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watched her go, but then a pair of jade green eyes, brimming with light, shifting shadows and unfathomable depths rose up in his brain, blocking out everything else like ocean tides sweeping clean shallow lines in the sand.
    Frustrated, he took a deep drink from his goblet and willed the siren temptress from his mind. He prayed that here in Tarsus he would forget, and if Dionysus truly possessed his spirit tonight, as the priestess had promised, perhaps He would burn away the shame of his disloyalty, leaving Antony as he was before he ever laid eyes on the Egyptian Queen. Pouring a generous libation to the ground, he vowed, for tonight, he would be merry and brood on Caesar and Cleopatra no more.
    The last of the sun's golden-red beams faded over the square and the village maidens lit translucent oil and salt lanterns which glowed cheerfully in the twilight. Barefoot women decked in festive robes, grape leaves wound through their loose hair, poured wine for the men, who donned leering Pan masks, transforming themselves into satyrs. The musicians brought forth their reed pipes and flutes, and began to play cheerful tunes, the sweet notes of their music mingling with the laughter and song which filled the square. Antony tapped his hand in time with the musicians, who added lutes, tambourines and tightly bound animal skin drums to the chorus of song that swayed the first of the dancers to their feet.
    The Priestess of Dionysus, a handsome woman with gray streaks running through her copper hair, approached Antony, followed by several women dressed as Bacchantes. Bowing, she presented him with the thyrsus wand of Dionysus. He accepted the gift with a gracious smile and opened his mouth to catch the purple wine which the maidens poured down his throat. They petted him and he sucked honey from their soft fingers in remembrance that Dionysus, as a boy, had been raised on this sweet sustenance.
    A laughing dark-haired beauty with wild dilated eyes threw herself onto his lap. She squeezed purple-black deadly nightshade berries between her stained fingers, expelling the hallucinogenic poison into the goblet of wine she grasped provocatively between her thighs. Reaching down, she raised the cup and held it to Antony’s lips. He drank deeply before passing the brew to the priestess as a feeling of lightheaded unreality began to take hold of him.
    Antony noticed, through his distorted vision, similar goblets were circulating throughout the square to the wild dancing women, whose skirts swirled round and round to the increasing tempo of the panpipes. The scene made him dizzy, but the young Bacchante still bouncing on his lap pulled him from his place of honor and led him into the center of the festival, where he was absorbed into the dance.
    As he moved, his head cleared a bit and he noticed he was the only man dancing. All the others stood to the side in their wild Pan masks, clapping and stamping their feet, calling out to the women who spun faster and faster, some reaching for tambourines or drums to beat time with their unrestrained movements.
    He was caught in a swirl of bare legs and loose hair, red cheeks and bright inebriated eyes. All around him the Bacchantes took his hands and pulled him this way and that, blowing him kisses as they rushed by, twining their slender arms around his waist to the screams of the crowd and spinning him around, confused and disoriented, but laughing in delight as he held one woman in his arms, only to find her sister's hands over his eyes, until, whipping around, he found another there to playfully kiss his lips and skip out of his grasp.
    The crescent moon had made her pale ascent and the stars shone bright in the country sky. Antony could feel the music in his blood, the beating of the drums dictating the throb of his heart, and a strange disorientation struck him as his vision began to blur and then clear again. He heard, as if it were another person, his own voice echoing up into the night with