by Michael Foss
Stela depicting the birth of the child-god Harpocrates before the eyes of Amun-Re, the goddess Nechbet and Cleopatra.
The winged scarab above the child (pardy damaged) symbolizes the King of Upper and Lower Egypt.
The Roman world had fallen to the triumvirs. The only obstacles now standing in their way were the resistance that Pompey’s son Sextus was stirring up in Sicily and the contrary pulls of their own ambitions. After some sparring the empire was divided between the three men. Italy was declared to be common ground for all of them. Lepidus, who was suspected of an agreement with young Pompey, was promised North Africa once he had cleared his name. Octavian took Spain and Sardinia but continued to be based in Rome. Antony the general of the victory at Philippe took what seemed to be the lion’s share. Transalpine Gaul fell to him and all the eastern possessions of the empire, where he accepted the task of settling the legions and raising the money for the long-delayed conquest of Parthia.
In Rome, Antony now appeared to be first among men; but the contradictions of his brawling, easy-going, pleasure-loving character fated him always to fall under the shadow of another’s superior resolution. He was brilliant at many things, but he lacked the single-minded application to turn talent into achievement. He was a dashing, forceful cavalry commander, but too brash and careless for the gritty perseverance needed in a good general He might win a battle but less easily a campaign. He was a persuasive orator, a philhellene, a quick mind with sharp instincts and good understanding. He was affable and warm-hearted and often generous to his enemies. It was Antony who had covered dead Brutus with his cloak at Philippi, to prevent the dreadful butcheries that Octavian wished to inflict on the body But in other cases Antony, too, was capable of that unfeeling Roman cruelty.
In the conduct of state business, Antony could charm and beguile important men, and he could thump the table in the rough camaraderie of the camp, drinking the night away with his sweat-stained troops. He had the cunning for sudden stratagems, but not the craft for the long tedious pull of a political campaign. He loved drink and women, and abused them both in the name of good fellowship, but it is a matter of doubt who finally was the master, love or Antony. He was ambitious, but even ambition – that deadly serious part of a great Roman’s gravitas – could not keep his attention. His mind wandered – women, food, drink, prowess at arms, mighty deeds, jokes, entertainments, convivial company, sleep, and then another sun-filled day to keep him amused. Perhaps he could not teach himself to care enough for world and reputation. What came easily he would take, but he would not pay the price for the hard accomplishments.
Antony was about forty when history offered him the chance of greatness, a big burly bear of a man with wild curls. In rude good health, he modelled himself perhaps too consciously on Heracles, a short tunic tucked up on his rump to show thunderous legs, a large brutal sword on his hip. One look at him said he was a mighty drinker, a roisterer with an unpredictable, invincible, magnanimous spirit. And there was much in his early life to confirm this view of himself. Careless in everything, he threw around his money, his abilities, his reputation and his heart. Many in Rome, both the virtuous and the mean-minded, abhorred him. Cicero, in whom a censorious, pinched spirit always contended with intellectual generosity, sometimes blushed for Antony’s antics and sometimes excoriated him. When Plutarch came to paint Antony’s early character, he drew on the violent antipathy voiced by Cicero and other narrow critics, but there was enough in the portrait to make Antony recognizable:
All men of principle loathed his ill-timed drunkenness, his wasteful spending, his debauchery with women, his days spent in sleep or staggering about with a splitting headache, his nights of revelry watching fools and jesters or botched representations in vulgar mime. We are told that when he was feasting at the marriage of the mime Hippias he drank all night, and in the morning, as the people called him to the Forum, he came before them still stuffed with food and vomited into his toga, which a friend held at his service. Cytheris, a notorious actress from the same school of mime, was his great favourite, whom he carried about in a litter on his Italian travels, with as many attendants after her as followed his mother. People were scandalized at the sight of golden goblets waved about on pleasure-trips as if in a sacred procession, at the pitching of rich pavilions and the laying-out of costly feasts by meadows and groves, at his chariots drawn by lions, and at the commandeering of respectable houses to put up harlots and music-makers.
