Antony and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  Not that Livia Drusilla intended to be a mouse; she simply masqueraded as someone small and meek and a trifle timid. Huge ambition burned in her, inchoate because she had no idea how she was going to seize that ambition, turn it into a productive thing. Certainly it was shaped in an absolutely Roman mold, which meant no unfeminine behavior, no putting herself forward, no unsubtle manipulating. Not that she wanted to be another Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi, worshipped by some women as a truly Roman goddess because she had suffered, borne children, seen them die, never complained of her lot. No, Livia Drusilla sensed that there had to be another way to reach the heights.

  The trouble was that three years of marriage had shown her beyond all doubt that the way was not through Tiberius Claudius Nero. Like most girls of her exalted station, she hadn’t known her husband-to-be very well before they married, for all that he was her close cousin. Nothing in him on the few occasions when they had met had inspired anything in her save contempt for his stupidity and an instinctive detestation of his person. Dark herself, she admired men with golden hair and light eyes. Intelligent herself, she admired men with great intelligence. On neither count could Nero qualify. She was fifteen when her father Drusus had married her to his first cousin Nero, and in the house where she grew up there had been no priapic wall paintings or phallic lamps whereby a girl might learn something about physical love. So union with Nero had revolted her. He too preferred golden-haired, light-eyed lovers; what pleased him in his wife were her noble ancestry and her fortune.

  Only how to be shriven of Tiberius Claudius Nero when she was determined to be a good wife? It didn’t seem possible unless someone offered him a better marriage, and that was highly unlikely. Her cleverness had shown her very early in their marriage that people disliked Nero, tolerated him only because of his patrician status and his consequent right to occupy all the offices Rome offered her nobility. And oh, he bored her! Many were the tales she had heard about Cato Uticensis, Caesar’s greatest enemy, and his tactless, prating personality, but to Livia Drusilla he seemed an ecstatic god compared to Nero. Nor could she like the son she had borne Nero ten months after their wedding; little Tiberius was dark, skinny, tall, solemn, and a trifle sanctimonious, even at two years of age. He had fallen into the habit of criticizing his mother because he heard his father do so, and unlike most small children, he had spent his life thus far in his father’s company. Livia Drusilla suspected that Nero preferred to keep her and little Tiberius close in case some pretty fellow with Caesarean charm tampered with his wife’s virtue. What an irritation that was! Didn’t the fool know that she would never demean herself in that way?

  The housebound existence she had led until Nero embarked upon his disastrous Campanian venture in Lucius Antonius’s cause had not allowed her as much as a glimpse of any of the famous men all Rome talked about; she hadn’t laid eyes on Marcus Antonius, Lepidus, Servilius Vatia, Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, Octavianus, or even Caesar, dead in her fifteenth year. Therefore today was exciting, though nothing in her demeanor showed that: she was going to dine with Marcus Antonius, the most powerful man in the world!

  A pleasure that almost didn’t happen when Nero discovered that Antony was one of those disgracefully fast fellows who let women recline on the men’s couches.

  “Unless my wife has a chair, I am leaving!” Nero said with his customary tact.

  Had Antony not already found the little oval face of Nero’s wife bewitching, the upshot of that remark would have been a roar and expulsion; as it was, Antony grinned and commanded that a chair be brought for Livia Drusilla. When the chair came he had it placed opposite his own position on the couch, but as there were only the three male diners, Nero couldn’t very well object to that. It wasn’t as if she was around a corner from him, though he did think it more evidence of Antony’s uncouth nature that he had relegated Nero to the end of the couch, put a puffed-up nobody like Plancus in the middle.

  Removal of her wrap revealed that Livia Drusilla wore a fawn dress with long sleeves and a high neck, but nothing could disguise the charms of her figure or her flawless ivory skin. As thick and black as night, with the same indigo tinge to its luster, her hair was done plainly, drawn back to cover her ears and knotted on the nape of her neck. And her face was exquisite! A small, lush red mouth, enormous eyes fringed with long black lashes like fans, pink cheeks, a small but aquiline nose, all combined to form perfection. Just when Antony became annoyed at not being able to decide what color her eyes were, she moved her chair and a thin ray of sun lit them. Oh, amazing! They were a very dark blue, but striated in a magical way with strands of whitish fawn. Like no eyes he had ever seen before, and—eerie. Livia Drusilla, I could eat you up! he said to himself, and set out to make her fall in love with him.

