The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March

by Thornton Wilder

  I have made a new friend where least I expected to acquire one. There are perhaps reasons why the Queen should go to considerable lengths to ingratiate herself with me, but I think I am not easily deceived and I can say that the interest we took in one another was not feigned. Each was an object of curiosity to the other, each of an extreme difference; such contrasts with a touch of distrust may turn to contempt and ridicule, with a touch of good will to delighted friendship.

  I arrived by boat with my nephew and his wife; we were greeted by the Queen at the gate which had been built as a reproduction of the Temple of Philae on the Nile. Our Tiber was all Egyptian and of new beauty; and such was the Queen. There are those who deny it; surely their eyes are askew with prejudice. Her skin is the colour of the finest Greek marble and as smooth; her eyes are brown, large and most living. From them and from her low but ever-varying voice proceeds an unbroken message of happiness, well-being, amusement, intelligence, and assurance. Our Roman beauties were there in number and I became aware that Volumnia and Livia Dolabella and Clodia Pulcher were stiff, ill at ease, and as it were haunted by an imminent irritability.

  The Queen was dressed, I am told, as the Goddess Isis. The jewels she wore and the embroidery on her gown were of blue and green. She led us first through the gardens, directing her remarks chiefly to Pompeia who seemed struck with fright and could find no answers, I am sorry to say. The Queen’s manner is completely simple and should be able to banish constraint from all who address her; so it did with me. She led us to her throne and presented to us the nobles and ladies of her court. She then turned to greet the long lines of guests who had been waiting while her attention was given to the Dictator.

  I had intended to return early to bed, but lingered viewing the countless diversions with friends of my generation and tasting the extraordinary dainties (much to the fright of Sempronia Metella who assured me that they had been poisoned). Suddenly I felt a hand brush my arm. It was the Queen asking me if I would sit down with her. She led me to a sort of bower, warmed by braziers, and seating me beside her on a couch smiled at me for a moment in silence.

  ‘Noble Lady,’ she said, ‘it is the custom in my country when one woman meets another to ask certain questions . . .’

  ‘I am delighted, great Queen,’ I said, ‘to find myself in Egypt, and to observe the customs of that country.’

  ‘We ask one another,’ she replied, ‘how many children we have had and whether the confinements were difficult.’

  At this we both burst out laughing. ‘That is not a Roman custom,’ I said, thinking of Sempronia Metella, ‘but I think it very sensible.’ And I told her my history as a mother and she told me hers. She drew from a cabinet beside her some admirable paintings of her two children and showed them to me. ‘All else,’ she whispered, ‘is like a mirage of our deserts. I adore my children. I could wish to have a hundred. What is there in the world to equal one of those darling heads, those darling fragrant heads? But I am a Queen,’ she said, looking at me with tears in her eyes, ‘I must go on journeys. I must be busy with a hundred other things. Have you grandchildren?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘None.’

  ‘Do you understand what I mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, Majesty, I do.’

  And we sat silent. My dear boy, that is not the conversation I expected to have with the Witch of the Nile.

  We were interrupted by my nephew bringing forward Marc Antony and the actress Cytheris. They were indeed taken aback to see the two of us sitting in tears amid the loud orchestras and the high torches.

  ‘We were talking of life and death,’ said the Queen, rising and passing her hand across her cheeks. ‘My party is the happier for it.’

  She appeared to ignore my great-nephew, but she addressed Cytheris: ‘Gracious lady,’ she said, ‘I have been told – and by no mean judge – that no one speaks the Latin language, nor the Greek, more beautifully than you do.’

  This letter is already too long. I shall be writing you again before I see you. Your last request I shall indeed comply with explicitly. Your letter and the prospect of my visit have made me very happy.

  XLI

  Cytheris, the Actress, to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

  [October 28.]

  I have been looking forward with happy expectation, my dear friend, to my visit to you in December. We shall talk and we shall read and again I shall climb all the heights and descend to all the coves. No cold and no storm will discourage me.

