by Karen Essex
She had died trying to give Pompey an heir. Pompey, devastated, prepared a grand funeral ceremony at his property in Alba, but a mob of citizens showed up at his house and demanded the girl’s body. Stole it, really. They took the corpse from the house and performed the ceremony in the Field of Mars where all Rome might attend. They told Pompey to his face that the daughter of Caesar belonged to the people and not to him. That, Caesar would like to have seen. He was told that the funeral pyre was spectacular. The mourning, city-wide. All in tribute to his only heir. Clodius, poor dead Clodius, had arranged the spectacle.
Julia, dead. Clodius, dead. Murdered on a lonesome stretch of the Appian Way by his rival, Milo. Intoxicated by violence, Clodius had gotten out of hand, stirring up trouble in the city to the point where the senate had threatened to put off the coming elections. Antony, running for quaestor, put a stop to it. He drew his sword on Clodius and promised to kill him if he did not change his tactics. When it came time to choose between Clodius and Antony, Caesar was decided. Clodius was the past, Antony the future. No one rivaled Antony in battle, no one, not even Caesar himself. Milo merely took care of an ugly job, saving Caesar from the necessity of turning forever on an old friend. The tear Caesar had shed upon Clodius’s death was merely nostalgic.
And now Crassus. Poor old Crassus, desperate to compete with Pompey and Caesar, had marched into savage Parthia, where he and his men—his son included—were mercilessly slaughtered at Carrhae, that same place where the Jews believed that their god had spoken to the prophet Abraham. Crassus’s head was brought to the king of Parthia, a monster known for his perverted productions of Greek plays, who used the unexpected gift that very evening as the head of Pentheus in a production of The Bacchae.
“Everyone is saying that Crassus was the Isthmus of Corinth,” reported one of Caesar’s secretaries. “The bulwark of calm that prevented the two great seas, yourself and Pompey, from crashing.”
Caesar considered the metaphor. Was it apt? He did not know if he was anxious or not for that prediction to manifest itself into truth. Perhaps not just yet.
According to the reports, Pompey was giving all his attention to his new wife, Cornelia, the young widow of Crassus’s slain son. It was said that the two of them strolled about Pompey’s beloved gardens with garlands draped around their necks, celebrating their union as if neither had a dead spouse to mourn. A disgrace. Caesar admitted that he was more than a little agitated that his Julia had been so quickly replaced.
Was Pompey trying to insult him? Since Julia’s death, Pompey had been so competitive. Or so it seemed to Caesar. Caesar conquered Briton; Pompey built a magnificent theater. Caesar vanquished Gaul; Pompey imitated Clodius and began to feed the masses with free grain. Now Pompey had turned his back on all the violence in Rome, quitted office, and gone back to hiding in his gardens. But he couldn’t fool Caesar; he was trying to force the senate to appoint him dictator.
And that would not do.
Caesar rose, feeling the familiar lightness in his head, the all-too-frequent blackness before his eyes when getting to his feet. It was already late afternoon, and he had forgotten to eat again. Though food had been put before him, his thoughts were too distracted to focus on consuming a meal.
The soldiers had selected their slaves. The rest of the Gauls were enchained to one another by the foot, twelve to a chain, to be led behind the baggage carts all the way to Rome, where they would be sold at the slave auctions. The best of the remaining lot were put into wagons—gifts for friends and allies of Caesar in Rome. No women. That was a problem. How many of his friends had requested a blond barbarian to add to his household? Well, he had sent them so many already.
“And what shall we do with Vercingetorix?” asked Labienus.
Caesar looked at his enemy. “Oh, he is coming back to Rome to be paraded in chains in my Triumph parade. The ladies will enjoy it so.”
Caesar headed toward his camp, Hirtius falling in next to him. The two men walked in silence. As methodically as ants, Caesar’s men carried the remains of the town out of the gates and loaded the plunder into large carts. Pottery, tapestries, goblets of silver and bronze, barber’s tools, water dishes, even chamberpots. Whatever might fetch a price in the markets at home. Caesar counted forty-two carts of soldiers’ gleaming armor, medals, and jewelry, as well as horses’ ornamentation and adorned saddles. With the gold and silver and the possessions of the townspeople, it would be an impressive show. But it was never enough for the insatiable appetites back home.
