Cleopatra and Antony (31 page)

Either because the ships she had in mind were too big for the small canal between the Nile and the Red Sea or because it had become silted up, she had some of the ships mounted on wooden rollers and dragged overland. The Egyptians had for many centuries been skilled at moving heavy objects long distances to build their great monuments. Cleopatra probably also knew about the techniques developed to transport vessels on wheels along a paved road of some four miles between the Saronic and Corinthian gulfs to save having to circumnavigate the Peloponnesian coast.

Despite her ingenuity and the heroic efforts of her sailors, Cleopatra’s plans came to nothing. Probably egged on by the Roman governor of Syria, who had just defected from Antony to Octavian, the Nabataean king Malchus and his men sallied forth on their camels from their stronghold of Petra, overcame the forces accompanying Cleopatra’s ships and burned them all. Malchus’ actions were an unwelcome reminder to Cleopatra of political realities. She had recently intervened with Antony to prevent Malchus’ kingdom from being crushed by Herod. However, the likely outcome of Octavian’s struggle with Antony weighed more heavily on the Nabataean king’s mind than thoughts of gratitude, particularly since he had the prospect of recovering his income from the Dead Sea bitumen deposits that Cleopatra had persuaded Antony to make over to her.

At about this time, Canidius Crassus brought in person to Alexandria the news of the loss of his legions, which Antony must by now have long suspected. This blow was almost immediately followed by another—the news of the defection of Herod of Judaea, together with his powerful forces. Given his long-standing alliance with Antony, Herod had realized that his throne was vulnerable. He therefore determined first to remove the one credible rival to his position, the former ruler of Judaea, Hyrcanus—now in his seventies and the last survivor of the former royal line, with its evocative links to the high priesthood. Herod trumped up some charges of treachery with the help of forged letters and condemned Hyrcanus to strangulation. But he still did not think he was safe to leave his kingdom to visit Octavian. Believing his wife, Mariamme, and his mother-in-law, Alexandra, might plot against him once more, he locked the two women up in one fortress, while he placed his children by Mariamme in the fortress of Masada on the Dead Sea, some distance away, under the care of his own mother and sister Salome, as hostages for Mariamme’s good behavior. Determined that Mariamme and her detested mother should not benefit from any plotting, he also left strict instructions that the two women should be summarily killed if news came of his own death.

Satisfied with his precautions, Herod set off for Rhodes to make his peace with Octavian, just as Auletes had gone to solicit Cato nearly thirty years previously. Once arrived, Herod carefully removed his royal diadem before his audience with Octavian, to demonstrate that he was counting on nothing. He then made his plea to retain his throne. He was, he claimed, a loyal man by nature, who would be as true to Octavian as he had been for so long to Antony. Playing to Octavian’s propaganda that Cleopatra was the real enemy who had besotted Antony and lured him from the path of Roman virtue, he stressed, quite possibly truthfully given his strained relationship with Cleopatra, that he had frequently but fruitlessly counseled Antony to dispense with the Egyptian queen.

The politician in Octavian recognized that his interests would be best served by disturbing the eastern status quo as little as possible in the run-up to his attack on Egypt. Therefore, he graciously confirmed Herod on his throne, whereupon the latter departed well satisfied back to Judaea.

Plutarch wrote that when Antony heard of the defection of Canidius Crassus’ legions and of Herod, “none of this news upset him. It was as if he was pleased to put aside his hopes since in so doing he could also let go his worries.” Antony had, in the best Stoic traditions, reconciled himself to the inevitable. He abandoned the Timoneum and returned to the royal palace and Cleopatra. Together they “set the city on a course of eating, drinking and displays of generosity.” Now both, not just Cleopatra alone, wore a brave face before their associates and the public alike. They dissolved their club, the Society of Inimitable Livers, but formed another, “just as devoted to sensuality, self-indulgence and extravagance as the previous one but they called it ‘The Society of Partners in Death.’ Their friends enrolled themselves in it as those who would die together and they all spent their time in a hedonistic round of banquets.” Although Cleopatra had celebrated her own birthday quietly, she marked Antony’s publicly with “extremely showy and costly festivities” to appeal to that side of his nature, which was somewhat childlike in its love of ostentation and need for attention and reassurance. In fact, many of the guests came poor to the banquets but departed rich.

