LEPIDUS                     ’Tis not a time

For private stomaching.

ENOBARBUS  Every time

Serves for the matter that is then born in’t.

LEPIDUS         But small to greater matters must give way.

ENOBARBUS  Not if the small come first.

LEPIDUS         Your speech is passion.

But pray you, stir no embers up. Here comes

The noble Antony.

Enter [at one door] Antony and Ventidius

ENOBARBUS  And yonder Caesar.

Enter [at another door] Caesar, Maecenas, and Agrippa      (2.2.8-14)

Lepidus is still trying to keep a lid on things, attempting to ensure (via Enobarbus—a long shot indeed, as he’s coming to appreciate) that the focus remains on the threat posed by Pompey to the triumvirate and the Roman empire. ’Tis not a time for private stomaching, belly-aching, he might say, the airing of personal grievances and grudges. Implicit: time to put aside personal rivalries for the greater, public good. Enobarbus is having none of it, this tepid appeal to public spiritedness: every time serves for the matter that is then born in’t. Things just happen, there’s no wrong or right time for anything, you just have to deal with matters as they arise. Enobarbus manages to make this philosophical truism sound neater and more aphoristic than it really is (the near monosyllables help) but Lepidus pushes back: but small to greater matters must give way. It’s about priorities, proportion; be reasonable. More important, weighty matters have to take precedence, surely? Not if the small come first, Enobarbus pushes back in turn (here, partly, there might be a clash of the politician with the soldier? But mostly it’s just Enobarbus being stubborn, fighting Antony’s corner even more than Antony might, and sniping with Lepidus for the sake of it). Your speech is passion, concedes Lepidus, you’re being driven by emotion, by loyalty to Antony instead of reason and political pragmatism. A final plea, though: pray you, stir no embers up. Don’t go out of your way to add fuel to the fire, to provoke Antony and raise the temperature. There’s perhaps some relief from Lepidus when he can leave off sparring with this surprisingly dogged and vocal Enobarbus (not the Nile-side libertine and layabout he was expecting?) as well as a touch of ironic flattery when he can say, here comes the noble Antony. And yonder Caesar, adds Enobarbus, not to be outdone in stating the bloody obvious. Editors sometimes add, as here, what’s implicit, that the two parties enter from different directions. Is Antony already at a disadvantage, having only one companion, Ventidius, to Caesar’s two? Wait and see…