Cleopatra feasted with Antony, but she bargained with him too. She would gladly agree to the execution of the traitor Serapion who, having fled Cyprus, had taken refuge in the Phoenician city of Tyre. She would also part-finance Antony’s Parthian campaign. But he, in return, must agree to protect her crown and her land. This protection included the removal of the sister who posed a constant threat to Cleopatra and Caesarion and who, as Cleopatra might well have argued, had almost certainly sided with Serapion and Cassius. Dragged from her sanctuary, Arsinoë was murdered on Antony’s order, then buried in Ephesus, possibly in the imposing city-centre tomb, today known as the Octagon, which has yielded the remains of an anonymous woman in her twenties. At the same time Antony disposed of a troublesome young man who was claiming to be the long-lost, undrowned Ptolemy XIII.
Cleopatra returned to Egypt and Antony followed a month later. He was to spend the winter of 41/40 relaxing in Alexandria and, perhaps, like Caesar before him, considering the possibility of generating revenue from Egypt. In Alexandria he found that he enjoyed all the popularity that Caesar had lacked. The Alexandrians had not forgotten how Antony had allowed Archelaos an honourable burial, or how he had used his influence to dissuade Auletes from massacring innocent citizens, and they were impressed by his current demeanour. While Caesar had forced himself on Alexandria with all the subtlety of a miniature Roman invasion, Antony appeared as a private individual, happy to abandon his Roman toga for a Greek chlamys, a military-style cloak, pinned on one shoulder, which could be worn either alone or over other garments. If the classical authors are to be believed, Cleopatra and Antony enjoyed a carefree, almost childish winter. Together they formed a drinking society, ‘The Inimitable Livers’ (amimetobioi, corrupted by a wag named ‘Parasite’, on an Alexandrian statue base, to ‘The Inimitable Lovers’), which met every night to drink, feast, dice, hunt and, a particular favourite, wander the streets of Alexandria in disguise, playing tricks on the hapless citizens. Plutarch believed that the new society was simply an excuse for Cleopatra to spend all her time with Antony: she could not bear, or could not risk, letting him out of her sight even for an evening. An alternative interpretation is that the Inimitable Livers was a group of Dionysiac initiates who met regularly, not for random debauchery but to perform sacred religious rites that required the consumption of alcohol. Certainly Cleopatra’s amethyst ring, which reportedly bore the inscription methe (drunkenness), can be accepted as referring to mystical rather than actual inebriation, as the amethyst itself was associated with temperance. Velleius gives a flavour of the long Alexandrian evenings spent carousing when he tells how Plancus was persuaded to perform at one of Cleopatra’s banquets: with his naked body painted blue, a crown of reeds on his head and a fish’s tail swinging behind, Plancus played the part of the sea god Glaucus.20
Plutarch tells us that already, by their second evening together, Cleopatra had ‘recognised in the jests of Antony much of the soldier and the common man, and adopted this manner also towards him, without restraint now, and boldly’. Antony was a famous joker. He jested with his men, and roared with laughter when they in turn played tricks on him. He had even attempted to joke with the serious Fulvia, but she had proved less than receptive to his humour:
Antony tried, by sportive ways and youthful sallies, to make even Fulvia more light-hearted. For instance, when many were going out to meet Caesar after his victory in Spain, Antony himself went forth. Then, on a sudden, a report burst upon Italy that Caesar was dead and his enemies advancing upon the country, and Antony turned back to Rome. He took the dress of a slave and came by night to his house, and on saying that he was the bearer of a letter to Fulvia from Antony, was admitted to her presence, his face all muffled. Then Fulvia, in great distress, before taking the letter, asked whether Antony was still alive; and he, after handing her the letter without a word, as she began to open and read it, threw his arms about her and kissed her.21
The Ptolemies, too, were fond of a good joke. Athenaeus tells of a trick played by Ptolemy II on Sosibios.22 Ptolemy had instructed his treasurers that when Sosibios asked for his salary, he was to be told that it had already been paid. This they did and Sosibios brought his complaint of underpayment before the king. Ptolemy looked at the records and slowly read out the names of those who had definitely been paid: Soter, Sosigenes, Bion and Apollonos. As he explained to Sosibios, by taking elements from each name – SOter, soSIgenes, Blon, ApollonOS – he could prove that Sosibios had indeed received his salary. Presumably the unpaid Sosibios was duty-bound to find this amusing. Cleopatra’s own sense of humour – aimed directly at the boyish Antony – had an equally unsophisticated twist:
