Cleopatra: A Life

by Stacy Schiff

  As Octavian advanced on Alexandria Antony experienced a sudden surge of energy. Rallying a modest force, he rode out to meet the enemy’s advance guard in the outskirts of the city, several miles east of the Canopic Gate. Octavian’s army was depleted from the march; Antony’s cavalry won the day, routing Octavian’s, and pursuing them all the way back to camp. At breakneck speed Antony galloped to Alexandria to share the brilliant news: “Then, exalted by his victory, he went into the palace, kissed Cleopatra, all armed as he was, and presented to her one of the soldiers who had fought most spiritedly.” For his courage Cleopatra rewarded the dusty young man with a golden breastplate and helmet. With respect and gratitude, he accepted both. He defected in the night to Octavian. Undeterred, Antony attempted yet again to suborn Octavian’s men, some of whom had after all been his. He sent as well an invitation to his former brother-in-law, challenging him to single combat. This time he got a response. Octavian observed frostily that there were many ways in which Antony might die.

  He determined to wage another assault, simultaneously on land and sea. A morbid dinner preceded that sortie, on the evening of July 31. Octavian camped outside Alexandria’s east gates, near the city’s hippodrome. His fleet rode at anchor just beyond the harbor. An eerie calm descended over the hyperkinetic city. Surrounded by friends at the palace, Antony urged his servants to drink copiously. They would have no such opportunity the next day, when they might well have a new master, and he would be, at best, “a mummy and a nothing.” Again his friends wept at his words. Antony consoled them. He would involve them in no useless battles. He aspired only to an honorable death. At dawn on August 1 he marched the remainder of his infantry out of the city gates, stationing them at a vantage point from which they might follow the engagement at sea. Around them the city was hushed. Antony stood motionless in the silvery morning air, tense with the anticipation of victory. His fleet rowed directly for Octavian’s—and saluted the enemy with their oars. Octavian’s ships returned the gesture. From shore Antony watched the fleets return peacefully to the harbor, now united as one. No sooner had their prows aligned than his cavalry deserted as well. His infantry put up a desultory fight. Incensed, Antony flew toward the palace, raving “that Cleopatra had betrayed him to the enemies he had made for her sake.” The charge tallies with his addled state of mind. Dio takes it at face value, again impugning Cleopatra. Obviously she had double-crossed Antony and caused the ships to desert. She was in league with Octavian. It is not impossible; she may well have preferred her own last-ditch efforts—she still had a negotiating position, as Antony had not—to his. On this count the spotty record is less problematic than are the personalities of our two chroniclers, which Cleopatra neatly draws out. Dio is excited by treachery, Plutarch undone by emotion. Now in a panic, the city was Octavian’s.

  Whether or not she had betrayed him, Cleopatra did not wait for Antony’s return. She had heard his rants before. She had no desire to hear them again. She knew now that her lover was finally, irrevocably, inconsolably ruined. Fleeing Antony, she rushed to the mausoleum with her maidservants and staff. Behind them they lowered the massive doors, evidently a sort of portcullis. Once in place the panels would not again budge. Cleopatra secured the entry as well with bolts and bars. For Dio, the flight to the mausoleum was all playacting; Octavian had kept up his regular stream of comforting messages. Clearly Cleopatra had agreed to his demand that she sacrifice her lover in exchange for Egypt. She made the dramatic move only to encourage Antony to kill himself. Antony suspected a ruse, “yet in his infatuation he could not believe it, but actually pitied her more, one might say, than himself.” There was no shortage of causes for pity. Dio allows Cleopatra at least a nod to Antony’s affection—she may be duplicitous, but she is not coldhearted—though again he mangles her motives. Were Antony to believe her dead he would surely not care to go on living. Having barricaded herself in the mausoleum, Cleopatra sent a messenger to Antony, with a report of her death.

