The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  Keep yourself well, and do not let your thoughts be troubled.

  —Your entirely loyal Olympos

  I was keeping myself well, but as for not letting my thoughts be troubled—that was not so easy. I was restless and discontented, unreconciled to the present state of things with no clear view of what I preferred instead. I was envious of Antony—envious because he had everything. He could have as much lovemaking as he liked, and all with the world’s approval—it was even for the greater good of Rome! He had lands to conquer, a campaign to conduct in Parthia.

  I should have been happy to be spared all that, I should have rejoiced in the peace my country enjoyed, its prosperity, my healthy children, my own quiet life. I did. But there was that in me that would almost have preferred the problems facing Antony. I did not like sitting still; at heart I was a warrior, too.

  Dearest Queen Cleopatra,

  Forgive me if I write just this short letter, but I feel you must know what Antony is saying, since it concerns you. As I told you earlier, Octavian was offended about the children you bore Antony—now his beloved brother-in-law—and made no secret about it. Evidently lately, at a banquet where the two men were feasting envoys from Cyprus and Crete—and with their pregnant wives at their sides—Octavian made a remark about it, to the effect that it was disgraceful that Antony should have been so careless and allowed such a thing. Then (so my informants told me, as I assure you I was not present) Antony put down his goblet and said in a ringing voice, “The way to spread noble blood through the world is to beget everywhere a new line of kings. My own ancestor was got by Hercules in this manner. Hercules didn’t limit his hopes of progeny to a single womb. He didn’t fear any Solonian laws against fornication and adultery. He didn’t fear the audits of his copulations. He freely let nature have its way and founded as many families as he could.”

  I was ashamed for you when I heard it. I knew I must tell you immediately. When I think what you suffered as a result of his Herculean imitation—! No one who had witnessed what I did would have spoken thus. It is good I was not there, or—by Zeus—he would not still be walking this earth. I may not be as good a swordsman as he, but there are many other ways to die. You remember my garden.

  Was this the same Antony who had sworn eternal love, and written the distraught letter? There he was, trying to please Octavian again. He takes on the strongest nature that’s nearest him. His words dismissed me as nothing but a breeder, a field to be sown by his Dionysian seed. Of course, that was to please the two Octs—Octavian and Octavia.

  I had never answered the letter from Antony. Was this his revenge?

  But I knew Antony was not a vengeful man. If anything, he was the opposite.

  He had to part from Octavian soon! His wits and judgment were being subverted. But of course, wherever he went he would take along a piece of Octavian. I had planted an astrologer in his household, but Octavian had done better than that; he had put a partisan in his very bed—Octavian’s loyal and obedient sister.

  Octavian. The world was not large enough to encompass us both. Nor could we share Antony.

  My eyes strayed to the corner of the chamber, where a spear and a helmet of Antony’s leaned against the wall. They were articles we had exchanged when we dressed in fantasy. He had forgotten them, left them behind when he sailed off for Tyre. They had served as a visible reminder of him, and I thought to present them to Alexander someday as a legacy from his father, just as I would give Caesarion the pendant from his.

  Now they just looked dusty and forsaken. He had not missed them; or if he had, he was too proud to ask for them to be returned. I walked over to them and touched them. Is there anything more out of place than the trappings of battle in a peacetime chamber? I should put them away.

  Oh, Antony. I would rather be the one to go than the one to stay behind—like these castoff weapons, I thought.

  I would rule alone. It was my allotted fate. With one hand I touched again the spear, with the other I touched the pendant, which I had put back on again: remnants of the men who had given me my heirs.

  Dearest Queen,

  Let me be the one to announce to you that Octavia’s child has been born, and it is a daughter. So much for the Golden Age son, the Roman messiah. That for Vergil.

  Scribonia will follow suit shortly. But they say Octavian means to divorce her. That can mean only one thing: he is ready to launch his war against Sextus, in spite of the treaty. Of course I never doubted it. Treaties serve Octavian only as a means of delay while he prepares himself to break them.

