Cleopatra and Antony

by Diana Preston

  On the other side of the Palatine Hill, between it and the Capitol, was the Forum, the center of Rome’s political life, from where not only Rome but the whole of the Roman world was ruled. The Forum itself was paved with stone, was rectangular in shape and measured about 600 feet by 230 feet. Law cases were conducted outdoors in the Forum, whatever the weather. Although there was a Senate house, meetings of the Senate also took place in various of the buildings and temples grouped around the Forum and elsewhere. To the north was the assembly ground, where politicians addressed the people from a platform decorated with ships’ prows captured in a long-ago sea battle. The platform was given the name rostra, the plural of the Latin word for a ship’s prow.*

  To the southeast, the dwellings of the Vestal Virgins and of the chief priest, the pontifex maximus, at this time Caesar himself, were close together near the Temple of Vesta. Nearby, too, was a remnant of the past nearly as old as the reed shepherd’s hut said to be the birthplace of Romulus and Remus and still preserved amid the opulence of the Palatine. This was the palace of Rome’s former kings. Increasingly dwarfed by the surrounding buildings, it housed the official archives and calendar.

  To the east of the Forum, in a valley between three other of Rome’s hills, was Suburia, where the Julian clan had its ancestral home and where Caesar himself had been born. Suburia was now an entertainment district, succinctly summed up by the poet Martial as a “seething, wakeful and clamorous” place where “hot chickpeas cost just a small coin, just like sex.” Here young bloods ate at fast-food stalls selling goat stew, sausages and bass “caught between the Tiber’s two bridges.” (This was not a particularly sanitary location since this was where the city’s great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima—still visible to this day on the riverbank and big enough for a man and a cart to drive through—discharged into the Tiber.) Later, one of the many fast women leaning from windows or sitting in bars and brothels might catch their eye. Some of the least expensive and most practical worked from what one visitor called “an alcove with a price list.”

  Caesar’s ambition was to change the face of Rome and create a city fit to be the capital of the world. He opened the first quarries at Carrara to produce marble for his projects and shipped in other materials from far and wide. His recollections of the broad, graceful thoroughfares of Alexandria lined with porticoes and statues undoubtedly influenced the plans he had been nurturing for some time. In particular, he planned to remodel the old Forum and create a grand new precinct in the very heart of Rome to be known as the Julian Forum.

  Caesar’s new Forum was a long, open rectangle surrounded by porticoed colonnades and shops but, most significantly, at one of the short ends of the rectangle, Caesar constructed a temple to Venus the Mother (Genetrix), from whom he claimed divine descent. In making this dedication, he was fulfilling his vow to raise a sacred place to the goddess if she granted him victory over Pompey. However, near to the image of Venus herself, Caesar placed a magnificent gilt-bronze statue of his own living goddess—Cleopatra. Though the Ptolemies had long placed their images alongside their gods, in Rome such a step was unprecedented. That the honor had been given not to a Roman but to a foreigner and a woman caused shock, outrage and heightened speculation about Caesar’s intentions toward the Egyptian queen.

  Caesar’s motives were probably mixed. He would have been mindful of the association of Venus with Isis and of Cleopatra’s claim to divine status as a reincarnation of the latter. Also, though there could have been no political imperative behind his placing of her statue in the temple and it did not change her official status, it allowed him to demonstrate to the people of Rome her importance to him personally as his lover and as the mother of his only son. This veneration of the child’s mother also seems clear confirmation that the child was indeed his, especially if recent research suggesting that the statue also incorporated a young Caesarion held on his mother’s shoulder is correct. A marble head of Cleopatra believed to date from between 40 and 30 and to be based on her statue in the Temple of Venus was discovered in the eighteenth century. Although the body on which the head is placed is not the original, indentations in the marble below Cleopatra’s left eye and just below the left corner of her mouth are consistent with where the fingers of Caesarion’s left hand would have rested had she been holding him on her right shoulder.*

