Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  The opportunity for such a victory came with the news that Gnaeus and Sextus Pompeius, sons of the great Pompey, had rallied the defeated remnants of the Pompeian party and were already under arms in Spain.

  It was annoying to have to interfere with the already advanced arrangements for his Parthian adventure and to send accumulated stores to such a distance in the opposite direction, but annoyance strengthened resolution. He was swift. He swooped on Spain in fury — calculating old zeal, merciless and silent, falling on the enemy at Munda and destroying thirty thousand men. That satisfied him. He was not an ordinary mortal. He was Caesar — imperial Caesar — a god upon earth — an ancestor — a founder of a dynasty — divine, predestined ruler of the world.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII. “Oh, I know Antony.”

  Those few of us who have attempted it agree that it is difficult to be a man and play that part with dignity and merit.

  — Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

  IT WAS while Caesar was in Spain that Antony and Cleopatra took their first real measure of each other’s mettle. Antony had taken umbrage because Caesar had commanded him to pay for Pompey’s mansion, which he had pretended to buy but actually had appropriated after Pompey’s death. And Antony had been approached discreetly, but with definite enough hints to stir his imagination, by an agent of Cassius, who attempted to sound him out as to his willingness to join in a conspiracy against the great dictator’s life.

  There was nothing novel or astonishing about that. Antony would likely have been more astonished had he learned by some means that Caesar’s life was not in any danger. Rome, for several generations past, had been a city in which no prominent man had dared to go abroad without an armed escort, and Caesar’s cool habitual indifference to the risks he ran was a perpetual invitation to the men whom he insulted recklessly to lie in wait for him and slay.

  The secret propaganda had gone far enough to enable Antony to turn whichever way he pleased, for or against it, but he mistrusted the men whom he suspected of plotting against Caesar more than he resented Caesar’s recent drastic dealing with himself. And more than them, he thoroughly mistrusted Caesar’s legal heir Octavian, who would have to be reckoned with in the event of the dictator’s death. He was aware of the terms of Caesar’s will, and he did not propose to himself to play into Octavian’s hand. Without flattering himself, he knew that his own influence, one way or the other, easily might tip the scale and he was minded to take part in no conspiracy until assured that he, Mark Antony, would profit by the outcome. Temperamentally or morally he had no particular objection to murder as an argument, nor embarrassing theories of any sort that might restrain him from pursuing an advantage, but he liked to foresee the advantage, or to think that he foresaw it. He was not far-sighted.

  So he went to Cleopatra and suggested to her, in the rather boyish, roundabout and frankly guilty way that was destined to become so familiar to her in the years to come, that he and she might make a better pair of rulers of the world than she and Caesar. Willing to fall in love with any woman almost at a moment’s notice and an adept at parading his own virtues, such as they were, he did his utmost to convince her, without definitely talking treason, that his heart was hers, his fortune with it, and that at a word from her he was ready to do what Caesar evidently feared to undertake — to make her empress — anything she pleased.

  Had Cleopatra cared as much as to consider his proposal — or so Antony assured her often in the course of after-years — that moment might have changed the face of history. With Caesar absent and with disaffection seething, with Octavian in the provinces and most of the senators writhing under a sense of outraged majesty, a blow might have been struck that none could counter before Antony should seize the reins of power and proclaim himself the liberator.

  “Caesar is old,” said Antony. “He is gray and tired and weakening before his time.”

  “He is the father of my son,” she answered.

  “I might divorce my Fulvia and wed Arsinoe,” Antony suggested.

  He expected that suggestion to produce a sort of panic, but he was disappointed.

  “You will find her very different from Fulvia — less critical but much more dangerous. But it would be an excellent thing for Arsinoe, who needs a husband. Caesar might consent to make you King of Cyprus, which has a climate that hardly suits Romans but is a rich island, with mountains where you could hide from Fulvia.”

