Last Days With Cleopatra

by Jack Lindsay

  Daphne and Victor had no need to sing. Every sense sang for them. Even before the birds came back with the spring, they thought that they heard birds everywhere; and when the earth burst into flowers, they merely wondered why they hadn’t been picking flowers before, because they were sure that they’d been smelling flowers wherever they went; and when they found thickening grass to lie on, they merely thought that they were feeling lazier and therefore more aware of such things as grass-beds.

  Olympos had been thinking about Daphne since her request for his help to gain her solstice-outing, and had decided that Nicias wasn’t acting fairly by her. He called on him and told him so.

  “You ought to bring home some of the better-class young students—to dine with you. They’d be honoured, and they could meet Daphne. She’s growing up.”

  Nicias considered the suggestion.

  “I’ve nothing against what you say. She’ll have to be married sometime or other, I suppose—though my sister never married. She was a trifle crabbed, but marriage would doubtless have only made her worse; and anyhow she died of internal troubles that even such a learned doctor as you didn’t seem to understand—despite the advances of medical science.”

  “But Daphne—”

  “I’ll bring some students home then. Some lads with money. I wouldn’t like to see her in want. I don’t care whom she marries as long as he’s a pure-blooded Greek.”

  So Nicias promised, and promptly forgot all about his promise, and no students were brought home. Nicias wasn’t interested in his students. Their characters were under-life-size, and he wanted men and women more virtuous and more wicked than men or women had ever been; he wanted life that achieved the ritual of tragic drama. The attendants at the Museion grinned with the tolerance of well-trained servants of an ancient and famous institution as they watched him slouch about, a roll under his arm, blind to the world that lusted and plotted on all sides.

  *

  Alexandria was almost a second homeland to the Jews. Their colony had grown until it filled the whole of one of Alexandria’s five districts, and they were the wealthiest of the citizens. Though they piously admitted the prior claims of the Temple of Yahwe at Jerusalem, they privately considered their own chief synagogue incomparable. They asserted that it could hold 100,000 worshippers. Seventy-one chairs of gold were reserved for the great masters and presidents of the Council; no single man could make himself heard from one end of the hall to the other; and flag-signals had to be made so that the congregations might utter their Amens at the right pauses. The Alexandrian Jews were the best-fed, most prosperous, and haughtiest of all Jews. Even the noble Sadducee families at Jerusalem were less stiff-backed; for the Sadducees, being suave men of the world, were too well bred to show insolence. Not so the Alexandrians, though in many ways they also had departed from the excessive strictness of the zealots at Jerusalem. They wished to gain the world while preserving Yahwe, but they saw no use in gaining the world unless they could display their wealth and answer hatred with hatred, blow with blow. It was therefore at Alexandria that anti-Semitism first arose.

  The time of Passover was come, and the underworld of Alexandria was hoping that the usual muttering would become a serious riot. Smoked ham or boiled bacon was the main meat of the Greek worker, to flavour his corn or beans; and the Jewish abstinence was regarded as an insult. But even the Egyptians, who also did not eat pig except on one ceremonial occasion (the conjunction of Moon and Sun, sister and brother), disliked the Jews. So the Greek talk about pig-flesh was but an excuse to attack Jewish clannishness.

  Manethos, following the account given by his ancestor, declared that the Jewish inhibition was borrowed from Egypt, since Moses, the prophet of the Jews, had originally been an Egyptian of the City of the Sun, named Osarsiph because he was a priest vowed to Osiris. Moreover, he quoted the case of an extinct set of Jewish sectaries who had met in secret garden-rites to sacrifice and eat pigs and mice. Consequently the Jews had stolen the taboo from Egypt, perverting it in the process.

  The antagonists of the Jews went further and said that the Jews worshipped the pig, because they were forbidden to kill pigs and religion forbade the killing only of’ things sacred.