What next? Rabirius was forever pestering him to go to Egypt and collect the debt from the old king, now that he had been reinstated. He’s spending the money he owes us restoring temples and buying back the goodwill of his people, Rabirius had complained in his last letter. Can’t you do something about it? Antony’s tales of Egypt’s bounty had been impressive. Though the senate would be against it, perhaps he should go there and claim it all for Rome. The senators opposing him would balk at the expanse of his power, but Caesar guessed that when he sent them their share of Egypt’s treasures, they wouldn’t send anything back.
“I have compiled the statistics you requested, sir,” said Hirtius. He was Caesar’s favorite secretary, quiet, unassuming, intelligent enough to know the mind of Caesar, but not ambitious enough to exploit that fact. “In all, we have subdued eight hundred Gallic towns and villages. The loss of life of the rebels totals one million, one hundred ninety-two thousand, as nearly as I can figure it.”
“Thank you, Hirtius, I estimated as much.” More men than lived in the city of Rome.
“Do you think it a good idea to release those figures in the report?” asked the secretary. “They are rather startling. Particularly for those unaware of our circumstances here.”
“Yes, by all means,” said Caesar. After all, was it not a Roman ideal that no war should be abandoned until it was won? Besides, Caesar guessed that the numbers would thrill rather than revile his countrymen. “My reputation for mercy is beyond reproach.”
EIGHTEEN
Kleopatra walked alone down the great hall toward the Royal Reception Room in search of her father. Though he no longer liked to be bothered with the details of administering the government, she often sought his counsel when she did not receive satisfactory advice from the new prime minister, Hephaestion, or when she was unsure of her own judgment. But the last time she approached the king about money for one of the temples, he threw up his hands so fiercely that she shied away.
“I am not a well man!” he yelled. “My spleen is heated, my bowels loose, my liver chilled, and my chest burns like a Roman furnace day and night.” Auletes, indeed, did not look well. During the four years since his return from exile, his consumption of food and drink had doubled. He was larger than ever and had begun to wheeze as he walked, as he sat, as he ate, and even as he talked. “I am becoming Potbelly, am I not? Fat as one of those large African beasts that are born in the water.” A hippopotamus, replied his daughter with as solicitous a voice as she could muster. Auletes frightened her in this temper, not because she feared what her father would do to her, but rather what he would do to the kingdom. With every groan, he moved closer to the day when he would be incapacitated. Kleopatra sometimes found herself torn between waiting for that day and dreading it.
She was seventeen, and had been so for the better part of the year. Small, still slim as a stable boy, she had learned to compensate for her lack of height with knife-sharp posture, and for her lack of mature features with scrupulously applied cosmetics. Instead of jumping on her horse first thing in the morning, she bathed quickly, allowing time to be dressed in a newly designed wardrobe of draped white linen that flattered and elongated. Her long wavy hair, streaked by the sun, was swept into a swirling hive at the nape of her neck and fastened with a smart ivory comb dotted with diamonds from African mines. To her cheeks, Charmion applied a powdery mix of cinnamon and ginger, brown enough to blend with her skin, for Kleopatra did not wish to look red in the fa
ce like the painted Rabirius or one of the court prostitutes. Charmion reddened her lips and palms, darkened her eyelids, and inked her lashes. With a steady hand, she rimmed Kleopatra’s impatient eyes with a fine band of kohl. All the while an attendant massaged almond oil into the princess’s hands, forearms, and feet, finishing with a brusque chamois cloth.
Thus, with her adolescence painted away, Kleopatra began her long day.
This morning, dread was her only companion. Every time she brought up the debt to the Romans, Auletes acted like a petulant slave child who did not wish to do his daily chores. I have executed my enemies and now it is my friends who so torment me, the king would complain. I cannot spend any more money placating the Romans. They are laughing at me, just as they laughed at Potbelly. And then he would waddle from the room, leaving the troubles of his kingdom behind, and leaving his daughter to wish she might so easily exonerate herself from duty.
