by Isaac Asimov
Antony is doing his best to make up his mind to leave Cleopatra, and he calls his most reliable aide:
Ho now, Enobarbus!
—Act I, scene ii, line 131b
Enobarbus is a shortened form of Ahenobarbus, and the person being called is, in full, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. His father had fought with Pompey against Caesar and had died at the Battle of Pharsalus.
Enobarbus himself had fought with Brutus and Cassius against Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar and had commanded the fleet, in fact. Even after the Battle of Philippi, Enobarbus had held out as a pirate until he was won over by Mark Antony in 40 B.C., just before this play opens. He then became one of the most ardent of Antony's adherents.
… Sextus Pompeius
It is not surprising that Antony must leave for Rome. He must take care of the Parthian menace and he cannot do it if he leaves an angry Octavius Caesar in his rear. He must mend fences there, explain away the actions of his wife and brother, and patch up an understanding. Then, and only then, can he turn on the Parthians. In addition, there is trouble in the West, for that matter. Antony says to Enobarbus:
… the letters too
Of many our contriving friends in Rome
Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius
Hath given the dare to Caesar and commands
The empire of the sea.
—Act I, scene ii, lines 183-87
Sextus Pompeius (also called Pompey the Younger) was the younger son of Pompey the Great. He had been in Greece with his father when the Battle of Pharsalus had been lost and he was in the ship with his father when Pompey fled to Egypt. He remained in the ship as his father was rowed to the Egyptian shore and witnessed his father being stabbed and killed when he reached that shore. He was about twenty-seven years old then.
Some years later Sextus was in Spain when his older brother, Gnaeus Pompeius, held out against Julius Caesar. He was at the Battle of Munda, in which Gnaeus was defeated and slain in 45 b.c. (see page I-258). Sextus escaped and during the confusion that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar, quietly built up his strength at sea.
By 40 b.c. he was in control of the Mediterranean. He had seized Sicily soon after the assassination and was still holding it. This cut off Rome's grain supply, part of which came from Sicily itself, with the rest coming from Africa and Egypt in ships that Sextus could easily intercept. What it amounted to was that this younger son of Pompey had his hand at the throat of Rome, and Octavius Caesar, who lacked a navy, could do nothing about it.
Naturally, since nothing succeeds like success, there was the danger that Sextus' increasing power would breed still further access of power. As Antony says:
Our slippery people,
Whose love is never linked to the deserver
Till his deserts are past, begin to throw
Pompey the Great and all his dignities
Upon his son;
—Act I, scene ii, lines 187-91
(In this play Sextus' lines are identified as those of "Pompey," but I shall call him Sextus or Sextus Pompeius in order not to confuse him with his father, Pompey the Great.)
… Nilus' slime…
Enobarbus tells Cleopatra of the forthcoming separation (Antony has been with her a year), and she goes seeking Antony himself to confirm the news.
Poor Antony is in a dilemma. He is no match for Cleopatra and can only fluster and fume. He tries to be consoling and reassuring, but she will have none of it. He even tries to explain to her that her greatest fear (that he will return to his wife, Fulvia) is gone, since Fulvia is dead. She turns even that against him, saying:
O most false love!
Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill
With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see,
In Fulvia's death, how mine received shall be.
—Act I, scene iii, lines 62-65
In view of what is to happen in Act IV, this is dramatic irony, for Antony will react quite differently to the report of Cleopatra's death.
In frustration, Antony protests that he is faithful to her even though he must leave. He says:
By the fire
That quickens Nilus' slime, I go from hence
Thy soldier-servant …
—Act I, scene iii, lines 68-70
Egypt is a desert land where it never rains. What makes life possible there is the presence of the Nile River. (The name is of unknown origin. The Egyptians called it simply "The River"; but the Greeks named it "Neilos," which is "Nilus" in Latin spelling and "Nile" to us.)
The Nile is an unfailing source of water for drinking and irrigation. Once a year, moreover, its level rises as the snow on the distant Abyssinian and Kenyan mountains melt. The river waters flood the banks and deposit silt brought down from east-central Africa. The water-soaked fresh soil is outstandingly fertile and in the hot African sun ("the fire that quickens Nilus' slime") generous harvests grow.
… this Herculean Roman…
When Cleopatra's perversity finally moves Antony to rage, she still fleers at him, accusing him of merely pretending anger. She says:
Look, prithee, Charmian,
How this Herculean Roman does become
The carriage of his chafe.
—Act I, scene iii, lines 82-84
The sneer refers to one of Antony's more ridiculous pretensions (though it was taken seriously in his time). Roman noblemen liked to pretend they were descended from the gods and from mythical heroes. The Julian family, of which Julius Caesar was a member, was supposed to have descended from Venus. In similar fashion, the Antonian family, of which Mark Antony was a member, claimed to be descended from Anton, a mythical son of Hercules. Mark Antony himself did everything he could to model himself on the strong man of legend.