  Antony laughed. He never made a secret of his fear of Fulvia’s temper. Laughter offered Cleopatra opportunity. She turned the tide on him:

  “Antony, you are offended because Caesar made you pay a debt that you rightly owe. But what is the price of a dead man’s house compared to the honor of having upheld Caesar and supported him?” She laid her finger on a great Etruscan vase that stood beside her chair. “The meanest man on earth can break that, Antony. But can you make another like it? And if Caesar, as you say, is aging, need you be in haste to wear his sandals?”

  “He is making himself hated,” answered Antony.

  “And do you expect to make yourself liked by playing traitor to him? Liked by whom? Would you compare those malcontents — that mob! — with Caesar? Did you ever know a man well liked who introduced a new idea to the world?”

  “Then lend me money,” answered Antony. “That payment that I made for Pompey’s house has drained my coffers dryer than a bone. My steward wrings his hands and rolls his eyes at me.”

  She lent him all he needed, stipulating that the secret should be well kept if he made his peace with Caesar and behaved toward him as a loyal henchman to his chief.

  So Antony made public reconciliation with Caesar, riding out of Rome to meet him as he came from Spain, and they embraced before thousands of people, sharing the same chariot as they entered the city.

  But Caesar said to Cleopatra: “How did you persuade him?”

  They were seated in the small room where they had first conversed when Cleopatra came to Rome, because it was chilly and hot-air pipes kept that room warmer than the rest — and there were pictures on the wall of gods and goddesses in human shape who, Cleopatra thought, provided a suggestive setting.

  “How did you know I persuaded him?”

  “Because he tried to make me think that he persuaded you! Oh, I know Antony. He is a good fair-weather friend. As long as Antony has money in his coffers he is generous and willing enough to swallow flattery at anybody’s cost. But what persuaded you to buy him?”

  “My regard for him. I like him. He is a big good-natured boy who can be led and managed.”

  “Fed and managed!” Caesar commented. “But it might cost more to feed him than the management is worth!”

  However, he welcomed Antony and made the most of him, contriving to suggest without exactly saying it that Antony would gain incredibly by being subject to a throne instead of a mere office-holder at the whim of bought votes and legions increasingly ready to lend an ear, and arms, to rival politicians.

  Thenceforth Antony threw all his boisterous heart into the work, with only occasional fluctuations when he took offense at some remark of Caesar; and when that happened Cleopatra found it a simple business to flatter and coax him back to his allegiance, although by doing so she made a bitter enemy of Fulvia, who railed against her in every women’s gathering in Rome. It was at Cleopatra’s suggestion that Antony even pretended to be plotting against Caesar, hoping to uncover treason in high places, but all that he gained by that was odium, since none believed him, or whoever did believe him refused to trust such a ready turncoat.

  There was plenty of up-hill work for Antony to do, since Caesar had grown impatient to realize his dream and was already exercising the prerogatives of king without the title, giving scandalous offense that had to be offset by any extravagant means available. He began by ignoring the sharp lesson of his triumph over Cato and once more celebrating a victory over Roman arms, riding through Rome to the capital with hundreds of prisoners and scores of wagonloads of captured R
oman weapons trailing in his wake.

  He sought to offset that with magnanimity that many men regarded as sheer recklessness or insolent contempt of lesser beings than himself; for instead of drastically clearing Rome of every politician credited with friendship for the dead Pompeian cause, as Marius and Sulla would have done, he calmly announced that the quarrel was over, declared an amnesty in favor of all former adherents of Pompey, restored the statue of Pompey to its old place in the curia and ordered every honorable record of the former friends of Pompey replaced in the forum and streets whence they had been removed.

  The magnanimity evoked scant gratitude, and Antony, observing the effect, remembered it, so that later, when his own day of power came, he punished savagely. But Caesar had reached a realm of thought in which he appeared to have lost all sense of caution. He ordered his own statue made and erected on the capitol in line with those of the seven ancient kings of Rome, suggesting that he himself should be the eighth; and there was far more talk about that than about his lofty and wise forgiveness of Pompeian rebels.

