The Rise and Fall of Alexandria

by Justin Pollard

  Caesar had called for reinforcements, but these would take time to arrive. In the meantime he was forced to look for a stronghold that might at least give him control of the Great Harbor. His sights fell on Pharos, and he left us with one of the few eyewitness descriptions of this wonder of the world:

  The Pharos is a tower on an island, of prodigious height, built with amazing works, and takes its name from the island. This island lying over against Alexandria forms a harbour; but on the upper side it is connected with the town by a narrow way eight hundred paces in length, made by piles sunk in the sea, and by a bridge. In this island some of the Egyptians have houses, and a village as large as a town.

  Julius Caesar, Commentary on the Gallic and Civil Wars,

  book 3, chapter 112

  Caesar’s interest in the island was purely practical. Even in his day, the island of Pharos was still famous for the pirates who would set upon any ship that accidentally ran aground there or failed to make the harbor entrance. This told him everything he needed to know. As he always did, Caesar reported himself in the third party:

  Without the consent of those who are masters of the Pharos, no vessels can enter the harbour, on account of its narrowness. Caesar being greatly alarmed on this account, while the enemy were engaged in battle, landed his soldiers, seized the Pharos, and placed a garrison in it.

  Julius Caesar, Commentary on the Gallic and Civil Wars,

  book 3, chapter 112

  Whatever Caesar now chose to do, Cleopatra could do little but support him. In a way the people of the city militias were right. It did look like a Roman occupation with her as puppet, and in truth, when reinforcements arrived Caesar might simply have seized Alexandria and made it his. Cleopatra had made her choice, but as Roman troops swarmed over Pharos, she was about to discover its true cost.

  The ships remaining in the harbor were an obvious danger for Caesar, and he didn’t have to think twice about what to do. He tells us in his own words:

  The enemy endeavored to seize with a strong party the ships of war. . . . They were all of either three or five banks of oars, well equipped and appointed with every necessity for a voyage. Besides these, there were twenty-two vessels with decks, which were usually kept at Alexandria, to guard the port. If they made themselves masters of these, Caesar being deprived of his fleet, they would have the command of the port and whole sea, and could prevent him from procuring provisions and auxiliaries. . . . But Caesar gained the day, and set fire to all those ships, and to others which were in the docks.

  Julius Caesar, Commentary on the Gallic and Civil Wars,

  book 3, chapter 111

  It was summer and the famed Etesian wind was blowing from the north. Normally this brought cool relief to the people of Alexandria, but now, as the ships erupted in flames, burning canvas and rope spiraled into the sky and were blown across the city. First the warehouses on the wharves caught alight, then the dockyards themselves. At this point, Plutarch tells us in a single, bald sentence, “this spread from the dockyards and destroyed the great library” (Plutarch, Life of Caesar, in Parallel Lives, 49).

  There is some confusion among the sources as to whether the great library in the royal quarter itself caught fire, or just the book warehouses on the waterfront, which housed volumes for export and those impounded from the ships. The lack of explicit references to the great library after this date might suggest that this fire was considerably more than a warehouse blaze—it was a disaster. By the time the fire was out, one source reports, some four hundred thousand papyrus scrolls had been lost. It was not the end of Alexandria’s library, but the great library itself would never recover its former importance, and the second, or “daughter,” library at the Serapeum would now begin to supplant it. The days of Eratosthenes and Archimedes, of Euclid and Callimachus, had passed, and as Cleopatra surveyed the burning city, the works that her ancestors had invested their lives in fluttered in burned ribbons about her.

  This was the price of Caesar’s support; indeed, some claim the fire in the library was started deliberately on his orders. The library was the Ptolemaic jewel, the last great treasure Rome could not own without first conquering Egypt. Knowledge was Alexandria’s strength, and perhaps that made it dangerous in the eyes of the Roman state. But knowledge was as vulnerable and ephemeral as the papyrus on which it was written. What had taken a lifetime to learn, Caesar could destroy in a morning with little more than a torch. The navy could be rebuilt, the houses repaired, but the books in the library could not so easily be replaced.

  No records survive to tell us what books were lost that day, but if the damage was extensive it was at least not total, and Alexandria remained a “library city.” Of those lost, some could be recopied from other sources and other copies could be bought; but in an age when a book might exist in only a handful of handwritten copies, some of the great works of antiquity may have died forever that day. It had been just a shot across the bow, but the sight of smoke rising over the library or even just the book warehouses marked a change in the life of the library and prefigured its final demise. The library, for all its learning, was vulnerable, and increasingly would now be seen not only as an asset, but as a liability. The pen was perhaps still mightier than the sword, but without soldiers to protect it, the single “barracks” where those words were stored was little more than a tinderbox awaiting a casual spark.

  With the burning of the library one era was coming to an end, but on the streets a new one had yet to materialize. The library was certainly the most important casualty in the Alexandrine War, but that war was not yet over, and there was a danger that Caesar might also succumb. At one point he was reportedly set upon when his own ship was stormed by hostile Alexandrians and, despite his years, had to dive into the harbor and swim for the safety of ships moored farther out. Ptolemy’s men were now also pumping salt water into the palace’s elaborate water system in an attempt to contaminate the water supply—a very early form of chemical warfare. It was a dangerous game of brinkmanship. Would Caesar (and Cleopatra) succumb, or would Roman reinforcements arrive? In a last-ditch effort to stall for time Caesar finally released the hostage Ptolemy XIII, but much to his disappointment, this seems only to have intensified the fighting.

  Fortunately for Caesar, Roman political and military might was about to force events. Mithradates of Pergamum, Caesar’s general, was now just outside Pelusium, with Cleopatra’s own troops and contingents from Judea and Nabatea. Caesar rushed to join them, and in the ensuing battle Ptolemy XIII lost his life, apparently drowned in the Nile. When Caesar returned to Alexandria he was the victor, and the unhappy but pragmatic Alexandrians could do nothing but bow to him and the ruler they had tried to shun, Cleopatra.

