THE DIVINE HISTORY OF JESUS CHRIST

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT

PART I.

CLEOPATRA AND CAESAR

CHAPTER X.

THE DEATH OF CAESAR AND THE RETURN OF CLEOPATRA TO EGYPT.

There can be little reason for doubt that Antony, who is to play so important a part in the subsequent pages of this history, saw Cleopatra in Rome on several occasions. After his reconciliation to Caesar in the early summer of BC 45, he must have been a constant visitor at the Dictator’s villa; and, as we shall presently see, his espousal of Cleopatra’s cause in regard to Caesar’s will suggests that her charm had not been overlooked by him. It is said, as we have seen, that he had met her, and had already been attracted by her, ten years previously, when he entered Alexandria with Gabinius in order to establish her father Auletes upon his rickety throne. He was a man of impulsive and changeable character, and it is difficult to determine his exact attitude towards Caesar at this time. While the Dictator was in Egypt Antony had been placed in charge of his affairs in Rome, but owing to a quarrel between the two men, Caesar, on his return from Alexandria, had dismissed him from his service. Very naturally Antony had felt considerable animosity to the Dictator on this account, and it was even rumoured, as has been said, that he desired to assassinate him. After the Spanish war, however, the quarrel was forgotten; and, as we have just seen, it was Antony who had offered him the crown at the festival of the Lupercalia. In spite of this, Caesar does not seem to have trusted him fully, although he now appears to have been recognised as the most ardent supporter of the Caesarian party.

Caesar had never excelled as a judge of men. Although unquestionably a genius and a man of supreme mental powers, the Dictator was ever open to flattery; and he collected around him a number of satellites who had won their way into his favour by blandishments and by countenance of their master’s many eccentricities. Balbus and Oppius, Caesar’s two most intimate attendants, were men of mediocre standing; and Publius Cornelius Dolabella, who now comes into some prominence, was a young adventurer, whose desire for personal gain must have been concealed with difficulty. This personage, although only five-and-twenty years of age, had been appointed by Caesar to the consulship which would become vacant upon his own departure for the East, a move that must have given grave offence to Antony; for Dolabella, a few years previously, had fallen in love with Antony’s wife, Antonia, who had consequently been divorced, the outraged husband thereafter finding consolation in the marriage to his present wife Fulvia. The various favours conferred by Caesar on this young scamp must therefore have caused considerable irritation to Antony; and it is not easy to suppose that the latter’s apparent devotion to the cause of the Dictator was altogether genuine. Indeed, the rumour once more passed into circulation that Antony nursed designs upon Caesar’s life, this time, strange to say, in conjunction with Dolabella. On hearing this report the Dictator remarked that he “did not fear such fat, luxurious men as these two, but rather the pale, lean fellows.”

Of the latter type was Cassius, a sour, fanatical soldier and politician, who had fought against Caesar at Pharsalia, and had been freely pardoned by him afterwards. From early youth Cassius entertained a particular hatred of any form of autocracy; and it is related of him that when at school the boy Faustus, the son of the famous Sulla, had boasted of his father’s autocratic powers, Cassius had promptly punched his head. Caesar’s attempts to obtain the throne excited this man’s ferocity, and he was probably the originator of the plot which terminated the Dictator’s life. The plot was hatched in February BC 44, and, when Cassius and his friends had prevailed upon the influential and studious Marcus Brutus to join them, it rapidly developed into a widespread conspiracy. “I don’t like Cassius,” Caesar was once heard to remark; “he looks so pale. What can he be aiming at?”