  The argument about pigs arose whenever the Graeco-Egyptian populace wanted to harass the Jews; and if pigs weren’t the subject of abuse, it was an ass. For the anti-Semites insisted that the highest god of the Jews was an ass because Osarsiph-Moses had found water in the wilderness by following some wild-ass tracks. The question of the ass-god Yahwe (whose very name was a hee-haw) arose strongly at the festivals. For periodically broke out allegations that the Jews sacrificed gentile children to Yahwe; and as in such a populous city as Alexandria there were always children missing, it was always possible to declare that one or other of the missing children had been kidnapped by Jews.

  The Passover could only be celebrated at Jerusalem, and all Jews who could go went thither as pilgrims; yet the tens of thousands left at Alexandria could not let the occasion pass altogether unnoticed. They wished also to eat of lamb while the more fortunate faithful were leading victims to the altar of the one Temple, where Yahwe actually lived. Besides, it was to bondage in Egypt that the Passover referred; and the gentile Alexandrians, aware of the feast’s date, felt wrathful as it neared. For the Jews to have ignored the great day would have been prudent, but insulting to Yahwe. At least they must eat of lamb, sprinkle their doorposts, and read the exodus-scriptures. Thus only would they feel safe, even if they were doing what was unsafe.

  This year also there was a further scandal. The consumptive son of a Greek merchant had been converted to Judaism; and with the zeal of a convert had gone to extremes, joining the sect of Therapeutee who had their hermit-camp below the lake; and he had died in agonies a few days past, on a Sabbath, rupturing himself during colic in his effort not to evacuate, for the sect considered all motions to be a rank sin on the Sabbath—as bad as the emptying of bowels before the face of the offended Sun. The tale of the convert had been re-told until it constituted an alarming indictment of the enormities of Jewish religion.

  It was therefore with a defiant spirit and a certain amount of foreboding that the Jews on the 14th day of Nissen, between the sun’s decline and his setting, prepared to slay a male lamb yeaned that year and of unblemished body. The poorer bought the kid of a goat, or two families clubbed together for a single lamb. But for such an event even the poorest family could usually rely on charity from the richer brethren; and many thousands of lambs had their throats slit that afternoon in Alexandria according to the prescribed methods of slaughtering and blood-drainage. Every door-post and lintel of the Delta Area was sprinkled with blood, so that the Angel of Wrath might pass the doors of the faithful, who had given a hostage to gluttonous death, the lamb who died that man might live, ogre-man.

  Parties of young Greeks prowled through the streets, snuffling at the blood and swearing that the Jews were cannibals. Their business methods were proof enough, with-out the blood. Even the Egyptians felt stirred when they remembered that the blood-sprinkling was meant to commemorate a night when Yahwe sent the angels of death to blast the first-born of Egypt. It was hardly tactful to suggest the Passover on Egyptian soil. It was vain for intellectuals like Manethos to smile indulgently and say that the impeccable records of the Pharoahs knew nothing of any such plague, though they told of an expulsion of Jews as undesirable aliens at the time of Moses-Osarsiph. The Jews had wanted to see the first-born blasted, even if their magic had failed to bring it about.

  On the day of the Passover the lamb was roasted entire (bowels, head, and all, by some conservative households), and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter salads. The Delta Area was filled with the stream of burnt sacrifice, the odour of crackling flesh that makes the bestial stomach heave with craving. The faithful licked their lips.

  At the same time a score or so of Greek youths sacrificed a pig before the chief Synagogue, splashing the blood on the door. The vergers came out
with rods and were pelted with pig’s entrails. Other Jews appeared to contest the proceedings. A brawl began. A Greek was trampled, a Jew had his face rubbed in the pig’s carcass. Finally a Greek was killed. Both parties, dismayed, drew back, and there was a lull. But the news of the death spread rapidly; and as the ranks of the Greeks increased, an assault was made on the synagogue with the intention of hanging the dead pig on the pulpit.

  More Jews arrived to defend the Synagogue, and the whole square was filled with rioters. The head of the civic police had brought up a detachment of his men, but no one took any notice. He had a trumpet blown, but the call merely swelled the tumult of the brawlers. A small squadron of palace-cavalry next appeared, and succeeded in dispersing the mob after running down several men, both Greeks and Jews. The mob took refuge in alleys, doors, and the spaces between the houses, and showed no signs of going home, despite the speech delivered by the head of police. The Greeks merely shouted “Hee-haw” and declared that he was bribed by the Jewish elders to deliver up the children of paupers for the Jews to pick their bones. Wasn’t the feast admittedly in honour of the slaughtered children of Egypt?

