Pompey had spent most of his life on campaign and did not know how to play the political game anywhere near as well. He relied far more on the glory of his victories. When these began to fade in the public consciousness, he decided that he needed new ones. In 67 BC he was given an extraordinary command to deal with the pirate problem, which had grown even worse since the failure of Mark Antony’s father. Pompey received massively greater resources than Antonius. He was also a good deal more competent, with a true genius for organisation. In a matter of months, he and his subordinates swept the Mediterranean clear of pirates. Looking for a long-term solution, many of the pirates were resettled on land where they could support themselves and their families without resorting to crime.13
Pompey’s success was spectacular, but he wanted far more and in 66 BC was granted another extraordinary command to deal with Mithridates of Pontus. Once again there was more than a hint of poaching the glory of others, because the war had already almost been won by Lucullus, one of the consuls of 74 BC. Pompey used the pretext of the war with Mithridates and his ally, King Tiridates of Armenia, to launch a series of eastern expeditions against various opponents. He expanded Roman territory and then systematically reorganised the eastern provinces. In the process he abolished the last rump of the Seleucid Empire. The Ptolemies were left as the only survivor of the three great Successor kingdoms.14
Pompey did not visit Egypt, but Auletes took care to provide aid to his army, including the supplies necessary to support 8,000 cavalrymen. In addition, he sent lavish gifts, including a gold crown, to the commander himself. In the meantime, Crassus held the censorship in 65 BC and began agitating to have Egypt declared Roman public land, which could then be distributed. He clearly hoped to be placed in charge of the process and so make a substantial profit, as well as placing large numbers of citizens in his debt. Julius Caesar – still only in his thirties, but extremely ambitious – was also involved, although it is not clear whether he supported Crassus or wanted to take charge of the process himself. Crassus was very influential and extremely rich – probably only Pompey could match his wealth – yet other senators had some wealth and some influence, and if enough of them combined to block a measure then there was no means of forcing it through. All proposals about Egypt made at this time were blocked.15
The move to annex Egypt failed, and Crassus and Caesar both passed on to other schemes. It is vital to remember that Egypt was not at the centre of Roman public life. Occasionally it became an issue, usually as part of the personal ambitions of a leading senator, as each struggled to rise to the top. In late 64 BC a law was proposed to make a widespread distribution of publicly owned land to poorer citizens. Egypt was wholly or partly to be included within this, but once again the measure was defeated and public life moved on to other concerns.16
Pompey also discovered that there were limits to his real power when he returned to Rome in December 62 BC. His prestige was colossal, his popularity huge and the triumph he celebrated shortly afterwards more spectacular than any ever seen before. Yet for all that he failed to gain the Senate’s approval for eastern settlement or secure land for the soldiers due for discharge from his army. Time and again attempts to secure these things were blocked. Other senators, including Crassus and the supplanted Lucullus, were eager to cut the great general down to size. None wanted to see the Republic dominated by Pompey, and at the same time thwarting him helped to build up their own influence and reputation. The issues were almost irrelevant. Pompey’s eastern settlement was sensible and thorough, the desire to reward his soldiers reasonable. This did not in any way restrain other senators from blocking them and Pompey was not a skilful enough politician to find a way round.17
It may have been Julius Caesar who came up with the idea of bringing Pompey and Crassus together in a secret alliance known to scholars (although not at the time) as the ‘first triumvirate’. On their own, neither Crassus nor Pompey could get what they wanted. Working together, and with Caesar as consul for 59 BC, all three men were far harder to resist. That did not prevent rival senators – including Caesar’s consular colleague Bibulus – from trying to block them every step of the way. Both sides in turn escalated the conflict, and there was intimidation and violence that stopped just short of serious bloodshed. Pompey’s settlement was ratified and his veterans given land, while Crassus won a favourable deal for the publicani with many of whom he had close connections. Caesar forced through a law redistributing public-owned land in Italy to poor citizens and secured himself an extraordinary military command for five years.18
Auletes had cultivated Pompey for some time and the king scented an opportunity now that the latter and his allies were so strong at Rome. At last Ptolemy XII gained formal recognition, being named as king and a ‘friend and ally of the Roman people’ by a law passed by Caesar in 59 BC. The price tag was enormous. Auletes promised to pay 6,000 talents – somewhere between half and all the annual revenue of Egypt. The bulk of this went to Pompey and Caesar, although Crassus may also have profited. Ptolemy’s representatives borrowed on a huge scale from Roman bankers to make the initial down payment.19
Auletes’ younger brother in Cyprus was unable to afford the cost of similar recognition. In 58 BC an ambitious Roman senator persuaded the People’s Assembly to pass a law granting a free dole of grain to every citizen in Rome. To meet the cost of this, the law authorised the seizure of Cyprus – or at least royal property there – by the Republic in accordance with Ptolemy X’s will. The king was offered comfortable retirement, but chose suicide instead when all his protests were unavailing.20
