Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  Maecenas; ask Agrippa

  As for Octavius Caesar, he is speaking with two men. Of what we can't say, but it is probably politics. Octavius affects carelessness. All we hear him say is:

  / do not know, Maecenas; ask Agrippa.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 16b-17

  Maecenas and Agrippa are Octavius Caesar's closest associates, then and afterward. Gaius Cilnius Maecenas was a man of peace. He was several years older than Octavius Caesar and had been a friend of his since the latter was a schoolboy. In later years Maecenas was always left at home to take care of Rome when Octavius Caesar was forced to be away on war or diplomacy. In his eventual retirement, Maecenas used the wealth he had gathered to support and patronize writers and artists. So earnestly did he do this and so great were those he helped that forever after a patron of the arts has been called "a Maecenas."

  Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, on the other hand, was the man of war, the good right arm of Octavius Caesar, the general who fought all his master's battles, and who made it possible for Octavius to win military victories. (Why didn't Agrippa win them for himself? Because he was intelligent enough to know that he needed Octavius' brain to direct his arm. In the same way, Mark Antony needed Julius Caesar's brain to direct his arm, but he never really understood that.)

  Agrippa was the same age as Octavius Caesar, was with him at school when the news of the assassination of Julius Caesar had arrived, and went with him to Italy. He did not play much of a part in the war against the conspirators, for he was still young. After the Battle of Philippi, however, Agrippa began to shine. It was he, for instance, who led the armies that penned up Fulvia and Lucius Antonius in Perusia and then defeated them.

  … time to wrangle …

  Softly and eagerly, Lepidus draws the two men together. Stiffly, they sit and confront each other. Each raises the matter of his grievances. Octavius Caesar has the better of this, for he can bring up the war fought against him by Fulvia and Lucius, claiming Antony set them on. Antony objects that the war was against his own policy, and ungallantly places full blame upon his dead wife, saying, in terms that must have raised a wry smile from many a husband in the audience:

  As for my wife,

  I would you had her spirit in such another.

  The third o'the world is yours, which with a snaffle

  You may pace easy, but not such a wife.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 65-68

  Nevertheless, argumentation continues till Enobarbus roughly points out the necessity of a compromise, however insincere:

  … if you borrow one another's love

  for the instant, you may, when you hear

  no more words of Pompey, return it again:

  you shall have time to wrangle in when

  you have nothing else to do.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 107-10

  It doesn't make pleasant listening, but it is a fair appraisal of the situation. A practical means of accommodation must be sought.

  Admired Octavia…

  Agrippa comes up with a suggestion at once. He says to Octavius Caesar:

  Thou hast a sister by the mother's side,

  Admired Octavia: great Mark Antony

  Is now a widower.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 123-25

  This sounds as though Agrippa is referring to a half sister, but he isn't. Octavia is a daughter of the same mother as Octavius Caesar as well as of the same father.

  Octavius Caesar had two sisters, both older than he. The older one, Octavia Major, was a half sister, by his father's first wife. The second, Octavia Minor, was a full sister and the one to whom Agrippa refers.

  She was by no means a young virgin, but was in her mid-twenties by this time (not much younger than Cleopatra) and had been married since her early teens, bearing two daughters and a son. Her husband, Gaius Marcellus, had died the year before, so what was being proposed was the marriage of a widow and a widower.

  Mark Antony agrees to the marriage and thus is produced what is hoped will be a permanent bond between the two triumvirs, someone who will be a common love and who will labor to smooth over all irritations. There is a precedent for this, in connection with the First Triumvirate, when Pompey and Julius Caesar were much in the position that Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar are now.

  In 58 b.c., when Julius Caesar was leaving for Gaul, he arranged to have Pompey marry Julia, his daughter, who was in her mid-twenties at the time. It turned out to be a love match. Pompey doted on her and while the marriage lasted, peace was maintained between the two men. In 54 b.c., however, Julia died at the age of only thirty. The strongest link between the two men snapped. The civil war that followed might have been prevented had Julia lived.

  It was this precedent which was now being followed. If only Mark Antony could love Octavia as Pompey had loved Julia, all might be well (and better, too, for Octavia was destined to live for thirty years more and was not to die young as Julia had done).

  … my sword 'gainst Pompey

  The agreement among the triumvirs was aimed particularly against Sextus Pompeius, and this was rather embarrassing to Mark Antony, who says:

  I did not think to draw my sword 'gainst Pompey,

  For he hath laid strange courtesies and great

  Of late upon me.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 159-61

  It was more than that, in fact. The two were making definite overtures toward an alliance. When Antony's mother fled Italy after the Perusine War, Sextus was ostentatiously kind to her. In fact, in a later scene, Sextus reminds Antony of this, saying:

  When Caesar and your brother were at blows,

  Your mother came to Sicily and did find

  Her welcome friendly.

