Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997)

by Margaret George

  "I didn't say I wanted to see Romans, I said I wanted to see Rome," said Caesarion with that same quiet, stubborn force his father had displayed in conversation. O Isis, how like him he was! "I want to see the Forum; I want to see the Senate house; I want to see the Tiber, and yes--I want to see the Temple of the Divine Julius! I want to see my father's temple!" His voice was rising, becoming more whiny and childlike. "I do! I do! It isn't fair that I can't!" He turned to me. "How can you expect me to care about it, or my inheritance, if I've never seen it? I can't ransack your mind for your memories; I have to make my own. Nothing is precious if you haven't seen it for yourself!"

  "Now that is a point for philosophers to debate," said Mardian soothingly. "They say that which is unseen can be more real than--"

  "That's a lie," said Caesarion coldly. "And don't change the subject." He dismissed the eunuch imperiously. Where had the child vanished? "Sooner or later I must go. Why not now?"

  "Why must you go, sooner or later?" I asked.

  "Because if I am to claim my Roman half, it cannot be as a stranger to myself--or to them."

  Go to Rome! I felt betrayed; he wanted to go to Rome, to that nest of enemies, which had never been anything but grief to me. But, although he seemed so entirely mine, so completely Ptolemaic, I knew that he spoke the truth--half his blood was theirs. My own child, part foreign.

  "Yes, I can see that," I said slowly. "But why now?"

  "Why wait longer? I want to see it now. And besides, no one notices a child; no one will know I am there. I want to see them, I do not want them to see me. Let Olympos take me with him. Olympos can pass as an ordinary man, and I can be his assistant. We will be invisible."

  "You cannot go without a guard," I said. "Don't you understand what a public figure you are? If someone--"

  "The boy is right," said Antony suddenly. "He would be safer traveling as nobody without a guard than as Caesarion with one."

  Antony! Antony was siding with them! "It is too dangerous," I said. "I cannot send him away like that--"

  "There comes a time when a boy--when a young man--has to leave his mother's side," said Antony. "He comes of age on that day--on the day he first desires it and acts upon it. It comes earlier for some than for others."

  It was too early. I shook my head. It was asking too much.

  "I will guard him with my life," said Olympos. "And I think it would be good for both of us. We would both learn much--to help us in our life's work."

  So now he was willing to go! Would to the gods he had never mentioned it in the first place! Yet Caesarion would have found another opportunity, and perhaps a worse one. . . .

  "Let me go!" Caesarion was pleading. "I want to go. ..."

  "So," I said to Antony, late that night when we were alone, "you will send my child in your place!"

  He shook his head. "No. The boy wishes to go."

  "And so do you!"

  "I do not deny it," he said. "There are political reasons for going, as well as--well, Rome is home. I have been away for--"

  "Not as long as Caesar was, and he returned in power."

  Antony sank down on one of the cushioned benches in the chamber. The night seemed to be growing hotter, and two servants were standing by with ostrich-feather fans, moving them up and down slowly. They appeared not to be listening, but I knew they were. I dismissed them. Now the hot air settled on us like a blanket.

  Antony looked up at me, his expression not that of a husband or a lover, but of an advisor. "Some say--and I cannot wholly deny it--that the reason Caesar was slain was that he was out of touch with Rome, and what Romans were thinking. That his long absence made him a foreigner to them--that otherwise he would have been able to detect the current of dissatisfaction swirling all around him--"

  "Of course he was aware of it!" I remembered the anguish it had caused him; that was one of the tortures of intelligence.

  "If he had truly understood, he would have known the people would not tolerate his abandoning them yet again for three years in Parthia, and ruling from a distance. They had had enough of the faraway . . . king."

  I had to think for a moment. What he said had weight to it. But what was the remedy? "I am afraid to let Caesarion go," I finally said. Was I afraid he would never come back, be swept into the vortex of Rome?

  "He needs to see it for himself," said Antony. "Only that way will its power over his imagination be loosened."