The Alexandrians seem to have welcomed the formal recognition of Auletes by Rome, but the annexation of Cyprus provoked deep resentment and a sense of humiliation. Auletes had done nothing to save his brother or resist the seizure of one of the oldest parts of the Ptolemaic Empire. At the same time the royal bureaucracy was especially aggressive in its collection of revenue, since the king needed to pay his debt to the triumvirate. Resentment festered. Romans became unpopular – we hear of one member of a delegation being lynched after accidentally killing a cat. Cats were sacred in Egypt (and this is one respect where elements of the Greek population had taken on existing beliefs), but the outburst was probably as much anti-Roman as anything else.21
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS
The king himself was seen as weak because he fawned to the Romans, and repressive because of his efforts to pay them. There may well have been other factors at work, and ambitious members of the court scented an opportunity for personal advantage. Late in 58 BC, Ptolemy XII Auletes left Alexandria and travelled to Rome, where he claimed that he had been driven out. Certainly, it was some years – and only by force – before he returned. His eldest daughter, Berenice IV, was proclaimed as queen in his absence and clearly against his will. We do not know how old she was, or whether she or her senior advisers were the prime movers in this coup. She was unmarried and took as co-ruler another member of the family called Cleopatra.22
This was definitely not our Cleopatra, who was only eleven at the time. Auletes married his sister Cleopatra V Tryphaena soon after he became king. She may have been his half-sister, especially if he was in fact the son of Cleopatra IV, which would suggest he was some twenty years older than her. In that case, her mother could well have been an unknown concubine. Solving one problem with the Ptolemaic family tree often seems only to create different questions.23
Cleopatra V Tryphaena was certainly the mother of Berenice IV, but ceased to be named in official documents late in 69 BC. From November of that year only Ptolemy himself is mentioned and it has often been assumed that the queen must have died. Reliefs on the temple at Edfu bearing her name seem to have been deliberately covered up at about the same time. This would seem odd if the queen had died and hints that she was withdrawn from public life, either in disgrace or for reasons of health. For whatever reason, Auletes did not marry again. If Cleopatra V Tryphaena was still alive in 58 BC then Berenice may have
ruled jointly with her mother.24
The Geographer Strabo, writing at the end of the first century BC, mentions casually that Ptolemy Auletes had ‘three daughters, of whom one, the eldest, was legitimate’. The eldest was Berenice, and this implies that she was the only child the king had with his wife. Our Cleopatra was born before Cleopatra Tryphaena disappeared and therefore it is chronologically possible that the latter was her mother, even if she died soon afterwards. Many slurs and insults were hurled at Cleopatra during and after her lifetime, but it is significant that no other source claims that she was illegitimate — in marked contrast to her father Auletes. It is very hard to believe that something ofthat sort would not have been used against her.
So there are two main possibilities. One is that Strabo’s throwaway comment was correct, even though the point is never mentioned anywhere else. This would make Cleopatra, her younger sister Arsinoe and their two brothers the offspring of a liaison between Auletes and one or more concubines. If Cleopatra Tryphaena was still alive after the end of 69 BC, then she was either incapable of producing more children or the king was disinclined to have them with her. There is no positive evidence for the existence of a royal mistress or mistresses. Since we do not even know whether this woman or women existed, it is important to emphasise that we have no idea at all about their identity. The suggestion made by some that she was an Egyptian from one of the priestly families is pure conjecture.
Alternatively, if Cleopatra Tryphaena survived after 69 BC, but was in disgrace, it is not impossible that she was the mother of some or all of Auletes’ children. This would mean that our Cleopatra’s parents were full brother and sister, which would in turn mean that she had only two grandparents. If Tryphaena was no longer officially queen, then that might just explain Strabo’s statement that only Berenice was legitimate. We simply do not know and should not pretend otherwise.25
A Cleopatra ruled jointly with Berenice IV. If it was not her mother, then the only real alternative is that there was another sister, Cleopatra VI, between Berenice and our Cleopatra. In this case Strabo would have been wrong to say that Auletes had three daughters. Once again, we simply do not know. Our Cleopatra is known as Cleopatra VII, but opinion is divided over whether or not there really was a Cleopatra VI. Whether mother or sister, Berenice IV’s co-ruler died within a year or so.
*
Mystery surrounds almost every aspect of Cleopatra’s family and birth. Our sources are equally blank about her early life. At least until 58 BC, she was probably raised in Alexandria. Tutors for the Ptolemies were often drawn from the scholars of the Museum. In later life Cleopatra would display formidable intellect and erudition. By this period, the royal family gave girls as full and thorough an education as boys. Her first language was Greek, but Plutarch says that she was also able to converse in the languages of the Medes, Parthians, Jews, Ethiopians, Trogodytae, Arabs and Syrians – all peoples living relatively near to her kingdom. Latin is notably absent from the list. Significantly, she was the first of her family to speak Egyptian.
When Ptolemy Auletes left Alexandria, we do not know what happened to the eleven-year-old Cleopatra. She may have remained behind and because of her youth played no part in the new regime. A vague and undated inscription set up in Athens has been interpreted as showing that she went with her father. There is nothing inherently impossible about this. If Ptolemy was suspicious of the loyalty of some senior courtiers and his eldest daughter, he might have preferred to keep some or all of his children with him. That something is not impossible does not mean that it happened.26
Yet there is something intriguing about the idea that the little girl accompanied Ptolemy, for the king would now go to Rome.
