THE DIVINE HISTORY OF JESUS CHRIST

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CLEOPATRA, QUEEN OF EGYPT

PART I.

CLEOPATRA AND CAESAR

CHAPTER IX.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EGYPTO-ROMAN MONARCHY.

The people of Rome now began to heap honours upon Caesar, and the government which he had established did not fail to justify its existence by voting him to a position of irrevocable power. He was made Consul for ten years, and there was talk of decreeing him Dictator for life. The Senate became simply an instrument for the execution of his commands; and so little did the members concern themselves with the framing of new laws at home, or with the details of foreign administration, that Cicero is able to complain that in his official capacity he had received the thanks of Oriental potentates whose names he had never seen before, for their elevation to thrones of kingdoms of which he had never heard. Caesar’s interests were worldwide, and the Government in Rome carried out his wishes in the manner in which an ignorant Board of Directors of a company with foreign interests follows the advice of its travelling manager. He had lived for such long periods in foreign countries, his campaigns had carried him over so much of the known world’s surface, that Rome appeared to him to be nothing more than the headquarters of his administration, and not a very convenient centre at that. His intimacy with Cleopatra, moreover, had widened his outlook, and had very materially assisted him to become an arbiter of universal interests. Distant cities, such as Alexandria, were no longer to him the capitals of foreign lands, but were the seats of local governments within his own dominions; and the throne towards which he was climbing was set at an elevation from which the nations of the whole earth could be observed.

In accepting as his own business the concerns of so many lands, he was assuming responsibilities the weight of which no man could bear; yet his dislike of receiving advice, and his uncontrolled vanity, led him to resent all interference, nor would he admit that the strain was too great for his weakened physique. Intimate friends of the Dictator, such as Balbus and Oppius, observed that he was daily growing more irritable, more self-opinionated; and the least suggestion of a decentralisation of his powers caused him increasing annoyance. He wished always to hold the threads of the entire world’s concerns in his own hands. Now he was discussing the future of North African Carthage and of Grecian Corinth, to which places he desired to send out Roman colonists; now he was regulating the affairs of Syria and Asia Minor; and now he was absorbed in the agrarian problems of Italy. There were times when the weight of universal affairs pressed so heavily upon him that he would exclaim that he had lived long enough; and in such moods, when his friends warned him of the possibility of his assassination, he would reply that death was not such a terrible matter, nor a disaster which could come to him more than once. The frequency of his epileptic seizures was a cause of constant distress to him, and his gaunt, almost haggard, appearance must have indicated to his friends that the strain was becoming unbearable. Yet ever his ambitions held him to his self-imposed task; and always his piercing eyes were set upon that goal of all his schemes, the monarchy of the earth.

People were now beginning to discuss openly the subject of his elevation to the throne. It was freely stated that he proposed to make himself King and Cleopatra Queen, and, further, that he intended to transfer the seat of his government to Alexandria, or some other eastern city. The site of Rome was not ideal. It was too far from the sea ever to be a first-rate centre of commerce; nor had it any natural sources of wealth in the neighbourhood. The streets, which were narrow and crookedly built, were liable to be flooded at certain seasons by the swift-flowing Tiber. Pestilence and sickness were rife amongst the congested quarters of the city; and in the middle ages, as Mommsen has pointed out, “one German army after another melted away under its walls and left it mysteriously victorious.” After the battle of Actium, Augustus wished to change the capital to some other quarter of the globe, as, for example, to Byzantium; and it is very possible that the idea originated with Caesar. At the period with which we are now dealing Rome was far less magnificent than it became a few years later, and it must have¹ compared unfavourably with Alexandria and other cities. Its streets ascended and descended, twisted this way and that, in an amazing manner; and so narrow were they that Caesar was obliged to pass a law prohibiting waggons from being driven along them in the daytime, all porterage being performed by men or beasts of burden. The great public buildings and palaces of the rich rose from amidst the encroaching jumble of small houses like exotic plants hemmed in by a mass of overgrown weeds; and Caesar must often have given envious thought to Alexandria with its great Street of Canopus and its Royal Area.

