Antony and Cleopatra

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Antony waited impatiently for his lover to arrive. Plutarch talks of him wandering restlessly and getting up in the middle of meals to go and look out to sea in the hope of spotting her ships. He began to drink even more heavily as the days stretched into weeks and Cleopatra had not arrived. There is no hint that she deliberately delayed. It was only a matter of months since she had given birth to their third child together, a boy given the name Ptolemy Philadelphus. The name was a reminder of the second king of her line, who had presided over the empire at its greatest extent. Perhaps Cleopatra had not yet recovered from the birth and did not feel immediately able to travel. As importantly, the summons was unexpectedly urgent and preparations needed to be made. Antony wanted money and clothes for his ragged army. Obtaining ten thousand or more tunics or pairs of boots inevitably took time, as did obtaining sufficient coin in the right sort of denomination to be issued as pay to the soldiers, and both were bulky to transport.

  When Cleopatra eventually arrived, she brought considerable quantities of clothing, but less money than Antony had requested. It may not have been available in the time and, in any case, he still had substantial reserves of his own. The troops were paid – quite probably a generous bounty in addition to their normal salary, for the legions had become accustomed to such things in the last decade or so. Antony was accused of telling his men that the money was a generous gift from Cleopatra, even though it was not. His spirits certainly recovered now that the queen was with him. Soon, they both went back to Alexandria.1

  AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

  Much had changed since Antony had set out for Armenia. In 36 BC Octavian launched a major offensive against Sextus Pompey. Lepidus had helped, bringing his own forces from Africa to invade Sicily. Sextus showed some of his old skill, and his men their usual courage, but this time they were outclassed. Agrippa had spent a year creating a larger and very well-trained navy, which included the 120 warships loaned to his colleague by Antony. He won the first battle of the year. Sextus soon struck back, defeating Octavian. However, he could not prevent both Octavian and Lepidus from landing armies in Sicily. Much of the island was soon overrun. There were some 300 ships on each side at the decisive battle fought off Cape Naulochus. Octavian watched from the shore as Agrippa virtually destroyed the Pompeian fleet, making use of a newly invented device called the harpax, which made it easier to grapple the enemy vessels. Once held, they could be boarded and captured. Agrippa had bigger vessels carrying larger numbers of legionaries acting as marines and so was always likely to win such encounters.2

  Sextus’ power was broken and he fled. Lepidus chose this moment to try and regain the power and prominence he had once enjoyed. Perhaps he hoped to dispose of Octavian altogether, or at least renegotiate their alliance. Lepidus assumed control of the combined armies in Sicily. The details are a little unclear and much clouded by propaganda, but there is no doubt that it was all quickly over. The young Caesar went into Lepidus’ camp in person. The legionaries now defected to him, just as they had flocked to join Antony’s men in 43 BC. Lepidus was stripped of his powers as triumvir, but allowed to live out the remainder of his life in comfortable retirement. It was a display of clemency reminiscent of Julius Caesar and unlike the savagery of the proscriptions. Lepidus remained Pontifex Maximus, although he cannot have actually performed the role in practice. Only when he died, more than twenty years later, did Octavian – by now having assumed the name Augustus – assume the priesthood. From then on, it remained the prerogative of the emperors until the collapse of the Western Empire in the fifth century AD, when it passed to the pope, who still holds the title.3

  Octavian celebrated an ovation for the defeat of Sextus, just as Crassus had once performed this lesser ceremony to mark his victory over Spartacus. At one point, Octavian himself had freed large numbers of slaves to provide manpower for the fleet, but his propaganda painted Sextus as the leader of runaway slaves rebelling against the natural order. Thousands of prisoners were crucified in another reminder of Spartacus. It was claimed that they were former slaves whose previous owners could not be found. Perhaps this was true, although more important was the propaganda message denying that this was another civil war. Instead, it was a matter of restoring order, of dealing with a pirate and not the son of Pompey the Great.4

