A sennet sounded. Enter Caesar, Antony, Pompey, Lepidus, Agrippa, Maecenas, Enobarbus, [and] Menas, with other captains

ANTONY         Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o’th’ Nile

By certain scales i’th’ pyramid. They know

By th’ 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.         (2.7.16-22)

There’s a fanfare of some kind, but this isn’t a procession, it’s a party, and there might be a jazzy note, a whistle or a kazoo, as the company spill on to the stage, already well away. It’s Lepidus that Antony is addressing; they’re mid conversation as they enter, and Lepidus is hanging on Antony’s every word in an exchange that has, perhaps, been going on for some time as Lepidus badgers him for all sorts of details about Egypt. (As ever, these questions about the strangeness of Egypt, its exotic customs and spectacles and climate, can function as a kind of displacement for the questions that Roman men really want to ask, about Cleopatra.) What Lepidus has asked about isn’t entirely clear, but it’s about the Nile and its flooding, or about Egypt’s great fertility, or about the nature and function of Egypt’s monuments (not, here THE pyramids, but a particular obelisk, usually called a pyramid in England) and Antony is explaining. So, this is how they go about it, thus do they, sir. They take the flow of the Nile by certain scales in the pyramid; they measure its rise and fall against a scale on a particular pillar—it’s all worked out—and that’s how they know what the harvest is going to be, because there’s a direct relationship between the irrigation available and the land’s fertility. They know by the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth or foison follow, whether it’s going to be a famine or a feast, a plentiful harvest. The higher the flood, the better it’s going to be: the higher Nilus swells the more it promises. (The language itself is fecund, phallic.) And as the waters recede, as it ebbs, the seedsman upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, and shortly comes to harvest. The sower casts his seed on the mud, thought to be so fertile already that it could produce life merely through the action of the sun (at least according to Ovid and other writers) and before you know it the crop’s ripe and ready. That’s all there is to it—you’re right, Lepidus, Egypt is a fertile place, pulsating and burgeoning with life. All it takes for that fecund, vital mud to bring forth life is the scattering of seed… (As Agrippa said, of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, ‘he ploughed her and she cropped’; Antony’s words echo this, and it’s possible for him to suggest—or his hearers to infer—that he’s simultaneously boasting about his relationship with Cleopatra, perhaps to Octavius Caesar’s discomfort, and Lepidus’s obliviousness.)