  —Act II, scene vi, lines 44-46

  Sextus was not doing this, of course, out of sheer goodness of heart. He expected the Perusine War would lead to a greater civil war and he was prepared to choose sides for his own greater benefit. Since Octavius Caesar was closer to himself and the more immediate enemy, he was ready to ally himself with Antony, and this kindness to Antony's mother was a move in that direction.

  Indeed, Antony would have welcomed such an alliance, and in 41 b.c. the first steps toward such an understanding had been taken. Undoubtedly, if it had not been for the terrible Parthian menace, the Sextus-Antony combination would have become reality. As it was, though, Antony had to have peace with Octavius Caesar, and to get that the alliance with Sextus had to be abandoned and even war on Sextus had to be considered.

  … Mount Mesena

  If the triumvirs were now to turn against Sextus Pompeius, it was none too soon. Sextus had even established strong bases on the shores of Italy itself. Antony asks where he is, and Octavius Caesar answers:

  About the Mount Mesena.

  —Act II, scene ii, line 166

  Mount Mesena is a promontory that encloses a harbor about which the ancient town of Misenum was located. That town, now long gone, was fifteen miles west of Naples. In later years, Agrippa was to construct a strong naval base there, but now it belonged to Sextus.

  … the river of Cydnus

  The triumvirs leave, so that Mark Antony might meet Octavia and perform whatever perfunctory rites of courtship might seem advisable. Maecenas and Agrippa remain behind with Enobarbus for a little light conversation.

  Naturally, this means there is a chance for a little leering in connection with Cleopatra. Maecenas and Agrippa want all the inside information from Enobarbus. Enobarbus is only too glad to comply:

  When she first met Mark Antony,

  she pursed up his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 192-93

  That takes us back to the previous year, 41 b.c., when Antony, in the aftermath of Philippi, had taken over the East and was traveling through Asia Minor, gouging money out of the miserable population for the war against Parthia he was planning. Unfortunately for him, there wasn't much money to be had, squeeze he ever so tightly. Br
utus and Cassius had been there the year before (see page I-303) and they had scoured the land clean.

  Antony made his headquarters in Tarsus, a city on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor, at the mouth of the Cydnus River. (In Tarsus, a generation later, St. Paul was to be born.) It seemed to Antony that the logical solution to his dilemma was to squeeze Egypt. That land, nominally independent, but actually a Roman puppet, had the greatest concentration of wealth in the Mediterranean world-wealth wrung out of an endlessly fertile river valley and an endlessly patient and hard-working peasant population.

  There had been reports that Egypt had helped Brutus and Cassius, and this was very likely, for Egypt was in no position to refuse help to any Roman general who was in her vicinity with an army. Mark Antony understood that well, but what interested him was that this help could be used as an excuse to demand money. He planned to demand a great deal, and for that reason he summoned the Queen of Egypt to come to him in Tarsus and explain her actions. He had briefly seen the Queen in Alexandria in the days when Julius Caesar was there, seven years before, but not since.

  Cleopatra, perfectly aware of what Mark Antony intended, and also perfectly aware of his reputation as a woman chaser and of herself as a supreme quarry, decided to come to him in conditions of the greatest possible luxury, with herself beautified to the extreme of art. Plutarch describes the scene well, but Shakespeare improves on it and places it, for greater effect, in the mouth of Enobarbus, the rough soldier, to show that even the least poetic man had to be affected by Cleopatra's unparalleled stage setting of herself.

  Enobarbus, in an unbelievable outburst of sheer lyricism, says:

  The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

  Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

  Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

  The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,

  Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke and made

  The water which they beat to follow faster,

  As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,

  It beggared all description: she did lie

  In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,

  O'erpicturing that Venus where we see

  The fancy outwork nature: on each side her

  Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,

  With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem

  To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,

  And what they undid did.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 197-21 la

  Agrippa, listening, can only mutter in envy:

  O, rare for Antony.

  —Act II, scene ii, line 21 1b

  Cleopatra's strategy worked to perfection. Antony found himself sitting at the pier on a throne in Roman state-but utterly alone. He was completely upstaged as everyone crowded to watch the approaching barge. He himself was overcome. When Cleopatra invited him on board the barge, he went in what was almost a hypnotic trance, and was her slave from that moment. The Parthians were forgotten until they charged into the Eastern provinces and forced themselves upon Antony's unwilling notice.

