by Talbot Mundy
“Herod has been useful and not unmindful of the respect due to Rome and to myself,” Caesar objected. “He appears to me to be a bright young man.”
“Too bright. He will grow too powerful and too rich, unless his wool is shorn. Let him fall heir to Jerusalem, where the Jews all hate and fear him; but deprive him of that rich revenue. Thus in the days to come he will be jealous and yet always seeking favors, which is the easiest way to make him useful.”
Caesar agreed and wrote the memorandum. And so Herod paid for Lollianè, and Apollodorus was appointed lord-collector of the revenues of Jericho, that Herod might rankle the more and that Apollodorus, pocketing his tenth, might taste in some degree at least the satisfaction of a personal revenge.
CHAPTER XXXVII. Caesar — Imperial Caesar — a god upon Earth.
Neither in earth nor sky nor sea do great events occur that give no warning which a man may read aright, if he have understanding, but the heedless are a multitude and they who understand are few.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
UNTIL after the triumph very few prominent Romans visited Cleopatra, and they only in the most formal manner to inscribe their names on the scroll kept for the purpose in Apollodorus’ charge. It was debatable whether Caesar wished that villa by the Tiber to be much frequented by society, and even whether Cleopatra wished it; and as it was noticed that Mark Antony held aloof that was accepted as a hint to await developments.
But two or three days after the last day’s triumph Mark Antony, surrounded by about a dozen of his boon companions, rode out to visit her and prolonged his stay for the whole of an afternoon. He was the handsomest man in Rome and reckoned one of the most influential, since he had definitely attached himself to Caesar. But he was dangerously popular; it was common rumor that Caesar had frequently resented Antony’s sway of the mob, and they were known to have seriously quarreled more than once. However, Antony was a man who quarreled thoughtlessly and made it up again without any more enduring malice than a child’s.
His curly dark hair, burly figure, magnificent muscles and sensuous frank smile endeared him to the Roman crowd, that — next perhaps to oratory, for which Antony was famous — most enjoyed a gay good-looking man, whose swagger through the streets was entertainment and whose horse-play wit provided a relief from the monotonous deadly earnestness of politics.
He was an aristocrat, but with almost none of Caesar’s aristocratic insolence and stern aloofness. He possessed even less than Caesar’s honesty in money matters, even more than Caesar’s looseness in affairs with women; and his character was said to combine shrewdness, sheer stupidity and generous energy in almost equal parts — an underestimate. He was a man of underdeveloped will and overdeveloped magnetism, as capable of genius as degeneracy and as yet not definitely headed either way although inclined toward over-self-indulgence — not sure yet of his own ability to mold the destiny of half a world and not yet sure in his own mind that he wished to be more than Caesar’s henchman, always provided that Caesar paid him handsomely and gave him ample opportunity to enjoy life, a large part of which enjoyment necessarily consisted in receiving public plaudits. Antony was bored if not flattering and being flattered, amusing and being amused, starting something and leaving other men to finish it, or lending all his popularity and muscle and ebullient enthusiasm to the purpose of a moment. A believer in luck; whereas Caesar believed in destiny, which is vastly different. An overgrown boy, suffering misfortune comically with a wry face, squandering good fortune as it came; affectionate, irascible, thoughtless, irresponsible and recklessly responsible by turns; as capable of cruelty as kindness, and as likely to neglect his friends from sheer forgetfulness as to forget the very existence of his enemies from lack of enduring malice of his own.
His visit to Cleopatra was at Caesar’s bidding, but he had a prior claim to her acquaintance and to her gratitude as having been the officer commanding the Gabinian cavalry that raided Alexandria and reinstated Ptolemy Auletes on the throne when Cleopatra was a child: a lawless, bribe-induced and heavily rewarded effort that might have cost him perpetual banishment from Rome had it not so unexpectedly succeeded. So he might, without much stretch of the imagination, claim to be responsible for Cleopatra’s ultimate accession to her throne. As temporary guardian of Arsinoe he had a claim of another kind on her attention, and he had doubtless heard from Arsinoe’s lips a thoroughly uncomplimentary and critical account of Cleopatra’s character and doings.