In the end, then, Mark Antony is forced to leave angrily, defeated in the battle of words with Cleopatra.
… the queen of Ptolemy
The scene now shifts to Octavius Caesar's house in Rome. Octavius Caesar is not much better off in Rome than Mark Antony is in Alexandria. He too is beset with problems, and he is annoyed that Mark Antony's inaction makes it necessary for himself to be all the more industrious. He is saying bitterly to Lepidus (the third member of the Triumvirate) as he reads a letter:
From Alexandria
This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike
Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy
More womanly than he;
—Act I, scene iv, lines 3-7
The phrase "the queen of Ptolemy" brings up an additional point that made Cleopatra unpopular with the Romans. In ancient Egypt it had long been the custom of the Pharaohs to marry their sisters. Since the Pharaonic blood was considered divine, it would not do to have one marry a mortal. Only a woman of the same line was a fit consort. At least, that was the rationalization.
When the Ptolemies ruled Egypt, they made it a point to adopt as many Egyptian customs as possible, in order to keep the populace quiet. This included brother-sister marriages, and Cleopatra was born of a family that had many times been involved in incest (see page I-185), something that was as repulsive to the Romans as it would be to us.
In fact, when Cleopatra's father died, Cleopatra and her brother, Ptolemy XII,.were made joint rulers and were, in fact, married. It was expected that eventually they might have offspring who would succeed to the throne. Ptolemy XII, however, died in the course of Julius Caesar's small war in Alexandria in 48 b.c., and Cleopatra's rule was joined with a still younger brother, Ptolemy XIII.
Ptolemy XIII was only ten years old at the time, and in 44 B.C., when the news of Julius Caesar's assassination reached her, Cleopatra had the boy killed and then ruled jointly with her son, Caesarion, only three years old at the time. The new king was Ptolemy XIV.
Octavius Caesar's reference to her as "queen of Ptolemy" stressed the fact that she had been married to her brothers, and we can be sure that this was included in the
whispering campaign that was conducted against Mark Antony.
… beaten from Modena…
Messages of disaster greet Octavius Caesar as they had greeted Antony. Octavius learns that Sextus Pompeius grows stronger along the coast and that pirates control the sea where Sextus himself does not. Daily Octavius Caesar's control over Rome grows shakier as its food supply dwindles. Octavius Caesar broods resentfully over the fact that he isn't being helped by Antony. Unaware that Antony is on his way westward, Octavius Caesar cries out:
Antony
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow, whom thou fough'st against
(Though daintily brought up) with patience more
Than savages could suffer.
—Act I, scene iv, lines 55-61
The reference is to the period following the assassination of Julius Caesar and deals with events not mentioned in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The events fall in the interval between Acts III and IV of that play (see page I-301).
Decimus Brutus (called "Decius" by Shakespeare) was in control of Cisalpine Gaul in northern Italy, and Mark Antony led an army northward to attack him. Decius fortified himself in Mutina, the modern Modena, 220 miles north of Rome. While Mark Antony fought there, Octavius Caesar, back in Rome, persuaded the Senate to declare war against Antony and to send an army against him led by the consul Hirtius; then another, led by the other consul, Pansa.
Mark Antony left his brother, Lucius, to conduct the siege of Mutina with part of the army, and then led the remainder against the consuls. Antony was badly defeated, but both Roman consuls were killed. (This was a stroke of luck for Octavius, for with both consuls dead, he was in full control of a victorious army.)
Antony had to retreat over the Alps into Gaul, and that retreat was attended by extraordinary suffering and hardship. Antony, in one of his better times, shared that suffering with his men and did so with such stoic patience that he endeared himself to the army. The tale of his nobility in this respect was undoubtedly told and retold with exaggeration, as we can see from the repulsive details Shakespeare has Octavius list:
Thou didst drink
The stale [urine] of horses and the gilded [scum-covered]
puddle Which beasts would cough at.
—Act I, scene iv, lines 61-63
The demi-Atlas.,.
Back in Alexandria, Cleopatra already misses Antony and is in a state of delicious self-pity. She says:
Give me to drink mandragora.
—Act I, scene v, line 4
Mandragora is an older form of "mandrake," a plant of the potato family which is native to the Mediterranean region. It has its uses as a cathartic, emetic, and narcotic. Which effect predominates depends on the dose, but Cleopatra thinks of the narcotic aspect, for when asked why she wants it, she says:
That I might sleep out this great gap of time
My Antony is away.
—Act I, scene v, lines 5-6
She thinks longingly of Antony, saying:
O, Charmian,
Where think'st thou he is now?
Stands he, or sits he?
Or does he walk?
Or is he on his horse?
O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!
Do bravely, horse, for wot'st thou whom thou mov'st?
The demi-Atlas of this earth. ..
—Act I, scene v, lines 18-23
Atlas was one of the Titans who warred against Jupiter (see page I-11). In fact, he may have been their general, for he was punished worse than the others. He was condemned to support the heavens on his shoulders.
