The imagery of Philo’s opening speech reminds the audience of the military power of Rome and how Rome was built through military conquest. Antony is compared to Mars, the Roman god of war. “The files and musters” of the battlefield not only represent Roman imperial might, but also suggest order, precision and strategy. The strength, immensity and solidity of the Roman Empire are all suggested in the architectural images of the “triple pillar” and “the wide arch of the ranged empire”.

In contrast, the imagery describing Egypt and the influence Egypt has on Antony is sensuous and suggestive of instability and change: the image of Rome melting into the Tiber powerfully expresses the vanity of all achievements on the world stage. Antony wishes to devote his life to the “soft hours” of love, ruled only by “pleasure” and “sport”.

That Antony is said to be “the bellows and fan” employed “to cool a gipsy’s lust” suggests that Roman masculine values are under threat in Egypt. The first scene requires the audience to question whether Antony is indeed emasculated by love or whether love can transcend Roman ideas of what constitutes honourable or manly behaviour. Philo, far from seeing Cleopatra as regal (as she surely appears to the audience at her splendid entrance), condemns her as a prostitute. This very narrow judgement of Cleopatra will be tested in the course of the play.

The imagery of the first scene underscores the dramatic contrasts and tensions between Rome and Egypt: the opposition of male and female, duty and pleasure, the warrior and lover; political or military action and idleness or pleasure are at the centre of the debate on love and honour in the play.