  Something took place last night which renders this voyage doubly grateful. A long and dear association of my life came to an end; a bell rang; a music ceased. You are the only person who will ever hear any word of it from me. You, who have heard so much of its progress, will hear its ending. The life that I have lived with Marc Antony for fifteen years has come to an end.

  Since long before the arrival of the Queen of Egypt, Marc Antony had been engaged in mocking her reputation for fascination and astuteness. He boasted to me of how he had been able to irritate the Dictator by representing himself as superior to any meretricious charms that Cleopatra might cast over natures less firmly rooted than his own. Few can have been in the position that I have been to observe the unbelievable patience with which the Dictator has supported the thoughtlessness of his nephew, a patience which has borne provocations of greater consequence than the one I am describing – though they could scarcely have been more exasperating.

  Since the Queen’s arrival, Marc Antony has attended her court frequently, and reports have reached me that there he has harassed her with an ironic gallantry. The Queen, apparently, did not counter this impertinence with playful superiority as she could well have done; but on several occasions in full presence she rebuffed him with undisguised anger. Rome began talking.

  Last night we attended together her great reception. My friend was in the highest spirits. On the way I noticed for the first time that his remarks about her betrayed true admiration and a sort of amazed delight. I knew then that, still unknown to himself, he was the victim of passion.

  When I see you I shall describe to you the magnificence of the palace and of the entertainment offered to us. I do not know how such receptions are conducted in Alexandria, but I suspect that the Queen was amazed to see how ill we Romans behave at large gatherings.

  As usual the women withdrew into constrained groups, standing or sitting by themselves. In other portions of the grounds the younger men, drinking heavily, became boisterous and engaged in those inevitable contests of daring and strength which are their only pastime. You may well imagine that Marc Antony was in the forefront. They built first one and then another bonfire and forming in long lines raced across the gardens to jump them. I have learned to turn my back to these hazards; but I was soon aware that my friend was climbing trees and leaping from bough to roof followed by those whom he had challenged. Accidents occurred; heads and limbs were broken, but the tumultuous drunken singing only rose the higher. The exquisite pageants which the Queen had prepared were left to be viewed by a few women and a few grandfathers.

  By midnight the men began to tire of these sports; many lay in drunken sleep among the bushes; the bonfires died down. A ballet was staged amid many-coloured torches on an island and the artificial lake was filled with swimming girls.

  The Dictator came upon me watching this show and did me the honour of sitting beside me. His wife had not enjoyed the evening and was pressing him to take his leave. I am now convinced that what then took place had been contrived by Clodia Pulcher, though she had worked with material all too ready to her hand. Clodia, like Marc Antony, had been attending the Queen’s court almost daily. Rightly or wrongly, she had come to regard herself as the Queen’s intimate and principal confidante in Rome. I had had occasion to witness Clodia’s arrival at the party. She came late, accompanied by her brother and a sprinkling of gallants from the Aemilian Draughts and Swimming Club. The Queen had long since left her station before the throne and
was mingling with the guests. Throughout the greater part of the evening the Dictator had remained by his wife’s side and had merely paid the Queen the most objective deference; but at this moment they were advancing side by side toward the avenue, returning from a fight between lions and tigers which had taken place in the stockade for wild beasts. Clodia saw before her a situation in which she could never participate: a woman who envied no one in the world; a Dictator twenty years younger; and a happiness that was then expressing itself in a laughter that meant ill-will to no one. I have known Clodia for many years; I could divine the pain that this spectacle cost her.

  When the water-ballet was ended, Caesar’s party rose to go in search of the Queen in order to take our leave. She was not at the lake. She was not in the palace. At the left of the avenue a stage had been constructed. Earlier in the evening it had served as the scene for a musical drama based on Egyptian history, but it now lay deserted and fitfully lighted by the torches from the court of honour near by. I cannot now remember what guided our steps in that direction. The scene represented a glade by the banks of the Nile, a grove of palm trees, bushes, and a thicket of reeds. To be brief, we surprised the Queen struggling and protesting in the embrace of a very drunken and ardent Marc Antony. There is no doubt that she was protesting, but there are degrees of protest and one could gather that this protest had been continuing for some time in a situation where escape was not difficult. In the half-dark we could not be sure what we saw.

