Antony had planned an ambitious combined attack for the following day, 1 August 30 BC. It would begin with warships attacking the enemy fleet and this would be followed by an assault on land. There was no realistic chance of victory, or at least not of any success that might actually turn the tide of the war. This may explain what happened next. Antony watched as his warships closed with the enemy, but was amazed to see them stop and raise their oars out of the water, a gesture of surrender. Closer to him, his cavalry followed their example, choosing this moment to defect. His infantry – less able to move quickly, less sure of each other’s mood or truly loyal –remained. They attacked and were quickly beaten. Antony returned to the palace and Plutarch claims that he was yelling out that the queen had betrayed him. Dio simply states that Cleopatra had ordered the ships’ captains to defect.
Most of the ships to escape from Actium were hers. Some may have been lost in the attempt to reach the Arabian coast, but any built to replace them were constructed and crewed at her expense. In most respects the naval squadrons were hers rather than Antony’s and so it is certainly possible that she had arranged their defection in secret negotiations. Most modern historians dismiss this as propaganda aimed at blackening her reputation. They may be right, and the truth in such cases was unlikely to have been widely known even at the time. However, there was absolutely nothing to be gained by fighting. Possessing the fleet gave a bargaining counter and giving it up could well have been a gesture of faith. Unconditional surrender either then or in the past months meant simply trusting to the mercy of the conqueror. Cleopatra hoped to persuade Octavian to make her a deal and that meant conceding slowly, demonstrating both her capacity and willingness to be of assistance. Giving up Pelusium, and later ordering the surrender of her fleet, would make sense as gestures, making Octavian’s conquest easier and less costly in lives. These would be coldly pragmatic decisions, but they were certainly not impossible ones.18
Cleopatra was a survivor who had clung on to power for almost twenty years amidst all the intrigues of the Ptolemaic court and the chaos of Roman civil wars. It would have been out of character for her to despair and it is clear that she had not yet done so. She might be able to save something of her own power, or if not then secure the position of some or all of her children. Caesarion was vulnerable after the emphasis on his paternity in the struggle with Octavian, but he had already been sent away on the long journey that should eventually take him to India. Her children by Antony might well be more acceptable to the young Caesar, and the Romans liked to employ client rulers. Their father may already have been beyond salvation.
‘CONQUERED VALIANTLY BY A ROMAN’
While Antony’s army dissolved around him, Cleopatra went to her mausoleum. It was a two-storey structure, with a single door and one or more large windows on the upper storey. Construction work was not yet complete and there were ropes and other building equipment for raising and placing the stone blocks still around it. She went inside, accompanied only by her two maids and a eunuch. Mechanisms were sprung, dropping into the doorway a stone barrier to close the entrance permanently. Sealed in with her treasure, the queen obviously did not expect her lover to join her. Both Plutarch and Dio say that she told her courtiers to tell Antony that she was dead.19
He believed the report and his anger against her turned to sorrow and a desire to join his lover in death. Plutarch makes him regret that the queen had been the first to take this courageous step, so that he – the great commander – had to follow her example. Retiring to his chamber and taking off his armour, he asked a slave to help him do the job, just as Brutus and Cassius had done. Although this generation of Roman aristocrats had become so enamoured of suicide, most still realised that it was a difficult thing to do cleanly and quickly. Even the determined Cato had not succeeded at his first attempt. On the retreat from Media, Plutarch says that Antony had asked one of his bodyguards to perform the task. His choice now was different and fell on an attendant named Eros, who had already been told to prepare for this final service to his master. Taking Antony’s sword as if to guide and give force to the thrust, instead the slave ran himself through.
Inspired by this gesture, Mark Antony then stabbed himself in the stomach, slumping back to lie on a couch. Either there were others in the room or they were attracted by the noise. Antony regained consciousness and begged them to help him die. None would, and some or all of them then fled. Plutarch says that at this point Cleopatra sent one of her scribes to have Antony brought to her, although does not explain how she knew what he had done. Dio claims that the cries of his attendants had made the queen look out from a window in the mausoleum. Someone saw her and told Antony, who realised that his lover was not dead. He tried to rise, collapsed from the exertion, then ordered them to carry him to her.
The door to the mausoleum was sealed and so they used some of the builders’ ropes to raise him on a bed up to the window, Cleopatra and her servants pulling hard to lift his weight. After a struggle, they brought him into the tomb and laid him out. After this effort she is supposed to have wept loudly, tearing her clothes and striking and scratching her own chest in grief. Antony begged her to be calm, then asked for wine and drank. It may have hastened the end and he died soon afterwards, with the queen beside him. Plutarch has him say that his end was a good one for a ‘Roman, conquered valiantly by a Roman’, but it is hard to know how anyone could have known what he said. These were good dying words, both for Octavian’s propaganda and for those Romans who cherished Antony’s reputation.
