by Jack Lindsay
Caesarion, now about sixteen years old, lounged at his mother’s side. He had the large head of his father Caesar, the same features in a weakened form. His head seemed too large for him, uneasily balanced; his shallow eyes were troubled; his lips were a petulant cupid’s bow. Olympos, mercilessly noting every detail, mouthed to himself the titles that burdened down the pleasant-faced weakling boy: King of Kings, Co-regent of Egypt, Caesar, Father-loving, Mother-loving God. The King of Kings was leaning against a cushioned window-seat, turning round and examining his signet-ring, and exchanging remarks with Antyllus, the son of Antonius by his former wife Fulvia, a sulky boy who plucked at the buckle of his belt and smiled maliciously every now and then.
Cleopatra was addressing the younger princes: Alexandros the Sun, the Great King of Armenia and Media and (yet unconquered) Parthia, a plump little boy of nine; and Ptolemaios Philadelphos, King of Phoinicia, Northern Syria and Cilicia, who was very inattentive, being about five years of age. Ptolemaios was dressed like Caesarion in the Macedonian royal costume, chlamys and military sandal-shoes, with a broad-brimmed hat dangling at his side and a white fillet round his head; but Alexandros was dressed in Median fashion, with long loose trousers of silk and embroidered cloak over a sleeved tunic, and in his hand he held the tall stiff tiara with its back-flap of cloth. Despite his hatred of the indignity of trousers he was dressed up thus daily to accustom him to the garb, for he was to go to Armenia as soon as things settled down.
Cleopatra was inquiring into the digestion, the lessons, and the manners of her sons.
But Cleopatra the Moon, the Queen of Cyrene and twin of Alexandros, caused a diversion by quarrelling with a nurse and weeping. Her mother hurried across to her, asked the cause of the outburst, and rebuked the Moon for her un-princess-like behaviour; for the highborn must learn to govern themselves before they govern others, and it is only by an austere certainty of justice in one’s attitudes that one can achieve the ruthless serenity of aristocratic decision. The Moon listened, large-eyed.
Iotapa, the Median princess who was married to Alexandros, looked on disdainfully. She was thirteen years old and therefore despised her husband, and also considered that to govern efficiently one only needed to know one’s own mind: a condition which she had already attained.
Alexandros, catching his wife’s cold eye, was annoyed. She put out her tongue at him behind Cleopatra’s back, and wrinkled up her nose.
Alexandros in indignation threw his tiara on the tiled floor and jumped on it.
“You mustn’t, dear,” said Cleopatra, turning to him patiently.
“She makes fun of me,” sobbed Alexandros. “She wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t dressed like this. Why ain’t I dressed like the others?”
“You don’t make fun of him, do you, Iotapa?” said Cleopatra to the girl.
Iotapa considered Cleopatra insolently. “If he doesn’t look funny, how could I?” she asked in innocent tones. “I think the clothes suit him.”
“They’re the clothes of your own country. You ought to like them. You mustn’t tease him.” She turned to Alexandros, “She admires you ever so much in your clothes That’s why she teases you about them.”
Alexandros looked utterly unconvinced, but Iotapa asked sharply, her dark eyes flashing with sudden tears:
“Where is my father? what have you done to him?” Her black hair, cut in a straight fringe, enclosed her face in a gleaming helmet.
“He’s gone home,” answered Cleopatra in a voice of dominating finality. Then she was drawn back to the Moon, who was weeping with vexation; and Iotapa took advantage of the diversion to sidle away to the window. Caesarion looked frightened and moved aside, tapping the lozenge-panes with his finger-tips and gazing out towards the western sun; but Antyllus uncrooked his lounging knee and awaited Iotapa. She talked fast in a low voice, biting her lips to stop the giggles. The attendants looked on in dismay, not liking to interrupt Cleopatra and draw her attention to his breach of etiquette. But Cleopatra, finishing with the Moon, noticed, and approached the window.
“We want to go fishing,” said Antyllus, half afraid, half boastful. “Us two, I mean.” He pointed to Caesarion.
“I’d like to go too,” said Iotapa.
