The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  “It would not be right,” I said. “I cannot order it just on a personal whim.”

  “You would be quick enough to remove them if Caesar asked!” he said coldly.

  “A copy should suffice,” I said. “That way you could keep it for your own library. With all the shipwrecks, surely you can appreciate that we cannot trust our manuscripts to the high seas.”

  His smile and genial manner had drained away. “I see.”

  “Is this a test of some sort? For it makes no sense otherwise,” I said. “I have told you I would be pleased to make copies of whatever you request.”

  “Never mind,” he said. “Don’t trouble yourself!”

  To my amazement, he turned his back on me and walked away.

  In all my life, no one had ever done that. But this was Rome, and the Saturnalia was a time of license. Masters served their slaves, and hosts turned their backs on guest queens.

  “Come,” I said to Ptolemy and Charmian. “I think we should move on.”

  “But we just got here!” he repeated. “Why do you keep doing this?”

  The only other house I knew to seek out was Antony’s. It, too, was famous, because he had seized it from Pompey’s forfeited estate and lived riotously in it, letting its contents be stripped away by gamblers and freeloaders. They said that slaves had won the purple bedspreads of Pompey, spreading them out on their pallets, and that all the furniture had been carried out on the shoulders of victorious dicers.

  It, too, was not difficult to find. It stood, a big jutting mansion, in the area called the Carinae, a short walk from Cicero’s. It was not as well situated, being on a spur of land trailing off from the Palatine, but it was still well above the level of the Forum.

  The lights were blazing. By this time it was thoroughly dark, and the golden fire of torches was the only illumination in the city.

  Loud noise poured out the main entrance. I stood, pushing my helmet down and clutching my shield. Suddenly I was tired. I was doing this for Ptolemy. My first two choices of houses had not offered him much. Surely this one would be better. I squared my shoulders and walked in.

  A blast of noise and heat almost knocked me backward. It was like a market day combined with a chariot race. A vast throng milled inside, some dancing, others eating, all drinking.

  “Come!” I said. “Let us fight our way in!” I raised my shield and began wielding my sword, brandishing it right and left. I loved the way it felt. People scattered. Oh, the joys of warriorhood! Homer was right.

  Behind me, Charmian was doing likewise, and Ptolemy yelled, “Onward, onward!” and cracked his whip. I knew then that I should have provided him with a mock chariot and steeds. It would have made a more imposing entrance, and allowed him to pretend better.

  The crowd, blurred with drinking, fell back with good nature. My sword flashed. I planted my feet in fighting stance. All were looking.

  At last I was where I felt at ease. These people were not judgmental, they merely wanted entertainment—in some respects, the most demanding request of all. But they cared not who provided it—in their incessant desire for diversion, they were the true democrats. Queen, slave, freedman—can you make us laugh?

  I could not see out the side of my helmet. Suddenly Antony was beside me.

  “Who goes there?” he asked. “Fierce warriors invade my home.”

  As with Lepidus, I saw him assessing my limbs and realizing this was no man. I plucked off my helmet and had the gratification of seeing his shock.

  “Your Majesty,” he stammered. “I—this is an honor!”

  “You have a house it is easy to enter,” I said. “I mean that as the highest compliment.”

  “I hope burglars do not feel the same.” He laughed. “But then, I have refurnished it once. I can do it again. Only this time, Fulvia may object.”

  “I meant that one feels at ease here.”

  “Surely a queen must feel at ease everywhere,” he said.

  “A queen may go anywhere, it is true,” I said. “But feel at ease—or rather, welcome—no.”

  “Come, let us fill your cups!” He motioned to a server. “My banker tonight must pass trays.” Rich wrought-gold goblets were brought forth. “Take one.”

  I looked at it in marvel. “You allow your guests to use these?”

  “Yes, why not?” he said.

  “But these are pure gold!”

  “Well, what better use for them? Were they not fashioned to hold wine?” He took one and handed it ceremoniously to Ptolemy, and filled it himself.

