The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  Hard on their heels, Antyllus returned. I was deeply relieved that Octavian had not “detained” him as Herod had the gladiators, but Antony was disappointed in the reply.

  Alone with us after the dinner welcoming him home, Antyllus recounted his experience.

  “He treated me courteously enough,” he said, “but it was as if I were a stranger! He did not betray any familiarity with me, let alone warmth.”

  “He spoke with you in private?” Antony asked.

  “Yes, in the old Phoenician palace he was using for headquarters,” Antyllus said. “It overlooks the sea, so close that breaking waves send spray in the windows. It made quiet conversation difficult. But I was alone with him, except for his guards, of course. He was seated casually—he even crossed his legs! He told me to pull up a chair, then chatted away.”

  “Well, what did he say?” Antony pressed.

  “His chatting was nothing. I don’t remember. He kept staring at me, while pretending not to.”

  “Yes, that’s his way,” I remembered.

  “He examined the gifts carefully, running his hands over the rim of the gold plate. He said he must refuse your request to retire into private life in Athens. He said the city was too fervently pledged to him now for it to be safe for you.”

  Antony was fidgeting with his hands, most unlike him. “Did you present the second letter?” he finally burst out.

  “Yes.” He rummaged around in a carrying case, and handed the letter back to Antony. The original seal had been broken, but another had been affixed. “He said for you to read it in private. He wrote an answer on it, very quickly. Just a word or two.”

  “Well, what was it?” Antony asked, taking the letter.

  “I don’t know, sir. Truly I don’t. He didn’t say.”

  “Oh.” Antony turned the letter over in his hands. We were all watching him. Slowly he broke the seal and unrolled the letter, his eyes darting down to the end of the scroll. Whatever he read there caused a look of consternation to cross his face. “Oh.” He rolled it up again, then tucked it in his belt.

  “Well, perhaps we will have better luck sometime later,” he said, an unconvincing smile spreading across his face. “I am proud of you, my son. You have executed a most difficult mission, and done it well.” He raised a cup to him, and asked us all to drink to Antyllus.

  The evening passed in congenial conversation, while sipping good Falernian wine. I urged Antony to refill his cup regularly. I wanted his head swimming, so he would be careless of his clothes when he undressed. But to my frustration, he was unusually restrained tonight. And at the end of the evening, he made off for his own quarters, announcing that he intended to sleep there.

  “I have an aching head and would do better by myself,” he said. “The palace noises are farther removed there.” And he sauntered off, calling for Eros.

  I waited until I thought enough time had passed, then I stole over to his apartments. The startled Eros let me in, and I slid past him into the bedchamber. If I was lucky, Antony would be asleep. But no! He was sitting up, the lamps still lit, reading. He looked surprised to see me.

  “I did not wish to be alone tonight,” I said apologetically. “But I will stay on this couch, and not disturb you if your head cannot stand jostling.”

  “Oh,” he said, his polite smile unfailing, while he touched his forehead, “it is not as bad as all that. I would not banish you to a couch.”

  Then followed a set of steps in which we each assured the other. At length we retired to bed together. (I would rather have been on the couch, the better to get up unobserved.) He had put out all the lamps, but I was fortunate in that the moon was nearly full and by midnight cast a shaft of bright light across the floor. His even breathing told me he was asleep by that time.

  As carefully as possible I climbed from the bed and inched my way across the floor to where he had left his clothes when he undressed. The letter was still with the belt; he had covered them up with his discarded outer garment. I stuck my hand under it and felt for the leather case. I found it without difficulty. I crawled across the floor and unrolled the letter as quietly as possible, just outside the rectangle of moonlight.

  Antony suddenly turned over and I froze. What if he was awake enough to notice I had gone? He seemed roused, and I did not dare move. But then his sleepy coughing told me he was still safely unaware, and ready to drop back into slumber. I waited another few minutes and then edged the letter out into the light where I could read it.