For Brutus, however, the Dictator entertained the greatest affection and esteem, and there was a time when he regarded him as his probable successor in office. One cannot view without distress, even after the passage of so many centuries, the devotion of the irritable old autocrat to this scholarly and promising young man who was now plotting against him; for, in spite of his manifold faults, Caesar ever remains a character which all men esteem and with which all must largely sympathise. On one occasion somebody warned him that Brutus was plotting against him, to which the Dictator replied, “ What, do you think Brutus will not wait out the appointed time of this little body of mine?” It is probable that Caesar thought it not at all unlikely that Brutus was his own son, for his mother, Servilia, as early as the year of his birth, and for long afterwards, had been on such terms of intimacy with Caesar as would justify this belief. Brutus, on the other hand, thought himself to be the son of Servilia’s legal husband, and through him claimed descent from the famous Junius Brutus who had expelled the Tarquins. Servilia was the sister of Cato, whose suicide had followed his defeat by Caesar in North Africa, and Porcia, the wife of Brutus, was Cato’s daughter. It might have been supposed, therefore, that Brutus would have felt considerable antipathy towards the Dictator, more especially after the publication of his venomous Anti-Cato. There was, however, equally reasonable cause for Brutus to have sympathised with Caesar, for his supposed father had been put to death by Pompey, an execution which Caesar had, as it were, been instrumental in avenging. As a matter of fact, Brutus was a young man who lived upon high principles, as a cow does upon grass; and such family incidents as the seduction of his mother, or the destruction of his mother’s brother and his wife’s father, or the bloodthirsty warfare between his father’s executioner and his father-in-law’s enemy and calumniator, were not permitted to influence his righteous brain. In his early years he had, very naturally, refused on principle to speak to Pompey, but when the civil war broke out he set aside all those petty feelings of dislike which, in memory of his legal father, he had entertained towards the Pompeian faction, and, on principle, he ranged himself upon that side in the conflict, believing it to be the juster cause. Pompey is said to have been so surprised at the arrival of this good young man in his camp, whither nobody had asked him to come, and where nobody particularly desired his presence, that he stood up and embraced him as though he were a lost lamb come back to the fold. Then followed the battle of Pharsalia, and Brutus had been obliged to fly for his life. He need not, however, have feared for his safety, for Caesar had given the strictest orders that nobody was to hurt him either in the battle or in the subsequent chase of the fugitives. From Larissa, whither he had fled, he wrote, on principle, to Caesar, stating that he was prepared to surrender; and the Dictator, in memory, it is said, of many a pleasant hour with Servilia, at once pardoned him and heaped honours upon him. Brutus, then, on principle, laid information against Pompey, telling Caesar whither he had fled; and thus it came about that the Dictator arrived in Egypt on that October morning of which we have read.

Brutus was an intellectual young man, whose writings and orations were filled with maxims and pithy axioms. He had, however, a certain vivacity and fire; and once when Caesar had listened, a trifle bewildered, to one of his vigorous speeches, the Dictator was heard to remark, “I don’t know what this young man means, but, whatever he means, he means it vehemently.” He believed himself to be, and indeed was, very firm and just, and he had schooled himself to resist flattery, ignoring all requests made to him by such means. He was wont to declare that a man who, in mature years, could not say “no” to his friends, must have been very badly behaved in the flower of his youth. Cassius, who was the brother-in-law of Brutus, deemed it very advisable to introduce this exemplary young man into the conspiracy, and he therefore invited him, as a preliminary measure, to be present in the Senate on the Calends of March, when it was rumoured that Caesar would be made king. Brutus replied that he would most certainly absent himself on that day. Nothing daunted, Cassius asked him what he would do supposing Caesar insisted on his being present. “In that case,” said Brutus, in the most approved style, “it will be my business not to keep silent, but to stand up boldly, and die for the liberty of my country.” Such being his views, it was apparent that there would be no difficulty in persuading him, on principle, to assist in the murder of Caesar, who had, it is true, spared his life in Pharsalia, but who was, nevertheless, an enemy of the People. The conspirators, therefore, dropped pieces of paper on the official chair whereon he sat, inscribed with such words as “Wake up, Brutus,” or “You are not a true Brutus”; and on the statue of Junius Brutus they scribbled sentences, such as “O that we had a Brutus now!” or “O that Brutus were alive!” In this way the young man’s feelings were played upon, and, after a few days of solemn thought, he came to the conclusion that it was his painful duty, on principle, to bring Caesar’s life to a close.

By March 1st the conspirators numbered in their ranks some sixty or eighty senators, mostly friends of the Dictator, and had Caesar attempted then to proclaim himself king he would at once have been assassinated. There were too many rumours current of plots against him, however, to permit him to take this step, and so the days passed in uneventfulness. He had planned to leave Rome for the East on March 17th, and it was thought possible that his last visit to the Senate on March 15th, or his departure from the capital, would be the occasion of a demonstration in his favour which would lead to his being offered the crown as a parting gift. The conspirators therefore decided to make an end of Caesar on March 15th, the Ides of March, upon which date he would probably come for the last time to the Senate as Dictator.