  When he received a deputation of the Senate seated there was such indignation that he had to plead a return of his old sickness as excuse; but he did not forgive the men who forced him to make that apology and one by one they suffered for it, either in the form of stinging snubs or in neglect of their petitions.

  He was increasingly irritable. He was overworked, since he was taking on himself all details of Roman government, from the affairs of Syria and Gaul and Spain to the perplexities of city politics, the widening of streets and the erection of new buildings. Flattered, cajoled, occupied with preparations for the conquest of Parthia on which his heart was set, he had no time to be aware of the seething undercurrents that surrounded him, although he narrowly watched Cassius on occasion and remarked to those who happened to be standing near that Cassius was a lean and hungry-looking individual who appeared to be conspiring about something. But that speech of course reached Cassius, and Cassius grew careful.

  Personally indifferent to the alleged delight of seeing men and animals destroyed in the arena, he held aloof from such performances but provided them with hitherto unheard-of extravagance. On several occasions he fed in the streets as many as twenty thousand people at a time in imitation of the Alexandrian festivities; and the reports that Antony kept bringing him were all to the effect that the populace would now prefer a king to a dictator, having tasted and approved the glamour and surfeit of entertainment that they were being educated to believe pertained to thrones rather than any other form of government.

  There was a strong Caesarian faction that seconded Antony’s efforts, but they were nearly all second-rate men, some lacking in experience and others courage; and they were all aware of the secret counter-propaganda that was circulating from a source that it was difficult to indicate. Half-hearted, they proposed alternatives and compromise. They prevailed on Caesar to accept the title of hereditary imperator. Next they asked him to accept the awkward and anomalous office of king of all Roman territories outside Italy.

  He refused it. It was all or nothing then. He would be king before he started on his campaign against Parthia; and he began to quarrel with the tribunes who removed the gilded crowns that his supporters, by way of suggestion, had placed on his statues in the forum and the streets.

  Calpurnia said nothing, simply caring for him when he came home, sharing his bed for the few hours that he spent in sleep and letting no man know, not even Caesar, what dreads and jealousy made her life almost unendurable. She was a Roman wife, and there was nothing to be gained by argument, recrimination or complaint, though every step that Caesar took toward a throne was an unquestionable step toward her own dismissal and oblivion. A quiet unpretentious woman, she had no delusions about being queen. Nor was she able to be turned against him, though they tried all means of doing it, in the hope, by stirring scandal, to arouse a popular demonstration that should humble Caesar to his senses.

  The last effort that was made to stir Calpurnia to revolt was when the news was made known of the death of Cleopatra’s infant brother.

  “Poison!” whispered Caesar’s enemies. “They poisoned him because he was supposed to share the throne with her, and Caesar wants that office for himself. The next thing, they will put Egyptian powders into your food, too, Calpurnia — much simpler than divorcing you!”

  But Calpurnia did not care. Or, if she did care, she concealed it. And she probably doubted Caesar’s willingness to stoop to such a mean way of furthering ambition.

  “Caesar is polygamous,” she answered. “That is all. Polygamous and proud; and if a god, as some men say, not destitute of human merit.”

  CHAPTER XXXIX. “Be silent, Tros!”

  The wise will ever modify a plan, and only fools are obstinate. But what the gods have disapproved they wipe out utterly.

  — Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.

  TROS came storming up from Ostia with news that secret discontent was seething to a head in Alexandria. He found Apollodorus — forced Apollodorus to summon slaves, who aroused women, who crept into Charmian’s room and begged her to awaken Cleopatra shortly after dawn. There was an interview in Cleopatra’s bedroom, she half clothed and curled up in a blanket of embroidered Persian wool because the Tiber mist was chilly.