He [Antony] was fishing once, and had bad luck, and was vexed at it because Cleopatra was there to see. He therefore ordered his fishermen to dive down and secretly fasten to his hook some fish that had been previously caught, and pulled up two or three of them. But the Egyptian saw through the trick, and pretending to admire her lover’s skill, told her friends about it, and invited them to be spectators of it the following day. So great numbers of them got into the fishing boats, and when Antony had let down his line, she ordered one of her own attendants to get the start of him by swimming onto his hook and fastening on it a salted Pontic herring. Antony thought he had caught something, and pulled it up, whereupon there was great laughter, as was natural, and Cleopatra said: ‘Commander, hand over your fishing-rod to the fishermen of Pharos and Canopus; your sport is the hunting of cities, realms, and continents.’23
In 40, Cleopatra gave birth to twins whom she named Alexander and Cleopatra. Antony had already left Alexandria. He would not make any effort to see either Cleopatra or his Egyptian children for three and a half years, although it seems that he did employ spies to keep him up to date with events in Egypt. This lengthy split is far from the behaviour of a lovesick swain and suggests that Antony may have considered the months spent with Cleopatra as little more than a brief holiday away from his ordinary life. Cleopatra, who had used Antony to help her fulfil her duty to produce more children, may well have felt the same way.
In late February or early March 40, the Parthians launched a dual attack on the Roman territories of Syria and Asia Minor. Antony rushed from Alexandria to Tyre, where he received the devastating news that many of the Roman client kings had defected to the cause of the Parthians. The still-loyal Herod of Judaea had been forced to flee to Egypt and, arriving in Pelusium, had been escorted by boat to Alexandria. Here he turned down Cleopatra’s offer of troops and borrowed a ship to travel to Rhodes, from where he made his way to Rome.
Worse was to come. While Antony had been focusing his attention on his eastern territories and, perhaps, on Cleopatra, Octavian had achieved what must have seemed an impossibility. He had convinced his troops that he, not Antony, was the real hero of Philippi and was slowly but surely eroding Antony’s support in Rome. Lucius Antonius, consul in 41, had been doing all he could to protect his older brother’s interests, and had worked with the energetic Fulvia to discredit Octavian and subvert his supporters. Fulvia and Lucius had raised their own army, with Fulvia personally forming two legions from her husband’s veterans, and had declared war on Octavian. They had a great deal of popular support – country dwellers were angry that Octavian had displaced them to settle 100,000 of his veterans on their land – but without Antony’s active help they were never going to succeed and Antony, many hundreds of miles away in Alexandria, was unable or unwilling to intervene. After some negotiations, and some desultory fighting, Lucius had found himself besieged in the hill town of Perusia (Perugia), where conditions soon became so desperate that the slaves, denied any part of the heavily rationed food supplies, were forced to eat grass and leaves. Twenty miles from Perusia, the smoke from their fires clearly visible to Lucius, camped troops loyal to Antony; their leaders, however, refused to take any action against Octavian without a direct order from Antony, and Antony remained silent. The slingshots that Octavian’s troops now fired ov
er the town walls were inscribed with demoralising obscene graffiti:
I’m aiming for Fulvia’s cunt!
Baldy Lucius Antonius and Fulvia, open your arses!24
In late February 40, the starving Lucius surrendered. Octavian executed the council of Perusia (permitting just one man, who had previously made a public condemnation of Caesar’s assassins, to live) and allowed his troops to sack the city, but the relieved soldiers were allowed to go free, as was Lucius. Meanwhile, Fulvia had already fled Italy. Antony met his wife in Athens, where a bitter quarrel ended with Antony abandoning the seriously ill Fulvia. She died soon after their meeting, allowing Antony, who must have known that Fulvia had always acted in his best interests, to shift responsibility for the entire débâcle on to his late wife.
