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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY
CHAPTER XVThe Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra at Tarsus and His winter with her in Alexandria .41-40 BC
It was very urgent that Antony should collect money during his tour, for
immense sums were needed with which to pay off the disbanded soldiers and to
meet the requirements of those still under arms; and it was therefore expected
that crushing fines would be imposed on those provinces or semi-independent
kingdoms which had given their support to Brutus and Cassius, and that taxes
would be collected all round with great severity. But the business of
satisfying the demobilized troops was a task which Antony had shifted, with
some cunning, onto the shoulders of Octavian; and in his present mood of happy
benevolence he was not prepared to exert himself unduly, nor, by intolerable
exactions, to jeopardize his chance of making popular the democratic Caesarian
cause in Greece.
During the early weeks of 41 BC he marched a part of his army southwards through Thessaly and down to Athens,
in which charming city he so greatly enjoyed himself that instead of imposing
taxes he made lavish presents to it. Like all educated Romans he could speak
Greek fluently, and he amused himself and delighted the Athenians by often attending
the public debates between philosophers and men of learning, and showing an
intelligent interest in their arguments. Brutus, who, it will be recalled, had
resided for a long time in Athens before making his fatal incursion into
Macedonia, was remembered there as a studious and scholarly man; and the city’s
intellectuals were surprised to find that the new master of the Roman world, in
spite of Cicero’s Philippics, which, of course, they had read, was also a
person of education, who had not lost on the battlefield that approximation to learning
and taste which had enabled him to hold his own amongst the shining lights of Caesar’s
famous galaxy. He was always asking to be shown their ancient buildings and
works of art; he patronized their artists and scholars; and he gave proof of a
genuine appreciation of their traditions which warmed their hearts in these
days of their city’s decline. Sports and games were taken very seriously in
Athens, and Antony also gave much pleasure by his interest in the athletic
contests and the races to which the people flocked. His own enormous physical
strength aroused their admiration, while his easy manners and his friendliness
made him immensely popular. People spoke, too, of his fairness and impartiality
in matters in which he had to give judgment; and they were much flattered to observe
his pleasure when in gratitude they hailed him as a true Philhellene, a lover
of Greece, and, in particular, a lover of Athens. Greece still stood for
artistic elegance, and it is the fact that when Antony was not fighting or
playing the fool he displayed strong leanings towards the cultured life, a
tendency which he was pleased to see recognized.
In spite of this, however, there must have been an occasionally
observable touch of the honest Philistine in him, a slight indication of that
pleasant and shameless practicality which reveals itself sometimes in the
modern tourist who is a little tired, of the reverence for ruins. We all know the
story of the returned traveler who recalled Rome to mind as the place where the
buildings were so out of repair; and a somewhat similar story is told of Antony
by Plutarch. The people of Megara, a city some twenty-six miles west of Athens,
famous for its antiquities, invited him to come over to see their celebrated
Senate-house; but when, after conducting him over the venerable edifice, they
asked him what he thought of it, he replied, “Well, it isn’t very large, and it
is extremely ruinous ...” People were a little shocked, too, when he proposed
to have extensive repairs carried out in the hoary temple of the Pythian Apollo;
but, after all, there is not much to be said in defense of an undue admiration
of the mere action of time and its pulverizing effect upon builders materials.
In the spring, when the smiling landscape was bright with wild-flowers,
and all the world seemed gay, he went north into Thrace, and, having left one
of his generals as governor of Greece and Macedonia, marched with a small and
happy army to the Hellespont and thence into Bithynia, which had become a Roman
province on the death of its monarch, Nicomedes the Third, the friend of Caesar.
Here he remembered the purpose of his mission, and collected whatever money he
could lay his hands on, “while”, as Plutarch says, “kings waited at his door,
and queens vied with one another in sending him presents and in endeavoring to
appear most charming in his eyes”. His tour now became a kind of royal
progress, splendid, sumptuous, and magnificent; and as he passed on he left
behind him the mingled encomiums of those he had entertained or by whom he had
been feted, and the groans of those into whose treasure-chests his
tax-collectors had dipped their greedy hands.
Great artistic geniuses—actors, singers, musicians, and dancers—joined
themselves to his company. Anaxenor and Xuthus, famous throughout the music-loving Asia Minor,
travelled with him; Metrodorus, the celebrated
dancer, attached himself to his ever increasing suite; until what Plutarch
describes as “a whole Bacchic rout” seemed to move
along in his train, “far outdoing in their license and their folly the pests
who had followed him out of Italy”. It is needless to say that Antony was soon
drinking heavily again; and the unfortunate fact that when he was drunk he was
prodigal in his generosity, caused a great deal of suffering of which, it is
said, he was wholly unaware. His friends, for instance, would ask him for
estates which they untruthfully declared had no surviving owners; and on one
occasion he gave his cook the house of a wretched citizen of Magnesia whom he
incorrectly believed to be dead, this being a tipsy reward for a particularly
good supper.