Brutus, of course, was terribly troubled as the day drew near. He was at heart a good and honourable man, but the weakness of his character, combined with his intense desire to act in a high-principled manner, led him often to appear to be a turncoat. Actually his motives were patriotic and noble, but he must have asked himself many a time whether what he believed to be his duty to his country was to be regarded as entirely abrogating what he knew to be his duty to his devoted patron. The tumult in his mind caused him at night to toss and turn in his sleep in a fever of unrest, and his wife, Porcia, observing his distress, implored him to confide his troubles to her. Brutus thereupon told her of the conspiracy, and thereby risked the necks of all his comrades.

A curious gloom seems to have fallen upon Rome at this time, and an atmosphere of foreboding, due perhaps to rumours that a plot was afoot, descended upon the actors in this unforgettable drama. Caesar went about his preparations for the Oriental campaign in his usual business-like manner, and raised money for the war with his wonted unscrupulousness and acuteness; but it does not require any pressure upon the historical imagination to observe the depression which he now felt and which must have been shared by his associates. The majority of the conspirators were his friends and fellow-workers —men, many of them, whom he had pardoned for past offences during the Civil War and had raised to positions of trust in his administration. At this time he appears to have been living with Calpurnia in his city residence, and so busy was he with his arrangements that he could not have found time to pay many visits to Cleopatra. The Queen must therefore have remained in a state of distressing suspense. The Calends of March, at which date the proclamation of the monarchy had been expected, had passed; and now the Dictator could have held out to her but one last hope of the realisation of their joint ambition previous to his departure. Caesar must have told her that, as far as the three-year-old Caesarion was concerned, she could expect nothing until the throne had been created; for, obviously, this was no time in which to leave a baby as his heir. His nephew Octavian, an active and energetic young man, would have to succeed him in office if he were to die before he had obtained the crown, and his vast property would have to be distributed. The Dictator must have remembered the fact of the murder of the young son of Alexander the Great soon after his father’s death, and he could have had no desire that his own boy should be slaughtered in like manner by his rapacious guardians. Yet Cleopatra still delayed her departure, in the hope that the great event would take place on March 15th, so that at any rate she might return to Egypt in the knowledge that her position as Caesar’s wife was secured.

The prevailing depression acted strangely upon people’s nerves, and stories began to spread of ominous premonitions of trouble, and menacing signs and wonders. There were unaccountable lights in the heavens, and awful noises at dead of night. Somebody said that he had seen a number of phantoms, in the guise of men, fighting with one another, and that they were all aglow as though they were red-hot; and upon another occasion it was noticed that numerous strange birds of ill omen had alighted in the Forum. Once, when Caesar was sacrificing, the heart of the victim was found to be missing, an omen of the worst significance; and at other times the daily auguries were observed to be extremely inauspicious. An old soothsayer, who may have got wind of the plot, warned the Dictator to beware of the Ides of March; but Caesar, whose courage was always phenomenal, did not allow the prediction to alter his movements.

Upon the evening of March 14th, the day before the dreaded Ides, Caesar supped with his friend Marcus Lepidus, and as he was signing some letters which had been brought to him for approval the conversation happened to turn upon the subject of death, and the question was asked as to what kind of ending was to be preferred. The Dictator, quickly looking up from his papers, said decisively, “A sudden one!” the significance of which remark was to be realised by his friends a few hours later. That night, Plutarch tells us, as Caesar lay upon his bed, suddenly, as though by a tremendous gust of wind, all the doors and windows of his house flew open, letting in the brilliant light of the moon. Calpurnia lay asleep by his side, but he noticed that she was uttering inarticulate words and was sobbing as though in the deepest distress; and upon being awakened she said that she had thought in her dreams that he was murdered. Caesar must have realised that such a dream was probably due to her fears as to the truth of the soothsayer’s prophecy; but, at the same time, her earnest request to him not to leave his house on the following day made a considerable impression upon him.

