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PART
II.
CLEOPATRA
AND ANTONY
CHAPTER XV.
THE
PREPARATIONS OF CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY FOR THE OVERTHROW OF OCTAVIAN.
When Cleopatra
carried Antony back to Alexandria to recuperate after his exertions, it seems
to me that she spoke to him very directly in regard to his future
plans. She seems to have pointed out to him that Roman attempts to conquer
Parthia always ended in failure, and that it was a sheer waste of money,
men, and time to endeavour to obtain possession
of a country so vast and having such limitless resources. Wars of this
kind exhausted their funds and gave them nothing in return. Would it not
be much better, therefore, at once to concentrate all their energies upon the
overthrow of Octavian and the capture of Rome ? Antony had proved his
popularity with his men and their confidence in him and his powers as a
leader, for he had performed with ultimate success that most difficult
feat of generalship—an orderly retreat. Surely, therefore, it would be
wise to expend no further portion of their not unlimited means
upon their eastern schemes, but to concentrate their full attention
first upon Italy. The Parthians, after all, had been turned out of Armenia
and Syria, and they might now be left severely alone within their own
country until that day when Antony would march against them, in accordance with
the prophecies of the Sibylline Books, as King of Rome. Cleopatra had
never favoured the Parthian expedition, though
she had helped to finance it as being part of Julius Caesar’s original design;
and she had accepted as reasonable the argument put forward by
Antony, that if successful it would enhance enormously his prestige and
ensure his acceptance as a popular hero in Rome. The war, however, had
been disastrous, and it would be better now to abandon the whole scheme
than to risk a further catastrophe. Antony, fagged out and suffering
from the effects of his severe drinking-bout, appears to have acquiesced
in these arguments; and it seems that he arrived in Alexandria with the
intention of recuperating his resources for a year or two in view
of his coming quarrel with Octavian. In Syria he had received news of
the events which had occurred in Rome during his absence at the wars.
Octavian had at last defeated Sextus Pompeius, who had fled to Mytilene; and
Lepidus, the third Triumvir, had retired into private life, leaving his
province of Africa in Octavian’s hands. His rival, therefore, now held the
West in complete subjection, and it was not unlikely that he himself would presently
pick a quarrel with Antony.
The comforts of the
Alexandrian Palace, and the pleasures of Cleopatra’s brilliant society, must
have come to Antony as an entrancing change after the rigours of
his campaign; and the remainder of the winter, no doubt, slipped by in
happy ease. The stern affairs of life, however, seem to have checked any
repetition of the frivolities of his earlier stay in the Egyptian capital;
and we now hear nothing of the Inimitable Livers or of
their prodigious entertainments. Antony wrote a long letter to Rome,
giving a more or less glowing account of the war, and stating that in many
respects it had been very successful. Early in the new year, b.c. 35, Sextus Pompeius attempted to open
negotiations with the Egyptian court; but the envoys whom he sent
to Alexandria failed to secure any favourable response. Antony, on the other hand, learnt from them that Sextus was
engaged in a secret correspondence with the Parthians, and was attempting
to corrupt Domitius Ahenobarbus, his lieutenant
in Asia. Thereupon he and Cleopatra determined to capture this
buccaneering son of the great Pompey and to put him to death. The
order was carried out by a certain Titius, who
effected the arrest in Phrygia; and Sextus was executed in Miletus shortly
afterwards. This action was likely to be extremely ill received in Rome, for
the outlaw, in the manner of a Robin Hood, had always been
immensely popular; and for this reason Antony never seems to have
admitted his responsibility for it, the order being generally said to have
been signed by his lieutenant, Plancus.
