The Judgment of Caesar

by Steven Saylor

  Caesar stood motionless, gazing after him.

  “Will you tell her now?” I said.

  Caesar gave me such a blank look that I repeated the question. “Will you tell her now? The queen? Or should I say simply, ‘Cleopatra,’ if she no longer possesses that title?”

  “I’m sure she’ll retain some sort of title,” Caesar said absently, as if my question had distracted him from more-important thoughts. “ ‘Princess,’ I suppose, as she was called when her father was alive; she’s still the Piper’s daughter, and the sister of the king.”

  “Though no longer his wife?”

  “I’m sure there’s a royal law to deal with the dissolution of their marriage,” said Caesar. “If not, we’ll invent one.”

  “And will she still be an incarnation of the goddess Isis, even without her crown? To lose one’s throne must be terrible; to lose one’s divinity—”

  “If you’re making a jest at the expense of the local religion, Gordianus, it’s not amusing.”

  “Will you tell her now?” I said again.

  He drew a deep breath. “There are some tasks that make a coward even of Caesar! But if I put off telling her, she’ll find out some other way, and that could lead to trouble. Best to be brave and face the situation head-on. It may be that the queen—the princess, I mean—has left already for Antirrhodus, but perhaps we can catch her before her boat departs.”

  “ ‘We,’ Consul?”

  “Of course I include you, Gordianus. When you witness the beginning of a thing, do you not wish to see it to the end?”

  “Perhaps. But does the consul wish me to see it?”

  “I’ve always found it useful to have another pair of eyes and ears to witness important events. My memory is not what it used to be; a second account comes in very handy when I sit down to write my memoirs. Meto has long served that purpose for me.”

  “I’ll make a poor substitute for my son. Perhaps you should summon him to resume his rightful role.”

  “An excellent suggestion. The cell where he’s been confined is close to the pier. I’ll send men ahead to release him, so that he can meet us. Having played antagonist to the queen—the princess—Meto deserves to be on hand when I announce my decision to her. Come, Gordianus!”

  I walked alongside Caesar as he traversed the palace complex accompanied by his retinue, stopping every so often to issue orders to subordinates along the way. We came to the gardens along the waterfront. Beyond the palm trees and flowering jasmine, out on the stone pier, Cleopatra stood in the company of a few servants, as well as the Roman messenger who had been sent to detain her from boarding the boat that would return her to Antirrhodus.

  Closer at hand, I heard a familiar voice. “Caesar!”

  The consul, seeing Meto beside the path, stopped and opened his arms wide. “Meto! You look well, thank Venus!”

  Meto hung back, but the smile on Caesar’s face overcame his hesitation. They embraced.

  “The messenger said—”

  Caesar nodded. “You’ve been cleared of all suspicion, thanks to the insights of your father.”

  “Papa!” Meto hugged me. It was to Caesar he had first spoken, and to Caesar he gave his first embrace; but I tried to think only of the joy I felt at seeing him unharmed and free and out of danger.

  “This must mean you found an answer to the question of what happened on Antirrhodus,” said Meto, looking quizzically at me and then at Caesar.

  “Indeed, your father did exactly that,” said Caesar. “But the explanation will have to wait. Cleopatra stands on the pier, and there is something I must tell her.”

  Caesar led the way, taking long, quick strides.

  “Papa, what’s happening?” whispered Meto.

  I was about to speak, but Caesar looked over his shoulder and silenced me with a glance.

  The afternoon sunlight, reflected off the stones of the pier and the water of the harbor, was dazzling. Gulls swooped and cried overhead. Waves lapped against the steps leading down to the royal skiff. Cleopatra, seeing Caesar, smiled at his approach, but as we drew closer, I saw a twist of anxiety at the corner of her mouth. When she saw Meto, the smile remained but grew stiff. She raised her hands to take Caesar’s, but he stopped short of stepping close enough, and she was left with an awkward, unfinished gesture of welcome. She drew back her hands and frowned.

  “Caesar, what’s happening?”

  He looked at her gravely. “There’s been . . . a development.”

  “Good or bad? Bad, to judge from the look on your face.”