In the morning the conspirators collected in that part of the governmental buildings where the Senate was to meet that day. The place chosen was a pillared portico adjoining the theatre, having at the back a deep recess in which stood a statue of Pompey.¹ Some of the men were public officials whose business it was to act as magistrates and to hear cases which had been brought to them for judgment; and it is said that not one of them betrayed by his manner any nervousness or lack of interest in these public concerns. In the case of Brutus this was particularly noticeable; and it is related that upon one of the plaintiffs before him refusing to stand to his award and declaring that he would appeal to Caesar, Brutus calmly remarked, “Caesar does not hinder me, nor will he hinder me, from acting according to the laws.”

This composure, however, began to desert them when it was found that the Dictator was delaying his departure from his house. The report spread that he had decided not to come to the Senate that day, and it was soon realised that this might be interpreted as meaning that he had discovered the plot. Their agitation was such that at length they sent a certain Decimus Brutus Albinus, a very trusted friend of the Dictator, to Caesar’s house to urge him to make haste. Decimus found him just preparing to postpone the meeting of the Senate, his feelings having been worked upon by Calpurnia’s fears, and also by the fact that he had received a report from the augurs stating that the sacrifices for the day had been inauspicious. In this dilemma Decimus made a statement to Caesar, the truth of which is now not able to be ascertained. He told the Dictator that the Senate had decided unanimously to confer upon him that day the title of King of all the Roman Dominions outside Italy, and to authorise him to wear a royal diadem in any place on land or sea except in Italy.¹ He added that Caesar should not give the Senate so fair a justification for saying that he had put a slight upon them by adjourning the meeting on so important an occasion owing to the bad dreams of a woman.

At this piece of news Caesar must have been filled with triumphant excitement. The wished-for moment had come. At last he was to be made king, and the dominions to be delivered over to him were obviously but the first instalment of the vaster gift which assuredly he would receive in due course. The doubt and the gloom of the last few weeks in a moment were banished, for this day he would be monarch of an empire such as had never before been seen. What did it matter that in Rome itself he would be but Dictator? He would establish his royal capital elsewhere: in Alexandria, perhaps, or on the site of Troy. He would be able at once to marry Cleopatra and to incorporate her dominions with his own. Calpurnia might remain for the present the wife of the childless Dictator in Rome, and his nephew Octavian might be his official heir; but outside his fatherland, Queen Cleopatra should be his consort, and his own little son should be his heir and successor. The incongruities of the situation would so soon be felt that Rome would speedily acknowledge him king in Italy as well as out of it. Probably he had often discussed with Cleopatra the possibilities of this solution of the problem, for the idea of making him king outside Italy had been proposed some weeks previously; and he must now have thought how amused and delighted the Queen would be by this unexpected decision of the Senate to adopt the rather absurd scheme. As soon as he had married the Sovereign of Egypt and had made Alexandria one of his capitals, his dominions would indeed be an Egypto-Roman Empire; and when at length Rome should invite him to reign also within Italy, the situation would suggest rather that Egypt had incorporated Rome than that Rome had absorbed Egypt. How that would tickle Cleopatra, whose dynasty had for so long feared extinction at the hands of the Romans!

Rising to his feet, and taking Decimus by the hand, Caesar set out at once for the Senate, his forebodings banished and his ambitious old brain full of confidence and hope. On his way through the street two persons, one a servant and the other a teacher of logic, made attempts to acquaint him with his danger; and the soothsayer who had urged him to beware of the Ides of March once more repeated his warning. But Caesar was now in no mood to abandon the prospective excitements of the day; and the risk of assassination may, indeed, have been to him the very element which delighted him, for he was ever inspired by the presence of danger.

Meanwhile the conspirators paced the Portico of Pompey in painful anxiety, fearing every moment to hear that the plot had been discovered. It must have been apparent to them that there were persons outside the conspiracy who knew of their designs; and when a certain Popilius Laena, a senator, not of their number, whispered to Brutus and Cassius that the secret was out, but that he wished them success, their feelings must have been hard to conceal. Then came news that Porcia had fallen into an hysterical frenzy caused by her suspense; and Brutus must have feared that in this condition she would reveal the plot.

At length, however, Caesar was seen to be approaching; but their consequent relief was at once checked when it was observed that Popilius Laena, who had said that he knew all, entered into deep and earnest conversation with the Dictator. The conversation, however, proved to be of no consequence, and Caesar presently walked on into the Curia where the Senate was to meet. A certain Trebonius was now set to detain Antony in conversation outside the doorway; for it had been decided that, although the latter was Caesar’s right-hand man, he should not be murdered, but that, after the assassination, he should be won over to the side of the so-called patriots by fair words.

