by Allan Massie
The young King Ptolemy was our hostage. I set little store by that, for I could not believe that the Egyptians would not happily sacrifice him, since they are by nature incapable of loyalty. Unlike Romans they set no store by promises, but will promise whatever they think may secure an immediate advantage. Anyone who has dealings with them knows, however, that their word is not worth a docken.
I reported to Caesar the measures I had taken. He approved them, but absently.
"I have always known I could rely on you, Mouse," he said.
"To the death," I replied.
He smiled and pinched my ear.
I hoped we would now be able to embark on a discussion of strategy, but at that moment we were interrupted by a knock on the door. A centurion entered, followed by slaves bearing a rolled-up carpet on their shoulders. They laid it on the marble floor, very gently, and stepped back. "So?" Caesar said.
"A gift to my lord from the Queen of Egypt," one said. "Well," Caesar said, "let us see what the Queen has sent us." "Be careful, Caesar. It may be a trap." "You are too cautious, Mouse."
The carpet had been placed some fifteen paces to Caesar's right, and was unrolled towards him. It was obvious that it contained an object. For a moment I suspected that the macabre and disgusting taste of the Egyptians had contrived to present us with another corpse: which of our friends might be revealed cruelly murdered?
I was wrong. A girl lay there, in a short purple shift, rucked up to display plump but shapely legs. She sprang to her feet, not apparently stiff as a result of her surely uncomfortable journey within the carpet. She looked Caesar in the eye and then threw herself on the marble pavement, stretching out her arms to embrace his ankles. He bent down, put his hand in the thick tresses of auburn hair and raised her up. Caesar was not a tall man, but she reached only to his chest. She smiled, showing white, even teeth. Her mouth was rather large, and her eyes sparkled.
"Do you know who this is, Mouse?" "No, of course not."
"I rather suspect the Queen of Egypt has delivered herself to me. You must be dusty, madam," he said to the girl. "I will give orders that a bath be prepared."
Two hours later, Caesar emerged from his bedchamber. "Now I have truly tasted Egypt," he said.
Many have said that Cleopatra bewitched him. But that is nonsense. Nobody ever bewitched Caesar, certainly no woman. She delighted him, but that is not the same thing at all. She was little more than a schoolgirl, fifteen years of age, and though her body was a woman's, and her breasts beautiful as pomegranates, her nature was childish. He called her "Kitten", and in her grace, impulsiveness and cruelty, she was indeed feline. Of course he made jokes about this, at my expense, Kitten and Mouse - there is no need to repeat them. Caesar too had an adolescent streak.
There is no doubt, however, that, even though she didn't bewitch him, from that first hour she determined his Egyptian policy. Before her arrival, he had been considering how best to use his possession of young Ptolemy. Now he was ready to discard him just as one spits out a melon seed. It was clear that Cleopatra was to be established as the ruler of Egypt, under Caesar's control. You may think this was an absurd ambition considering that we were beleaguered. But Caesar cared nothing for such considerations. Cleopatra sat on his knee and stroked his cheeks and begged for stories, and expressed wonder at his exploits; Caesar played with the rich tresses and kissed those luscious breasts, and ran his finger along those cherry-red lips, and feasted on her dark almond-shaped eyes, that seemed sometimes black, sometimes a deep purply blue; and had formed his determination.
One thing should be said. Cleopatra cured him of that lassitude which had afflicted him ever since he held Pompey's ring with the lion supporting a sword in its paws. If he spent half the day, and all the night with her, in the other hours he recaptured his wonted energy.
Cleopatra didn't love him, of course, being capable of passion but not love, quite different emotions as I know to my cost; and that might have been grief to him, but wasn't, he being too vain to feel what wasn't there, or the pain of its absence. Instead he took great pleasure in recounting his exploits to her, believing that she was as deeply impressed as she pretended. The light in Alexandria towards evening is violet-coloured, as cranes fly black overhead; and that is how I see them, on the terrace, the Queen sitting on his knee as he talked and talked and she stroked his cheek, her profile hard against the darkening light over the sea. Her nose, I thought, would be too large when her features were fully formed. She listened and purred. She knew when to laugh too, and this pleased him, for Caesar had no great sense of humour, but considered himself a wit.