Cleopatra and Antony also took a decision that would have dire consequences for Caesarion and for Antyllus, Antony’s son by Fulvia. They had Caesarion, who was about sixteen, made a member of the youth organization that in the Greek world signified acceptance into manhood, while Antony gave Antyllus, only fourteen, the
toga virilis
, making him a Roman adult. The public celebrations and revelries filled the city’s broad streets for many days. They were probably helpful in maintaining public morale, underlining as they did the continuance of both Cleopatra’s and Antony’s lines, “since [the populace] would have these boys as their leaders should any disaster overtake their parents.” However, their entry into manhood made both young men formally liable to adult penalties.

At the same time as they were sponsoring this show of outward defiance, Cleopatra and Antony were privately considering whether they could come to any compromise settlement with Octavian. Although they knew they were thereby revealing their weakness, each sent peace envoys to him. The detail and sequence of their peace initiatives are obscure and vary from source to source. They clearly dispatched their children’s tutor as their spokesman. He brought with him from Cleopatra one of her royal crowns and a golden scepter as well as other of the Egyptian royal insignia, asking Octavian on her behalf to allow her children to inherit the royal throne of Egypt. On behalf of Antony, the tutor asked that he might be allowed to retire into private life in Athens if not in Egypt, just as the other triumvir, Lepidus, had been allowed to do elsewhere after his defeat.

According to Dio Cassius, Octavian made no response to Antony’s request but prudently kept Cleopatra’s gifts: “His official response to her was a threatening one including the pronouncement that if she would disband her forces and renounce her throne he would then consider what should be done with her. But he also sent her a secret message that if she would kill Antony he would pardon her and leave her kingdom intact.”

On another occasion, Antony sent his young son Antyllus to Octavian with a large sum in gold and a request for terms. Octavian again kept the money but made no reply. Later, Antony sent another emissary, once more bearing gifts of money. A measure of his despair is that this time the usually loyal Antony also sacrificed Publius Turullius, one of Julius Caesar’s assassins who had been among his own entourage for some time, handing him over to Octavian, who had him executed. Antony, showing a selfless love for Cleopatra, even offered to kill himself if this meant that Cleopatra would be saved. Octavian again gave no answer.

The sources agree that Octavian was keen to wean Cleopatra away from Antony. They suggest that he thought he could flatter her and appeal to her vanity. To this end, he sent Thyrsus to her. Plutarch depicted him as a man of considerable intelligence “who could speak persuasively on his young commander’s behalf to a haughty woman with an astonishingly high opinion of her own beauty.” Octavian briefed Thyrsus to flatter Cleopatra by suggesting that Octavian was in love with her. “He hoped that since she believed she had the power to inspire passion in all mankind she might dispose of Antony and keep herself and her treasure unharmed.”

In the event, Antony became jealous and suspicious of Thyrsus’ long, private meetings with Cleopatra and had him thoroughly flogged before sending him back to Octavian with a letter at the same time ironic, sheepish and defiant, admitting that Thyrsus’ insolent and supercilious behavior had infuriated him at a time when his temper was short because of all his troubles. “If you find what I’ve done intolerable,” he added, “you’ve got my freedman Hip-parchus. You can string him up and flog him and then we’ll be quits.” (Hip-parchus was the son of Antony’s steward and had deserted to Octavian shortly after Actium.)

Cleopatra was very unlikely to have been taken in by Octavian’s protestations of love but may have been seeing what information she could charm out of Thyrsus. Other suggestions that at around this time she was actively seeking to betray Antony lack credibility since they occur only in the later sources, wherein Octavian’s denigration of Cleopatra had reached its maturity. Contemporaneous writers such as Horace and Vergil, who were by no means favorable to Cleopatra, accused her of many things but not of seeking to betray Antony during these final, desperate days. Cleopatra would have known that the war had been declared on her and not Antony, that Octavian wanted Egypt’s treasure and that her fate and Antony’s were bound together. It also seems hard to believe that, survivor though she was, she would have considered deceiving the man to whom she had been faithful for so long—the father of three of her children and, to all intents and purposes, her husband.