  As Suetonius recorded, Caesar wanted all his projects to be “the biggest.” He planned a huge new theater to eclipse that built by Pompey in 55 when, using riches acquired in his eastern campaigns, Pompey had raised a stone theater on the Campus Martius. By placing a temple on the western rim he had cleverly bypassed a law banning stone as a construction material for places of entertainment. The prohibition seemingly derived from the lofty view that secular theaters were immoral places invented by Greeks and, if to be tolerated in Rome, should be made of less permanent material such as wood. Pompey’s theater complex, then the biggest in the world, was more than a thousand feet long and seated some seventeen thousand. Its revolutionary design became a template for future theaters, including the Coliseum a hundred years later. Unlike previous theaters, which were based on Greek precedents and dug into hillsides, Pompey used the Roman invention of concrete. His theater was freestanding and set on a foundation of barrel vaults ideal for providing access to the auditorium and stage. The seats rose in tiers above the vaults. Behind the stage was a large colonnaded courtyard, inside one of the halls of which stood a statue of Pompey surrounded by representations of the fourteen nations he had conquered. This hall was sometimes used for meetings of the Senate and would be on the ides of March just two years later. Caesar intended to build his own theater just west of the Capitol itself and began purchasing and clearing land, tearing down existing houses and temples.

  Some of Caesar’s works were clearly influenced by what he had seen in Cleopatra’s Egypt. In 46, a hundred years after the Romans had razed Corinth, Caesar decided to refound the city by disposing of some of Rome’s surplus population there. The Egyptians’ ability to build canals linking branches of the Nile delta and Lake Mareotis had so impressed Caesar that, as part of the Corinth project, he launched a search for a feasible route between the Ionian and Aegean seas. Centuries later this resulted in the Corinth canal. On Cleopatra’s advice, Caesar probably made use of Egyptian geographers in his schemes to improve the canal system around Rome and, indeed, to drain the nearby Pon-tine Marshes, a project abandoned at his death and not eventually achieved until Mussolini’s time.

  Cleopatra’s presence in Rome and Caesar’s experiences in Egypt also had a profound intellectual impact on Roman society and culture. His admiration for the Library of Alexandria inspired Caesar to establish a great library of Rome that, by bringing together the whole of Greek and Roman literature and knowledge, would outdo Alexandria and make Rome the cultural as well as political center of the world. Unlike the canals, this project was completed shortly after Caesar’s death.

  Caesar’s discussions with Cleopatra and the professors who studied in the Museon and the Library of Alexandria also inspired his reform of the calendar. The first of the great Alexandrian astronomers was Aristarchus. Around 270, using a modified sundial to determine the height and course of the sun and the angle at which the sun shone on the moon, he had deduced that the sun was far from the earth. He also postulated that the earth circled the sun—a theory rejected by earthcentric astronomers for another eighteen centuries.

  A few decades later, another of Alexandria’s astronomers estimated the circumference of the earth within 250 miles and calculated within a tenth of a degree the tilting of the arc of the earth’s rotation that gives us our seasons. About eighty years before Caesar’s visit to Alexandria, Hipparchus, working in the Museon, produced a catalog of the stars, with estimates of the distances between them. By studying when solstices occurred over a period of years, he validated the general accuracy of the Egyptian calendar, which was based on the sun and divided the year into 365 days, and estimated the length of th
e solar year within six minutes of the true figure of 365 days, five hours and forty-nine minutes.

  The Roman calendar, by contrast, had developed from a lunar calendar and counted years from Romulus’ founding of the city. The Romans had at frequent intervals added extra days into their calendar, which had 355 days (divided initially into ten but soon into twelve months), to try to bring their calendar back into line with the seasons, which, of course, derived from the progress of the sun. However, by 46 the Roman calendar had drifted more than two months ahead of the seasons.