  “This is Caecuban,” he said. “Drink as much as you wish!”

  Ptolemy turned bright with the implication that he was a full adult.

  I looked around. “The costumes are elaborate,” I said. Everywhere there were helmets, turbans, shields, capes, high boots. Then I looked carefully at Antony. He was wearing a purple-stained tunic; a wreath of ivy was twined about his dark curls. The tunic, unlike Caesar’s, had short sleeves, revealing the muscular bulge of Antony’s shoulders and upper arms. “What are you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’m a wine taster,” he said. “That’s the slave’s job that would suit me best.”

  Suddenly I remembered his knowledge of wine and vineyards long ago, during the festival of Bacchus in Alexandria. “It seems you are a true Dionysus,” I said.

  “It is merely a hobby,” he said. “Despite what my enemies say, it is not my regular occupation.”

  “And what is that?” I was curious—how did he see himself?

  “Why, I am a soldier,” he said. “And Caesar’s right hand.”

  “And you have no higher wish?”

  He looked genuinely astonished. “What higher wish could there be?”

  “To be first in the world, not a lieutenant.”

  “To be Caesar’s lieutenant is to be first in every respect,” he said.

  32

  “So you’ll have multiple wives?” I said. “Even Jupiter did not! Even though you’re to be addressed as ‘Julius Jupiter,’ that won’t be enough! That would limit you to one—Calpurnia, your Juno!”

  It was the first time I had been alone with Caesar since the New Year, and I found the proposal to permit him several wives was still causing me to bubble with anger.

  “There is no such proposal,” he said coldly. “Neither to call me ‘Jupiter Julius’ nor to allow me more than one wife. O ye gods! My enemies spread the most outlandish lies about me!” He held his arms up toward the heavens, then turned stern eyes upon me. “And that you believed it! That you would think such a thing of me! I can expect little from my enemies, but that you, my—”

  “Yes, your what?” Let him answer that!

  “My love, my soulmate, my other self.”

  “But not your wife. You have Calpurnia!”

  He turned aside. “This is tiresome.”

  “For you, perhaps. For me, I would like to know one thing: Why do you stay married to her? Do you love her?”

  “To divorce her would give scandal—”

  “Scandal has never deterred you. To invite Gauls and libertini to the Senate gives scandal.”

  “How your Latin is improving,” he said sarcastically.

  “Answer me!”

  “I married Calpurnia fourteen years ago,” he said. “Her life with me has been one of absences, of separations. Now I am reaping honors. Should she not be allowed to share in them, as a reward for all the privations?”

  He sounded so reasonable, so persuasive, as if I were a demanding, selfish shrew.

  “You are a queen, with a country bulging with riches. You do not need any of the honors that are coming to me. But she—without me, she is nothing. She has suffered from being my wife, living in the midst of those in Rome who hated me. Is not some reward her due? Would I not seem the most callous of wretches to cast her off now? No one else would ever take her, as she’s barren.” He was an eloquent pleader. No wonder he was known in Rome as second only to Cicero in his oratory.

 
“How noble, how self-sacrificing you are,” I finally said.

  “There is a place for us,” he said. “I promise. It is different, grander, more enduring.”

  “But you never reveal what it is.”

  “Soon,” he said. “Soon. The plan is almost ready.”

  “And in the meantime, the outsized honors heap up. The Senate spends its hours deliberating what may come next. Let’s see—what was it last week? You are to be called Pater patriae—father of your country—”

  “Yes, your Latin is definitely improving.”

  “Don’t interrupt. Besides that, your image is to be put on coins, and your birth month has finally been renamed Julius—‘July.’ ” I paused. “Oh yes. And you will sit on a gilded chair in the Senate and wear the garb kings formerly wore.”

  He turned away, as if a little embarrassed.

  “Don’t be shy!” I taunted him. “There are other honors. Pray tell me! Don’t hold back!”

  I could see now that I had truly angered him. “I will not be mocked!” he said.

