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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY
CHAPTER XVIIIThe Great Parthian Adventure, and Antony’s Movement towards Sovereign Power.36 - 33 BC
The fact that in the previous spring Antony had been so impatient to
obtain from Octavian the extra legions he required for the Parthian expedition
indicates that he had planned to open the campaign in the autumn; and the
choice of this time of year suggests that he had intended to take the southern
route into Parthia, marching down the valley of the Euphrates through Mesopotamia
to Babylonia and thence to Ctesiphon, one of the Parthian capitals, for in
these parts winter was the only tolerable season for campaigning. The fact that
he himself took up his headquarters in Syria suggests, too, that he had
expected to follow this southern route. But when the delay in Italy had forced
him to postpone the expedition until the spring he had altered his plans and
had chosen the northern route through Armenia and thence down into Media to the
city of Ecbatana, for the reason that here in the north the summer season was
more suitable for warfare.
When he reached the Euphrates at Zeugma, therefore, and first came into
touch with the enemy outposts, they must have wondered whether he would advance
up-stream to join his advance-guard already sent into Armenia, or whether he would
move downstream towards Ctesiphon. Antony, himself, was perhaps even yet not
absolutely decided, for there seems to have been some delay here, and some
uncertainty in regard to the plan of campaign, which led Plutarch to suppose
that Antony was a man in love, unable to think of anything but his passion for
Cleopatra. He seems, however, to have had little doubt that he should take the
northern route, more especially since his general in Armenia had reported that
Artavasdes, the King of Armenia, was prepared to co-operate with him, having a
private quarrel with his namesake Artavasdes, King of Media, the Parthian ally.
The Parthian empire included within its wide bounds an area as big as
that of the entire Roman world. Mespotamia, and ancient Assyria and Babylonia,
formed its western wing; Persia, Carmania, and Gedrosia (Beluchistan) were comprised
in its southern territory; and Bactriana (Bokhara) and those states which lay
on the near side of the Indus, over against northern India, constituted its
eastern possessions. Parthia (Khorassan) itself lay in the midst of these, just
to the east of Media, and south-east of the Caspian Sea. It was a vast
territory to conquer; but Alexander the Great had done so, and Antony was sure
that he could achieve with his great Roman army the same success which Alexander’s
smaller force of Greeks had achieved three centuries earlier.
It was the middle of April, 36 BC when he set out upon his march northwards. Moving up the valley of the
Euphrates, he passed through Samosata, the city which he and Ventidius Bassus
had besieged in the previous campaign, and so came to Melitene in Cappadocia,
and thence to Satala in northern Armenia Minor, which he reached in early June.
He then proceeded into Armenia where, at the end of that month, he made his
juncture with the troops which had been sent ahead; and here he proudly
reviewed his whole army prior to the southern advance into Media. Not less than
a hundred-thousand men were now under his command, the bulk of these troops
being Roman legionaries amongst which were many of his veteran Gauls.
Polemo, whom Antony had made King of Laodicea, had recently been
transferred by him to the throne of Pontus, the kingdom in north-eastern Asia
Minor which adjoined Armenia; and this monarch was now here with a small but
useful contingent of troops. King Artavasdes of Armenia was also in the camp,
having placed in the field sixteen thousand horsemen, these being extremely
valuable because they were roughriders trained in the Parthian method of
warfare, namely that of shooting with bow-and-arrows from horseback. Artavasdes
himself proved to be most helpful and friendly: he was a man who had been
educated as a Greek, and, being inclined to literature, had written some
passable Greek plays and also a number of historical works. His people had
received the Romans very hospitably, and were glad to open their country to
them as a base of operations against their hereditary southern enemies, the
Medes. A matter of great satisfaction to Antony, moreover, was the fact that a
number of Parthian nobles had come into Armenia with offers of aid, having
quarreled with the king of Parthia, Fraates, a man of great cruelty who had
begun his reign by murdering his father and most of his relations.
The frontier between Armenia and Media was formed by the river Araxes
(the Aras), and Antony’s army crossed this river about the end of July. Antony
himself pushed rapidly forward with the main army to the city of Phraaspa, some
forty miles north of Ecbatana, his object being to overwhelm these two important
centers in the first rush, and thence to move eastwards into Parthia or
southwards to Ctesiphon. He expected to take Phraaspa by assault, and he
therefore left his baggage-train and his great siege-engines to follow him with
an escort of ten thousand men or more, including the King of Pontus. But when
he reached the city, in the middle of August, he found it strongly defended,
and, to his great disappointment, he was obliged to prepare for a siege.
Meanwhile, the Parthian monarch, Phraates, had come up from the south
with his host of mounted archers; and, hearing that Antony at Phraaspa was
separated from his siege-train, which was now at Gaza, fifty miles to the
north, he made a wide detour and suddenly fell upon it. The result was a
disaster for the Romans which ruined Antony’s hopes. All the siege-engines were
destroyed, the baggage was lost, King Polemo of Pontus was captured, and nearly
all the ten thousand men of the escort were slaughtered together with their
general. On hearing the news, Antony at once hastened back with all the troops
he could spare; but he found only dead men and the wrecks of his engines. He
then learnt that the King of Armenia who had been advancing behind the
siege-train, had at once fled with his sixteen thousand horsemen, and was now
on his way back to his own country.
Antony would have been wise to have accepted his misfortune and at once
to have marched his army back to Armenia; but the effect of the catastrophe
upon him was that of angering him into the determination to fight it out. Such
was his nature: the more formidable the enemy the more stubbornly he desired to
hit back. Returning to Phraaspa he settled down to starve it into surrender;
but owing to the fact that king Phraates and his Parthian and Median horsemen
were hovering around the outskirts of his camp, he himself was almost as
closely besieged as was the city he was besieging. He had to fight for his food
in the country round about; but though he attempted to force the enemy into a
pitched battle on the one side or to take the city by assault on the other, he
failed to bring about a major engagement of any kind.
