FIRST MESSENGER   Labienus—

This is stiff news—hath with his Parthian force

Extended Asïa; from Eúphrates

His conquering banner shook, from Syria

To Lydia, and to Ionia,

Whilst—

ANTONY                     ‘Antony’, thou wouldst say?

FIRST MESSENGER   O, my lord!     (1.2.83-88)

The Messenger gets down to the nitty gritty detail of conquest, and it’s not good news. This is stiff news, he says, his choice of adjective a useful contrast to the liquidity and languor of Egypt: Labienus (who had fought with Brutus and Cassius, with the Parthians, against Antony and Octavius Caesar; thank you editors) is continuing to push back against Rome; he’s extended, that is conquered Asia, raising his banner from the Euphrates to Syria, to Lydia and Ionia… It’s the first instance in the play of a catalogue of names of countries, of territories: there’s so much more to it than ‘Rome’ and ‘Egypt’, even if these places remain just names (like Labienus: who he, really?), named as they are lost, and the names create a sense of vastness that can’t readily be comprehended, because the point is that these names are just the points on a map, and it’s the territory between them that’s the real issue here. Rome is struggling, the empire is falling, whilst… And the messenger realizes what he’s about to say, as if he’s repeating something verbatim that he’s heard, been told, which he really should edit diplomatically before relaying to the person it most concerns. Antony is (still) a wily enough politician to pick up on this immediately, that his name is mud in Rome, that all of this military and political turmoil is going on whilst Antony is here, AWOL in Egypt. ‘Antony’, thou wouldst say? He was about to, certainly. O, my lord. The Messenger is apologetic but they both know what he was about to say, and that he’s absolutely right.