Then it became necessary to save the state from civil war and bloodshed.
Antony consented to form an alliance with his rival, and, as security for the sincerity of the reconciliation, he gave his hand in marriage to Octavia, whose first husband, Marcellus, had just died--his hand, I say, only his hand, for his heart was captive to the Queen of Egypt.

And if Antony was faithless to the wife to whom statecraft had bound him, he kept his pledge to the other, who had an earlier, better title.
If Cleopatra did not give up the man to whom she had sworn fidelity forever, she was right--a thousand times right! In my eyes--no matter how often my mother rebukes me--Cleopatra, in the eyes of the immortals, is and always will be Antony's real wife; the other, though on her marriage day no custom, no word, no stroke of the stylus, no gesture was omitted, is the intruder in a bond of love which rejoices the gods, however it may anger mortals, and--forgive me, mother--virtuous matrons." Berenike had listened with blushing cheeks to her vivacious daughter; now with timid earnestness she interrupted: "I know that those are the views of the new times; that Antony in the eyes of the Egyptians, and probably also according to their customs, is the rightful husband of the Queen.

I know, too, that you are both against me.

Yet Cleopatra is in reality a Greek, and therefore--eternal gods!--I can sincerely pity her; but the marriage has been solemnized, and I cannot blame Octavia.
She rears and cherishes, as if they were her own, the children of her faithless husband and Fulvia, his first wife, who have no claim upon her.

It is more than human to take the stones from the path of the man who became her foe, as she does.