‘It will, I am sure, come as no surprise to any present to learn that the boy is a scion of our great line. The house of Ptolemy and the house of the Julii are joined by blood. The boy is to be named Ptolemy Philopator Philometor Caesar.’
Cassius could not prevent the disgusted curl of a lip. Caesar glanced in his direction and pretended not to notice, refusing to allow the sour expression to ruin his moment of triumph. Fronto plastered a smile across his face with the rest, while his mind raced. What Caesar saw as a boon could well turn into a millstone around his neck. The Roman people might not take well to their consul fathering a child with a foreign queen, tying himself to a royal house outside the republic. Moreover, the man had been slowly and steadily bringing his great nephew Octavian under his wing, treating the precocious young man as something of an heir and son. Fronto wondered what the extremely clever, and almost certainly ambitious, Octavian would make of being ousted in favour of a half-Aegyptian child.
And then there was Caesar’s wife, of course. Calpurnia was unlikely to be thrilled by the news, despite her clear acceptance that the consul would always be a man for the ladies.
He shivered. The civil wars of the past few years, and the political turmoil that had underpinned them, might seem like children squabbling compared with what could begin to brew in the coming days.
‘Tell me that you intend to return to Rome, Caesar.’
All eyes shifted from the consul to Cassius, who stood like some defiant stormcrow in the corner of the room. The shadow of a column fell in such a disconcerting way that it cast the man in gloom in an otherwise bright room, and that simple effect made Fronto shudder all over again.
‘Cassius?’ the consul said, an edge to his tone.
‘Tell me, Caesar, that you do not intend to return to Aegyptus for the winter. That you will make for Rome with all haste and attempt to right the problems of the republic.’
Caesar frowned. ‘Of course. This is not the season for war, but…’
Cassius shook his head and cut the general off. ‘I am not talking about war, Caesar. The republic has had enough of war. Our enemies are crushed, and those men who remain opposed to you are Romans. Cato and his companions can be reasoned with. I mean that you need to return to Rome. Calm the legions. Restore the senate to order. Make overtures of peace and begin the healing process. You were made dictator in order to save the republic, not go to war with it, or to marry it to foreign queens.’
This last was dangerously close to the knife edge, and Fronto saw Caesar tense.
‘You walk near to insult, Cassius.’
‘I speak the plain truth, Caesar, without dissembling. Will you return to Rome and save the republic?’
The consul nodded. ‘Rome is my priority, Cassius, but I will say without hesitation that no overture of peace to Africa will heal that rift. I will make an attempt, but I can guarantee that the coming year will see war with Cato’s army.’
Cassius shook his head. ‘Then that is not a war in which I will fight, Caesar. I will return to Rome with you and help in any way I can to heal the state, but I will no longer lead citizen against citizen.’
‘That is your prerogative,’ Caesar said, coldly, all traces of the good mood his tidings had brought now gone. The room felt suddenly awkward and cold.
‘To Rome, then,’ Fronto said with enforced brightness, trying to dispel the new icy aura of the meeting.
Aulus Hirtius cleared his throat, nodding at Fronto and picking up the thread, trying to lighten the mood once more. ‘I have almost completed my chronicle of the campaign to be published back home, Consul, but Amantius begs for news already; for tidings he can give the senate and the people. Word of Zela and Pharnaces’ defeat have not yet been announced at home, after all.’
Caesar turned slowly, having to tear his cold gaze from Cassius, and straightened to address Hirtius.
‘Send Amantius a dispatch, then, ahead of our own arrival.’ He reached down, drawing his pugio from his belt and slammed it into the map on the table, the point driving down through the campaign map there, pinning the location of his great victory as it stuck in the wood, reverberating as the consul let go.
They all stared at the knife vibrating over Zela.
‘Tell him I came, I saw, and I conquered,’ Caesar said.
The end.