Those who study the lives of Cleopatra and Caesar in conjunction cannot fail to ask themselves how far the Queen influenced the Dictator’s thoughts at this time. During these last years of his life—the years which mark his greatness and give him his unique place in history—Cleopatra was living in the closest intimacy with him; and, so far as we know, there was not another man or woman in the world who had such ample opportunities for playing an influential part in his career. If Cleopatra was interested, as we know she was, in the welfare of her country and her royal house, or in the career of herself and Caesar, or in the destiny of their son, it is palpably impossible to suppose that she did not discuss matters of statecraft with the man who was, in all but name, her husband. At a future date Cleopatra was strong enough to play one of the big political roles in history, dealing with kingdoms and armies as the ordinary woman deals with a house and servants; and in the light of the knowledge of her character as it is unfolded to us in the years after the Dictator’s death, it is not reasonable to suppose that in Rome she kept aloof from all his schemes and plans, deeming herself capable of holding the attention of the master of the world’s activities by the entertainments of the boudoir and the arts of the bedchamber. Her individuality does not dominate the last years of the Roman Republic, merely because of the profligacy of her life with Antony and the tragedy of their death, but because her personality was so irresistible that it influenced in no small degree the affairs of the world. I am of opinion that Cleopatra’s name would have been stamped upon the history of this period even though the events which culminated at Actium had never occurred. The romantic tragedy of her connection with Antony has captured the popular taste, and has diverted the attention of historians from the facts of her earlier years. There is a tendency completely to overlook the influence which she exercised in the politics of Rome during the last years of Caesar’s life. The eyes of historians are concentrated upon the Alexandrian drama, and the tale of Cleopatra’s life in the Dictator’s villa is overlooked. Yet who will be so bold as to state that a Queen, whose fortunes were linked by Caesar with his own at the height of his power, left no mark upon the events of that time ? When Cleopatra came to Rome her outlook upon life must have been in striking contrast to that of the Romans. The republic was still the accepted form of government, and as yet there was no definite movement towards monarchism. The hereditary emperors of the future were hardly dreamed of, and the kings of the far past were nigh forgotten. Now, although it may be supposed that Cleopatra, by contact with the world, had adopted a moderately rational view of her status, yet there can be no doubt that the sense of her royal and divine personality was far from dormant in her. Her education and upbringing, as I have already said, and now the adulation of Caesar, must have influenced her mind, so that the knowledge of her royalty was at all times almost her predominant characteristic; and it would be strange indeed if the Dictator’s thoughts had been proof against the insinuating influence of this atmosphere in which he chose to spend a great portion of his time. Did Rome herself supply Caesar’s stimulus, Rome which had not known monarchy for four hundred and fifty years ? But admitting that Rome was ripe for monarchy, and that circumstances to some extent forced Caesar towards that form of government, can we declare that the Dictator would, of his own accord, have embraced sovereignty and even divinity so rapidly had his consort not been a Queen and a goddess ?

During the last months of his life—namely, from his return to Rome in the early summer after the Spanish campaign to his assassination in the following March— Caesar vigorously pressed forward his schemes in regard to the monarchy. Originally, it would seem, he had intended to complete his eastern conquests before making any attempt to obtain the throne; but now the long delay in his preparations for the Parthian campaign had produced a feeling of impatience which could no longer be controlled. Moreover, his attention had been called to an old prophecy which stated that the Parthians would not be conquered until a King of Rome made war upon them; and Caesar was sufficiently acute, if not sufficiently superstitious, to be influenced to an appreciable extent by such a declaration. Little by little, therefore, he assumed the prerogatives of kingship, daily adding to the royal character of his appearance, and daily assuming more autocratic and monarchical powers.

