The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  “It is for both our sakes,” I insisted. “You should not have to expend more than a quarter of your time on the financial matters.” I paused. “You have done wonders in the rebuilding,” I said. “I am most impressed. Soon the war will be erased.”

  “Not completely,” he said. “There is always Caesarion to remind us that it happened.”

  Caesarion. I had returned to find my son about to begin walking. At the end of the month he would be a year old.

  I nodded. “Yes. I know that, although sometimes it does seem unreal.” I noticed that he was carrying several scrolls. “You have news. News of Caesar.” I held out my hands for the letters and reports. Whatever was in them, I could face.

  “He won, my lady,” said Mardian. “He won.”

  The story was all in the scrolls, and I read and reread them for hours. This war had taxed Caesar’s ingenuity and resourcefulness to the utmost, for one of his best lieutenants of the Gallic Wars, Labienus, was with the rebels. It was he who directed their strategy and tactics; it was he who knew how his former commander thought, and could anticipate his moves. It was he, Labienus, who knew that Caesar liked to strike fast and fight pitched battles. For four months he thwarted Caesar’s attempts to do that. Caesar was unable to bring any of the parties to battle, and in the meantime was hard put to feed and supply his men.

  At long last, through his own cleverness, Caesar managed to trick the enemy near the city of Thapsus. The city was located on an isthmus, and Caesar proceeded there with his entire army as if he meant to besiege it. He made an easy target for the enemy, who thought they had captured him. Actually it was he who had captured them. They divided their forces, thinking to bottle Caesar up. On his western side, Scipio and his legions and elephants dug in; on the eastern, Juba and Afranius. Like a nugget between them lay Caesar—his army all together in one body. The enemy was on narrow terrain, where the deployment of forces was difficult and cavalry was particularly hampered. It did not seem to occur to them that they were now exposed, divided, and on battleground unsuited for their strengths. Instead they gloated over having fenced Caesar in on a narrow neck of land.

  While Scipio was entrenching, and drawing up his lines, Caesar left two legions to guard the city of Thapsus (whose inhabitants were cowering inside the walls) and his rear, with Juba and Afranius, and took the rest to fight Scipio. Against the two wings of elephants he deployed his four best legions, backed up by the Fifth, specially trained in terrorizing elephants and turning them against their masters. Likewise the other legions had been trained not to flinch in an elephant attack.

  The troops were even more eager for battle than Caesar was; months of humiliating inactivity and hindrance had made them almost mad. It was all Caesar could do to restrain them; they pressed forward almost before he could give the battle-cry Felicitas! and lead the charge. The Fifth Legion, along with the slingers and archers, broke the left wing of elephants, and the animals stampeded back into their own lines; the rest of the army turned and fled. At the sight of Scipio’s army collapsing, Juba and Afranius likewise fled. Caesar’s angry troops pursued them, and even when they surrendered and begged for mercy, they slew them to a man. Too many of the enemy soldiers had already been pardoned once by Caesar for fighting against him earlier. His soldiers were finished with clemency, even if their commander was not.

  Immediately after the battle, Caesar rushed to Utica, where Cato and his supporters were. This was the gathering place of the wealthy senators and property owners who supported Pompey’s cause. Doubtless the defeated generals would flee there; Caesar hoped to catch them, and also to capture Cato, his most relentless foe.

  But Cato robbed him of the opportunity to demonstrate his clemency. “I am not willing to be indebted to the tyrant for his illegal actions,” he said. “He is acting contrary to the laws when he pardons men as if he were their master, when he has no sovereignty over them.” Then followed his stubborn and gory suicide. After a dinner with friends, and a private reading of Plato’s dialogue of the soul, he smuggled a sword into his bedroom and, in the middle of the night, stabbed himself. His horrified family and physician discovered him before he could bleed to death. The wound was sutured. Then, before their eyes, he ripped it open with his own hands so his entrails spilled out, and he died on his couch.