Shortly after this
the whole course of events was suddenly altered by the arrival in Alexandria of
no less a personage than the King of Pontus, who, it will be remembered,
had been captured by the Parthians1 at the outset of Antony’s
late campaign, and had been held prisoner by the King of Media. The latter
now sent him to Egypt with the news that the lately allied
kingdoms of Media and Parthia had come to blows; and the King of Media
proposed that Antony should help him to overthrow his rival. This announcement
caused the greatest upheaval in Cleopatra’s palace. Here was an unexpected
opportunity to conquer the terrible Parthians with comparative ease; for Media
had always been their powerful ally, and the Roman arms had come to grief on
former occasions in Median territory. Cleopatra, however, fearing the
duplicity of these eastern monarchs, and having set her heart on the
immediate overthrow of Octavian, whose power was now so distinctly on the
increase, tried to dissuade her husband from this second campaign,
and begged him to take no further risks in that direction. As a
tentative measure Antony sent a despatch to Artavasdes, the King of Armenia, who had deserted
him after his defeat in Media, ordering him to come to Alexandria
without delay, presumably to discuss the situation. Artavasdes,
however, showed no desire to place himself in the hands of his overlord
whom he had thus betrayed, and preferred to seek safety, if
necessary, in his own hills or to throw in his lot with the Parthians.
Antony was deaf to
Cleopatra’s advice; and at length accepting the proposal conveyed by the King
of Pontus, he prepared to set out at once for the north-east. Thereupon
Cleopatra made up her mind to accompany him; and in the late spring they
set out together for Syria. No sooner had they arrived in that country,
however, than Antony received the disconcerting news that his
Roman wife Octavia was on her way to join him once more, and proposed
to meet him in Greece. It appears that her brother Octavian had chosen
this means of bringing his quarrel with Antony to an issue ; for if she
were not well received he would have just cause for denouncing
her errant husband as a deserter; and in order to show how justly he
himself was dealing he despatched with
Octavia two thousand legionaries and some munitions of war. As a
matter of fact the legionaries served actually as a bodyguard for Octavia,
while their ultimate presentation to Antony was to be regarded partly as a
payment for the number of his ships which had been destroyed in Octavian’s
war against Sextus, and partly as a sort of formal present from one
autocrat to another. Antony at once sent a letter to Octavia telling her
to remain at Athens, as he was going to Media; and in reply to
this Octavia despatched a family friend, named
Niger, to ask Antony what she should do with the troops and
supplies. Niger had the hardihood to speak openly in regard
to Octavia’s treatment, and to praise her very highly for her noble
and quiet bearing in her great distress; but Antony was in no mood to
listen to him, and sent him about his business with no satisfactory reply.
At the same time he appears to have been very sorry for Octavia, and
there can be little doubt that, had such a thing been possible, he would
have liked to see her for a short time, if only to save her from the added
insult of his present attitude. He was an irresponsible boy in these
matters, and so long as everybody was happy he really did not care very
deeply which woman he lived with, though he was now, it would seem,
extremely devoted to Cleopatra, and very dependent upon her
lively society.
The Queen, of
course, was considerably alarmed by this new development, for she could not be
sure whether Antony would stand by the solemn compact he had
made with her at Antioch, or whether he would once more prove a
fickle friend. She realised very clearly that
the insult offered to Octavia would precipitate the war between East and
West, and she seems to have felt even more strongly than before that Antony
would be ill advised at this critical juncture to enter into any
further Parthian complication. To her mind it was
absolutely essential that she should carry him safely back to Alexandria,
where he would be, on the one hand, well out of reach of Octavia, and, on
the other, far removed from the temptation of pursuing his Oriental
schemes. Antony, however, was as eager to be at his old enemy once
more as a beaten boy might have been to revenge himself upon his
rival; and the thought of giving up this opportunity for vengeance in
order to prepare for an immediate fight with Octavian was extremely
distasteful to him. Everything now seemed to be favourable for a successful invasion of Parthia. Not only had he the support of
the King of Media, but the fickle King of Armenia had thought it wise
at the last moment to make his peace with Antony, and the new agreement
was to be sealed by the betrothal of his daughter to Antony’s little
son Alexander Helios. Cleopatra, however, did not care so much about
the conquest of Parthia as she did for the overthrow of her son’s rival,
who seemed to have usurped the estate which ought to have passed from the
great Caesar to Caesarion and herself; and she endeavoured now,
with every art at her disposal, to prevent Antony taking any further risk
in the East, and to urge his return to Alexandria. “ She feigned to be
dying of love for Antony,” says Plutarch, “ bringing her body down
by slender diet. When he entered the room she fixed her eyes upon him
in adoration, and when he left she seemed to languish and half faint away.