  It was still a success, which contrasted strongly with Antony’s defeat in Media. The latter’s despatches to the Senate concealed the scale of the losses and painted some of the skirmishes as great victories. For the moment, at least in public, Octavian and his associates did not question the truth of Antony’s version. Rumour would have flourished anyway, for no doubt many of his officers wrote their own versions of events. At the very least, it was soon clear that the expedition had made few, if any, tangible gains.5

  Octavia travelled to Athens in the spring of 35 BC, intent on joining her husband. She brought with her 2,000 praetorians and also a substantial quantity of money, supplies and draught animals. Appian also mentions a unit of cavalry. Around the same time, Octavian sent back to Antony the ships he had borrowed at Tarentum. Only seventy remained, reflecting the heavy losses in the struggle with Sextus. The promised legionaries – whether two legions or 20,000 men – were not included. Plutarch thought that Octavian sent his sister with less than the pledged aid as a deliberate provocation and modern commentators have been inclined to agree. If Antony welcomed his wife, then he could be seen to accept without question whatever assistance his triumviral colleague chose to grant. More probably he would be insulted and might rebuff the well-respected Octavia. Scorning a Roman wife in favour of a mistress who was not only foreign, but royal, was bound to damage Antony’s reputation.6

  Yet it was natural enough for Octavia to go again to Athens, bringing aid to her husband, and everything she brought – including the praetorians – was presented as a personal gift from her, not from her brother. It would have been a strange thing to stop her. On the other hand, in the past she had never gone further east than Athens. Antony sent word telling her to remain in the city, since he planned to campaign once again. A Roman wife was not supposed to follow her husband to war itself. He accepted the gifts she brought, although he was understandably – and no doubt publicly – annoyed by the failure of her brother to fulfil his promises. Octavian’s lack of support was a convenient thing for Antony to blame as an excuse for his own mistakes. More soldiers are very unlikely to have made any major difference to the outcome of the expedition in 36 BC.

  Nor would they have been of much immediate use in the following summer. The remnants of his army had not had enough time to recover from the hardships of the retreat. In particular, the cavalry mounts must have been in poor shape and the mounted arm was of vital importance in any operation against the Parthians. Even more serious were the losses in baggage animals and wagons, and those brought by Octavia are unlikely to have made up for these. Without transport a major offensive was simply impossible. Fortunately, the enemy had fallen to bickering over the spoils of their recent victory. Artavasdes of Media sent messengers to Antony offering alliance against the Parthian king.7

  There seemed to be an opportunity for limited operations, suitable for his currently limited resources, when Antony was suddenly forced to deal with a wholly unexpected threat. Sextus Pompey had fled eastwards and landed in the province of Asia. At first he offered alliance with Antony against Octavian. Then, hearing of the disaster in Media, he seems to have decided either that the eastern triumvir was vulnerable or perhaps that it was better to negotiate from a position of strength. Sextus began enrolling legions of his own. After a brief campaign he was suppressed by the nearest governors and executed. It is unclear whether or not Antony himself gave this order. Octavian would later contrast his own generosity to Lepidus with his colleague’s summary killing of Sextus. Yet it is difficult to imagine that he would not have killed Pompey’s son if Sextus had fallen into his hands, and it would certainly have been hard to reconcile with the concerted effort to portray
him as a pirate. Nor was there any real incentive for Antony to spare him. At the time Octavian publicly celebrated the execution in Rome.8

  Faced with these distractions, and with the bulk of his army still exhausted, Antony achieved very little before the autumn made campaigning impractical. He may still have been very tired himself. Cleopatra was with him for much of the year, either in Alexandria or afterwards probably in Antioch. Plutarch says that she feared Octavia and was reluctant to let her lover spend the winter with his wife. Antony responded to affection and, although she was Octavian’s sister, Octavia was a similar age to the queen, was clever and widely considered beautiful. Her love for her husband may well also have been genuine and her sense of duty was clearly very strong. Therefore, Cleopatra was supposed to have worked on Antony, showing utter delight when he was with her and ‘letting’ him catch glimpses of her quickly hidden tears when he was not. She deliberately lost weight, while her courtiers, and quite possibly some of his Roman friends whom she had taken care to cultivate, spoke to him of her utter devotion.9