  Did she deliberately deceive him? She stands accused of so many betrayals that it is difficult to know what to do with this one, arguably the most humane and least surprising. The two were after all partners in death; Antony had already offered to kill himself to save her. Octavian had no further use for Antony, an impediment to Cleopatra at this point as well. Someone had to put him out of his misery, a task defeated Roman generals traditionally handled themselves. The message may have been bungled in transmission, well before it was mauled by historians. In any event Antony lost no time; in Cleopatra’s absence he was without a reason to live. Nor was he particularly eager to be shown up by a woman. He received the news in his room, among his staff. Plutarch has him instantly unfastening his breastplate and crying out, “O Cleopatra, I am not distressed to have lost you, for I shall straightaway join you; but I am grieved that a commander as great as I should be found to be inferior to a woman in courage.” By prearrangement, his servant Eros was designated to kill him should the need arise. Antony now requested he do so. Eros drew his sword and—turning from his master—slew himself. He collapsed at Antony’s feet. Antony could only applaud his courage and his example. Brandishing his own sword—the blade would have been about two and a half feet long, with an extended steel point—he ran it straight into his ribs, missing his heart, puncturing his abdomen. Bloodied and faint, he dropped to the couch. He had not succeeded in his task, however, and shortly regained consciousness. It was somehow typical of Antony to leave the job half-done. He begged those around him to deliver the coup de grâce but again and for the last time found himself deserted. To a man, his retinue fled the room.

  An outcry followed, which brought Cleopatra to the upper story of the mausoleum. She peered either through the second-floor windows or the unfinished roof; she had built quickly, but not quickly enough. The sight of her caused a commotion—so she was not dead after all!—though if Dio is correct, no one could have been more surprised than Antony. Again Plutarch and Dio’s accounts are incompatible. It is unclear whether Antony first learns that Cleopatra is still alive, or if Cleopatra first learns that Antony is half-dead. Antony then either orders his servants to take him to her (Dio), or Cleopatra sends her servants for him (Plutarch). Already Antony had lost a great deal of blood. Cleopatra’s secretary found him on the floor, writhing and crying out.

  In their arms, Antony’s servants carried him, bleeding to death and in agony, to the mausoleum. From the windows above Cleopatra let down the ropes and cords that had been used to hoist stone blocks atop the structure. To these the servants fastened the limp body. Cleopatra drew her lover up herself, with the aid of Iras and Charmion, long familiar with Antony. It is impossible to improve upon Plutarch’s version of the ordeal; even Shakespeare could not do so. “Never,” Plutarch writes, working from an eyewitness account, “was there a more piteous sight. Smeared with blood and struggling with death he was drawn up, stretching out his hands to her even as he dangled in the air. For the task was not an easy one for women, and scarcely could Cleopatra, with clinging hands and strained face, pull up the rope, while those below called out encouragement to her and shared her agony.” No sooner had she hauled Antony up and laid him out on a couch than Cleopatra began to rip and tear at her robes. It is one of only two recorded moments in which she loses her colossal self-possession. She yields to raw emotion; “she almost forgot her own ills in her pity for his.” The two had been together for the better part of a decade; Cleopatra wiped the blood from his body and smeared it across her face. She beat and scratched at her breasts. She called Antony master, commander, husband; she always knew how to talk to a man. He silenced her cries and demanded a sip of wine, “either because he was thirsty, or in the hope of a speedier release.” Once served, he encouraged Cleopatra to attend to her own safety and to cooperate with Octavian so far as her honor allowed, advice that suggests some doubt on Antony’s part as to her intentions. Among Octavian’s men he recommended that she entrust herself in particular to Gaius Proculeius. He had be
en a friend as well to Antony. She was not to pity him his fate, but to rejoice for the happiness and honors that had been his. He had been the most illustrious and powerful of men, and he now died a noble death, vanquished in the end only by a fellow Roman. The waves murmured outside. Antony died in Cleopatra’s arms.

  AS ANTONY MADE his excruciating trip to the mausoleum, one of his bodyguards sped—with Antony’s sword secreted under his cloak—to Octavian’s camp, outside the city. There he produced the heavy blade, still smeared with blood, and an early account of the botched suicide. Octavian retired immediately to his tent, to weep the same brand of crocodile tears that Caesar had wept for Pompey, “a man who had been his relation by marriage, his colleague in office and command, and his partner in many undertakings and struggles.” The relief must have been great; dispensing with Antony had been a problem. While Antony lay dying in Cleopatra’s arms Octavian indulged in a little ceremony of self-justification, producing copies of the letters that he and his former brother-in-law had exchanged over the previous years. These he read aloud to his assembled friends. Was it not remarkable “how reasonably and justly he had written, and how rude and overbearing Antony had always been in his replies”? (He took care later to burn Antony’s side of the correspondence.) After the dramatic reading Proculeius set off. He was on Cleopatra’s doorstep within minutes of Antony’s death.