“You shall all go fishing later on,” answered Cleopatra, intimidating Iotapa with a slightly blank glance. “When I’ve time to arrange it. But you mustn’t dare to do anything about it till then. You’ll all be drowned.”
“I can swim,” said Iotapa, recovering herself and swinging her arms.
“So can I,” said Antyllus.
Alexandros the Sun shouted, “Make her stop talking. She’s my wife.”
“Go and speak to him,” said Cleopatra with a sweet smile that made Iotapa feel her knees tremble.
But Iotapa was determined not to succumb. She moved across to the Sun, hunching her shoulders up provocatively, and then insulted the Sun by offering him her finger to suck and hissing “Cry-baby” in his ear. The Sun punched her, but she couldn’t complain after her taunt. Instead, she pulled his cloak back on the pretence of settling it and made him cough.
Olympos was watching Cleopatra. Weariness seemed to take her in mid-speech with Caesarion and Antyllus. She motioned to the tutors, nurses, pages, guards and other members of the retinues, to remove the children. Ptolemaios and the Moon were arguing, but gladly hastened from the room after kissing their mother’s hand. The Sun, however, bolted without that proper dismissal, lazily followed by Iotapa. Antyllus gave a glance round and also went. Cleopatra signed to a eunuch, whispered, and waved him away; he went out quickly. Caesarion dawdled at the window, pulling at the curtain-strings and startled by a dead fly that he dislodged from above. Nervously he dragged out a thread from the curtain-fringe and was dismayed to see that its absence showed; he tried ineffectively to push it back, to move the other threads to hide the gap.
“Is there anything I can do, mother?”
“No, darling.”
She kissed him on the brow, then on the mouth. He stared at her with big-eyed affection, tried to say something, and went out after the others. Cleopatra sank back in her chair, the smile hardening on her face. She sat thinking for a moment, then looked up and saw Olympos.
“Come here,” she said, without raising her voice.
He saw her lips move and knew that she was summoning him; and he crossed the wide floor. His foot crunched on a biscuit that one of the children had smuggled in and dropped. The shining blue floor was littered with the skins of tigers and panthers. In the centre stood a large table of citrus-wood, the leg and top cut solid from a single trunk: a table worth its weight in gold in the collectors-market. Across the polished top ran a dark streak which would give it in the trade the name of murena-table, from a resemblance fancied to the streak across the back of the murena-fish.
Olympos passed the table, the empty gilt chairs with legs ending in carved lions-paws, and slowly neared Cleopatra. It seemed to take him longer to cross the room than the city. The weariness of Cleopatra seemed to descend upon him, making desolate the room that was lately so noisy. Then he found himself bowing before Cleopatra, who said nothing. He took hold of Cleopatra’s wrist between his thumb and forefinger, counted the pulse for a while, then respectfully lowered the hand and looked into the worn face.
“You need a rest, Your Majesty. But I know it is no use suggesting such things.”
“No use at all.”
She answered in soft halting tones, twining and untwining her hands, not looking at him. Then she spoke in a matter-of fact way:
“He is drinking himself to death on that island.”
“You can do nothing.”
She waved her hand as if dismissing something unpleasant. “I wish he would end it. That’s all.” She knew that Antonius was waiting in the hope she would come to humble herself—to what purpose?
“I didn’t expect anything else.”
She looked up at Olympos and smiled. “You’re a good man, Olympos. I’d ask your advice, but nobody
’s advice can help me.”
Olympos wondered if he would suggest that it was unwise to tax the Egyptian temples further, but decided that everything else was equally unwise and most unwise of all was political advice.
Cleopatra walked to the window and stared down on the rock-island and its Timonion. “I can’t think as things are. Something must happen.” She went on dully. “Thing’s have been worse before. But I was young then. And the world was different. I can’t understand. What is happening?”
Olympos lowered his head. She walked up to him and lifted his head again, her finger under his chin.
“You old hypocrite,” she said, smiling sadly. “You don’t care what happens to us.”
“Sometimes I don’t. I feel out of it all. You don’t want me to pity you.” She shook her head, and he went on, also sadly smiling, “I care more for my young niece than for the fate of Alexandria, with Egypt thrown in as makeweight.”