He expected voluptuous scenes and wasteful gaiety, so he was rather taken aback by the atmosphere of demure retirement and unostentatious dignity that Cleopatra had contrived in expectation of his coming. There were lovely women in attendance to chat with and entertain the friends he brought with him, but they were under Charmian’s watchful eye and there was great care taken not to suggest more breadth of social behavior than even Fulvia, Antony’s grim wife, would have tolerated in her own home.
For there was nothing about Mark Antony’s private or public life that Cleopatra had not ascertained — from the severity of his domineering fury of a wife to the cause and the cure of his occasional quarrels with Caesar; from his father’s reputation for corruption leading to an ignominious death, to his own rather scandalous youth and his consequent hatred of Cicero, who had denounced him in season and out, in the Senate, in private, in his correspondence and in his published writings. She had judged that to begin with an appeal to the voluptuous and extravagant side of Antony’s character would be a mistake. There would be plenty of time to do that afterward if necessary. She understood the apparent paradox that such a man as Antony, who laughed at women’s pretensions to virtue and deliberately ruined as many of their reputations as he could, should admire his wife’s termagant temper and return to her like a naughty boy for punishment as often as he disregarded her discipline and aroused her indignant ire with some new scandal. For the moment she was bent on impressing him with her unchangeable devotion to Caesar, with a view to stirring Antony’s enthusiasm for his chief and subsequently making use of that to encourage Caesar along the dangerous, difficult course he had chosen. Far more clearly than Caesar did, she saw the dictator’s need of thoroughly enthusiastic friends, who would take on themselves the responsibility of urging what they knew that Caesar wished and the suggestion of which would come better from them than from him. So it was for Caesar, not for herself, that she desired this interview.
Antony’s way with women was invariably hearty (even with his own wife) and expressive of his disbelief in either chastity or its advantages. His manner was an invitation to a woman to admire him and to fall into his genial strong arms — to enjoy his strength and masculinity — to laugh with him at the traditional conventions of morality. But Cleopatra baffled him. She was as wholly at her ease as if she had known him all her life long. His physical attractions and his bluff, boisterous, gay manner seemed to pass unnoticed. It was he, not she, who lost his head and yielded up most of his self-control after two hours’ conversation, in which he discovered that she knew more than he did about world affairs and how to manage them. He began to understand why Caesar was devoted to her.
Before evening she had won Mark Antony to her view of Caesar’s destiny, and he left her as convinced as she was that a crown and throne not only were Caesar’s due but that his own best interests were likely to be served by urging Caesar to accept the kingdom. He had Caesar’s ear. He was a plausible, amusing and convincing advocate. And he could begin to popularize the notion without consulting Caesar, so that Caesar should find himself urged by friends and public and should be able to appear to consent unwillingly.
It was from that time on that there began in Rome the definite and persistent rumor that Caesar would accept the crown if it were offered to him. But enemies were alert. There was an equally persistent counter-rumor, shrewdly given currency by Cicero and those who clung to the republican tradition, that Cleopatra was the source of the plot and its inspiration, hoping to make herself Caesar�
��s queen in order to preserve the Ptolemaic dynasty at Rome’s expense.