By now it was the height of summer in the year 30 and Octavian had set out with his confident legions to invade Egypt. When he came ashore in Phoenicia he found King Herod awaiting him. Eager to please his new overlord, Herod provided lavish entertainments and accommodations and provisioned Octavian’s armies with both water and wine as they marched onward through the hot deserts of Gaza and Sinai and on to the very borders of Egypt.

Death on the Nile

Antony himself had not been at Pelusium but nearly 180 miles to the west of Alexandria at Paraetorium, the modern Mersah Matruh, trying to stem the advance of Octavian’s forces from Cyrenaica. These were the four legions that had deserted from Antony only some nine months previously and were now led by Cornelius Gallus. From an unprivileged background, Gallus was nevertheless an accomplished lyric poet as well as a general. He had once composed volumes of verse to Antony’s former mistress, Cytheris. In the face of Antony’s advance, he showed his military skills by trapping and destroying some of Antony’s galleys in a small harbor, into which he had allowed them to sail unopposed. He did so by stretching chains across the harbor mouth and lowering them beneath the water before the arrival of Antony’s unsuspecting vessels, only to raise them again using a sophisticated system of winches once the galleys were inside. When, on land, Antony approached Gallus’ lines to try to address the troops who had so recently been loyal to him and had served with him on so many campaigns, Gallus ordered the trumpeters to sound their bugles and to continue as long as Antony persisted in his attempt to speak. Eventually Antony gave up.

When the news of Pelusium reached him, Antony himself returned to Alexandria, leaving his subordinates to defend Egypt’s western frontiers as best they could. Antony was only just in time. Octavian advanced quickly across the branches of the Nile delta toward Alexandria. Before long, in the shattering July heat, he was making camp near the hippodrome to the east of the city walls. Energized by the chance of further action, this time against Octavian in person, Antony led a sally out of Alexandria and, encountering the advance guard of Octavian’s cavalry, sent them reeling back in panic to their camp.

Plutarch wrote that “Antony felt good after his victory.” It was his final moment of glory. Still wearing his armor, dust-caked and sweat-soaked, and with the adrenaline of battle still pumping through his aging body, he strode into the royal palace, wrapped Cleopatra in his arms and kissed her. He then presented to her the soldier who in his view had fought the most bravely in the successful action. In a flamboyant gesture typical both of her generosity and of her ostentation, she rewarded him with a gleaming gold breastplate and helmet. However, that very night, the man quietly defected, crossing the lines to Octavian’s camp, taking Cleopatra’s gifts with him—a depressing sign of the faltering confidence of those close to Cleopatra and Antony and a reminder, if they needed one, to Octavian and his men of Alexandria’s riches.

Nevertheless, Antony’s hopes had revived, at least for a while. In a grand gesture he invited Octavian yet again to take him on in single combat. The younger man, who had no intention of agreeing to anything so foolish, replied coldly that “there were all sorts of ways for Antony to meet death.” Antony next attempted a leafleting campaign, firing into the enemy camp missiles to which were attached notes offering large rewards to deserters. Octavian countered by reminding his men that the entire wealth of Antony, Cleopatra and of all Egypt would soon be theirs for the taking.

Determined to confront Octavian rather than face a siege, Antony decided to unleash a combined land and sea assault on his enemy. The night before the attack, Plutarch related that he ordered an especially sumptuous and extravagant dinner. It was, perhaps, a final gathering of the Society of Partners in Death. Once more in a fatalistic mood, Antony demanded that his servants pile his plate and fill his glass, “since there was no means of knowing whether they would be able to do so on the morrow or whether they would be serving other masters while he lay dead, a lifeless husk, a nothing.” The eyes of his friends filled with tears as he told them he would be leading the attack not for the sake of victory or safety, since what he desired was “an honorable death.”

