Antony and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  “No, I won’t be in Agrigentum!” Antony snapped. “I’ll be well on the way to reducing the Parthians.”

  “Then how do you expect the division of what’s in Sextus’s vaults to follow your dictate?” Lepidus asked.

  “Because if it doesn’t, Pontifex Maximus, you’ll be out of your priestly job and everything else! Do I care about your legions? No, I do not! The only legions worth their salt belong to me, and I won’t be in the East forever. Eighty percent.”

  “Fifty percent,” said Octavian, face still expressionless. He looked at Lepidus. “And for you, Pontifex Maximus, nothing. Your services won’t be required.”

  “Nonsense, of course they will,” said Lepidus complacently. “However, I’m not greedy. Ten percent will do me nicely. You, Antonius, are not doing enough to warrant forty percent, but I’ll agree to that, as you’re such a glutton. Octavianus has the most debts due to Sextus’s activities, so he should get fifty percent.”

  “Eighty, or I take my fleet back to Athens.”

  “Do so, and you get nothing,” said Octavian, leaning forward in subtle menace, an act he did better than Antony did. “Do not mistake me, Antonius! Sextus Pompeius is going to go down next year, whether you donate a fleet or not. As a loyal and dutiful Triumvir, I am offering you a chance to share in the spoils of his defeat. Offering. Your war in the East, if successful, will benefit Rome and the Treasury, therefore a share will help fund that war. For no other reason do I offer. But Lepidus has a point. If I use his legions as well as Agrippa’s to invade a very large and mountainous island once Sextus’s fleets are no more, Sicilia will fall more quickly, and with less loss of life. So I am willing to concede our Pontifex Maximus ten percent of the spoils. I need fifty percent. That leaves you with forty. Forty percent of seventy-two thousand is twenty-nine. That’s about what Caesar had in his war chest for his campaign against the Parthians.”

  Antony listened in obviously growing ire, but said nothing.

  Octavian swept on. “However, by the time we mount this all-out war against Sextus, he will have added twenty thousand talents to his hoard—the price of this year’s harvest. That means he’ll be sitting on about ninety-two thousand talents. Ten percent of that is over nine thousand talents. Your forty, Antonius, goes up to about thirty-seven thousand. Think on that, do! A huge return for a minor investment—one fleet only, no matter how good.”

  “Eighty,” Antony repeated, but wavering.

  How much, Maecenas wondered, has he come prepared to take? Not eighty percent—he must know he’d never get away with that. But clearly he’s forgotten the addition of another harvest to the spoils. It depends on how much he’s spent in his mind. On the old figures, thirty-six thousand. Accepting ten percent less on the new figures, he comes out slightly ahead of that if what he had counted on getting was fifty percent.

  “Remember,” said Octavian, “whatever goes to you, Antonius, and to you, Lepidus, is paid in Rome’s name. Neither of you will spend your share on Rome herself. Whereas my entire fifty percent will go straight into the Treasury. I know the general is entitled to ten percent, but I will take nothing. What would I use it for, if I did? My divine father left me more than enough in property for my needs, and I have bought the only Roman domus I’ll ever require. It’s already furnished. So my personal wants are quite nonexistent. My share goes wholly to Rome.”

  “Seventy percent,” said Antony. “I’m the senior partner.”

  “In what? Certainly not the war against Sextus Pompeius,” said Octavian. “Forty percent, Antonius. Take it or leave it.”

  The wrangling went on for a month, at the end of which Antony should have been well on his way to Syria. That he remained where he was could be laid entirely at the door of Sextus’s hoard, for he was determined to come out of the negotiations with enough to equip twenty legions superbly, and twenty thousand cavalry. Many hundreds of pieces of artillery. An enormous baggage train capable of carrying all the food and fodder his massive army would eat. Trust Octavian to imply that he would keep his percentage for himself! He would not, which Octavian well knew. It meant the finest army Rome had ever fielded. Oh, and the plunder at the end of his campaign! It would make Sextus Pompey’s hoard look miserable.

  Finally the percentages were agreed: fifty for Octavian and Rome, forty for Antony and the East, and ten for Lepidus in Africa.

  “There are other things,” said Octavian. “Things that have to be thrashed out now, not later.”