She took great pains that he should see her in tears, and, as soon as
he noticed it, she hastily dried them and turned away, as if it were
her wish that he should know nothing of it. Meanwhile Cleopatra’s agents were
not slow to forward her design, upbraiding Antony with his unfeeling
hardhearted nature for thus letting a woman perish whose soul depended
upon him and him alone. Octavia, it was true, was his wife; but Cleopatra,
the sovereign queen of many nations, had been contented with the name
of his mistress, and if she were bereaved of him she would not
survive the loss.”
In this manner she
prevailed upon him at last to give up the proposed war; nor must we censure her
too severely for her piece of acting. She was playing a desperate
game at this time. She had persuaded Antony to turn his back upon Octavia
in a manner which could but be final; and yet immediately after this, as
though oblivous to the consequences of his action,
he was eager to go off to Persia at a time when Octavian would probably
attempt to declare him an enemy of the Roman people. Of course, in reality
the Queen was no more deeply in love with Antony than he with her; but
he was absolutely essential to the realisation of her hopes, and the necessity of a speedy trial of strength
with Octavian became daily more urgent. For this he must prepare by a
quiet collecting of funds and munitions, and all other projects must be
given up.
Very reluctantly,
therefore, Antony returned to Alexandria, and there he spent the winter of BC 35-34
in soberly governing his vast possessions. In the following spring,
however, he determined to secure Armenia and Media for his own ends; and
when he transferred his headquarters to Syria for the summer season1 he again sent word to King Artavasdes to meet
him in order to discuss the affairs of Parthia. The Armenian king,
however, seems to have been intriguing against Antony during the winter;
and now he declined to place himself in Roman hands lest he might suffer
the consequence of his duplicity. Thereupon Antony advanced rapidly
into Armenia, took the King prisoner, seized his treasure, pillaged
his lands, and declared the country to be henceforth a Roman province. The loot
obtained in this rapid campaign was very great. The legionaries seized
upon every object of value which they observed : and they
even plundered the ancient temple of Anaitis in Acilisene, laying hands on the statue of the goddess which
was made of pure gold, and pounding it into pieces for purposes of division.
On his return to
Syria Antony entered into negotiations with the King of Media, the result of
which was that the Median Princess Iotapa was
married to the little Alexander Helios, whose betrothal to the King of
Armenia’s daughter had, of course, terminated with the late war. As we
shall presently see, it is probable that the King of Media
had consented to make the youthful couple his heirs to the throne of
Media, for it would seem that he had no son; and thus Antony is seen to
have once more put into practice his jesting scheme of founding royal
dynasties of his own flesh and blood in many lands. Antony then returned
to Alexandria, well satisfied with his summer’s work, but “with his
thoughts,” as Plutarch says, “now taken up with the coming civil war.”
Octavia had returned to Rome, and had made no secret of her ill-treatment. Her
brother, therefore, told her to leave Antony’s house, thus to show her
resentment against him; but she would not do this, nor did she
permit Octavian to make war upon her husband on her account, for, she
declared, it would be intolerable to have it said that two women, herself
and Cleopatra, had been the cause of such a terrific contest.
Nevertheless, there was little chance of the quarrel being patched up;
and Antony must have realised now the wisdom of
Cleopatra’s objection to an expensive and exhausting campaign in Parthia.
On his return to
Alexandria in the autumn of BC 34, Antony set the Roman world agog by
celebrating his triumph over Armenia in the Egyptian capital.
Never before had a Roman General held a formal Triumph outside Rome; and
Antony’s action appeared to be a definite proclamation that Alexandria had
become the rival, if not the successor, of Rome as the capital of the
world. It will be remembered that Julius Caesar had talked
of removing the seat of government from Rome to Alexandria; and now it
seemed that Antony had transferred the capital, at any rate of the Eastern
Empire, to that city, and was regarding it as his home. Alexandria was
certainly far more conveniently situated than Rome for the government of
the world. It must be remembered that the barbaric western
countries—the unexplored Germania, the newly conquered Gallia,
the insignificant Britannia, the wild Hispania, and others—were not of
nearly such value as were the civilised eastern
provinces; and thus Rome stood on the far western outskirts of the
important dominions she governed. From Alexandria a march of 600 or
800 miles brought one to Antioch or to Tarsus; whereas Rome was
nearly three times as far from these great centres.