September went by, and, when the approach of cold weather in October and
the difficulty of obtaining food had reduced him and his troops to the verge of
despair, he made an elaborate and carefully planned movement to jockey the
enemy into the open. Taking ten legions and all his cavalry he went a day’s
march from the camp, and when, as he expected, he was followed by the enemy, he
suddenly turned upon them. As a result of the surprise, however, he killed no
more than eighty of them and took only thirty prisoners, the fact being that
the Parthian and Median horsemen were altogether too nimble for him, and prided
themselves on their equal ability to swoop down on their opponents and to
gallop away to safety. He was exasperated by his failure, and when he returned
to the siege-lines and found that there had been a sortie which had put some of
his men to flight, he angrily punished the cowardice of those who had fled by
imposing upon them the old Roman penalty of “decimation”, that is to say, the
execution of one in every ten of the delinquents, the victims being drawn by
lot. This severity checked a tendency to mutiny which would have meant disaster
to the whole force; but if it startled the men into the endurance of their
hardships with outward courage, it did nothing to relieve the inward depression
of them all. The retirement of the King of Armenia from the campaign, with his
sixteen thousand cavalry, was an irreparable loss, for these men would have
been of the utmost service in dealing with the evasive enemy horsemen, their
methods of fighting being similar.
At length the Parthians proposed an armistice, and to this Antony
responded by saying that if the eagles captured from the legions of Crassus at
Carrhae in 53 BC were returned
to him, and if the prisoners then carried off were released, he would take his
departure. The Parthian king, however, rejected these terms, and merely sent
word that if Antony would leave the country at once his retreat would not be
molested.
In the deepest dejection, therefore, as the winds of winter began to
whistle about the camp, Antony accepted this consoling himself as best he could
by the thought that he would recuperate in Syria and recommence the campaign
next year. His sorrow and shame, nevertheless, were so great that he refused to
address his men to acquaint them with the news which to them must have been so
welcome. “Some of the soldiers”, Plutarch writes, “resented this behavior on
the grounds that it slighted them, but the greater number understood the cause
and pitied him, finding in it a reason why they on their part should treat him
with even more respect and obedience than was their usual habit”.
Antony had intended to march back by the way he had come, the road
passing through open country; but a certain friendly chief of the Mardi—a people
living in that part of Media which lay along the southern shore of the Caspian
Sea—who had served with the Romans throughout the campaign, earnestly advised
him to make for the mountains on the eastern side of Media and to follow the
upland highway northwards to the frontier of Armenia, for in so doing he would
prevent an attack by the Parthian horsemen who could maneuver at will on the
level plains but were useless in the rugged hill-country. That such an attack
was contemplated by the treacherous King Phraates, he declared, he had no doubt.
Antony did not know whether or not to believe the man, but when he offered to
allow himself to be shackled during the march, so that he could not escape if
treachery were suspected, his good faith was recognized and his advice taken.
The retreating army therefore headed for the mountains; and three days
later, when they were fording the river Amardus (the Sufeid), presumably near
the town of Batina (Sultanieh), where it runs at the foot of the hills, they
were attacked by the Parthians, as their guide had predicted. Antony’s Gallic
cavalry, however, saw that these wild horsemen got as good as they gave; and
the encounter had the value of putting him on his guard and taught him to flank
his heavy infantry with his archers and light cavalry. A few days later,
however, an officer named Flavius Gallus took his men too far away in pursuit
of the enemy who had again attacked the column, and, being ambushed, suffered a
very serious defeat. Three thousand Roman and Gallic cavalry-men were left dead
upon the ground, while five thousand were wounded. An even greater disaster was
only averted by Antony’s prompt action: he personally led out the Third Legion,
and drove off the enemy. Flavius Gallus was brought in with four arrows shot
through his body, and died a few hours later.
“After this engagement”, Plutarch tells us, “Antony went from tent to
tent to visit and comfort those of the defeated men who were left alive, and
was not able to look upon them without tears and a very passion of grief. They,
however, seized his hand with happy faces, bidding him go and see to his own
needs and not to worry about them, calling him their Emperor and their general,
and saying that if he himself fared well they were safe. Never, indeed, in all
these times can history point to a general at the head of a more glorious army,
whether you consider their strength and youth or their patience and endurance
in hardships and fatigue, while as for the obedience and loving respect they
showed towards their general, and the unanimous feeling amongst humble and
great alike, whether officers or common soldiers, that they preferred his good
opinion of them to their very lives and existence, it is not possible that they
could have been surpassed even by the Romans of old. For this devotion to Antony
there were many reasons: his nobility, for instance, his frank and open manners,
his generous and magnificent mode of life, his familiarity in talking with
everybody, and, at this time in particular, his tender-heartedness in visiting
and pitying the wounded, joining in all their pain, and furnishing them with
all things necessary, so that the sick and disabled were even more eager to
serve him than those who were well and strong”.
Upon the next day Antony thought it would be only right to address the troops;
and in order to show them how deeply he felt their sufferings and the loss of
so many brave men he put on a mourning-garment, and went, unshaven and with
tear-stained face to the platform. But his anxious staff-officers stopped him,
insisting that he should don his general’s scarlet cloak; and this he finally
consented to do. There was no man of his time like him, says Plutarch, for
carrying his soldiers with him by the force of words, and on this occasion he
made an impassioned speech, praising those who had fought well in the recent skirmishes,
and reproaching a particular contingent which had shown signs of panic. At this
the men of the latter called out that they were ready to undergo decimation or
any other punishment so long as he would forgive them and not thus shame them;
whereupon Antony flung his hands upwards to heaven, and, closing his eyes,
uttered a prayer, that if, to balance the great blessings he had received, any
misfortunes were in store, he implored the gods to pour their wrath upon his
head alone, and to spare his soldiers.
Day after day the weary and underfed army made its way along the
mountain road, while the Parthians and Medes shot at them from behind the
rocks, and killed the stragglers. It was difficult to forage for food under
these conditions, and the men had often to be content to eat the roots of
wayside plants or anything else which seemed to be edible. Unfortunately,
several men cooked and ate a certain herb, and were poisoned thereby. Its effect
was said to be that of causing them to lose their reason, so that, like men
enchanted, they wandered about, moving stones from place to place, or engaging
vaguely in other useless tasks, until at last they collapsed and died.