  “Oh, Jupiter!” growled Antony. “What?”

  “The Pact of Puteoli or Misenum or whatever you want to call it gave Sextus proconsular imperium over the Islands as well as the Peloponnese. And he is to be consul the year after next. Those are all things that must be stopped immediately. The Senate must re-enact its decree of hostis, forbid Sextus fire and water within a thousand miles of Rome, strip him of his so-called provinces, and remove his name from the fasti—he cannot be consul, ever.”

  “How can any of that be done immediately? The Senate meets in Rome,” Antony objected.

  “Why, when the subject is war? When it discusses war, the Senate must meet outside the pomerium. And Tarentum is definitely outside the pomerium. There are over seven hundred of your tame senators here, Antonius, busy smarming up to you so assiduously that their noses have turned quite brown,” Octavian said acidly. “We also have the Pontifex Maximus here, and you are an augur, and I am priest and augur. There is no impediment, Antonius, none at all.”

  “The Senate must convene in an inaugurated building.”

  “Of which, no doubt, Tarentum has its share.”

  “You’ve forgotten one thing, Octavianus,” said Lepidus.

  “Pray enlighten me.”

  “The name Sextus Pompeius is on the fasti already—that’s what happens when we choose the consuls years in advance and then simply pretend to have them elected. To strike it off would be nefas.”

  Octavian giggled. “Why strike it off, Lepidus? I don’t see the need. Have you forgotten there’s another Sextus Pompeius of the same family strutting around Rome? There’s no reason he can’t be consul the year after next—he was one of the sixty praetors who served last year.”

  Every face broke into a broad grin.

  “Brilliant, Octavianus!” Lepidus cried. “I know the fellow—Pompeius Strabo’s brother’s grandson. He’ll be flattered to death.”

  “Just flattered to near death will do, Lepidus.” Octavian stretched, yawned, managed to look like a contented cat. “Do you suppose this means we can conclude a Pact of Tarentum and repair to Rome to spread the joyous news that the Triumvirate has been renewed for a further five years, and the days of Sextus Pompeius the pirate are numbered? You must come, Antonius, it’s already too late for a campaign this year.”

  “Oh, Antonius, how delightful!” Octavia cried when he told her. “I can see Mama, and visit little Julia for myself—Livia Drusilla is indifferent to her plight, won’t exert herself to persuade Little—Caesar Octavianus, I mean—to keep in touch with his daughter. I fear for the mite.”

  “You’re pregnant again,” said Antony, light dawning.

  “You guessed! How amazing! It’s barely a fact yet, and I was waiting until I was sure before I told you. I hope it’s a son.”

  “Son, daughter, what does it matter? I have plenty of both.”

  “Indeed you do,” said Octavia. “More than any other man of distinction, especially if you include Cleopatra’s twins.”

  A smile flashed. “Irked, my dear?”

  “Ecastor, no! Just rather proud of your virility, I think,” she said with an answering smile. “I confess that sometimes I find myself wondering about her—Cleopatra. Is she well? Is life pleasant for her? She’s faded out of consciousness to most of Rome, including my brother. A pity in a way, since she has a son by Divus Julius as well as your twins. Perhaps one day she will return to Rome. I would like to see her again.”

  He reached for her hand, kissed it. “One thing I’ll s
ay for you, Octavia—you don’t have a jealous bone in your body.”

  In Rome, Antony found two letters waiting for him, one from Herod and one from Cleopatra. Considering Cleopatra’s of less moment, he snapped the wax seal on Herod’s letter first.

  My dear Antonius, I am King of the Jews at last! It wasn’t easy, given the military ineptitude of Gaius Sosius—no Silo, he! A good peacetime governor, but not up to the task of disciplining the Jews. However, he paid me a signal honor by giving me two very good legions of Roman troops and letting me lead them south to Judaea. Antigonus came out of Jerusalem to meet me at Jericho, and I utterly routed him.

  He then fled to Jerusalem, which underwent siege. It fell when Sosius sent me two more good legions. He came with them himself. When the city fell he wanted to sack it, but I talked him out of it. What I wanted and Rome needed, I said to him, was a prosperous Judaea, not a pillaged desert. Eventually he agreed. We have put Antigonus in chains and sent him to Antioch. Once you are in Antioch, you can decide what to do with him, but I strongly urge execution.