  Cleopatra relied on Antony to hold on to power. Love may well have grown, whether or not it was there from the start. Together they had had three children, and there were very few men indeed whom Cleopatra could see as her equal and so a worthy companion as well as a lover. Genuine passion probably fuelled the political dependency. Antony had left her for years in 40BC, returning to Italy and a new wife. At some point he was bound to return to Rome and the heart of the Republic, which had given him power. If he joined Octavia, then this could well happen sooner rather than later and remove his direct support from the queen. The Roman wife was a dangerous rival.

  She was also a reminder to her husband of his recent failure. If Antony joined her, then he renewed the close connection with her brother, but more than that would once again become fully the Roman senator. His administrative reorganisation of the east had generally been successful, renewing and sometimes improving on the work of Pompey. Yet unlike Pompey he could not boast of genuine victories. Nor was there any prospect of fighting another campaign on the same scale – and with as good a chance of success –for several years. His career had gone badly wrong and that was not a pleasant thought. This truth would have been much harder to ignore in the company of Octavia, and so would the knowledge that her brother was bound to capitalise on his weakness.

  It was not a very attractive prospect, in contrast to staying with Cleopatra, who was a much more pleasant and encouraging companion. With her he could live pleasantly and try to forget about the future. Perhaps it was also easier to believe that he could do something to repair the damage of his defeat. Antony sent word to Octavia telling her to return to Rome. Like a good Roman wife she obeyed and returned to their house – the property once owned by Pompey the Great. She continued to use her influence on behalf of Antony’s friends. Rumour said that her brother suggested that she divorce her husband, but that she staunchly refused.10

  It was probably a minor concern to Octavian, since he was very busy. From 35 to 33 BC he led three consecutive campaigns in the Balkans, fighting against several Illyrian tribes. Caesar had himself planned to campaign in the area, so perhaps there was an echo of the great commander in his choice. There were also defeats to avenge and lost standards to recapture, for Antony’s old commander Gabinius had lost an army there back in 47 BC. The region was also near the border with the territory governed by Antony, and so a useful place to demonstrate the strength of his forces against any potential rival, including his colleague. Yet the main reason was the same as the one that had led Antony to attack the Parthians. Octavian wanted to prove himself a proper servant of the Republic and win the glory of defeating foreign enemies. In his case, even his victories over other Romans were tainted by rumours of cowardice and weakness.

  In the campaigns that followed he took good care now to appear as heroic as possible, managing to get injured during an assault on a town. (It was probably not through direct enemy action, but the enemy was certainly close.) Like Antony he ordered at least one cohort to be decimated. There are other stories of his exemplary punishments that may date to these operations – for instance, having centurions stand at attention outside his tent. Sometimes a man’s belt was undone, so that the long military tunic fell almost to his ankles and so looked unmartial and perhaps even feminine. They might also be made to hold up a piece of turf or a measuring pole. Barely thirty by the time the campaigns were over, Octavian wanted to establish a reputation as a stern commander in the traditional mould, a man who personified the virtus expected of a Roman aristocrat. Awarded a triumph, he chose to postpone it and busy himself with working on the Republic’s behalf.11

  The spoils of victory were pumped into rebuilding Rome. Octavian began a series of major projects and others were undertaken by other successful generals, many of them close associates. There was a spate of temple building, and the Regia and several basilicas were restored. Rome also for the first time acquired a permanent stone amphitheatre, while Asinius Pollio gave it a public library – something Caesar had planned, but not had time to create. In later life Augustus would boast that he ‘found Rome brick, and left it marble’. (He did not mean the incredibly strong, oven-fired red bricks visible today in so many of Rome’s great monuments, for this was an innovation of the imperial period. Under the Republic cheap and simple mud bricks were one of the commonest building materials.)

