These soldiers of Octavius kept up their torture till they suffocated him. Like Antigone, I wonder, “Will they torture me?” And I answer with the reply that Creon gave her: “No, your death will suffice.” What this tyrant does not know is that my death has long been a gift from Antony, who also tortured me. What does it matter what Octavius can do to me?
As I said, Mark Antony, you came back. Two years after you had left me in Alexandria, you returned.
You sent me a long, persuasive letter. I feel a desire to repeat it here, so sweet a letter! You did not know I had learned it by heart. From time to time I repeat it, to bathe my tongue in honey. If I still had a tongue, I would want to drink its words now, but I am totally lost to everything.
In that letter you begged the queen of Egypt to take her twins and herself to Antioch, so that you could know “the twin fruits of the best days of your life.” Inside the five sheltering walls of that city, our glances met again. At once the bond that united us, the knot of mutual pleasure, tied our bodies together, binding us with its protective force.
The two years that had divided us were transformed into the four steps that our bodies took to form an embrace, fusing us together, one into the other.
Had you really been widowed and then married Octavius’s sister? Had I really forsaken my better self till I was restored to health by the city’s sages? All that disappeared the second we saw each other. You had never gone away; you had only drawn closer. You and I had found a route that bypassed every wall, every rampart, every form of separation.
A few days later, we celebrated our marriage Egyptian-style, convinced that nothing could separate us ever again. We forgot that
Nothing lasts for those who are born to die,
Both fortune and misfortune hurry by.
We were drunkenly happy, with a happiness that made us unique, vigorous, indefatigable enjoyers of life.
We minted coins with both our images on them. Wishing to fix forever the two aspects of our love, I stamped on my seal the word: methe, intoxication, for the gold of our laughter, our joy, our being together, and for the desperation with which we possessed each other, the madness of losing ourselves irretrievably, the torment in which our woven sheets wrapped our bodies. It was a torment that we in our drunkenness would not forgo. I wanted to see you every day, Antony, never to let you out of my sight for fear my exasperated need for you would tear at my flesh. You brought me no peace, no serenity. You brought me intoxication and fever. The wealthy queen of Egypt lived on the verge of starvation. Not that the delights of your love did not satisfy me to the full. Not that you did not come to me with laden hands, giving me more than any man had ever before given a woman. But you, too, were scourged by our hunger for each other. Love obliged us to live on our nerves. Nothing induced calm or repose. Nothing reduced the anguish of love’s arrows.
Temperance, that good without equal, had no place in our style of life. Like a tongue of flame, we set ourselves under each other’s heels. But we did not want to remove that burning pain, for the mere notion of losing each other again was worse than seeing ourselves devoured by a thousand tongues of fire.
We both donned the same garment of Deianeira, the one she wove with her own hands for her beloved Hercules to wear. Out of jealousy she dipped it in the blood of the centaur Nessus in the hope of recovering her hero’s love. Do you recall the story? Hercules was returning with her to the walls of his city, when he encountered the turbulent waters of Evenus, swollen by winter rains, more turbulent than ever before. The river was full of treacherous whirlpools, and Hercules, instead of reminding him that he had recently defeated a river in order to gain his bride, thought only of the rapids and feared for his wife, who was not familiar with the fording places. Hercules! All you had to do was grasp her by the waist and carry her across like a child. You had just come from a victory over the tumultuous rivergod Achelous, but fear for your Deianeira stole away your confidence in your own powers. You thought fainthearted thoughts about how to get your beloved to the opposite bank without any risk.
And what did you do? Trusting the words of the fierce Nessus, you let her cross the river on his back. When the centaur, emboldened by the current, caressed her flesh, she cried out and you wounded him with a poisoned arrow. Treacherous to the end, he said to Deianeira, “Your beauty had destroyed fierce Nessus. I leave you, my beautiful one, this present. Keep my blood where daylight cannot reach it. If one day Hercules, in his blindness, fails to recognize your charms, soak a robe in my blood. Make him wear it and he will adore you once again.” And other things, too, he said that I will not repeat here.
When Hercules returned victorious from his labors, his eyes were glutted with the beauty of a young captive. It was then that Deianeira bathed the tunic in the centaur’s blood. It consumed him in agony.
We both put on the tunic of Deianeira. With us, the centaur got his revenge without needing to lie to its weaver. We were both like the fleece of the white sheep she used to daub the tunic. We devoured ourselves, we turned ourselves into fugitive smoke there on the bed we made for ourselves.
We set about destroying each other; there hardly remained a visible trace of us, only a mere scattering of ashes where the tree once grew. We continued bubbling away, as if on the boil, and nobody could see the damage the fire was causing.
It was the arrow that kills the one it does not strike.
Clad in the precious garments that Love prescribed, our limbs contracted little by little; they narrowed, became enchained. On the one hand, our presence drew the eyes of the world, the presence of you and me side by side, as if the cleverest artisan in the world had fashioned us, creating the visible statue of Love itself. Who, when he saw us, would not exclaim: “They love each other!” We were fairer than the fairest, because you and I together composed one figure, entire in itself, the purest of forms. The gift of the ancient centaur had been put on. “From hereon he will see women but none will please him like you do. None will please you except him. Thanks to that garment, the two of you will feel your very entrails shiver with delight!”
From that time on, after our return from Antioch, we were possessed by convulsive cramps. Under the sway of the jealous Deianeira, the double Hercules, the queen of Egypt and the triumvir Mark Antony, were like two children out of control.
The arrow infected with the poison of the hydra of Lerna envenomed two lives more. The dusky hydra imprisons us now; its venom circulates through our veins; its stabbing pains burn our flesh and transform it into hot coals. We bubbled, as if boiling, and nobody warned against the fire, though it blazed unremittingly around Mark Antony and Cleopatra, obscuring them from the world. The bonds of love converted into the shirt of Deianeira defeated us. Now your blood, which a dagger let loose from your body, bathes me, Mark Antony. Look, I am relieved because it has set you free of me.