  I have freed my family and the family of Hyrcanus from Masada, and married Mariamne. She is pregnant with our first child. Since I am not a Jew, I did not appoint myself High Priest. That honor went to a Zadokite, Ananeel, who will do exactly as I tell him. Of course I have opposition, and there are some who conspire to take up arms against me, but nothing will come of it. My foot is now firmly on the Jewish neck, and will never be lifted while there is life in my body.

  Please, I beg you, Marcus Antonius, give me back a whole and contiguous Judaea instead of these five separate places! I need a seaport, and would be happy with Joppa. Gaza is a little too far south. The best news is that I have wrested the bitumen fisheries off Malchus of Nabataea, who sided with the Parthians and refused me, his own nephew, succor.

  I close thanking you most profusely for your support. Rest assured that Rome will never regret making me King of the Jews.

  Antony let the scroll curl up and sat for a moment with his hands behind his head, smiling at his thoughts of the Semitic toad. Maecenas in eastern guise, but owning a ruthlessness and savagery that Maecenas completely lacked. The thing was, what would benefit Rome’s interests in southern Syria most? A reunited Judaic kingdom, or a fragmented one? Without expanding his geographical borders by one mile, Herod had enriched himself mightily by acquiring the balsam gardens of Jericho and the bitumen fisheries of the Palus Asphaltites. The Jews were warlike and made excellent soldiers—did Rome need a wealthy Judaea ruled by a highly intelligent man? What would happen if Judaea engulfed all of Syria south of the Orontes River? Where would its king look next? To Nabataea, which would give him one of the two great fleets engaged in trade with India and Taprobane. More wealth. After that, he’d look to Egypt, less of a hazard than any attempted expansion north into Rome’s provinces. Hmmm…

  He picked up Cleopatra’s letter, broke the seal, and read it more quickly by far than he had Herod’s. Not that they were so very different, Herod and Cleopatra: not an ounce of sentimentality in either of them. As always, she had written a litany of praise for Caesarion, but that wasn’t sentimentality, that was the lioness and her cub. Caesarion apart, it was the letter of a sovereign rather than an ex-mistress. Glaphyra would do well to emulate her Egyptian counterpart.

  Cleopatra’s beaky little face swam before his inner gaze, the golden eyes shining as they did when she was happy—was she happy? Such a businesslike letter, softened only by love for her older son. Well, she was a ruler first, a woman second. But at least she had more to talk about than Octavia, immersed in her pregnancy and loving being in Rome again. Though she didn’t see a great deal of Livia Drusilla, whom she considered cold and calculating. Not that she’d said so—when did his present wife ever commit a social solecism, even in private to her husband? But Antony knew because he shared Octavia’s dislike; the girl was so absolutely Octavian’s creature. What did Octavian have, that he could grab and hold certain chosen people with talons of steel? Agrippa. Maecenas. And now Livia Drusilla.

  Suddenly he was filled with loathing of Rome, of Rome’s tight little ruling class, Rome’s greed, Rome’s inexorable goals, Rome’s divine right to rule the world. Even the Sullas and the Caesars abnegated their own desires before Rome, offered everything they did on Rome’s altars, fed Rome with their strength, their deeds, the animus that drove them. Was that what was wrong with him? Was he incapable of that kind of dedication to an abstraction, an idea? Alexander the Great didn’t think of Macedon the way Caesar had Rome; he thought of himself first, he dreamed of his own godhead, not his country’s might. Of course that was why his empire fell apart as soon as he died. Rome’s empire would never fall apart because of one man’s death, or even the deaths of many men. A Roman man had his place in a temporary sun, he never thought of himself as the sun. Alexander the Great had. And perhaps Marcus Antonius did too. Yes, Marcus Antonius wanted a sun of his own, and his sun was not Rome’s. No, it was not Rome’s!