  To the end Antony proved overly trusting. Proculeius had two commissions. He was to do all in his power to extract Cleopatra from the mausoleum. And he was to see to it that the treasure Octavian so urgently needed to settle his affairs did not go up in flames. Herod had supplied him with a taste of the East; Octavian could not afford to sacrifice the fabulous hoard of Egypt, the subject of dreams and exaggerations since the time of Homer, to a funeral pyre. His debts were his only remaining obstacle in Rome. He also needed a live Egyptian queen, which he calculated would “add greatly to the glory of his triumph.” Dio devotes a great deal of attention to Cleopatra’s wiles and feints over the next days but knew he was writing of two slippery characters, both deeply invested in the duplicity business. Octavian wanted to seize Cleopatra alive, Dio allows, “yet he was unwilling to appear to have tricked her himself.” Mild-mannered Proculeius was to keep her hopes up and her hand from the fire.

  Despite Antony’s assurances, Cleopatra refused to grant Proculeius an interview in the mausoleum. If he wanted to speak to her, he would have to do so through the well-bolted door. Octavian had made her certain promises. She wanted guarantees. She threatened to burn her treasure without them. Repeatedly she pleaded that her children—three of them were under respectful guard, with their attendants—might inherit the kingdom. Repeatedly Proculeius circumvented the request. He assured her that she had no worries. She could trust Octavian entirely. She was unconvinced on that front and had taken various precautions. She wore a small dagger at her hip, inserted into her belt; it could not have been the first time she did so. And she had long before dispatched Caesarion up the Nile. She knew she could ask no favors on her eldest child’s count. With his tutor, Rhodon, and a small fortune, he was to make his way overland to the coast and to sail for India, the established source of Ptolemaic ivory and dyes, spices and tortoiseshell. Proculeius made little progress, though he did have ample opportunity to survey the mausoleum, to which he returned with Gaius Cornelius Gallus—who had entered Egypt from the west, at the head of Antony’s legions—for a second interview. Gallus outranked Proculeius. A poet and an intellectual, he enjoyed a facility with language; he was a pioneer of the love elegy. (Ironically, he addressed his work to the actress who had been Antony’s mistress.) Again he faced one of Antony’s women. Perhaps he could negotiate a surrender. Gallus met Cleopatra outside the door for a prolonged conversation, presumably little different from the one she had had with Proculeius. She remained intransigent.

  Meanwhile Proculeius fixed a ladder to the side of the building and climbed in the upper-story window through which Antony had been carried. Two servants scurried up the wall behind him. Once inside the three descended to the ground floor, where they stole up on Cleopatra, at the mausoleum door. Charmion or Iras noticed the intruders first and cried out: “Wretched Cleopatra, you are taken alive!” At the sight of the Romans, Cleopatra reached for the dagger to stab herself, but Proculeius was quicker. Throwing himself upon her, he enveloped Cleopatra in both arms. He wrested away the dagger and searched the folds of her clothing for poisons, all the while affably reassuring her, as he had been instructed. She should not act rashly. She did herself a disservice, and Octavian too. Why rob him of the opportunity to prove his kindness and integrity? He was after all—she had heard the claim before, from a messenger who had defected, about a man whose lifeless body lay upstairs in a pool of blood—“the gentlest of commanders.”