At this emotional, perhaps even maudlin moment, strange sounds are said to have erupted in the otherwise subdued and apprehensive city. In the soft depths of the night, the diners heard “harmonious sounds from all manner of musical instruments, and the loud shouts of people making their way with Bacchic cries and prancing feet.” It was as if “a troop of Dionysian revellers were raucously leaving the city. Their course seemed to lie more or less through the middle of the city towards the outer gate which faced the enemy camp, where the noise reached its crescendo and then died away.” Plutarch continued: “Those who tried to interpret this sign concluded that the god [Dionysus], with whom Antony claimed kinship and whom he had sought above all to imitate, was now abandoning him.” It was a potent image—the god of glory and conquest in the East and the patron of the Ptolemies deserting Cleopatra and Antony just as the gods had abandoned Troy the night before its fall.

As dawn broke over Alexandria on August 1, 30—ever afterward celebrated as a public holiday in Rome as the day when Octavian “rescued the state from the greatest danger”—Antony positioned his troops on high ground between the city and the hippodrome and waited as the rowers propelled his galleys out past the Pharos lighthouse into the blue waters of the Mediterranean before bearing down on Octavian’s fleet. Plutarch wrote that he expected to see his fleet victorious. Instead, as the vessels came within reach of Octavian’s, Antony’s rowers raised their oars in salute and Octavian’s men at once returned the greeting, whereupon Antony’s men changed sides and all the ships combined in a single fleet to make directly for the city. Seeing the two sides fraternizing and realizing that this made defeat inevitable, Antony’s cavalry also deserted, leaving only his infantry faithful to their old general. They were soon overrun by Octavian’s men. Antony rushed back to the city toward the royal palace, apparently heaping reproaches on Cleopatra’s head, crying out that she had betrayed him and that it was only for her sake that he had gone to war. But if they were ever spoken, they were words of abject despair uttered in the agony of the moment. Antony’s love for and trust in Cleopatra were undiminished.

She was no longer in the palace but had barricaded herself with her waiting women, Iras and Charmion, in the “wonderfully imposing and beautiful” two-story stone tomb she was building, and which was now nearing completion, adjacent to the Temple of Isis, and which she had ordered to be crammed with all her royal treasure—gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory and cinnamon together with containers of pitch, a great stack of firewood and oakum for kindling. If all else failed, she could order that the whole lot should go up in an expensive bonfire, taking herself with it, just as Queen Dido had died at Carthage. With the portcullises lowered and secured with bolts and bars, she was waiting anxiously on events.

Amidst all the confusion, as Antony searched for Cleopatra, a false report reached him that she had killed herself in her mausoleum. Plutarch and Dio Cassius believed she had sent it herself to deceive Antony and presumably to prompt his own suicide. Far more likely, a message sent by her to Antony that she was intending to kill herself had become confused, or perhaps reports of her death had begun circulating spontaneously. With Octavian’s forces expected in Alexandria any minute and panic-stricken citizens fleeing hither and thither, the city must have teemed with all kinds of contradictory and alarming stories.

Whatever the source of the report, the distraught Antony believed it and no longer wished to live. In his despair he cried out, “It is not the loss of you that hurts. I shall be joining you very soon. What stings is that for all my great status as a commander, I have been shown inferior in courage to a woman.” Unstrap-ping his breastplate, he asked his slave Eros, “to whom he had long ago entrusted the task of killing him in an emergency,” to strike him down. Eros drew his sword, positioned it as if to kill Antony then, twisting, fell upon it himself and so died. With an agonized cry, “You have taught me what I must do,” Antony thrust his sword into his own abdomen. Though grave, the wound was not immediately fatal, leaving a swooning Antony to fall backward on a couch. Eventually recovering consciousness, he cried out for someone to finish him off but no one would deliver the coup de grâce. Instead, they ran off, leaving him alone, writhing in agony and growing ever weaker from loss of blood until finally Cleopatra’s scribe, Diomedes, arrived. She had sent him to bring Antony to her in the tomb. Whether she had done so because she had learned that he was dying or whether she had been hoping for a final reunion with her lover is unclear.