Thence he came to Ephesus, where, in view of the reputation which had
preceded him, the women met him dressed as nymphs and Bacchantes and the men
and boys as satyrs and fauns, wreathed with ivy, and singing his praises to the
accompaniment of drums, harps, flutes, and other instruments. In their songs
they hailed him as Bacchus or Dionysus, a deity who was not only the god of the
vine, but was the Joy-bringer, the gentle Spirit of Peace and Love—“and so
Antony was to some”, says Plutarch, “though to far
more he was the Devourer and the Rioter”. In this city he passed his time in
the former capacity, enjoying a Bacchic round of
festivities; but before he left he assumed the latter role for just sufficient
length of time to issue an ill-considered command that the annual tax should at
once be collected throughout Asia Minor, in giving which orders he overlooked the
fact that the tax of the previous year had only just been paid. Hereupon a certain
citizen came to him and told him in plain language that this was sheer robbery.
“If you are going to collect two years’ tribute at once” he said, bitterly, “you
can doubtless give us a couple of summers and harvests. If the last tax has not
been paid to you, ask your collectors for it; if it has, and is all gone, we
are ruined men”. It is said that Antony was touched to the quick by these
words, and cancelled his orders with generous apologies; for, as Plutarch
points out in this connection, “he was quite ignorant of most things that were
done in his name—not that he was careless, but that he was so prone to trust
frankly in all about him”.
It was probably while at Ephesus that he made the then apparently casual
decision which changed the whole course of his life. For some reason not made
clear by classical writers, he sent a messenger across the sea to Egypt to tell
Queen Cleopatra that he desired to see her. Plutarch thinks that he wished her
to answer an accusation that she had given assistance to Cassius in the late
troubles; but this seems to be contradicted by the fact that Cassius, when in
Syria, had wanted to bring Egypt by force over to his side before he ventured
to join Brutus in the west, and by the statement of Appian that Cleopatra had
sent ships to help the Triumvirs. Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that
Cleopatra would have sided with the murderers of Caesar, the father of her boy
Caesarion, who was now nearly six years of age, having been born in July, 47 BC; for it must have been obvious to her
that if the party of Brutus and Cassius came into power they would show little
consideration for the woman who had shared Caesar’s dreams of a Roman monarchy.
It appears most probable that Antony wished to ask the Queen for money,
and also to speak to her regarding the possibility of bringing the young Caesarion
onto the scene as the Dictators rightful heir. The murdered hero’s own little
son, his only known son now that Brutus was dead, might be made a very
important factor in the situation. He was said to resemble his fattier closely;
and if, in two or three years’ time, he were brought to Rome and shown to Caesar’s
old soldiers, they might rally around him to the complete extinction of the
unpopular Octavian, who was, after all, but the Dictator’s grand-nephew. Antony
perhaps saw himself as the future guardian of the boy, ruling the empire as a
sort of regent; for, as will presently become apparent, that was undoubtedly
the position at which he afterwards aimed.
The adoration of the memory of Caesar, and the actual worship of his
divinity, were now at their height in Rome. Antony owed much of his popularity
to the fact that he had unswervingly pursued the chief assassins to their deaths;
and the dislike of Octavian was largely due to his having, on the contrary,
allied himself for some time with them. Caesar’s spirit, in fact, dominated the
Roman world; and Antony could not overlook the tremendous potentialities
inherent in the existence of this child, this sole and genuine offspring of the
celestial hero of the People.
At any rate, whatever the motive might be—and it was certainly
political—Antony was anxious to see Cleopatra again after this lapse of three
and a half years since the day when she had fled from Rome. Her age was now
twenty-seven, and he had heard that she had matured into a most attractive and
clever woman: indeed, he remembered that when she was Caesar’s mistress she had
impressed him as a witty and talented young lady, and he was evidently not a
little intrigued by the thought of renewing his acquaintance with her. She had
not married, and he must have wondered whether she had remained romantically true
to Caesar’ memory, or whether there was any foundation for the vague stones he
had heard that she had indulged in various secret love-affairs with the
gentlemen of her court.
His messenger was a diplomatic young man named Quintus Dellius, who
had been the companion of Dolabella in Syria, had fallen into the hands of
Cassius whom he had unwillingly served and now was on Antony's staff. He was
instructed, it seems, to bring back the Queen’s reply, after which a rendezvous
could be arranged at some seaport city further to the east which Antony
intended in any event to visit; and it may be said in anticipation that Dellius
was able to convince her that his master was, as Plutarch records, “the
gentlest and kindest of soldiers”, and that she need have no fears. It is said,
however, that she showed no inclination to hurry herself, and that the mission
of Dellius was followed by a considerable number of letters from Antony and
those of his officers who had known her in Rome; and these no doubt gave her
news of his movements, so that she might know where to find him when at last
she should decide to cross the sea.
