2
From Olympos, to Olympos:
As I have always kept the most meticulous medical notes (those who think I have a prodigious memory are wrong; I merely have a prodigious system for recording and organizing what I have found), so I will record briefly what happened in the tumultuous days following the death of Octavian’s last enemy, the Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra the Great. For she was truly the greatest of Egypt’s rulers, a political genius who turned the weak country she inherited into something before which even Rome trembled. Who else but a political genius of the first order would have thought of using Romans to threaten Rome? And she was the last to reign over Egypt as a free country. Yes, these notes may be necessary someday, if only to offset the official version of events, preserve a different viewpoint.
I secured the Queen’s last scroll from where it rested near the tomb, neatly rolled up (how like her!), and took it home, where I read it, to my woe and wonder. Mardian was transported to my house, where Dorcas and I nursed him. His recovery was slow, but as I pointed out to him, it was his fat that saved him. That, and the fact that he was bitten low on his leg, below the knee, and that the snake had already bitten three other people before him, and evidently was running low on venom! I have observed that fat people survive poisonous bites better than thin ones…possibly the fat traps the poisons?
He was feverish and delirious for days, muttering and moaning, while his leg swelled and the skin stretched so taut it shone. But at length it subsided, and he was able to recount those last hours in the mausoleum. How the funeral feast was held, how the serpents had been sent from Heliopolis by an arrangement made months before, and how they were waiting inside the building. There were two of them, but only one was used. Where had the other gone? A mystery—both had vanished in the sands outside. How they had planned it all, and how smoothly it had gone. The note sent to Octavian was a request for burial rites. Of course, as soon as he opened it, he knew. Then he sent soldiers running to try to prevent it.
The poison must have been very swift, since they had not allowed themselves much time to carry out the plan. Mardian told me the asps were prize ones from Heliopolis, bred for their fast, fatal bites. Even normal asps are used in Alexandria as the most humane and painless means of execution, so these must have been a step beyond even that.
The funeral was royal and magnificent, but only an echo of other celebrations in Alexandria’s history. The city was mourning, having fallen at last to Rome, and having lost its proud Queen. Silently its citizens stood watching the cortege, bidding farewell not only to Cleopatra but to their freedom and their glory among cities. Mardian and I stood with the rest, he leaning on crutches.
Both Iras and Charmian were entombed beside their mistress, and Octavian erected a memorial tablet to them. As I have said, he seemed quite taken with the courage and grace of the death scene in the mausoleum.
As soon as the funeral was decently over, Octavian went sightseeing. He visited Alexander’s tomb, but, not content with merely looking at the conqueror, he insisted that the crystal cover be removed so he could touch him. Evidently he was imbued with the idea that some power would pass from Alexander to him; after all, were they not the same age, and both possessed of an enormous empire? And, truly, Octavian now controlled almost as great an area as Alexander had. He must, then, be Alexander’s true successor. Then something untoward happened: a piece of Alexander’s nose came off in Octavian’s hand. Was the great one rejecting Octavian, or giving him a precious relic? Like most symbolic events, this one was open to wildly differing interpretations.
Shortly thereafter Octavian ordered all of Antony’s statues to be overthrown, but a timely bribe of two thousand talents by a loyal friend of Cleopatra’s prevented hers from being likewise destroyed, and thus they remain standing throughout the land.
Enemies must be punished: Canidius was executed, as were some senators who had adhered too closely to Antony’s cause.
Making a show of his restraint, Octavian was reputed to have taken nothing from the palace except an agate drinking cup, an old possession of the Ptolemies. It was one I knew Cleopatra to have set great store by. But the victor can take his pick of whatever excites his fancy, large or small.
Behind his smiling face, Octavian proceeded to his heinous deed, the one he had planned all along, as his words to me in the mausoleum revealed. I must record it in the briefest manner, because to linger over it is to ache with helpless fury and sorrow.
