by Michael Foss
Within a few days the fleet of Julius Caesar, following hard in Pompey’s wake, sailed into the Great Harbour of Alexandria with two legions containing more than 3000 foot soldiers and 800 cavalry. Theodotus, the royal tutor and a professor of rhetoric, was the man chosen to offer soft words to the victor of Pharsalus, and he took with him Pompey’s signet ring and his severed head. It was both an act of obeisance before the new master of Rome, and a signal that his task was done and that he could go home. It was said that Caesar wept when he saw the head of his enemy. But neither grief nor joy swayed the political calculations of this austere Roman. He had seen too much pain and death to value them beyond their brief moment.
Yet at this crucial instant he did make a mistake. Misreading the psychology of the populace, he decided to overawe the citizens with a full display of Roman pomp. He entered the city in the dress of a consul preceded by lictors bearing the axe and the bundle of rods known as the fasces. Intelligent Greeks knew the symbols, and this was seen as an act of possession, which it was. It was too much provocation, as Caesar himself acknowledged in the Civil War.
The multitude considered that this act infringed the king’s dignity. The tumult was contained, but for several days there was frequent disturbances by the mob, and a large number of soldiers were killed throughout the city.
Caesar had yet to reach an understanding of the turbulent Alexandrian mentality, nor had he reckoned with the ingrained hostility to Rome. But he was determined not to be driven out until he had made arrangements that were favourable to his own security and to Roman needs. Besides the persuasion of arms, he had several pretexts for being in Egypt. The will of Ptolemy Auletes, lodged in Rome, had placed the king’s children and successors under Roman protection. Caesar had also pledged himself to collect the huge debt owed by the Ptolemies to the financier Rabirius. The debt was only half-paid and Caesar, at the end of some ruinously expensive campaigning, badly needed money. He asked immediately for 10 million denarii.
Then he began to dig in, ready to set the discipline of his veteran legionaries against the violence of his unruly opponents. Pothinus, head of the council and spokesman for the Alexandrians, suggested that Caesar should hear the call of his manifold duties in Rome. Caesar was not disconcerted by impertinence. Then Pothinus arranged for musty grain to be delivered to the Roman troops, and had the royal table set with wooden plates and earthenware pots, implying that Romans had stolen the gold and silver vessels. Caesar went steadily on. As guardian of the Egyptian crown, he demanded that the young co-rulers should mend their quarrel and appear before him for reconciliation. Ptolemy XIII left the Egyptian army at Pelusium and made a reluctant visit to the palace of Brucheion with Pothinus to help him.
But Cleopatra faced a problem. She was not unwilling to appear before Caesar. She had already made her case in writing, and this argument was likely to be strengthened (as the historian Dio Cassius noted) by the charm and wit of her person. But she was still camped at the frontier with the army of her brother blocking the way. There was no guarantee of a safe passage to Alexandria. She solved this problem, if a romantic story by Plutarch is to be believed, by a ruse which amply demonstrated that charm and wit:
She took a small boat manned by her confidant Apollodoras of Sicily and landed near the palace in the dusk. Wondering how to enter undetected she thought of having herself wrapped in a roll of bedding, which Apollodorus tied up and carried through the gates to Caesar’s apartment. This bold stroke so caught the fancy of Caesar, who admired such daring invention, that he quickly reconciled her to her brother and re-installed them as co-rulers of the kingdom.
Coin depicting Julius Caesar and dated 42 BC, two years after his death.
Julius Caesar was fifty-two, a man of many struggles already suffering from the headaches and fainting-fits of ill health. He was worn-looking (as the more honest portraits show), with a long lean neck, big nose, the weathered skin of a campaigner, a balding head and large penetrating eyes. His talents and his achievements were extraordinary, as even his greatest enemy would admit. Soldier, scholar, writer, administrator, man of business, politician, visionary statesman, he encompassed whatever he set his hand to. He combined learning with sharp, swift judgement in practical affairs. If he needed it, the winning charm of his personality was as persuasive as his intellect. He was bold in decision, brave in battle, stoical and uncomplaining under hardship, and he was famously popular with his troops whom he led with a subtle mixture of example, iron discipline and genuine sympathy. He was also vain, ruthless, calculating, often cruel and always driven by his own ambition, though that might be clothed in the dignified garments of principle. His friends felt the warm sun of a great and powerful personality; his enemies courted a sudden death.