The southern Peloponnesus was, by way of Crete, considerably nearer to
Alexandria than it was to Rome by way of Brundisium.
Ephesus and other cities of Asia Minor could be reached more quickly by
land or sea from Egypt than they could from Rome. Rhodes, Lycia,
Bithynia, Galatia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, Commagene, Crete, Cyprus, and many other great and
important lands, were all closer to Alexandria than to Rome; while Thrace and
Byzantium, by the land or sea route, were about equidistant from
either capital. As a city, too, Alexandria was far more magnificent, more
cultivated, more healthy, more wealthy in trade, and more “go-ahead” than
Rome. Thus there was really very good ground for supposing that
Antony, by holding his Triumph here, was proclaiming a
definite transference of his home and of the seat of government ; and
one may imagine the anxiety which it caused in Italy.
The Triumph was a
particularly gorgeous ceremony. At the head of the procession there seems to
have marched a body of Roman legionaries, whose shields were
inscribed with the large C which is said to have stood for “Cleopatra,”
but which, with equal probability, may have stood for “ Caesar,” that is to
say, for the legitimate Caesarian cause. Antony rode in the customary
chariot drawn by four white horses, and before him walked the unfortunate
King Artavasdes loaded with golden chains,
together with his queen and their sons. Behind the chariot walked a long
procession of Armenian captives, and after these came the usual
cars loaded with the spoils of war. Then followed a number of
municipal deputations drawn from vassal cities, each carrying a golden
crown or chaplet which had been voted to Antony in commemoration of his
conquest. Roman legionaries, Egyptian troops, and several eastern
contingents, brought up the rear.
The procession
seems to have set out in the sunshine of the morning from the Roya] Palace on
the Lochias Promontory, and to have skirted the harbour as far as the temple of Neptune. It then
travelled probably through the Forum, past the stately buildings
and luxuriant gardens of the Regia, and so out into the Street of
Canopus at about the point where the great mound of the Paneum rose up against the blue sky, its ascending
pathway packed with spectators. Turning now to the west, the procession
moved slowly along this broad paved street, the colonnades on either side
being massed with sightseers. On the right-hand side the walls of the
Serna, or Royal Mausoleum, were passed, where lay the bones of Alexander
the Great; and on the left the long porticos of the Gymnasium and the Law
Courts formed a shaded stand for hundreds of people of the upper
classes. On the other side of the road the colonnades and windows of the Museum
were crowded, I suppose, with the professors and students who had
come with their families to witness the spectacle. Some distance farther
along, the procession turned to the south, and proceeded along the broad
Street of Serapis, at the end of which, on high ground, stood the splendid
building of the Serapeum. Here Cleopatra and her court, together with the high
functionaries of Alexandria, were gathered, while the priests and priestesses
of Serapis were massed on either side of the street and upon
the broad steps which led up to the porticos of the temple. At this
point Antony dismounted from his chariot; and probably amidst the shouts of
the spectators and the shaking of hundreds of systra,
he ascended to the temple to offer the prescribed sacrifice to Serapis, as
in Rome he would have done to Jupiter Capitolinus.
This accomplished he returned to the court in front of the sacred building,
where a platform had been erected, the sides of which were plated with
silver. On this platform, upon a throne of gold, sat Cleopatra, clad in
the robes of Isis or Venus; and to her feet Antony now led the royal
captives of Armenia, all hot and dusty from their long walk, and dejected
by the continuous booing and jeering of the crowds through which they had
passed. Artavasdes was no barbarian: he was a
refined and cultured man, to whose sensitive nature the ordeal must have
been most terrible. He was something of a poet, and in his time had
written plays and tragedies not without merit. He was now told to abase
himself before Cleopatra, and to salute her as a goddess ; but this he
totally refused to do, and, in spite of some rough handling by his guards,
he persisted in standing upright before her and in addressing her
simply by her name. In Rome it was customary at the conclusion of a
Triumph to put to death the royal captives who had been exhibited in the
procession; and now that he had openly insulted the Queen of Egypt
he could not have expected to see another sun rise. Antony and
Cleopatra, however, appear to have been touched at his dignified attitude;
and neither he nor his family were harmed. Instead, they were
treated with some show of honour,1 and thereafter were held as state
prisoners in the Egyptian capital.