Using the swiftest messengers, Octavian was able to reach Caesarion and Rhodon before they boarded the ship for India. Money persuaded Rhodon in turn to persuade Caesarion that they must return to Alexandria, where Octavian wished to make him King. Once they were there, acting on the practical advice of his philosopher friend Areius, who paraphrased Homer in saying, “Too many Caesars is not a good thing,” Octavian had Caesarion killed.
Of all the lost things in all the world, the things we will never know, this lost son of Caesar and Cleopatra’s must stand as the most tantalizing. What would he have been, what being would he have grown into, with the gifts he had from both of his remarkable parents? Octavian did not wish to find out—and so we never shall, either.
Only one small glint of mercy here: Cleopatra never knew of his fate; she closed her eyes and went into the dark believing that he was safe. Isis had protected her to the last from that which would hinder her passage into the other world by grieving her spirit.
Where was Caesarion buried? No one knows; I like to think it was beside Antyllus, wherever that was, and that the two boys are together, consoling each other over the fateful downfall of their parents. Both were heirs whose potential challenge Octavian could not brook.
Such matters having been taken care of, Octavian took his leave of Egypt, carrying his agate cup, his victory, and Cleopatra’s three remaining children. If their mother had refused to grace his Triumph, he must make do with them.
3
My duties were not over. I had thought they were, with the departure of the Romans. But no. Those of us who are living do not have our obligations and involvements end as neatly as those who have chosen death. Life drags out, drags on, and continues making intermittent, unexpected demands on our loyalties.
Human decency and respect constrained me to follow the royal children and watch over them in Rome, if only from a distance. I seemed doomed to continue ministering to the Queen long beyond what I had imagined when I gave my promise.
I followed them to Rome, arriving in the heat of the summer. The children were all lodged together with the long-suffering Octavia. I could see them when I walked on the Palatine at sunset. They looked content enough as they played games on the grounds with their half-siblings, Antony’s other children. Octavia presided over a household of some nine children now, including hers and Fulvia’s as well as the Egyptian ones. Octavian’s only child, Julia, must have been there often as well, meaning the ages ranged from the nineteen-year-old Marcella to little Philadelphos, age six. I did not make myself known to them, thinking it was better that way, but I hovered on the edges of their lives, spying from the path outside their house.
Octavian had dallied, making his way slowly overland. It was not until March that he returned, and then he set about planning the details of his Triumph—or, rather, Triumphs, for there were to be three of them, on three successive days. He chose the month that was called Sextilis, the month that Alexandria had fallen. He would parade through the streets on the very day that the Queen’s funeral procession had wound through Alexandria. He liked things to be neat like that.
In the meantime, while awaiting his arrival, the city busied itself thinking of honors for their master, and deeds to please him. The Senate passed a resolution condemning Antony, declaring the day he had been born to be cursed, and forbade anyone to use the names Marcus and Antonius together. His name on all monuments was to be erased, as if he had not existed. They declared the day that Alexandria had fallen to be a supremely lucky day in the c
alendar, and even proposed that henceforth all Alexandrians must celebrate it as the start of a new era, the first day of a refigured calendar. They proposed that Octavian be granted tribunician power for life, and that he was to be prayed for at all banquets, public and private, and have libations poured to him.
Then our old friend Plancus, he of the blue body-paint and timely desertion, created a new name and title for G. Julius Caesar Octavianus, divi filius: Augustus, the Revered One. It hinted at godhood, but not so blatantly that it would offend old-line Republicans. It was satisfyingly vague but majestical nonetheless. Octavian was most pleased, and allowed it to be bestowed upon his laureled head. He had now been transformed into Imperator Caesar Augustus, leaving any common-sounding names, which might betray his origins, behind him.
Like Caesar, he must have a month named after him. It was assumed that—like Caesar—he would choose his birth month, which in his case was September. But no. He chose Sextilis, his great victory month, for his memorial. Henceforth it was to be known as August.
