Although Octavian spent the battle laid low with sea-sickness, his ships drew Sosius out and, as a gap developed in the fighting, Cleopatra, keeping to the prearranged plan to escape and regroup, saw her chance and headed for open sea. Yet, surrounded by the smaller, lighter vessels of the enemy, Antonius could not go after her and was forced to transfer to a smaller craft to do so. The rest of their fleet, caught up in heavy fighting, were unable to follow and in rising seas had little choice but to surrender.
It was claimed that in the thick of battle Antonius decided suddenly to chase after his fickle wife who, ‘as a woman and as an Egyptian’, had treacherously fled to save herself. Despite the fact that the sails each vessel carried clearly indicated that she was acting according to plan, Cleopatra has been condemned as a coward ever since and Antonius taken to be so besotted that he simply followed. Later compared to the Trojan prince Paris in his love for Helen of Troy, Antonius, ‘like another Paris, left the battle to fly to her arms; or rather, to say the truth, Paris fled when he was already beaten; Antony fled first, and, following Cleopatra, abandoned his victory’, a tragic tale of doomed love yet complete nonsense.
The couple had broken out with around a hundred ships as opposed to ‘hardly one’ as claimed by the enemy. Aktion had been ‘no heroic battle but a series of skirmishes on land and a few exchanges at sea’, and although later transformed into legend by Octavian’s poets, their subsequent eulogies were clearly ‘out of proportion with the actual events’, since the poorly reported encounter had been no resounding victory or defeat for either side.
Octavian may have won by default, but Cleopatra and Antonius had succeeded in their plan for escape and lived to fight another day. And as her flagship pressed on south, the pragmatic Cleopatra was already making plans for the next stage in a war she still fully intended to win.
PART SIX
Chapter 11
The Final Year: Defeat, Death and Eternal Life
Having pulled off their successful escape from Aktion, Cleopatra and Antonius headed south down the coast of the Peloponnese. Still planning their next move, they reached Cape Taenarum after three days’ sailing and despatched orders to Canidius Crassus who was leading the army overland to Egypt. But soon they received devastating news.
Although the men had followed orders as far as Macedonia, they had been intercepted by Octavian’s forces and, during week-long negotiations, had wavered when offered a deal which included returning to their Italian homeland — something Antonius could never offer them. Despite Canidius’ refusal to betray Antonius, his men finally switched sides. While he and his fellow officers made their escape to Egypt, Octavian claimed they had simply chosen to abandon their troops whose surrender he accepted.
The news that his men had deserted was far more of a disaster for Antonius than the shambolic encounter at Aktion, and as Cleopatra’s flagship resumed its journey south over the Mediterranean he spent the crossing in silence at the prow of the ship. Although her servants did what they could to bring the couple together to eat and sleep, he slid into a deep depression while Cleopatra maintained her steely determination. Given that they still had troops in the East, together with part of their fleet, she was fully aware that the Mediterranean need not be the only theatre of operations, nor was it Egypt’s only coastline. And having survived previous situations when her very life had hung in the balance, New Isis came increasingly to the fore in the face of her husband’s increasing inertia.
Before heading for Alexandria, the couple sailed 125 miles west to the key communications base at Paraetonium (Mersa Matruh) on Egypt’s western border, from where they intended to organise a counter-attack. Yet not only did they receive confirmation that their forces in Greece had defected, they discovered that their four remaining legions in Cyrene had also gone over to Octavian whose name had already begun to appear on Cyrene’s coinage. To prevent the turncoat legions being sent over the border into Egypt, Antonius decided to remain at Paraetonium and do what he could to fortify the region. Since this was the place from which Alexander had launched his trailblazing expedition to Siwa, the Ptolemies had created a subterranean shrine here in his honour, and filled it with ancestral portraits including images of Cleopatra’s grandfather Ptolemy IX. It seems highly likely that she followed Ptolemaic tradition by invoking the powers of her great ancestor to help restore Antonius’ spirit.
Leaving him with around forty of their remaining ships, she took her sixty-strong squadron east to Alexandria, sailing into harbour with purple sails unfurled. With garlands about her prow, and flying the flags of victory to deny any rumour of defeat, she disembarked to flute music and hymns, ‘The Glorification of Cleopatra Philopator’ honouring the ‘divine protectress of the country’.