Antony was the life and soul of the retreat, and from time to time he
was heard to exclaim, "O, the Ten Thousand!"—as though proudly
comparing their journey to that of the Greeks under Xenophon. Solely by the
power of his personality he preserved the spirit and the discipline of his men;
but at length a series of new misfortunes broke down their endurance and there
was a serious mutiny. One night, while they were camped, several soldiers made
themselves sick by drinking at a stream the water of which was brackish, and
Antony, having failed to dissuade others from drinking, gave orders for the
march to be resumed, there being better water a short distance ahead, so the
Mardian guide had told him, and an attack by the enemy from the rear being
expected. The night march which ensued was trying to the nerves of everybody;
and at last some of the men revolted, beginning to plunder the baggage of their
officers and even seizing Antony’s own belongings. The noise and confusion
caused by their behavior led Antony to suppose that the enemy had attacked
them, and were in their midst; and to him this seemed to be the end. Calling
aside one of his freedmen, Rhamnus by name, he obliged him to take an oath that
at a given signal he would kill him and cut off his head, burying it so that it
should not fall into the hands of the Parthians; and, in fact, he was about to
give this signal when he learnt the true cause of the disturbance.
Thereupon he called a halt, and took the necessary steps to restore
order; but at break of day they were again attacked, a severe fight taking place,
in which, however, the Romans were victorious. It now became necessary to
descend into the plains and to cross a river; and here Antony expected another
battle, but to his surprise the enemy allowed them to make the crossing unmolested,
and, indeed, made signs to them from a distance as though bidding them
farewell, thereafter unstringing their bows and riding away southwards. For the
remainder of their journey they were not attacked, and six days later they
crossed the Araxes and attained the friendly soil of Armenia. Here the men
kissed the ground in their excitement, and there were scenes of intense
emotion, the soldiers embracing one another and shedding tears of joy, while
Antony himself received an ovation.
The retreat from Phraaspa has occupied twenty-seven days, and during
that time the Romans had beaten off the enemy on no less than eighteen distinct
occasions. The total losses of the whole campaign, including those incurred in
the overwhelming of the siege-train, were twenty-four thousand dead, of whom a
large part had died of sickness. Now, since ten thousand of these had been massacred
on that one occasion, and three thousand on the occasion of the ill-advised
action of Flavius Gallus, Antony could console himself with the thought that
his unavoidable losses—the ordinary casualties of the war—had not been more
than eleven thousand men, which was not excessive. His depression was thus
relieved by the hope that he would be able to make a second invasion in the
following year, and that, having now learnt the tactics of the Parthians, he
would be able to prevent a repetition of his two major disasters. If only he
could recruit a force of mounted archers in Armenia, or train his own Gallic
cavalry in the Parthian methods, he would have a chance of success.
For this reason he forbore to punish the Armenian King for his
desertion, but, wishing to use him to better purpose next time, marched through
that country with flags flying, so to speak, making light of his retreat and
giving out, apparently, that he would resume the war at no distant date. At
first he may have thought of wintering in Armenia, but presently he seems to
have decided to make his second attack from the south, beginning the new
campaign, therefore, in the following autumn; and with this purpose in view he
seems to have deemed it better to march back into Syria, where he could obtain
money from Egypt and elsewhere with which to reward his men, and could more
conveniently rest and reorganize his army.
But ill-luck dogged him. No sooner was he well upon his way than a spell
of particularly severe weather set in, and during his march through Armenia
Minor and Cappadocia there were almost continuous snowstorms. Epidemics of
sickness attacked the troops, and before they had reached the warmer climate of
Syria, eight thousand of them had died. He did not halt, however, at Antioch,
but passed on down the Syrian coast to a point just to the south of Berytus
(Beirut). This city stood at the western end of the great caravan-route which
crossed the Lebanon to Damascus and thence traversed the desert by way of
Palmyra to Mesopotamia. It was the most direct route to Ctesiphon, the southern
capital of the Parthians; and Antony’s selection of the neighborhood of Beirut
for his headquarters seems to me to indicate that he intended to take this
desert route in his next campaign, as did Roman armies of later times.
The army which he thus brought back into Syria in the early days of 35 BC was but the sorry wreck of that with
which he had set out in the previous spring. The men were emaciated and in
rags; and Antony himself, in spite of his indomitable determination to attack
again was physically exhausted. Yet he sent off a report to the Senate in Rome
in which he stated that his campaign had been most successful, and that he had
returned undefeated to Syria to prepare for a second campaign. Meanwhile,
however, the news which he received from Italy must have greatly disconcerted
him.
In the summer of 36 BC Octavian had made another onslaught upon Sextus
Pompeius, and, working in conjunction with Lepidus, who had brought a powerful
force over from North Africa, he had attacked him in Sicily. At first he had
been badly defeated, being more than once nearly taken prisoner, and on one
occasion narrowly escaping assassination, while Sextus had inflicted enormous
losses upon him; but at last the roving son of Pompey the Great had been
overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and had fled to Mitylene in the isle of Lesbos.
The third Triumvir, Lepidus—“the vainest of human beings” as Velleius calls
him, who had merited not by a single good quality so long an indulgence of
fortune—had then quarreled with Octavian, and as a punishment for a foolish
attempt at rebellion, had been forced by him to retire into private life; and
thus the Triumvirate had come to an end, Octavian and Antony being left as the
sole rulers respectively of the west and east.