Caesar’s relations with women were true to his character. He had the power to attract them and the cold deliberation to use them. In the manner of all the noble Roman clans, in their ferocious contest for position and wealth, he had taken on and cast off wives with unseemly haste, with a view to forming political alliances, building factions and gaming funds. He had had many lovers and mistresses, for he seemed to have a strong sexual urge but little potency in the loins since his only offspring was his daughter Julia. Nonetheless it was wise for careful men to hide their pretty women when Caesar was about, as ribald song of his legions proclaimed:
Home we bring our bald whoremonger.
Romans lock your wives away.
All the bags of gold you lent him,
Went his Gallic tarts to pay!
He liked women, to make love to them and to bring him the broad comforts of humanity that he missed so often pent up in the narrow camp-bed of-his many wars. He liked the softness of women, but even more he liked bold scheming females whose intelligence challenged his own and whose wit struck sparks from his own brilliance.
What kind of woman did he see when the surprising bundle was unrolled and the 21-year-old queen of Egypt tumbled out before him? The coins of her reign show various pictures, but all of them were to some degree exercises in state propaganda representing a Ptolemaic ideal. We see, in general, a Cleopatra with a neat, shapely head, wavy hair pulled back into a bun, a determined brow, a generous mouth and a nose rather long and thin. In most portraits the nose is rather hooked. As to her stature and figure and complexion, there is no information.
Ancient prejudice, of which there was plenty, did not seem to include colour prejudice. A person was subject to keen and small-minded criticism for all kind of reasons, from accusations of barbarousness and uncouth speech to superior reflections about the cut of a dress or tunic. But colour was not mentioned. The early Ptolemies were fair-faced Macedonian highlanders, often with a ruddy complexion. They took care to marry within the family But Egyptian society was mixed, from darkish to quite light skin, with much new African blood being brought in from Nubia and Ethiopia. Mixed marriages were common. And though the Ptolemies married within the family, they were not faithful within the family. The mistresses and concubines of many of the kings were well known. The lovers connected with the successful and long-reigning Ptolemy II were celebrated. There was an Egyptian known by the Greek name Didyme; an actress of vulgar comedies; two girls who were musicians and dancers; Clino who posed naked for popular statues; and Bilistiche, called by Plutarch a barbarian whore from the marketplace, but declared a goddess by her royal lover under the name of Aphrodite Bilistiche. And Ptolmaic queens, women of notorious independence, were as likely to take lovers as their husbands. Who knew the true parentage of many a Ptolemy prince or princess?
The grandmother of Cleopatra was a concubine; her mother is not known for certain. Given all the uncertainties of her ancestry one scholar has estimated her blood as 32 parts Greek, 27 parts Macedonian and 5 parts Persian. It is a reasonable guess. If she was black, no one mentioned it.
One description of Cleopatra has survived. Although the author, Plutarch, wrote long after Cleopatra’s death, his words carry some conviction because his
family in the past had been friends with her court doctor.
Her actual beauty [Plutarch wrote] was not in itself so remarkable; it was the impact of her spirit that was irresistible. The attraction of her person, joined with the charm of her conversation and the characteristic intelligence of all that she said and did, was bewitching. It was a delight merely to hear the sound of her voice. As if this were an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another.
Caesar spoke Greek, as did most educated Romans with an interest in philosophy and literature. Latin was not included in Plutarch’s list of Cleopatra’s languages. But it is unlikely that a girl talented enough to learn Ethiopian or Arabic, and astute enough to judge the threat to Egypt from Rome, would neglect the rather simple tongue of the masters of the Mediterranean world. Whatever language they used (most probably Greek, as the more subtle and expressive, both for thought and for love), when forceful personality and intelligence met, mediated through the sweetness of their words, each was suddenly revealed to the other.
She was a queen arising out of a famous past, a fabulous history that combined something of the glory of Alexander with the triumphant longevity of Egypt’s story. She was the inheritor of a grandiloquence that put to shame such mumbling expressions of the human spirit as he had already seen in Pontus or Spain or Gaul or even in Italy itself, riches laid down like layers of Nile silt for millennium after millennium.