  The end of the others was equally showy. Juba planned to immolate himself—as well as his family and his subjects—on a giant funeral pyre in his capital city; the citizens did not wish to render their city for the service, so they refused him entrance. Juba and his ally, Petreius, instead held a death banquet in which they dined sumptuously, and then they fought a duel. Juba killed Petreius and then had himself killed by his slave. Scipio fled by sea and, when captured, stabbed himself on the deck of the ship. Mortally wounded, when his captors asked where the Imperator was, he told them, “Imperator bene se habet”—“The general is well enough, thank you”—and then he died.

  Labienus, Varus, and both Pompey’s sons, Gnaeus and Sextus, escaped to Spain—doubtless to fight again. But with the death of Cato, the Republic had expired.

  In three weeks—three weeks that were long-sought and long in coming—all of North Africa had fallen into Caesar’s hands. He proceeded to turn Juba’s kingdom into the Roman province of New Africa, and doled out bits and pieces to reward the Mauretanian kings for their support.

  Only Egypt remained free. All the rest was now Roman, won by Caesar.

  Other letters contained vignettes of Caesar’s behavior. One reported how, in an earlier attack, when all was confusion and Caesar was almost routed, he caught one of his fleeing standard-bearers, took him by the shoulders, turned him around, and said firmly, “That is the direction of the enemy.”

  Upon being told of Cato’s suicide, he had said, “Cato, I must begrudge you your death, as you begrudged me the honor of saving your life.” I myself rejoiced at Cato’s death, as he had caused my uncle’s more than ten years earlier in Cyprus. Death chasing death; suicide giving rise to suicide. Now, surely, it must end.

  There was also a report that Caesar had loaded Eunoe, wife of the Moorish King Bogud, with presents, and rewarded her husband lavishly for allowing his wife to be his mistress. Nothing more. No details.

  I forced myself to read on, though my heart was heavy. I had hoped to find no mention of it, so that I could dismiss it as an earlier rumor and slander put out by Scipio, with no foundation.

  In order to hearten his soldiers, he did not belittle the enemy’s strength, but rather exaggerated it. When his troops were in a panic over King Juba’s advance, he addressed their fears thus: “You may take it from me that the King will be here within a few days, at the head of ten infantry legions, thirty thousand cavalry, a hundred thousand lightly armed troops, and three hundred elephants. This being the case, you may as well stop asking questions and making guesses. I have given you the facts, with which I am familiar.” He was complimenting their valor by presenting them boldly with these overwhelming odds, as if they were of no real import to such soldiers as his.

  He was liberal about his soldiers’ predictable misbehavior, and one of his boasts was, “My soldiers fight just as well when they are stinking of perfume.” But he was brutal in punishing desertion or mutiny—soldierly dishonor.

  He always addressed his soldiers as “comrades” and gave them expensive equipment—weapons with gold and silver inlays, for example. But this was clever of him, for it made them more determined not to be disarmed in battle. He loved his men dearly, and they loved him. He won the devotion of his army, and their devotion to him made them extraordinarily brave. Private soldiers offered to serve under him without pay or rations, and throughout all the civil wars there were almost no desertions, including during this one.

  It was his custom to spare all enemy soldiers captured the first time; only if they were taken a second time did he order their execution.

  Other letters concerned the state of affairs in Rome, and Caesar’s expected return t
here in Quintilis. Only it was no longer to be known as Quintilis, but to be renamed July in his honor. July, the month when Gaius Julius Caesar had been born.

  But for all those letters, reports, dispatches, and scrolls about Caesar, there was no word from Caesar himself. He was silent toward me, silent toward Egypt.

  More news trickled in. The shattered forces of the followers of Pompey, bedraggled and dazed, were gathering in Spain. Spain seemed to breed one uprising and discontent after another. Caesar would have to go there and end it once and for all. But not yet.

  At last it came: a letter from Caesar; and it came from Utica, not Rome. He was still on our coasts. I took it and withdrew onto the most secluded part of my terrace, holding it for a long time before opening it. I had waited so long, and now I was hesitant to end the suspense. But finally I did break the seal and read it.

