Octavia replied that she would not leave her husband's house.

That house was her post of duty, whatever her husband might do, and there she would remain.

She accordingly retired within the precincts of her old home, and devoted herself in patient and uncomplaining sorrow to the care of the family and the children.

Among these children was one young son of Antony's, born during his marriage with her predecessor Fulvia.

In the mean time, while Octavia was thus faithfully though mournfully fulfilling her duties as wife and mother, in her husband's house at Rome, Antony himself had gone with Cleopatra to Alexandria, and was abandoning himself once more to a life of guilty pleasure there.