It was not long before he caused himself to be given the hereditary title of Imperator, a word which meant at that time “Commander-in-chief,” and had no royal significance, though the fact that it was made hereditary gave it a new significance. It is to be observed that the persons who framed the decree must have realised that the son to whom the title would descend would probably be that baby Caesar who now ruled the nurseries of the villa beside the Tiber; for there can be little doubt that the Dictator’s legitimate marriage to Cleopatra at the first opportune moment was confidently expected by his supporters; and we are thus presented with the novel spectacle of enthusiastic Roman statesmen offering the hereditary office of Imperator to the future King of Egypt. There can surely be no clearer indication than this that the people of Rome took no exception to Cleopatra’s foreign blood, nor thought of her in any way as an Oriental. The attitude of the majority of modern historians suggests that they picture the Dictator at this time as living with some sort of African woman whom he had brought back with him from Egypt; but I must repeat that I am convinced that in actual fact the Romans regarded Cleopatra as a royal Greek lady whose capital city of Alexandria was the rival of the Eternal City in wealth, magnificence, and culture, bearing to Rome, to some extent, the relationship which New York bears to London. It was rumoured at this time that a law was about to be introduced by one of the tribunes of the people which would enable Caesar, if necessary, to have two wives—Calpurnia and Cleopatra—and that the new wife need not be a Roman. The people could have felt no misgivings at the thought of Cleopatra’s son being Caesar’s heir; for already they knew well enough that Caesar was to be King of Rome, and by his marriage with Cleopatra they realised that he was adding to Rome’s dominions without force of arms the one great kingdom of the civilised world which was still independent, and was securing for his heirs upon the Roman throne the honourable appendage of the oldest crown in existence, and the vast fortune which went with it. In later years, when Cleopatra as the consort of Antony had become a public enemy, there was much talk of an East-Mediterranean peril, and the Queen came to represent Oriental splendour as opposed to Occidental simplicity; but at the time with which we are now dealing this attitude was entirely undeveloped, and Cleopatra was regarded as the most suitable mother for that son of Caesar who should one day inherit his honours and his titles.

At about this date the baby actually became uncrowned King of Egypt, for Cleopatra’s young brother, Ptolemy XV, mysteriously passes from the records of history, and is heard of no more. Whether Cleopatra and Caesar caused him to be murdered as standing in the way of their ambitions, or whether he died a natural death, will now never be known. He comes into the story of these eventful days like a shadow, and like a shadow he disappears; and all that we know concerning his end is derived from Josephus, who states that he was poisoned by his sister. Such an accusation, however, is only to be expected, and would certainly have been made had the boy died of a sudden illness. It is therefore not just to Cleopatra to burden her memory with the crime; and all that one may now say is that, while the death of the unfortunate young King may be attributed to Cleopatra without improbability, there is really no reason to suppose that she had anything to do with it.

Caesar now caused a statue of himself to be erected in the Capitol as the eighth royal figure there, the previous seven being those of the old Kings of Rome. Soon he began to appear in public clad in the embroidered dress of the ancient monarchs of Alba; and he caused his head to appear in true monarchical manner upon the Roman coins. A throne of gold was provided for him to sit upon in his official capacity in the Senate and on his tribunal; and in his hand he now carried a sceptre of ivory, while upon his head was a chaplet of gold in the form of a laurel-wreath. A consecrated chariot, like the sacred chariot of the Kings of Egypt, was provided for his conveyance at public ceremonies, and a kind of royal bodyguard of senators and nobles was offered to him. He was given the right, moreover, of being buried inside the city walls, just as Alexander the Great had been laid to rest within the Royal Area at Alexandria. These marks of kingship, when observed in conjunction with the hereditary title of Imperator which had been conferred upon him, and the lifelong Dictatorship which was about to be offered to him, are indications that the goal was now very near at hand; and both Caesar and Cleopatra must have lived at the time in a state of continuous excitement and expectation. Everybody knew what was in the air, and Cicero went so far as to write a long letter to Caesar urging him not to make himself King, but he was advised not to send it. The ex-Consul Lucius Aurelius Cotta inserted the thin edge of the wedge by proposing that Caesar should be made King of the Roman dominions outside Italy; but the suggestion was not taken up with much enthusiasm. Caesar himself seems to have been undecided as to whether he should postpone the great event until after the Parthian war or not, and the settlement of this question must have given rise to the most anxious discussions.

