw,
in the cautious manner with which the army greeted the general, a bad
omen for the result of the battle. The architect had presented Dion to
the youths as the ghost of a dead man, who, as soon as he was asked
whence he came or whither he was going, would be compelled to vanish in
the form of a fly. He could venture to do this; he knew the Ephebi--
there was no traitor in their ranks.

Dion, the former head of the society, had been welcomed like a beloved
brother risen from the dead, and he had the gratification, after so long
a time, of turning the scale as speaker in a debate. True, he had
encountered very little opposition, for the resolve to hold aloof from
the battle against the Romans had been urged upon the Ephebi by the Queen
herself through Antyllus, who, however, had already left the meeting when
Dion joined it. It had seemed to Cleopatra a crime to claim the blood of
the noblest sons of the city for a cause which she herself deemed lost.
She knew the parents of many, and feared that Octavianus would inflict a
terrible punishment upon them if, not being enrolled in the army, they
fell into his power with arms in their hands.

The stars were already setting when the Ephebi accompanied their friend,
singing in chorus the Hymenaeus, which they had been unable to chant on
his wedding day. The melody of lutes accompanied the voices, and this
nocturnal music was the source of the rumour that the god Dionysus, to
whom Mark Antony felt specially akin, and in whose form he had so often
appeared to the people, had abandoned him amid songs and music.