He was the visionary of Rome, both philosopher and all-conqueror, who seemed to offer at last a chance for peace in a poor warring world now subdued, after the defeat of Pompey, under a great man. At Ephesus, the weary people of the East had recently saluted Caesar as ‘Son of Ares and Aphrodite, God made flesh, Saviour of all mankind’.
He was battle-worn, travel-weary, ageing. The ambition of his life was almost within grasp but he knew that the final resolution must take place in Rome. These Alexandrian days were an interlude. He saw a bright but troubled young queen in a tempestuous court surrounded by intrigue, violence and hatred. He could offer her worldly instruction and a strong Roman arm to lean on. Each of them had uses for the other. A startled meeting led to conversation, and respect, and pleasure, and the human instinct for gratified desire, and so to bed. Sex, besides the instant joy, was always a means to an end for worldly and ambitious women, treading delicately in the quicksands of male domination and power. As for Caesar, did not his Julian clan claim descent from Venus, Goddess of Love?
Caesar may have been pleased by the enforced reconciliation he had effected between the young monarchs. But the sulky king, who saw the gains he had made already vanishing in the joint bed of his sister and the Roman, ran lamenting into the street and tore the diadem from his head, to stir up the natural resentment of the Alexandrians against Rome. In this he was helped by Pothinus and Achillas who felt their influence receding as Cleopatra’s advanced. The Egyptian army, still gathered near Pelusium, was turned about and led by Achillas back to Alexandria to put the Romans under siege. Caesar had about 4000 men under his command; the Egyptian army numbered some 20,000 soldiers, including many Gabinians and mercenaries. And the Alexandrian mob was, as ever, ready to turn violence and treachery against the hated foreigners.
All at once Caesar had a difficult little war on his hands. The partial occupation of a large city, hemmed in by a bitter hostility, menaced by street skirmishes and ambushes, was a dangerous task even for a general of Caesar’s gifts. Some of his legions were on the march from Syria but time was short. He tried to negotiate with Achillas. But one of his envoys was killed and another severely beaten. He and his Roman veterans were strongly placed for the moment, behind the walls of the royal quarter of Brucheion, bordering the Great Harbour. And with his usual swift reaction Caesar had set fire to the Egyptian warships in the harbour before Ptolemy’s men could protect them. Then he stood his ground, as the account of the war partly written by Caesar himself related:
He secured the necessary points and fortified them in the night. From his first arrival Caesar was lodged in a wing of the palace, next door to a theatre that served as a citadel commanding an avenue to the port and other docks. In the next few days he built a rampart in front so he should not be forced to fight against his will.
Since Cleopatra and young Ptolemy were still with Caesar in the palace, he could give the uprising the colour of a rebellion against lawful monarchs. But soon Arsinoe, younger sister of Cleopatra, escaped with the help of a eunuch called Ganymedes. She placed herself at the head of the resistance and raised the standard of legitimate rule against the puppet monarchs under Roman control. This advantage was quickly lost when Arsinoe and Achillas began to quarrel, and when Pothinus was caught sending messages from within the palace to the Alexandrians, Caesar had him executed.
In the street-fighting a fire broke out, perhaps started by the Roman troops to destroy the grain warehouses in the docks. In this conflagration a large store of papyri and book-rolls – Livy says 40,000 volumes – was burnt. Later, it was rumoured, and then believed, that the famous Library itself had been set on fire, as a consequence of Caesar’s carelessness. An act like that would have grieved Caesar as much as Alexandria, and the spreading of such a story was as good a way as any to blacken his reputation.
Arsinoe and Achillas continued to quarrel until Arsinoe gained the upper hand. Then she had the army commander arrested and executed. In this place she installed her favourite Ganymedes. The palace eunuch, though only tutor and adviser to the princess, pursued the war with some imagination. He stopped the flow of fresh water from Lake Mareotis into the city’s network of canals and waterways, and filled them with salt water instead. Lack of water was a serious blow to the besieged, but Caesar set his men to dig into the harbour beach. With his wide interest in science and topography he had confidence that fresh water would be found there. His men dug anxiously through the night and by morning had reached an adequate spring. With this, they had enough water to hold out, and soon the intense pressure on them was relieved when a fleet of military transports brought the 3 7th Legion and a good store of supplies.