Composing the speech she would make to the king, Kleopatra motioned to the guard to open the double mahogany doors and strode breezily, unannounced, through the opening. Below the great eagle over her father’s throne sat Auletes—his robes wide open, a naked youth stretched across his lap like a baby. The boy’s penis was firm in Auletes’ hand, his head thrown back, his mouth open. Little gasping noises escaped from his lips. Auletes frantically pressed his head against the back of the throne, while he thrust himself into the boy’s bottom. Kleopatra stood agape. They seemed not to notice her. A water boy, a spritelike Egyptian of perhaps eleven, crouched on the floor next to the table of wine. He glanced at Kleopatra and then hid his face in the tablecloth. He probably fears that he is next, she thought. She turned away and walked out, the sounds of their ecstasy serenading her exit.
At least he’s written his will, she thought, quickening her step in the direction of the Prime Minister’s office. Six months earlier, the scrupulous Hephaestion had urged Auletes to name as his successors Kleopatra and her younger brother. Ptolemy the Elder was still just a child, but, theoretically, her future husband. Auletes issued a Proclamation that they be known as Philadelphoi, deities, lovers of their siblings.
Kleopatra suppressed a smirk when she heard the wording. She hardly knew her brother. Custom, nonetheless, was custom, and Auletes arranged succession according to tradition. He then invited Kleopatra to accompany him to the small palace where his other children lived to announce the contents of his will. They were reared by a staff who brought them to official ceremonies several times a year, but Kleopatra and her father had no real contact with these offspring. The king, Kleopatra suspected, considered them remnants of his life with Thea, and probably feared that betrayal was a characteristic that ran in the blood. Why should he trust them when his entire family history bore witness to that possibility?
Arsinoe, fourteen, was a creature of both Thea and Berenike. Berenike had raised the girl, intoxicating her childhood with the legends of the warrior queens. Arsinoe was very like Berenike—muscular, aggressive—though shorter and even less attached to the earth. But she was buxom like Thea, and Kleopatra felt a deadly chill of memory when Arsinoe sat in her father’s lap and stroked his face seductively. Ptolemy the Elder was ten years old and demonstrating the unfortunate tendency to fatness of the males in the lineage. His tutor, the painted and bejeweled eunuch Pothinus, attended him solicitously, praising his every word, even if he was merely quoting an overused verse of Homeric poetry, and encouraged Arsinoe to praise him as well. Kleopatra had been warned about Pothinus by Hephaestion, who judged him grandiose, foolish, and ambitious. “There is nothing worse than ignorance followed by action,” Hephaestion had said, “and I fear that Pothinus subscribes to that pattern of behavior.” Ptolemy the Younger was eight, but already aware of the position to which he might someday ascend, and fully attached to the elder two, who told him they would conquer Syria for him to rule while they presided over Egypt. Still in the nursery, he wore elaborate clothing and bid his nurse call him Ptolemy XIV, king of the Seleucids. Lost in a dream world, these children knew nothing of the functions of the government. Kleopatra noticed that Arsinoe indulged the tutor and her brothers, all the while turning shrewd eyes to her older sister, letting Kleopatra know that her eager compliance was mere sport. The boys will forever be a burden, Kleopatra had thought, and Arsinoe, trouble. Another Berenike—fierce and ambitious, but ignorant of the world’s realities. Kleopatra sat motionless in her chair, assessing this bizarre assembly of characters—her father and his rotund sons, identical replicas of descending sizes; her sister, a master of connivance, playing the temptress for her father, the solicitous nursemaid to her brothers, and the precocious pawn to the eunuch. It was as if every censorious judgment against the Ptolemies had been painted into this living tableau before her. Kleopatra had begun to feel dizzy and cut the visit short with complaints of a headache.