Meanwhile Antony proceeded on his gay and leisurely way eastwards,
passing through Phrygia, Galatia, and Cappadocia, and so coming down into
Cilicia, to the city of Tarsus, which he appears to have reached in August or
September. Tarsus, the Tarshish of the Bible, stood
on the river Cydnus, twelve miles back from the open
sea. It was a city famous for its schools of oratory and philosophy, and it had
produced and was producing so many celebrated men of learning that its general
atmosphere was academic and scholarly in the highest degree. Antony had made a
point of visiting it because it had been a place much honored by Caesar, and in
consequence of its loyalty to the Caesarian party had been savagely punished by
Cassius. Antony now offered what reparations he could, and instead of gathering
money from the city, made generous presents to it, just as he had done in the
case of Athens.
It may well be supposed that here, as in Athens, he played the part of
the dilettante, patronizing the above-mentioned schools, visiting the places of
antiquarian interest, and curtailing the exuberant activities of his theatrical
entourage. Queen Cleopatra, however, who had decided to make her visit to him
during his sojourn here at Tarsus, had heard from Dellius and others a great
deal about the Bacchic reception given to him at
Ephesus, and about the spectacular nature of his whole progress through Asia
Minor. She was deeply interested in him, and in his almost miraculous ascent
through difficulty and disaster to supreme power. To her he must have seemed to
be more than a play-actor, and his tour a sacred carnival rather than a mere
show : she recalled, no doubt, his behavior at that never-to-be forgotten
Lupercalia, when he had pranced almost naked and in a sort of inspired and
momentous frenzy, through the Forum—she had been in Rome at the time, and must
have had an account of it from Caesar, if, indeed, she had not witnessed his
strange and eventful antics herself from some window; she remembered that he
used often to comport himself as a Hercules, thus impersonating his legendary
ancestor; and she had heard more than once of late that people were speaking of
him with affectionate awe as an incarnation of some deity.
Now, in her own country she was herself an actual divinity, and Caesar
had presented her to Rome as an incarnation of his own mythical ancestress,
Venus, placing her statue, it win be recalled, in his new temple dedicated to
that goddess, and allowing her likeness to be impressed upon her coinage in the
guise of Isis-Venus. She therefore made up her mind to play the role of Venus
to Antony’s Dionysus—not altogether in fun, not altogether in consideration of
its spectacular value, but in a large measure because the custom and mental
outlook of the age enabled her, in spite of her reason’s ridicule, to think of
herself in some sense as a goddess and of Antony as a God. After all, Caesar
was now Jupiter-Julius, and in the fiery guise of a comet he had been seen in
the starry night-sky rushing to heaven: why, then, should not this new
superman, this new master of the Roman world, who had so miraculously arisen,
be also a deity, as Ephesus had evidently deemed him?
But in this seat of learning as has been said, Antony had discarded his
celestial role; and when the news was suddenly brought to him one afternoon by
runners from the coast that Cleopatra’s fleet had been sighted, and that she
was sailing up the river to the city, he assumed his most dignified posture,
and gave instructions that the city’s Forum should be prepared for a formal
reception. He dressed himself in his official robes, and, when the time came,
went in state to this place, seating himself upon the magistrate’s throne, his
glittering company of officers and officials about him, the learned professors
and venerable elders of the city on his either hand, and a great array of
soldiers holding in check the excited crowds.
As he sat waiting, however, he noticed that one by one his immediate
company excused themselves and left him, and that gradually the crowd was
melting away. Making puzzled enquiries, he found that Cleopatra’s ships had
arrived at the quay nearby, and that the vessel upon which she was travelling
was so marvelously decorated that the sight was drawing the whole city to the
waterside. Hastily he sent her a message, little short of a command, that she
should come ashore to be received formally by him, and that afterwards, since
it was already dusk, she should accompany him to his official residence to
attend the state banquet which he had ordered to be made ready.
By the time that her answer was received he was almost alone in the
darkening Forum, save for his stall and the wondering soldiers. She sent word
that she would prefer to receive him and his friends on her ship, and to give him dinner there instead; and at this, Antony appears to have been
completely nonplussed, not knowing what was the dignified thing to do. The
enthusiasm of the crowds, however, relieved him of his embarrassment, for they
trooped back into the Forum, shouting out that Venus herself had come to feast
with Bacchus, and that he must certainly betake himself to the quay to greet
her and to see the marvelous sight.
He therefore complied with their wishes, cancelled his banquet, and
walked with great dignity down to the mooring-place. Darkness had now fallen, and
the sight which met his eyes was indeed astonishing. The hot September night
being still and windless, the illuminations which Cleopatra had provided for
the occasion were seen at their best; the whole deck of the royal vessel was
ablaze with candles, arranged in squares, circles, and other patterns; and in
their steady light the Queen could be seen reclining under a golden canopy
backed by a still spread sail of purple linen. Around and about were half-naked
boys, impersonating Cupids, and maidens scantily attired as nymphs of the sea:
the sailors had all been sent below, and these youths and girls were so posed
at the rudder, at the helm, and about the rigging, as to suggest that they were
the fairy crew of a fairy ship. There was an
orchestra, too, playing the haunting music for which Egypt was famous; and here
and there stood a priestly figure burning
sweet-smelling incense.
