I lowered the paper. That was all there was concerning Antony; the rest was all personal and local.
“Thank you,” I told Mardian. “This is much more informative than official correspondence.” I paused. “So I have caused a scandal?”
“You always do,” he said shyly, shrugging. “Even in the days of the Egyptian Club, remember? That time we ran away…” He laughed. “Scandals are just the earmark of an extraordinary person. What you do is unexpected, and noteworthy.”
“That is a flattering way of putting it, but I shall not argue.” And wait until the next item became apparent, I thought. More for the Athenians to talk about next winter.
But after he left, gloom settled on me. Antony’s situation was grim. How many legions lost? His own eastern territory had been seized, and now he was being shut out of the west by the machinations of Octavian.
Egypt should also prepare, in case the Parthians turned their eyes in our direction. Thanks to the recent good harvest, we had the resources to arm ourselves, and my new navy was almost ready. Certainly we would put up a strong resistance; we would not be easily overcome.
Outside, the sun was sparkling on the water. High summer was here, the time when things happened in the world. Ships sailed, armies marched, messengers galloped where they would. And events gathered force like a coming storm.
At long last a letter came from Antony himself. It had been sent from Athens, before he departed, and so the news in it was old. Where was he now? What had happened since?
My own soul,
Since we parted my thoughts have flown to be with you every day, but they are deaf and dumb. They cannot speak to you, nor I hear what they overhear you say. Hence they do little good, except that they are able to be where I wish to be. O lucky thoughts! How like the drear time of year it has been to me without you, although all the world would say it is summer. Perhaps to others it is.
As for what I have found: the Parthians victorious as far west as Stratonicea. But their advance has been stopped. It is necessary that I go to Rome, where things are unsettled. I have told Sextus that only if my solemn pact with Octavian and Lepidus has been irretrievably broken will I negotiate with him separately. Thus it must be.
I shook my head. He was so stubborn. Even with Octavian taking his legions away, he refused to think ill of him. Or rather, refused to act on what he must sense.
My friend and client Herod has slipped away from Masada and sought out the Nabataeans in Petra for support against the Parthians. He expects to travel to Egypt; please welcome him, and in my name provide him with a ship to come to Rome. He must be restored to the throne of Judaea.
A thousand kisses on your hand, your throat, your lips.
M.A.
I could almost feel them. Smiling, I put the letter into a strongbox for private correspondence. I noted that he had not mentioned Fulvia.
Several weeks passed, with no further news—at least from the outside world. I had taken to swathing myself in voluminous gowns of layers of the lightest silk, proclaiming it a new fashion. I took care to order the gowns and begin wearing them very early, when there was as yet nothing to excite attention. Thus I hoped to keep my condition a secret as long as possible. I made Charmian and Iras wear similar gowns, and soon everyone at court was imitating us. The palace was filled with fluttering human butterflies, long, swirling clouds of color against the white marble. I must say, it was one of the loveliest seasons we had ever had.
Mardian had even let himself try an adaptation of the fashion, using lighter colors and a looser fit in his clothes than usual, and pronounced them very comfortable. As his girth was steadily increasing, this did not surprise me. Tight belts and fitted shoulders must have been torture to him, yet as my head minister he had to dress formally much of the time. Thus he benefited from my condition.
One hot day he came padding into my quarters, his eyes excited. I noted that he had a new type of sandal to go with his clothes—they had a special strap circling the big toe, and another for the rest of the toes. Around the soles, gilded lotuses were painted directly on the leather.
He was waving a letter. “This has just arrived!” he said.
I took it. “It must be good news, from the look on your face,” I said. “Pray, pour yourself some of this cool juice; it is a mixture of cherries and tamarind, and quite good.” I indicated the pitcher on my table, surrounded with goblets.
He did so, sipping a sample, then refilling his goblet. “Most refreshing,” he agreed, nodding. He seated himself expectantly, arranging his gown precisely.
The letter was from the Egyptian envoy at Apollonia, on the west coast of Greece, where the great main road, the Via Egnatia, began. Situated on a narrow strait of the Adriatric, directly across from Italy, it was an excellent listening post for both Greece and Italy.
Most dread and powerful Queen, greetings! Such a sight as we have seen with our own eyes shall never be forgotten, and I shall try to make you see it as well. The fleet, some hundred ships strong, of Ahenobarbus were cruising in our waters. They always excited terror, because they have attacked Brundisium recently, and so we all lined the cliffs watching them with apprehension. From the south we saw other ships approaching, and were told they were those of the Triumvir Antony. Leaving the bulk of his fleet behind, Antony sailed boldly out to meet Ahenobarbus with only five ships, putting himself completely at his mercy if the information he had—namely, that Antony’s general Asinius Pollio had negotiated an agreement with Ahenobarbus—was false.
Closer and closer they approached, and Ahenobarbus looked threatening. Only within close range—far too late for Antony to save himself had it been otherwise—did Ahenobarbus turn the rams of his ships away, making the sign of peace. The two fleets united, and sailed off toward Italy together.