And he exerted himself, hoping she would be as amazed by what he did now as she pretended to be by what he recounted. To please her, he had her brother murdered in the prison where he had been confined, and even yielded to her request that they should view the unfortunate boy's corpse. Then she nuzzled
Caesar and he squeezed her breasts. "I'm so glad he's dead," she whispered.
Otherwise his renewed exertion was to our common benefit. It relieved me of much anxiety. Though our restored position owed more to what I had undertaken during his weeks of lassitude, yet the evidence of the General's new-found vigour pleased and comforted the soldiers, making them bolder. Whatever one says against Caesar — and, as I intend to demonstrate, there is much that can be said - no one can deny his possession of an extraordinary gift: there never was (I believe) a general so capable of inspiring the ordinary legionary. How he did it, performing what miracle, I do not know. Perhaps it was simply that he conveyed to them his certainty of his own Destiny. But other generals have been equally certain that they were favourites of the gods, and yet their soldiers have run away.
I felt exhilaration at our restored fortunes, and pride also, on account of the part I had played, and I did not yet experience any of the doubts and fears I came later to entertain. This was short-sighted. Looking back, I see so clearly how the Egyptian interlude fed his inordinate appetite.
I had only one encounter alone with Cleopatra. She set herself to charm me. She was little more than a child but she couldn't be with a man, alone, for even a few minutes without setting herself to make him her slave, desperate to be in bed with her. It wasn't what she said — that was commonplace — or even how she said it. She spoke Greek, of course, very fluently, but full of mistakes; and, do you know, I found that charming. She giggled when I said:
"Don't you know that in your language a neuter plural subject takes a singular verb?"
"Grammar," she giggled, "my tutors were always on at me about grammar. It matters awfully, I don't think."
"You do know Caesar will have to leave Egypt, don't you? Will you be all right when we go?"
She scratched the top of her plump thigh.
"I've got an itch. What was that you were saying?"
"I was asking if you'll be all right when we leave Egypt."
My words sounded silly.
"Why does he call you 'Mouse'?" she said.
"It's a childhood nickname."
"It suits you. Of course I'll be all right. I'm the Queen." "I think sometimes you can't wait for us to go." "Doesn't everybody think like that about Romans?" (You'll agree with her, Artixes, won't you? I wish your father would let me go.)
"Does Caesar know you feel like that?" "I wouldn't tell him." "But you tell me." "Mmm."
She pulled up her skirt, and pointed her finger at a round red spot, on the inside of her thigh, near the top.
"Look, that's why I'm itching. It's a bite. I think saliva would be good for it. Would you like to lick, Mouse?"
It was the hour when there are no shadows, but it was cool and dark in the great chamber, and I knelt on the marble, which had ingathered the heat of the dry season, with my head between the legs of the Queen who was also a girl less than half my age, and did as she bid. My tongue rippled over that red spot, and her fingers twined in my hair, and then she drew my head back, and thrust the fingers of her other hand between my lips.<
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"Now taste my cunty fingers."
Delight suffused me. I swivelled, pressing myself between her legs and my hands kneading the flesh. The Greek word "ecstasy" means in its root standing outside oneself, and I knew ecstasy then, seeing the picture we made and living it at the same time.
"I shall make Caesar give me a child, I think," she said. Her legs held me tight, and she withdrew her hand and bent down and kissed my mouth, thrusting her tongue where her fingers had been a moment before.
Caesar said: "There is no reason why I should not divorce Calpurnia and marry Cleopatra. It would be a fine thing. Even Alexander did not achieve such a marriage. To take possession of Egypt is to hold the East . . . the East, of which Pompey boasted himself master."