When Antony went aboard, and greeted the Queen in these fantastic
surroundings, he found that she herself was dressed in the guise of Venus, that
is to say she was wearing the soft and shimmering robes of that goddess and her
elaborate headdress. She was a small, dainty little creature, radiant, rather
than beautiful, but having a charmingly molded face, an abundance of soft, dark
hair, a fascinating mouth, thoughtful, wide-set eyes, and a general appearance of
breeding which justified her rather prominent though finely chiseled nose. He
was charmed by her personal appearance, and yet I fancy that he must have felt
a little embarrassment at the theatricality of her studied pose and at her
carefully staged tableau; for, as we shall presently see, she very quickly
changed her tactics.
Antony, it has to be remembered, had had so much to do with the theatre
and with all sorts of professional actors and actresses—his former mistress,
Cytheris, in particular—that by now he must have been quite incapable of being
bewitched by the histrionics of an amateur, however splendidly presented. He
could admire her display as a work of art; but he could not respond to it in
the same unnatural vein, and, indeed, it would seem that the more ardently she
enacted the part of the voluptuous goddess the more uncomfortable he became,
and the more he felt himself to be a practical, vulgar man. As so often happens
when a would-be enchantress plays her romantic part before a man of the world,
his response was disconcertingly close to laughter. His identification with
Dionysus, after all, had not been of his own seeking; and he was not prepared
to sustain the role for the sake of supporting this young lady in her own
celestial impersonation.
“She, perceiving that his joking behavior was broad and vulgar”, says
Plutarch, “and that it savored more of the soldier than the courtier, soon
responded in the same manner”; and though that writer is here referring to the
following day, one may suppose that, being a quick-witted woman, she did not
take long to step out of her rôle and to explain it
as a piece of fun, or as something intended for the eyes of the people. At any rate,
she had made herself look charming: that was enough, and for the rest, she had
to admit, as many a young woman has had to do, that her intended effect had
been ruined by its contact with the armor of a middle-aged man’s experience.
Antony was now forty-two: he had reached the age at which plain-dealing on the
part of the other sex is more appreciated than the cleverest acting.
History does not tell us more of that first meeting after these three
and a half years; but we are informed that on the next night, or the night
after that, Antony entertained the Queen in return, and that on this occasion
she herself behaved as jovially and as naturally as he did, capping his
improper stones with her own, passing ribald remarks upon the cooking, teasing
him about the dearth of sparkling conversation, and generally treating him like
an old friend and boon-companion. This bantering, outspoken woman was far more
to his taste than the languorous Venus of the night of her arrival; and he was
quite captivated by her.
“Her actual beauty”, writes Plutarch, was not in itself so remarkable
that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without
being struck by it; but the contact of her presence, when one got to know her, was irresistible. The attractions of her person, combined
with the charm of her talk, and the distinctive character of all she said or
did, was something bewitching. It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of
her voice, especially as she could pass from one language to another, and could
speak without an interpreter to Ethiopians, Bedouins, Jews, Arabs, Syrians,
Persians, and many others, not to mention Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.
On the following night Cleopatra entertained Antony at another banquet,
and on this occasion the entire floor of her vessel’s saloon was carpeted with
roses so thickly packed that they formed a sort of sweet-smelling mattress. For
some weeks she remained at Tarsus with him, and at length she suggested that he
should visit her at her capital, Alexandria. Antony was in any case going to
continue his tour from Tarsus on into Syria and Palestine, where he expected to
arrive in November or December; and from Palestine it would be a simple matter
to cross the desert into Egypt, and he felt that he could spend his time very
profitably there during the winter months. I imagine that at first he merely
thought of exacting a handsome sum of money from the Queen in return for a
promise of Roman support for her on her always precarious throne; but
gradually, it seems to me, a larger plan presented itself to his mind, and he
was eager to study the resources of her country, financial, military, and
naval, and to enroll her as an active ally in his future schemes.
There was every reason for him to avoid going back to Italy for the
present; for he must have been most anxious not to involve himself in the
difficult situation which had there developed. Octavian
had unexpectedly recovered from his illness and was now not only unlikely to
die young, but was proving himself quite capable of asserting his authority
even though it were in opposition to that of Anthony’s self-appointed representatives
- Fulvia, his wife, and Lucius, his brother, who was one of the Consuls for
this year 41 BC.
It had been Octavian’s thankless task to try to settle the demobilized
soldiers on the land, and to satisfy their demands both for profitable acres
and for payment of the money due to them; but, having no available funds for
the purpose, he had been obliged to ask the municipalities and private landowners
in certain districts to find room for the veterans on their estates and to
supply them with their initial stock. This, so Antony heard, had caused an uproar; and Lucius, supported by Fulvia, had opposed the
plan, saying that the grants to the ex-soldiers should be suspended until
Antony returned to look into the matter. Octavian, on his part, had angrily declared
that Lucius was not acting in accordance with Antony’s wishes in taking the
part of the threatened landowners against the soldiers; and to mark his
disapproval of Fulvia, whom he regarded as more to blame than Lucius, he had
divorced her daughter, Clodia, Antony’s step-daughter, whom he had married at
the time of the establishment of the Triumvirate, and had sent her back, still
a virgin, to her mother.
