THE DIVINE HISTORY OF JESUS CHRIST

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT

PART I.

CLEOPATRA AND CAESAR

CHAPTER IV.

THE DEATH OF POMPEY AND THE ARRIVAL OF CAESAR IN EGYPT.

The fortress of Pelusium, near which the opposing armies of Ptolemy and Cleopatra were arrayed, stood on low desert ground overlooking the sea, not far east of the modern Port Said. It was the most easterly port and stronghold of the Delta; and, being built upon the much-frequented highroad which skirted the coast between Egypt and Syria, it formed the Asiatic gateway of the Ptolemaic kingdom. The young Ptolemy XIV had stationed himself, with his advisers and his soldiers, in this fortress, in order to oppose the entrance of his sister Cleopatra, who, as we have already seen, had marched with a strong army back to Egypt from Syria, whither she had fled. On September 28th, BC 48, when Cleopatra’s forces, having arrived at Pelusium, were preparing to attack the fortress, and were encamped upon the sea-coast a few miles to the east of the town, an event occurred which was destined to change the whole course of Egyptian history. Round the barren headland to the west of the little port a Seleucian galley hove into sight, and cast anchor a short distance from the shore. Upon the deck of this vessel stood the defeated Pompey the Great and Cornelia his wife, who, flying from the rout of Pharsalia, had come to claim the hospitality of the Egyptian King. The young monarch appears to have been warned of his approach, for Pompey had touched at Alexandria, and there hearing that Ptolemy had gone to Pelusium, had probably sent a messenger to him overland and himself had sailed round by sea. The greatest flurry had been caused in the royal camp by the news, and for the moment the invasion of Cleopatra and the impending battle with her forces were quite forgotten in the excitement of the arrival of the man who for so long had been the mighty patron of the Ptolemaic Court.

Egypt, like all the rest of the world, had been watching with deep interest the warfare waged between the two Roman giants, Pompey and Caesar, confident in the success of the former; and the messenger of the defeated general must have brought the first authentic news of the result of the eagerly awaited battle. The sympathies of the Alexandrians were all on the side of the Pompeians, for the fugitive, who now asked a return of his former favours, had always been to them the gigantic representative of Roman patronage. They knew little, if anything, about Caesar, who had spent so many years in the far north-west; but Pompey was Rome itself to them, and had always shown himself particularly desirous of acting, when occasion arose, in their behalf. For many years he had been, admittedly, the most powerful personage in Rome, and the civilised world had grovelled at his feet. Then came the inevitable quarrel with Julius Caesar, a man who could not tolerate the presence of a rival. Civil war broke out, and the two armies met on the plains of Pharsalia. It is not necessary to record here how Pompey’s patrician cavalry, in whom he confidently trusted, was defeated by Caesar’s hardened legions; how the foreign allies were awed into inactivity by the spectacle of the superb contest between Romans and Romans; how the debonnaire Pompey, realising his defeat, passed, dazed, to his pavilion arid sat there staring in front of him, until the enemy had penetrated to his very door, when, uttering the despairing cry, “What! even into the camp?” he galloped from the field; and how Caesar’s men found the enemy’s tents decked in readiness for the celebration of their anticipated victory, the doorways hung with garlands of myrtle, the floors spread with rich carpets, and the tables covered with goblets of wine and dishes of food. Pompey had fled to Larissa and thence to the sea, where he boarded a merchantman and set sail for Mitylene. Here picking up his wife Cornelia, he made his way to Cyprus, where he transhipped to the galley in which he crossed to Egypt. He had expected, very naturally, to be received with courtesy by Ptolemy, who was to be regarded as his political protege; and he had some undefined but cogent plans of gathering his forces together again and giving battle a second time to his enemies. At Pharsalia he had thought his power irrevocably destroyed, but on his way to Egypt he learnt that Cato had rallied a considerable number of his troops, and that his fleet, which had not come into action, was still loyal; and he therefore hoped that with Ptolemy’s expected help he might yet regain the mastery of the Roman world.

As soon as his approach was reported to the Egyptian King, a council of ministers was called, in order to decide the manner in which they should receive the fallen general. There were present at this meeting the three scoundrelly advisers of the youthful monarch whom we have already met: Potheinos, the eunuch, who was a kind of prime minister; Achillas, the Egyptian, who commanded the King’s troops; and Theodotos of Chios, the professional master of rhetoric, and tutor to Ptolemy. These three men appear to have organised the plot by which Cleopatra had been driven from Egypt; and, having the boy Ptolemy well under their thumbs, they seem to have been acting with zeal in his name for the advancement of their own fortunes. “It was, indeed, a miserable thing,” says Plutarch, “that the fate of the great Pompey should be left to the determinations of these three men; and that he, riding at anchor at a distance from the shore, should be forced to wait the sentence of this tribunal.”