  There was in Alexandria at this time an unprecedented number of reckless veterans and ruffians who had fled from Roman justice, and, with a vague sense that the days of independence were closing, they were eager for at least one last fling. They mingled with the mob, stiffening their resistance and suggesting that a search of the rich Jewish mansions would undoubtedly reveal piles of well-picked infant bones as well as money-chests, though there was no harm in despoiling the money-chests of cannibals. The situation was getting out of hand as dusk fell.

  The chief of police, leaving the cavalry-officer in charge, departed for the Palace, where he reported to the Queen. She had no sympathy for the Jews, who had long been her enemies; she knew that the Jewish bankers were intriguing with their fellows at Rome and Puteoli to bring about the annexation of her kingdom. The capitalists had no use for an Egypt outside the customs-bounds of the Roman Empire. Besides, she couldn’t forget that anonymous balladist who had described her offensively as saying in a supposed Testament:

  I’d give my blush, but I have none

  to make the rose more scarlet.

  My nose in pity I will leave

  to grace a Jewish harlot.

  For months the populace had hummed the tune whenever she was seen in public. But she couldn’t allow riots to go on. The city might catch fire; and the Jews were her subjects, however much suspected of treason. She decided to crush the riot and next week to impose a crippling tax on all Jewish merchants. She smiled, and told the chief of police to take the rest of the cavalry that were in the palace-barracks.

  “If there is a single sound heard in an hour’s time, I shall expect your resignation.”

  Antonius had come in and listened with growing interest. He walked away and came back, briskly rubbing his hands together.

  “Leave this to me. I’ve been waiting for something to do, though I didn’t know it until now, when there’s a chance...”

  His eyes besought her not to humiliate him before the police official. She for her part was angry with him for asking her at all. Why did he speak to her as if he was a menial; ashamed because he knew how he’d wasted her resources, because he didn’t have any real status in Egypt despite his half-marriage with her and his Roman dictatorship, because he didn’t dare to be her husband as King of Egypt. Always trying to compromise in essentials, to please everybody, to be a shadowy king-consort in Egypt and a legalized magistrate of Rome. Now he was trying to shame her in return, to make publicly obvious his dependence, his broken heart, his pathos of loyalty. Bah.

  “Of course take charge if you want to amuse yourself,” she said coldly and lightly—coldly enough to wound Antonius, lightly enough to deceive the police official.

  Antonius was troubled by her tone but overjoyed by her words. Action! He rubbed his hands still more briskly, and whistled to his pages, who received his orders and came running with a uniform, a cuirass, leathern kilts, tunic, cloak, sword. Antonius snapped out his orders. The roughness of the leather delighted him like a soft caress; the lush scarlet of the cloak soothed his eyes; the gleam of the polished silver and steel was like spring sunlight on singing waters; the clank of the sword, the tightening of the belt, the pressure of the cuirass chiding slack muscles, the scrape of the shoulder-pieces fitting over the straps. All these matters enfolded him with an embrace of power. He ran his hand over the gorgon-face carved in relief on the cuirass, and he felt his very breast shrugging into metal, his heart moulded in the image of the basilisk-fury. How was it that he had failed before Actium, with tens of thousands of men loyal to his call? He had failed, yet surely there was hope when his blood could still respond so thrillingly to the need of action, the brutal world of force in which the finest moments of his life had blossomed. Amorously he fondled his sword, clasping the hilt and running his fingers up and down. He had forgotten Cleopatra and his weakness.