And so, on the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth of August, the Triumphal processions would rumble through the streets. They were rumored to be even more lavish than Caesar’s. Horace and Vergil had both written laudatory verses in commemoration. Bizarre African animals were to be shown for the first time to Rome. No one living must ever forget these celebrations.
How to describe them? As briefly and plainly as possible—I am not here to laud Octavian. It is true that I will never forget them, but for personal reasons.
The first, commemorating the victory over the Illyrians, was a modest affair. There was a parade of prisoners, with three chieftains as figurehead enemies, and the recaptured standards lost by Gabinius years earlier, and banners proclaiming the defeat of the Pannonians, Dalmations, Iapydes, and some Germanic and Gallic tribes. The Vestal Virgins came out of the city to meet the Triumphal chariot and escort it into Rome, and the senators walked alongside the soldiers behind the chariot.
The second, celebrating the naval victory of Actium, was more lavish. Adroitly, no Romans were featured, but only the client kings—half of whom had deserted before the battle was even fought! Ah, the genius of rewriting history! Poor Adiatorix of Galatia and Alexander of Emesa were marched out, men who had barely figured in the fighting. Agrippa was awarded a blue banner for his achievement, and it was announced that henceforth the victory of Actium would be celebrated with sacred games every four years, a sort of rival Olympics. Beaks of the captured ships, from “fours” to “tens,” would be mounted on a platform as a memorial in the Forum.
And now we come to the Alexandrian Triumph, the last and the grandest. The same array of Vestal Virgins and senators and soldiers made up the parade, but they were dwarfed by the prizes exhibited. A hippopotamus and a rhinoceros plodded along the Via Sacra. Lines of Nubians embellished the Forum, providing exotic prisoners. Carts groaning with booty swayed along the stones. I said that Octavian did not take anything from Alexandria, but of course he had helped himself to the treasury, which he had come so far to get. The amount of gold transferred to Rome had the effect of immediately lowering interest rates there from twelve percent to four.
A representation of the Nile itself, complete with all seven mouths, rolled past, followed by flat wagons displaying Egyptian statues, snatched from the temples.
At last Octavian himself appeared in his chariot, being saluted as the conqueror of the world, wearing the crown, rather than having it merely held over his head by a slave. And then…O shame! Walking behind the chariot, in chains, were Selene and Alexander, with little Philadelphos between them, followed by a lurid, huge depiction of their mother, snakes twined around her arms.
She looked fierce, her eyes blazing, her fists clenched. Was she supposed to be dying? She was stretched on her couch, but not limply. She radiated power and purpose. Was it to depict her as the rapacious enemy who had posed such a threat to Rome? Whatever it was, it caused the crowd to cry out, to cheer. Were they applauding her or rejoicing? Possibly both. The snakes suggested Isis as well as her death. It was not unworthy of her. So she had eluded Octavian’s victory parade, and this was his way of saluting her for it: the enemy larger than life.
Beside the picture an actor walked, reciting some of Horace’s poem about Actium:
She preferred a finer style of dying:
She did not, like a woman, shirk the dagger
Or seek by speed at sea
To change her Egypt for obscurer shores,
But gazing on her desolated palace
With a calm smile, unflinchingly she laid hands on
The angry asps until
Her veins had drunk the deadly poison deep:
And, death-determined, fiercer now than ever,
Perished. Was she to grace a haughty triumph,
Dethroned, paraded by
The rude Liburnians? Not Cleopatra.
As the parade concluded, Octavian dismounted from the chariot and motioned to the children. Now was when prisoners were taken off to a prison cell to be strangled while the victor gave solemn thanks at the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. But Octavian took Antony and Cleopatra’s children with him to mount the steps up to the Temple. Thereafter they vanished back into his household.
There were yet two ceremonies to be observed, tacked onto the end of the Triumph. The doors to the Temple of Janus were formally closed, pronouncing an end to war. And Octavian made his way to Caesar’s temple, there to dedicate a statue of Victory and present Egyptian spoils.