When Caesar entered the building the whole Senate rose to their feet in respectful salutation. The Dictator having taken his seat, one of the conspirators, named Tullius Cimber, approached him ostensibly with the purpose of petitioning him to pardon his exiled brother. The others at once gathered round, pressing so close upon him that Caesar was obliged to order them to stand back. Then, perhaps suspecting their design, he sprang suddenly to his feet, whereupon Tullius caught hold of his toga and pulled it from him, thus leaving his spare frame covered only by a light tunic. Instantly a senator named Casca, whom the Dictator had just honoured with promotion, struck him in the shoulder with his dagger, whereupon Caesar, grappling with him, cried out in a loud voice, “You villain, Casca! what are you doing?”. A moment later, Casca’s brother stabbed him in the side. Cassius, whose life Caesar had spared after Pharsalia, struck him in the face; Bucolianus drove a knife between his shoulder-blades, and Decimus Brutus, who so recently had encouraged him to come to the Senate, wounded him in the groin. Caesar fought for his life like a wild animal. He struck out to right and left with his stilus, and, streaming with blood, managed to break his way through the circle of knives to the pedestal of the statue of his old enemy Pompey. He had just grasped Casca once more by the arm, when suddenly perceiving his beloved Marcus Brutus coming at him with dagger drawn, he gasped out, “You, too, Brutus—my son!” and fell, dying, upon the ground. Instantly the pack of murderers was upon him, slashing and stabbing at his prostrate form, wounding one another in their excitement, and nigh tumbling over him where he lay in a pool of blood.

As soon as all signs of life had left the body, the conspirators turned to face the Senate; but, to their surprise, they found the members rushing madly from the building. Brutus had prepared a speech to make to them as soon as the murder should be accomplished; but in a few moments nobody was left in the Curia for him to address. He and his companions, therefore, were at a loss to know what to do; but at length they issued forth from the building, somewhat nervously brandishing their daggers and shouting catch-words about Liberty and the Republic. At their approach everybody fled to their homes; and Antony, fearing that he, too, would be murdered, disguised himself and hurried by side-streets to his house. They therefore took up their position in the Capitol, and there remained until a deputation of senators induced them to come down to the Forum. Here, standing in the rostra, Brutus addressed the crowd, who were fairly well-disposed towards him ; but when another speaker, Cinna, made bitter accusations against the dead man, the people chased the conspirators back once more to the Capitol, where they spent the night.

When darkness had fallen and the tumult had subsided, Antony made his way to the Forum, whither, he had heard, the body of Caesar had been carried; and here, in the light of the moon, he looked once more upon the face of his arrogant old master. Here, too, he met Calpurnia, and, apparently at her request, took charge of all the Dictator’s documents and valuables.

Upon the next day, at Antony’s suggestion, a general amnesty was proclaimed, and matters were amicably discussed. It was then decided that Caesar’s will should be opened, but the contents must have been a surprise to .both parties. The dead man bequeathed to every Roman citizen 300 sesterces, giving also to the Roman people his vast estates and gardens on the other side of the Tiber, were Cleopatra was, at the time, residing. Three-quarters of the remainder of his estate was bequeathed to Octavian, and the other quarter was divided between his two nephews, Lucius Pinarius and Quintus Pedius. In a codicil he added that Octavian should be his official heir; and he named several guardians for his son, should one be born to him after his death.