Fulvia’s death left Antony free to marry Cleopatra, but marriage to a foreigner, no matter how pro-Roman, was not necessarily the most sensible move at this most sensitive of times. In early October 40 the Treaty of Brundisium (Brindisi) saw the reorganisation of the triumvirate. Antony was required to prove his loyalty to Octavian by relinquishing his control of Gaul and by making a diplomatic marriage with his recently widowed half-sister Octavia. Their wedding was celebrated just weeks after the birth of Antony’s Egyptian twins. Octavia, a good and dutiful Roman wife, was to give Antony two daughters, Antonia Maior (future grandmother of the emperor Nero) and Antonia Minor (future grandmother of the emperor Claudius). Early in 38 the couple settled in Athens, where Antony was again hailed as the New Dionysos, consort of the goddess Athena Polias, while the modest Octavia became his earthly consort, the ‘Divine Benefactress’. As Antony relaxed into the luxurious lifestyle of an eastern monarch, his soldiers, under the command of Publius Ventidius, began the first, successful stage of his Parthian campaign. Antony himself travelled eastwards in 38 and captured the city of Samosata (Samsat) on the Euphrates.
Silver tetradrachm of Mark Antony: one of many issues showing Antony on one face and Cleopatra on the other, possibly produced at Antioch.
From 40 to 30, Cleopatra ruled an increasingly prosperous Egypt. It is in this last decade of her reign that we can catch a fleeting glimpse of some of the humdrum, day-to-day, unremarkable work that must have filled Cleopatra’s hours. A papyrus decree issued on 23 February 33, for example, deals with the privileges to be granted to the family of Antony’s great friend Publius Candidus [Crassus]. The family is to be allowed to export grain and import wine tax-free, and lands and servants are also to be exempt. On the bottom of the document is the single Greek word ginestho, ‘let it be so’, written in what some but by no means all experts believe might be Cleopatra’s own handwriting.25 This papyrus, once stored in the Alexandrian archives, was later recycled into a cartonnage mummy case and buried with a Roman mummy. The mummy case was recovered in the Faiyum cemetery of Abusir el-Melek in 1903–5 and was eventually dismantled, revealing the hidden document. Theoretically, anyone in Ptolemaic Egypt was free to petition the king or queen, and archaeologists have recovered a whole archive of relatively trivial correspondence from the Memphite Serapeum, dated between 200 and 150 and addressed to ‘King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra’. We have already seen, in Chapter 1 (pages 22–3), Ctesicles’ petition about his wayward daughter addressed directly to Ptolemy III; this may be compared with a petition written c. 220 ‘to King Ptolemy’ by Philista, a lady who has been scalded by a careless Egyptian bath attendant. In practice, it seems unlikely that the monarch would have dealt personally with such matters, and we know that Philista’s complaint was actually reviewed by the strategos Diophanes.26
In the spring/summer of 37 Antony, Octavia and Octavian met at Tarentum (Taranto), where an agreement was reached to renew the triumvirate for a further five years. In addition, Antony agreed to supply Octavian with two squadrons (120 warships) that he could use against Sextus, whose pirate ships were causing an intolerable disruption to trade. Octavian, in return, was to provide Antony with four legions (20,000 men) that he could use against the Parthians. To seal the agreement, Antony’s son by Fulvia, the nine-year-old Marcus Antonius (Antyllus), was betrothed to Octavian’s two-year-old daughter, Julia. Satisfied, Antony and Octavia set sail together for Corfu. Here they parted, and Antony sent the pregnant Octavia to live under her brother’s protection in Rome.
Antony had handed over his 120 ships, but had not received the promised troops. Belatedly, he realised that he could not rely on Octavian. He travelled to Antioch, then summoned his military ally and financial backer Cleopatra. Or, as Plutarch puts it:
… the dire evil which had been slumbering for a long time, namely, his passion for Cleopatra, which men thought had been charmed away and lulled to rest by better considerations, blazed up again with renewed power as he drew near to Syria. And finally, like the stubborn and unmanageable beast of the soul, of which Plato speaks, he spurned away all saving and noble counsels and sent Fonteius Capito to bring Cleopatra to Syria.27
Cleopatra spent the winter of 37/6 in Antioch, locked in negotiations with Antony. Egypt had enjoyed four years of stability and growing prosperity and, personal relationships aside, she was in a far stronger bargaining position than she had been in Tarsus. She could provide the fleet and provisions that Antony needed, but in exchange she asked for the return of the lost eastern empire of Ptolemy II Philadelphos. Antony agreed: not necessarily because he had been driven mad by his infatuation with Cleopatra, but because he needed Cleopatra’s help and, in his view, the return of the lands was fully in line with Roman policy, which was happy to allow a certain amount of autonomous government by tried and trusted client monarchs. Octavian’s reaction, and the propaganda that he was later able to make out of Antony’s donation of whole provinces to Cleopatra without consulting the Senate, suggest that not everyone agreed.