Then it was over, and the general celebrations could begin—the eating, drinking, dancing. I shall not describe it; all crowd celebrations are the same. But I pushed my way through the mob to reach Caesar’s Temple of Venus Genetrix in his Forum. I had to see if…it would be surprising if…but Octavian was a surprising man, I grant him that.
And he surprised me now—pleasantly. For standing where Caesar had placed it seventeen years ago was the gold statue of Cleopatra as goddess and consort. The enemy in the Forum still reigned supreme and honored in this house of Caesar; so revered was Caesar that no one dared attack the statue. Or perhaps it was more than that; perhaps the Romans, who admire courage and a resolute foe above everything else, secretly wished to honor their greatest adversary and keep her where, over the years, they could pay her homage.
4
And now I address you again, my friend, my Queen. Strange how death does not stop us from talking to our departed ones. Or, rather, there are stages we go through: At first, when the gulf is recent and therefore not so wide, we chatter freely, feeling them to be just behind us. Then something happens—grief, gazing on the tomb, seeing the empty seat—that creates a thick wall between us. Then time itself, such a fluid thing, dissolves the barrier and we are back where we started, close again.
Such has happened to me, in regards to you. And once that separation had vanished, I was able to set out to complete the journey that you entrusted to me.
Oh yes, the scrolls are bulky and heavy. They require a stout trunk to house them. I have all ten of them—twenty, actually, since you insisted on copies going to the Kandake. You always knew that we must help chance to triumph, hence an extra set is prudent.
It was good to leave Alexandria; you were right about that. My medical practice has exploded beyond what I can manage, as I have become monstrously famous—or notorious—as the Queen’s physician. They credit me with the asps, with which, of course, I had nothing to do, and with miraculously saving Mardian, which also was not my doing but his luck in being bitten last, and being so bulky. The notoriety is a nuisance, and keeps me from the anonymity I prize. So a lengthy excursion to Meroe is most welcome, and refreshing.
Passing through the canal, then down the Nile, I am retracing our childhood excursion of so long ago. Egypt never changes: the same palms, the same mud-brick houses, the same pyramids. It is good to remind myself of that. Here, beyond Memphis, I question whether they even know that Octavian is the new “P
haraoh.”
Yes, he has embraced this identity. He is posing as your heir—isn’t that amusing? By taking in Alexander, Selene, and Philadelphos, and rearing them in his Roman household, he pretends to continuity of the line. I understand carvers are busy in temples depicting him in Pharaonic crown, sacrificing to Osiris and Horus. But I do not plan to stop and look at them.
Egypt, Egypt, eternal Egypt…always unique. The new “Pharaoh” has declared it a special province, one that no prominent Roman may even visit without express permission. It is to be maintained as a gigantic park, Octavian’s own playground. Cornelius Gallus will oversee it, but he is not its governor. It has no governor.
Timeless eddies on the river, sandbanks with crocodiles, temples, sand, papyrus reeds, and the wide bosom of the Nile reaching down into Africa. It is easy to forget everything else, and let time swirl away.
I will push on past Philae, going all the way to Meroe. There has lately been some trouble around the First Cataract between the Nubians and the Romans, and I think it safer to make my way south first. I must confess that I plan to question the physicians of Meroe and take back samples of any medicinal plants they may have, and thus I am anxious to get there.
I have arrived. It has taken me four months! Months in which to read your account of your own journey here, past all the cataracts. It is not something lightly undertaken. Now the city looms before me, and the banks are lined with the curious. I can only hope that the Kandake is still well, and reigns. Odd how we think distance can confer longevity as well.
She has received me. She lives, although arthritically, and moves her bulk in great majesty through her palace. She was rhapsodical about you, recalling your visit to her so many years ago.
The Memoirs of Cleopatra Page 144