The Triumph ended,
a vast banquet was given to all the inhabitants of Alexandria; and late in the
afternoon a second ceremony was held in the grounds of the Gymnasium. Here
again a silver-covered platform had been erected, upon which two large and
four smaller thrones of gold had been set up; and, when the company
was assembled, Antony, Cleopatra, and her children took their seats
upon them. Certain formalities having been observed, Antony arose to
address the crowd; and, after referring no doubt to his victories, he
proceeded to confer upon the Queen and her offspring a series of
startling honours. He appears to have proclaimed
Cleopatra sovereign of Egypt, and of the dominions which he had
bestowed upon her at Antioch nearly three years previously. He named
Caesarion, the son of Julius Caesar, co-regent with his mother, and gave
him the mighty title of King of Kings.2 Caesarion was
now thirteen and a half years of age; and since, as
Suetonius remarks, he resembled his father, the great Dictator, in a
remarkable manner, Antony’s feelings must have been strangely complicated
as he now conferred upon him these vast honours.
To Alexander Helios, his own child, Antony next gave the kingdom of
Armenia; the kingdom of Media, presumably after the death of the reigning
monarch, whose daughter had just been married to him; and ultimately the
kingdom of Parthia, provided that it had been conquered. This seems to
have been arranged by treaty with the King of Media in the previous summer, the
agreement probably being that, on the death of that monarch, Alexander
Helios and the Median heiress, Iotapa, should ascend
the amalgamated thrones of Armenia, Media, and Parthia, Antony promising
in return to assist in the conquest of the last-named country.
The boy was now six years of age, and his chubby little figure had
been dressed for the occasion in Median or Armenian costume. Upon his head
he wore the high, stiff tiara of these countries, from the back of which
depended a flap of cloth covering his neck; his body was clothed in a
sleeved tunic, over which was worn a flowing cloak, thrown over one
shoulder and hanging in graceful folds at the back; and his legs were
covered by the long, loosely-fitting trousers worn very generally
throughout Persia. To Cleopatra Selene, Alexander’s
twin-sister, Antony gave Cyrenaica, Libya, and as much of the
north-African coast as was in his gift; and finally he proclaimed the
small Ptolemy King of Phoenicia, northern Syria, and Cilicia. This little
boy, only two years of age, had been dressed up for the occasion in
Macedonian costume, and wore the national mantle, the boots, and the cap
encircled with the diadem, in the manner made customary by the successors
of Alexander. At the end of this surprising ceremony the children, having
saluted their parents, were each surrounded by a bodyguard composed of men
belonging to the nations over whom they were to rule; and at last all
returned in state to the Palace as the sun set behind the Harbour of the Happy Return.
In celebration of
the occasion coins were struck bearing the inscription “Of Cleopatra the
Queen, and of the Kings the children of Kings.” Antony perhaps also caused
a bronze statue to be made, representing his son Alexander Helios dressed
in the royal costume of his new kingdom, for a figure has recently been
discovered which appears to represent the boy in this manner. He then
wrote an account of the whole affair to the Senate in Rome, together with
a report on his Armenian war; and in a covering letter he told his agents
to obtain a formal ratification of the changes which he had made in the
distribution of the thrones in his dominions. The news was received in
Italy with astonishment, and in official circles the greatest exasperation
was felt. Antony’s agents very wisely decided not to read the despatches to the Senate; but Octavian insisted, and
after much wrangling their contents were at last publicly declared.
Stories at once began to circulate in which Antony figured as a
kind of Oriental Sultan, living at Alexandria a life of voluptuous
degeneracy. He was declared to be constantly drunken; and, since no such
charge could be brought against Cleopatra, the Queen was said to keep
sober by means of a magical ring of amethyst, which had the virtue of
dispelling the fumes of wine from the head of the wearer.