As time went on, it became difficult to picture Atlas as holding up the sky. The Greeks learned more about astronomy and knew that there was no solid sky to support. The notion arose, then, of Atlas supporting the earth rather than the sky.
Cleopatra pictures Antony here as supporting the weight of the problems of the Roman world. He shared this weight with Octavius Caesar, of course, so he himself was but a demi-Atlas; that is, half an Atlas.
… Phoebus' amorous pinches…
In contrast, the self-pitying Cleopatra seems to herself to be ugly and old. She says:
Think on me,
That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black
And wrinkled deep in time. Broad-fronted Caesar,
When thou wast here above the ground, I was
A morsel for a monarch; and great Pompey
Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow;
—Act I, scene v, lines 27-32
Phoebus is, of course, the sun, and to be black with the sun's pinches would be to be sun-tanned. A queen like Cleopatra, however, would certainly not allow herself to grow sun-tanned. That was for peasant girls.
What is meant is that she is dark by nature because she dwelt in a tropic land. It is part of the Egyptian-Negress notion of Cleopatra, the usual false picture.
Nor is she honestly "wrinkled deep in time." At this point in the story, she is twenty-nine years old; past her first youth, perhaps, but by no means old and wrinkled.
Still it is human for her to think of herself as she was nine years before, only twenty-one, when Julius Caesar knew her; and even earlier when she met not Pompey himself, but his older son, who bore the same name.
Her opulent throne…
But now comes a messenger to Cleopatra from Antony, with the gift of a pearl and with a pretty speech. He says:
"Say the firm Roman to great Egypt sends
This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot,
To mend the petty present, I will piece
Her opulent throne with kingdoms.
All the East (Say thou) shall call her mistress."
—Act I, scene v, lines 43-46
The story was indeed spread in Rome that Antony was planning to hand over Roman provinces to Cleopatra; even to make her Queen of Rome (with himself as king, of course); that a foreign ruler would thus raise an exotic throne upon the Capitol. In the end, this, more than anything else, was to embitter Rome against Antony.
Shakespeare gets a little ahead of history here. The threat of turning the East over to Cleopatra comes later.
At the moment, Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar, each waist-deep in trouble, were going to have to be friends whether they liked it or not, for only by working together could they survive.
But Cleopatra is not concerned with practical politics now. She is delighted with Mark Antony's remembrance and is ashamed of herself for so much as remembering Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius. When Charmian teases her with her onetime love of Julius Caesar, she dismisses it with a much quoted line, saying:
My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,
—Act I, scene v, lines 73-74
And indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of this play is that it is a paean to the ecstasies of mature love, rather than of the teen-age passions so often celebrated.
… every hour in Rome
The second act opens in Messina, Sicily, at the camp of Sextus Pompeius, who is in conversation with his captains, Menecrates and Menas. Sextus is rather euphoric, confident that his hold on Rome's food supply gives him the trump card and that Octavius Caesar and Lepidus can do nothing without Antony's military ability. As for Mark Antony, Sextus has full confidence in Cleopatra's charms. He says:
Mark Antony
In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make
No wars without doors.
—Act II, scene i, lines 11-13
He is, however, overconfident. Another one of his captains, Varrius, conies with unwelcome news:
This is most certain, that
I shall deliver: Mark Antony is every hour in Rome
Expected.
—Act II, scene i, lines 28-30
There is hope, of course, that upon arrival, Mark Antony will fall to quarrel
ing with Octavius. This is tentatively advanced as a possibility by Menas, but Sextus shakes his head. They may have cause enough to quarrel, but as long as the danger from the sea exists, they will have to make friends. At the end of the short scene, things look as bad for Sextus as, at the start, they had looked good.
Hark, Ventidius
In Rome, in Lepidus' house, it is now late in 40 b.c. The confrontation between Octavius Caesar and Mark Antony is about to take place and poor Lepidus is in a sweat lest the two collide destructively. He has undoubtedly done his best to influence Octavius Caesar to be accommodating, and he pleads with Enobarbus to do the same with respect to Mark Antony.
From opposite sides approach the two triumvirs, each with friends, and each pretending to be deep in private discussion so that, for effect, he can seem to be ignoring the other.
Antony speaks first to the general at his side-his thoughts, to all appearances, on military matters in the East:
// we compose well here, to Parthia.
Hark, Ventidius.
—Act II, scene ii, lines 15-16a
Here he goes off, apparently, into military talk unheard by the audience and undoubtedly meant to impress Octavius.
Ventidius is Publius Ventidius Bassus, who in early life had been a poor man who made a living renting mules and carriages. He rose to become a general serving under Julius Caesar in Gaul and remained loyal to Julius Caesar during the war with Pompey. After the assassination of the great Julius, Ventidius served Mark Antony and has remained loyal to him since.