Some of the councillors suggested that he should be politely requested to seek refuge in some other country, for it was obvious that Caesar might deal harshly with them if they were to befriend him. Others proposed that they should receive him and cast in their lot with him, for it was to be supposed, and indeed such was the fact, that he still had a very good chance of recovering from the fiasco of Pharsalia; and there was the danger that, if they did not do so, he might accept the assistance of their enemy Cleopatra. Theodotos, however, pointing out, in a carefully reasoned speech, that both these courses were fraught with danger to themselves, proposed that they should curry favour with Caesar by murdering their former patron, thus bringing the contest to a close, and thereby avoiding any risk of backing the wrong horse; “and,” he added with a smile, “a dead man cannot bite.” The councillors readily approved this method of dealing with the difficult situation, and they committed its execution to Achillas, who thereupon engaged the services of a certain Roman officer named Septimius, who had once held a command under Pompey, and another Roman centurion named Salvius. The three men, with a few attendants, then boarded a small boat and set out towards the galley.

When they had come alongside Septimius stood up and saluted Pompey by his military title; and Achillas thereupon invited him to come ashore in the smaller vessel, saying that the large galley could not make the harbour owing to the shallow water. It was now seen that a number of Egyptian battleships were cruising at no great distance, and that the sandy shore was alive with troops; and Pompey, whose suspicions were aroused, realised that he could not now turn back, but must needs place himself in the hands of the surly-looking men who had come out to meet him. His wife Cornelia was distraught with fears for his safety, but he, bidding her to await events without anxiety, lowered himself into the boat, taking with him two centurions, a freedman named Philip, and a slave called Scythes. As he bade farewell to Cornelia he quoted to her a couple of lines from Sophocles—

“He that once enters at a tyrant’s door

Becomes a slave, though he were free before;”

and so saying, he set out towards the shore. A deep silence fell upon the little company as the boat passed over the murky water, which at this time of year is beginning to be discoloured by the Nile mud brought down by the first rush of the annual floods; and in the damp heat of an Egyptian summer day the dreary little town and the barren colourless shore must have appeared peculiarly uninviting. In order to break the oppressive silence Pompey turned to Septimius, and, looking earnestly upon him, said: “Surely I am not mistaken in believing you to have been formerly my fellowsoldier?”. Septimius made no reply, but silently nodded his head; whereupon Pompey, opening a little book, began to read, and so continued until they had reached the shore. As he was about to leave the boat he took hold of the hand of his freedman Philip; but even as he did so Septimius drew his sword and stabbed him in the back, whereupon both Salvius and Achillas attacked him. Pompey spoke no word, but, groaning a little, hid his face with his mantle, and fell into the bottom of the vessel, where he was speedily done to death.

Cornelia, standing upon the deck of the galley, witnessed the murder, and uttered so great a cry that it was heard upon the shore. Then, seeing the murderers stoop over the body and rise again with the severed head held aloft, she called to her ship’s captain to weigh anchor, and in a few moments the galley was making for the open sea and was speedily out of the range of pursuit. Pompey’s decapitated body, stripped of all clothing, was now bundled into the water, and a short time afterwards was washed up by the breakers upon the sands of the beach, where it was soon surrounded by a crowd of idlers. Meanwhile Achillas and his accomplices carried the head up to the royal camp.

The freedman Philip was not molested, and, presently making his way to the beach, wandered to and fro along the desolate shore until all had retired to the town. Then, going over to the body and kneeling down beside it, he washed it with sea-water and wrapped it in his own shirt for want of a winding-sheet. As he was searching for wood wherewith to make some sort of funeral pyre, he met with an old Roman soldier who had once served under the murdered general; and together these two men carried down to the water’s edge such pieces of wreckage and fragments of rotten wood as they could find, and placing the body upon the pile set fire to it.

Upon the next morning one of the Pompeian generals, Lucius Lentulus, who was bringing up the two thousand soldiers whom Pompey had gathered together as a bodyguard, arrived in a second galley before Pelusium; and as he was being rowed ashore he observed the still smoking remains of the pyre. “Who is this that has found his end here?” he said, being still in ignorance of the tragedy, and added with a sigh, “Possibly even thou, Pompeius Magnus!” And upon stepping ashore, he too was promptly murdered.