  Oh, and Herod has arrived in Rome. He was warmly welcomed by both men, and elevated to King of Judaea, promoted from merely governor of Galilee. Now remains the small matter of clearing the Parthians out of Herod’s kingdom for him, so he can ascend his throne.

  To continue—twenty days later:

  Scribonia has presented Octavian with a daughter. (You see, I told you they would have the same horoscope.) And the very next day he divorced her! Such a kind, thoughtful man! And now he is marrying again—whom? Prepare yourself. She herself is married, and her obliging husband is divorcing her and giving her away, although she has yet to deliver their child. I find this monstrous. I really cannot stomach Rome much longer. Antony is transferring his headquarters to Athens shortly, and I will make the journey on the same ship. I have long wanted to spend time in Athens, and from there I can cross back to Egypt easily.

  I meant to tell more of Octavian’s bride. He has reportedly fallen madly in love, but I find this hard to believe. The fact that the bride comes from one of the very oldest aristocratic families of Rome, and that that faction is the one where Octavian needs most to win partisans, makes me suspect his sudden passion. She is Livia, the daughter of the ardent Republican Livius Drusus, who committed suicide after the battle of Philippi. She is also the wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero, a political enemy of Octavian’s, only just reconciled with him after the treaty of Misenum. What a coup for him. One by one, and bit by bit, his enemies are tranquilized, neutralized, pulverized. Soon there will be none left. And he will reign supreme in all the world, straddling it on his spindly legs.

  Athens, I come! Enough of Rome! I have done my best for you here, but with Antony’s departure my task is over. The city stinks, and not just because the Cloaca Maxima needs a good cleaning.

  To the most exalted Queen Cleopatra—

  What a relief to have landed in Athens! How clear and fine it seems after the sinkhole of Rome. How the acropolis gleams in the golden sunlight! Truly, all that’s best in either day or night becomes itself here. I feel I can breathe again! The city retains its ancient beauty, and the dark columns of the cypress trees against the fluted columns everywhere give even my cynical soul a touch of peace.

  Athens seems fond of Antony, and it has restored the better side of him. Perhaps you were right—he definitely improves, the farther he gets from Octavian. Someday I may even come to understand what you saw in him. But that is still a long way off. He has been feted, and both he and his wife proclaimed gods. He went through some gibberish of a marriage ceremony to Athena. He has taken up Greek dress. (Yes, again he takes on that which is nearest him.) When he finally recovers from this round of meaningless but colorful ceremonies, it is said he intends to get to work reorganizing some of the eastern territories and preparing for war.

  As for myself, I find Athens interesting as a version of Alexandria. It is our mother-city, even if eclipsed by her young offspring. One should always show respect for one’s mother.

  I trust your children follow this maxim!

  Your servant and friend, Olympos

  I had always wanted to visit Athens. Now I was once again envious of Antony to be stationed there, far from Octavian’s yapping and the Roman mobs, free to do what he liked in such a great city. From what Olympos said, it would appear that Antony found it congenial, and the Athenians appreciated him as well.

  Now that he was closer, and in the Greek sphere, I found that my
thoughts were pulled to him often. His absence was not like that of Caesar’s, whose void seemed to fill all the earth, as well as my own life. And the absence caused by death is so absolute, so remorseless, that I was forced to turn away from it toward the living. Antony’s absence was the lack of a fillip to life, a collapsing of an added dimension. Real life went on unharmed, with no gaps, but curiously flat. In my hunger, I reminded myself that no one ever died from lack of seasoning, and that bland food was just as nourishing for the body as spiced.

  “Olympos is returning!” I told Caesarion. “Have you written your verses yet?”

  He had promised to compose some welcoming verses. I told him if he could manage both to write them in Greek and translate them into Egyptian, I would order an image of him as a grown Pharaoh to be carved on the Temple of Dendera, far up the Nile.