But the events of the civil war, the murder of his great chief, the intrigues of the triumvirate, and the victory at Philippi appeared to make a more sober Antony. Back in Rome at the end of 42 BC, he shunned the disreputable life, quietly preparing himself for government in the East and for Caesar’s uncompleted task – the conquest of Parthia – laid upon Antony as a holy duty. He was busy putting on the garments of responsibility, becoming the student of the hellenis-tic East, getting ready to be the keeper of client-kings and the pacifier of their ancient states. In all things he was the servant of Rome. But the wild man in him was only dormant, waiting to be tickled or prodded into recklessness. Adventures and temptations in eastern lands had unsettled steadier Romans than Antony.
At the beginning of 41 BC, when Antony arrived in Ephesus to take on the role in the East assigned to him by the triumvirs, the unflattering eye of Plutarch saw the old shambling beast starting to peep out beneath the proconsular dignity:
When Antony made his entry into Ephesus, women dressed as Bacchantes and men and boys as Satyrs and Pans frisked in the procession before him. The city was draped with wreaths of ivy and thyrsus wands, the air sounded with brazen music of many instruments, and the people hailed him as the New Dionysus, the Benefactor and Bringer of Joy. This was how some people saw him, but to others he came as Dionysus the Cruel, the Eater of Flesh, for he ruined many noble families and gave their property to rogues and sycophants.
His task, which was to establish order after war and to raise money for more wars, was difficult and he went at it with a kind of misdirected enthusiasm, flinging benefits here and exacting cruel tributes there.
His character [Plutarch continued] was essentially simple and he was slow to see the truth. When he knew he was at fault, he was fall of repentance and ready to satisfy those he had wronged. If he had to punish an offence or put right an injustice, he acted on the grand scale, and in the general view he overstepped the bounds far more in rewards than in punishments.
To some cities and princes he gave freedom, remission of taxes, new territory, even whole islands. Other poor citizens were screwed down to the last penny, ordered to pay nine years’ taxes in the space of two years, which was at least more generous than the initial demand of ten years of taxes to be paid at once. For some he had special favours. Archelaus, a Cappadocian prince, was most fortunate because (or so it was rumoured) his mother Glaphyra was a beautiful woman and had taken Antony to her bed.
As he began to set up his administration Antony summoned all governors, princes and client-kings to his court to account for their actions and to be told of his plans. Egypt, richest and most powerful of the eastern kingdoms, figured boldly in these plans. Thirteen years before, as an officer with the army of Gabinius, he had seen the land at close quarters; he knew the potentiality of the country, and also the history and reputation of the queen. He wrote letters to Cleopatra summoning her to attend on him. He wanted her to explain Egypt’s rather limp support for the triumvirs in the recent war with Cassius. She considered that her small foray with the fleet had shown enough enthusiasm, and otherwise she meant to keep to her usual policy of polite non-co-operation, saying perhaps and meaning no, while she tried to read the new pattern of the pieces in Rome. Antony persisted. He sent his loose, shifty, talented friend Quintus Dellius with a dangerous charm and some persuasive arguments. No doubt there was also a hint of threat. After a stately delay due to a goddess-queen of the most distinguished lineage in the Mediterranean world, during which Cleopatra had glimpsed a way to h
andle this importunate Roman, the queen set out to meet Antony at Tarsus in Asia Minor.
6
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
THE SCENE, made ever-famous by Shakespeare, is best given in the words of Plutarch, from whom Shakespeare took his story:
She sailed up the River Cydnus in a barge with a poop of gold and with purple sails, her rowers stroking the water with oars of silver that kept time to the music of flutes and pipes and lutes. As for Cleopatra herself, she reclined under a canopy of cloth-of-gold, dressed as that Aphrodite we see in paintings, while on either side stood pretty little Cupids who cooled her with their fans. In her crew were the most beautiful of her women clothed as Nereids and Graces, some at the helm, others tending the tackle and the ropes of the barge, out of which came a wondrous sweet smell of perfumes that wafted over the river-banks. A multitude of people raced the riverside to view her progress and the city emptied to see her. As the crowds fled away, Antony sat enthroned in the marketplace to await the queen. At last, he was left sitting alone, while the word spread on all sides that Aphrodite had come to play with Dionysus for the happiness of Asia.