  Guided by Sosigenes, a celebrated astronomer from the Museon, whom Caesar may have met during his time in Alexandria in 48 and 47 and who had come to Rome either as part of Cleopatra’s entourage or at Caesar’s direct request, Caesar determined on a once-and-for-all adjustment to align the Roman calendar with the solar year. He therefore introduced a calendar that had 365 days divided into twelve months, as at present, with an extra day in February every fourth year to keep the calendar in balance. (Such a calendar had been introduced into Egypt by Ptolemy III in 238, but the addition of the extra day every fourth year had not always been adhered to.)

  Caesar’s calendar made January rather than March the first month of the year, but he retained the old names of the months, which meant that several—such as September, October and November—contained the wrong numeral in their title. However, the Senate soon changed that of Quintullus, the month of Caesar’s birth, to Julius (July) in his honor. The Romans did not have the concept of weeks or weekends, and Caesar did not change the division of the month, which was defined by particular days such as the kalends, the first of the month (and the origin of our word calendar); the ides, which fell in the middle of the month, either on the thirteenth or fifteenth depending on whether the month was a long or a short one; and the nones, the ninth day before the ides. Other days did not have particular names but were positioned by reference to their being before or after the named days. Certain days were specified in the calendar as lucky and others as unlucky. The Roman day did have twenty-four hours, but only at the equinox was each hour of equal length. Daylight was divided into twelve hours and darkness into another twelve, so that the length of an hour of daylight (and of night) differed from month to month. To tell the time, people used public sundials and water clocks, these last adjusted to fit the current season of the year.

  To get the calendar back on track, Caesar added two months to the year 46, making it 445 days long and what Caesar called “the last year of confusions.” Confusion there certainly was in relation to commercial contracts, and a Roman governor in Gaul increased the annual taxes due for that year because it had extra days. Conservatives or traditionalists disparaged the change, which was promulgated across the Roman world by edict, as they did any of Caesar’s reforms, on this occasion suggesting that Caesar was not content with ruling the earth but wanted to rule the stars. When told that a particular constellation would be visible next morning, Cicero commented sourly, “Yes, in accordance with Caesar’s edict.”

  However, as would soon become clear, Caesar could control neither the heavens nor his own bright star. Despite all Caesar’s power he was still, as Cicero pointed out, “the slave of the times.”

  *Our word palace derives from the grand buildings on the Palatine.

  *The singular is rostrum, hence our English word.

  *Today the marble head is in the Vatican Museum. Interestingly, a limestone statue of a woman of the Ptolemaic era holding a child on her shoulder in exactly this manner has been recovered from Aboukir Bay and is now on display in the National Museum of Alexandria.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Ides of March

  IN THE WINTER OF 46, Caesar was forced to leave Rome and Cleopatra. Pompey’s two sons—young Sextus, who had witnessed his father’s murder off the shores of Egypt, and his much older brother, Gnaeus—had raised thirteen legions in Spain, including seasoned veterans from Pharsalus and the African campaign, which Caesar’s legates had been unable to defeat. It was, as Plutarch wrote, an extremely dangerous situation. So swift was Caesar’s departure that he had no time to oversee elections to fill the key political offices for the following year. To defer the problem until his return, he had himself elected sole consul for 45.

  Appian relates how Caesar made the long journey from Rome in just twenty-seven days. As he bounced about in a springless carriage he composed a lengthy poem entitled, appropriately enough, “The Journey,” but now lost. On March 17, 45, at the battle of Munda, east of modern Seville, he defeated the Pompeian forces, but only after fierce fighting, during which the fifty-four-year-old Caesar dismounted, grabbed a shield and shamed his faltering troops by rushing at the enemy. He later told his supporters that although he had often fought for victory, this was the first time he had fought for his life. Sextus managed to escape, but a few days after the battle his elder brother, Gnaeus, was caught and killed, ending the rising. Caesar, who had usually been merciful during the civil war, punished the rebels without mercy—executing them in droves and ordering their heads, including that of Gnaeus, to be displayed on spikes. Perhaps hot blood and a consciousness of the closeness of the conflict hardened his heart, together with a desire to signal that no further risings would be tolerated.