At the news that Cleopatra still lived, Antony struggled to his feet as if to go to her but, feeling his life ebbing away as the blood flow increased as he stood up, fell back on the couch and begged his returning slaves to take him to her. They carried him in their arms to the mausoleum, but Cleopatra refused to unlock the gates, presumably because she feared being captured. Instead she and her two waiting women let down ropes from an upper window. Antony’s slaves fastened these as securely as they could around their dying master, and Cleopatra and her women began struggling and straining to haul him up. Plutarch’s account has a raw vividness:

Trapped in her mausoleum, cradling her dead lover and covered in his congealing gore, Cleopatra’s future had never been so bleak or so uncertain. As she sat and the first waves of numbing, paralyzing shock receded, fears over the fate of her children can only have added to her grief and agonized indecision—whether or not she should order the fire to be put to the wooden kindling in the mausoleum. Well before Octavian’s arrival on the borders of the kingdom, she had dispatched Caesarion, her “King of Kings,” to safety, “plentifully supplied with money” and under the protection of his tutor, Rhodon, whom she had ordered to take her son up the Nile, and over the desert to a port on the Red Sea and thence to India. Always a devoted mother and a woman with a strong sense of her lineage, she must have kept going over in her mind whether Caesarion was indeed beyond Octavian’s reach and also what would happen to Alexander Helios, Cleopatra Selene and Ptolemy Philadelphus, still somewhere in the royal palace. Their fates, like hers, lay entirely in the hands of Octavian, a man not noted for his clemency.

It had not taken long for news of Antony’s death to reach Octavian. One of Antony’s bodyguards had grabbed the bloodstained sword with which he had stabbed himself, concealed it beneath his clothes and hastened with it to the enemy camp. Octavian apparently shed a few tears for the man who had been not only his brother-in-law but also once his partner in government. Such a magnanimous expression of sorrow over the fate of a fellow Roman was not only good manners but also good public relations—Caesar had wept when shown Pompey’s crudely severed head. Equally judicious was Octavian’s reading to his assembled supporters of the letters that had passed between himself and Antony to demonstrate that while he had been polite, reasonable and restrained, Antony had consistently been “rude and arrogant.”

Octavian’s thoughts turned very quickly to the Egyptian queen immured with the body of her dead lover in her tomb. He sent Proculeius into the city with instructions to take her alive if possible. Foremost in his mind was the need to secure Cleopatra’s valuables before she had a chance to destroy them. Despite Antony’s dying display of foresight in commending Proculeius to her, she refused to open the gates of the mausoleum to him, just as she had refused to unlock them to the dying Antony. However, Cleopatra agreed to talk to Proculeius as he stood outside one of the doors at ground level. She petitioned for what now mattered most to her, her children, begging that they be allowed to inherit her kingdom. Proculeius smoothly assured her she could trust Octavian absolutely and had no need to worry, but he made no specific promises.

While seeking to soothe the Egyptian queen, Proculeius took a careful look around the exterior of Cleopatra’s stronghold, assessing its weak points and how best to gain entry quickly before Cleopatra had time either to kill herself or to set fire to her treasure. After rushing back outside the city to report to Octavian, Proculeius set out once more through the hushed and nervous streets of Alexandria toward the tomb. This time he was accompanied by Cornelius Gallus, the commander who had led the invasion of Egypt from the west and who had already reached the Egyptian capital. On this occasion, he was to deploy his skill with words, not weapons. Gallus’ task, like a mediator in a hostage taking, was to keep Cleopatra talking and distracted from observing the activities of others. As Gallus was speaking, Proculeius quietly propped a ladder against one of the walls of the mausoleum, swiftly scaled it and climbed in through the same blood-smeared window through which Antony had been hoisted. Accompanied by the two slaves he had brought with him, Proculeius dashed past Antony’s stiffening body downstairs to where Cleopatra, still unsuspecting, was deep in earnest conversation with Gallus, her face to the door and her two waiting women beside her.