LEPIDUS         What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?

ANTONY         It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves with it own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.

LEPIDUS         What colour is it of?

ANTONY         Of it own colour, too.

LEPIDUS         ’Tis a strange serpent.

ANTONY         ’Tis so, and the tears of it are wet.

CAESAR          [to Antony] Will this description satisfy him?

ANTONY         With the health that Pompey gives him; else he is a very epicure.         (2.7.37-47)

This is such a gem of an exchange, and it works on multiple levels. It is, of course, ridiculous, Lepidus so drunk that he doesn’t realise that he’s being mocked by Antony (and the rest) with this nonsensical description of a crocodile. It’s a parody of the kind of proto-scientific description which was emerging in natural histories at around this time, with all its markers of accuracy, but it conveys no information at all. Lepidus’s fascination with Egypt’s strange serpents is in some ways like that of a small child’s love of dinosaurs; he’s fascinated, but uncomprehending, unable to interpret the information he’s being given, because he’s so drunk, but also because these animals are so exotic, so far out of his Roman experience. What manner o’ thing is your crocodile? What are crocodiles really like? Antony’s response is grave, prosy, and it can take a while to cotton on to what he’s doing. It is shaped, sir, like itself. Well, a crocodile is—crocodile-shaped. It is as broad as it hath breadth, as wide as it’s wide, and just so high as it is (Antony might start to gesture with a hand, and then give up—there can’t be any indication of accurate dimensions through here). It moves with it own organs—that is, the crocodile walks on its legs. (The second it, it own, is grammatically accurate in early modern usage, but it’s also typical of how one might speak to a child, and that’s the tone that Antony’s taking here, as if crouching down and speaking slowly, so that little Lepidus can say, WOW!) And the crocodile lives by that which nourisheth it, on the food it eats! (said food carefully unspecified). And the elements once out of it, once it’s dead, it transmigrates. Off its soul goes, into another creature, just as Pythagoras and other philosophers have taught. This is the most esoteric claim that Antony makes, and either it baffles Lepidus or it simply passes him by; in any case, he’s got a more pressing question: what colour is it of? Surely this will force Antony into making an actual answer—but no. Of it own colour too. It’s crocodile-coloured. ’Tis a strange serpent—yes, Lepidus, very strange, and you don’t know anything more about it than you did before you started quizzing Antony. Oh yes, absolutely, agrees Antony, ’tis so, and—and is he finally going to deliver an actual fact? some crocodile-specific trivia? Nope. And the tears of it are wet.

But this is also about Cleopatra. Lepidus could even be about to ask Antony about Cleopatra, but loses his nerve, and says crocodile instead, although that’s a bit of a stretch. Antony’s comically prosaic response, however, which promises description but entirely fails to deliver, is a version of Enobarbus’s great hymn to Cleopatra’s singularity in 2.2, when he says to the panting Romans that her person beggared all description. The crocodile, like Cleopatra, is simply indescribable; it is, like her, sui generis, entirely its own thing, existing on its own terms, coloured like itself, just so high as it is. So she is the serpent of old Nile indeed. (Mostly it’s just the comedy. But I do think that there’s this other thing going on too, whether Antony knows it or not. If anyone gets it, it’ll be Enobarbus.)

Will this description satisfy him, asks Caesar? and he can be in on the joke, but also partly disappointed, even repelled by Lepidus’s ridiculousness and weakness. With the health that Pompey gives him; else he is a very epicure. It’d better, together with all the wine he’s drunk at Pompey’s behest, otherwise nothing will, he is an epicure who will never be satisfied.