Cleopatra walked back to the window.
“If anyone else said that, I’d crush him. But you—when you said it, I merely liked you a little more.”
She turned and her face seemed very haggard. “I want some more sleeping-draughts.”
He inclined his head and made to go.
“Thank you, Olympos,” she said, resuming her quiet matter-of-fact voice.
She looked out into the harbour. Blueness of space, and birds winging, a world of freedom soft with petals. Spring water for the beggar’s brat, and apples from the roadside tree. Death for the queen. Death came nearer, yet the horizon was still as far, unclouded with sails. Why couldn’t it stay thus, a happy world relaxed between lunch and dinner-time? There was nowhere to hide. A queen was branded like a condemned slave; it was written on her eyes, between her breasts, in the small blue veins on the inner-side of her thighs. And yet she only wanted to watch the birds, to be free. All other ambitions faded garishly, a garland crushed in crude night-hours of the darkened senses. The horizon was closing in, beaked with war-galleys.
The cruel hunger-cry of a sea-gull reached the room. There lay the trap. Prepare to die, while the earth grew more precious, a tomb giving up miraculous objects of beauty from a forgotten past, a desecrated past: beautiful objects of which the use had become forgotten, and a body crumbling in the shock of sunlight, the hammers of the sun.
Quickly she went into the next room.
*
The secretaries were standing obsequiously round the low table on which the documents had been laid in sorted piles. She did not seat herself on the ebony stool or recline on the couch while they brought her the documents one by one. She leaned over the table, her single gold bracelet thudding on the wood.
The Chief Secretary of the Dikasterion bustled forwards, bowing three times and fingering his memoranda dealing with law-appeals. The clerks from the Treasury edged a little closer. Cleopatra glanced rapidly through a pile of papyrus sheets: mere details of executive, which needed her signature. One document looked suspicious and she placed it aside, for later investigation. Then all the petitions. A world crying for justice—many of the criers being people wronged by her orders, but those were merchants, tradesmen, who knew only too well how to look after their own; justice was a perilous cry for them to raise. She returned to the document that had aroused her suspicions. It was signed Hermias, head scribe of the third ward of the Emporion. Yes, that was a man whom she had already once detected in minor peculations, but he had excuses; this time he would be degraded and beaten with canes.
More petitions from the merchants. Let them take care. She had been forced to strong measures on her return. The wealth of Egypt had been poured out to furnish Antonius with his army; twice he had drained Egypt with promises to pay with the plunder of Parthia. Her teeth gritted. She wanted to throw all the petitions into a fire, into the harbour.
To Theon: Whereas those from the City who do agricultural work in the Prosopite and Bubastite Nomes have addressed a Petition to Us in Audience on the 16th Phaophi against the officials of the Ten Nomes, declaring how these, contrary to Our will and the orders repeatedly sent out in accordance with Our decisions, by those over the administration, to the effect that no one should demand of them anything above the correct Royal Dues, essay to act wrongfully and to include them among those of whom rural and provincial dues, which concern them not, are exacted, We, being exceedingly indignant and judging it well...
She looked up, pressing on the table with her spread fingertips.
“This has been going on for a long time. I remember the details.”
The clerk ducked down and answered. “Perhaps you are right, Your Majesty. You are always right.”
She took up a split reed-pen and ran a line through the writing.
“This is not strong enough. Dismiss Theon. Give these people permits to draw on the dioiketes for the money that they’ve been cheated out of.”
It couldn’t be afforded, but justice must be done. Better throw a few merchants and tradesmen into jail for spreading treasonous rumours, and fine them heavily. Put another tax on the resident Jews. Give them something to squeal about.
She went on reading through the appeals, The waiting clerk of the Royal monopolies fidgetted with a pile of papers that he had rested on a side-table. She felt the blood hammering behind her brow. Her eyes were hot with pain, weak with sleepless nights, and the letters twisted and ran into one another, skipped like tiny daimons, ravens of ill-omen perched on a line. She would never be able to go through all the documents. The Romans might arrive the day after tomorrow. Why not tell the departments to do as they liked? She looked at the chief clerk’s shifty eyes and returned to the documents, swiftly picking out the central point of each and settling it.