There can, indeed,
be little doubt that Antony was very intemperate at this period. He was worried
to distraction by the approach of the great war with Octavian; and he
must have felt that his popularity in Rome was now very much at stake.
While waiting for events to shape themselves, therefore, he attempted
to free his mind from its anxieties by heavy drinking; but in so
doing, it would seem from subsequent events, he began to lose the place in
Cleopatra’s esteem which he had formerly held. She herself did not ever
drink much wine, if we may judge from the fact, just now quoted, that she
was at all times notably sober; and she must have watched with increasing
uneasiness the dissolute habits of the man upon whom she was obliged to
rely for the fulfilment of her ambitions.
The fact that he
was ceasing to be a Roman, and was daily becoming more like an Oriental
potentate, did not trouble her so much. It differentiated him, of
course, from the great Dictator, whose memory became more dear to her
as she contrasted his activities with Antony’s growing laziness; but all
her life she had been accustomed to the ways of Eastern monarchs, and she
could not have been much shocked at her husband’s new method of life,
except in so far as it modified his abilities as an active leader of men. Now
that the quarrel with Octavian was coming to a head, her throne
and her very existence depended on Antony’s ability to inspire and to
command; and I dare say a limited adoption of the manners of the East made
him more agreeable to the people with whom he had to deal.
“Cleopatra,” says the violently partisan Florus,
“asked of the drunken general as the price of her love the Roman Empire,
and Antony promised it to her, as though Romans were easier to
conquer than Parthians.... Forgetting his country, his name, his toga, and
the insignia of his office, he had degenerated wholly, in thought,
feeling, and dress, into that monster of whom we know. In his hand was
a golden sceptre, at his side a scimitar; his
purple robes were clasped with great jewels; and he wore a
diadem upon his head so that he might be a King to match the Queen he
loved.”
The Palace at
Alexandria had been much embellished and decorated during recent years; and it
was now a fitting setting for the ponderous movements of this burly
monarch of the East. Lucan tells us how Sumptuous a place the royal home
had come to be. The ceilings were fretted and inlaid, and gold-foil hid
the rafters. The walls and pillars were mainly made of fine
marble, but a considerable amount of purple porphyry and agate were
used in the decoration. The flooring of some of the halls was of onyx or
alabaster; ebony was used as freely as common wood; and ivory was to be
seen on all sides. The doors were ornamented with tortoiseshells brought
from India and studded with emeralds. The couches and chairs were
encrusted with gems; much of the furniture was shining with jasper and
carnelian; and there were many priceless tables of carved ivory. The
coverings were bright with Tyrian dye, shining with spangled gold, or
fiery with cochineal. About the halls walked slaves, chosen for their good
looks. Some were dark-skinned, others were white; some had the
crisp black hair of the Ethiopians; others the golden or flaxen locks
of Gaul and Germania. Pliny tells us that Antony bought two boys for £800
each, and that they were supposed to be twins, but that actually they came
from different countries. Of Cleopatra, Lucan writes: “She breathes
heavily beneath the weight of her ornaments; and her white breasts shine
through the Sidonian fabric which, wrought in close texture by the sley of
the Chinese, the needle of the workmen of the Nile has separated,
loosening the warp by stretching out the web.” The newly-developed trade
with India had filled the Palace with the luxurious fabrics of the Orient;
and the Greek, or even Egyptian, character of the materials and objects in
daily use was beginning to be lost in the medley of heterogenous articles
drawn from all parts of the world.