The upper classes had for the most part decided that Lucius was quite
right in opposing this spoliation of the rich for the benefit of the disbanded
troops, and in demanding that no such drastic measures should be taken until
Antony had been consulted and had had time to raise money in the east. Lucius
had thus become the hero of the moneyed classes and what remained of the
republican party, and the enemy of the veterans; but with one section of the
latter he had retrieved his popularity by suggesting the compromise that lands
should be found for those soldiers who had been loyal to Cesar's memory from
the first, and who had actually fought at Philippi.
Matters had then passed out of control. The veterans in some cases had
forcibly seized the lands which Octavian was trying to obtain for them, and had
come to blows with the owners, who relied on the support of Lucius; and there
were indications that actual warfare would break out between the two parties, Lepidus,
the discredited, third Triumvir, meanwhile, had played so ignoble a part that
he had been brushed aside in the general commotion, and was no longer of the
least importance. According to the dispatches which Antony received, however,
it seemed that Fulvia was the stormy petrel, and was encouraging these
disturbances in order to oblige her husband to return to Italy, not only so
that he should be once more under her control but also that he might be forced
to quarrel with Octavian whom she now passionately desired to destroy—if only
in revenge for his insult to her daughter.
Antony, however, did not want to quarrel with Octavian at the moment,
and, indeed, had honorable scruples in that regard, after Philippi, he had made
an amicable agreement with him, binding so long as the Triumvirate should last,
and since, moreover, he had the interests of the veterans at heart himself, and
was most anxious to avoid being involved in the difficulties consequent on
their demobilization until he had collected sufficient money to satisfy in cash
their just demands. That was the crux of the matter: money. By hook or by crook
he would have to raise money; and, at the moment, Egypt seemed to him to be the
most likely source of the gold he needed. Cleopatra’s kingdom was immensely
wealthy; and I think he must have seen that he could probably persuade her to
raise the required sum with which to satisfy the veterans in the hope that thus
she would pave the way for their recognition of Caesarion as Caesar’s true
heir.
He knew that Caesar had intended to marry her and to make her his
consort upon the world-throne which he had desired to establish; he realized
that the dream of such a throne for her son still haunted her thoughts; he saw
that a goal of this kind was to her the only hope for her dynasty, since its
alternative fate would probably be extinction, and the annexation of Egypt by
Rome, at no distant date. If, then, he could induce her to place all her
resources at his disposal in return for a promise that he would act as guardian
to her son and that he would launch him, when he was of age, into the
adventurous sea of Roman life as the heir of the adored Dictator, he would not
only be able to return to Rome with enough money to win the gratitude of the
ex-soldiers, but would ultimately be able to place in the field a formidable
rival to Octavian. It was necessary, then, for him to get to know the young Caesarion,
and, if he should prove to be a promising boy, to arrange for his education in
Rome.
It was some such plan, I think, which led him to accept Cleopatra’s
invitation to visit her in Egypt. It is true that he had found her to be a most
entertaining companion now that she had dropped her celestial pose and had come
down to earth, so to speak, with such an uncompromising impact, and it is
certain that he had already entered into amorous relations with her in his own
light-hearted way; but I do not think that he was as yet at all deeply in love
with her, nor she with him. He was a very fine figure of a man and she was
greatly attracted, no doubt, by him: she was an exceedingly charming young
woman, and he was greatly intrigued by her. But world-events were too serious
just now for the consideration of them to be relegated to the back of the mind;
and neither he nor she could forget that they were leaders in momentous
movements. Both were bent on obtaining from the other certain material
advantages. There was no room yet in their hearts for sensational romance.
After Cleopatra had left Tarsus, Antony moved on to Daphne, near
Antioch, in Syria, and later into Palestine, whence, having made certain
dispositions in regard to the Jewish government, and having apparently sent
most of his troops back into Asia Minor crossed the desert into Egypt, and so
arrived at Alexandria probably in December. The Egyptian capital was at this
time the most important city in the world, with the exception of Rome, and not
even Rome could rival it as a seat of learning and a centre of intellectual and
artistic life, in which respect it had long since taken the place of Athens. In
character it was predominantly Greek; and although the population was very
mixed and contained Egyptian, Syrian, Jewish, and many other elements, the
language, dress, and habits of the upper classes were Greek, as also was the
city’s architecture.
It had been founded by Alexander the Great to serve as a Greek port on
the conquered coast of native Egypt; but Cleopatra’s ancestor, a Greek general
who had made himself King of Egypt after Alexander’s death, had converted it
into the capital of the country, and he and his descendants had there ruled for the last three hundred years over the
people of the Nile, with whom they had no more real or penetrating connection
than Englishmen in India today have with the natives of that country, or the
early settlers in America had with the pacified Redskins. Cleopatra, as has
already been pointed out, was not an Egyptian: she was a Macedonian Greek,
enthroned in a Greek palace, and living a Greek life in a Greek city which had
little concern with the native Egyptian nation other than that of governing it
and drawing enormous wealth from it.