A few days later, on October 2nd, Julius Caesar, in hot pursuit, arrived at Alexandria, where he heard with genuine disgust of the miserable death of his great enemy. Shortly afterwards Theodotos presented himself to the conqueror, carrying with him Pompey’s head and signet-ring; but Caesar turned in distress from the gruesome head, and taking only the ring in his hand, was for a moment moved to tears. He then appears to have dismissed the astonished Theodotos from his presence like an offending slave: and it was not long before that disillusioned personage fled for his life from Egypt. For some years, it may be mentioned, he wandered as a vagabond through Syria and Asia Minor; but at last, after the death of Caesar, he was recognised by Marcus Brutus, and, as a punishment for having instigated the murder of the great Pompey, was crucified with every possible ignominy. Caesar seems to have arranged that the ashes of his rival should be sent to his wife Cornelia, by whom they were ultimately deposited at his country house near Alba; and he also gave orders that the piteous head should be buried near the sea, in the grove of Nemesis, outside the eastern walls of Alexandria, where, in the shade of the trees, a monument was set up to him and the ground around it laid out. Caesar then offered his protection and friendship to all those partisans of Pompey whom the Egyptians had imprisoned, and he expressed his great satisfaction at being able thus to save the lives of his fellow-countrymen.

It is not difficult to appreciate the consternation caused by Caesar’s attitude. Potheinos and Achillas at once realised that the disgrace of Theodotos awaited them unless they acted, with the utmost circumspection, biding their time until, as was expected, Caesar should take his speedy departure, or until they might deal with this new disturber of their peace in the same manner in which they had disposed of the old. But Caesar had no intention of leaving Egypt in any haste, nor did he give them the desired opportunity of anticipating the Ides of March. With that audacious nonchalance which so often baffled his observers, he quietly decided to take up his residence in the Palace upon the Lochias Promontory at Alexandria, at that moment occupied by only two members of the Royal Family, the younger Ptolemy and his sister Arsinoe; and, as soon as sufficient troops had arrived to support him, he left his galley and landed at the steps of the imposing quay. Two amalgamated legions, 3200 strong, and 800 Celtic and German cavalry, disembarked with him, this small force having been considered by Caesar sufficient for the rounding up of the Pompeian fugitives, and for the secondary purposes for which he had come to Egypt.

Caesar’s object in hastening across the Mediterranean had been, primarily, the capture of Pompey and his colleagues, and the prevention of a rally under the shelter of the King of Egypt’s not inconsiderable armaments. It appears to have been his opinion that speed of pursuit would be more effective than strength of arms, and that his undelayed appearance at Alexandria would more simply discourage the undetermined Egyptians from rendering assistance to their former friend than a display of force at a later date. Fresh from the triumph of Pharsalia, with the memory of that astounding victory to warm his spirits, he did not anticipate any great difficulty in subjecting the Ptolemaic Court to his will, nor in demonstrating to them that he himself, and not the defeated Pompey, represented the authentic might of Rome. It would seem that he expected speedily to frustrate any further resort to arms, and to manifest his authority by acting ostentatiously in the name of the Roman people. He himself should assume the prerogatives lately held by Pompey, and should play the part of benevolent patron to the court of Alexandria so admirably sustained by his fallen rival for so many years. There were several outstanding matters in Egypt which, on behalf of his home government, he could regulate and adjust: and there is little doubt that he hoped by so doing to establish a despotic reputation in that important country which would retain for him, as apparent autocrat of Rome, a personal control of its affairs for many years to come. In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, I am of opinion that his return to Rome was not urgent; indeed it seems to me that it could be postponed for a short time with advantage. Pompey had been a great favourite with the Italians, and it was just as well that the turmoil caused by his defeat and death should be allowed to subside, and that the bitter memories of a sanguinary war, which had so palpably been brought about by personal rivalry, should be somewhat forgotten before the victor made his spectacular entry into Rome. At this time he was not at all popular in the capital, and indeed, six months previously he had been generally regarded as a criminal and adventurer; while, on the other hand, Pompey had been the people’s darling, and it would take some time for public opinion to be reversed.

When, therefore, Caesar heard that the treacherous deeds of the Egyptian ministers had rendered his primary action unnecessary, he determined to enter Alexandria with some show of state, to take up his residence there for a few weeks, and to interfere in its internal affairs for his own advancement and for the consolidation of his power.