She had won Antony, and dozens along with him; but she was not so successful with Brutus, Cassius and Dolabella — three men of such totally diverse attainments and character as to make it extremely unlikely they would unite in one political purpose unless they thought their own lives or their own prosperity were endangered. All that they held in common was ingratitude to Caesar, who had spared their lives and given them important posts. Cassius and Brutus, both, had fought against him at Pharsalia, from motives that were mixed of bitterness and altruism — selfish in the one, self-laudatory in the other. Cassius was lean and mean, a fanatic, a hater of autocracy in any form although himself a despotic provincial governor; by nature an accuser although himself accused of misappropriation of funds in Syria and only saved from being brought to trial by the outbreak of civil war; a good general in the field, but so jealous of any other man’s success as to be incapable of retaining friendships. A capable, shrewd, sarcastic man, of ancient patrician family. As peregrine praetor for the year his profitable duty was to guard the interests of aliens in Rome which gave him good excuse and opportunity to visit Cleopatra, ostensibly to discuss the petitions of certain Alexandrians’ that had been brought to his attention.
Brutus was scholarly, weak and excitable; a lover of high-sounding phrases and ideas, given to extremes of generosity and equal depths of cowardly panic due to doubt whether his ideas were so excellent after all. Caesar had a quite peculiar affection for him, partly based on knowledge that he himself was actually Brutus’ father. He was interested by Brutus’ idealism which he considered harmless and occasionally even excellent; aware of his integrity in some respects; and amused as much by Brutus’ indignant repudiation of their relationship as by his equally prompt assertion of it whenever he needed favors or forgiveness. In other words, he felt indulgently fatherly toward him. Nearly everyone in Rome loved Brutus; but his intimates all recognized him as a man who could be easily manipulated for a moment’s use but could not be depended on to stand firm once his philosophical doubts and the opposition between his ideals and his own personal interests had time to unnerve him. He had some of the qualities and all the aspirations of a hero, but no iron, and in the last resort he was always likely to be swayed by the opinions of those around him.
Dolabella was Cicero’s son-in-law, a general by profession and an utterly dishonest turncoat, plunderer and ambitious profligate in practice. Recognizing his danger if left in Rome, Caesar had taken him to Africa on the campaign against Cato, where his services in the field had been so valuable that it was next to impossible not to reward him for them and to include him in the government of Rome on his return.
Divining that those three men were leaders of opinion likely, each of them, to sway his own particular coterie, Cleopatra loaded them with presents and did her utmost to make them realize that Caesar’s coronation as king or emperor of Rome would be to their own advantage and the best thing that could happen to the state. But she was unlucky, both in the event and in her choice of method.
Cassius took umbrage at the appointment of a man named Decimus Junius Brutus, a relative of Caesar’s natural son, as urban praetor; he regarded it for a host of reasons as a reflection on himself and as an obstacle deliberately set between himself and higher office. As vindictive as an adder, he immediately turned on Caesar and, pretending to continue friendly to him, plotted against him day and night, including Cleopatra in his hatred, his plot taking first one form and then another, but his vigilance and his determination never once relaxing.
But it was Cleopatra herself who offended Marcus Brutus. Meaning to amuse him and to gain his interest, she showed him the child Caesarion and pointed out to him how much already he resembled Caesar. Precocious, as Caesar had been as an infant, he was already learning to walk and it was possible to imagine that he used his father’s gait and gesture. There were those who said the same of Brutus, who, however, always did his utmost to avoid the slightest trace of resemblance of speech or habit.
Mild in his outward manner and disposed to be compassionate and kind rather than resentful, Brutus nevertheless was hag-ridden by obsessions, one of which was shame on account of his way of entering the world; another was that any reference to Caesar’s sexual recklessness, however cautious, or if merely made by inference, if made to him or in his presence was an insult aimed deliberately at himself And for all his protestations of benevolence and altruism he could hate savagely — hate underneath while he loved on the surface — hate with the consuming and slow torment of a buried fire, not realizing that he hated, justifying the resulting treachery with high-sounding phrases anent right and wrong.
He hated Cleopatra from that instant. Cassius and Dolabella knew him better than be knew himself and easily coaxed the creeping fire into flame that burned up any gratitude that he might have felt toward Caesar, until Caesar’s disregard of convention, tradition and his country’s ancient laws became the dominant thought in his mind, and he thought of Cleopatra only as the temptress who was teaching him to violate the rights of man.