There was no longer need for the Dictator to hide his intentions with any great care; and as a preliminary measure he did not hesitate to proclaim to the public his belief in the divinity of his person. He caused his image to be carried in the Pompa circenis amongst those of the immortal gods. A temple dedicated to Jupiter-Julius was decreed, and a statue in his likeness was set up in the temple of Quirinus, inscribed with the words, “To the Immortal God.” A college of priestly Luperci, of whom we shall presently learn more, was established in his honour; and flamines were created as priests of his godhead, an institution which reminds one of the manner in which the Pharaoh of Egypt was worshipped by a body of priests. A bed of state was provided for him within the chief temples of Rome. In the formulae of the political oaths in which Jupiter and the Penates of the Roman people had been named, the Genius of Caesar was now called upon, just as in Egypt the Ka, or genius, of the sovereign was invoked. “The old national faith,” says Mommsen, “became the instrument of a Caesarian papacy”; and indeed it may be said that it became the instrument actually of a supreme Caesarian deification.

By the end of the year BC 45 and the beginning of BC 44 there was no longer any doubt in the minds of the Roman people that Caesar intended presently to ascend the throne; and the only question asked was as to whether the event would take place before or after the Eastern campaign. Some time before February 15th he was made Dictator for life; and this, regarded in conjunction with the homage now paid to his person, and the hereditary nature of his title of Imperator, made the margin between his present status and that of king-ship exceedingly narrow. It is probable that Caesar was not determined to introduce the old title of “King,” although he affected the dress and insignia of those who had been “kings” of Rome. It is more likely that he was seeking some new monarchical title; and when, on one occasion, he declared “I am Caesar, and no King,” he may already have decided to elevate his personal name to the significance of the royal title which it ultimately became, and still in this twentieth century continues to be.

His arrogance was daily becoming more pronounced, and his ambition was now “swell’d so much that it did almost stretch the sides o’ the world.” He severely rebuked Pontius Aquila, one of the Tribunes, for not rising when he passed in front of the Tribunician seats; and for some time afterwards he used to qualify any declaration which he made in casual conversation by the sneering words, “By Pontius Aquila’s kind permission.” Once, when a deputation of Senators came to him to confer new honours upon him, he, on the other hand, received them without rising from his seat; and he was now wont to keep his closest friends waiting in an anteroom for an audience, a fact of which Cicero bitterly complains. When his authority was questioned he invariably lost his temper, and would swear in the most horrible manner. “Men ought to look upon what I say as law” he is reported by Titus Ampius to have said; and, indeed, there were very few persons who had the hardihood not to do so. On a certain occasion it was discovered that some enthusiast had placed a royal diadem upon the head of one of his statues, and, very correctly, the two Tribunes caused it to be removed. This so infuriated Caesar, who declared the official act to be a deliberate insult, that he determined to punish the two men at the first convenient opportunity. On January 26th of the new year this opportunity presented itself. As he was walking through the streets some persons in the crowd hailed him as King, whereupon these zealous officials ordered them to be arrested and flung into prison. Caesar at once raised an appalling storm, the result of which was that the two Tribunes were expelled from the Senate.

Cleopatra’s attitude could not well fail to be influenced by that of the Dictator; and it is probable that she gave some offence by an occasional haughtiness of manner. Her Egyptian chamberlains and court officials must also have annoyed the Romans by failing to disguise their Alexandrian vanity; and there can be little doubt that many of Caesar’s friends began to regard the menage at the transpontine villa with growing dislike. A letter written by Cicero to his friend Atticus is an interesting commentary upon the situation. It seems that the great writer had been favoured by Cleopatra with the promise of a gift suitable to his standing, probably in return for some service which he had rendered her. “I detest the Queen,” he writes, “and the voucher for her promises, Hammonios, knows that I have good cause for saying so. What she promised, indeed, were all things of the learned sort and suitable to my character, such as I could avow even in a public meeting. As for Sara (pion), besides finding him an unprincipled rascal, I also found him inclined to give himself airs towards me. I only saw him once at my house; and when I asked him politely what I could do for him, he said that he had come in hopes of seeing Atticus. The Queen’s insolence, too, when she was living in Caesar’s trans-tiberine villa, I cannot recall without a pang. So I will not have anything to do with that lot.”