The palace stood upon the Lochias promontory,
on the east side of which the rocks and sandy coves fronting the city extended
into the distance, while on the west was the harbor protected from the open sea
by the long, low island whereon rose the famous Pharos lighthouse, then
regarded as one of the wonders of the world. This lighthouse, built two
centuries earlier, was a white marble structure, nearly six hundred feet in
height, and having a beacon-light visible for thirty miles out to sea.
The city was full of magnificent buildings, the Temple of Serapis (the Jupiter of the Egyptians) being without a
rival. The Museum, which was what we should now call a university, was the
greatest institute of learning in the world, its particular subjects of study
being medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and literature; and its famous library
contained nearly half a million books. The mausoleum in which lay the body of Alexander the Great, in a coffin of gold, was
one of antiquity’s most revered monuments, and around it were the splendid sepulchers
of Cleopatra’s royal ancestors. The Forum, the theatres, the Hippodrome or
racecourse, the Gymnasium, and the famous arcaded Street of Canopus, were
amongst the other architectural marvels; and the public parks and gardens were
celebrated.
The Alexandrians carried on an immensely prosperous trade with the Mediterranean
lands. Egypt has been called the granary of the ancient world, and corn was
exported to Rome and elsewhere in great quantities. The linen trade was
extensive, and the material of which the sails of ships were made came nearly
all from here. Perfumes, incense, and oils were
exported, and many manufactures such as glass, pottery and paper (papyrus) were
sent across the seas. Gold, copper, and ornamental stone were extracted from
the eastern Egyptian deserts; and works of art of all sorts were carried over
to the European markets, while Greek and native Egyptian artists and craftsmen
were everywhere in demand.
Over this wealthy Greek city, and over the teeming Egyptian race
dwelling in the Delta and the Nile Valley beyond, Cleopatra ruled in strangely
solitary splendor. Her two brothers, who had in turn been her consorts, were
both dead, the one having been killed in 47 BC in the war which was waged when Caesar was in Alexandria, and the other having
died early in 44 BC just before the
Dictator’s assassination. Her now exiled sister, Arsinoe, and her little son, Caesarion,
were the only other surviving members of the royal family; and it appears that
the boy was all the world to her. It is indeed
remarkable that after Caesar’s death she had not married, but had for these
three and a half years and more remained in lonely control of her kingdom; and
the explanation must be that she was waiting for that new master of Rome to
arise who would take the place of Caesar as the protector of her boy and as the
aspirant to the world-throne to which Caesar had wished to elevate her, and of
which she had never ceased to dream.
Antony was now that master: he seemed to her to be the hero for whom she
had been waiting so patiently, watching with anxious eyes the movement of Roman
affairs. Until lately she had hardly supposed that the expected man of destiny
would prove to be this Antony, Caesar’s jovial colleague; but now that she had
come to know him in Tarsus, and had seen his popularity and his power, she was
convinced that in him lay all her hopes. Her attitude to him differed from his
to her in this respect, that whereas he sought to make use of Egypt’s wealth
for his own political ends, offering in return to promote the future interests
of her son in the arena of Roman ambition, she, on her part, regarded Antony as
the destined ally and husband for whom she had waited, and saw no reason why he
should not create with her that Roman throne which Caesar had so nearly
succeeded in founding. Her line of action was quite clear to her, she would
have to excite his admiration for her regal power and her boundless resources
of wealth, and at the same time she would have to win his actual love as she
had won Caesar’s.
When she had captivated Caesar, it should be pointed out, she had been
no more than twenty-one years of age, and had been a wayward, capricious,
audacious little creature, whose pluck had greatly appealed to him. She had
been driven out of Alexandria by her brother, it will be remembered, and when
the Dictator had taken possession of the palace she had managed to penetrate
the enemy’s lines and to be carried into Caesar’s room rolled up in a carpet.
He had promptly seduced her, but she had so won his affection that he had
remained with her until her child was born, it will be recalled, and then had
renewed his relations with her in Rome. There she had perhaps become a little vain
and haughty, as Cicero had found her; but the disaster of Caesar’s death, and
her consequent flight back to Egypt, had knocked all the vanity out of her, and
now, as her twenty-eighth birthday approached, she was a woman of much deeper
character. There is no reliable evidence that she was less moral than most
other women of the time; and, in any case, it is not for us to sit in judgment
upon her if it be true, which is questionable, that she had not behaved with
continence during these years of her solitude. She must have been very lonely.
It must be admitted that the writers of antiquity have portrayed her
character in ugly terms, presenting her as a lewd and vicious enchantress,
ambitious, ruthless, and cruel; but if we remember that she ultimately did make
the bid for a throne in Rome, that the attempt was wrecked by Octavian, who
himself became the first Emperor, and that the writers of the imperial age not
unnaturally placed the blame upon her for the unaccountable behavior of the
popular Antony, we can easily see that they would be prone to describe her as a
siren and a courtesan, the slave of her passions.