The dead body lay in state in the Forum for some five days, while the ferment in the city continued to rage unabated. The funeral was at length fixed for March 20th, and towards evening Antony went to the Forum, where he found the crowd wailing and lamenting around the corpse, the soldiers clashing their shields together, and the women uttering their plaintive cries. Antony at once began to sing a dirge-like hymn in praise of Caesar; pausing in his song every few moments to stretch his hands towards the corpse and to break into loud weeping. In these intervals the crowd took up the funeral chant, and gave vent to their emotional distress in the melancholy music customary at the obsequies of the dead, reciting monotonously a verse of Accius which ran, “I saved those who have given me death.” Presently Antony held up on a spear’s point the robes pierced by so many dagger-thrusts; and standing beside this gruesome relic of the crime, he pronounced his famous funeral oration over the body of the murdered Dictator. When he had told the people of Caesar’s gifts to them, and had worked upon their feelings by exhibiting thus the blood-stained garments, the mob broke into a frenzy of rage against the conspirators, vowing vengeance upon one and all. Somebody recalled the speech made by Cinna on a previous day, and immediately howls were raised for that orator’s blood. A minor poet, also called Cinna, happened to be standing in the crowd; and when a friend of his had addressed him by that hated name, the people in the immediate vicinity thought that he must be the villain for whose life the mob was shouting. They therefore caught hold of the unfortunate man, and, without further inquiries, tore him limb from limb. They then seized benches, tables, and all available woodwork ; and there, in the midst of the public and sacred buildings, they erected a huge pyre, upon the top of which they placed the Dictator’s body, laid out upon a sheet of purple and gold. Torches were applied and speedily the flames arose, illuminating the savage faces of the crowd around the pyre, and casting grotesque shadows upon the gleaming walls and pillars of the adjoining buildings, while the volume of the smoke hid from view the moon now rising above the surrounding roofs and pediments. Soon the mutilated body disappeared from sight into the heart of the fire; and thereupon the spectators, plucking flaming brands from the blaze, dashed down the streets, with the purpose of burning the houses of the conspirators. The funeral pyre continued to smoulder all night long, and it must have been many hours before quiet was restored in the city. The passions of the mob were appeased next day by the general co-operation of all those concerned in public affairs, and the Senate passed what was known as an Act of Oblivion in regard to all that had occurred. Brutus, Cassius, and the chief conspirators, were assigned to positions of importance in the provinces far away from Rome; and the affairs of the capital were left, for the most part, in the hands of Antony. On March 18th, three days after Caesar’s death, Antony and Lepidus calmly invited Brutus and Cassius to a great dinner-party, and so, for the moment, peace was restored.

Meanwhile, Cleopatra’s state of mind must have been appalling. Not only had she lost her dearest friend and former lover, but, with his death, she had lost the vast kingdom which he had promised her. No longer was she presumptive Queen of the Earth, but now, in a moment, she was once more simply sovereign of Egypt, seated upon an unfirm throne. Moreover, she must have fancied that her own life was in danger, as well as that of the little Caesar. The contents of the Dictator’s will must have been a further shock to her, although she probably already knew their tenor; and she must have thought with bitterness of the difference that even one day more might have made to her in this regard. It was perhaps true that the Senate had been about to offer him the throne of the provinces on the fatal Ides; and in that case Caesar would most certainly have altered his will to meet the new situation, if indeed he had not already done so, as some say. There was reason to suppose that such a will, in favour of Caesarion, had actually been made, but if this were so, it was nowhere to be found, and had perhaps been destroyed by Calpurnia. What was she to do? When would Octavian appear to claim such property and honours as Caesar had bequeathed to him? Should she at once proclaim her baby son as the rightful heir, or should she fly the country?

In this dilemma there seems to me to be no doubt that she must have consulted with Antony, the one man who had firmly grasped the tangled strings of the situation, and must have implored him to support the claims of her son. If the public would not admit that Caesarion was Caesar’s son, then the boy would, without doubt, pass into insignificance, and ultimately be deprived, in all probability, even of his Egyptian throne. If, on the other hand, with Antony’s support, he were officially recognised to be the Dictator’s child, then there was a good chance that the somewhat unprepossessing Octavian might be pushed aside for ever. Caesar had taken a fancy to this obscure nephew of his during the Spanish War. The young man, although still weak after a severe illness, had set out to join the Dictator in Spain with a promptitude which had won his admiration. He had suffered shipwreck, and had ultimately made his way to his uncle’s camp by roads infested with the enemy, and thereafter had fought by his side. He was now following his studies in Apollonia, and intended to join Caesar on his way to the East. If he could be prevented from coming to Rome the game would be in the Queen’s hands; and I am of opinion that she must now have approached Antony with some such suggestion for the solution of the difficulty. Antony, on his part, probably realised that with the establishment of Octavian in Caesar’s seat his own power would vanish; but that, were he to support the baby Caesarion, he himself would remain the all-powerful regent for many years to come. He might even take the dead man’s place as Cleopatra’s husband, and climb to the throne by means of the right of his stepson.