  But it wasn’t possible. She was not shy, answered all of his questions frankly yet demurely, wasn’t afraid to add a tiny comment when it was called for. However, she would introduce no topic of conversation of her own volition, and said or did nothing that Nero, watching suspiciously, could fault. None of that would have mattered to Antony had a single spark of interest flared in her eyes, but it didn’t. If he had been a more perceptive man, he would have known that the faint moue crossing her face from time to time spoke of distaste.

  Yes, he would beat a wife who grossly erred, she decided, but not as Nero would, coldly, with total calculation. Antonius would do it in a terrible temper, though afterward, cooled down, he wouldn’t rue the deed, for her crime would be unpardonable. Most men would like him, be drawn to him, and most women desire him. Life during those few days in Sextus Pompeius’s lair at Agrigentum had exposed Livia Drusilla to low women, and she had learned a lot about love, and men, and the sexual act. It seemed that women preferred men with large penises because a large penis made it easier for them to achieve climax, whatever that was (she had not found out, afraid to ask for fear of being laughed at). But she did find out that Marcus Antonius was famous for the immensity of his procreative equipment. Well, that was as may be, when now she could discover nothing in Antonius to like or admire. Especially after she realized that he was trying his hardest to elicit a response from her. It gave her tremendous satisfaction to deny him that response, which taught her a little about how a woman might acquire power. Only not intriguing with an Antonius, whose lusts were transient, unimportant even.

  “What did you think of the Great Man?” Nero asked as they walked home in the brief, fiery twilight.

  Livia Drusilla blinked; her husband didn’t usually ask her what she thought about anyone or anything. “High in birth, low in character,” she said. “A vulgar boor.”

  “Emphatic,” he said, sounding pleased.

  For the first time in their relationship, she dared to ask him a political question. “Husband, why do you cleave to a vulgar boor like Marcus Antonius? Why not to Caesar Octavianus, who by all descriptions is not a boor, nor vulgar either?”

  For a moment he stopped absolutely still, then turned to look at her, more in surprise than irritation. “Birth outweighs both. Antonius is better born. Rome belongs to men with the proper ancestry. They and only they should be permitted to hold high offices, govern provinces, conduct wars.”

  “But Octavianus is Caesar’s nephew! Wasn’t Caesar’s birth unimpeachable?”

  “Oh, Caesar had it all—birth, brilliance, beauty. The most august of the august patricians. Even his plebeian blood was the best—mother Aurelian, grandmother Marcian, great-grandmother Popillian. Octavianus is an imposter! A tinge of Julian blood, the rest trash. Who are the Octavii of Velitrae? Utter nobodies! Some Octavii are fairly respectable, but not those from Velitrae. One of Octavianus’s great-grandfathers was a rope maker, another a baker. His grandfather was a banker. Low, low! His father made a lucky second marriage to Caesar’s niece. Though she was tainted—her father was a rich nobody who bought Caesar’s sister. In those days the Julii had no money, they had to sell daughters.”

  “Is a nephew not a quarter Juli
an?” she ventured boldly.

  “Great-nephew, the little poseur! One-eighth Julian. The rest is abominable!” barked Nero, getting worked up. “Whatever possessed the great Caesar to choose a low-born boy as his heir escapes me, but of one thing you may be sure, Livia Drusilla—I will never tie myself to the likes of Octavianus!”

  Well, well, thought Livia Drusilla, saying no more. That is why so many of Rome’s aristocrats abhor Octavianus! As a person of the finest blood, I should abhor him too, but he intrigues me. He’s risen so far! I admire that in him because I understand it. Perhaps every so often Rome must create new aristocrats; it might even be that the great Caesar realized that when he made his will.