  Caesar averted his eyes.

  “Caesar? What’s happening? Tell me now!” In her suddenly strident tone, I heard the voice of her younger brother.

  When he still did not answer, she shifted to a more formal tone. “Consul,” she said, and I knew she suspected the truth, for she was testing to see whether Caesar, in response, would formally address her as the queen.

  He drew a deep breath and was about to speak when a cry came from one of the Roman watchmen who patrolled the rooftops of the palace behind us. “Warships! Warships! Egyptian warships entering from the Eunostos Harbor!”

  All eyes turned toward the Heptastadion. Near the center of the causeway, a tunnel allowed ships to sail from one harbor to the other. With their oars working at a furious pace, one Egyptian warship after another was entering the great harbor. Their decks were crowded with soldiers and catapults and bristled with spears.

  Another watchman cried out from the rooftops: “Smoke! Flames! Fire at the barricades next to the royal theater!”

  As one, those of us on the pier swung around to witness the cloud of black smoke that rose from the area where Caesar’s defenses were most strongly concentrated. At the same time, a heavy, percussive vibration traveled through the air, rattling my teeth—the boom . . . boom . . . boom of a distant battering ram. Achillas’s forces had launched a coordinated attack by land and by sea on Caesar’s position.

  I looked at Caesar and saw a series of emotions sweep across his face—consternation, outrage, and bitter disappointment. He saw that I stared at him, and he seized my arm in a painful grip. He drew me aside and hissed in my ear. “Gordianus! You were there. You saw. You heard. Did the king not pledge to call off Achillas and his troops?”

  “He did.”

  “Then what can be happening?”

  From the direction of the approaching warships, I heard a loud crack, followed by a recoil. One of the Egyptian warships, slipping past Caesar’s galleys, had advanced to a point within firing distance of the pier. Had some eagle-eyed scout spotted Caesar and Cleopatra, or had those in charge of the catapult simply let off a shot at the first available target? Whatever the case, the flaming ball of pitch hurtled towards us. One of Cleopatra’s serving girls let out a shriek, and some of those around me scrambled back. But the missile fell short; with a splash and a hiss, it landed in the water some distance from the pier, but close enough to send a spray of hot vapor across my face.

  My arm was still captured in Caesar’s painful grip. “It’s because of her!” he whispered. “It’s because I wouldn’t let him have her. He hates his sister more than he loves me! He must have issued an order to attack, the moment he reached Achillas. He knows where I’ve deployed my men and fortified my defenses; he’s told Achillas exactly where to mount the assault. The wretched little viper!”

  Cleopatra stood a short distance away. Her eyes were not on the approaching warship, but on us. In all the commotion, she had not moved at all. Her expression, if anything, was more composed than before. There was even, unless I imagined it, a slight intimation of a smile on her face. Had she grasped, in an instant, exactly what had transpired? I think so; for the smile on her face was a smile of a queen who has snatched triumph from the jaws of defeat.

  “It would appear, Consul, that we are under attack.” Her use of the word “we” was not an accident. “I’m surprised that Achillas would mount such an assault, considering that my brother is in your c
ustody.”

  She did know what had happened. She was baiting Caesar to tell her the truth. He did not answer.

  The warship drew closer. I could now make out the faces of the Egyptian soldiers on the deck, and I could see that the catapult was being ratcheted back to launch another fireball at us.

  “Or could it be,” said Cleopatra, “that this assault is being launched at the instigation of my brother?”

  Caesar drew a breath. “Your Majesty perceives the situation. Not an hour ago I released your brother and allowed him to join Achillas.”

  “But why, Consul?”

  “Imperator!” cried Meto. “We must withdraw at once! The danger—”

  Caesar looked away from the queen long enough to bark an order. “Withdraw to safety! All of you! Now!”

  Meto moved to take his arm. “Imperator, you must come as well—” Caesar shook him off, but curiously, with his other hand, he held me as fast as ever. “Go, Meto. Lead the others to safety. I’ll follow in a moment. Go! I order you!”

  Reluctantly, Meto turned and gestured for the others to follow him off the pier. I could not have done so had I wanted to; Caesar held me fast in his grip.