Amidst these
theatrical surroundings Antony acted, with a kind of childish extravagance, the
part of the half-divine Autocrator of the East. When
he was sober his mind must have been full of cares and anxieties; but
on the many occasions when he was somewhat intoxicated he behaved himself in
the manner of an overgrown boy. He delighted in the general recognition
of his identity with Bacchus or Dionysos; and he
loved to hear himself spoken of as the new “Liber Pater.” In the
festivals of that deity he was driven through the streets of Alexandria in
a car constructed like that traditionally used by the bibulous god; a golden
crown upon his head, often poised, it would seem, at a peculiar
angle, garlands of ivy tossed about his shoulders, buskins on his
feet, and the thyrsus in his hand. In this manner he was trundled along
the stately Street of Canopus, surrounded by leaping women and prancing
men, the crowds on either side of the road shouting and yelling their
merry salutations to him. A temple in his honour was
begun in the Regia at Alexandria, just to the west of the Forum; but this
was not completed until some years afterwards, when it was converted into
a shrine in honour of Octavian, and was known as
the Caesareum. On one occasion he assigned the
part of the sea-god Glaucus to his friend Plancus, who forthwith
danced about at a banquet, naked and painted blue, a chaplet of
sea-weed upon his head and a fish-tail tied from his waist.
Antony had never
troubled himself much in regard to his dignity; and now, in the character of
the jolly ruler of the East, he was quite unmindful of his appearance in
the eyes of serious men. Often he was to be seen walking on foot by the
side of Cleopatra’s chariot, talking to the eunuchs and servants who
followed in her train. He caused the Queen to give him the post
of Superintendent of the Games, — a position which was not considered
to be particularly honourable. It is apparent that her
company had become very essential to him, and much notice was taken of the
fact that he now accompanied her wherever she went. He rode through
the streets at her side, conducted the official and religious ceremonies
for her, or sat by her when she was trying cases in the public tribunal.
Sometimes when he himself was alone upon the judicial bench, looking out
of the window in the midst of some intricate judgment and by chance seeing
Cleopatra’s chariot passing by across the square, he would without explanation start
up from his seat, run over to her, and walk back to the Palace at her
side, leaving the magistrate, police, and prisoners in open-mouthed
astonishment.
We hear nothing in
regard to Antony’s relations with his children, and it is difficult to picture
him as he appeared in the family circle. His stepson Caesarion, his
two sons Alexander and Ptolemy, and his daughter Cleopatra, were all at
this time residing in the Palace; and moreover his son by Fulvia, Antyllus, a boy somewhat
younger than Caesarion, had now come to live with him in Alexandria. It is
probable that he was an affectionate and indulgent father; and there
must have been many happy scenes enacted in the royal nurseries,
which, could they have been recorded, would have gone far to correct the
popular estimate of the nature of Antony’s home-life with Cleopatra.
The Queen was his legal wife; and in contemplating the extravagances
and eccentricities of his behaviour at Alexandria, we must not lose sight of the obvious fact that his
life at this period had also its domestic aspect. He did not admit to
himself that his union with Cleopatra was in any way scandalous; and
writing to Octavian in the following year he seems to be quite surprised
that his family life should be regarded as infamous. “ Is it because I
live in intimate relations with a Queen?” he asks. “She is my wife. Is
this a new thing with me? Have I not acted so for these nine years?”
Indeed, as compared with Octavian’s private life, the family circle at
Alexandria, in spite of Antony’s buffoonery and heavy drinking, was by no
means wholly shameful. In Rome Octavian was at this time employing his
friends to search the town for women to amuse him, and these agents,
acting on his orders, are related to have kidnapped respectable girls, and
to have torn their clothes from them, as did the common slavedealers, in order to ascertain whether they were
fit presents for their vile master. We hear no such stories in regard
to the jovial Antony.
A characteristic
tale is told by Plutarch which illustrates the open-handed opulence of the
Alexandrian court at this time. A certain Philotas, while dining with
Antony’s son Antyllus, shut the mouth of a
rather noisy comrade by a very absurd syllogism, which made everybody
laugh. Antyllus was so delighted that he promptly
made a present of a sideboard covered with valuable plate to the
embarrassed Philotas, who, of course, refused it, not imagining that a
youth of that age could dispose in this light manner of such
costly objects. Having returned to his house, however, a friend
presently arrived, bringing the plate to him; and on his still objecting
to receive it, “What ails the man?” said the bearer of the gift. “Don’t
you know that he who gives you this is Antony’s son, who is free to
give it even if it were all gold?”
