Act 2 - Scene 7

On board POMPEY's galley, off Misenum.

Music plays. Enter two or three Servants with a banquet

First Servant

Here they'll be, man. Some o' their plants are
ill-rooted already: the least wind i' the world
will blow them down.

Second Servant

Lepidus is high-coloured.

First Servant

They have made him drink alms-drink.

Second Servant

As they pinch one another by the disposition, he
cries out 'No more;' reconciles them to his
entreaty, and himself to the drink.

First Servant

But it raises the greater war between him and
his discretion.

Second Servant

Why, this is to have a name in great men's
fellowship: I had as lief have a reed that will do
me no service as a partisan I could not heave.

First Servant

To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen
to move in't, are the holes where eyes should be,
which pitifully disaster the cheeks.

A sennet sounded. Enter OCTAVIUS CAESAR, MARK ANTONY, LEPIDUS, POMPEY, AGRIPPA, MECAENAS, DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS, MENAS, with other captains

MARK ANTONY

[To OCTAVIUS CAESAR] Thus do they, sir: they take
the flow o' the Nile
By certain scales i' the pyramid; they know,
By the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth
Or foison follow: the higher Nilus swells,
The more it promises: as it ebbs, the seedsman
Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,
And shortly comes to harvest.

LEPIDUS

You've strange serpents there.

MARK ANTONY

Ay, Lepidus.

LEPIDUS

Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the
operation of your sun: so is your crocodile.