Actually, Cleopatra was not altogether the cause of Antony’s downfall;
and in the light of this unavoidable conclusion the Queen’s character takes on
a fairer aspect. To understand her we must think of her at this time as a woman
struggling to prevent her country being annexed by Rome, and audaciously
meeting that danger by aiming at no less than an Egypto-Roman
crown, a worldwide sovereignty, which was, she hoped, to be established for her
and her son, Caesar’s child, by the aid of Caesars kinsman, friend, and
representative—Antony. Let us admit that she was ambitious, scheming, and
unscrupulous; let us admit what nobody denies, that she was brilliant,
energetic, courageous and tenacious; yet in the absence of any but vague and
prejudiced gossip about her, we must surely receive the conventional stones of her
immorality with the greatest caution.
Like many of her ancestors she was a woman of refinement and culture, a
true Greek in her artistic and intellectual equipment; and as soon as Antony
arrived she set herself to the task of dazzling him with the brilliance of her
court, and shaming him out of those less elegant kinds of entertainment in
which she had participated in Tarsus. Here in Alexandria she was surrounded
both by genuine scholars and artists and by fashionable and wealthy
intellectuals who seem to have combined the art of good living with the rarer
accomplishment of clever conversation; and Antony at once found himself the
guest of honor, and, indeed, the dominant figure, in a scintillating company
such as he had not known since the days when he was a member of the famous bevy
of talent over which the astonishing Caesar had presided. It is true that he
was a simple soul, and was as happy in a rough company of soldiers as he was,
in other mood, in the society of the elegant; but here in Cleopatra’s gay
capital there was a Greek spirit of light-heartedness in these men of brains
which nothing in Rome could match; and its effect upon him was like that of
wine. It seems that he had never before so thoroughly enjoyed himself.
Very soon he proposed that Cleopatra and the most brilliant of his new
friends should form themselves into a society or club which should be called
the Amimetobioi,
or “Inimitable Livers”; and, the idea being well received, Antony became the
chief “Inimitable”, with the Queen as his colleague. Each member of the club in
turn entertained the others, all vying with one another in their attempts to
stage the perfect party. As an instance of the length to which these efforts
were carried, Plutarch mentions the fact that on one occasion a visitor to the
royal kitchens saw no less than eight wild boars in different stages of being roasted
whole, not because the company was large, but because the cooks, having no idea
of the hour at which Antony and Cleopatra would choose to dine, were obliged to
employ this method of ensuring that the pork would be cooked, to a turn.
Antony, however, was incorrigibly boisterous, and the Queen did not
neglect to meet his chronic high spirits with a revival of her own. “Were he
disposed to mirth”, writes Plutarch, “she had at once some new amusement or
delight to meet his mood: at every turn she was with him, and let him escape
her neither by day nor by night. She played at dice with him, drank with him,
hunted with him; and when he exercised himself in arms, she was there to see.
At night she would go rambling with him to disturb and play pranks on people by
knocking at their doors or windows, she and he being both disguised in servants’
clothes; and from these expeditions he often came home very scurvily answered and sometimes even roughly handled, though most people guessed who he
was. However, the Alexandrians in general liked, it all well enough, and joined
good-humouredly in his frolics and jokes, saying they were much obliged to him
for acting his tragic parts at Rome and reserving his comedy for them”.
It is hardly necessary to say that she was now his habitual bedfellow.
She made no secret of it; and, since in her own country she was above the law,
she allowed her subjects to recognize in Antony her chosen consort, who, though
having another wife in Rome, was here by the special sanction of the gods
united to her, just as the divine Caesar had been. Thus, when it became known
that she was again going to become a mother, nobody was either surprised or
shocked.
She herself, no doubt, was happy to think that a definite link between
herself and Antony would thus be created, which might cause him to regard an
ultimate legal marriage with her almost as a duty; but he, on his part, was not
prepared to admit any such obligation. Perhaps he would divorce Fulvia and
marry the Queen one day; but he was a busy man, and this little holiday in
Alexandria would presently end, and he would have to return to Rome to pursue
his destiny. The thought had probably been implanted in his mind by now that
his fortune might lead him to that throne of which Caesar had dreamed; but the
time had not yet arrived. For the present he was only prepared to offer Cleopatra
his protection on her own Egyptian throne, and his guardianship of her boy, Caesarion,
whom he had found to be a promising child; and in return for this protection he
was going to avail himself of Egypt’s wealth. But for the rest, his future was
in the lap of the gods.
One service, however, he was able to perform for the Queen, namely the
removal of two pretenders to her throne. Her sister Arsinoe, that same princess
who had been led through the streets of Rome in Caesar’s triumph, had from
childhood never ceased to plot against her; and it seems that she had given
what help she could to the enemies of the Caesarian party in the hope that
their victory would lead to the dethroning of Cleopatra. She was now residing
in Asia Minor, having found sanctuary with the priestesses of Artemis; and the
Queen asked Antony to give orders for her execution. This he did, for she was
unquestionably a dangerous enemy; and she was dispatched at the steps of the
altar where she was serving, the High Priest of Artemis being arrested as a
conspirator against the Caesarian cause, and a general clean-up of this nest of
treason being carried out. The other pretender was a man who claimed to be that
brother of Cleopatra who had really been killed in his war with Caesar: he
seems to have been in league with Arsinoe, and was trying to raise an army in
Phoenicia at the time when Antony’s agents seized him and put him to death. An
ambitious Egyptian general, named Serapion, who had helped them both, was also
executed.