Her confident facade allowed her to resume control of the administration. It was said that ‘as soon as she reached safety, she slew many of the foremost men, since they had always been displeased with her and were now elated over her disaster’. No doubt the recent betrayals by Dellius, Plancus and Ahenobarbus were foremost in her mind as she eliminated those within the Alexandrian elite who wished to exploit her weakened position. The most prominent victim of her purge was Artavasdes, former king of Armenia, who had not only betrayed Antonius during the first Parthian campaign but refused to pay her homage. She sent his head as a gift to his sworn enemy the king of Media, whose young daughter was already betrothed to Cleopatra’s son Alexander Helios.
As she continued to renew alliances with Antonius’ remaining vassals, no doubt unsurprised that Herod of Judaea, who had once named his palace ‘Antonia’, was already planning his harbour city of Caesarea in honour of his new overlord Octavian, the latter was still in no position to invade Egypt since Aktion had not been as decisive as was later claimed. There were still centres of fierce resistance: the community of gladiators the couple had established at Cyzicus in Asia Minor marched south through Syria, for as soon as they heard what had happened they started for Egypt to help their rulers — and if necessary would fight to the death. So, needing to secure Greece and counter the couple’s remaining popularity, Octavian began to work back through the couple’s recent itinerary from Athens to Samos until he received news of serious rebellion in Italy. Although a conspiracy led by the son of the former triumvir Lepidus had been put down and its leader executed, Agrippa was sent back to maintain calm and the thousands of soldiers who had been promised so much by Octavian were now demanding their rewards.
Left with little choice, Octavian was forced to return to Italy in winter seas so stormy they claimed the life of his personal physician. When he finally reached Brundisium he was met by the Senate, but his hero’s welcome was marred by jeering crowds of angry veterans demanding payment. Although temporarily appeasing them with land previously awarded to Antonius’ troops, Octavian knew that in the long term he desperately needed the fabled wealth of the Ptolemies which Cleopatra still possessed and planned to use.
To augment the 20,000 talents remaining in her war chest, later sources claimed she ‘plundered her country’s gods and her ancestors’ sepulchres’ and ‘did not exempt even the most holy shrines’ in a charge of sacrilege which has long been accepted even though she had a tradition of funding the temples as a means of maintaining native support. And clearly the Egyptians did continue to support her, since a delegation from southern Egypt demonstrated their willingness to bear arms on her behalf to defend their country against Octavian, and her statues continued to be venerated in temples throughout the land by a clergy headed by her royal relative, the high priest Petubastis. So if temple funds were indeed forthcoming, they must have taken the form of voluntary contributions.
Certainly one of Cleopatra’s very first acts after returning home was to honour Isis and Min in their joint temple at Koptos, with a stone stela dated 21 September 31 BC inscribed ‘year 22 which is equivalent of year 7, first month of akhet, day 22 of the female pharaoh, the bodily daughter of kings who were on their part kings born of kin
gs, Cleopatra, the beneficent father-loving goddess and of pharaoh Ptolemy called Caesar, the father and mother loving god’. Only Caesarion was portrayed, perhaps promoted alone in case anything should happen to his mother and co-ruler. The text then referred to royal payments to the Buchis bull cult and the wages for local linen weavers who prepared the creature’s funerary wrappings. Yet such royal favour may well have been prompted by the fact that Koptos was the main access point from the Nile to the Red Sea, the route guarded by Min and Isis whose assistance Cleopatra sought in her forthcoming plans to safeguard her treasure, her children and herself.
For while Egypt was surrounded to the east, west and north, the south remained free, and this is where Cleopatra planned her next move. Having accepted that the Mediterranean belonged to Octavian, she decided against moving to Spain to join Pompeius’ few remaining supporters and instead staked her future on Egypt’s other coastline. As a region beyond Octavian’s reach yet familiar to the Ptolemies, particularly to Cleopatra who spoke many of its languages, the Red Sea region encompassed much of southern Egypt — even if enemy forces invaded the Delta, the south would continue to regard itself as an independent region strongly supportive of her regime. Relocation to an area on the direct sea route with India would also offer new opportunities for travel and trade. A fine bronze figurine of Isis’ son Harpokrates with his characteristic sidelock and the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, manufactured in Alexandria but found in the Punjab, was perhaps advance propaganda for plans she began to implement by means of’a most bold and wonderful enterprise’.