  He strode out, followed by the pages, who carried his plumed helmet and its side-pieces. In the court the guard had assembled, a full squadron of cavalry and a maniple of foot-soldiers, Roman legionaries who bore on their shields K for KXeovari a. Eros knelt, and Antonius, stepping on his back, vaulted lightly into the saddle of the horse held by a soldier-groom. Down the cypress-avenue he rode, while Victor and Eros trotted at the side of the horse. Behind came the squadron and the men on foot. Out through the main gate they went, and rode southward, the populace shouting and rushing from the houses and side-streets to see the cavalcade. The noise of the rioters grew louder, and the flames of some bonfires showed above the house-tops.

  Antonius whispered quietly and fingered his sword. He wasn’t concerned to handle the outbreak with gentleness; he wanted a violent outlet for his suppressed emotions. His horse paced proudly on, and he felt the old joy of leadership. It flooded him like wine when it came, without disturbing his judgment, indeed quickening and cooling his brain while warming his body to a careless courage. It was in the between-times that he chose wrongly or felt the fear that creates danger. But he had thought the power was gone out of him—ever since the end of the retreat through Armenia. Now it was coming back. Hercules, if it had come back to stay, he’d win the world yet.

  Turning, he waved his arm, kicked the horse’s ribs, and charged down the road. He had seen the mellay in the square beyond, where the police had given up the effort to keep order and stood packed in the door of the synagogue with a few horse-soldiers, ready to give way at the imminent rush of the rioters. The Jews were mustering on the flank of the threatened synagogue, and the rest of the horse-soldiers left in charge were formed up weakly in a side-street.

  Antonius charged, hearing the clacking thunder of the squadron behind him. He had no interest in race-bickerings, but wanted action. He struck down a man who was whirling a staff, rode into a group of Greeks who were outraging a captive Jew, and flung them cursing in all directions. Then he made for the front rank of Jews, among whom a zealot, having torn out the entrails of a slaughtered Greek, was engaged in draping them round his neck. He swung his sword at the Jew and slashed his ear off, ripping open his face. With a cheer he passed on.

  Victor and Eros had run beside him till the charge. Then they had tried to run aside; but the squadron was too close behind, and they had to run on, afraid of being trampled down by their own men. The horsemen caught up, but had sufficient space to pass them by, spreading out into the square and checking something of the first speed. The pages found themselves in the thick of things; they dropped the helmet-pieces which they still carried, and, drawing their daggers, they tried to defend themselves from demented assailants who fought without knowing or caring whom it was they were fighting.

  Victor thrust and snarled mechanically. He wasn’t exactly afraid, he was startled into a kind of dull anger. Why didn’t these madmen leave him alone? He had no quarrel with them, no interest even in their doings or creeds; he was
so entirely outside the circle of their obsessions that he couldn’t conceive any peril from them. They were merely gnats, to be beaten away; unruly children; nuisances. And yet they were murderers too, driving him to a vigilant fury of self-defence.

  Something whizzed through the air. He felt a grinding pain, but couldn’t believe it real, though it was hurting him with wild-beast claws. It must be somebody else who was struck, somebody concerned in such nonsense. He lifted his hand, to beat away the gnats, to make them sting someone else. The world whirled, cobbled faces and star-drops. The pain grew worse, the world whirling black, and he fell.

  *

  He was lying across something, head and feet dangling; something that rocked, clattered, swung. He was lying across the shoulders of the horse that Antonius rode, the horse-hooves beating in his brain, stinging. He tried to struggle up, but felt too weak, groaned, and found himself lifted in the arms of Antonius, who smiled, said something, rode on, holding him. He was grateful, but wanted to get off the horse. It was the beat of the hooves that hurt his head. He grew dizzy again.

  Then they were back before the great pillared entrance to Cleopatra’s Palace, with Cleopatra standing on the steps, surrounded by girls in purple dresses. How white they were, but one girl was ivory-pale, another girl, named Daphne. Why were all the girls of the world on the steps except Daphne? It would be better if there were only Daphne and not all the girls of the world.

  Cleopatra was staring at the blood on the horse’s ribs, then at Antonius. He smiled; he was unwounded. She made as if to open her arms, and then drew back. Lifting Victor down into the arms of a soldier, Antonius leaped from his horse and clasped Cleopatra, kissed her, and then, taking her by the hand, led her through the lofty doorway, followed by the trooping girls.