  Appearances were saved. Charmian, the Queen’s attendant, appeared at that moment from behind the scene, bearing the brazier without which Cleopatra cannot support our cold weather. The Queen berated Marc Antony for clumsiness. The Dictator berated him for drunkenness. The moment was apparently passed off in laughter. No explanation was made, however, of why they had found themselves in so deserted a spot. I, from whom Marc Antony can keep no secret, knew that he was experiencing what he had experienced for me fifteen years before and had not known elsewhere in all his vagaries. What it meant for the Queen I could not know save as it was reflected in the great man beside me; no actor can equal Caesar and only an actor could divine that he was struck to the heart. No one else, I think, observed this. Pompeia had lingered behind us on the path.

  We took our leave. In the litter, Marc Antony laid his head against my ear sobbing and repeating my name a hundred times. There could be no clearer farewell.

  I knew that sooner or later this hour would come. The lover had become a son. I shall not pretend to a lightheartedness I do not feel; but I shall not exaggerate a suffering which, without my realising it, had already been half-transmuted into resignation. I come to Capri with a higher recognition of friendship – that friendship which I could never know with Marc Antony, for friendship flowers from minds which are akin. Wonderful are its resources; but I am a woman. Only to you, whose wisdom and patience have no end, can I cry out for the last time that friendship – even yours – is and must be second to the love I have lost. It filled my days with radiance as it filled my nights with unbearable sweetness. For fifteen years I have found no reason to ask myself why one lives or why one suffers. I must now learn to live without the loving glances from those eyes on which I have dreamed my life away.

  XLI-A

  Cleopatra to Caesar.

  [Midnight, October 27.]

  Deedja, Deedja, believe me, believe me, what could I do? He led me there, pretending that he and his companions were to show me the greatest feat of strength ever seen in Rome. He was both drunk and very sly. I am in a maze. I do not know how that could have taken place. I am certain that creature Clodia Pulcher was somehow a part of it. She had goaded or challenged him to it. She had shown him the plan first. I am sure of it.

  Deedja, I am innocent. I shall not sleep until you send me word that you understand it all; that you trust me and love me. I am mad with horror and grief.

  Send me, I pray you, word by this messenger.

  XLI-B

  Caesar to Cleopatra.

  [From the house of Cornelius Nepos, whither Cleopatra’s messenger had traced Caesar and where he found him sitting beside the sick bed of G. Valerius Catullus.]

  Sleep, sleep well.

  Now it is you who are doubting me. I know my nephew well. I understood what had taken place at once. Do not doubt your Deedja’s understanding.

  Sleep well, great Queen.

  Book Three

  XLII

  Caesar, Supreme Pontiff, to Madam, the President of the College of the Vestal Virgins.

  [August 9.]

  Reverend Maid:

  This letter is for your eyes alone.

  Last spring the Lady Julia Marcia repeated to me some admirable words which you had let fall in a conversation with her. She is unaware of the importance your words were to have for me and she knows nothing of the letter I am now writing you.

  She remembered your saying that you regretted that there were occasional elements of grossness in the sublime rituals of our Roman religion. Those words recalled a similar expression of my mother, the Lady Aurelia Julia. You may remember that when I was previously elected to the office of Supreme Pontiff in the year [61] the ceremonies of the Good Goddess, being held in my house, my mother was Lay Directress. The Lady Aurelia was a woman of exemplary piety and deeply versed in the religious traditions of Rome. As Supreme Pontiff I gave her every assistance in the celebration of the rites at that time, but you may be assured that I was told no more of what takes place during them than was fitting for a man holding that high office to hear. She did tell me, however, that she energetically deplored certain passages of ancient and barbarous coarseness that inhered in the ritual and which, she said, were not essential to the greatness of the action arising from it. You may also remember that in that year (this much I was permitted to know) she took upon herself the responsibility of substituting serpents of clay for living serpents – an innovation which was adopted without opposition and which, if I am not mistaken, has persisted to this day.