The close of 41 BC found
Antony at the height of his enjoyment of Cleopatra’s splendid hospitality; but,
probably in January or February of the New Year, 40 BC, he received belated dispatches from Rome, giving him an account
of what had occurred in Italy since last he had had news, in the autumn.
The opposition of Lucius and Fulvia—supported by the menaced
landowners—to Octavian’s intended, appropriation of lands for the disbanded
veterans, recorded earlier in this chapter, had at length developed into open
hostilities, and the former had gone out into the country to recruit an army.
At length Lucius had forcibly seized upon Rome, and had made a speech in the
Forum, proposing that Octavian should be declared a public enemy, that the
Triumvirate should be ended, and that Antony should be asked to return to Rome
and to assume the post of Consul for 40 BC, with special powers for the
pacification of the country. These proposals may be described as an attempt to
form a coalition between the democrats and the remnant of the republicans; and
it is evident that Lucius and Fulvia had supposed Antony to be ready for a
reconciliation of the two parties in opposition to the bullying Caesarianism of the ex-soldiers. Octavian, however, with
the aid of the veterans, had gained the upper hand, and had obliged Lucius to
retire to Perugia, where he had soon been closely besieged; while Fulvia had
taken up her headquarters at Praeneste (Palestrina), and not only had assumed
command of a military force, but had actually dressed herself like a general
and had buckled on a sword.
She was smarting under the now unconcealed insults of Octavian, and she
had believed that she and Lucius, by declaring that they were carrying out the
wishes of her absent husband, could rouse the country against the young man,
and could clear him out of the way, so that she, Lucius, and Antony should be
in complete control of the empire. Octavian, very wisely, had stated that he
had no quarrel with his friend and colleague, Antony, but only with this turbulent
couple, who, though Antony’s wife and brother, were really acting against his
interests: in fact, he seems to have said, he and Antony were both good
democrats, having the welfare of the poor soldiers at heart, while Lucius and
Fulvia had become traitors to the party, and were leaguing themselves with the
old republicans, the conservatives and the aristocrats.
Antony, of course, was extremely troubled by this news; and, in the
words of Plutarch, “at last arousing himself with difficulty from idleness, and
shaking off the fumes of wine”, he made preparations for his departure. He must
have been furious with Fulvia and his brother Lucius for having thus recklessly
jeopardized his cause by this premature attempt to pick a quarrel with
Octavian; and one may suppose that his intention was to hasten back to Italy,
to repudiate his wife, and, with Cleopatra’s money and such funds as he could
raise elsewhere, to satisfy both the veterans and the landowners, thus gaining
personal credit for the ending of the quarrel, reestablishing his endangered
position at home, and relegating Octavian once more to the background.
But now came another piece of news, this time from Syria, which was even
more disconcerting. After the battle of Philippi a good many Roman fugitives
had taken refuge in Parthia; and one of their number, Labienus, the son of the
Pompeian general killed at Munda in Spain in 45 BC, had persuaded the Parthians to
invade Syria and Cilicia, his reckless aim being, apparently, to crush Antony
and thus to pave the way for a future return of the republicans to power. A
great invading army had crossed the Euphrates, and was marching on Antioch in
northern Syria, and such Roman troops as were in that part of the country were
in full retreat. The attack was a complete surprise.
With such dangers threatening him, Cleopatra had no wish to keep Antony
in Alexandria. Egypt itself was safe from a Parthian invasion, for the Egyptian
army, aided by the Macedonian troops permanently stationed in the capital, and
the Roman soldiers who had been there ever since the days of Gabinius, could be
relied on to hold the eastern Egyptian frontier. With a sudden sinking of her
heart the Queen must have realized that Antony was not the undisputed master of
Rome that she had supposed him to be. She had been too hasty, perhaps, in
staking her all upon him; for he had yet far to go, and much lost ground to
retrieve, ere he could think of championing her cause and that of Caesarion
before the Roman world. Her attitude towards him is revealed in an anecdote
related by Plutarch. During the idle days shortly before his departure, he used
to go out fishing with the Queen; but having been unlucky in his catches, he
jokingly engaged some divers to descend unseen into the water and to fasten
large fish onto his hook one after the other, so that he appeared to be the
most wonderful of fishermen. Cleopatra, however, detected the trick, and sent a
diver down with a salted fish, which Antony drew to the surface amidst great
laughter, whereupon the Queen said to him: “Leave the fishing-rod, Antony, to
us poor nine sovereigns of Egypt: your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms!”
Early in March, 40 BC, he set sail for the city of Tyre, on the Syrian
coast, with a small fleet, leaving Cleopatra to bring into the world, when her
time should come, the offspring of their happy nights together. Neither he nor
she could tell when they would meet again.
Antony's return to Rome; His Marriage to Octavia; and His Maneuvers for Political
Unity
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