  “Liars and lie-abed sots and knaves are your ministers!” Tros burst out, opening his business as he would a battle, meaning to win with the first shot, or if not to win, to worry. “Marvelous dispatches they have sent you, doubtless! All is well in Alexandria! But luckily the Jew Esias has a half-breed slave named Bimbo whom he trusts to carry to me by word of mouth what no man who values his skin would dare to put in writing. When a king sleeps councilors see visions! There is a move on foot to make Arsinoe the queen, and the people are told it is because she will protect the library, whereas you brought away a shipload of the books for Caesar. They assert that Rome is to be made the home of science and philosophy, so that all the world will go to Rome instead of Alexandria. There is another move to proclaim a republic, many asserting you will never return, and others contending that if you do return you will fasten the yoke of Rome more tightly on their necks. There is a rumor, too, in Alexandria that Caesar is to be murdered, and you with him, to prevent his squandering blood and money on the conquest of the world.”

  “And you, Tros? What do you think of it all?” asked Cleopatra.

  “Think? I rot at anchor! How shall a man think with Neptune’s whiskers streaming under water from the hull of every vessel in the fleet — and no careening because Royal Egypt bids us lie ready to weigh?”

  “Do you wait for my leave to clean ships?” she asked him sharply.

  “I will clean them on the sand of Egypt. Month after month I have waited while you dally here with Caesar. I am not blind, deaf, a drunkard, or bereft of understanding. I have sent my man Conops to mingle with crowds in the streets and the booths and the brothels, and I know what rumors are abroad in Rome. Myself, I have endured the gossip of the dives of Ostia, and of the Roman captains, and of the money-lenders who buy mortgages on slave gangs. I have heard it said, if once, a hundred times, that Caesar will set you on the throne of Rome beside him. And an equal number of times I have heard the answer: Rome will not have it! By Heracles, are you and Caesar strong enough to ride Rome in rebellion? Where is that fellow Olympus? Have you lost him? Have you lost touch with Philae? What is the plan now? Will you throw Rome into rebellion to save your Land of Khem? Whoever plays at that game, let me tell you, cuts his own throat — has rebellion on his hands at home before he knows it — is as a scorpion pricked by his own sting! And they have told me tales of Caesar that a deaf and dumb man could read readily enough: you have poured your wine into his bottle until the ferment maddens him! To what end? Have you heard the proverb? Whom the gods—”

  “Be silent, Tros!”

  “I warned you, I will speak bluntly,” he grumbled, striding away toward the window where he shrugged his shoulders and
shook his head, with his back toward the others.

  “What do you say to it all, Apollodorus?”

  “Little, beyond that Rome is as ever, a dung-heap! Jewels in their proper setting glitter and men value them; buried in a dung-heap they are only pebbles for the lousy farmyard cocks!”

  “You have been talking to Olympus! And you, Charmian?”

  “I have said my say. The men, yes. But the Roman women—”

  Cleopatra interrupted her, arms around her shins under the blanket, chin on knees:

  “The Roman women sicken me! I have only heard of one truly decent Roman woman, and have never met her. I would like to take Calpurnia to Alexandria! But even she would be afraid to accept my friendship because of the tongues of whores and hypocrites!”

  “That lays no keels in Alexandria!” Tros commented, from over by the window. “I hear you have bought pearls, lapis lazuli and amethyst. What else is there that you have from Italy worth taking home? You have sowed your seed here. You have planted your philosophers and priests and craftsmen. Sail away and leave those seeds to grow before Rome plants in you a worm that will eat your heart out!”

  She dismissed them all, giving the excuse that she would dress, and sent then for Olympus, whom she interviewed alone, without even Charmian being present.

  “I said my say before you came to Rome,” Olympus answered when she stabbed at his silence with one of her quick, keen questions.

  “Yes, and you have filled Apollodorus full of wise remarks to make to me instead of doing your duty and telling me directly what you have in mind!”

  “You are in Caesar’s net — I mean the same net that has taken Caesar like the seine that guides the fish into the pool of their undoing. You should have stayed in Alexandria whither Caesar would have come if you had waited for him. But it is not too late — not yet.”

  “Too late for what, Olympus? Why do you look at me so sternly?”