At best his suicide had been a series of misunderstandings, but since both our main sources report that some of the confusion was deliberately created by Cleopatra, then it is hard not to believe that she planned to separate her own fate from that of Antony. The report of her death was bound to make him react. He might flee from Alexandria, although with another invader to the west it would have been hard for him to go anywhere but to the south, and there was little chance of his rallying support there. Perhaps he would surrender or let himself be captured, suffering imprisonment or execution as Octavian saw fit. Most likely he would do what he did and take his own life. Cleopatra knew him as well as anyone and must have guessed how he would react. She did not kill her lover, and most certainly had not in the past months stooped to murder, although admittedly Antony’s Roman friends would most likely have reacted violently had she done so. Yet the false message made it likely that he would take his own life, or leave, or be killed in some other manner.20
Whichever action he took, Antony would be out of the way and leave her to negotiate her own settlement with Octavian. For it is clear that Cleopatra had no intention of being a ‘Sharer in Death’, at least for the moment, and she was to survive him by more than a week. Ensconced in her mausoleum, surrounded by her treasure and the means to destroy it, she had a few cards left to play. That does not mean that her grief for Antony was any less real, even if— perhaps especially if — it was tinged with an element of guilt through having to sacrifice him so that there was a chance for her and any of her children to survive with dignity and perhaps power. Cleopatra mourned her lover and she and her attendants did their best to treat the body properly. There was nothing she could have done to save him.
Octavian entered Alexandria with more show than actual use of force. He summoned the population to a public meeting in the gymnasium. There, he addressed them in Greek. Unlike Antony and most Romans of his class, he was not entirely comfortable in the language, in part because his education had been cut short by Caesar’s murder. He assured the Alexandrians of good treatment and brought before them a philosopher named Areius, whom he planned to use as a local representative. The inhabitants of the city did not respond with the enthusiasm they had kept for Antony, but there was certainly general relief.21
Antony’s suicide in turn relieved Octavian of having to deal with him and the stigma likely to follow his execution. He could afford to be magnanimous and put on a display of grief, reading
Antony’s letters to his senior staff and speaking of their past friendship. Cleopatra and her treasure presented a problem, even if they were not a threat to his victory. Whatever contact and secret negotiation had occurred, either no agreement had been struck or she was not yet prepared to rely on his good faith. Octavian sent an equestrian named Caius Proculeius along with a freedman to the mausoleum to speak to the queen. In Plutarch’s account of his death, Antony is supposed to have told her that she could trust Proculeius, although once again it is hard to know how the author could have obtained this information. None of the witnesses wrote an account of what happened, although it is possible that they did tell others about what had happened in the days before they died. Proculeius and the queen spoke, but she refused to come out and he returned to report to Octavian.
Next, Proculeius returned with Cornelius Gallus and it was the latter who led the negotiations. As on the earlier occasion, she did not come to the window, but shouted through the sealed door. While Gallus kept her attention, Proculeius and two slaves put a ladder up against the side of the building and climbed in through the window. Going down to the ground floor, they grabbed hold of Cleopatra, thwarting her attempt to stab herself with a knife. The eunuch died in the struggle, perhaps of snakebite or poison, but the queen and her maids were taken as prisoners back to the palace.22
Cleopatra was given permission to attend to the funeral arrangements for her dead lover, a task that several prominent Romans and other client rulers are said to have requested. Romans, and especially the aristocracy, in the first century BC generally cremated the dead and then interred the ashes in a tomb. Antony’s body does not seem to have been burned, but was embalmed and probably placed in a coffin. Alexander the Great had been mummified, and so were many of the Ptolemies, at least from the second century BC onwards. However, the full process took seventy days, and could not have been completed before Cleopatra herself was dead.23
From grief, and an infection in the cuts she had given herself with her own nails, Cleopatra fell ill, developing a fever and refusing to eat. She was treated by her doctor, Olympus, who later wrote an account of her last days, which was used by Plutarch. He said that the queen had lost the will to live, but then rallied a little when told that Octavian wished to see her, perhaps unwillingly because it was said that he threatened to harm her children.
Dio and Plutarch present the encounter in dramatically different ways. The former has Cleopatra dressed to look at once pitiful and beautiful — much as she had first met Caesar. She reclined on an elaborately decorated couch in a grand apartment, surrounded by pictures and busts of Caesar, with his letters clutched to her bosom. When Octavian entered, she rose to greet him, not the proud queen, but the respectful and open suppliant. Her talk was mainly of Caesar and she read extracts from his letters, pausing sometimes to weep and then kiss the papyrus. Dio has Octavian refuse to look at the beautiful petitioner when he replied, but simply assure her that her life was not in danger. The queen went down on her knees to beg, but could get no more than this, even when she begged him to let her join Antony in death. Propaganda emphasised that the virtuous Octavian was not to be seduced like Caesar and Antony, but in reality the situations were so different that this was never likely.
Plutarch’s account of Cleopatra’s final days is a good deal more sympathetic, and indeed far warmer than his portrayal of the rest of her life. He depicts her wearing only a tunic or shift, her hair dishevelled and lying on a mattress of plain straw. Yet perhaps his version is not so different in that he also maintained her looks were still striking. Plutarch’s Cleopatra pleaded that she had had no choice but to obey Antony and that the guilt was his. Octavian is supposed to have patiently disproved all her arguments.