  The transformation of the city really began in these years. As important as the monuments themselves was the work and incomes provided for the inhabitants of Rome. Little construction work was ever done by slaves and these projects were important job creation schemes. A good deal of the improvements were highly practical. Agrippa became aedile in 33 BC, an extraordinarily junior post for a man who had been consul in 37 BC, but since he was technically still too young to hold either office this was a minor breach of tradition. He took on the task of improving the city’s water supply and drainage system, and was remembered for sailing through the sewers in a boat to inspect them properly. Inspection was followed by a long programme of work. Agrippa repaired existing aquaducts and added a new one, the Aqua Julia, and made ‘700 cisterns, 500 fountainheads… 130 water towers’. Rome was not only to be beautiful, but also functional and a better place in which to live. The spoils of victory were to benefit the Roman people.12

  THE DONATIONS

  In 34 BC Antony finally achieved a little revenge for the disaster in Media. He was still not in a position to seriously harm Phraates IV, and instead turned his attention to King Artavasdes of Armenia, the ally accused of letting the Romans down. In a limited operation Armenia was overrun and Artavasdes was taken prisoner, probably seized under cover of negotiations. Dellius had been the delegate chosen to negotiate with the king. The Romans found such methods acceptable if they helped to resolve a conflict, so in itself this was not too damaging an accusation. Yet in the end this was a minor operation, achieving victory over a recent ally with very little fighting. There was little glory in such a success, certainly nowhere near enough to balance the earlier failure. The operation was also not complete, since the Armenian nobility proclaimed the king’s son as king, who was able to escape to Parthia.

  Antony strengthened Rome’s position in the border kingdoms by securing Armenia for the time being. Around this time the alliance with Artavasdes of Media was also strengthened, when Antony and Cleopatra’s son Alexander Helios was betrothed to the king’s daughter. Both were still young children, so the marriage could not meaningfully take place for at least a decade, but it was a pledge for the future. In many ways a more surprising wedding actually occurred a few years later when Antony married his eldest daughter Antonia to Pythodorus of Tralles, a wealthy and influential aristocrat from Asia Minor. Presumably he already had – or was given – Roman citizenship, but it remained an extremely unorthodox alliance for a senator’s daughter. It is generally assumed that this Antonia was the offspring of his second marriage to his own cousin, also n
amed Antonia, although perhaps it is possible that she was the child of his first wife, the freedman’s daughter Fadia. Even more than his formal recognition of his children with Cleopatra, this went a stage further than previous emulation of Hellenistic royalty by Roman commanders. Antony is said to have boasted that founding dynasties from his own bloodline set him alongside his ancestor Hercules and that the best thing about Rome’s dominance was what they gave to the provincial peoples.13

  The capture of Artavasdes was the biggest success Antony himself had enjoyed since Philippi seven years earlier. That in itself suggests his lack of personal focus on military adventures. Time and again he had felt called away to deal with crises in the west, as the triumvirate threatened to break apart. His visits to Italy and the need in the previous year to deal with Sextus Pompey were all important concerns, and yet it does contrast very strongly with the ruthlessly single-minded approach to campaigning of Pompey and Caesar, and indeed many less famous Roman commanders. These interruptions had certainly hindered preparations for the attack on Parthia and probably contributed to its rushed start and muddled conduct.

  The Armenian victory was a small one, but it was all that he had had for such a long time and Antony decided to celebrate on a grand scale. What followed soon became deeply controversial and the reality of what happened smothered in hostile propaganda, so that the whole truth is probably impossible to establish. Antony had decided to spend another winter in Alexandria and entered into the city in a grand procession. Once again he appeared as Dionysus –Bacchus or Liber Pater, the ‘Free Father’ to the Romans. The triumvir rode in a Bacchic carriage and wore a wreath of ivy, a robe of saffron and gold, as well as the buckskins associated with the god, and carried his sacred wand, known as the thrystus. None of this was new, and it was a more tactful way of displaying power to a Hellenistic audience, appearing as a personification of the great god of celebration and victory and not as a blatantly Roman overlord.14