  He spoke to Cleopatra. “Your brother begged me to let him go to Achillas. He vowed to me that he would order Achillas to withdraw his troops. He promised to return to the palace as soon as that was done.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I accepted a vow made by the king of Egypt.”

  “My father was the king of Egypt! My brother is nothing more than a foolish boy.”

  “I see that now. And if he ever was the king, then, as of this moment, Ptolemy is king no longer, and never will be.”

  A fire leaped behind Cleopatra’s eyes. “What are saying, Caesar?”

  “I abandon all attempts to reconcile you with your brother. As consul of the Roman people, and executor of your father’s will, I recognize you as queen of Egypt and sole claimant to the throne.”

  “And Ptolemy?”

  “Ptolemy has betrayed me. In doing so, he’s betrayed his people as well, and his own destiny. Once we’ve defeated him and his army, I shall take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that he can never again lay claim to the throne or do harm to you in any other way.”

  I heard a loud crack, much closer than before, followed by a recoil. The catapult had launched a second fireball at us. It arced through the air, its trajectory hard to determine from my foreshortened point of view.

  “Go, Your Majesty!” said Caesar. “Follow the others to a place of safety.”

  Cleopatra smiled calmly. She did as Caesar asked and proceeded to leave the pier. Her stride was quick, but she did not run.

  “Consul,” I said nervously, gazing up at the approaching fireball, “should we not also—”

  “Stand fast! I have a good eye for these things, Gordianus. This missile is poorly aimed. We’re perfectly safe.”

  Sure enough, the descending fireball landed harmlessly in the water at a point more distant than the first. Meanwhile, a Roman galley was swiftly approaching to head off the Egyptian warship, which abruptly turned about.

  Caesar drew me close. “Did you hear what I told the queen?” “Every word, Consul.” I raised an eyebrow. “You omitted certain details regarding your conversation with her brother.”

  “Perhaps. But you must never, ever contradict or stray from the exact version of events that I recounted to the queen. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Consul. Cleopatra must never be told that she was your second choice.”

  He looked toward the head of the pier, where the queen was just joining the little crowd gathered there. He nodded thoughtfully. “I chose between the two of them, and I chose wrongly. But the gods gave me a chance to rectify my mistake before I compounded it further. Cleopatra deceived me, and I lost faith in her. Now I’ve deceived her in return; and so we’re even and may start afresh.”

  “It seems to me, Consul, that neither of you deceived the other a whit. You each perceived exactly the game played by the other.”

  “But we shall pretend otherwise; and there you have the essence of statecraft, Gordianus—and of marriage, as well. Cleopatra is a woman, and I am a man; but we are also heads of state. When one of us sets a foot wrong, the other will pretend not to notice. When there is friction, we shall maintain a fiction of harmony; and thereby we shall respect one another’s dignity.”

  “Would it not be wiser, and a great deal less troublesome, in marriage as well as statecraft, to simply be forthright and honest? To admit one’s mistakes and ask forgiveness?”

  Caesar looked at me and shook his head. “I don’t know what sort of husband you made, Gordianus, but you could never have succeeded as a politician or a king.”

  “I never desired to be either, Consul.”

  “A good thing! Now, let’s get off this damned pier. Where are my officers? Where are my messengers? There’s a queen to be defended and a battle to be won!”

  CHAPTER XXIX

  As it turned out, there were many battles to be waged over the course of the coming months in Alexandria.

  Achillas’s assault on Caesar’s position was only the beginning of what developed into a full-scale war, and a most unusual one, fought almost entirely within the arena of the city and its harbor. The fight on land took place in the close quarters of narrow streets and across adjoining rooftops, rather than on sweeping plains or across mountainous terrain, and therefore it required a strategy very different from the usual tactical deployment of cavalry and infantry. The naval engagements took place within the confines of the harbor, and at times took on the appearance of some vast aquatic spectacle mounted for the dubious amusement of the populace.