  “Yes, but I’m not pleased with them,” he said. He showed me the paper where he had written them. “The words are so ordinary! I want to use special ones!”

  I looked over his composition, finding it very well done for an eight-year-old. “You would do well to remember what your father said about that. His writings were renowned for their clarity and style. He said, ‘Avoid the rare and unusual word like a helmsman the rocks.’ In other words, steer clear of it. I think he would approve of this verse.” I handed it back to him. “I know Olympos will appreciate it. He has been gone a long time—over six months. Studying medicine.” And spying, I thought.

  “What’s he learned? Can he sew heads back on if they’re cut off?”

  I laughed. “I don’t think anyone can do that.” Otherwise someone would have stuck Cicero’s back on, and he would still be fulminating about the Republic.

  Just then the twins came in. They were walking now, not very steadily, but every day they improved. Caesarion did not look pleased. “Oh, it’s them.” He snatched his paper and held it up over his head, lest they try to grab it. He stood on tiptoe and whispered into my ear, “When I asked for a brother or sister, I didn’t think they would be so boring. They don’t do anything, except cry and tear things up.”

  “Give them time,” I said. “Someday you will be friends. They will catch up to you.”

  “Never.” He sidestepped as one of them reached out chubby fingers to tug on his tunic. Selene fell flat on her face and started wailing. “You see?” He looked disdainful and left the room. “What a nuisance!”

  Olympos would be surprised at how they had changed since he left. They had grown fast, and were no longer smaller than others their age. They both had golden curls that made them look angelic, but that was misleading. Children, especially pretty ones, can be tyrants.

  Olympos was back, looking rested and yet happy to return. He had lingered in Athens almost to the danger-point for travel, but said he was so beguiled by the mellow sunshine in the city it was hard to realize winter was coming.

  In our private chambers, Caesarion recited his memorized welcome verses, then read them off in halting Egyptian. The twins excited themselves so much they went into a frenzy of jumping and yelling, and even Kasu the monkey started climbing on the curtains and leaping from chair to chair.

  “Pandemonium!” said Olympos. “Where is the classical ideal of restraint and order? This is positively Dionysian.” He leaned forward to kiss my cheek, then applauded Caesarion’s literary efforts. Finally he bent down to look carefully at the twins.

  “They seem to be thriving,” he said. “They must be eating ambrosia, the food of the gods, to shoot up so. If Antony saw them, he would be proud.” But of course he won’t, I could almost read his thoughts in the tight line of his lips. Your parting must be final, after his insults.

  “You are too protective of me,” I said, answering his thoughts rather than his words. But that is how it is between old friends. “I can fend for myself.” I drew him aside, when I could divert the children. “What was the last news you heard before you set sail?”

  “No real news,” he said. “Antony and Octavia will spend the winter in Athens, while he organizes the east for his ventures. All is quiet. It is not known when he plans to launch the massive attack on Parthia. It would seem difficult to ready everything by next spring, since an enormous army has to be equipped. Oh, and I brought you this. I thought you would want to see it.” He took my hand and slowly and deliberately pressed a coin into it. “A new issue.”

  I opened my palm and stared at its bright beauty. It was an aureus, a gold coin, with the heads of Antony and Octavia. So he was minting money with his wife’s head on it! It made me angry, as Olympos meant it to.

  As if to cover up his blatant provocation, he then produced another coin. “I thought you might find this amusing.” He held it between his thumb and forefinger, turning it around.

  “Well, give it to me.” I took it and saw that it was a denarius showing Sextus’s father Pompey with a dolphin and trident on one side, and a war galley under sail on the other.

  “What does this mean?” I asked. It seemed silly.

  “Sextus is now claiming that he’s the son of Neptune; he’s blurring his real father, with his sea command, into the divine one. He takes it seriously enough, and so do the mobs in Rome. They cheered like crazy when a statue of Neptune was carted around at the races, in company with the other gods; Antony and Octavian had it removed, and they almost rioted. Sextus has even started costuming himself in a blue cloak in honor of his ‘father.’ ”

  “He sounds like a clown,” I said. How could anyone pay attention to this?