What is most remarkable is what the sailors themselves reported: that the general Plancus tried to persuade the Triumvir not to put himself into Ahenobarbus’s hands on blind trust, but that Antony replied, “I would rather die by breach of faith than save myself by cowardice.”
I stopped reading and tried to picture it. The ships on the sea, making toward one another, with those on land watching…the warships turning aside only at the last minute, and Antony doubtless standing on the deck, unflinching.
“How very like him,” I said.
“What?” asked Mardian.
“That statement about preferring to die by breach of faith—someone else’s breach, that is, not his. Never his.” It was both his glory and his folly. Someday it would be his undoing. In that he was like Caesar, only with this difference: Caesar never had any belief in other people’s good faith, but only in his own. “And so we are left watching him, still on his way to Italy,” I said to Mardian. “The tale is still to tell!” I felt the waiting was killing me.
The next news that came was shocking, even to me, and I prided myself on anticipating the worst behavior to which someone could sink. Octavian, in order to win Sextus to his side, had married Sextus’s aunt! She was named Scribonia, was a notorious shrew, and was many years older than Octavian.
I sank down on a stool and began to laugh and cry at the same time. While Antony would give only the strictest, proper response to Sextus’s overtures, Octavian was ready to make off with the aunt to disarm Sextus.
“They say she’s very tall and bony,” said Mardian, shaking his head.
“Well, just because Octavian marries someone does not mean he actually performs his marriage duty,” I said, remembering Claudia. “So now he’s been married to a child, and to an old lady—for political reasons.”
The situation was funny, but his ruthlessness was anything but.
50
Summer continued, the most glorious summer in recent memory; the sea wind was as deliciously cool as alabaster inside a shaded temple, and the sun as beneficent as the gods could make it. Many evenings I invited Olympos’s scholar friends from the Museion to come to the palace and—if this is not too inappropriate
a word—entertain us. Caesarion was becoming interested in mathematics, and I hoped this would serve as a pleasant way of learning for him. They all were kind to him, never seeming to tire of explaining things. But he was especially taken with the leading astronomer, a young man named Diodorus, who seemed equally at home with older scholars and a seven-year-old boy.
In the evening, near twilight, we would gather in a part of the palace that had rooms especially suitable for our group; its wide windows opened onto the harbor, and the wall paintings repeated the scene, so it looked as if we were surrounded on all sides by open air. The soft breezes entering the room further enhanced that illusion.
At these gatherings we ate very little, but there was plenty of fine wine to be passed around. Olympos accused me of trying to hold a Greek symposium, but I pointed out that this did not follow a dinner, that I did not want everyone to get drunk, and that women were present, unlike a true symposium.
“You ought to make them drink more deeply,” he said. “They would start quarreling over the theories of the circumference of the earth, and whether the equinoxes are precessing, and you would see how petty academics really are. The men you would expect to be the most enlightened are capable of the nastiest fights—worse than gladiators! Men have died defending their theory of the armillary sphere.” He laughed lightly.
“Now you are revealing your own deep-seated cynicism,” I told him. “Besides, since Antony left, Alexandria has become quite sober.” Or at least I had.
“That’s because the city is in mourning for his departure,” he said. “He and Alexandria made a very good fit.”
Antony…Alexandria…These evenings served to take my mind off the ever-present concern about what was happening in Italy, as well as my own condition. The floating gowns were still an effective disguise, but I had not yet addressed the practical problems awaiting me.
Diodorus announced that he had a demonstration for all of us, but particularly for Caesarion, and it would have to be fully dark to work. “I will show how the earth and the moon both make shadows, cast by the sun, and thereby enable us to measure the size of the earth itself. And I will also show how eclipses happen.”
The older men made disparaging noises, but Diodorus held up his hands. “I realize you know all the theories, but can you devise a model to illustrate them? That is what I wish to exhibit.” He was a thin little man, who reminded me of a grasshopper—he seemed to jump from place to place, and no sooner land than jump again. He bent down to address Caesarion directly. “I want you to watch carefully,” he said.
Then he rushed away to prepare a flare, backed by a sheet of polished metal to serve as a giant mirror, and had servants lower spheres on lines from the ceiling, or suspend them between columns.
“In the meantime, drink, drink, drink!” he said. “It will make it easier to believe the demonstration! You won’t notice the flaws, or see the strings.”
“Not you,” I said to Caesarion, saying no to the wine. “Nor I.”
While we were waiting for it to grow fully dark, Diodorus asked me what I was planning for the upcoming solar eclipse.
“I did not know one was coming,” I admitted.
“Well!” His chirping voice sounded truly surprised. “You have been preoccupied, if you didn’t know about the eclipse. It’s the most important event in the sky this year.”
Yes, preoccupied. What a superficial way to describe what I had been, and still was. “I suppose so,” I said. “When is it to come? I have never seen one.”
“In fifteen days,” he said. “And of course you haven’t seen one. There has not been one of this magnitude for fifty years. Oh, it will be an event! The scientists will be standing by to study it. The sky darkens, and the animals think it’s night. A hush comes…the temperature falls. It’s quite dramatic!”
“But how dark does it get?”