Almost overnight, Cleopatra was given control of Cyprus, Crete, Cyrenaica (Libya), large parts of Coele-Syria, Phoenecia, Cilicia and Nabataea. The only land missing was Judaea, which had recently been declared the property of the newly installed king Herod. Even without Judaea, Cleopatra was the wealthiest monarch in the world, and she was able to increase her wealth further by striking deals with the Jews and the Nabataeans for the lease of land and the right to extract bitumen from the shore of the Dead Sea. Herod even agreed to collect taxes on her behalf.
Antony now acknowledged the twins, who went through a naming or renaming ceremony to become Alexander Helios (sun) and Cleopatra Selene (moon):
… he heightened the scandal by acknowledging his two children by her, and called one Alexander and the other Cleopatra, with the surname for the first of Sun, and for the other of Moon. However, since he was an adept at putting a good face upon shameful deeds, he used to say that the greatness of the Roman empire was made manifest, not by what the Romans received, but by what they bestowed; and that noble families were extended by the successive begettings of many kings. In this way, at any rate, he said, his own progenitor was begotten by Heracles, who did not confine his succession to a single womb, nor stand in awe of laws like Solon’s for the regulation of conception, but gave free course to nature, and left behind him the beginnings and foundations of many families.28
Cleopatra and Selene were two well-established Ptolemaic names and, as the moon was associated with Isis in her role as Queen of Heaven, both were highly suitable for Cleopatra’s daughter. Alexander was also a Ptolemaic name, one which carried memories of Alexander the Great; while Helios, the sun, was not only the traditional twin of the moon, it was a name that associated the young Alexander with the Egyptian solar cults, both traditional (the cult of Re and the cult of Horus, son of Isis and Osiris/Dionysos) and new (the cult of Serapis). Outside Egypt Helios was linked with Apollo, Octavian’s own divine inspiration.
Once again Cleopatra and Antony were lovers. Whether this was a part of the bargain, or whether there was genuine passion on both sides, is impossible to determine. The following year, in late summer 36, Cleopatra was to bear a second son, Ptolemy Philadelpho
s, whom she named, following her reacquisition of the Ptolemaic empire, after the illustrious Ptolemy II. Returning from Antioch in triumph, Cleopatra proclaimed a new era. The year from 1 September 37 to 31 August 36 was now to be known as ‘Year 16 that is Year 1’ and this double dating system would continue until ‘Year 22 that is Year 7’, the year of Cleopatra’s death. The glorious new age was accompanied by new titles. Phoenician coins now show an obverse portrait of Basilissa Cleopatra Thea Neotera (The Younger Queen Cleopatra Thea, or, Queen Cleopatra the Younger Goddess), with a reverse portrait of Antony. Cleopatra Thea is an obvious reference to our Cleopatra’s great-great-aunt Cleopatra Thea, queen of Syria. In 37 a contract from Heracleopolis, Egypt, makes reference to Thea Neotera Philopator kai Philopatris (the Father-Loving and Homeland-Loving Younger Goddess).29 Caesarion’s title, the ‘father-Loving and Mother-Loving God’ remains unchanged.
In May 36, Antony resumed his Parthian campaign, starting with a long and tiring march northwards through Syria, then eastwards through Armenia. The campaign began well but quickly turned into a humiliating disaster, with the loss of over 30,000 men – approximately two-fifths of his army. Antony, left with just twenty-five legions under his command, was forced to make a weary winter retreat to Syria. Once again Cleopatra was summoned from Egypt, and once again she hesitated, perhaps because she had just given birth, or because she needed time to collect supplies, or because she needed time to consider her position. For Antony’s Parthian humiliation had coincided with Octavian’s defeat of Sextus, and Octavian had further strengthened his position by forcing Lepidus into retirement and seizing his remaining territories. The balance of power had shifted and Octavian was beginning to pose a serious challenge to Antony’s authority. In January 35, Cleopatra met Mark Antony in the obscure Phoenician port of Leuce Come (White Village). She brought supplies of warm clothing and food, but not enough money to pay the troops. A few weeks later both Antony and Cleopatra retired to Alexandria.
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