[VI]
ADOLESCENT
Very little is known about Mark Antony’s mother. Plutarch called her ‘as noble and virtuous a woman as any of her day’. Aristocratic women at Rome tended to be married young, usually to older men. If they survived the perils of childbirth, then there was a good chance that they would outlive their husbands. Politicians rarely became too prominent during their father’s lifetime, but many had living mothers and some of these had a powerful influence on their sons. Julia could still change her son’s mind when Antony was in his forties.1
The Romans celebrated mothers who disciplined their sons, trained them in virtue and drove them on to excel. The ideal was more stern than soft and forgiving – although that may simply be because the latter was taken for granted. One of the most famous was Cornelia, wife of a man who was twice consul and censor, and the mother of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus. The brothers had spectacular careers, but each was killed in succession – the first acts in the violence that dominated the last century of the Republic. By that time she had long since been widowed and was said to have turned down a proposal of marriage from Ptolemy VIII. Julius Caesar’s mother Aurelia was held in similarly high regard.2
Julia was fifth cousin to Julius Caesar. The two branches of the family had diverged several generations earlier, to the extent that they were now members of different voting tribes in the Popular Assembly. Her own brother was Lucius Julius Caesar, who was consul in 64 BC and a distinguished member of the Senate. Their father had also reached the consulship, but he and his brother were both victims of the massacre carried out by Marius’supporters in 87 BC. In spite of his failures against the pirates, it is highly likely that her husband, Marcus Antonius, would have reached the consulship had he not died before returning to Rome. Julia’s second husband was consul in 71 BC.
Women could not vote or stand for political office, but senators’ daughters were raised to be proud of their family. Unable to have a career of their own, many did their utmost to promote the career of their husband and sons. On marriage, Julia did not take her husband’s name. She remained Julia, the daughter of Lucius Julius Caesar, and one of the Julii and a patrician. This was reinforced because her property remained her own and so was not eaten away by her first husband’s debts. Her own father dead, Julia enjoyed a remarkable degree of independence even though she married again.
Aristocratic women rarely breastfed their children, and the amount of time they chose to spend with them when they were infants varied considerably – as indeed it does today, especially amongst the more affluent. We know nothing at all of how Julia felt about or treated her three sons – in the same way that we know nothing about her emotions towards either of her husbands. The mother’s role was important in supervising the upbringing of her children, even if this was sometimes done at a distance and their day-to-day care left to nurses, who would usually be slaves. These would also be selected by the mother. Yet, ideally, many Romans seem to have believed that the mother should be more directly involved. Writing at the end of the first century AD, the senator Tacitus claimed that:
In the good old days, every man’s son, born in wedlock, was brought up not in the chamber of some hireling nurse, but in his mother’s lap, and at her knee. And that mother could have no higher praise than that she managed the house and gave herself to her children.… In the presence of such a one no base word could be uttered without grave offence, and no wrong deed done. Religiously and with the utmost diligence she regulated not only the serious tasks of her youthful charges, but their recreations also and their games.3
Education was carried out at home in aristocratic families. Only the less well-off, but still moderately wealthy, sent their children to fee-paying primary schools. The poor had little or no access to education and many were probably illiterate. In contrast, the aristocracy were raised to be bilingual, fluent in Greek as well as Latin. A slave from the Hellenic east would act as the child’s attendant (paedagogus) to begin teaching him Greek (or her — by this period senators’ daughters were usually as well educated as their sons). Along with numeracy and literacy, children were taught about history, and in particular the part in it played by their family. As Cicero put it, ‘For what is the life of a man, if it is not interwoven with the life of former
generations by a sense of history?’4
Julia would have made sure that Antony and his brothers knew they were heirs both to the Antonii and Julii. Personal virtue was emphasised. Rome had grown to be the greatest power in the world because of its special respect for the gods, and the courage, constancy and proper behaviour of the Romans, especially the aristocracy and most of all the boys’ ancestors. From his earliest years Antony would have been surrounded by expectation that he would live up to — or better still surpass — the achievements of previous generations. Rome was the greatest state in the world and it had been led to that greatness by its aristocratic leaders. Being born into a senatorial family made a child special, particularly if his family was one of the handful at the centre of public life. Rome had no monarch and senators considered themselves greater than the kings of other countries. Antony will never have doubted that being born to his parents meant that he would be one of the most prominent men of his generation. He was born to distinction and glory.
From about the age of seven he began a practical preparation for this, accompanying his father as he went about his daily business. Senators’ lives were lived very much in public. Apart from meetings of the Senate, there was a daily round of receiving the greetings of clients — people attached to the family, usually as a result of past favours — and meetings with other senators. Boys were supposed to observe and copy the proper way of doing things. They were not admitted to the Senate’s meetings themselves, but were allowed to sit outside the open doors and hear what they could of the procedure and debates. Clustered there were the other boys of aristocratic families, so that from very early on there was a close association with the men with whom a boy would later compete for office.5
Antony and Cleopatra Page 9