  “Nay, tell me.” I tried to sound more gentle. “I would know. And I would know what they mean.”

  “They have proposed that all my decrees, past and present and future, be binding.”

  “Future? How can they know what they will be?”

  “They cannot,” he said, “and that is what makes it such a staggering privilege—and responsibility.” He paused. “Besides that, my person is to be sacrosanct. When next the Senate meets, they will vow to defend my life. So I will, to show my good faith, dismiss my bodyguards.”

  “Is that not foolish?”

  “They are a nuisance,” said Caesar. “This gives me a good pretext for getting rid of them. They have also decided that there must be a college of priests attached to the temple to my Clemency. They will be the Luperci Julii.”

  “All this is grown—monstrous.” It seemed alien to the Romans.

  Suddenly he laughed. “And I shall appoint Antony my chief priest!”

  I was taken aback. “Are you trying to show your disdain for their honors? Will you not insult them and move them to fury?”

  “Anger I can stomach,” he said. “It is silent hostility and plotting that I cannot counter.” He took both my hands in his and looked at me searchingly. “I can answer your anger about Calpurnia,” he said. “What I could not endure is your enmity, your grudge.” He kissed me tentatively. “I do not have that, do I? I could not live if I did.”

  He was persuasive; he was compelling; he was overwhelming, as usual. I could not prevail against him in either my anger or my warnings. Would he had not been so compelling; he might have lived.

  We had been closeted in his private workroom. His Spanish bodyguards—soon to be dismissed, he had said—were outside and in the main atrium.

  “I have an appointment,” he said, glancing out the window to see where the sun was. “I must be at the Julian Forum at the ninth hour to meet with some senators.” He sounded wary. “They requested it. Come with me.”

  “I hardly think they would wish me to be present.”

  “Is not the Forum a public place? They are the ones who requested that we meet there, instead of in the Senate house.” He grabbed his toga and began putting it on, impatiently. “At least walk there with me. Have you seen your statue since I put the pearl earrings on her?”

  “No,” I said. “It is always so crowded in there, with so many people looking, that I do not frequent it. Still, I shall walk with you.”

  “Good.” He swung a cloak over his shoulder in case the weather should turn nasty. Together we left the house. A contingent of the guards followed us, marching briskly.

  I had to admit that gray skies and leafless trees became the Forum. The travertine stone, the marble, all varying shades of gray or pearly white, seemed enhanced by having a frame of the same color. Even our breaths, as we walked, made little clouds of the same opal white.

  The newer stone of the Julian Forum made it seem illuminated, it was so much brighter than anything around it. The building had been completed, and now the mounted statue of Caesar was in place before the temple, as was a fountain—running very slowly now in the cold.

  Caesar paced around, waiting, his feet making quick, impatient steps. No one was approaching, and he began to grow cross. Then he saw them—a group of ten or so magistrates, walking slowly toward him, their togas lifting in the wind.

  “I will go inside,” I said, leaving him. I climbed the steps up to the temple and stood in the shadows of a column, watching.

  I saw Caesar sit down and take out a letter and begin to read it, not looking up until they were quite near. Then he seemed to greet them pleasantly enough. There was a great deal of bowing, of flourishes, of speeches, and then, finally, something was presented to him. He took it and unrolled it, then smiled and extended his hand. The men milled about, doing a sort of slow-motion dance around Caesar’s bench, but he was still sitting. Why did he not rise?

  I could tell by the expressions of the men, and by the way they moved back, that they had heard something they did not like. They fawned some more before taking their leave, walking in single file back across the courtyard and out into the old Forum. Caesar sat watching them go, then he closed his eyes and seemed to be clenching his jaw.

  I waited until I was sure the men would not return, then I stole over to Caesar, who was still sitting on the bench, his face drained of color and his whole body rigid. Wordlessly he thrust the scroll into my hand. I unrolled it and read the words: DICTATOR FOR LIFE. The rest, in tiny Latin words, I could not decipher.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  But he gave no answer, and when I saw his face I understood what had happened.