Auletes attempted to deposit a copy of his will with the Vestal Virgins in Rome, but the terror reigning in the streets of that city thwarted his effort. He sent letters and gifts to Pompey, begging him to ensure that Rome would support Kleopatra and Ptolemy the Elder as monarchs in the event of his death. “Remember the little girl who so skillfully handled your horse? She is a woman now and reigns at my side. She is astute in matters of policy, and is an invaluable diplomat as she speaks and reads many languages.” He sent dozens of these missives, always with gold, or with extravagant jewels for Pompey’s new wife, Cornelia, whom Kleopatra assumed was another young plaything like Julia. When she discovered the truth—that Cornelia was herself a scholar and learned matron—she suggested to Auletes that he send her a generous gift from the Alexandria Library. This Pompey responded to, undoubtedly at Cornelia’s insistence. He sent Auletes a letter guaranteeing that he would be responsible for the safekeeping of his will and for its implementation in the “terrible event that the gods take Your Highness from us.” Auletes had the letter translated into Greek and demotic Egyptian and posted throughout the land.
Once Auletes had Pompey’s assurance, he abruptly withdrew from his duties. He attempted to escape the ravages of his age and condition by daily indulgence in wine and in the pleasures of young lovers, lured by gifts of jewelry for the ostentatious, rare manuscripts from the Library for the intellectuals, and idle promises of future political power for those who were ambitious. Finally, thought Kleopatra, he has succumbed to the pattern of iniquity established by his ancestors. Was it the destiny of the men in the family to spend their later years wallowing in decadent sport while the kingdom was run by women and eunuchs? So be it; she was up to the task.
With a resolute gait, she strode into the office of the Prime Minister, waving at him to sit when he rose to attend to her, and dropped carelessly on his sofa. “My father is debauching himself again with a boy from the gymnasium. I did not think it a good time to bother him with our concerns.”
Hephaestion smiled. He was a handsome forty-year-old eunuch who dressed conservatively and moved with the slow, tranquil pace of a priest. It had taken Kleopatra many months to learn to trust him. She had found his manner of silently observing her disquieting. But after he had watched her conduct herself in the arduous two years after she and Auletes had returned from exile, he came to her one day and said, “Surely you realize that none of the king’s advisers any longer seek his opinion. If you wish, I will henceforth direct all matters of state to you.” Kleopatra had been stunned at his candor and merely stared at him. “You do realize you are running the kingdom?” he had asked, his sincere brown eyes defying her to disagree.
“Yes, I realize that,” she had replied. “I did not know whether you realized it as well.”
“Very good,” he had said, pleased with her answer.
“But what of my father? Do we ignore him now and treat him as a senile old man?”
“No,” the eunuch had replied almost tenderly. “We furnish him with all the respect of his office and his age. You must always remain loyal to your father and treat him with dignity and warmth.
“But, Princess Kleopatra, when you make decisions regarding matters of state, I advise you to let your blood run cold.”
Now the eunuch smiled at Kleopatra’s report of Auletes’ excesses. “At least he is not vexed with worry as we are. I rather envy him. He is clearly not a bitter man.”
“When you are an old man, you, too, shall be allowed to wallow in depravity, but at present, I require your good mind,” Kleopatra answered. She appreciated his humor but was too occupied to acknowledge it. “Let us face the facts: My father is a spent man. He has worn himself out trying to hold on to the throne and trying to appease all parties. He only wishes now for a bit of pleasure in his dotage. Though he says his doctors tell a different story, I know he is not well. His days are numbered,” she said, numb to her own words.
“I concur with your assessment,” said Hephaestion. “But it does not alter the situation.”
“Read it to me again,” she said.
The eunuch retrieved a small scroll from his desk. He opened it.
My Dear King Ptolemy, I hope you nave forgotten neither your old friend and benefactor nor your outstanding debt to me. I have taken the matter up with my colleague Julius Caesar. As you may have heard, Caesar has finished his governorship in Gaul and will soon return in glorious victory to Rome. I have sent him notice of the aforementioned matter. He is reviewing it and will shortly make a decision as to what action may be required to collect the unpaid funds. I trust that you will send a substantial portion of the money owed immediately. My attempts to help you have cost me dearly. I look forward to your expedient response, Yours, C. Rabirius
“Concise and to the point, I would say,” said Hephaestion. “Pay up or face the most feared man in Rome.”
“What of Caesar? Why should he collect the debt for Rabirius?”
“Why? For a portion of the money. Your Highness, Caesar is a dangerous man, a renegade. His men are excited from their recent victories and believe themselves invincible. Your father’s man Pompey also has a huge army he might raise at any time. I believe these men will soon clash and one will emerge as king.”