“Like night!” he said. Then he admitted, “Of course I have never seen one either, so I have to go by what has been written about it. I can hardly wait to see it!”
An eclipse. What could it mean? I would have to consult the royal astrologers. And doubtless foreign astrologers would make the journey here as well.
He bolted off to light the fire and begin his demonstration.
“Now pretend this fire is the sun, pouring forth its light and heat…”
He went on to point out the earth—a wooden ball hanging between two posts—and the moon, and pulled strings to make them pass each other so that one at a time their shadows fell across each other. When the “moon” passed between the “earth” and “sun,” it caused a “solar” eclipse, and when the “earth” passed between the “sun” and “moon,” its shadow caused a “lunar” eclipse.
“And do you see how the shadow is curved?” His voice rose in excitement. “That is the curvature of the sphere of the earth. Now, by measuring it and figuring out how far away the moon is, we can calculate the size of the earth itself. Do you understand?” He turned suddenly to Caesarion, who was watching all this intently.
“Yes, of course,” he said with great dignity. “But the problem would be in calculating exactly how far away the moon is.”
Diodorus was surprised at the clear, concise answer. And so was I.
That night, as he said good night, Caesarion said, “Perhaps I should be an astronomer. Or a mathematician.”
Both of them safe occupations, posing no threat to anyone. “Perhaps,” I said. “It depends on what fate calls you to.” Certainly he could be King of Egypt as well as a mathematician. No conflict there.
Now that I was alerted, I looked forward eagerly to the day of the eclipse. Each night I watched as the moon grew smaller, waning away like a melting lump of pale wax. A solar eclipse would occur only when the moon was completely dark.
Diodorus had built it up so much that Caesarion could barely sleep, awaiting the great event. Several times he came to my chamber in the middle of the night, saying, “I can’t sleep!” Once he said, “Tell me again the story about Artemis and the moon, and how she guides it across the sky! When there’s a solar eclipse, does that mean she and Apollo and his chariot of the sun have run into each other? Have they had a crash?” And he would laugh.
I put my arm around him and wrapped a light blanket over his shoulders. “You know that Artemis and Apollo and the sun chariot are just a story,” I said. “It’s how the poets describe something as beautiful and mysterious as the moon and sun.” Since he understood the mathematics of it, he would have to relinquish his belief in the old tales.
“But isn’t there really an Apollo?” His voice sounded very small.
“Well, yes…but he doesn’t actually ride a chariot across the sky with four horses pulling it. He has more to do with creativity—with music and all the bright things of life—of which the sun is only one.”
“Oh.” He leaned against me, putting his arms around me. “Why have you gotten so fat?” he asked innocently. “I don’t see you eating much.”
He was the only person allowed to wrap his arms around my waist, and there were no puffy, air-filled gowns to divert his attention. I was taken by surprise, especially since it was the middle of the night. So all I could say was, “Because there’s a baby in there.”
“There is?” His voice rose to a squeak. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We will just have to wait to find out.”
“When? When?”
“Oh, sometime in the autumn. Are you pleased?”
“Oh yes! Everyone else has a brother or sister. I’ve always wanted one.”
How simple it was for him.
The great eclipse day arrived, and we had a gathering on the highest palace terrace, out in the open, affording the widest view of the horizon. As if to challenge the very idea of any vulnerability, the sun rose hot and yellow, pouring out ferocious light and heat on the sea and land. It burned my arms and made me retire under a canopy. Everyone put on a wide-brimmed hat and had to squint, the l
ight was so fierce. We all felt a little foolish, since we had no proof—besides mathematical calculations—that anything at all would happen. Several astrologers were standing by, ready to interpret the occurrence, consulting with each other, arguing.
“I tell you, the moon is female, and the sun male,” said one. “So when the moon blots out the sun, it means a woman is going to rule, or destroy, a man.”
“But what man, and what woman? Is it a prediction for some shoemaker with an overbearing wife? Or does it mean something political?”
“Something political, of course!” the first man snorted. “The heavens do not concern themselves with the events of the lives of common people.”
“But everyone has a horoscope,” a third astrologer protested. “So the heavens rule everyone’s lives.”
“But an event of this magnitude—it’s to warn us of greater things than a shoemaker and his domestic troubles. The heavens may guide lesser happenings, but they do not trouble themselves to advertise them.”
“Well, there are prophecies about a woman of the east ruling Rome,” said the middle astrologer.
“Perhaps this confirms it,” the third said.
“Or perhaps it’s all just a lot of nonsense,” said Olympos, speaking directly into my ear.
I turned to him. “Is there anything you believe in?” I asked. I had heard of the prophecies, too, and meant to have them copied out and brought to me. But I would not admit that to him.
“You know well enough what I believe in,” he said. “I believe in the strength of the human body, and in its ability to heal itself, given half a chance. I believe in a good night’s rest, and the importance of a bath. Oh, and I believe that hot peppers upset the digestion. And I especially believe that listening to all those prophecies is very bad for a person’s health. It is apt to lead him astray.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Think of all the people who have risen higher than they ever would have, because they believed in a prophecy about themselves.”
The Memoirs of Cleopatra Page 79