What she did was transport her remaining fleet of sixty ships, which were presumably far too large to pass through the existing canal, ‘over the small space of land which divides the Red Sea from the sea near Egypt’. It was said that ‘the narrowest place is not much above 300 furlongs [about 40 miles] across’ so ‘over this neck of land Cleopatra had formed a project of dragging her fleet and setting it afloat in the Arabian Gulf, using Egyptian-style wooden rollers or perhaps a wheeled transporter system like one she may have recently seen in Corinth in which ships were transported overland.
But although the plan gave real scope for the future, it ended in sudden disaster when her great ships were destroyed by ‘the Arabians of Petra’ led by their ruler Malchus. Having long resented the Ptolemies’ territorial incursions and trade links, the Arabs had never forgiven Cleopatra’s seizure of their lucrative bitumen trade. Their devastating arson attack, supported by Octavian’s newly appointed governor of Syria and Herod of Judaea, settled some old scores.
If Antonius’ lowest point had been the defection of his land forces, the destruction of her fleet, which had offered them all a means of survival, was surely Cleopatra’s darkest hour. Yet even through this she remained active, for while she still had her treasure she had her power. With Antonius back from Paraetonium, having done what he could to safeguard the western routes into Egypt, Cleopatra gave orders that the eastern approach via Pelusium was to be secured while she prepared to take on Octavian, using the treasury he so desperately needed as a bargaining tool. Deciding to split the wealth, she would keep half in Alexandria within her vault-like mausoleum while entrusting the rest to her teenage co-ruler Caesarion who would in due course be sent abroad, far away from Octavian who was already on his way.
By spring 30 BC he was already in Rhodes, where Cleopatra sent word she was willing to abdicate on condition that her children were allowed to rule Egypt. She accompanied her message with a large bribe and the royal insignia of an Eastern monarch, in much the same way that Rome had once sent Ptolemy IV a toga in place of his favoured Dionysiac garb — no doubt making a point to Octavian, who famously insisted on the toga as a means of emphasising the difference between Romans and effete Easterners. Although he kept the money, and presumably the exotic ensemble, his response was non-commital and it was repeated when she sent the tutor Euphronios with another bribe to put the same request.
While Cleopatra and her children continued to live in the palace at Alexandria, quite possibly on Antirrhodos, a despondent Antonius preferred his own company in the light of continuing defections which had even included his old ally Herod. Sharing the sentiments of the misanthrope Timon of Athens and his famous epitaph ‘here I am laid, my life of misery done, ask not my name, I curse you every one’, Antonius gave form to his feelings by extending a promontory into the sea to build the Timoneum, a granite and marble retreat close to Cleopatra’s palace on Antirrhodos to the west but completely separated by water, allowing her to see him but not to reach him.
He sent Octavian his son Antyllus, once engaged to Octavian’s infant daughter Julia; the boy passed on the message that his father simply wanted to live as a private citizen in Alexandria, or in Athens if that were not possible. Although Octavian kept the money accompanying his request, he sent his answer back only to Cleopatra, telling her ‘there was no reasonable favour which she might not expect, if she put Antonius to death or expelled him from Egypt’.
Although Antonius then offered to kill himself on condition Cleopatra would be spared, it was jealousy that finally roused him from his inertia. Octavian’s handsome young freedman Thyrsos was enjoying such prolonged audiences with Cleopatra that he gave orders for Thyrsos to be flogged for his impertinence. Sending him back to Octavian with a note claiming his ‘busy impertinent ways had provoked him’, Antonius added that Octavian could even the score by flogging Antonius’ own freedman Hipparchus, who had recently gone over to Octavian’s side.
Finally leaving his self-imposed exile, Antonius decided to enjoy what was left of his life and ‘was received by Cleopatra in the palace and set the whole city into a course of feasting, drinking and presents’. Although she kept her own thirty-ninth birthday celebrations purposefully low-key, she must have been deeply relieved to have him back, insisting that his fifty-second was celebrated on 14 January 30 BC with such magnificence ‘that many of the guests who sat down in want went home wealthy men’.