Historical Note
I will first hold up my hands and say “Mea Culpa” over the first couple of chapters of this book. The detailed history of these events is relayed to us only primarily in Caesar’s Civil War and the Alexandrian War, likely written by Aulus Hirtius. Hirtius is not my favourite writer. Caesar managed to convey in his earlier books a great vivid view of events that was nicely clear and workable. Hirtius takes ten times as many words to say half as much, and his detail is too cluttered to be very clear. Similarly, Caesar concentrates on certain events at the end of his Civil War and glosses over others with little detail.
At the end of book 11, I had the enemy fleet sailing back towards Alexandria and the army inbound. The entire first chapter here is my own invention. The harbour needs to have a fleet in it to be burned in chapter 3, and yet we are told that Caesar’s fleet survives intact and that it is Egyptian ships that burn. Given that there was no real reason for that fleet to be in Alexandria previously, I’d had it out and sailing around. Consequently, I started this book with the issue of having to put the Egyptian fleet back in the harbour so it could be burned. That’s what I did.
Similarly, we are told in Caesar’s diary that “Achillas […] was trying to occupy Alexandria except that part […] Caesar held with his troops, though at the first assault he had endeavoured to burst into his house; but Caesar, placing cohorts about the streets, held his attack in check. And at the same time a battle was fought at the port, and this affair produced by far the most serious fighting.” Consequently I knew that the fighting in Alexandria’s streets had to be bad, it had to be with appallingly unbalanced numbers, and it needed to fail, leaving them in control of only the small redoubt around the palace, another fight going on at the harbour. Given the inventiveness of Romans in siege situations, what I’ve portrayed is extrapolating from what has happened in similar situations throughout history but with a Caesarian slant. The pits into sewers etc was inspired by the events later in the story when Ganymedes cuts off and poisons the water. I think it worked, and I could only show a small slice of the action through Salvius’ eyes, but I enjoyed it. Hope you did too.
As the war goes on, we are told by Caesar “These defences he increased on subsequent days so that they might take the place of a wall as a barrier against the foe” and by Hirtius “Meanwhile he daily strengthened his fortifications by new works; and such parts of the town as appeared less tenable were strengthened with testudos and mantelets”. In truth, it is of Achillas’ army that Hirtius is speaking when he says “They shut up all the avenues and passes by a triple wall built of square stones”. I moved this to Caesar, justifying it quite reasonably with Hirtius’ further comment “they so well copied what they saw done by us” to have Achillas building his own triple wall in a subsequent chapter. Mea Culpa once again.
There may be students of ancient Egypt reading who will bridle at where I have placed the Canopus Canal, passing the palace region and emptying into the Great Harbour nearby. Most maps you search will show the canal skirting the entire city and emptying into the western harbour. I found only one map showing it where I placed it, and used that as it suited my story. I will justify myself in two ways: firstly, the actual geography of the ancient city is scantily recorded and largely theoretical, and secondly the line of the canal shown on most maps is actually that of the Mahmoudiyah Canal constructed in 1817, and if this was the line of the ancient canal, it seems unlikely they would have to completely dig anew. Thus, the ancient canal likely vanished and is yet to be identified under Alexandria’s streets. I am unrepentant therefore in my placing of it.
With Caesar’s maritime expedition for water and
to gather his relief legion, accounts are vague. How the legion actually reaches the city is never explained. Caesar learns the legion is kept away by the winds, sails his ships out to get water with no men on board, then battles those same winds to get back, and at some point thereafter the 37th is in the city. I have combined the two events following a suggestion by Luciano Canfora in his book on Caesar (this is also the book from which I have drawn my dates.) Hirtius’ writing says that Caesar gets his water at a part of the coast called Chersonesus. The nearest part of the coast that bears a name of that derivation is near Benghazi in Libya, some 400 miles away and more than a third of the way back to Rome. As such, I suggest this is utter rubbish. Likely Hirtius is referring to some minor location much closer of which no other record survives. Caesar wouldn’t sail his entire fleet 400 miles away in search of water. As such I have had these events happen around El-Alamein, 60 miles away and on the very edge of the farmable area of Egyptian coastline. Anything further is madness.
For the record, in case purists are standing there with a copy of Canfora’s book open to the timeline for Caesar, I have shuffled and conflated the events of the naval battle and the attack on Pharos. In the timeline they are much more spread out over time. I have shuffled them together for the sake of tension and immediacy. This is one of those moments with the emphasis on the second word in ‘Historical fiction’. Mind you, the events follow the text, just not quite the timing.
The battle of the Heptastadion mole is one of the most complex sequences of action in any of Caesarian history. As such, I have cut through the narrative, marked where people were and when, taken the main actions and portrayed them in the clearest manner I could, attempting to give better reasoning to the decisions made. As such, for instance, the disaster on the ships that led to sinkings and Caesar’s swim I turned from them attacking Egyptians on the Heptastadion, and driving off ships, to dealing with land units in the harbour. The result is the same, and the sequence for the reader makes a lot more sense. In some ways what I have done with the main fighting in this battle is to make the disaster an Aegyptian achievement rather than a Roman mistake.
As to the changes in Egyptian command, I have somewhat chosen my own path for this book. What is generally agreed upon is that the king had initially commanded with Achillas. He had gone to the palace and become Caesar’s hostage. Achillas then prosecuted the war in his name. Later, Arsinoë sneaks out of the palace with Ganymedes and takes control of the army, executing Achillas. There is then a complete change in the way the war goes. So far, so good. This I have replicated from the sources.
The real question is what happens when the king is then released. In Hirtius’ Alexandrian War he has Ptolemy beg not to send him back. There is no mention of what happens to Ganymedes or Arsinoë, though they both appear to be with the enemy until the end, when Ptolemy dies, for Hirtius says they are captured and taken away from Egypt. Though the king is named as commanding throughout this time, clearly Ganymedes and Arsinoë were still present.
Florus, writing a century and a half later, has Ganymedes die in the chaotic flight after the battle in the delta. His only mention of Arsinoë is that she is paraded in Caesar’s triumph. Cassius Dio has Ganymedes being the one deciding to execute Achillas. Dio also has Ganymedes’ subordinates being the ones asking for the king’s return as they are sick of Ganymedes and Arsinoë. I decided against this, trusting less to this much later source than to the contemporary Hirtius despite his difficulties. It also seems unlikely that after the huge success Ganymedes had brought them in his time, they would turn on him so easily. Dio also does not note the fate of the pair after the king’s return, and is of little use in that.
Thus I have filled in the gaps in Hirtius and satisfied the best I could from the sources by having Ganymedes still enjoying success, turning on the princess as they had previously done on Achillas, and then leading the army alongside the returned king to defeat in the delta. Having the general becoming strong and using Ptolemy as a figurehead while Arsinoë sulks in a tent works logically and for the plot, given the fact that Achillas had clearly done much the same.
In the texts we are told that Caesar is informed of Mithridates’ approach and his victory at Pelusium and runs to join him. Ptolemy then sets off to race him. I have set these motivations the other way around, for Caesar is far too wily a creature to abandon his position of power in Alexandria and run off to an uncertain fate in the delta when he could remain where he was and wait for Mithridates to come to him, then be easily strong enough to wipe out his enemy. Only the relief army being threatened would likely drag Caesar from Alexandria. After all, he is more or less besieged there, and Alexandria remains of political import. The only reason to abandon it is if it is no longer under threat and the greater threat is elsewhere.
In the Marius’ Mules series I have made every effort where possible to stay true to the sequence of events in Caesar’s text, using outside sources like Florus or Plutarch or (in this book) Josephus only to add or clarify on events too important (or juicy) to ignore. This is the first book where significant parts of the action have been tweaked in ways, and I am content to pass the blame for that on to Aulus Hirtius. The complexity and often contradictory action in Hirtius’s account makes it difficult to draw into a narrative. As examples of this I will cite two passages that deal with the war moving on to Pontus. Firstly, that Hirtius says (in the Loeb edition): “He then summoned all the states of this latter province to forgather at Tarsus […] There he settled all the affairs of the province its neighbouring states” and then goes on to note that “his eagerness to set out and prosecute the war admitted no further delay”. These two events side by side in the text do not seem to fit. Moreover, in the McDevitte and Bohn translation, we are told in even more contradictory terms: “Having thus settled the kingdom, he marched by land into Syria” and then later “sailed himself for Cilicia, with the fleet he had brought from Egypt.” Barring the world’s largest portage operation, someone had their wires crossed at the time of writing. This only goes to show how big a pinch of salt we must take with Hirtius’ writings. Oh woe is me, Caesar, that you farmed out your latter works to a poor second.
Add to this that Hirtius is clearly trying to ‘big up’ his boss in a way that even Caesar didn’t do, and you discover that Hirtius concentrates at times too heavily on motive and blame than on the actual events, so the reader ends up with gaping holes, missing information and hurried accounts punctuated by long passages of very little use for the reworker of the tale.
So I have, as you now know, taken the events, the people and the sequence and made them work as a timeline, squeezing and pushing events into place where they need to be and cutting to the chase in order to nail my particular sequence down. It is the only way the Alexandrian War makes common sense. Upon completion of this book, I now understand why almost all academic works on Caesar devote as little time, space and effort as possible to these few crucial months.
Another point upon which I diverged from the sources is the death of Ptolemy. Upon fleeing the fortress, we are told by Hirtius “It is ascertained that the king escaped from the camp, and was received on board a ship; but by the crowd that followed him, the ship in which he fled was overloaded and sunk.” This suggests that this was only a report. As such I chose to give him a slightly different end, partially because I feel he deserved it, but also because by now in this tale I was getting sick of ships sinking under the weight of survivors. It had already happened to Caesar. And in a recent book I wrote with Gordon Doherty an emperor died when a bridge collapsed under the weight of men, something that happens in yet another book I am working on. So quite simply I saved you from repetitive endings. And fed a crocodile.
Decimus Carfulenus is mentioned only peripherally in the tale. He leads the attack on the south wall, as I have reported. He must have been from a plebeian family, for he is later appointed a tribune of the plebs. His family are attested in Aquileia. That made it ever so nice to tie together.
A poor soldier from the swampy regions of Veneto leading an attack through a swamp? Perfect.
Finally, I have conflated the events leading up to the battle of Zela. The original texts diverge for some time telling us what is happening of import all over the Roman world and then take up with Caesar again as he reaches Syria. We are then treated to an odd stop-start journey through the east where Caesar alternately spends time doing local administration and waiting, then rushing off at speed because he has somewhere to be, until finally he hooks up with Deiotarus and then meets Pharnaces to end the tale with one of those Caesarian phrases that has come down through the centuries as a classic quote. I have cut through the bulk of this and taken us almost straight from reaching Syria, through a few brief scenes, into Zela. In the grand scheme of things, the events of the east after Alexandria are peripheral to my main story, and I might have skipped them entirely were it not for the Veni Vidi Vici element. That, and the fact that I love Deiotarus. His personal army was so closely modelled on the Roman system that when he died without issue in the time of Augustus and willed his entire kingdom to Rome as a province, the army was immediately incorporated into Rome’s forces as the legion XXII Deiotariana. Thus their last king’s name lived on in glory. I have a soft spot for he and his people.
For the record, my favourite part of the research for this book was working out how long it took the chariots to move one hundred paces at Zela. Assuming somewhere around the 25km/h speed for a charging chariot, working that into miles and then paces, then using the paces/hr measurement to work out how long it took to move 200 paces, then converting that from hours to heartbeats. Fascinating stuff, if a little ‘mathsy’ for me.
One thing that will probably not have escaped the astute Roman historians among you, and I hope this comes as no spoiler to any of you, is the sense in this book that we are building to a certain conclusion. It has been my stated goal since the early days of the series to conclude the entire arc on book 15, which will detail the events of 44BC. We are therefore but three years (and three books) from the end. If anyone has no idea what happens of import in 44BC, best stop reading here.
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