  As I lay sleepless that night, staring up at the lights playing across the ceiling from the flickering oil lamp--its stores almost burnt out--I kept thinking about Rome. Antony still had many partisans there, many senators who supported him, many of the old Republicans and aristocracy. His inheritance--a grandfather who was Consul and a famous orator, a father who was the first Roman to be given an unlimited military command, a mother from the revered Julian clan--still shone bright in the Roman panoply. But for how long? Things unseen diminish in memory's strength, and Octavian was there, ever before them, to help obliterate Antony's image. The longer it went on, the more complete the process would be.

  Yet he could not go there, not now--not after the Parthian humiliation, and his sending Octavia away. Everything I had said against it to Antony was true. But it was also true that his power was eroding in the west, and that was dangerous.

  Lepidus gone . . . Sextus beaten . . . Octavia dismissed ... all the bridges and brakes between Antony and Octavian were down. They were already at war. When would Antony realize it?

  Because I am above all a realist, and I face what is, not what should be, might be, could be, I knew I must let Caesarion go with Olympos. When beaten, one should give in gracefully, and make the most of whatever opportunities remain to be salvaged in the situation. Caesarion would go to Rome; very well, I must prepare him.

  "It is not on the sea," I said.

  "I know that," he said proudly. "I have studied maps of it."

  "What that means is that there are no sea breezes there, and in summer it will be very hot--much hotter than Alexandria. Besides that, the buildings are low and made of brick, the streets narrow and winding--it feels very dark and cramped."

  "But there are gardens--"

  "Yes, in the old villa that Caesar had across the Tiber, where you lived as a baby. They are public now, and give the Romans a chance to gasp some fresh air."

  The orderly, tranquil gardens--were they now filled with foul-breathed, sweating crowds?

  "I will visit them, and visit all the places where you walked," he said solemnly. This was a true pilgrimage for him.

  "You can see me in Rome," I told him. "Go to the Temple of Venus Genetrix--the family temple of the Julians--it's in the new Forum. There's a statue of me inside--your father put it there and caused a great scandal at the time."

  And he made love to me in the empty temple, in the shadows of the statues, I almost added. But he was too young for that. I almost blushed to remember it ijiyself. How young I had been at the time, how shocked, how hesitant! But Caesar had always done what he pleased, where he pleased.

  Had his son inherited that? I didn't think so.

  "Be careful," I said. "Keep your eyes wide open, and see everything. And then return."

  Return home, I wanted to say. But eventually Rome might turn out to be his home. Where did he belong, this son of Caesar's and mine?

  "Here," I said, handing him the pendant I had kept for him. "It is time you took this. It is yours--from Caesar himself."

  Chapter 63.

  To the most glorious Queen, Cleopatra--from a student in Rome, reporting on Egyptian medicines:

  Hail, Queen of all beauty, dark-haired as moonless midnight, slender as the Nile before flood time, graceful as the serpent that guards your ancestral crown:

  I kiss your feet in their jeweled sandals. I console myself that everyone throughout the known world wishes they could do so. I pledge my soul to your health, and will climb crumbling desert cliffs to procure herbs to soften your skin; will dive into the cold depths of
water off Rhodes to bring up the daintiest sponges to dab your eyes; will milk a panther to whiten your hands. I will--

  Now that I am past the first turn of the scroll, I can stop this nonsense. I will have lost any spying reader back in that welter of groveling. But you probably enjoyed it. Come now, admit it. Did you suspect it was from me? Or did you think it was Antony? He probably talks like that to you--if only in private.

  At least that is what they are saying here in Rome. Oh, I have heard a great deal, without even trying. Sometimes it is all lean do to keep my mouth shut, not to shout, "No, Antony does not wear bedclothes to audiences! No, he does not use a golden chamber pot"--I swear, that tale is being told of him, with the proviso "a thing of which even Cleopatra would be ashamed." He is being painted as debauched, corrupted, un-Roman, and all under the unmanly influence of the Queen of Egypt. We don't need to ask who has put these rumors into circulation, but they are thriving. They make such a colorful story! And people would always rather have color than earth-toned truth.