The ill-feeling towards Caesar, which was very decidedly on the increase, is sufficient to account for the growing unpopularity of Cleopatra; but it is possible that it was somewhat accentuated by a slight jealousy which must have been felt by the Romans owing to the Dictator’s partiality for things Egyptian. Not only did it appear to Caesar’s friends that he was modelling his future throne upon that of the Ptolemies and was asserting his divinity in the Ptolemaic manner; not only had he been thought to desire Alexandria as the capital of the Empire; but also he was employing large numbers of Egyptians in the execution of his schemes. Egyptian astronomers had reformed the Roman calendar; the Roman mint was being improved by Alexandrian coiners; the whole of his financial arrangements, it would seem, were entrusted to Alexandrians; while many of his public entertainments, as, for example, the naval displays enacted at the inauguration of the Temple of Venus, were conducted by Egyptians. Caesar’s object in thus using Cleopatra’s subjects must have been due, to some extent, to his desire to familiarise his countrymen with those industrious Alexandrians who were to play so important a part in the construction of the new Roman Empire.

The great schemes and projects which were now placed before the Senate by Caesar must have startled that institution very considerably. Almost every day some new proposal was formulated or some new law drafted. At one time the diverting of the Tiber from its course occupied the Dictator’s attention; at another time he was arranging to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Now he was planning the construction of a road over the Apennines; and now he was deep in schemes for the creation of a vast port at Ostia. Plans of great public buildings to be erected at Alexandria or in Rome were being submitted to him; or, again, he was arranging for the establishment of public libraries in various parts of the capital. Meanwhile the preparations for the Parthian war must have occupied the greater part of his time; for the campaign was to be of a vast character. So sure was he that it would last for three years or more that he framed a law by virtue of which the magistrates and public officials for the next three years should be appointed before his departure. He thereby insured the tranquillity of Rome daring his prolonged absence in the east, thus leaving himself free to carry his arms into remote lands where communication with the capital might be almost impossible. When we recollect that Caesar’s recent campaigns had all been of but a few months or weeks duration, and that the words veni, vide, vici now represented his mature belief in his own capabilities, these plans for a three years’ absence from Rome seem to me to indicate clearly that he had no intention of confining himself to the conquest of Parthia, but desired to follow in Alexander’s footsteps to India, and ’thence to return to Rome laden with the loot of that vast country. He must have pictured himself entering the capital at the end of the war as the conqueror of the East, and there could have been no doubt in his mind that the delighted populace would then accept with enthusiasm his claim to the throne of the world.

As the weeks went by Caesar’s plans in regard to the monarchy became more clearly defined. He does not now seem to have considered it very wise to press forward the assumption of the sovereignty previous to the Parthian war, since his long absence immediately following his elevation to the throne might prove prejudicial to the new office. Moreover, a strong feeling had developed against his contemplated assumption of royalty, and Caesar must have been aware that he could not put his plans into execution without considerable opposition. Plutarch tells us that “his desire of being King had brought upon him the most apparent and mortal hatred, —a fact which proved the most plausible pretence to those who had been his secret enemies all along.” Much adverse comment had been made with reference to his not rising to receive the Senatorial deputation; and indeed he felt it necessary to make excuses for his action, saying that his old illness was upon him at the time. A report was spread that he himself would have been willing to rise, but that Balbus had said to him, “Will you not remember you are Caesar and claim the honour due to your merit?” and it was further related that when the Dictator had realised the offence he had given, he had bared his throat to his friends, and had told them that he was ready to lay down his life if the public were angry with him. Incidents such as this showed that the time was not yet wholly favourable for his coup; and reluctantly Caesar was obliged to consider its postponement. On the other hand, there was something to be said in favour of immediate action, and he must have been more or less prepared to accept the kingship if it were urged upon him before he set out for the East. The position of Cleopatra, however, must have caused him some anxiety. Without her and their baby son the creation of an hereditary monarchy would be superfluous. His own wife Calpurnia did not seem able to furnish him with an heir, and there was certainly no other woman in Rome who could be expected to act the part of Queen with any degree of success, even if she were proficient in the production of sons and heirs. Yet how, on the instant, was he to rid himself of Calpurnia and marry Cleopatra without offending public taste? If he were to accept the kingship at once and make Cleopatra his wife, was she capable of sustaining with success the role of Queen of Rome in solitude for three years while he was away at the wars? Would it not be much wiser to send her back to Egypt for this period, there to await his return, and then to marry her and to ascend the throne at one and the same instant ? During his absence in the East Calpurnia might conveniently meet with a sudden and fatal illness, and no man would dare to attribute her death to his and the apothecary’s ingenuity.