In November Octavian had returned to Rome in triumph, and, having
decided that the time had come to improve his personal reputation, had adopted
a conciliatory attitude to all parties and had even announced that he was
prepared to lay down his exceptional powers if his colleague, on his return
from Parthia, would do likewise. So far as Antony could make out, in fact, he
had definitely turned over a new leaf, and now, in the twenty-seventh year of
his age, was at last attempting to consolidate his position and to consider the
future, instead of acting simply as the needs of the moment required, without
policy, prudence, or principle. For the first time since the division of the empire
into an eastern and a western area Octavian’s position was as powerful as his
own; and Antony now learnt, with a sinking of his heart, that the Senate had
invited the young man to assume any distinctive honor he cared to suggest, and
meanwhile had decreed him the right to wear on all occasions a crown of laurel,
and had bestowed all manner of other privileges upon him, such as that of
feasting annually with his wife and family in the precincts of the Temple of
Jupiter Capitolinus upon the anniversary of his victory over Sextus Pompeius.
Another piece of news which Antony now received was that Cleopatra in
the early autumn had given birth to a son, whom she had named Ptolemy,
according to the custom of her house. These tidings were interesting, to say
the least, and, indeed, may well have touched his sentimental heart, though the
emotional tremor of becoming a father must by repetition have lost its
poignancy; but since he knew that the announcement of the event must have
already reached Rome, its probable effect upon Octavia and her brother was for
him a further cause of anxiety. He was determined, however, never to return to
his Roman wife; and as though to defy the gossip at home, he sent a letter to
Cleopatra, telling her to come to him at once, and incidentally, to bring with
her as much money as she could lay her hands on, and also all the clothes and
comforts she could collect for his men.
He then gave himself up to the only relaxation his tired body and mind
desired after these months of toil and fatigue: he turned, that is to say, to
the gods of oblivion, and drank himself daily into a condition of complete
stupor. During the next weeks, in his moments of sobriety, he asked for news
only of the Queen's coming; and when at last he heard that she was on her way,
not even his wine could long detain him in the house or keep him from starting
up every now and then to scan the sea in the hope that the far line of the
southern horizon might be etched with the masts and sails of her approaching fleet.
When at length Cleopatra arrived, bringing with her many shiploads of
clothing and supplies for the army, Antony’s relationship towards her seems to
have passed into that new phase to which his impatience for her coming had been
the prelude. It would be perhaps a little too bold to say that now for the
first time he fell in love with her—the woman who in Tarsus, in Alexandria, and
in Antioch had lived in such tender intimacy with him, and as a consequence had
borne him three children; and yet it is not an uncommon experience in the life
of errant men that at middle age—and Antony was now about forty-eight—a
pleasantly amorous relationship widens and deepens into the proportions of a
lifelong devotion and dependence, Antony was at this time a tired and
disappointed man; and the comfort of Cleopatra’s tactful sympathy, the
brightness and charm of her society which not even her worst enemies have
denied, the encouragement of her unconquerable optimism, and, above all, her
masterfully feminine handling of his masculine difficulties, combined to make
her companionship for the first time essential to him. From this date onwards
his life was inseparably linked to hers; and the reader will have seen that
this was not the case before the present year, 35 BC.
Having learnt from him that he intended to march upon Parthia from the
south in the following autumn, she made him come back to spend the spring and
summer with her in Alexandria, not only that she might revive his energies and
restore his confidence in himself, but also that she might present him to her
people as her husband and their sovereign lord. Antony, of course, was ready
enough to be persuaded that he could make his military plans as well from
Alexandria as from Beirut; and the luxury of Cleopatra’s palace, the pleasures of
her beautiful capital, and the well-remembered perfection of the banquets of
the Inimitable Livers, were temptations which he could not resist. It is even
possible, too, that he wanted to see the new baby and the twins.
Just as he was about to leave for Egypt he received news that Sextus
Pompeius, in a desperate attempt to restore his fortunes, was attempting to
stir up trouble in Asia Minor. He had sailed with the remnant of his fleet
through the Dardanelles, had tried to capture Cyzicus (Kyzik) on the Sea of Marmora,
had passed through the Bosporus into the Black Sea, and was attacking the coast
of Bithynia prior to a movement towards Pontus and Armenia, which is said to
have had as its object an alliance with the Parthians. Antony therefore dispatched
one of his generals, Marcus Titius by name, to suppress the marauder; and in
anticipation it may be said that the unfortunate Sextus was at length captured
in Phrygia and was put to death by Titius who had failed to receive Antony’s
instructions that his life should be spared. It was an inglorious end to a
romantic career; and with his death the line of Pompey the Great became extinct
upon the male side. Sextus Pompeius may be described as the last of the
militant republicans; but now, indeed, the Democratic Party, to which both
Antony and Octavian belonged, was itself losing its identity and was, moreover,
becoming divided by its allegiance to one or other of these leaders.
Antony’s holiday in Alexandria was interrupted in the spring by the
wholly unexpected arrival of an embassy from the King of Media, headed by King
Polemo of Pontus, who, it will be recalled, had been captured by the enemy on
the occasion of the disaster to Antony’s siege-train, and who had now been
released as an earnest of the Median monarch’s good will. The King of Parthia,
it appeared, had not behaved himself with proper regard to the terms of his
alliance with Media; and the friction between them—which was perhaps the cause
of the sudden abandonment of their attacks upon Antony’s retreating army had
developed at last into open hostility. The Median King therefore proposed now
that Antony should return at once into his country, and that they should
together invade Parthia.
Antony was dumbfounded. As Plutarch puts it, he was being asked, as a
favor, to accept that very thing, the want of which had hindered his conquest
of the Parthians before, namely a force of mounted bowmen. These Median
horsemen, indistinguishable in skill and training from the dreaded light
cavalry of Parthia, would make a Roman victory almost certain; and Antony,
aflame with excitement, instantly agreed to march his men back into Armenia at
once, so as to move into Media in the summer and thence to invade Parthia in
the autumn. Now was his chance to recover the ascendancy of his position over that
of Octavian, and by a spectacular conquest of the Orient to impose his dominant
personality upon the mind of every man in the Roman world.