It would seem, therefore, that he persuaded Cleopatra to remain for the present in Rome; and not long afterwards he declared in the Senate that the little Caesarion had been acknowledged by Caesar to be his rightful son. This was denied at once by Oppius, who favoured the claims of Octavian, and ultimately this personage took the trouble to write a short book to refute Antony’s statement.

The young Dolabella now seized the consulship in Rome, and, being on bad terms with Antony, at once showed his hostility to the friends of the late Dictator by various acts of violence against them. Caesar, before his death, had assigned the province of Syria to Dolabella and that of Macedonia to Antony; but now the Senate, in order to rid Rome of the troublesome presence of the Dictator’s murderers, had given Macedonia and Syria to Marcus Brutus and Cassius, and these two men were now collecting troops with which to enter their dominions in safety. There was thus a political reason for Antony and Dolabella to join forces; and presently we find the two of them working together for the overthrow of Brutus and Cassius.

Into these troubled scenes in Rome the news presently penetrated of the approach of the young Octavian, now nearly nineteen years of age, who was coming to claim his rights; and thereupon the city, setting aside the question of the conspirators, formed itself into two factions, the one supporting the newcomer, the other upholding Antony’s attitude. It is usually stated by historians that Antony was fighting solely in his own interests, being desirous of ousting Octavian and assuming the dignities of Caesar by force of arms. If this be so, why did he make a point of declaring in the Senate that Caesarion was the Dictator’s child? With what claims upon the public did he oppose those of Octavian if not by the supporting of Caesar’s son ? We shall see that in after years he always claimed the Roman throne on behalf of the child Caesarion; and I find it difficult to suppose that that attitude was not already assumed, to some extent, by him.

There now began to be grave fears of the immediate outbreak of civil war; and so threatening was the situation that Cleopatra was advised to leave Rome and to return to Egypt with her son, there to await the outcome of the struggle. It is probable, indeed, that Antony urged her to return to her own country in order to raise troops and ships for his cause. Be this as it may, the Queen left Rome a few days before April 15th, upon which date Cicero wrote to Atticus, from Sinuessa, not far from Rome, commenting on the news that she had fled.

As she sailed over the Mediterranean back to Egypt her mind must have been besieged by a hundred schemes and plans for the future. The despair which she had experienced, after the death of the Dictator, at the demolition of all her vast hopes, may now have given place to a spirited desire to begin the fight once more. Caesar was dead, but his great personality would live again in his little son, whom Antony, she believed, would champion, since in doing so he would further his own ambitions. The legions left at Alexandria by the Dictator would, no doubt, stand by her; and she would bring all the might and all the wealth of Egypt against the power of Octavian. The coming warfare would be waged by her for the creation of that throne for the establishment of which Caesar had indeed given his life ; and her arms would be directed against that form of democratic government which the Dictator, perhaps at her instance, had endeavoured to overthrow, but which a man of Octavian’s character, she supposed, would be contented to support. Her mighty Caesar would look down from his place amidst the stars to direct her, and to lead their son to the goal of their ambitions; for now he was in very truth a god amongst the gods. Recently during seven days a comet had been seen blazing in the sky, and all men had been . convinced that this was the soul of the murdered Dictator rushing headlong to heaven. Even now a strange haze hung over the sun, as though the light of that celestial body were dimmed by the approach of the Divine Caesar. Before the Queen left Rome she had heard the priests and public officials name him God in very truth; and maybe she had already seen his statues embellished by the star of divinity which was set upon his brow after his death. Surely now he would not desert her, his Queen and his fellow-divinity; nor would he suffer their royal son to pass into obscurity. From his exalted heights he would defend her with his thunderbolts, and come down to her aid upon the wings of the wind. Thus there was no cause for her to despair; and with that wonderful optimism which seems to have characterised her nature, she now set her active brain to thoughts of the future, turning her mature intellect to the duties which lay before her. When Caesar had met her in Egypt she had been an irresponsible girl. Now she was a keen-brained woman, endowed with the fire and the pluck of her audacious dynasty, and prepared to fight her way with all their unscrupulous energy to the summit of her ambitions. And, moreover, now she held the trump card in her hands in the person of her little boy, who was by all natural laws the rightful heir to the throne of the earth.

PART II.

CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY

CHAPTER XI.

THE CHARACTER OF ANTONY AND HIS RISE TO POWER.