  I am aware, revered Madam, that it is the custom that the Vestal Virgins retire from the ceremonies at midnight, that is prior to the concluding ceremonial. I think I am not wrong in concluding from this that certain symbolic actions take place after that hour which might be repugnant to the sensibilities of the dedicated and the chaste. A reflection of such a repugnance I have not failed to notice throughout my life in the attitude of the women of my household. To a far greater extent I have been aware, however, of their joy in those rites, and of the deep devotion they brought to them. The great Marius said of them, ‘They are like a column upholding Rome.’ I could wish that it be said of them and of the body of our Roman ceremonies what Pindar said of the Eleusinian mysteries: that they held the world together from falling into chaos.

  Permit me to urge you, noble maid, to meditate upon the subject I have brought to your attention. Should you think it advisable you may send this letter to the Lady Julia Marcia. I feel it to be within the power of you two, mutually aiding one another, to perform a signal service in the highest interests of our people. It is not without fear and awe that one would venture to alter one word or gesture in such ancient and hallowed exercises. It is my opinion, however, that it is the law of life that all things grow and change, casting aside the husks that protected their origins and emerging into fairer and nobler forms. It is so that the Immortal Gods have ordained it.

  XLII-A

  Caesar to the Lady Julia Marcia on her farm in the Alban Hills.

  [August 11.]

  I enclose the copy of a letter which I have just written to the President of the College of the Vestal Virgins. I hope I have expressed correctly the idea which you had in mind.

  A great deal of resistance to any innovations in these matters is to be expected. Women, for good and for ill, are impassioned conservators. Men have long since eliminated the grosser elements in their rituals – the rites of the Arval Brethren and others. Perhaps I should say, they have dethroned them and set them to one s
ide; they remain as vestiges, marginal to the ceremonies, some harmless clowning which takes place before and after the principal rites.

  It is with mortification that I survey the roster of our first families, seeking several women of good sense who would be of assistance and support to you in this necessary work. In the preceding generation it would not have been difficult to have named a score. Now I see only those who will attempt to place obstacles in your way: Sempronia Metella and Fulvia Manso, from unthinking conservatism; Servilia, from resentment that she was not the initiator of the project; Clodia Pulcher, from the spirit of contradiction. I would not be surprised if Pompeia also attempted to voice an opinion contrary to our intentions.

  My dear aunt, I gave myself yesterday some not inconsiderable pleasure. As you know I am founding some colonies on the Black Sea. My map shows me an admirable location whose conformity suggests that it furnish the site of two adjacent towns. I am naming them after your great husband and yourself; they will be called Marius City and Julimarcia. I am told that the place is salubrious and of great beauty, and I am sending to it the most highly recommended of the families who have applied for transportation.

  XLII-B

  Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

  [About September 6.]

  973. [Concerning reforms introduced into the Mysteries of the Good Goddess.] As an anonymous letter has recently informed me, a dictatorship is a powerful incitement to the composition of anonymous letters. I have never known a time when so many were in circulation. They are continually arriving at my door. Inspired by passion and enjoying the irresponsibility of their orphaned condition, they nevertheless have one great advantage over legitimate correspondence: they expose their ideas to their ultimate conclusion; they empty the sack.

  I have stirred up a hornet’s nest of them by attempting to remove certain primitive crudities which I know – though none too clearly – are incorporated in the celebration of the Mysteries of the Good Goddess. My shrouded correspondents are, of course, women. They do not suspect that I am at the bottom of this effort at reform; they merely appeal to me as Supreme Pontiff and ultimate arbiter.