  To the Most Divine and Mighty Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, Greetings:

  The war is finished, and I have been victorious. It was a difficult campaign. I cannot say veni, vidi, vici—I came, I saw, I conquered—this time. I would have to say, I came, I saw, I waited, I planned, I overcame—the opposite of succinct, both the statement and the war. But it is the final outcome, the vici, that matters. Knowing that Egypt was always to the east gave me courage. I knew that I had an utterly reliable ally nearby, a precious thing.

  And now I return to Rome, where the Senate has granted me the right to hold four Triumphs in succession: one to celebrate my victory in Gaul, the next Egypt, the next Pontus, and the last Africa. They will be held in September. Rome will never have seen anything like it. I invite you to come and share my celebration. It is especially important that you be present with me during the Egypt Triumph, to show that it was your enemies I overthrew, and that you are a staunch supporter of Rome. Your sister Arsinoe will be led as a captive.

  Please bring as large a retinue as you wish. I will house you all in my private villa across the Tiber, which has extensive gardens. I think you will find the accommodations suitable for a long stay. I greatly look forward to seeing you again, and to seeing your most royal son.

  Your assured friend and ally, Gaius Julius Caesar, Imperator

  I let my hand, holding the letter, fall to my side. It said so much; it said so little. Every phrase could be interpreted in different ways. “I knew that I had an utterly reliable ally nearby, a precious thing….” Was it the knowing that was precious, or the ally? “I think you will find the accommodations suitable for a long stay….” Was he expecting me to stay indefinitely? Why? And as for the clever way he both asked to see our son and avoided legitimizing his name by writing it—!

  No! I would not go! He could not order me to, like a vassal or a client king!

  And yet that is what you are, a vassal, a client monarch who holds her throne only because Rome allows her to. You are no different from Bocchus of Mauretania or Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia. The proud kingdom of Ptolemy has been reduced to that. But at least it has not been reduced to a Roman province—New Africa.

  There was a threat in his words, and not veiled, either. Be there to show you are not Rome’s enemy, or, like a watchman with his dogs, he was saying, I may not be able to control what they do. So be there.

  He had promised to bring me to Rome. But I had not thought it would be like this—to do obeisance to his conquests.

  My anger had passed. I knew I had to go. Never mind what he had meant when he wrote the letter. What mattered was what would happen after I got there.

  I would have to learn Latin, that much was certain. If I could not understand what was being spoken all around me, I would be at a terrible disadvantage. I had never learned it because it was not a very important language, and besides, all educated Romans spoke Greek. But in Rome, of course, they would be speaking Latin.

  I asked Mardian to find me a good Latin tutor, and also informed him that I would be departing for Rome in only a month and leaving him in complete charge of the government—with the help of Epaphroditus, of course. He looked uneasy.

  “It is no different from when I went to Nubia,” I assured him. “That did not worry you.”

  “It is different,” he said, his broad brow all wrinkled up. “You may stay in Rome indefinitely!”

  “That’s ridiculous. What would I do there? The Triumphs will last a few weeks, that is all.”

  “What if Caesar—what if he—wants you to stay there? What if he divorces Calpurnia?”

  “What if he does? He’s been divorced before.”

  “Yes, and then he remarried. Are you—is there a possibility—?”

  “Even if I married him, I would not live in Rome like a housewife!”

  “That is what women do in Rome.”

  “That is changing. There is, for example, a firebrand named Fulvia, the wife of a politician, who doesn’t stay home at all but takes to the streets for her causes. Servilia, Brutus’s mother, is influential with the Senate. But that is beside the point. Those are Roman women, with Roman concerns. I have a kingdom to rule, and it is here.”

  “Roman concerns would quickly become your concerns, I fear. And you would be engulfed in them, like falling into a tar pit.”

  “Egypt is my first and only concern.”

  “Does Caesar know that?”

  “He should! He saw it firsthand!”

  “You may look different to him in Rome, just the right queenly ornament to acquire for his house.”

  “I have no wish to be his ornament, or to be put in a niche in his house.”

  “What do you wish, then?”

  “I will be his equal as a ruler, or nothing.”