  Caesar, taken by surprise by Ptolemy’s duplicity and outnumbered, was at first hard-pressed to maintain his position. To flee by ship at that time was virtually impossible, due partly to unfavorable winds that made it difficult to leave the harbor, and partly to the extreme hazards attendant upon a withdrawal of all the troops toward the docks and thence by ship through the narrow harbor entrance, all the while under Egyptian attack on land and sea; Pompey, harassed by Caesar, had managed such a naval withdrawal from Brundisium, but just barely. Caesar was effectively trapped in Alexandria, and faced certain destruction should the Egyptians manage to penetrate his defenses. There was considerable grumbling among his officers that he had landed them in a very tight spot, thanks to an uncharacteristic miscalculation of the forces against him and to his love for a treacherous queen; but Caesar himself never betrayed any sign of doubt or gave vent to recrimination. Perhaps Cleopatra had convinced him that together they possessed a divine destiny, and that together they would overcome all obstacles on their path to immortality.

  I shall leave it to others to recount all the many incidents of the Alexandrian War. No doubt Caesar himself, with the help of Meto and others, will write a more or less accurate, if entirely self-serving, account. How candid will he be about his relationships with the royal siblings? It will be interesting to read the delicate phrases he uses to justify his decision to allow Ptolemy to leave the palace and join Achillas. But when it comes to recounting events in the military arena, Caesar’s memoirs can usually be trusted.

  Certain incidents stand out in my memory. Early on, the Egyptians attempted to contaminate the water supply to the palace. In all Alexandria, not a single public fountain is supplied by a well or a spring, and the water of Lake Mareotis is too brackish to drink; all fresh water for the city arrives via the canal from the Nile, and where the canal approaches the city, the water is split into numerous channels to supply various precincts. The Egyptians, having control of the canal, began pumping seawater into the supply that flowed into the areas under Caesar’s control. As their water inexplicably grew saltier, Caesar’s men came near to panicking; but he assured them that along every coast, underground veins of fresh water could be found. The men devoted themselves to digging at numerous spots, workin
g continuously night and day. And in fact, enough veins of fresh water were struck to produce an adequate supply, and a crisis that might have given the Egyptians an early victory was averted.

  Also early on occurred the burning of the warehouses along the harbor, which has since grown into the legend that Caesar burned the whole of the great Library. In fact, when Caesar’s men set fire to a number of Egyptian ships anchored in the great harbor, so that the vessels could not later be seized and used against them, the fire spread to some buildings on the waterfront. Among these was a warehouse used by the Library, in which great quantities of papyrus were stored along with an uncertain number of recently acquired or copied scrolls that had not yet been filed in the Library. As many as forty thousand volumes may have been destroyed, but the Library itself was unscathed. Still, Cleopatra gave Caesar much grief about the destruction, and Caesar himself bitterly regretted it, if only because it gave the Egyptians further cause to label him a destroyer and a barbarian.

  But the low point of the war, for Caesar, was the day he lost his new purple cape.

  Caesar had always worn a blood red cape, proud of the fact that friends and foes alike could easily spot him in the thick of battle. It was Cleopatra who gave Caesar a new cape of a different hue, an equally conspicuous, very regal shade of purple. A few Romans grumbled at this innovation—were they fighting for a consul or a king?—but many appeared to welcome it. Caesar wore the cape on the day he sailed across the harbor with several hundred troops and laid siege to the causeway leading out to the Pharos lighthouse. His object was to gain control of the arch in the causeway that allowed Egyptian ships to attack from the Eunostos Harbor.

  The battle went well at first; the island of Pharos itself was seized, as was the causeway, and Caesar’s men set about filling the mouth of the tunnel with stones. But the Alexandrians received reinforcements, and the tide of the battle turned. Caesar’s men panicked and fled. Caesar himself was forced to retreat to his ship, which was drawn alongside the causeway. So many soldiers streamed onto the ship that it began to founder. Wearing his purple cape, Caesar jumped from the deck and swam toward another ship farther out in the harbor. The heavy folds of the sodden cape threatened to drag him under; struggling in the choppy waves, barely keeping his head above water, he managed to extricate himself from the garment, and for a while he swam with it held between his teeth, for he hated to lose the queen’s gift. But in the end the cape slipped from his teeth, and he abandoned it.