  Cleopatra’s movements during this time are unclear. Cicero, writing in 44, seems to suggest that some while earlier she had left Caesar’s estate. She might have taken the opportunity to return briefly to Alexandria to reassure herself that all was well there. However, she would have known that King Bogud of Mauretania was once again assisting Caesar, just as he had in North Africa, and that with him would be Eunoe. Cleopatra therefore would not have wished to absent herself from Rome for long. Far better to remain and be ready to greet the returning conqueror and remind him of all he had been missing.

  Antony did not wait for Caesar’s return to congratulate him. Anxious to regain Caesar’s favor, he hurried off to join him in southern Gaul and was delighted by Caesar’s response. His old patron conspicuously honored him, choosing him as his traveling companion in preference even to his young great-nephew, Octavian.* Ill health had prevented Octavian from accompanying Caesar when he left for Spain, but after recovering sufficiently he had followed after him, surviving shipwreck and enemy-infested roads to reach him. Being displaced from Caesar’s carriage by Antony and relegated to traveling in the chariot behind must have seemed a poor reward.

  Curiously, during the long, bumpy journey back to Italy, though the two men talked of many things, comfortable in their reestablished amity, Antony failed to mention that an old drinking friend, Gaius Trebonius, had hinted of a plot to murder Caesar. He had been sounding Antony out to see whether he might wish to join it. Antony had firmly refused but did not see fit, as he lolled by Caesar’s side, to warn him of the plotting that in a few months would claim his life. Perhaps for the moment he was hedging his bets. Perhaps he did not wish to incriminate a friend.

  Weakened by the campaign and the epileptic fits that were becoming ever more frequent, Caesar decided not to return at once to Rome. Instead, he went to his country estates southeast of Rome, where Cleopatra may have joined him. While he convalesced he wrote his will, to be given into the care of the Vestal Virgins. It named Octavian as his main heir. On Caesar’s death he was to receive most of Caesar’s huge wealth and become his adopted son. The document, kept private for the present, made no reference either to Caesarion or to Cleopatra but could hardly have done so since the law prevented Roman citizens—even dictators—from naming foreigners as their heirs. However, according to Suetonius, Caesar “provided for the possibility of a son subsequently born to himself” by designating guardians for the child. Cleopatra must have been the mother he had in mind. Ironically, those he appointed to protect any future child were to be among his own assassins.

  News of Caesar’s final triumph over his republican enemies had already prompted the Senate to load him with fresh honors and titles. He was awarded the right to wear his
triumphal robe at all public gatherings. Like Cleopatra, his statue was to be erected in a temple—in Caesar’s case that of Quirinus, the divine form of Rome’s mythical founder, Romulus. The inscription was to read, “To the undefeated god.” Another statue of Caesar was erected on the Capitol next to those of the kings, while his ivory effigy was to be carried in the procession of gods that preceded the games. The Senate also handed him complete military and financial control over Rome and appointed him consul for ten years.

  In early October 45, restored to health, Caesar marched in glory into his capital. This time the Triumph lauding his Spanish victories made no pretense he had conquered anyone other than dissident and treacherous Romans. It concluded with a feast for the entire population of Rome, not once but twice. In a gesture designed to whip up popular adulation, Caesar dismissed the first repast as too meager and ordered it to be repeated four days later with “more succulent provender.” However, his grandiose gesture increased rather than stifled people’s unease, and it is indicative that he could not see this. The greater the honors heaped on Caesar, the more isolated he was becoming and thus the more faulty his judgment. Unlike the citizens of Alexandria, Romans were not conditioned to living gods. To many, Caesar appeared to have forgotten the warning words whispered by the slave in his ear during his Triumphs: “Remember you are human.”