Cleopatra insisted upon coming with him, at any rate as far as Syria;
but when he was once more back at his military headquarters, insurmountable
obstacles to an immediate campaign presented themselves. What these were is not
recorded, but we may conjecture that the depleted numbers of his soldiers,
their reluctance to risk treachery on the part of the Median King, and certain rumors
which were current in regard to the untrustworthiness of the King of Armenia,
were amongst the objections advanced. It was not long, in fact, before Antony
realized that protracted negotiations with both these monarchs would have to be
undertaken before the campaign could be initiated; and at the same time a great
deal of recruiting would have to be accomplished before his army could be
brought to the necessary size. He had recently extended a pardon and a promise
of employment to all the men in his area of governance previously in the
service of Sextus Pompeius, and he had also used his right to send his
recruiting officers into Italy; but the results of these efforts would now have
to be awaited. Very reluctantly, therefore, he postponed the campaign until the
following
While he was here in Syria, and before this decision had finally been
taken, he received letters from his wife Octavia, telling him that she was on
her way to join him, carrying with her not only money, supplies, and comforts
for his men, of whose return in rags from the Parthian war she had just heard,
but also bringing him two thousand picked soldiers, perfectly armed and accoutered,
these being a present to him from her brother Octavian, who wished thereby to
show his good will.
This news was immensely embarrassing, and he sent an immediate answer,
telling her that he was about to set out for Parthia again, and that she was to
await his return at Athens. But when Cleopatra learnt that he had thus
prevaricated, and had not taken the opportunity to give Octavia her final
dismissal, she was beside herself with anxiety and annoyance. It is to be
remembered that the Queen’s fate and that of her country, her dynasty, and her
children depended almost entirely upon Antony. Caesarion, her son by Caesar,
was now nearly twelve years of age, and would soon be old enough to be regarded
as a serious rival by Octavian: if, then, Octavian were ever to attain to sole
power in the Roman empire, Caesarion’s arrest and execution would be certain—in
which regard it may be said in anticipation that Octavian did in the end put
the boy to death on the grounds that there could not be two Caesars in the
world.
So long as Antony retained his power and continued to be her consort and
her protector she and her family were safe, and there was every hope that one
day he would found a throne for himself and her at the steps of which the
nations of the whole earth would do obeisance. But if he were to return to
Octavia, he might be inveigled into a new accommodation with his brother-in-law
Octavian, and one of the terms of the bargain forced upon him by the upholders
of the Roman Republic might well be his abandonment of his connection with the
Egyptian throne.
The ancient historians have always endeavored to present Cleopatra as a
wicked siren, scheming to hold Antony to her by means of her voluptuous charms in
order to use him for the purpose of her personal aggrandizement; but actually,
as has already been said, there is no evidence that her character was
evil. She was a brave, tenacious, anxious woman, the "widow" of
Caesar and the mother of his son persistently fighting for the realization of
those ambitions with which the Dictator had once filled her head, but
struggling also to maintain that security for herself and her line which would
at once be menaced by the supremacy of Octavian.
She was not yet sure of Antony’s devotion; and although it is to be
presumed, I think, that she now loved him—had gradually passed in fact, into
that same condition in which he also found himself—she was continuously worried
about him, asking herself whether Octavia’s gentleness and goodness could make
an appeal to his pity stronger than her own bright appeal to his manhood and
his intellect, and wondering, too, whether he might think that there was a
quicker route to the autocracy of the world by way of those sedate mansions in
Rome and Athens over which Octavia presided than through the pleasant halls of
the Alexandrian palace. Octavia still had the guardianship of Antony's two sons
by Fulvia, and of his two infant daughters of whom she, Octavia, herself was
the mother: would these parental ties outpull those which she, Cleopatra, could
put forward in the existence of her twins and her latest baby? Antony, in spite
of his feverish manner of life, was one of those good-natured giants who, at
heart, love their homes and their children; and it may be supposed that the Queen
often asked herself whether he would give heed to the call of his Roman family.
Indeed, it was probably at her suggestion that not long afterwards he sent for
his eldest son, Antyllus, who was now about ten years of age, the boy being
brought at length to Alexandria as a playmate for the young Caesarion.
Cleopatra was not very skillful in intrigue. Many of her actions
suggest, in fact, that she was not easily able to conceal her feelings, or to
play a sustained part; and one gets the impression that on most occasions her behavior
must have corresponded in a somewhat startling degree with her actual thoughts
and emotions. Thus, in regard to this letter from Octavia and Antony’s reply to
it, she did not attempt to hide her distress. She told her immediate circle
that he was not behaving fairly to her: she, the sovereign lady of many
nations, she cried out, had been content to be called his mistress, and had not
spurned such a relationship so long as she might thereby enjoy his love; and
what was her reward?—he was still allowing Octavia to call herself his wife,
although the marriage had been one of mere political convenience, and he was
even undecided as to whether or not to go back to her, although he knew quite
well that she, Cleopatra, could not survive his loss. He was unfeeling and
hard-hearted, she declared, thus to play fast and loose with one who loved him
and whose whole life depended upon him.
Plutarch has supposed that this behavior was play-acting on her part.
She pretended, he writes, to be dying of love for him, bringing her body down
by slender diet. When he entered the room she fixed her eyes upon him in
rapture, and when he left, seemed to collapse and half faint away. She took
great care that he should see her tears, and, as soon as he noticed them,
hastily dried them and turned away, as if it were her wish that he should know
nothing of her feelings. But this was no pretense. The possibility of losing
him had served both to make clear to her her dependence upon him, and to arouse
her love for him into a turmoil of jealous and passionate emotion. She knew
from past experience that it was useless to employ mere feminine wiles in
dealing with a man of his wide experience of the arts of woman, or to act in
front of one who was a patron of actresses; and her behavior appears to me to
have been entirely sincere.