  My dear brother, I come to you now as that. Between brothers, I hereby declare to you that I am willing to do that which honor allows me. Death will be my friend and our bond if thereby I can guarantee the life of the Queen. I gladly exchange my life for hers, and I trust that you will honor your word, once given. Let her live, I ask you. No, I beg you. Your word then given, I will straightway fulfill my promise. I salute you in death, a death I gladly offer.

  —Marcus Antonius, Imperator

  And scrawled right beneath it, under Antony’s signature and seal, were the stark words: “Do as you will. Nothing can save her.—Imperator G. Caesar, Divi Filius.”

  I felt cold all over. My nose, my fingers…Antony had offered this, without telling me? And the thing that Octavian had demanded of me, he now refused, when Antony himself offered it. It seemed that Antony’s head was not what he had wanted after all, but only to prove he could make me betray him. He was a fiend.

  Shaking, I rolled the letter up again, replaced it, and got back into bed beside Antony, wanting to wake him up and hold him more tightly than I ever had. But better to let him sleep.

  82

  The summer continued to unfold, the high-riding sun mounting to his farthest reach in the sky. The month of Julius arrived, and on its first day we gathered around his statue in Caesarion’s old quarters and offered up prayers and requests. Our son must be at the shores of the Red Sea by now, awaiting the ship to take him to India by mid-July. I had heard nothing since he departed. A few days earlier his seventeenth birthday had come around, and I had thanked Isis for him and beseeched her to protect him. One can never ask too many gods, and since Caesar was a new one, it seemed prudent to go to Isis as well.

  Reports were that Octavian had left Ptolemais Ace and was proceeding south; he was expected to reach Joppa before long. Herod was providing him with not only a hero’s welcome but with troops, supplies, and guides. Behind him streamed all his legions; Octavian was finally granted the chance to march along at the head of a mighty army, like a genuine general—instead of the imitation one he was.

  It was time for another mission to him. There still might be a chance to buy him off. He must be told about the treasure I stood ready to torch. We must exaggerate the size of the force and resistance waiting to meet him; perhaps he would take the easier way and negotiate. The best we could hope for was abdication and banishment for me, banishment for Antony, in exchange for Caesarion—or even Alexander and Selene—being made ruler in my place. He could have the treasure in return, pay off his soldiers. That way we would both get what we wanted without bloodshed: he the treasury, I the continued independence—nominal, of course—of Egypt under the Ptolemies. Egypt’s strength would be gone, but at least she would still be in existence. It was not altogether impossible that I could bring this about.

  This would be my mission, and I would send Euphronius, the children’s tutor, as ambassador.

  “Send a schoolmaster?” Antony was incredulous.

  “Yes, why not?”

  “But wouldn’t Mardian, or even Epaphroditus, be more respectful?”

  “I am not trying to be respectful. Sending Antyllus did not seem to carry much weight. Perhaps it’s better to do the opposite, and send a menial. That will catch his attention.” I had decided this would be my last appeal to him; as he approached closer, there would be nothing but silence to greet him.

  There was gold to go along with the letter, in which I repeated my request that he put my heir in my place. I
said I would surrender the throne into his hands on this assurance. I also said that I had secured a large portion of the Ptolemaic treasure in a place where it could be destroyed in the twinkling of an eye, if I saw fit. His refusal to accede to my wishes would cost him, literally, a fortune. He did not wish that, did he? Then let us be reasonable, and come to an agreement.

  I sealed the letter, pleased with its wording, but, above all, pleased with my foresight in assuring that I still had something to offer him. As I said earlier, in order to negotiate, one has to have something to bargain with—something the other person wants, and wants badly. Antony’s life did not fall into that category, so Octavian had no incentive to consider his desperate request.

  It seems that in this miserable life, it is not the despair of the supplicant that moves the hearer, but his own selfish desires. If he needs a footstool, and the bent back can serve, then…Otherwise, a kick sends him on his way.

  Just as Euphronius was ready to depart, Antony suddenly decided he wished to add a letter of his own. This time I insisted on reading it, as I wanted no repeat of the previous one. What if, on a whim, Octavian said yes? He was just cruel enough to say it offhandedly.

