Verses familiar to every young student of classics sound the refrain, Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus, ‘It is now time to drink, time to strike the ground with a foot that nothing holds back any more.’ But from just what fear was Rome now delivered? Horace was writing close to the imperial milieu. The ode is an immediate echo, almost live, of the birth of the foundation myth of the empire that Octavian, the future Augustus, wanted to impose on Roman opinion and on future historians. The mortal threat to Rome which Octavian averted came from a monstrum fatale, a ‘monster capable of forcing fate’, a queen who was preparing the ruin of Rome and the destruction of an empire still in embryo. Fortunately, the myth goes, Octavian defeated her in Actium, which otherwise would have been the last stage before her sacrilegious conquest of Italy. However, it was only half a victory for Octavian: Cleopatra escaped from the encircling. To chain her up, Octavian – Horace wrote – swept down upon her like the hawk upon doves or the hunter upon a hare, two at least debatable images. Horace hides neither his admiration for the queen nor his misogyny: she did not behave like a weak woman; she faced up to defeat and refused to flee from Alexandria at the arrival of the enemy.