To make a symbolic severance from the traitors Plancus, Titius and Dellius, the couple formally dissolved ‘The Inimitable Livers’ and in its place founded the ‘Synapothanoumenoi’, ‘Those who will die together’ or ‘The Suicide Club’. Made up of hard-core supporters who wore chaplets of poisoned flowers, each vowed they would die with the couple when the time came, including Canidius Crassus who had bravely defied Octavian and made it back to Egypt.
Wishing to find a painless means to end her life should the need arise, Cleopatra was determined to follow the example of her uncle Ptolemy of Cyprus who had commited suicide when the Romans had taken his kingdom. At all costs she wished to avoid the fate of her half-sister Arsinoe who had been forced to walk in chains through Rome, the city she herself had once ruled with Caesar. With no intention of ever returning, certainly not in any Triumph of Octavian, Cleopatra adamantly declared, ‘I will not be shown in a Triumph’.
So to this end, ‘her daily practice’ involved research within the Mouseion on the subject of toxicology, and ‘busied in making a collection of all varieties of poisonous drugs and in order to see which of them were the least painful in the operation, she had them tried upon prisoners condemned. But finding that the quick poisons always worked with sharp pains and that the less painful were slow, she next tried venomous animals, and watched with her own eyes whilst they were applied, one creature to the body of another.’ Alexandria’s first librarian Demetrios of Phaleron was said to have chosen to die by the bite of an asp, a form of execution used in Alexandria and considered by the Greek doctor Galen a humane method. Indeed, it was said that ‘she pretty well satisfied herself that nothing was comparable to the bite of the asp, which without convulsion or groaning brought on a heavy drowsiness and lethargy with a gentle sweat on the face, the sense being stupefied by degrees; the patient, in appearance, being sensible of no pain, but rather troubled to be disturbed or awakened like those that are in a profound natural sleep’. So she kept snakes and ‘other reptiles to end
her life’, no doubt in the royal zoo.
Having chosen the perfect means to pass over into the afterlife with the dignity befitting her status, Cleopatra was equally keen to complete the place in which she would be buried — her mausoleum begun early in her reign in accordance with pharaonic tradition. Having nevertheless broken with tradition by opting out of burial in the Soma, she had created ‘several tombs and monuments’ for herself and immediate family as an independent complex. It was described as ‘joining the temple of Isis’, a phrase which could refer to any one of the city’s many Isis temples, including a round temple in the easterly Hadra quarter with its royal statuary and ‘large edifice’; however, a further reference to ‘the tomb which she was building in the grounds of the palace’ suggests it was next to the temple of Isis on the Lochias promontory beside the sea.
Surviving descriptions of the tombs’ ‘wonderful height’ also mention that they were ‘very remarkable for their workmanship’, recalling Cleopatra’s magnificent Birth House at Hermonthis whose ‘luxuriant decoration represented an excellent example of the baroque style of [Ptolemaic] architecture. The daring roof construction of the entrance kiosk, the play of light and shadows at the capitals, and the effect of the huge, window-like openings that created beautiful connections between interior and exterior spaces must have been stunning.’
Possibly accessed by means of an ‘ingenious double system of trapdoor and sliding portcullis’ as used in other Ptolemaic tombs, Cleopatra’s is known to have been a two-storeyed construction with a windowless ground floor and an upper storey reached by at least one internal staircase. Windows set high up in the building would let in both light and sound, from the lapping of the sea to the daily rituals in the adjoining temple, allowing her remains to be venerated as sacred relics in the manner of Alexander and perpetuating her status as a goddess with the powers of resurrection. There may even have been an ancient-style false door on the wall between temple and tomb, a feature Cleopatra had incorporated into her Hermonthis Birth House to enable the living to communicate with the dead. Contemporary tombs in Alexandria even had antechamber-style dining areas where the living could eat with the dead, among surroundings decorated in a blend of classical and Egyptian-style decor, where Greek gods, cupids and dolphins appeared alongside Isis, Osiris and jackal-headed Anubis, bending over the mummy on the funerary bier.
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