Antony was the victor of Philippi, Caesar’s general entering his appointed lands. Vain-glorious, bold and ruggedly handsome, he was composed for pleasure, and he looked on the East as a harem of does awaiting its stag, though unfortunately this lordly Roman beast was married to Fulvia, a dominating Roman shrew. Cleopatra was twenty-eight, every inch an Egyptian queen, and in her prime, knowing, practised, clever.
So she provided herself with a world of gifts [Plutarch wrote], stores of silver and gold, riches and sumptuous ornaments, all that her exalted position and the vast wealth of her realm could give her. But she had brought nothing in which she trusted more than in herself, and in the charm and grace and enchantment of her presence.
Whatever weapons she relied on, they were stronger than his: she, a guileful queen long experienced in the dark arts of politics, a woman with the sensuality to attract the best of heroes, and the capacity to know it and use it; he, a successful soldier who gave way too easily to indulgence, a strong valiant body allied to a warm but careless heart. The brief contest of the sexes, in which he was so utterly vanquished, is again related by Plutarch:
Antony invited Cleopatra to dine with him, but she thought it more fitting that he should come to her; so most courteously he accepted and went. He found the preparations made for him magnificent beyond words. But what astonished him most was the infinite number of lights and torches, so artfully arranged in devices and patterns, some round and some square, that their brilliance amazed the eye and took the breath away Next day, Antony feasted her intending to surpass her in magnificence and elegance, but he was hopelessly outdone in both so that he, with his equal good spirits, was the first to pour scorn on his own meagre entertainment. Then Cleopatra saw that he had a soldierly humour, broad and coarse, and she began to pay him in his own coin, teasing him thoroughly and without fear.
Silver coin depicting Antony, c. 39 BC, at the time of his marriage to Octavia.
For the details of this passionate adventure between two strong personalities, Plutarch is our only guide. He wrote long after the events but he relied on memoirs and personal accounts handed down in his family from Alexandria, and on writings of the time that have not survived. He was sufficiently Greek to keep always in mind the humanity of his characters, and the tragedy of their affair which is implicit in their fall from high estate. In this sense, what he gives us is romance. A Roman historian with access to such intimacies would surely have given us a harder view, with a wider political interpretation, and a heavy dose of moralistic propaganda. But Plutarch had the sensibility of an older world than ours, even in his view of romance, and he knew that before it became tragedy their love-making began with high policy on her part and high foolishness on his.
He allowed the queen to carry him off to Alexandria, where he indulged himself in a waste of childish sports, squandering on idle pleasures what Antiphon calls the most precious of all commodities, which is time. For they gathered around them a group of friends whom they called the Inimitable Livers, and they gave banquets each day for one another of extraordinary expense.
The royal cooks would prepare eight wild boars for a company of a dozen people, not that so much would be eaten, but everything had to be cooked and served to perfection, which might be ruined by a moment’s delay.
For Antony might eat at once, or in a little while, or he might call for wine first, or of a sudden take up some business. ‘So we never prepare just one supper,’ said the cook, ‘but many of them, for we never know the moment he will wish to eat.’
They feasted and flirted and made fun out of both night and day, and Cleopatra played Antony as skilfully as she handled his fishing-line on their seaside gambols, baiting the hook and tricking him into the catch:
Plato speaks of four kinds of flattery, but Cleopatra knew a thousand. Whether Antony was serious or lighthearted, she knew a way to please him, and kept him in her sight night and day She played dice with him, and drank with him, and hunted with him, and stood watching while he performed his exercise at arms. At night, he would dress like a slave and roam the city, peering into poor men’s windows, scolding and making fun, and she would go with him as a maid-servant, taking part in his mad antics, even as he mocked and brawled and sometimes took home blows. But the fact was that the Alexandrians liked this buffoonery and jollity, and they played their part in all these games. They liked Antony with his jibes and his jokes, and used to say that he showed the Romans his tragic mask but kept the comic one for them.