  Age cannot wither …

  Agrippa and Maecenas grow uneasy at the description. The entire accommodation of the triumvirs rests upon the stability of the marriage of Antony and Octavia. Maecenas points out that now Antony must leave her, but Enobarbus answers in an immediate and positive negative; composing in the process the most effective description of complete feminine charm the world of literature has to offer. He says of the possibility of Antony's leaving Cleopatra:

  Never; he will not;

  Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

  Her infinite variety: other women cloy

  The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry

  Where most she satisfies; for vilest things

  Become themselves in her, that the holy priests

  Bless her when she is riggish.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 240-46

  And what can the others offer in place of this? Maecenas can only say, rather lamely:

  // beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle

  The heart of Antony, Octavia is

  A blessed lottery to him.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 247-49

  Thy daemon …

  Antony pledges himself to Octavia, but on leaving her and Octavius Caesar, he encounters the soothsayer, who has apparently accompanied his train to Italy. Antony asks whose fortune will rise higher, his own or Octavius Caesar's. The soothsayer answers:

  Caesar's.

  Therefore,

  O Antony, stay not by his side.

  Thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee, is

  Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,

  Where Caesar's is not. But near him thy angel

  Becomes afeared, as being o'erpow'red: therefore

  Make space enough between you.

  —Act II, scene iii, lines 18-24

  The Greeks came to believe that with each individual was associated a divine spirit through which the influence of the gods could make itself felt. It was when this influence was most strongly felt that a man could attain heights otherwise impossible to him. Where a particular spirit was most continually effective, the man himself would be of unusual power and ability. In some cases, this belief was elaborated to the point where each individual was thought to have two such spirits, one for good and one for evil, the two continually fighting for mastery.

  To the Greeks, such a spirit was a "daimon" (meaning "divinity") and in the Latin spelling this became "daemon." To the later Christians these daemons, being of pagan origin, could only be evil, and therefore we get our present "demon," meaning an evil spirit However, the Greek notion lives on with but a change of name, and. we still speak of guardian angels and we sometimes even envisage an individual as being influenced by his better or worse nature.

  The soothsayer is saying that though Octavius Caesar's daemon is inferior to Antony's it can nevertheless win over the latter. In present parlance, we might say that Octavius Caesar plays in luck whenever he encounters Mark Antony. And yet this is hard to accept. It wasn't luck that kept Octavius Caesar on top through all a long life, but ability.

  The Latin equivalent, by the way, of the Greek daimon was "genius" (see page I-118).

  I'th'East…

  The soothsayer, in warning Antony to stay far away from Octavius Caesar, is but telling Antony what he wants to hear. (This is the supreme art of the soothsayer in all ages and places.) Antony therefore says, after the soothsayer leaves:

  I will to Egypt:

  And though I make this marriage for my peace,

  I'th'East my pleasure lies.

  —Act II, scene iii, lines 39-4la

  Eventually, yes, but right now he can't. There are problems he must attend to and until those are resolved, he must remain married to Octavia and must stay out of Egypt

  And some of the problems are in the East and won't wait for his personal presence. His general, Ventidius, comes on scene, and Antony says:

  O, come, Ventidius,

  You must to Parthia. Your commission's ready:

  Follow me, and receive't.

  —Act II, scene iii, lines 41b-43

  … be at Mount

  If the Parthians must be dealt with, so must Sextus Pompeius. He was the nearer and the more immediate menace.

  The new agreement between the triumvirs and, in particular, Antony's betrayal of his earlier moves toward an alliance had embittered Sextus, and he now escalated his own offensive. In the whiter of 40-39 b.c. Sextus' hand about Rome's throat tightened. Virtually no food entered the capital city and famine threatened. When the triumvirs tried to calm the populace, they were stoned.

  They had no choice but to try to come to an agreement with Sextus and to allow him to enter the combine. This would make four men (a quad-rumvirate) in place of three. To discuss this, the triumvirs agreed to come to Misenum, Sextus' stronghold, to confer with him.


  Shakespeare skips over the hard winter, passing directly from Antony's marriage to Octavia to the moment when the triumvirs are leaving for Misenum. Lepidus, Maecenas, and Agrippa come on scene in a whirlwind of activity, and Maecenas says:

  We shall

  As I conceive the journey, be at

  Mount Before you, Lepidus.

  —Act II, scene iv, lines 5-7

  The "Mount" is the Misenum promontory where the meeting with Sextus will take place.

  … his sword Phillipan

  Back in Alexandria during that same whiter, Cleopatra spends a moody, restless time. She longs for the period of happiness she had experienced with Antony and says, in reminiscence, to Charmian:

  / laughed him out of patience; and that night

  I laughed him into patience; and next morn,

  Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;

  Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst

  I wore his sword Philippan.

  —Act II, scene v, lines 19-23