  I had scant time to prepare. I would have to embark for the voyage in fewer than thirty days. Thirty days to plunge into Latin, to select my entourage, to foresee the problems that might arise during my absence from Egypt, to fit myself out as if for a campaign. For it was a campaign—a campaign to secure myself and my country in Rome. It was also my task to take the measure of the infamous Romans on their home ground.

  I set about it in methodical fashion. The Latin lessons began at once. I found them daunting. It is a difficult language, because nearly everything is determined by the case or tense of a word; its place in the sentence can be deceiving. Amicum puer videt and puer amicum videt both mean “the boy sees his friend.” So you could throw all the words helter-skelter, like a child tumbling blocks, and wherever they landed you could still reassemble the original thought by the form of the words. This should have been reassuring, but it was not, because it meant you had to memorize enormous numbers of word endings.

  At least, my tutor assured me, it meant there were no double meanings in Latin. A word could mean only one thing. Ah, but what that one thing was—a Herculean task to determine!

  And so I toiled away twice daily in the thickets of sum-esse-fui-futurus and duco-ducere-duxi-ductum.

  My entourage was relatively easy to select. Not knowing how long I would be gone, I would not remove Olympos from his patients, but take one of his associates; I would leave Mardian and Epaphroditus behind to steer the government; I would leave Iras but take Charmian, whose expertise in wardrobe matters was a necessity. At all times I would be on display, I knew that. Even supposedly alone in my chambers—Caesar’s chambers, rather—there would be spies. I must do Egypt proud and make Caesar realize I was someone to be reckoned with, even far from my base of power. And I did not want him to have to defend himself for his taste in taking up with me; that would just lay a heavier burden on me. Of course there was vanity involved as well—why bother to deny it? I wanted all of Rome to gasp when they saw me, to say, So that is Egypt! I wanted to erase all memories of my father as an embarrassing, begging representative of Egypt. I wanted to dazzle their eyes with gold and beauty.

  But what sort of clothes would achieve this? Charmian, with her exquisite and elegant taste, helped me to choose a variety of costumes, from the near-gaudy—gilded threads and bejeweled in the Persian style—to the most simple Grecia
n gowns with plain, flowing silk mantles.

  “For until you actually set foot there, it is hard to tell what will feel appropriate,” she said. “What seems perfect here in your high, open chambers in Alexandria may be all wrong in Caesar’s villa. They say it is stifling hot there this time of year—that the Romans would sell their souls for a fresh breeze in summer. Then in winter it is very cold—oh, but you will not stay until winter,” she said quickly. “No need to worry about that. But for summer, you will need the thinnest fabrics. And for the Triumphs—then you must look a queen indeed. For your headdress: either the double crown of Egypt or the diadem of the Ptolemies. And you must be loaded with jewels, to the point of vulgarity. Let them all look, and lust, and envy Caesar!”

  “Shall I wear the Red Sea pearls, all five strands of them?”

  “Indeed. And the rope of emeralds, to twine around them.”

  “I am not beautiful,” I said. “What if all these jewels just call attention to it?”

  Charmian looked surprised. “Who told you you were not beautiful?”

  “When I was small, my sister Arsinoe. And later, my friends never told me I was beautiful.” But Caesar did. He said, “Child of Venus, you are fair.” I stamped on the memory quickly.

  “Mardian and Olympos wouldn’t tell Aphrodite herself, and as for the others, perhaps they assumed you knew it, or that to say it was to sound as if they were flattering a queen. Whether you are classically beautiful or not, this one thing I know: you give the impression of being beautiful, which is all one can ask. The jewels become you, they do not belittle you.”

  I took her hands. “Charmian, you give me courage. Together we will conquer Rome!”

  Little Caesarion must also be prepared. As I said, he was walking now—just barely. And although he was able to understand many words, there were few he could say as yet. I tried to teach him to say Caesar and Father, but they are difficult words to pronounce. He would laugh and blurt out all sorts of other sounds. I watched his face carefully, trying to imagine what it would look like to someone who had never seen it before. But it was an impossible task, because he was so much a part of me now, I could not make that leap of imagination to seeing him strange and anew.