Alexandria suited Antony well. It was a city of some wickedness and much licence where a man could devote himself as seriously to entertainment as to science and philosophy The moral background was significantly different to that of Rome; a man was not condemned for imaginative misconduct, and extravagant display, so long as it was artistic, counted as a part of virtue. Antony was of good birth but rustic upbringing, with a father who was an improvident gambler. He had spread his wild oats among actresses and mimes. He married first the daughter of a freedman and then Fulvia who, though humbly born, made brave men quake. ‘A private citizen’, Plutarch wrote of her, ‘was beneath her notice. She wanted to rule magistrates and give orders to generals.’ To escape from this Roman harridan into the arms of the queen of Egypt was a strange bliss for Antony Yet like many loose-living men with a disposition for heroic action, Antony found something intimidating in strong women, even when they led him on to further excess. As Plutarch commented wryly:
Cleopatra was indebted to Fulvia for the lessons she had given Antony in obedience to women. He was thoroughly tamed when the queen took him over.
Even in the realm of love, she was the queen and he was the subject.
The verdict of Plutarch, which was also a general opinion of the time, was clear enough. Antony was bewitched by a power beyond his control.
Such was Antony’s nature that the love of Cleopatra came as the final and crowning mischief of all that could befall him. It roused to the point of madness many passions formerly concealed, or at least dormant; if any spark of goodness or hope to redeem him were left in him, Cleopatra quenched it straight and made all things worse than before.
As for Cleopatra, what did she want beyond the spice of slumming in late-night dives, or in the satisfaction given by a vigorous Roman body? In Tarsus, she had already begun to make her demands. She called for executions: Arsinoe, the younger sister who had so treacherously failed her first in Alexandria during Caesar’s war and then in Ephesus where she dared to let herself be called the queen of Egypt; Serapion, the governor of Cyprus who had defected with ships and supplies to Cassius; and a deluded young man at Aradus who claimed to be her first brother-husband Ptolemy XIII, long since drowned in the waters of the Nile. In her kingdom there was only one monarch and one voice. Any other who claimed to speak in the name of authority could expect the extreme penalty of her law. Her f
irst and greatest interests were the security of her throne and the safety of her country.
Antony’s sin, in the eyes of history, was not so much the revelry and love-making in Alexandria but (as Plutarch noted) the waste of precious time. In the winter of 41 BC and into the next year Antony and Cleopatra played their games, and who is to doubt that they enjoyed themselves enormously? It was a carnal interlude. A world of pleasure unfolded, and Cleopatra knew better than to press her lover too hard. After she had received some small benefits, she read the book of his character and filed him away for the future. Antony had his excitement, but he got no money for his Roman ventures from her treasury. Nor could he yet rely on her unconditional support against Octavian, if it came to a contest between the triumvirs, as seemed very likely when Antony’s wife Fulvia and his brother Lucius revolted against Octavian in Italy.
Idling in Alexandria, Antony had no knowledge of his family’s rash actions in Italy. Fulvia and Lucius were defeated and driven into exile, but neither Antony nor Octavian was ready for a prolonged test of wills. Fulvia, blundering as ever, had given a foretaste of the inevitable, but for the moment it was expedient to patch up an agreement, for both leaders had their troubles elsewhere. In the eastern empire, Herod, the ruler installed by Antony in recognition of past services to Rome, was at odds with his own people. On the border of Judaea, Syria was uneasy, beginning to face the threat of a fresh attack from Parthia. Asia Minor was also in a state of nerves, the client-kings waiting to see if they should jump from Rome to Parthia. Most of all Parthia itself called into question Roman resolution and authority. The defeat of Crassus at Carrhae so long ago was still unavenged, Caesar’s campaign of reconquest seemed less important than drinking and fondling in Alexandria, and now a belligerent Parthia was on the move once more.