Thus the winter of BC
34-33 passed, and in the spring of 33 Antony set out for his summer quarters in
Syria. He desired to cement the agreement with the King of Media, in
order to guard himself against a Parthian attack while engaged in the
coming war with Octavian; and for this purpose he determined to proceed at
once to the borders of that country. Cleopatra, therefore, did not
accompany him; and in this fact we may perhaps see an indication of some
loss of interest on her part, due to her growing disrespect for him.
Passing through Syria he went north-eastwards into Armenia, and
there he seems to have effected a meeting with the King of Media. To
him he now gave a large portion of Greater Armenia, and to the King of
Pontus he handed over the territory known as Lesser Armenia. The little
Median princess, Iotapa, who had been married to
the young Alexander Helios, was placed in the care of Antony with the
idea that she should be educated at Alexandria. With her the King sent
Antony a present of the eagles captured from his army at the time when the
siege-train was lost in BC 36; and he also presented him with
a regiment of the famous mounted archers who had wrought so much
havoc on the Roman lines in the late campaign, while in return for these men
Antony sent a detachment of legionaries to the Median capital.
The Parthian danger
being thus circumvented by this extremely important and far-reaching compact
with Media, Antony set out for Egypt with the idea of spending the
winter there once more. He took with him the little Princess Iotapa, and in the early autumn he reached Alexandria.
His news in regard to Media must have been very satisfactory to Cleopatra,
and Iotapa thenceforth became the companion of
the royal children in the Palace. But the news which he had to relate
in connection with Octavian was of the worst, and Cleopatra must have
asked him in astonishment how he could think of spending the winter
quietly in Alexandria in view of the imminence of war. In the first place,
the Triumvirate1 2 came to an end at the close of the
year, and it seemed likely that Octavian would bring matters to an
issue on that date. Then Octavian had attacked him violently in the
Senate, and excited the public mind against his rival; and Antony, hearing
of this while in Armenia, wrote to him an obscene letter, much
too disgusting to quote here. To this Octavian replied in like manner.
Antony then charged him with acting unfairly, firstly, by not dividing the
spoils captured from Sextus Pompeius; secondly, by not returning the
ships which had been lent to him for the Pompeian war; thirdly, by
not sharing the province of Africa taken over after the retirement of
Lepidus; and lastly, that he had parcelled out
almost all the free land in Italy amongst his own soldiers, thus leaving
none for Antony’s legionaries. Octavian had replied that he would divide all
the spoils of war as soon as Antony gave him a share in Armenia and Egypt,
while in regard to the lands given as rewards to his legionaries, Antony’s
troops could hardly want them, since, no doubt, by now they had all
Media and Parthia to share amongst themselves. This reference to Egypt, as
though it were a province of Rome instead of an independent kingdom, must
have been deeply annoying to Cleopatra; but, on the other hand, it
was pleasant to hear that Octavian had abused Antony for living immorally
with the Queen, and that Antony had replied by stating emphatically that
she was his legal wife.
The war, thus, was
now on the eve of breaking out, and Cleopatra must have been in a fever of
excitement. Antony’s vague and casual behaviour seems, therefore, to have annoyed her very considerably; and it was
not until he had decided to take up his winter quarters at Ephesus
instead of in Egypt that harmony was restored. Once aroused, he acted with
energy. He sent messengers in all directions to gather in his forces; and
he eagerly helped Cleopatra to make her warlike preparations in her
own country. In a few weeks the arrangements were complete, and Antony and
Cleopatra set out for Ephesus early in the winter of BC 33, at the head of
a huge assemblage of naval and military armaments and munitions. The
people of Alexandria must have realised that
their Queen was going forth upon the most marvellous adventure. Only a few years ago they had lain prone under the heel of
Italy, expecting at any moment to be deprived of their independent
existence. Now, thanks to the skill, the tact, and the charm of their
divine Queen, their incarnate Isis-Aphrodite, they were privileged to
witness the departure of the ships, the hosts, and the captains of Egypt
for the conquest of mighty Rome. They had heard Cleopatra swear to seat
herself and her son Caesarion in the Capitol; and there could
have been few in the cheering crowds whose hearts did not swell with
pride at the thought of the glorious future which awaited their country
and their royal house.
THE
DECLINE OF ANTONY’S POWER.
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