But her fears were unwarranted: Antony had no intention of returning to
Octavia. Yet he must have been sorry for his patient Roman wife, who possessed
in a high degree the typical Roman virtues and was reported to be looking after
his children and attending to his interests in the most gracious and estimable
manner. The faults so often attendant upon these virtues, however, were
evidently very conspicuous in Octavia: the spiritless docility of an obedient
spouse, the conventionally-minded care of a woman of good repute to be correct
in all her behavior, the indifference of a domesticated wife to the mental and
physical elegances of fashionable life, the limited outlook of a mind directed
along the narrow path of duty, the very absence of those culpable frailties
which make the human sinner eternally beloved these things may well have
rendered a comparison between the good Octavia and the unconscionable and hot-tempered
Cleopatra wholly favorable to the latter. The Queen of Egypt was not a bad
woman; but it is evident that she reflected just that little sparkle of the
everlasting fires which, in the eyes of a Caesar or an Antony, is an
indispensable attraction in the female.
The Parthian campaign being postponed, Antony gladly went back with
Cleopatra to Alexandria; and here during the summer of 35 BC he received
another letter from Octavia saying that she would do as he bade her, and await
his coming, asking him to what place it was his pleasure that she should send
the supplies and troops which she had brought with her to Athens. Antony’s
reply indicates the development of his relationship to Cleopatra. There was now
no prevarication in regard to his ultimate return: he simply thanked her for
the gifts, asked her to forward them to Syria under the care of the troops, and
bluntly told her to go back to Rome. He did not yet institute divorce proceedings,
for he knew that such a step would cause an immediate rupture of his relations
with Octavian; and he was not prepared to come to grips with him until his now
hopeful Parthian schemes had been brought to a successful issue, and his
prestige raised to the consequent heights.
Octavian, so his despatches from Rome informed him, was equally anxious
to maintain peace between them for the moment, deeming it necessary to
consolidate his own position in the west before tackling the great problem of
his rivalry with Antony. Moreover, he was now conducting a difficult campaign
against certain rebels in Illyria and Pannonia, his two most eastern provinces,
at the north-east corner of the Adriatic; and he had no wish to be involved in
a dispute with Antony while his attention was thus distracted.
Thus, the summer passed into autumn, and the autumn into winter, while
Antony remained at Alexandria busy with the organization of his coming campaign
against Parthia, with the negotiations between himself and the Kings of Armenia
and Media, and with the administration of his great empire. During this time his
tendencies towards monarchy developed, and indeed, it hardly have been possible
for him to live in the palace at Alexandria, as husband and consort of a Queen,
without himself assuming the general aspect of royalty. At the state functions
of the Egyptian capital, and in its many religious ceremonials, he was obliged,
I suppose, to play his part as actual King, or Pharaoh, of Egypt, and to
perform those immemorial rites wherein the sovereign acted as the
representative and the incarnation of the sun-god.
It is of course an exaggeration to say, as does Florus, that “he so
openly aspired to sovereignty that, forgetting his country, his name, his toga,
and the Roman magisterial insignia, he degenerated wholly, in thought, sentiment,
and dress, into that monstrosity—a King, in his hand there being a golden scepter,
at his side a scimitar, his robe^ being of purple clasped with enormous jewels,
and his head being adorned with a royal crown, to the end that as a King he
might dally with the Queen”. Yet it is probably true that neither his official
manner nor his private outlook were any longer those of a chief magistrate of
the Roman Republic, save to those of his own countrymen who were with him in
Egypt, and to the Roman soldiers who were in his service. To these latter he
was always a democratic general, a soldier like themselves, although, according
to Dion Cassius, he now termed his military headquarters the Palace. The same
writer says that he sometimes dressed in a manner not in accord with the
customs of his native land, wore an oriental dagger at his belt, and let
himself be seen even in public upon a gilded couch or a chair of similar
appearance; a more modest statement than that of Florus, and one which we may
accept
As the spring of 34 BC approached, both he and Cleopatra became
increasingly uneasy in regard to the Parthian adventure. It seemed so hazardous
to stake their entire fortune upon a difficult campaign which might possibly end
in disaster. If he were victorious, of course, his prestige would be enormously
enhanced, and Rome would welcome him as a conquering hero; but if he were
defeated not even his present eastern empire would maintain its allegiance, and
Octavian might find himself in a position to force him to retire from public
life, as he had forced the third triumvir, Lepidus. This was not the time to go
adventuring into the Orient; and, in fact, the dream of emulating the exploits
of Alexander the Great and of carrying the Roman eagles to the confines of
India had already faded from his mind. The farthest extent of his hope was now
the infliction of a single, resounding defeat upon Parthia, and the recovery of
those standards and those prisoners captured from Crassus.
At any rate he was set upon a military parade through Armenia, the
fidelity of whose monarch, Artavasdes, was ever in doubt, and also upon the
clinching of his alliance with Media, whose King was already impatient at his
delay. In about April, 34 BC,
therefore he left Cleopatra and sailed across to Syria, where he placed himself
at the head of his army not the great army with which he had previously marched
northwards, but a powerful force, nevertheless. He sent his friend Delhus ahead
to the Armenian court with the proposal that a contract of betrothal should be
made between his eldest son by Cleopatra—the young Alexander Helios, who was
now in his sixth year—and one of the daughters of Artavasdes; and when he
reached the city of Nicopolis on the borders of Pontus and Armenia Minor, he
sent a further message to the King, inviting him to come there to discuss the
general situation. Artavasdes, however, declined the invitation, making some
specious excuse, and thereupon Antony marched upon Artaxata (Ardesh), the
Armenian capital, which stood a few miles to the north-east of Mount Ararat.
Further negotiations, however, persuaded Artavasdes to come into the
Roman camp to make his peace with Antony; but, upon doing so, he was at once
put under restraint, and was compelled to accompany the army upon its tour
through the country and to issue orders for the payment of a heavy tribute to
the Romans, as compensation for his having deserted them in the last campaign
in Media. Thereupon, the Armenians raised his eldest son, Artaxes, to the
throne, and attempted to put up a fight; but they were quickly overcome, and
the new King fled to Parthia. Antony then caused Artavasdes to be put in
fetters, but, out of consideration for his rank, directed that the chains
should be made of silver; and presently he sent him as a prisoner back to
Alexandria, permitting him to take his wife and children with him. His kingdom
was afterwards freely looted, and it is said that in the temple of Anaitis, the
local Aphrodite, in Acilisene, a district m the south-west of Armenia, the
soldiers found a statue of that goddess made of pure gold, which they melted
down and divided among themselves.