With this object in view his four thousand troops were landed, and he set out in procession towards the Royal Palace, the lictors carrying the fasces and axes before him as in the consular promenades at Rome. No sooner, however, were these ominous symbols observed by the mob than a rush was made towards them; and for a time the attitude of the crowd became ugly and menacing. The young King and his Court were still at Pelusium, where his army was defending the frontier from the expected attack of Cleopatra’s invading forces; but there were in Alexandria a certain number of troops which had been left there as a garrison, and both amongst these men and amongst the heterogeneous townspeople there must have been many who realised the significance of the fasces. The city was full of Roman outlaws and renegades, to whom this reminder of the length of her arm could but bring foreboding and terror. To them Caesar’s formal entry meant the establishment of that law from which they had fled; while to many a merry member of the crowd the stately procession appeared to bring to Egypt at last that dismal shadow of Rome by which it had so long been menaced. On all sides it was declared that this state entry into the Egyptian capital was an insult to the King’s majesty; and so, indeed, it was, though little did that trouble Caesar, who was well aware now of his unassailable position in the councils of Rome.

The city was in a ferment, and for some days after Caesar had taken up his quarters at the Palace rioting continued in the streets, a number of his soldiers being killed in different parts of the town. He therefore sent post-haste to Asia Minor for reinforcements, and took such steps as were necessary for securing his position from attack. It is probable that he did not suppose the Alexandrians would have the audacity to make war upon him, or attempt to drive him from the city; but at the same time he desired to take no risks, for he seems at the moment to have been heartily sick of warfare and slaughter. The Palace and royal barracks in which his troops were quartered, being built mainly upon the Lochias Promontory, were easily able to be defended from attack by land—for, no doubt, in so turbulent a city, the royal quarter was protected by massive walls; and at the same time the position commanded the eastern half of the Great Harbour and the one side of its entrance over against the Pharos Lighthouse. His ships lay moored under the walls of the Palace; and a means of escape was thus kept open which, if the worst came to the worst, might be used with comparative safety upon any dark night. I think the turbulence of the mob, therefore, did not much trouble him, and he was able to set about the task which he desired to perform with a certain degree of quietude. The Civil War had been a very great strain upon his nerves, and he must have looked forward to a few weeks of actual holiday here in the luxurious royal apartments which he had so casually appropriated. Summer at Alexandria is in many ways a delightful time of year; and one may therefore picture Caesar, at all times fond of luxury and opulence, now heartily enjoying these warm breezy days upon the beautiful Lochias Promontory. The crisis of his life had been passed; he was now absolute master of the Roman world; and his triumphant entry into the capital, when, in a few weeks’ time, the passions of the mob had cooled, was an anticipation pleasant enough to set his restless heart at ease, while he applied himself to the agreeable little task of regulating the affairs in Egypt. He had sent a courier to Rome announcing the death of Pompey, but it does not seem that this messenger was told to proceed with any great rapidity, for he did not arrive in the capital until near the middle of November.