The will which he now made, or confirmed, in view of his departure, shows clearly that his desire for the monarchy was incompatible with his present marital conditions. Without a Queen and a son and heir there could be little point in creating a throne, since already he had been made absolute autocrat for his lifetime; for unless the office was to be handed on without dispute to his son Caesarion, there was no advantage in striving for an immediate elevation to the kingship. By his will, therefore, which was made in view of his possible death before he had ascended his future throne, he simply divided his property, giving part of it to the nation and part to his relations, his favourite nephew, Octavian, receiving a considerable share. A codicil was added, appointing a large number of guardians for any offspring which might possibly be born to him by Calpurnia after his departure; but so little interest did he take in this remote contingency that he seems to have made no financial provision for such an infant. There was no need to leave money to Cleopatra or to her child, since she herself was fabulously wealthy. This will was, no doubt, intended to be destroyed if he were raised to the throne before his departure, and it was afterwards believed that he actually wrote another testament in favour of Caesarion, which was to be used if a crown were offered to him; but if, as now seemed probable, that event were postponed until his return, the dividing of his property would be the best settlement for his affairs should he die while away in the East. So long as he remained uncrowned there was no occasion to refer either to Cleopatra or to Caesarion in his testamentary wishes; for if he died in Parthia or India, still as Dictator, his hopes of founding a dynasty, his plans for his marriage to the Queen of Egypt, his scheme for training up Caesarion to follow in his footsteps, indeed all his worldly ambitions, would have to be bundled into oblivion. Caesar was not a man who cared much for the interests of other people; and, in the case of Cleopatra, he was quite prepared to leave her to fight for herself in Egypt, were he himself to be removed to those celestial spheres wherein he would have no further use for her. His passion for her appears now to have cooled; and though he must still have enjoyed her society, and, to a considerable extent, must have been open to her influence, her chief attraction for him in these latter days lay in the recognition of her suitability to ascend the new throne by his side. She, on her part, no doubt retained much of her old affection for him; and, in spite of his increasing irritability and eccentricity, she seems to have offered him the generous devotion of a warm-hearted young woman for a great and heroic old man.