  Octavian, in contrast, paints himself wan and white--a virtuous ghost of old Roman piety. The ghost part comes from Caesar, whom he invokes regularly as "son of the divine JuliusHe is in the process of making Rome white. Now that the civil wars are over--so he stresses--it is time that Rome was clad in marble. The rivalry with Alexandria could not be more obvious. He wants a Rome as white as our glorious city, so he has hinted to his loyal followers, and they are obediently paying for public works out of their own purses. New temples are rising everywhere, basilicas, monuments, libraries, amphitheaters, and there is even talk that Octavian is contemplating a huge mausoleum for himself, to rise on the banks of the Tiber.

  Even the stink has subsided, as Agrippa had the Cloaca Maxima cleaned out, and has built a new aqueduct to bring in more water. And (doubtless at his masters bidding) he has dangled free services before the people--shaves, admission to the baths, theater, food and clothing tokens, open admission to the Circus. He wants them to see him-- Octavian--as the great Roman benefactor.

  Why, even as I write this, I am using one of the free oil lamps distributed throughout the city--by them. I must bring it back to you. It commemorates the battle ofNaulochus with a row of silver dolphins, reminding everyone of the naval victory against Sextus. Who am I to pass up a free lamp? So I use it. So do hundreds of others. They are very clever, this Octavian and his Agrippa.

  It occurs to me that perhaps if Agrippa s own ambition could be fired a bit, so he extricated himself from his master . . . perhaps his loyalty would wane as his pride rose. But alas, he seems wholly devoted to the Son of the Divine Julius.

  I just reread this--and am horrified. I sound like a newly hatched politician. The atmosphere in Rome must have invaded my brain. The very air is politics.

  As for my studies, they are already proving most profitable. Should we fight another war, I will be able to perform miracles, even sewing back severed heads. (I cannot do that yet. But next month . . . )

  Your son is happy, and blends in here all too well. He has proved invisible, as he predicted. In three days it is the Divine Julius's birthday, and Rome is readying itself for public observance. It is fortunate Caesarion is here at this time to see it for himself.

  I should close. There is a ship leaving this evening. I stop here to allow your son to add his own message, before the boat leaves.

  All those fulsome phrases--part of me means them. I pray this finds you well, until my return. Your Olympos.

  .

  To my mother, most exalted Queen:

  We arrived here after only twenty days--a miracle at this time of year! I know it bodes well for us; it means the gods themselves helped us to get here quickly. All along I knew it was right, but this confirms it.

  How sad you were for me to go. I hope you have gotten over it by now. You promised to ride Cyllarus for me, soke wont be lonely and miss me too much. I would have told Antony to, but I think he weighs too much, and my dear horse wouldn't like it.

  We are all settled in a part of Rome they say is disreputable--the Subura! That way no one will ever think to look for us, or suspect anything. The Subura is east of the Forum, and it's very crowded and noisy. They live in things called insula--islands--that are apartments stacked one on top of another, some of them five or six apartments high. There isn't much light down on the street, so you can't see the garbage you are stepping in. People eat all their meals on the street, buying from little shops. It's great fun--everything feels so naughty, like being on a holiday. Nothing is settled and normal.

  Olympos spends a lot of time on the island in the middle of the Tiber, where there's a hospital for poor people and wounded veterans. That leaves me free to amuse myself. Just walking the streets here is an adventure. I will tell you more in a later letter. I can't rush describing things that are important to me. Tell Alexander and Selene that there are a lot of cats here--more than I've ever seen. They are lurking on every corner and in every window. But there are no crocodiles in the Tiber.

  Your loving son, P. Caesar.

  P. S. The Ludi Apollinares are being celebrated--many days of chariot races and games, in honor of Apollo. Why don't we have anything like that?

  .