  Livia Drusilla’s interpretation of Nero’s reasons for hewing to Mark Antony was a gross oversimplification—but then, so was Nero’s reasoning. His narrow intellect was undeveloped; no number of additional years could make him any more than he had been when a young man serving under Caesar. Indeed, he was so dense that he had no idea Caesar had disliked him. Water off a duck’s back, as the Gauls said. When your blood is the very best, what possible fault could a fellow nobleman find in you?

  To Mark Antony, it seemed as if his first month in Athens was littered with women, none of whom was worth his valuable time. Though was his time truly valuable, when nothing he did bore fruit? The only good news came from Apollonia with Quintus Dellius, who informed him that his legions had arrived on the west coast of Macedonia, and were happy to bivouack in a kinder climate.

  Hard on Dellius’s heels came Lucius Scribonius Libo, escorting the woman surest to blight Antony’s mood: his mother.

  She rushed into his study strewing hairpins, stray seed for the bird her servant girl carried in a cage, and strands from a long fringe some insane seamstress had attached to the edges of her stole. Her hair was coming adrift in wisps more grey than gold these days, but her eyes were exactly as her son remembered them: eternally cascading tears.

  “Marcus, Marcus!” she cried, throwing herself at his chest. “Oh, my dearest boy, I thought I’d never see you again! Such a dreadful time of it I’ve had! A paltry little room in a villa that rang night and day with the sounds of unmentionable acts, streets slimed with spittle and the contents of chamber pots, a bed crawling with bugs, nowhere to have a proper bath—”

  With many shushes and other soothing noises, Antony finally managed to put her in a chair and settle her down as much as anyone could ever settle Julia Antonia down. Only when the tears had diminished to something like their usual rate did he have the opportunity to see who had entered behind Julia Antonia. Ah! The sycophant to end all sycophants, Lucius Scribonius Libo. Not glued to Sextus Pompey—grafted to him to make a sour rootstock produce sweet grapes.

  Short in height and meager in build, Libo had a face that reinforced the inadequacies of his size and betrayed the nature of the beast within: grasping, timid, ambitious, uncertain, selfish. His moment had come when Pompey the Great’s elder son had fallen in love with his daughter, divorced a Claudia Pulchra to marry her, and obliged Pompey the Great to elevate him as befitted his son’s father-in-law. Then when Gnaeus Pompey followed his father into death, Sextus, the younger son, had married his widow. With the result that Libo had commanded naval fleets and now acted as an unofficial ambassador for his master, Sextus. The Scribonian women had done well by their family; Libo’s sister had married two rich, influential men, one a patrician Cornelius by whom she had borne a daughter. Though Scribonia the sister was now in her early thirties and deemed ill omened—twice widowed was once too often—Libo did not despair of finding her a third husband. Comely to look at, proven fertile, a two-hundred-talent dowry—yes, Scribonia the sister would marry again.

  However, Antony wasn’t interested in Libo’s women; it was his own bothering him. “Why on earth bring her to me?” he asked.

  Libo opened his fawn-colored eyes wide, spread his hands. “My dear Antonius, where else could I bring her?”

  “You could have sent her to her own domus in Rome.”

  “She refused with such hysteria that I was forced to push Sextus Pompeius out of the room—otherwise he would have killed her. Believe me, she wouldn’t go to Rome, kept screeching that Octavianus would execute her for treason.”

  “Execute Caesar’s cousin?” Antony asked incredulously.

  “Why not?” Libo asked, all innocence. “He proscribed Caesar’s cousin Lucius, your mother’s brother.”

  “Octavianus and I both proscribed Lucius!” Antony snapped, goaded. “However, we did not execute him! We needed his money, that simple. My mother is penniless, she stands in no danger.”

  “Then you tell her that!” said Libo with a snarl; it was he, after all, who had had to suffer Julia Antonia on a fairly long sea voyage.

  Had either man thought to look her way—he did not—he might have seen that the drowned blue eyes held a certain cunning and that the profusely ornamented ears were picking up every word uttered. Monumentally silly Julia Antonia might be, but she had a healthy regard for her own well-being and was convinced that she would be much better off with her senior son than stranded in Rome without an income.