Antony then got into touch with the King of Media, his former enemy; and
a very satisfactory alliance was made with him, by the terms of which it was
agreed that, in preparation for a campaign in the following year, a number of
Roman legions should be left for the present in Armenia, which country should
henceforth be regarded as a dependency of Media, both Armenia and Media,
however, becoming an integral part of the Roman empire. It was further agreed
that the son of Antony and Cleopatra, the little Alexander Helios, should at
once be married by proxy to Iotapa, the infant daughter of the Median King, and
that the King should make the boy his heir, so that one day he should be ruler
of Armenia, Media, and of all Parthia, as far as the borders of India, when it
should be conquered. Thus, by the arts of diplomacy, and without any actual
campaign, Antony added an enormous area to the Roman dominions over which he
ruled as Autocrat; and at the same time he so distributed his forces in Armenia
and Syria that a double invasion of Parthia from the north and south—through
Media, that is to say, on the one hand, and through Mesopotamia on the other—would
have every chance of success. The faded vision of a march to the frontiers of
India became bright once more with vivid possibility.
It was a splendid summer’s work, and when Antony returned to Alexandria
in the early autumn of 34 BC, he had
reached the highest peak of his power yet attained in his entire career. Moreover,
the loot of Armenia, much of which was in precious metal able to be turned into
money, was sufficient for the payment of his soldiers, all of whom were in high
spirits and were ready to follow their general withersoever he should lead
them. Like Octavian, Antony seemed to bear a charmed life, and to be able to
extricate himself from every difficulty, rising after each relapse, to a higher
level of attainment. His confidence in himself was fully restored. He appears
to have felt young again in spite of his forty-nine years; and Cleopatra, who
was nearing her in thirty-four birthday and was the mother of four children,
was so infected by his high spirits that she, too, must have been radiant with
happiness.
The consciousness of his power caused Antony to take a step which he
knew would be resented by Rome: he decided to celebrate a Triumph in
Alexandria. Now a Triumph was a ceremony which had never yet been performed outside
Rome; it was an honor accorded to a victorious commander only by the mother-city;
it was the particular privilege and prerogative of the ancient capital; and
that this Triumph should be held in Alexandria was tantamount to a declaration
that Rome had ceased in his opinion to be the official center of the empire.
Antony was quite aware of the fact, and in breaking thus with tradition he was
definitely pursuing that policy to which attention has already been called, the
policy of transferring the seat of supreme government from Octavian’s western
sphere to his own eastern dominions, so that in the end Italy should become
what its geographical situation showed it to be—a western appendage to the
world-empire of the Romans.
The great temple of Serapis was to Alexandria what the Capitol was to
Rome, and, one bright, autumnal day, the triumphal procession made its way
thither from the palace, through the Forum and along the famous Street of
Canopus and Street of Serapis, passing many of the celebrated buildings which
made Alexandria so much more magnificent a city than the Rome of that date. Antony
drove through the crowded streets in his triumphal chariot; and in the
procession walked the captive King Artavasdes of Armenia with his wife and
children, having chains of gold attached to their wrists, while behind them
followed the wagons heaped high with the spoils of their country. Triumphal
processions were always occasions for a striking display of wealth and might;
and it may be supposed that amongst the military forces which took part in the
spectacle were detachments of Roman legionaries and Roman and Gallic cavalry,
Macedonian Household-troops which formed the permanent bodyguard of the
sovereign, Egyptian soldiers, mounted bowmen from Media, light cavalry from
Pontus, and various units from Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Libya, the
upper Valley of the Nile, and so forth.
In a certain open space, perhaps in front of the Temple of Serapis,
Cleopatra sat upon a golden throne raised upon a platform plated with silver;
and here the captive Armenian King was led forward to do obeisance. He,
however, while willing to pay homage to Antony, refused to bow to the Queen or
to address her in any other manner than by her name, Cleopatra, without
titulary embellishments; and though he was in consequence subjected to a good
deal of rough handling, he maintained his proud dignity, standing upright
before her until at last he was dragged away. It was the Roman custom, as we
have seen, to put an important prisoner of this kind to death at the end of a
Triumph; but the good-natured Antony had decided to break with tradition in
this respect also, and he did him and his family no hurt, but kept them
afterwards as honorable prisoners in Alexandria, where, no doubt, Artavasdes
amused himself by continuing to write his historical books and his dramas.
On the following day, or at any rate shortly afterwards, a great public
ceremony was held in the Gymnasium, a kind of stadium having a stone-built
grandstand the columned frontage of which, facing the Street of Canopus, was
more than two hundred yards in length. Here in the open air, upon a platform of
silver, were two golden thrones whereon Antony and Cleopatra were seated side
by side, while near them were four other thrones occupied by the four
children—Caesarion, now some months over thirteen years of age, the twins
Alexandria Helios and Cleopatra Selene, six years old, and the little Ptolemy,
two years old. (Antyllus, Antony’s son by Fulvia, had not yet arrived from
Rome.) Antony, speaking in Greek, then made a speech to the assembled crowds,
announcing the honors and dignities which he had obtained for, or conferred
upon, their royal family; and so splendid were these that the Alexandrians who
heard his words must have been left almost breathless.
Cleopatra, he announced, was the true wife and widow of the divine Caesar,
and as such, besides her kingdom of Egypt, he named her Queen of all Libya—the
territory west of Egypt except for the promontory of Cyrene, Queen of Syria
north and east of Palestine, and Queen of Cyprus, and declared that her title
henceforth would be Queen of Kings. Caesarion, he said, was the only son of Caesar,
and in honor of that great name, he was to be entitled King of Kings, and was
to rule jointly with his mother as Pharaoh of Egypt and King of Libya, Syria,
and Cyprus. Alexander Helios, he declared, was Prince, and future King, of
Armenia and Media, and also of the Parthian realms as far east as the Indus when
they should be conquered., Cleopatra Selene was to be Queen of Cyrene, that
part of the Libyan sea-coast just east of Tripoli, with which, so it seems,
went the island of Crete, for Crete and Cyrene, since 95 BC, had been regarded as a single Roman Province, though separated
by a hundred and thirty miles of open sea. And finally the infant Ptolemy was
declared King of the northernmost corner of Syria west of the Euphrates and
north of Antioch, and of the adjoining Cilicia.