  “Oh yes, everyone is a god these days—or the son of one. I wonder who I should claim?”

  “Asclepius, of course,” I said.

  “He isn’t grand enough—he started life as a mortal.”

  “Well, you have to start somewhere,” I said, wishing to end this. I was happy to have Olympos back, but I wanted to be alone to glower at the coins.

  After he was gone, I stared at the profiles. Pompey’s was certainly a recognizable likeness, but I thought Antony’s face looked stretched and flat, as if he had been ill and lost weight. As for Octavia—her profile was behind his, and all it showed was a straight nose and well-formed lips. I thought it looked vaguely familiar, but it might not have really looked like her, if the likeness of Antony was any guide.

  So he was proceeding as if this were the only life he had ever wanted, as if he was born to be all the things he now was: Octavia’s husband, Octavian’s brother-in-law, an exemplary citizen of the patrician intellectual offerings of Athens. Olympos said he had settled into a round of attending lectures, readings, council meetings, and the like, all with his seemly wife in tow. Had his spirits really been extinguished under all that domestic propriety? It would be as sad as the majestic, exotic wild beasts I had seen—tigers, panthers, pythons—turned into broken amusements in cages.

  I put the coin into a box, where it would be safe, and where I wouldn’t see it.

  53

  The farther south we went, the warmer it got, so that by the time we reached Dendera, even though it was only February, it was basking-hot at noon. I had kept my word to Caesarion, and was taking him to see the temple where he was represented as a full-grown Pharaoh. It had taken eighteen months for the carving to be completed, and it had taken almost that long for him to become proficient in Egyptian. The bargain on both sides had been fulfilled.

  Now, as I stood beside him at the railing of the boat, I thought that it was a good idea for us to have come away together. It was also good that he see something of Egypt beyond Alexandria. He had been as enthralled by it as I had been when I first escaped up the Nile. In only a few months he would be ten; it was time for him to explore a new world. He had watched the land sliding past, green-fringed palm trees bristling by the riverbanks, oxen in the fields, the long stretch between the pyramids and Dendera, the first of the temples the Ptolemies built.

  “I can see it from here,” he said, pointing toward a massive sandstone structure, a bright golden color against the endle
ss dun sands and soil.

  I remembered the voyage when my father had taken me to other temples, which he had helped build and embellish. Now I was aware of repeating the cycle. It was supposed to make me feel old, to see a son growing tall and being trained to follow in my footsteps, but instead it felt entirely right and natural. His coming adulthood did not threaten me. I was thankful that I had an heir, with two more children behind him.

  He all but bounced off the boat, running down the gangplank, rushing past the dignitaries lining the banks. He wanted to see himself, an artistic version of himself, up on the walls.

  “Look! Look!” he cried, dragging me by the hand, while he hunted for the carving. The entire outer wall of the temple was filled with representations of divine processions and earthly figures carrying offerings in them. “Where is it? Where is it?”

  I pulled him to a halt. “You are going in the wrong direction,” I said. “It is on the southwestern corner.” We turned that way, passing gigantic gods and goddesses on the walls high above us. I stopped at the corner and pointed up. “There we are.”

  Looming over us were two outlined figures, in ancient Egyptian costume, holding incense and offerings in their outstretched arms. They were at least twenty feet high; standing directly beneath them as we were, we could not see their heads clearly.

  “We must step back,” I said, and we went quite a ways across the hard-packed earth to a vantage point.

  “That doesn’t look like me!” was the first thing he said.

  “No, of course not. It’s just a representation—all Pharaohs are made to look the same.”

  He studied my profile. “And she doesn’t look like you, either.”

  “No. It’s a standard queen. You see, there’s a certain way a queen of Egypt is always supposed to look, and so she’s depicted that way on statues and paintings. So everyone knows exactly who it is.”