And Cleopatra made of Dolabella, too, an enemy by accident. She was discussing him with Caesar in the presence of Apollodorus, wondering what Caesar saw in him that he should treat him with such evident favor.
“He is a good general,” said Caesar, “and a man of tried ability, whose fortune is dependent entirely on my good-will for which reason I have some confidence in his devotion to me, seeing that he has good sense and would hardly be likely to bite the hand that feeds him—”
Cleopatra summed up Dolabella in a sentence: “He is an imitation-Caesar, lacking all your royal nature but quite well able to copy you on the surface. He is a shaft that if you lean on too heavily will break and pierce your hand.”
The phrase “imitation-Caesar” stuck. Apollodorus circulated it. It came to Dolabella’s ears. It rankled. They three, Dolabella, Cassius and Brutus, not conspirators as yet but drawn together by a hatred held in common that they had to mask, became a nucleus around which jealousy and fear of Caesar slowly crystallized into a passion — a thing of numbers, virulence and force.
Material for them to work on was far from lacking. Most of the Roman women, and particularly those who had been Caesar’s paramours in former days, took up the cudgels in Calpurnia’s behalf, commiserating with her and arousing hypocritical indignation against Caesar and Cleopatra in social circles in which adultery was reckoned a pastime rather than a vice. There is nothing easier than to excite jealousy of foreign competition, and nothing simpler than to convict by acclamation a woman who confesses openly that her child was by another woman’s husband. Knowing well that Cleopatra was of pure Greek ancestry, they spoke of her as “the Egyptian” and spread through the crowd, by the lips of their freedmen and slaves, a vague, disturbing talk about the eastern peril, of which Cleopatra, it was hinted, was the guiding genius.
All of which came to Caesar’s ears and stirred not only his resentment but his scorn. Wherever he went, beneath a mask of flattery he was aware of stinging accusation, that he did not choose to admit could sting him but that made him lonelier than moonlight on a forum wall. Only in Cleopatra’s company he found relief. She not only had no criticism but seemed to understand his motives and his craving to express his genius. He felt he needed her. He found himself increasingly unable to deny her theory of the divinity of rulers. He and she alone could visualize in prospect such an empire as he meant to bring under the yoke. Others saw only a frontier here and there, and had no greater sense of grandeur than to govern provinces or to occupy the Senate seat and prattle about what they thought was dignity. He and she saw the world, to which Parthia was only one gate, too hard to enter for a man like Crassus, a mere ambitious, upstart money-miser; but to a demigod —
Demigod? God! He would accept divinity. He had the courage of conviction and he no longer feared to make himself ridiculous.
He took a temple and refashioned it. He set hi
s image in there and he organized a corps of priests, a ritual of offerings and hours of worship. He caused Timomachus the sculptor to make Cleopatra’s figure and then set that in the temple next to his — his answer to the critics! And when he took his seat in the curia to preside over the Senate and to make sure that his new laws were immediately passed, his arrogant demands all granted and his nominees confirmed in office, he frequently invited Cleopatra to share the seat he had caused to be installed, more like a throne than a republican place of honor.
He rode rough-shod over the Senate, never hesitating now to threaten them or to exclude from the curia whoever dared to oppose or criticize him. Not satisfied with placing the financial reforms entirely in the hands of Alexandrians, he made over to Sosigenes the readjustment of the calendar: an action that antagonized the priestly colleges. And he began to clean Rome, giving serious offense because he told the Senate that the city was not fit to be a stable to Alexandria.
He felt, and despised, the increasing bitterness. He knew that the Roman wits were laughing at his newly claimed divinity, and he ached for opportunity to prove it to them before consolidating his assembling legions to invade the East; another victory, he felt, — a sudden, bloody and decisive miracle of violence, — would awaken them to the fact that he was not an ordinary mortal, not though epilepsy was increasing its drains on his mental and physical strength. It attacked him more than once while he presided in the Senate.