Caesar, indeed, was old before his time. The famous portrait of him, now preserved in the Louvre, shows him to have been haggard and worn. He was still under sixty years of age, but all semblance of youth had gone from him, and the burden of his years and of his illness weighed heavily upon his spare frame. His indomitable spirit, and the keen enthusiasm of his nature, held him to his appointed tasks; but it is very doubtful whether his constitution could now have borne the hardships of the campaign which lay before him. His ill - health must have caused Cleopatra the gravest anxiety, for all her hopes were centred upon him, and upon that day when he should make her Queen of the Earth. The fact that he was now considering the postponement of the creation of the monarchy until after the Parthian war must have been a heavy blow to her, for there was good reason to fear lest his strength should give out ere his task could be completed. For three years and more she had worked with Caesar at the laying of the foundations of their throne; and now, partly owing to the undesirability of leaving Rome for so long a period immediately after accepting the crown, partly owing to the difficulty in regard to Calpurnia, and partly owing to the hostility of a large number of prominent persons to the idea of monarchy, Caesar was postponing for three years that coup which seemed to her not only to mean the realisation of all her personal and dynastic ambitions, but actually to be the only means by which she could save Egypt from absorption into the Roman dominions or preserve a throne of any kind for her son. In the Second Philippic Cicero says of Caesar that “after planning for many years his way to royal power, with great labour and with many dangers, he had effected his design. By public exhibitions, by monumental buildings, by bribes and by feasts, he had conciliated the unreflecting multitude. He had bound to himself his own friends by favours, his opponents by a show of clemency”; and yet, when in sight of his goal, he hesitated, believing it better to wait to be carried up to the throne by that wave of popular enthusiasm which assuredly would burst over Rome when he should lead back from the East his triumphant, loot - laden legionaries, and should exhibit in golden chains in the streets of the capital the captive kings of the fabulous Orient. The delay must have been almost intolerable to Cleopatra; and it may have been due to some arrangement made by her with the Dictator and Antony, who now must have been a constant visitor at Caesar’s villa, that an event took place which brought to a head the question of the date of the establishment of the monarchy.

On February 15th the annual festival of the Lupercalia was celebrated in Rome; and upon this day all the populace, patrician and plebeian, were en fête. The Romans of Caesar’s time do not seem to have known what was the origin of this festival, nor what was the real significance of the rites therein performed. They understood that upon this day they paid their respects to the god Lupercus; and, in a vague manner, they identified this obscure deity with Faunus, or with Pan, in his capacity as a producer of fertility and fecundity in all nature. Two young men were selected from the honourable order known as the College of the Luperci, and upon this day these two men opened the proceedings by sacrificing a goat and a dog. They were then “ blooded,” and the ritual prescribed that as soon as this was done they should both laugh. They next cut the skins of the victims into long strips or thongs, known as februa; and, using these as whips, they proceeded to run around the city, striking at every woman with whom they came into contact. A thwack from the februa was believed to produce fertility, and any woman who desired to become a mother would expose herself to the blows which the two men were vigorously delivering on all sides. By reason of this; strange old custom the day was known as the Dies februatus;¹ and from this is derived the name of the month of February in which the festival took place.

It seems to me certain that this ceremony was originally related to the Egyptian rites in connection with the god of fecundity, Min-Amon, the Pan of the Nile Valley. This god is usually represented holding in his hand a whip, perhaps consisting originally of jackalskins tied to a stick; and it has lately been proved that the hieroglyph for the Egyptian word indicating the reproduction of species  is composed simply of these three jackal-skins tied together, that is to say the februa. We know practically nothing of the ceremonies performed in Egypt in regard to the februa, but there is no reason to doubt that the rites were fundamentally similar to those of the Roman Lupercalia. The dog which was sacrificed in Rome had probably taken the place of the Egyptian jackal; and the goat is perhaps to be connected with the Egyptian ram which was sacred to Amon or Min-Amon.

Now it is very possible that in Alexandria Cleopatra and also Caesar had become well acquainted with the Egyptian equivalent of the Roman Lupercalia, and it may be suggested, tentatively, that since Caesar was regarded in that country as the god Amon who had given fertility to the Queen, he may, in Egypt, have been identified in some sort of manner with these rites. One may certainly imagine Cleopatra pointing out to Caesar the similarity between the two ceremonies, and suggesting to him that he was, or had acted in the manner of, a kind of Lupercus. He had practically identified Cleopatra with Venus Genetrix, the goddess of fertility; and he may well have attributed to himself the faculties of that corresponding god who carried on in Rome the traditions of the Egyptian Min, to whom already Caesar had been so closely allied by the priests of the Nile. The Dictator certainly took great interest in the festival of the Lupercalia in Rome, for he reorganised the proceedings, and actually founded an order known as the Luperci Julii, a fact which could be regarded as indicating a definite identification of himself with Lupercus. Indeed, if he was identified with Min-Amon in Egypt, and if, as I have suggested, Min-Amon is originally connected with the Lupercalia celebrations, it may be supposed that Caesar really assumed by right the position of divine head of this order. Knowing the Dictator to have been so careful an opportunist, one is almost tempted to suggest that he found in this identification an excuse and a justification for his behaviour to the many women to whom he had lost his heart; or perhaps it were better to say that his unscrupulous attitude towards the opposite sex, and the successful manner in which, as with Cleopatra, he had succeeded in reproducing his kind, appeared to fit him constitutionally for this particular godhead.

