Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997)

by Margaret George

  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 Anton}, 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 wont, 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 br
other-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.

  Chapter 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 endless 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."

  "And you don't wear clothes like that, either. And I certainly never wear a transparent kilt!" He laughed. "I think the double crown is so big it would snap my head off."

  "Yes, crowns can be very heavy. At least that kind can be. So we only wear them ceremonially. When you are crowned at Memphis, you'll have one if you wish. But by that time you'll have a very strong, heavy neck, because I intend to live a long time." I cocked my head. "This is the wrong time of day to see the carvings--not enough shadow. We should come back at sunset."

  "They've made me as tall as you," he said proudly.

  "Well, you almost are. You are tall, like your father." And he had kept the resemblance, with the same broad face and keen, deep-set eyes.

  "My father," he said quietly. "It makes me sad that I can never see him."

  "Yes, it makes me sad too."

  "Well, at least you have seen him, and can remember. He died before I was old enough to have memories. Did he really look like the bust in my room?"

  I nodded. "Yes. Roman art is quite realistic. It is a very good likeness. But, you know, if you learned Latin, you could read his works. His writing was famous. In that way you could come to know him; people can speak to us through what they write."

  "But it's just about battles and marches; it isn't about him."

  "His battles are him."

  "Oh, you know what I mean! He didn't write essays or speeches, like Cicero. That's easier to see someone in."

  "I think he did write them, but I don't know if they were published. They may have been among his papers after he died. If so, then perhaps Antony still has them--or knows where they are. He took charge of everything in the house . . . afterward."

  "He probably left them back in Rome, and Mardian says he'll never go back to Rome again, that Octavian has shut him out and won't allotu him back."

  "That's a lie! He can return whenever he wishes. But why would he wish to, before he's defeated the Parthians? After that, he can go to Rome as ruler, and shut Octavian out."

  Caesarion shrugged. "Mardian said that Octavian called him back to Italy and then refused to meet with him. Mardian says that it set Antony's Parthian campaign back by a whole year. Mardian says that's probably what he wanted--Octavian, I mean--"

  "Mardian does like to talk," I said lightly. "It's true that Octavian begged Antony to come and bring ships to Italy to help in the war with Sextus, and then changed his mind. But it has not cost Antony any time in Parthia. His general Bassus has beaten the Parthians out of Syria and back over the Euphrates again. Now the real campaign can begin."

  "Good. I think he must be ready to fight at last."

  "Did Mardian also tell you that Octavian has been beaten time and again by Sextus? He all but drowned in trying to fight him; half his fleet was wrecked in the Strait of Messina. Scylla on her rock almost devoured Octavian himself; he barely managed to wash ashore and crawl to safety." But he somehow always managed to crawl to safety, I thought--crawl, rest up, and gather his forces.

  "No, he didn't," Caesarion admitted.

  "Octavian's losing is getting to be a joke," I said. "The Romans made up a verse about him: 'He's lost his fleet, and lost the battle, twice. Someday he'll win; why else keep throwing dice?' "

  "You seem to know a great deal about him," said Caesarion.

  "I make it my business to know," I said.

  Someday he'll win; why else keep throwing dice? I shivered, even in the warm sun.

  "Come," I said, steering him in the direction of the anxious, hovering chief priest. They wished to honor us by a meal, held under a shaded trellis.

  I saw him watching the temple from his seat, his gaze always going back to the carving of himself in that strange garb. He struggled with Egyptian, trying hard not to lapse back into Greek, and the priest seemed flattered.

  The drowsy noontime seemed to lay calming hands on our heads. Here, almost four hundred miles upriver, all the things I was so preoccupied with in Alexandria faded to unimportance. Here we were hidden, protected, given sanctuary. This was the true Egypt, the motherland, where Rome could not reach us. If all else failed, my children could rule here unmolested.

  If all else failed . . . but I must not think of failure. It would be failure indeed if Caesar's true heir, and the children of a Triumvir, had to content themselves with less than their due inheritance. And that inheritance, for better or worse, was part of the Roman world.

  But, ah! How delightful it was to recline beneath the arbor, luxuriating in the dry heat, seeing the white butterflies dancing overhead. Everything here was either brown or green or
white.

  "Tell me about Hathor," Caesarion was saying. "The goddess who presides over this temple."

  The priest's eyes lit up. "She is our ancient goddess of beauty, joy, and music."

  "Like Isis?" he asked.

  "Yes, only older. Although we believe they may just be manifestations of each other. And once the Greeks came, they thought she was also Aphrodite."

  How different this Egyptian-style temple, with its solid walls, its carvings, its darkened sanctuary, was from the Roman one Caesar had likewise built to honor the goddess of beauty. Both saluted her in appropriate ways. Beauty . . . we all worship her, we all stand in awe of beauty. It is the one god we all seem to agree upon.

  "You have been most generous, Majesty, in providing for the temple," the priest was saying. "As were your ancestors."

  "As heirs of the Pharaohs, we are honored to do so," I said. We Ptolemies had tried to keep Egyptian religion, art, and architecture intact; Greek influence was confined to only a few cities. Some had accused us of becoming more Egyptian than the Egyptians, by taking up brOther-sister marriage, decking out the temples, honoring the sacred bulls of Apis, and being crowned at Memphis. Others said it was just political guile. Perhaps it was for some, but in my own life I felt a pull toward the ancient Egyptian ways, and the old stones and gods spoke to me.

  As the sun sank low in the sky, we stood once more looking at the figures on the temple. Now the lines were etched dark by shadows, and the Queen and King stood majestically tall, their elaborate headdresses towering above them, every detail of their wigs and jewelry sharp and clear.