  “Single combat?” This was not at all what I had expected the letter to say. “What do you mean?”

  “Only that if he would agree to meet me, man to man, and we could fight, and thereby determine the outcome, it would save so many lives.”

  Was he mad? Was he never fully to regain the hearty common sense he had had before Actium, but continue to have relapses into odd thinking and behavior?

  “You know Octavian would never agree to that,” I said slowly. “He has nothing to gain by it and everything to lose. Why would a man with twenty legions, who is a poor fighter, agree to personal combat with his superior, who has no army left? He will laugh at you. Don’t send this!”

  “What else can I do?” said Antony. “I must propose something!”

  “It makes no sense to make proposals you know won’t be accepted. And we aren’t Greeks from the age of heroes; great issues aren’t decided by personal combat anymore. You can’t play Hector. I know the part suits you, but it can’t be.”

  “I must send it anyway,” he insisted. “The gesture must be made.”

  The days stretched out. An eerie waiting seemed to grip all Alexandria, although the city seemingly went about its business. But in every house, supplies were being gathered, books balanced, quarrels either mended or pursued to the end, postponed letters written. Fathers gave sons the advice they imagined they would be remiss to withhold, and wills were drawn up. But the expected event was so ill-defined that more specific actions could not be undertaken. There might be fighting, there might not. Only the name of the ruling Ptolemy might change, or the whole government might undergo a massive upheaval, ending with Egypt a Roman province.

  Epaphroditus kept me apprised of the changing moods of the city. He was attending me more often now, presenting the financial picture as a flooding Nile promised another bountiful harvest. Sadly, he also said he feared the Jews of Alexandria might welcome Octavian because he came in company with Herod.

  “Not that Octavian is our friend, as Caesar was,” he said. “But Herod is their hero, and they think of Judaea as their homeland.”

  I looked at my minister, older now but no less handsome than when I had first persuaded him to work with me. “First you say ‘our,’ then you change to ‘their,’ ” I pointed out. “Why?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I am caught between merely observing what my people do and joining them. I hold myself apart from the common thinking. Certainly I don’t look on Judaea as my homeland, and I think it’s foolish of anyone who has lived away from a place for generations to call it home. It’s a sentimental corruption of their thinking, and can be dangerous.” He laughed. “Why, we could no longer read our holy writings in the Judaean tongue, and had to have it translated into Greek, and that was two hundred years ago! We have been gone from that land a long time.”

  He looked so fierce in asserting his disapproval that I had to smile. “Well, the Ptolemies have been gone from Macedonia for just as long, but we still call our palace guards the Macedonian Guard,” I said.

  He snorted, as if to say, Then you are foolish, too.

  “It is hard to let go of a cherished identity,” I said. That was why being declared un-Roman was such a blow for Antony. After all, if he was not Roman, what was he? “I shall be disappointed if the Jews—who are, after all, two-fifths of the city—turn from me to Octavian.” It was one thing for client kings, whose loyalty did not go back very far, to desert. It was another for one’s own citizens. “Is there anything more painful than desertion?” I blurted out.

  “Probably not,” said Epaphroditus. “It robs us of even our memories, since they must always be viewed through the smudge of betrayal.”

  “Well, enough of this.” My spirits were low. I straightened my back. “Let us discuss the import taxes. After all, ships are still docking. We are not blockaded by sea….”

  It was a day like all the rest—as fine and light as the lines on a painted Greek vase—when the messenger was announced. As day after day strove to outdo the last in perfection, I had conceived a fancy that each one knew this might well be my last summer, and wanted both to console and torment me. Savor us; bid farewell to that which you are losing. So there was no other sort of day on which the messenger could have arrived, save one wreathed in warmth and sun and cool breezes.

  Mardian announced him with a sniff. “A fellow who calls himself Thyrsus has come from Octavian.” He tilted his head to convey disdain. “I suppose you will wish to receive him?”