Whether or no Caesar, in the intolerable arrogance of his last years, was now actually naming himself the fruitful Lupercus in Rome as he was the fecund Amon in Egypt, it is a fact that upon this occurrence of the festival in the year BC 44 he was presiding over the ceremonies, while his lieutenant Antony was enacting the part of one of the two holders of the februa. On this day Caesar, pale and emaciated, was seated in the Forum upon a golden throne, dressed in a splendid robe, in order to witness the celebrations, when suddenly the burly Antony, hot from his run, bounded into view, striking to right and left with the februa, and indulging, no doubt, in the horse-play which he always so much enjoyed. An excited and boisterous crowd followed him, and it is probable that both he and his companions thereupon did homage to the majestic figure of the Dictator, hailing him as Lupercus and king of the festivities. Profiting by the enthusiasm of the moment, and acting according to arrangements previously made with Cleopatra or with Caesar himself, Antony now stepped forward and held out to the Dictator a royal diadem wreathed with laurels, at the same time offering him the kingship of Rome. Caesar, as we have seen, had already been publicly hailed as a god upon earth, and now Antony seems to have addressed him in his Lupercalian character, begging him to accept this terrestrial throne as already he had received the throne of the heavens. No sooner had he spoken than a shout of approval was raised by a number of Caesarians who had been posted in different parts of the Forum for this purpose; but, to Caesar’s dismay, the cheers were not taken up by the crowd, who, indeed, appear to have indulged in a little quiet booing; and the Dictator was thus obliged to refuse the proffered crown with a somewhat half-hearted show of disdain.

This action was received with general applause, and the temper of the crowd was clearly demonstrated. Again Antony held the diadem towards him, and again the isolated and very artificial cheers of his supporters were heard. Thereupon Caesar, accepting the situation with as good a grace as possible, definitely refused to receive it; and at this the applause once more broke forth. He then gave orders that the diadem should be carried into the Capitol, and that a note should be inscribed in the official calendar stating that on this day the people had offered him the crown and that he had refused it. It seems probable that Antony, appreciating the false step which had been made, now rounded off the incident in as merry a manner as possible, beginning once more to strike about him with his magical whip, and leading the crowd out of the Forum with the same noise and horseplay with which they had entered it.

The chances now in regard to the immediate assumption of the kingship became more remote. Caesar intended to set out for Parthia in about a month’s time; and it must have been apparent to him that his hopes of a throne would probably have to be set aside until the coming war was at an end. In regard to Cleopatra nothing remained for him to do, therefore, but to bid her prepare to return to Egypt, there to await until the Orient was conquered; and during the next few weeks it seems that the disappointed and troubled Queen engaged herself in making preparation for her departure. Suetonius tells us that Caesar loaded her with presents and honours in these last days of their companionship; and doubtless he encouraged her as best he could with the recitation of his great hopes and ambitions for the future. There was still a chance that the monarchy would be created before the war, for there was some talk that Antony and his friends would offer the crown once more to Caesar upon the Calends of March; but Cleopatra could not have dared to hope too eagerly for this event in view of the failure at the Lupercalia. To the Queen, who had expected by this time to be seated upon the Roman throne, his reassuring words can have been poor comfort; and an atmosphere of gloomy foreboding must have settled upon her as she directed the packing of her goods and chattels and prepared herself and her baby for the long journey across the Mediterranean to her now uneventful kingdom of Egypt.

CHAPTER X.

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