Cleopatra: A Life

* No one saw the will other than Octavian, who may have fabricated it himself. Plancus may equally well have forged it; in urgent cases, he had authority to sign Antony’s name and affix his seal. The document evidently included a confirmation of the gifts Antony had bestowed on Cleopatra’s children, as well as of Caesarion’s paternity. So far as we know, Antony never refuted the terms. Nor, for that matter, did Octavian refute the claim regarding Caesarion, which at this point he was wiser to ignore. It is all the same difficult to imagine any circumstances under which Antony might actually have committed to paper the provisions Octavian read aloud.