There followed a kind of coronation ceremony, in which Cleopatra was
robed in the ancient Egyptian manner as the goddess Isis-Venus, assuming the
famous vulture-headdress surmounted by the horns and disk; while upon the head
of Caesarion, it is to be supposed, was placed the old Pharaonic double-crown
of Upper and Lower Egypt encircled by the golden diadem of his Macedonian line.
Alexander Helios was presented to the people wearing Median costume and having
upon his head the tall tiara of the ancient Persians, while a bodyguard of
Armenians waited upon him; and the little Ptolemy, guarded by Macedonian
troops, and dressed in Macedonian robes, was crowned with a cap and diadem such
as had once been worn by Alexander the Great.
Two points must be noticed. Firstly, in declaring Caesarion King of
Egypt, Antony abandoned his own right to that title as consort of Cleopatra;
and we may suppose that this was a gesture which was intended to contradict the
common report that he had ceased to regard himself as a magistrate of the Roman
Republic. His title of Autocrator, however, was higher than that of any King,
and he was satisfied with it, knowing that it would serve him even if he were
to establish a throne for himself. Secondly, his insistence upon me fact that
Cleopatra was the widow, and Caesarion the son, of the great Caesar, was
clearly an attempt to show the world that he was acting as Caesar’s executor,
so to speak, in thus honoring them. “It was his purpose”, says Dion Cassius, “in
this way to cast reproach upon Octavian as being only an adopted, and not a
real, son of the Dictator”; and in becoming openly the boy’s patron and
guardian he must have deliberately thrown down a gauntlet which his rival could
not fail to see.
He then sent a report of the proceedings to Rome; and although, before
leaving Italy, he had obliged the Senate to agree to an anticipatory
ratification of all his acts, as has already been recorded, he now demanded
that they should pass a special decree to ratify these latest dispositions. He
declared also that he was quite willing to place himself at the disposal of the
Senate and to abide by its wishes, being ready even to resign his command if he
were required to do so. He said this, however, knowing that his offer would not
be acted upon. His letter would reach Rome at about the beginning of the new
year, 33 BC, when, by his general arrangements
made with Octavian before he left Italy, the two Consuls-elect for the
following year, 32 BC, would be his
friends and supporters, Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Sossius, his former governor
of Syria. Consuls-elect had the right of addressing the Senate before the other
members; and this fact, coupled with his belief that at least half of the
Senators favored him rather than Octavian, made him pretty sure that he would
not be too greatly censured. Rome was thoroughly used to creating vassal
kingdoms, if not quite on this vast scale. In any case he wished to show some
outward deference to the Senate; for even if he were in the end to transfer the
seat of government from Rome to the East, it was to be presumed that this
ancient assembly would also be transferred, and not disbanded.
Antony was at this time in a condition of great exhilaration; and his
sense of the limitless power wielded by him throughout his eastern empire was a
stimulant which projected him into his daily affairs with overwhelming zest. It
is true that from time to time he drank heavily, and behaved riotously; but
life itself was usually intoxication enough for him. The longer lie lived with
Cleopatra the more devoted he became to her; and though, obviously, there were
quarrels between them, these had the nature of lovers tiffs, and were soon
followed by happy reconciliations. He was hardly willing to let her out of his
sight; and it is said that sometimes when he was engaged in official business,
or was acting as judge in the courts of law, he would start to his feet on
seeing her passing in her litter, and, leaving his work, would hasten out to
her, and walk through the streets at her side, laughing and talking with her.
He gave her a bodyguard of Roman soldiers, and caused their shields to
be inscribed with the letter C, the initial of her name. He and she used
frequently to sit together for the Alexandrian painters and sculptors, he being
sometimes represented in the guise of Dionysus, or of the Egyptian god Osiris
who was in certain aspects identified with that deity, and she being portrayed
as Isis or Venus. He allowed the Alexandrians to begin the erection of a temple
in honor of his divinity, corresponding to the temple of Isis-Venus which was
dedicated to her. It pleased him to be hailed as the New Dionysus, and at
certain festivals, he would appear in public in that guise, garlanded with ivy,
wearing the Dionysian buskins on his feet, and holding the thyrsus in his hand;
while Cleopatra played the part of the New Isis. In the great games held in the
Gymnasium, however, he threw off his celestial character, and, to the huge
delight of the crowds, assumed the office of Gymnasiarch, or Chief Steward of
the Proceedings, conducting himself in the arena like a burly ring-master.
In the palace, meanwhile, magnificent banquets were held, at which he
and his Greek and Roman friends became thoroughly inebriated, though Cleopatra
herself drank little and was so habitually sober that people supposed her to
wear a magic ring which had the faculty of preventing intoxication. At these
parties Antony played the fool with carefree indifference to scandal; and it is
related that on one occasion he made his friend Plancus dance before the guests
in the guise of the Boeotian sea-god Glaucus, naked and painted blue, a chaplet
of seaweed on his head, and a fish-tail tied to his waist. So wildly was money
spent in these revels, that even the newly-arrived young Antyllus, Antony’s
son, on one occasion is said to have made a gift to one of his friends of all
the rich silver plate used at a palace banquet.
Yet in spite of these frivolities, Antony was daily busy with his
administrative work, and with his preparations for the Parthian campaign of his
dreams; and these tasks must have been so exacting that one cannot suppose him
to have wasted undue time over his amusements. Five or six months of this full
Alexandrian life were all that he allowed himself; and in the early spring of
33 BC he bade farewell to Cleopatra
and her gay capital, and set out to join his army in Syria, preparatory to a
new march into Armenia.
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