  “Can you walk home?” I asked him. “You can lean on me. We will go slowly.”

  He had felt an impending attack of his illness, and had been forced to dissemble before the senators.

  He stood up stiffly and, under the masking cloak, put his arm around my shoulders. Together we traversed the short distance across the old Forum back to his home; I was thankful that the cold weather meant the usual throng of businessmen, vendors, and shoppers was missing.

  As soon as we were back inside his house, he tumbled onto his bed and shut his eyes. “I think it will pass. I do not think it will develop further,” he said, through gritted teeth.

  I wet the hem of my gown in his washing bowl and used it to wipe his brow. I must confess I felt a certain triumphant relief that Calpurnia was not there.

  He remained motionless on the bed for what seemed almost an hour. Then he turned over and sighed. “I think it is safe now. It is going.”

  “I thought you said you had conquered the illness.”

  “I have. I do not let it get control.” His voice was still weak. “In Spain—it was the same once. Just before a battle. But I never fall anymore.”

  “No, because you sit down first,” I said with a smile.

  “You witnessed what it used to be. Sitting down was not a cure.” He carefully sat up. “There. The room is still. My limbs obey. And I never lost consciousness.” He sounded very relieved.

  “The men—what was all that about?”

  It was then that he revealed just how ill, momentarily, he had been. He had to reach for the scroll and read it before he could answer.

  “The Senate has made me Dictator for life,” he said haltingly, each word being led forth like a sacrificial animal. “This is impossible.” Obviously he had no clear recollection of exactly what the men had said when they presented it, any restrictions they had mentioned. He shook his head. “A dictator is appointed for a temporary term only. A dictator is an office outside the regular offices of state—Consul, praeter, censor, tribune. It is not a normal part of the government, because the dictator’s power supersedes all those other offices. Dictator for life…that’s another word for ‘king.’ For what is a king but a dictator for life?” He was thinking out loud. “This cannot be.”

&nbs
p; “But”—I pointed to the scroll—“there it is, in writing.”

  “It must be a trick. Was I meant to refuse it? Perhaps that was what it was.” He shook his head again. “But I do not remember what I said.”

  “You did not refuse it, of that I am sure.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The men looked displeased. Perhaps you did not accept it with enough pleasure.”

  “Pleasure was not what I was feeling—dizziness and stiffness was.”

  “But they do not know that,” I reminded him. “Here.” I put some pillows behind him so that he could lean back comfortably. “Tomorrow, when you are fully recovered, you will have to attend the Senate. Thank them profusely for the great honor. That is, if you intend to accept it. You always could refuse, you know.” I dangled the decision before him. “You could say that you wrestled with your conscience all night and realized, for the good of Rome, you must decline it.”

  “But the truth is, for the good of Rome, I must accept it.” His voice was stronger now, but quiet. “It is for my own good that I should refuse it.”

  “You have never yet refused anything that fate has awarded you,” I said. “That is the essence of your character.”

  The next day all of Rome was buzzing about the unspeakable arrogance and insolence of Caesar in refusing to rise when the senators came to him with this great honor. They castigated him for overweening pride, and since only the truth about his illness would have exonerated him, and he refused to divulge it, he had to bear the full weight of the accusations. One other way lay open to him—to decline the honor. But as I had known, had he been able to do that, he would not have been Caesar.

  The next incident happened when he was returning from a ceremony outside the city; a throng of bystanders hailed him as king. (I wondered then, and I still wonder—were they planted there by his enemies, in hopes of deluding Caesar, making him believe there was a popular movement to make him king?) He replied, “I am not king but Caesar.” Then all Rome buzzed about that.

  It was not long until an invisible hand placed a diadem on Caesar’s statue on the Rostra, and one of the tribunes of the people had it removed. Caesar ordered the diadem to be dedicated to Jupiter, Rome’s only ruler. Still, Rome buzzed. Under whose orders were these things taking place—Caesar’s, his enemies’, or were they true indications of popular sentiment?