Both our sources make it clear that they discussed her wealth, Cleopatra listing her property in some detail. A royal attendant named Seleucus – presumably not the general of the same name, but someone equally keen to win Roman approval – spoke out to say that she was omitting many valuable items. Plutarch says Cleopatra grabbed the man by the hair and repeatedly struck his face. Then she explained that she was keeping aside some of her most precious jewellery to present as gifts to Livia and Octavia. Dio also says that she hoped to win favour from Octavian’s wife and sister and that she offered to sail to Rome. Imaginations were doubtless given free rein in both accounts of this dramatic encounter. Yet there is nothing implausible in the claims that Cleopatra was willing to try charm, pathos, flattery, the musical qualities of her voice and the force of her looks and personality to persuade the conqueror. It was only sensible to employ every means still left to her.24
The meeting ended with little resolved. Octavian was determined to take her to Rome to be led in triumph and believed that the meeting had reassured her and restored her willingness to live. It is doubtful that at any point he or anyone else suggested that she be executed at the end of the triumph. This had never been done to a woman and, even with male leaders, this ritual was not always followed. Yet it was probably also clear that although her life would be spared she would not be permitted any power. Comfortable exile, perhaps in Italy or just possibly somewhere in the Greek world, was the extent of his mercy. Octavian had also pointedly not promised to let any of her children rule as monarchs. He would soon annex Egypt, but it was to be a province different from any other, virtually run as a personal possession of Octavian and his successors. It was vital for him to exploit its resources directly and equally important to prevent any rival from ever controlling them.
Cleopatra was disappointed. The most she could take away from the meeting was the satisfaction of convincing the Roman leader that she would not try to take her own life. Retirement held no appeal for her, especially since she was denied the satisfaction of passing power to her children. The prospect of being led as a captive along the Via Sacra for the amusement of the Roman mob repelled her. Plutarch claims that a sympathetic young aristocrat on Octavian’s staff secretly let her know that she must undergo this ordeal. She decided to kill herself. 25
Some scholars have speculated that, in spite of his attempts to keep the queen alive, it was actually more convenient for Octavian to let her die or even have her killed. Therefore the guard placed over her was loose enough to give Cleopatra every chance to commit suicide. The example of Arsinoe, who won the Roman crowd’s pity when she was led in Caesar’s triumph, is cited. It is possible that a similar reaction was feared, but given that Cleopatra was much older and had been portrayed so strongly as Rome’s enemy, then it was far from certain. As a famous captive she would grace Octavian’s triumph and for the rest of her life be a visible sign of his clemency. On balance, it is more likely that he wanted to keep her alive. It would surely have been possible for her to be killed ‘accidentally’ in the confusion of Antony’s defeat had he wanted this — at least once her treasure was secured.26
The precise method of the suicide tends to be discussed at great, even excessive length, to the extent that it sometimes overbalances far more important episodes in her life. Our ancient sources were clearly unsure over precisely what happened and it is therefore highly improbable that we can solve every detail of the mystery. If the bite of a snake was the method used, then people have speculated about the precise species of asp or viper, and then wondered how many animals would be required to kill both Cleopatra and her two maids. The most likely candidate is the Egyptian cobra, which can grow to 6 feet and so would have been harder to conceal, especially if two or three were needed. Plutarch tells a story of a snake being smuggled into the royal chamber, concealed in a basket of figs, whereas in Dio’s version it was a basket of flowers. Both report other versions and other sources of poison — for instance, a hollow pin that Cleopatra wore in her hair and which contained a fatal poison. The substance may have been snake venom collected at an earlier time. Strabo talks of a poisonous ointment.27
The broad details are more certain. On 10 August 30 BC Cleopatra probably went to visit Antony’s corpse on
e last time. Presumably it was still in her mausoleum and the entrance to this had now been opened, if only to remove the treasure. None of our sources suggests that the queen and her attendants had to climb a ladder to get in and out again. Returning to the palace she bathed, dressed once more in royal finery and with only Charmion and Iras for company, took a sumptuous last meal. Earlier she had sent a letter to Octavian, confident that it would not arrive in time for him to stop her.
Cleopatra then killed herself. One of the sources reported faint scratches or punctures to her arm and this was the only visible mark on her. Whether made by the fangs of a snake or by the point of a pin is unknown. If she did use a cobra, then its venom can cause convulsions in the latter stages. Her attendants took care to lie their mistress down on a couch, keeping her body, clothes and jewellery as immaculate as possible. After that they too took poison in some form, allowing themselves to be bitten by snakes or drinking or otherwise ingesting a fatal substance. By the time Octavian had received the letter and sent men to the royal chamber, Iras was already dead, lying at the feet of the queen. The dying Charmion was struggling to make last minute corrections to Cleopatra’s royal diadem.
Plutarch says that one of the men angrily called to her that this was a fine thing. ‘Truly a fine deed, becoming a queen descended from so many kings,’ Charmion replied, and then collapsed and died. Whether or not the story is true, it was a fittingly theatrical final scene for Cleopatra’s story.28
Antony and Cleopatra Page 42