His first action was to send messengers to Pelusium strongly urging both Ptolemy and Cleopatra to cease their warfare, and to come to Alexandria in order to lay their respective cases before him. He chose to regard the settlement of the quarrel between the two sovereigns as a particular obligation upon himself, for it was during his previous consulship that the late monarch, Auletes, had entrusted his children to the Roman people and had made the Republic the executors of his will; and, moreover, that will had been confided to the care of Pompey, whose position as patron of the Egyptian Court Caesar was now anxious to fill. In response to the summons Ptolemy came promptly to Alexandria, with his minister Potheinos, arriving, I suppose, on about October 5th, in order to ascertain what on earth Caesar was doing in the Palace; and meanwhile Achillas was left in command of the army at Pelusium. On reaching Alexandria they seem to have been invited by Caesar to take up their residence in the Palace into which he had intruded, and which was now patrolled by his Roman troops; and, apparently upon the advice of the unctuous Potheinos, the two of them made themselves as pleasant as possible to their new patron. Caesar at once asked Ptolemy to disband his army, but to this Potheinos would not agree, and immediately sent word to Achillas to bring his forces to Alexandria. Caesar, hearing of this, obliged the young King to despatch two officers, Dioscorides and Serapion, to order Achillas to remain at that place. These messengers, however, were intercepted by the agents of Potheinos, one being killed and the other wounded; and two or three days later Achillas arrived at the capital at the head of the first batch of his army of some twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse, taking up his residence in that part of the city unoccupied by the Romans. Caesar thereupon fortified his position, deciding to hold as much of the city as his small force could defend—namely, the Palace and the Royal Area behind it, including the Theatre, the Forum, and probably a portion of the Street of Canopus. The Egyptian army presented a pugnacious but not extremely formidable array, consisting as it did of the Gabinian troops, who had now become entirely expatriated, and had assumed to some extent the habits and liberties of their adopted country; a number of criminals and outlaws from Italy who had been enrolled as mercenary troops ; a horde of Syrian and Cilician pirates and brigands; and, probably, a few native levies. But as Caesar now had with him in the Palace King Ptolemy, the little Prince Ptolemy, the Princess Arsinoe, and the minister Potheinos, who could be regarded as hostages for his safety, and four thousand of his war-hardened veterans, ensconced in a fortified position and supported by a business-like little fleet of galleys, I cannot see that he had any cause at the moment for alarm. One serious difficulty, however, presented itself. Immediately on arriving in Egypt he had sent orders to Cleopatra to repair to the Palace ; and his task as arbiter in the royal dispute could not be performed until she arrived, nor could he expect to assert his authority until her presence completed the group of interested persons under his enforced protection. Yet she could not dare to place herself in the hands of Achillas, nor rely upon him for a safe escort through the lines; and thus Caesar found himself in a dilemma.

The situation, however, was relieved by the pluck and audacity of the young Queen. Realising that her only hope of regaining her kingdom lay in a personal presentation of her case to the Roman arbiter, she determined, by hook or by crook, to make her entry into the Palace. Taking ship from Pelusium to Alexandria, probably at the end of the first week of October, she entered a small boat when still some distance from the city, and thus, about nightfall, slipped into the Great Harbour, accompanied only by one friend, Apollodorus the Sicilian. She seems to have been aware that her brother and Potheinos were in residence at the Palace, together with a goodly number of their own attendants and servants; but there were no means of telling how far Caesar controlled the situation. Being unaccustomed to the presence of a power more autocratic than that of her own royal house, she does not seem to have realised that Caesar was in absolute command of the Lochias, and that not he but Ptolemy was the guarded guest; and she felt that in landing at the Palace quays she was running the gravest risk of falling into the hands of her brother’s party and of being murdered before she could reach Caesar’s presence. This fear indeed may well have been justified, for there is no doubt that Ptolemy and Potheinos had considerable liberty of action within the precincts of the Palace; and, if the rumour had spread that Cleopatra was come, neither of them would have hesitated to put a dagger into her ribs in the first dark corridor through which she had to pass. Waiting, therefore, upon the still water under the walls of the Palace until darkness had fallen, she instructed Apollodorus to roll her up in the blankets and bedding which he had brought for her in the boat as a protection against the night air, and around the bundle she told him to tie a piece of rope which, I suppose, they found in the boat. She was a very small woman, and Apollodorus apparently experienced no difficulty in shouldering the burden as he stepped ashore. Bundles of this kind were then, as they are now, the usual baggage of a common man in Egypt, and were not likely to attract notice. An Alexandrian native at the present day thus carries his worldly goods tied up in his bedding, the mat or piece of carpet which serves him for a bedstead being wrapped around the bundle and fastened with a rope, and in ancient times the custom was doubtless identical. Apollodorus, who must have been a powerful man, thus walked through the gates of the Palace with the Queen of Egypt upon his shoulders, bearing himself as though she were no heavier than the pots, pans, and clothing which were usually tied up in this manner; and when challenged by the sentries he probably replied that he was carrying the baggage to one of the soldiers of Caesar’s guard, and asked to be directed to his apartments.

Caesar’s astonishment when the bundle was untied in his presence, revealing the dishevelled little Queen, must have been unbounded; and Plutarch tells us that he was at once “captivated by this proof of Cleopatra’s bold wit.” One pictures her bursting with laughter at her adventure, and speedily winning the admiration of the susceptible Roman, who delighted almost as keenly in deeds of daring as he did in feminine beauty. All night long they were closeted together, she relating to him her adventures since she was driven from her kingdom, and he listening with growing interest, and already perhaps with awakening love. And here it will be as well to leave them while some description is given of the appearance and character of the man who now found himself looking forward to the ensuing days of his holiday in Alexandria with an eagerness which it must have been difficult for him to conceal.

CHAPTER V.

CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR.