by Craig Smith
Nicolas and I were in Rome arguing before Caesar about the fate of Herod’s kingdom – this in the wake of Herod’s death. Nicolas supported Archelaus, Herod’s eldest surviving son, as a successor to the king. I proposed the elevation of Herod’s grandson, Herod Agrippa, the legitimate heir to the throne, though he was then just five years old. There were a great many technical issues to cover in my arguments, including Nicolas’s sabotage of Herod’s government and the likelihood, in my humble opinion, that Herod’s death was in fact an assassination perpetrated by none other than Nicolas and Prince Archelaus. While I was still building the logic of my case and not yet ready to point my finger directly at him, Nicolas apparently guessed my intentions. To neutralise my charges against him, he struck first, declaring he was astonished that a man of my unsavoury character stood in the same room as Caesar.
This unspecified slander against me excited Caesar’s interest, for beneath all his dignity Caesar was a hopeless gossip. Pretending to defend one of his ‘most noble equites’ Caesar asked Nicolas to explain himself or face serious consequences. Nicolas had already written a gushing biography of our revered princeps. To put it plainly, he had no worries about stirring Caesar’s wrath. Still, he proceeded diffidently, as if concerned that he may have overstepped. ‘I only meant to say that it was Quintus Dellius and no other who instructed Cleopatra on how to seduce Mark Antony before the two villains met at Tarsus. I say this as one who witnessed Dellius’s visit to the queen in Alexandria, when he advised her to come in all her splendour to meet Antony, explaining to her in great detail about Antony’s tastes in lovemaking.’
This was an obvious attempt to put the blame of all that followed from that disastrous love affair squarely on my shoulders. By that time, strange as it may sound, no one remembered the true nature of Cleopatra; by some accounts she was an unpleasant mix of a sphinx and that murderous creature of the orient, Medea; by other accounts, Cleopatra was only a quarrelsome girl who got swept up in Antony’s intrigues. It has never been the Roman way to give women too much responsibility, either in accomplishment or disaster. And of course Nicolas and I were the only ones in Caesar’s court that day who knew the truth; so Nicolas’s remarks had the authority of an eyewitness. In his version of the event, I became Cleopatra’s favourite for my cunning advice and remained in that high station until she discovered that I often arranged a suitable bed mate for Antony whenever he did not sleep with the queen. Further, on those occasions when my selection did not entirely please Antony, I happily fulfilled the role of his lover myself.
I made several protests as these lies were being put into the public record, but Caesar would not allow me to stop the fellow. Nicolas was not passing along idle rumour but stating what he had seen. When Nicolas had finished I stood to defend myself against these scurrilous charges, only to be told by a very pleased Caesar that we were quite off topic and had better attend to the fate of Judaea. I complained that I had been ruined by this harangue and was entitled to answer the charges. At this, Nicolas quipped, ‘Perhaps Dellius has some innocent explanation for being so often with Antony in his bed.’
Caesar and his court laughed at this; not one of them doubted that Antony had used me as his girl. I was sixty years of age at that time but still a good hand with a sword. Had I been armed with my gladii, Nicolas would surely have lost his head at a stroke. As it was, I punched him several hard blows before Caesar’s praetorian guard wrestled me to submission. Even as they pulled me away Caesar scolded me: ‘Come, come, Dellius. We were all young once. There’s no reason to be angry because someone has a long memory.’
To his inner circle that evening Caesar quipped, ‘I suppose it is time I admit our friend Quintus Dellius was not the Horse Changer I have always imagined, riding one horse and then another according to the political winds, but the horse so many rode!’ Great fun on the Palatine.
Instructing Cleopatra how to seduce Mark Antony! Yes, and in my spare time I teach crows to caw and cobras how to curl up inside baskets.
Tarsus and Alexandria: Summer, 41 BC
When Cleopatra arrived in Tarsus in her royal barge Antony was on business in the city, adjudicating the claims of a couple of landowners, as I recall. All very dull stuff, but of course the city had turned out to watch the imperator. When word came that Cleopatra’s magnificent vessel had docked, the entire city fled the agora and raced to the harbour. Plaintiff and defendant remained before Antony as well as Antony’s Guard; otherwise the Forum was empty. Antony instructed the men to continue their arguments. He was not about to compromise his dignity by running down with the rest of the mob to have a look at the queen’s great ship. The two litigants, however, begged permission to be allowed to settle. They were too eager to see Cleopatra to worry about boundary lines.
So Antony alone snubbed the queen, though I doubt she noticed it. He had me deliver an invitation to her for dinner that night. This gave me the chance for a look at her ship: it was festooned with flowers, trimmed in gold, and propelled by silver-tipped oars. Its size required six hundred oarsmen. At dock the vessel was magnificent; at sea, I expect it sailed as gracefully as a rudderless raft. When I delivered Antony’s invitation, Cleopatra claimed she could not leave her ship. She was utterly exhausted by her long journey. She did, however, suggest that Antony might come to her that evening, if he cared to indulge in her ship’s meagre offerings.
I suppose Antony was actually curious to see the barge, which now everyone in the city but Antony had seen; so he accepted the invitation despite his better judgment. I believe he had become inured to eastern sycophancy and found the queen’s impertinence refreshing. At any rate, he boarded the ship and feasted his way through twenty courses of meagre offerings. Meats, sauces, fish of every variety, exotic fruit from Africa and the orient, and even, I am told, vegetables from Italian farmlands. All delivered by nubile black maidens clad only in diamonds and pearls. These girls were happy to tease the imperator at every service but left the queen to finish her guest off, with her hand and coconut milk, as I learned from the guards I had posted onboard. Antony staggered from the queen’s barge at noon next day. The whole city, gathered at the docks for the occasion, roared with applause, just as fellows will do when a groom leaves his new bride on the morning after their wedding.
Next evening, Antony invited Cleopatra for dinner at his residence. This was supposed to be a banquet to equal the queen’s sumptuous fare, but he had no servants to match her staff. Midway through what he had hoped would be the finest cuisine the queen had ever enjoyed, Antony turned to me with orders to execute the chef. I took this as a joke, but the chef learned of the remark and spent several days in hiding.
Having no hope of impressing the queen either with his dignity or his borrowed staff and palace, Antony surrendered. He ordered me to sail to Ephesus and arrange the execution of Arsinoë on the steps of the Temple of Artemis, for all to see. She was strangled with a piece of knotted silk, this a gift from Cleopatra. I oversaw the affair but let another take the poor girl’s life. This murder broke any number of laws and religious sanctions and exposed me, once again, to the outrage of Artemis, had the goddess actually existed. In the meantime, Antony and Cleopatra sailed away blissfully to Alexandria in the queen’s golden barge.
XVIII
THE PARTHIANS
Galilee: March, 40 BC
As my reward for attending to the execution of Arsinoë, Antony did not require me to follow him to Egypt. Instead, he provided me with a thousand Spartans from his Guard and sent me to Galilee. Officially, I was there to liaise between Antony’s legions in Syria and Herod’s army in Galilee. In practice, the job was chiefly administrative. I had to make sure couriers were set up for runs down the Judaean highway as far as Ashkelon. From there, ships took these reports to Alexandria.
As an intelligence officer I thought no one had more current information than I did, but one morning Herod came to me with news that there had been a revolt in northern Italy. Caesar’s problem, I answere
d. ‘Perhaps it is,’ Herod said, ‘but I suggest you inform Antony of the matter at once.’
I sent Antony what little I knew. Some days later Herod had more information. The revolt turned out to be something more than a local uprising; the leaders were none other than Fulvia, Antony’s wife, and Antony’s brother, Lucius. Joining these two was the freshly retired praetor, Claudius Nero.
I was not anxious to be the first to inform Antony of these matters and remarked that Antony must surely know about it. Herod’s response startled me. ‘Only if he ordered the revolt, Dellius. The news is five days old.’
Of course that was impossible, at least in so far as I understood the world. When I said so, Herod told me about his carrier pigeons. Antipater had long before established dovecotes in Italy, Macedonia, Asia Minor, and throughout the provinces of Judaea. The news he gave me had passed from bird to bird at the rate of sixty miles an hour! When I still would not believe him, he showed me one of his pigeons and then sent a message to Jerusalem. Within an hour another bird returned with an answer to his question. I suspected this was some kind of parlour trick, for I really could not comprehend such speed. Herod understood my scepticism, however, and explained how his family had come to learn about the secrets of this race of bird. He told me that centuries ago the Persians had discovered the male bird of certain types of pigeons have the power to find their nests even if they are hundreds of miles away. By creating dovecotes for these birds every two or three hundred miles, one might send messages across thousands of miles in a matter of a day or two, not weeks.
Only then did it dawn on me that the use of birds in Judaea and Syria had made it possible for the Roman prefect who had arrested me in Samaria to know my intentions to travel before I had even departed. It also explained why Herod and Phasael knew within an hour of my crossing into Judaea that I was coming with an army of four legions. So they had arrived at Ashkelon on the very evening of the day I sent my ultimatum. I had very little time to reflect on these matters at that time, though I was later much fascinated with the flight of birds. I actually bred the birds in the hope of selling the concept to Caesar, but Caesar in old age was quite as dull as Caesar in his youth. He thought I had a brilliant idea if I could only get the same bird to fly in two directions.
Lebanon and Galilee: May, 40 BC
Though I was fairly sure Antony had incited the revolt in Italy or at least given his tacit permission, I sent the news to Alexandria. A week later Herod informed me that Caesar’s man, Marcus Agrippa, had made short work of the revolt. Fulvia and Antony’s brother had been captured.
I sent another courier to Antony with this fresh news and received his response a week later. I was to ride to the harbour town of Tyre and await his arrival. I took most of my staff with me, as well as three hundred Spartans for escort. Once there, we waited several weeks for Antony’s fleet to arrive.
During that same period the Parthians suddenly broke across the border and defeated Antony’s legions in Syria. Those cohorts managing to escape fled to Tyre in the hope of finding rescue. By the time Antony’s fleet arrived, the situation had become critical. The Parthians had begun to lay siege to the city walls. Antony soon concluded that he hadn’t enough ships to transport all of his men. Rather than abandon them, he sent to Tarsus for additional transport ships. We waited a desperate week, fighting at the city walls day and night until the ships from Tarsus arrived. When all was ready, Antony ordered his men to abandon the defence of the city and begin boarding the ships.
As Antony’s prefect of the Guard I fully expected to join Antony’s flagship. My only concern was securing passage for Hannibal, but when I attempted to arrange this, one of Antony’s legates informed me that Antony wanted to speak with me. Antony had remained onboard his ship throughout the siege and was anchored close to the mouth of the harbour. During the week we had waited for the ships from Tarsus, I fought on the city walls. I had sent Antony several reports but had not met with him since his arrival. It took nearly an hour to get through the mass of ships in that harbour and board his flagship. Once onboard I waited another hour until I was escorted into his presence.
Antony had no time for greetings. As soon as I appeared before him, he ordered me to take my cohort of Spartan auxiliaries out of the city and return to Galilee. I was stunned, for it seemed to me that Antony had no idea what he was asking of me. First, getting out of the city with only three hundred men for escort might prove impossible. Beyond that, I could not imagine what he expected me to accomplish with such a meagre force. ‘If the Imperator expects me to help to defend the Galilean border, might I request a legion?’
‘I wish I could afford it. As matters stand, I require every fighting man I have to sail with me to Italy.’
‘Herod does not have an army of sufficient size to stop the Parthians, Imperator.’
‘I know that, Dellius. I want you there to make sure Herod and Phasael do not join the Parthian alliance.’
‘If they decide to abandon Rome, I don’t see how I can stop them.’
Antony went to a small sea chest that he had set up in the corner of his room. Unlocking it, he pulled two vials from a row of a half-dozen and handed them to me. ‘If you cannot kill them by force of arms, murder them by stealth. My fear is that if the sons of Antipater join the Parthians, Egypt will fall within a matter of weeks. That simply must not happen.’
For many years I thought that Antony worried for Cleopatra’s life. Old age has let me see the matter more clearly. Antony could hope to recover Syria and the Jewish provinces as long as Egypt remained an ally of Rome, but if Egypt was lost as well, it would mean the end of his Imperium.
Antony sailed for Athens on the same evening that we spoke. Using the cover of darkness, I broke out of the city with my staff and three hundred Spartan auxiliaries. We had some fighting with the Parthian camp guarding the road to the south of the city, but after we broke through their defences we had an open road, which we followed at full gallop.
Athens: Summer, 40 BC
In the wake of their defeat, Fulvia and Lucius Antony were given their lives, but Caesar exiled them both from Italy. Claudius Nero, their co-conspirator, had managed to escape the city before its fall and spent the summer as a fugitive. I learned much later that Nero’s escape and subsequent survival in a hostile land was due in large part to the services of a loyal freedman and to his wife, Livia. At the time, I only knew that poor, dull Nero was the most wanted man in Italy.
As for Antony’s wife and brother, they sailed to Athens to meet Antony, who had arrived there with his fleet and was attempting without success to communicate with Caesar in Rome. Antony was still awaiting a response when his mother arrived in Athens. Publically, she claimed she had fled Rome out of fear for her life, but in fact, the old girl was not quite the timid matron she pretended. On her way to Athens she had stopped in Sicily. Sextus Pompey asked her to tell Antony that he was not only willing but anxious to form an alliance and help him in his fight against Caesar.
Fulvia and Lucius fervently backed the idea of a new alliance but Antony could see no value in it. He would still be sharing power and, to his thinking, as he admitted to me some years later, it was better to share his authority with ‘the little twit’ than with Sextus Pompey, who actually knew how to fight.
He did not rebuff Pompey at once. Rather he left the offer open as he sailed to Italy at the head of a fleet of four hundred ships.
Brindisi: Summer, 40 BC
Antony was not permitted entry at the harbour of Brindisi. Rather than risking all on a naval battle, he sailed on and found anchorage at Taranto, due west across the isthmus. This permitted him to lay siege to Brindisi from the landward side of that city. Caesar’s forces, commanded by Marcus Agrippa, soon arrived and forced Antony to lift his siege.
Over the course of several days cavalry skirmishes between Agrippa’s and Antony’s forces ensued. Then, once Caesar had arrived, the two armies faced one another. Curiously, the legions on both sides ref
used the order to advance into battle.
It was of course not as simple as that. Antony had informed his centurions that should any of the men call across the lines and ask for a truce there would be no disciplinary action. So up and down the line Antony’s legionaries called to Caesar’s men. This was not Philippi. There was no reason for a fight. The legions loved both Antony and Caesar; the legions ought to insist on negotiations.
Caesar’s men, tired of so many fights against Roman forces and fearing Antony’s reputation for unpredictability, soon responded. Caesar and Agrippa had no choice but to enter into talks with Antony. Hostages were the first to cross the no man’s land between the two armies; then finally the leaders met and a truce was sworn.
Once again Caesar and Antony made a pact without consulting Lepidus. This time Caesar gained the advantage, receiving all of northern Gaul to go with Gaul’s coastal province and with it the eleven legions stationed there; for his part Antony got a new wife, Octavia, the elder sister of young Caesar. Fulvia, Antony’s former wife, had remained at Athens. By a happy coincidence Fulvia became ill soon after Antony left her. Before Antony could ask for a divorce, he learned she was already dead.
Lucius Antony also died of stomach ailments that same summer. As part of the negotiations, he had been awarded a governorship in Andalusia but died while still on his journey to Spain. Most suspected Caesar, but for years after Antony always had a shifty look whenever he accused Caesar of the crime.