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12She accordingly prepared a splendid apartment and a costly couch, and moreover arrayed herself with affected negligence,—indeed, her mourning garb wonderfully became her,—and seated herself upon the couch; beside her she placed many images of his father, of all kinds, and in her bosom she put all the letters that his father had sent her. 2When, after this, Caesar entered, she leaped gracefully to her feet and cried: “Hail, master—for Heaven has granted you the mastery and taken it from me. But surely you can see with your own eyes how your father looked when he visited me on many occasions, and you have heard people tell how he honoured me in various ways and made me queen of the Egyptians. 3That you may, however, learn something about me from him himself, take and read the letters which he wrote me with his own hand.”
After she had spoken thus, she proceeded to read many passionate expressions of Caesar’s. And now she would lament and kiss the letters, and again she would fall before his images and do them reverence. 4She kept turning her eyes toward Caesar and bewailing her fate in musical accents. She spoke in melting tones, saying at one time, “Of what avail to me, Caesar, are these thy letters?” and at another, “But in this man here thou also art alive for me”; again, “Would that I had died before thee,” and still again, “But if I have him, I have thee.”
5Such were the subtleties of speech and of attitude which she employed, and sweet were the glances she cast at him and the words she murmured to him. Now Caesar was not insensible to the ardour of her speech and the appeal to his passions, but he pretended to be; and letting his eyes rest upon the ground, he merely said: “Be of good cheer, woman, and keep a stout heart; for you shall suffer no harm.” 6She was greatly distressed because he would neither look at her nor say anything about the kingdom nor even utter a word of love, and falling at his knees, she said with an outburst of sobbing: “I neither wish to live nor can I live, Caesar. But this favour I beg of you in memory of your father, that, since Heaven gave me to Antony after him, I may also die with Antony. 7Would that I had perished then, straightway after Caesar! But since it was decreed by fate that I should suffer this affliction also, send me to Antony; grudge me not burial with him, in order that, as it is because of him I die, so I may dwell with him even in Hades.”
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