  Octavian installed a freedman named Epaphroditus at Cleopatra’s side. He had firm instructions. He was to keep the queen of Egypt alive “by the strictest vigilance, but otherwise to make any concession that would promote her ease and pleasure.” All instruments by which she might again attempt to kill herself were confiscated. Presumably the pile of treasure was at this juncture carted away as well. Cleopatra was, however, supplied with all she requested—incense, and oils of cedar and cinnamon—with which to prepare Antony for burial. She spent two days purifying the body, a courtesy Octavian was no doubt happy to grant. He could win points for honoring an unwritten code of warfare while at the same time delivering the scandalous burial that he claimed Antony had requested. Octavian’s men removed none of Cleopatra’s retinue or attendants, “in order that she should entertain more hope than ever of accomplishing all she desired, and so should do no harm to herself.” The three children were treated sympathetically and as befit their rank, for which she had reason to be grateful. Octavian’s men tracked down Antyllus, betrayed by his tutor, entranced by the priceless gem he knew the sixteen-year-old to be wearing under his toga. Antony’s son had sought refuge in a shrine, probably within the massive walls of the Caesareum. He begged for his life. Octavian’s men dragged him out and beheaded him. The tutor lost no time in snatching the jewel from the corpse, for which he was later crucified.

  Cleopatra asked for and obtained permission to bury Antony herself. Accompanied by Iras and Charmion, she did so “in sumptuous and royal fashion.” A first-century woman grieved with much ritual screaming and thrashing and clawing at the skin, and Cleopatra was no exception: her display was so extreme that her chest was inflamed and ulcerated by the end of the funeral on what was probably August 3. Infection set in, accompanied by a fever. She was pleased; if she now swore off food, she could, she reasoned, manage a quiet, Roman-free death. She confided as much in Olympus, who counseled her and promised his assistance. Her method was hardly subtle, however; Octavian learned quickly enough of her compromised state. He had a trump card as great as Cleopatra’s treasure. He “plied her with threats and fears regarding her children”—another kind of warfare, concedes Plutarch, and a most effective one. Cleopatra surrendered to food and treatment.

  Octavian had by now bought some goodwill, which may have partly reassured Cleopatra. He called for a public assembly; late on the afternoon of August 1, the day of Antony’s death, he rode into the city with a prepared scroll. He always wrote out what he meant to say in Latin; this speech was afterward translated into Greek. In the gymnasium where Antony and Cleopatra had crowned their children Octavian ascended a specially built platform. The terrified Alexandrians prostrated themselves at his feet. Octavian bade them stand. He meant no harm. He had resolved to pardon their city for three reasons: In honor of Alexander the Great; because of Octavian’s great admiration for their home, “by far the richest and greatest of all cities”; and to gratify Areius, the Greek philosopher at his side. The truth of the matter, concedes Dio, is that Octavian did not dare “inflict any irreparable injury upon a people so numerous, who might prove very useful to the Romans in many ways.”

  Events, Cleopatra would
have noticed, were moving quickly. Urgently she requested an interview with Octavian, granted on August 8. While in broad outline Plutarch and Dio’s accounts of that meeting are similar, the mise-en-scène differs radically. Plutarch is writing for Puccini, Dio for Wagner. There may be more art than truth in both versions; either way, it was quite a performance. (It made too for a revealing contrast to Herod’s interview.) Plutarch sends up the curtain with Cleopatra lying frail and disheveled on a simple mattress, clad only in a tunic, without any kind of cloak. Octavian has elected to surprise her. At the sight of her caller she springs up and throws herself at his feet. The wretched week has taken its toll: “Her hair and face were in terrible disarray, her voice trembled, and her eyes were sunken. There were also visible many marks of the cruel blows upon her bosom; in a word, her body seemed to be no better off than her spirit.” Dio prefers Cleopatra in her regal splendor and at her histrionic best. She has prepared a luxurious apartment and an ornate couch for her visitor. She is groomed to perfection, superbly turned out in mourning clothes that “wonderfully became her.” As Octavian enters she leaps girlishly to her feet, to find herself face to face with her mortal enemy, for what was almost certainly the first time. Octavian had come into his looks, or into his panegyrists; he was highly attractive to women, “for he was well worth beholding,” as Nicolaus of Damascus put it later. Cleopatra must have experienced a certain relief. “To be so long prey to fear is surely worse than the actuality we are afraid of,” Cicero had observed. Before Cleopatra stood after all only a man, about five feet seven, with tousled blond hair, benign in his expression, more comfortable in Latin than in Greek, six years her junior, sallow, stiff, and ill at ease.