Queen Cleopatra Father-loving Goddess and King Ptolemaios who is also Caesar Father-loving Mother-loving God to the Strategos of the Tani te Nome Greeking: Let the subjoined Decree with the enclosed Royal Letters be transcribed in Greek and in Native script and let it be put up publicly in the metropolis and in the principal places of the Nome...
She signed in long scrawling letters. The pile was thinning. The ache left her eyes, and then came stabbing back.
The pile was ended.
“Now bring me the monopoly-accounts.”
The other treasury-clerks edged closer in. She leaned over the pile of papers with burning eyes and stiffly painful back. Sea-gulls were outside, crying with hunger, despite the plentiful refuse of the docks, crying with the fear of the sated belly. An unprotected driven world, attacking, attacked, and soft with petals, frank in the lucid bridal light.
“Where is the account of the state linen-factory,” she asked harshly.
A cowering clerk slid towards the table.
5 TEMPTATION
The look-out, who was stationed in the tower during the day, announced that a strange-looking ship had anchored in the wharf under the fort at the land-end of the Great Mole. She wasn’t a merchant-ship, nor an ordinary war-ship. Antonius, on hearing the report, climbed to the tower-top and inspected the new-comer for himself. She had a low-lying swift look, and from his height he could see the glint of shields along the bulwarks. The sails were dyed purple, and a Babylonian carpet hung over the stern.
His hand trembled as he gazed. Could the ship be bringing an envoy from Rome? It was a bad month for navigation. No action would be taken yet, surely. But the boat had come from somewhere.
He composed his countenance and climbed slowly down the steps with tightened lips.
Then the door-keeper reported a man in livery hastening along the causeway towards the Timonion. Antonius made no answer and lay still without moving. Then he leaped up, called for his sword, and placed it under the pillows of his couch.
The door-keeper, returning, declared that a messenger from King Herodes of Judaea had arrived. Antonius breathed deeply, nodded his head, and sat passing his hands over his chest, feeling it fill out and rise.
The man was admitted, a Syrian with a downy beard that ran along t
he line of his jaw in short flat curls. He doffed his braided cap and fell on his knees, saying that King Herodes desired to speak with his Lord and Master, the Autocrator.
“Let him come,” said Antonius, drawing himself up with dignity. Then he looked at the Syrian’s small sycophantic face, the out-turned ears, the fringe of square-cut curls damply stuck to the forehead; and he went on with a short laugh that left his face twitching. “But let him bring no woman. Not even a flea-bitch. Not even a mirror in which a woman’s looked. Not even...not even...”
His fingers went to his eyes and he scratched the itching lids, gesturing for the messenger to go.
The messenger had already gone. Antonius called for some red wine. The pale wine, he said, made him sick; it was the urine of female elephants bought cheap by wicked vintagers. But the red wine was blood of the god.
The door-keeper reported a procession on the causeway.
“Send them back,” said Antonius. “Only Herodes can enter. And search him to see that he hasn’t a woman hidden about him.” He roared with laughter, then spoke cautiously.
“Didn’t she slip in to catch Caesar first in a bundle of carpets? Tread on her.”
Herodes was announced. Eros and Victor received him and removed his sandals, brought him a ewer of warm water and washed his feet and hands. He submitted impatiently. Victor studied him during these ministrations. A tall spare man with piercing black eyes and hooked nose, a heavy mouth and thickly-unguented hair. Smelling of food and something else. Victor didn’t know what. A smell like crushed ants.
Herodes entered the reception-room. Antonius did not rise.
“You read the inscription on the door?”
“No. I came to see my Lord.”
He spoke roughly, without any wheedling tones and there was a clearness in his voice, a sinewy self-satisfaction, that shook Victor’s unpleasant impression but increased his fear of this Arab King of the Jews.
“I am no man’s lord,” said Antonius brusquely, something of his old authority coming back to his voice as he unconsciously pitched his accents in key with those of Herodes. “Take a seat, and drink, and go.”