Into the early months of 47 BC the siege continued with no particular advantage on either side. Then the Roman admiral who had brought in the fleet mounted a swift raid on the island and lighthouse of Pharos and gained control. Caesar followed up immediately, hoping to capture the long mole of the Heptastadion which joined the island to the mainland. The attack faltered. Caesar was outflanked and on the point of being cut off on the mole. His plight unfolded in the impersonal account given in the Alexandrine War:
Caesar, when he saw that they were all giving ground, withdrew to his own boat. He was followed by a crowd who began forcing their way on board, making it impossible to steer the boat or push it off from the land. Sensing what would happen, Caesar jumped overboard and swam to the ships further out. Then he sent small boats to pick up the soldiers in difficulties and thus saved many As to his own boat, it sank under the weight of numbers, with the loss of all those still on board.
The 5 2-year-old general, so the story went, swam in armoured breastplate and greaves still holding certain documents above his head ‘and would not let them go, though arrows and darts were coming at him and he was often under the water. Still he swam with one hand, holding papers with the other above the water’. Only his purple cloak was left behind for the enemy to claim as a trophy.
At this point, for obscure reasons, Caesar released young king Ptolemy to the Alexandrians. Perhaps Cleopatra worked on her lover to expel the youth. In the confines of a palace under siege, the king, petulantly at odds with his sister, was a liability to morale, and Caesar calculated he had ‘nothing to fear from one so young and so ill-prepared for life’. Ptolemy left clutching Caesar’s hand and weeping, but once in the city he ordered Arsinoe aside and took command of the Egyptians. Nothing more is heard of the ingenious eunuch Ganymedes.
By March 47 BC the relief force summoned by Caesar from Syria had reached the Egyptian border. The gene
ral Mithridates of Pergamon led a mixed army that included 3000 Jewish soldiers under the Idumaean minister Antipater, a presence that persuaded the large Jewish community in Alexandria to back away from Ptolemy This Roman army stormed Pelusium on the frontier, marched quickly around the apex of the delta, and set off northwards along the western branch of the Nile towards Alexandria. Ptolemy hurried out with the Egyptian army to the corner of Lake Mareotis, hoping to cut off the relief before it could join up with Caesar. But by a night manoeuvre through canals and the lake, Caesar’s Romans avoided the Egyptians and joined Mithridates.
In late March a fierce little battle took place. The larger Egyptian army was swept away with merciless efficiency ‘The enemy’, said the account in the Alexandrine War, ‘were so frightened by the attack that they took to their heels, but in vain for few returned to the king.’ After a night’s pause, the attack was renewed.
Then the Alexandrians struggled to escape and threw themselves over the bank near the river. The first group tumbled into a ditch and were trampled under the feet of the others behind. The king got away in a boat, but so many fugitives crowded aboard that the boat sank and he was drowned.
After the battle, on the same day, Caesar returned to Alexandria by forced march and possessed the city, which for the first time in three hundred years passed entirely into the hands of a foreign general. He was met by Queen Cleopatra, the partner of his days and nights. The subdued citizens received him with ‘all those sacred symbols of their religion which they formerly used to appease their angry kings’. Spurred on by the rush of war Caesar was once more his old brisk soldierly self. He ordered a hunt for the body of Ptolemy, for he knew it was necessary to prove his death to this subjects. The drowned body was dredged from the river and the king’s golden armour was displayed to the people. Ptolemy XIII was dead; with an astute understanding of Egyptian custom Caesar at once acknowledged the accession of the younger brother Ptolemy XIV to be co-ruler with Cleopatra. Perhaps this was a blow for the queen, who had fought so hard to rid herself of one brother. But she knew that Ptolemaic tradition demanded a co-ruler and her safety in Alexandria depended on it. The city hated her. She had become a good cause for war and defeat, a plaything of the Romans, and an enemy of the independent Greek society that was the glory of Alexandria.