  I put the letter down, feeling curiously heavy. Outside, beyond my shaded balcony, the sea lay flat and motionless. The weather was uncharacteristically hot and oppressive--the way I had described Rome. Now it was as if my words had returned to mock me.

  The perfume I had put on could not escape my skin; the air imprisoned it. I felt mummified, bound by cloth and aromatic smears of ointment.

  I should be pleased to hear they had arrived safely. Olympos was doing useful work. Caesarion seemed fascinated with Rome. As I expected, he would find the good in it and compare it to Alexandria--that was what children did. It did not escape me that he signed himself "P. Caesar."

  But I did not like the news. I did not like it that Agrippa and Octavian were doing public works; and even the building of the mausoleum seemed suspect. Octavian was only twenty-seven years old--why was he building a mausoleum? Was it supposed to be a national shrine? And what was all this talk about Antony and golden chamber pots--when the talk should be about his victory in Parthia?

  I would have to show the letters to Antony, but I did not expect any helpful response from him. He was sunk in gloom because his lieutenant Titius had executed Sextus once he brought him to Miletus, without waiting for Antony's orders. Now that Sextus was dead, a chorus of voices bewailed him: the last son of the Republic . . . the son of Neptune . . . the pirate-king . . . noble Roman, the last of his kind. . . .

  It disgusted me. Sextus was nothing but a renegade, a brilliant admiral who did not have the sense to follow up any victory, make alliances, or provide his followers any cause to rally for. But then his father, Pompey, had had the same problem. After Pharsalus Caesar had said that if Pompey had known how to follow up a victory, he--Caesar--would have been beaten then and there. "The war would have been won today if the enemy had a man who knew how to conquer," was how he put it. Now Pompey's line ended, condemned by that same trait in his son.

  But Antony was reaping all the opprobrium about it. He was blamed for not being "merciful" like Octavian in sparing Lepidus; he was painted as a cruel executioner. Once again I knew who was putting out these stories.

  The stories . . . they were powerful, and might do the work of armies, in time. In. any case, Antony was taking it hard, and I did not want to bring up the subject of Rome just now. I put the letters aside, and waited for the next.

  .

  Dearest Mother:

  The past few days have been so exciting I hardly know where to begin in telling you about them! I have been all over Rome--up on all the seven hills, and to the Circus to see the free races, and even out into the countryside . . . it's so different from Egypt! But you have seen all those things, and don't need me to describe them. What I can tell you that no one else ever can is how it feels to discover that my father is
real. I know you have done everything possible to make him so for me. You put the bust of him in my room, and told me things he had said-- little things, that no one else would know--and made me learn Latin so I could read his reports. But he was still not real to me, he was more like a pretend game you and I played. Or like the imaginary playmates the twins tell me about.

  But now I come here and everyone is part of the game, everyone pretends to know him or believe in him. There are statues of him everywhere, and in all different poses, so I can see him sitting or standing or smiling or frowning. People talk about him as if he were here; his Forum is a popular place, with the fountain splashing, and the statue of him on horseback.

  I went inside the temple, and just as you said--there was your statue! I like to imagine Caesar showing it to you, and all the Romans being shocked by it. And the one of him on the other side--well, it's nice to see you together, if only in marble.

  I went up to the villa, the one Caesar gave to the people in his will, and walked along the paths, and tried to see if I remembered anything. But I felt as though I had never seen it before. The house is used by the groundskeepers now, and I was not allowed in.

  But the best thing was seeing his temple, the Temple of the Divine Julius, in the Forum. There's a finely carved statue of him, wearing his star of godhood like a diadem, and I just stood very quietly and communed with him. Yes, I felt as if he were talking to me, that he sensed I was there, and he was pleased with me and . . . loved me. How odd I feel, writing this down! The feeling was so overwhelming at the time, but now it seems silly, written down. I listened carefully to what people said when they came, bringing flowers or candles or offerings to place at his feet. They were talking to him, too.