He must have known it was impossible, and since Cleopatra was not a Roman citizen, also illegal. Even the appearance of such a marriage would destroy his position in Rome. I could imagine what a meal Cicero would make of it, and I couldn't believe Caesar did not understand this himself. And yet, at that moment, I encouraged him.
"Bring the Queen to Rome," I said.
CHAPTER 4
Each time I return to Rome, the city seems less itself. There are new buildings and new people, and what used to be familiar has lost its old proportions. (I write in this present-perfect tense, though it is improbable I shall have again this experience of a return home that is like an arrival somewhere unknown.)
On this occasion my mother had even moved house. The noise on the Esquiline, she said, had become insupportable, and so she was now living in a property inherited from her mother, which stood on the Aventine. It was peaceful there, with blackbirds and siskins in the garden, and, she assured me, a nightingale when darkness fell. It felt wrong, that absence of bustle.
"The truth is," she said, "you hear more Greek spoken than Latin where we were. Now tell me all about Caesar, darling Mouse. Is he well? Is it true that he is having an affair with the Queen of Egypt? And did you simply adore Egypt, or hate it? People always do one or the other, mostly the latter. Dear Pompey claimed he adored the place, and look at what it did for him. But you haven't answered my questions."
"You haven't given me time, and so I've forgotten now what they were ..."
"Don't be a tease."
"Very well, Mother. In reverse order: I neither loathed Egypt nor loved it; the Queen of Egypt is having an affair with Caesar, but neither heart will be broken. As for the General, Caesar is Caesar: I'm sure you must have heard him say so."
"He wrote to me, you know, by the last post, to say how well you had done, and how I should be so very proud of you."
"Caesar excels at graciousness. You know that too, Mother."
"I've asked Calpurnia to supper. I hope you don't mind. She is desperate to have word of her hero-husband."
"What word should I give her? He has sent her presents by me. That's something, I suppose."
"I leave it to you to decide. There's no doubt, by the way, that she knows all about the Queen."
"Nobody, Mother, does that."
I withdrew, sacrificed to our family gods (as it is proper to do after a journey, to honour them and express gratitude for one's safe arrival) and retired to the chamber which had been prepared for me. I could not sleep. My mind was troubled, as it had been for weeks now, by images of Cleopatra. It amused me that my mother had arranged that Calpurnia should be with us; it showed that her capacity for demure mischief-making was not exhausted.
Calpurnia is more of a puzzle to me than Cleopatra. Of course it's well known that Caesar married her for political reasons — her father, Calpurnius Piso, was consul in 58 and a trusted ally of Pompey's when Caesar and Pompey first came together in friendship. But he remained married long after the political value of the union had expired, and he did so even though Calpurnia was notably lacking in charm or beauty. Thin, angular, with a voice like an Ostia fishwife, and a temper to match, she frequently embarrassed Caesar at dinner-parties. She had the absurd habit of disputing people's observations on matters of which she could not be other than ignorant. Moreover, she didn't hesitate to contradict Caesar himself. I remember once when the talk turned on the question of the transmigration of souls — a theory that had long attracted Caesar - and he spoke of how, visiting Athens for the first time, he had found his way to the house which he was seeking without enquiring directions from any passer-by, but travelling with certainty as if he had already made that journey many times, perhaps even daily, in another life, she interrupted to suggest that he was probably drunk, because it's well-known that drunk men are favoured by fortune . . .
"Besides," she said, "I expect it was a brothel you were seeking, and I've never heard of a pig that couldn't find its way to a sty."
Caesar tried to laugh it off - and indeed Calpurnia made this last comment with a bray like a she-ass, inviting us to share the joke - but he wasn't pleased. I wondered then if he was frightened of Calpurnia.
It sounds absurd. We all know that Caesar was fearless. He made a point often enough of telling us so. Yet, as my friend Gaius Valerius Catullus was wont to say, "The most mysterious silence in the world is that which surrounds a man and woman when they are alone together."