  Why had he let that lot in Tarentum whittle his percentage down? All he had to do was sail away with his fleet, but he hadn’t. Thinking he was staying in order to ensure the safety and welfare of his troops when he invaded the Kingdom of the Parthians. Being fobbed off with mere promises! Yes, I promise that I’ll give you twenty thousand well-trained legionaries, said Octavianus, lying through his teeth. I promise I’ll send your forty percent the moment we open Sextus’s vault door. I promise you’ll be consul. I promise you’ll be the senior Triumvir. I promise to care for your interests in the West. I promise this, I promise that. Lies, lies, all lies!

  Consider, Antonius. Think! You have more than seven hundred out of the thousand senators. You can rally voters in the upper Classes and control laws, elections. But somehow you can never get to him, Caesar Octavianus. That’s because he’s here in Rome, and you’re not. Even this interminable summer, while you are physically here, you can’t marshal your forces to destroy him. The senators are waiting to see how much they’ll get out of Sextus Pompeius’s coffers—those among them, that is, who haven’t disappeared to their seaside villas for a summer out of stinking, sweltering Rome. And the People are losing sight of you. Now you’re back, a lot of them don’t recognize you at a glance anymore, though it’s only two years since you were last here. They may hate Octavianus, but he’s a familiar and much-loved hate—the kind of man whom every man thinks he has to love to hate. Whereas I am not even seen as Rome’s savior these days. They have waited too long for me to assert myself. Five years since Philippi, and I haven’t managed to do what I said I’d do in the East. The knights loathe me more than they do Octavianus—he owes them millions upon millions, which makes him theirs. I don’t owe them anything, but I haven’t succeeded in making the East a safe place to conduct business, and that they can’t forgive.

  The month of Julius has come and gone, Sextilis is fast disappearing into that maw I don’t understand. Why does time fly so quickly? Next year—it must be next year! If it isn’t, I will be a has-been, an also-ran. While that little turd wins.

  Octavia came into the room, hesitated with a tentative smile, then continued when he beckoned her.

  “Don’t look afraid,” he said, voice deep. “I won’t eat you.”

  “I didn’t think you would, my dear. I just wondered when we were leaving for Athens.”

  “On the Kalends of September.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll be taking you, but not the children. By the end of the year I’ll be in Antioch, which means an exile for you in Athens. The children would be better off in Rome, under your brother’s protection.”

  Her face fell, her eyes filled with unshed tears. “Oh, that will be hard!” she said, voice breaking. “They need me.”

  “You can stay here if you want,” he said curtly.

  “No, Antonius, I can’t. My place is with you, even if you are not in Athens very often.”

  “Whatever you like.”

  14

  There was a new Quintus Dellius
in Antony’s life, a tall and extremely elegant senator of a fairly old family that had, for instance, produced a Vestal Virgin close to a hundred years ago. The Fonteii Capitones were genuine Roman plebeian aristocrats. His name was Gaius Fonteius Capito, and he was as handsome as any Memmius, as well educated as any Mucius Scaevola. Nor was Fonteius a sycophant; he enjoyed Antony’s company, brought out the best in Antony, and, as a loyal client, was pleased to do Antony a service, but he owned himself.

  When Antony quit Rome and Italia at the beginning of September, embarking himself and Octavia on his flagship at Tarentum, he took Fonteius with him. The hundred and twenty ships of his fleet had been joined by twenty more quinqueremes Octavia had donated to her brother out of her private fortune; all hundred and forty were still at anchor in Tarentum, busy building ship sheds so the vessels could be drawn up out of the water before winter.

  It was still a little early for equinoctial gales, thus Antony was anxious to be gone, hoping to sail before a following wind and a following sea all the way around Cape Taenarum at the foot of the Peloponnese, and thus up to Athens and anchor in the Piraeus.

  But three days out, they encountered a terrible storm that forced them to seek shelter on Corcyra, a beautiful isle off the Greek shore just below Epirus. The tossing sea hadn’t been kind to Octavia, nearing the end of her seventh month, so she greeted terra firma with gratitude.

  “I hate to see you delayed,” she said to Antony, “but I confess I hope we have several days here. My baby must be a soldier, not a sailor.”

  He didn’t smile at her little joke, too impatient to be on his way to be moved by his wife’s suffering, or her gallant attempts not to be a nuisance. “As soon as the captain says we can put out, we sail again,” he said brusquely.