  So the answer had come! I gripped the arms of the chair where I sat. “Of course. But not here. I will receive him in the audience chamber.” I rose. “Tell him it will not be until late afternoon.” Let him wait, and wonder.

  I hurried away to change into formal clothes. So quick an answer. My threats must have stirred Octavian’s attention. Should Antony also be present? Surely there was an answer for him as well. But no…better that I speak to the man alone. Octavian was not going to agree to Antony’s suggestion, so there was no point in giving him an opening for insult.

  “Charmian, my audience clothes!” I demanded when I entered my chamber. “They must themselves suggest the richness of the treasure I withhold from Octavian’s grasp.” I must look as fabulously wealthy as Roman imagination had painted me all these years. This was the first enemy who had approached the throne, and he must be dazzled—especially as Dellius, Plancus, and Titius had undoubtedly spread lies to Octavian. This one must return goggle-eyed to his master.

  The neatly folded stacks of glittering material looked like an artificial field of wildflowers, available in every hue and texture. Should I wear gold? Too obvious. Silver? Not at its best during the day. Red? Too blaring. Blue? Too retiring. White?

  I fingered the material of a favorite white silk gown that floated around my ankles as if a whisper of a breeze were always blowing across the floor. But no. That was a gown for private moments.

  Black? Too severe, and suggestive of mourning. Odd how I could have hundreds of gowns, and yet so few would do for any particular occasion.

  From between a black gown and a yellow I saw a fold of purple barely protruding. A purple that had been twice-dyed, giving it a deep, inimitable color…yes. “That one,” I told Charmian. As she pulled it out, I remembered that the style was perfect: discreet banding of gold threads at the hem and the shoulders, neck shown to advantage, arms covered. Under its ample folds, only the slightest hint of legs and body showed, revealed fleetingly whenever I stepped forward or stirred on my throne. Gold sandals must clasp my feet and kiss the hem of the garment.

  The wedding necklace would form a riveting collar of gold around my neck, and of course there would be a gold circlet with the royal cobra on my brow. Let the Republican Roman gaze on pure queenship, and shield his eyes! Octavian and his consciously fru
gal homespun togas would fade into invisibility.

  “Who is this man, my lady?” Iras asked as she arranged my hair around the circlet.

  “Octavian’s messenger,” I said. “No one of any note: I have never heard his name before—Thyrsus.”

  She said in her soothing manner, “Octavian had doubtless never heard of Euphronius either. Whatever you do, he mimics.” She pointed over to Kasu, who was combing her fingers through her wiry crown of head-fur, copying Iras at work. “Like our monkey.”

  I appreciated her loyalty and sense of humor. But the truth was that Octavian probably knew the name of everyone in my palace, and what he or she did. I did not doubt his spies eavesdropped even on my most intimate moments whenever possible.

  The sun was halfway down to its setting place. I had made this Thyrsus wait long enough. Time for our meeting. I arose, liking the way the purple gown rustled against my legs.

  He was announced while I sat on my throne, and he waited, invisible, in an outer room. The air, which perfumed itself from the flowers in the gardens surrounding the palace, was rolling voluptuously through the open windows, enveloping me in soft fragrance.

  In writing this, I realize that this was my last formal audience. My first had taken place in this chamber by my father’s side when he had started training me to be his heir. It seemed, in the worn phrase, only yesterday. We always know when something is our first, but we seldom—through the kindness of the gods—know when we do it for the last time. Had I known…But what would I have done differently? Nothing. Nothing except pay closer attention to all the details, the better to remember them.

  “Thyrsus, envoy from Octavian Caesar’s camp,” my attendant announced. That neatly satisfied both sides—the pointed “Octavian” for me, the “Caesar” for him.

  A tall young man strode in, with the proud carriage of an eagle. I sat as impassive as possible, so that no human element would detract from all the trappings of splendor around me. I saw him staring at me, looking as travelers do who first stumble toward the pyramids or the great Temple of Artemis, primed to see a wonder.