  By this time the steward and several female servants had arrived, their faces displaying some trepidation. Unmoved by this evidence of servile fear that they were about to be burdened with a problem, Antony thankfully passed his mother over to them, all the while assuring her that he wasn’t going to send her to Rome. Finally the deed was done and peace descended on the study; Antony sat back in his chair with a sigh of relief.

  “Wine! I need wine!” he cried, suddenly erupting out of the chair. “Red or white, Libo?”

  “A good strong red, I thank you. No water. I’ve seen enough water in the last three nundinae to last me half a lifetime.”

  Antony grinned. “I fully understand. Chaperoning my mama is no picnic.” He poured a large goblet almost to its brim. “Here, this should numb the pain—Chian, ten years old.”

  Silence reigned for some time as the two bibbers buried their snouts in their goblets with appropriate sounds of content.

  “So what brings you to Athens, Libo?” Antony asked, breaking the silence. “And don’t say, my mother.”

  “You’re right. Your mother was convenient.”

  “Not for me,” Antony growled.

  “I’d love to know how you can do that,” Libo said brightly. “Your speaking voice is light and high, but in a trice you can turn it into a deep-throated growl or roar.”

  “Or bellow. You forgot the bellow. And don’t ask me how. I don’t know. It just happens. If you want to hear me bellow, keep on evading the subject, by all means.”

  “Er—no, that won’t be necessary. Though if I may continue about your mother for a moment longer, I suggest that you give her plenty of money and the run of the best shops in Athens. Do that, and you’ll never see or hear her.” Libo smiled down at the bubbles beading the rim of his wine. “Once she learned that your brother Lucius was pardoned and sent to Further Spain with a proconsular imperium, she was easier to deal with.”

  “Why are you here?” Antony said again.

  “Sextus Pompeius thought it a good idea for me to see you.”

  “Really? With a view to what end?”

  “Forming an alliance against Octavianus. The two of you united would crush Octavianus to pulp.”

  The small full mouth pursed; Antony looked sideways. “An alliance against Octavianus…Pray tell me, Libo, why I, one of the three men appointed by the Senate and People of Rome to reconstitute the Republic, should form an alliance with a man who is no better than a pirate?”

  Libo winced. “Sextus Pompeius is the governor of Sicilia in full accordance with the mos maiorum! He does not regard the Triumvirate as legal or proper, and he deplores the proscription edict that falsely outlawed him, not to mention stripped him of his property and inheritance! His activities on the high seas are purely to convince the Senate and People of Rome that he has been unjustly condemned. L
ift the sentence of hostis, lift all the bans, embargoes, and interdictions, and Sextus Pompeius will cease to be—er—a pirate.”

  “And he thinks I’ll move in the House that his status as a public enemy and all the bans, embargoes, and interdictions be lifted if he aids me in ridding Rome of Octavianus?”

  “Quite so, yes.”

  “I take it he’s proposing outright war, tomorrow if possible?”

  “Come, come, Marcus Antonius, all the world can see that you and Octavianus must eventually come to blows! Since between you—I discount Lepidus—you have imperium maius over nine-tenths of the Roman world and you control its legions as well as its incomes, what else can happen when you collide other than full-scale war? For over fifty years the history of the Roman Republic has been one civil war after another—do you honestly believe that Philippi was the end of the final civil war?” Libo kept his tone gentle, his face serene. “Sextus Pompeius is tired of outlawry. He wants what is due to him—restoration of his citizenship, permission to inherit his father Magnus’s property, the restitution of said property, the consulship, and a proconsular imperium in Sicilia in perpetuity.” Libo shrugged. “There is more, but that will do to go on with, I think.”

  “And in return for all this?”

  “He will control and sweep the seas as your ally. Include a pardon for Murcus and you will have his fleets too. Ahenobarbus says he’s independent, though as big a—pirate. Sextus Pompeius will also guarantee you free grain for your legions.”