Now, naturally enough, she questioned me narrowly concerning Cleopatra — Calpurnia was the sort of woman who always knew the stories that were going the rounds. She didn't trouble to hide her conviction that Caesar was again being unfaithful to her. Most women would conceal such knowledge, on account of their pride. But Calpurnia's pride was of a different order; she delighted in presenting herself to the world as a wronged woman.
"She's of an age to be his granddaughter," she said. "Not quite."
"I've done my calculations. She would be under marriageable age if she was a Roman. What does he see in her?"
"She amuses him. There's nothing more to it. Except this: the relationship is political. The importance of Egypt is well-recognised. Therefore it's a good thing to be on friendly terms with its Queen."
"Friendly terms! But you men always stick together. The only thing that surprises me is that he preferred her to her brother. He had him put to death, didn't he? Was he very ugly?"
"I've no idea."
"You're a rotten liar. You're blushing, your face gives you away."
I tried to turn the conversation to more general questions. But she kept returning to the matter of Cleopatra.
At last she said: "He'll have to come home in a couple of months. His dictatorship expires, doesn't it? Will he ask for it to be renewed, or will he be content with more ordinary honours?"
"How can I answer a question if his wife is ignorant of the matter?"
Then, to divert her, I sent a slave to fetch the presents which Caesar had entrusted to me.
"There's something inescapably vulgar about all Oriental workmanship," she said.
Nevertheless she took them with her when she left, though I later heard that, when Caesar eventually came home, he found that some of the jewels which he had had his quartermaster so carefully select had been passed on to Calpurnia's favoured freedwomen. As a loan, of course; if she dismissed a servant she took care to retrieve anything she had lent her.
When Calpurnia left, I said good night to my mother, and went out into the streets, saying I required fresh air, to blow away memories of Calpurnia's spite.
"You won't find that in Rome, nothing but filth. Behave yourself," and she held out her cheek for me to kiss.
I felt, as I knew I would, the excitement of return, the strange sense of liberation that the city's nocturnal life offered. I passed through the Suburra, stopping to admire the filthy shows outside the brothels. My ears were assailed by the babble of countless tongues, as if all the languages of the world sought to express their vices in the stew of Rome. My poor dead friend Catullus had often insisted that filth and beauty were two sides of the same coin. And, thinking of Catullus, I admitted where I was heading, in a roundabout fashion.
He had loved Clodia to distraction;
I myself only knew him after he had broken away, with tears and in trembling. His voice shook when he spoke of her. He could escape neither the memory of her love - the beauty of those great dark ox-eyes -nor the horror with which she had filled him. "We are drawn to what terrifies and disgusts us," he said. "She demands adoration, like the goddess Cybele, and then slays her admirers. Her lusts are insatiable. She exhausts her lovers, and unmans them. I trust, Mouse, that you will never find yourself in the clutches of so terrible a woman."
That was the warning he gave me, and since then, Clodia's reputation had been utterly destroyed. Who does not remember the lawsuit she brought against Caelius Rufus, himself a close friend of Catullus? (They were the same age - I am some years younger.) When Caelius left her, she accused him of all sorts of crimes: he had tried to poison her, he had defrauded her of money she had lent him, he had plotted the assassination of an Egyptian diplomat, he had tried to raise a riot in Naples; and so on. It was a collection of absurdities. Men said the woman had taken leave of her senses.
Caelius got Cicero to defend him. I was in court. It would be, people promised, better than the gladiators. "Cicero hates Clodia, on account of the way her brother persecuted him. You know, of course, she was her brother's lover. Fact." That was the way people talked.
Cicero's speech was masterly. Whatever doubts - generally well-founded - people have expressed about his character, no one has ever denied his genius for forensic oratory. And I doubt if he has ever displayed it to more effect than in his defence of Caelius.