  When Caesar left Egypt he ordered three legions to stay in the country for the protection of the queen, who was now carrying his son—Caesarion (“son of Caesar,” as the Alexandrians called him). Of course few in Alexandria can have doubted that this was not so much an army of protection as one of occupation. With her on the throne he had placed the child king Ptolemy XIV, her younger brother (and new “husband”), as a concession to the supporters of Ptolemy XIII. No one doubted, however, who was in control. Egypt was now, in essence, a Roman protectorate, but while the queen’s relationship with Caesar remained close, Egypt was safe, and flourished.

  A year later Cleopatra was in Rome with her baby son and her co-ruler. The city was not yet perhaps the city of marble that the emperor Augustus so proudly boasted of (if we believe his own propaganda) but still the city of brick which he would inherit from Caesar. It was also a city of rumor. Cleopatra’s influence on Caesar was said to be growing, and was causing much distrust in Rome. For her visit she was staying in Caesar’s own house, a scandal in itself, for while what had happened in Egypt was, as the historian and Roman senator Cassius Dio points out, only hearsay, their behavior in Rome was clear for all to see. For many Romans this proved that the great Caesar’s head had been turned by a mere girl. They co
mmented that the Alexandrine War, unlike his other victories, was an unnecessary diversion, and one he undertook not for the glory of Rome but out of his love for Cleopatra. There were also in the city those who feared her son would be the heir to Rome, as Caesar had had no children by his wife, Calpurnia, whom he had divorced in 53 BC.

  And there were other signs that his time in Alexandria had influenced him. During Cleopatra’s visit Caesar introduced the new and more accurate Julian calendar to Rome, which had until that date calculated its years based on a lunar reckoning. This had led, as Cassius Dio puts it, to the days getting “somewhat out of order” (Cassius Dio, Roman History, book 43, chapter 26). This new, improved calendar had a 365-day year divided into twelve months, with one extra day added every fourth (leap) year. This exceptionally precise calendar—accurate to one day in 1,461 years—was not of course invented by Caesar, but a product of the mind of Eratosthenes, devised and refined in the museum of Alexandria.

  Cleopatra was also having a more direct influence on her lover, playing the game of power politics just as well as he could. On her return to Alexandria her co-ruler was conveniently murdered, so she could now rule jointly with Caesarion. Caesar could content himself with the knowledge that his only son was already a pharaoh, while Cleopatra, sharing a throne with her baby, knew she could in effect rule alone. Despite her political intriguing, however, events were moving too fast even for Cleopatra.

  Little did she know that when she left Rome, she would never see her lover again.

  The mood in the Roman senate had been turning against Caesar for some time, and the appearance in Rome of his Eastern mistress had done little to improve his standing. Many feared that with Cleopatra’s financial aid he would soon dismantle the republic and install himself over them as tyrant. So on the Ides of March, 44 BC, a small group of senatorial conspirators ensured it would never come to pass. Julius Caesar was assassinated in Pompey’s theater in Rome, and Cleopatra was once again alone. That year the Nile floods failed and there was famine in Egypt.

  The man to whom she now turned for support would prove to be her last ally, and one whose relationship with her has gone down in history as one of the greatest and most tragic romances of all time. Cleopatra was a practical Alexandrian and knew she needed to pick a winner from the civil war into which Rome was diving headlong. There was now a choice of three: Octavian, Julius Caesar’s personal heir and effective ruler of the west of the empire; Lepidus, in command in Africa; or Mark Antony in the east. All three “triumvirs” theoretically ruled together, but the time was coming when everyone would have to choose. But in choosing Mark Antony, Cleopatra made more than a simple political decision.

  Mark Antony was a natural soldier, with a fine physique and an iron constitution that excesses and hardships alike failed to weaken. His courage, affability, and generosity made him hugely popular with his men, and when he invited Cleopatra to Tarsus in 41 BC even the queen of Egypt could hardly refuse the man who had hunted down and defeated Caesar’s murderers. He was clearly the logical as well as the emotional heir to Cleopatra’s affections, and in his presence she once again turned around her city’s and her country’s fortunes in a single night. She arrived in Tarsus displaying all the magnificence and sophistication of an Alexandrian monarch. She was Isis and Aphrodite, the perfect refinement of a Hellenistic ruler and a woman at the height of her powers. Plutarch in his Life of Antony describes her arrival

  in a barge with gilded poop, its sails spread purple, its rowers urging it on with silver oars to the sound of the flute blended with pipes and lutes. She herself reclined beneath a canopy spangled with gold, adorned like Venus in a painting, while boys like Loves in paintings stood on either side and fanned her. Likewise also the fairest of her serving-maidens, attired like Nereïds and Graces, were stationed, some at the rudder-sweeps, and others at the reefing-ropes. Wondrous odours from countless incense-offerings diffused themselves along the river-banks.

  Plutarch, Life of Antony, in Parallel Lives, 26

  After that arrival the meeting could be nothing other than a success. The first night she banqueted him; the second he tried to respond but was forced to admit his efforts were “rustic” compared with the magnificence of her meal. But regardless of the food, the bond between them was already fast. After this brief first meeting Antony returned the compliment by spending the whole of the following winter with her in Alexandria. For a moment it seemed that together they could do more than save Egypt. For a wonderful, willfully blind moment it seemed they could inherit Alexander’s dream. The Alexandrians loved Antony, saying he wore a tragic face for the Romans but a comic mask with them (Plutarch, Life of Antony, in Parallel Lives, 29). The two lovers spent days in gilded games, most famously a fishing trip which Plutarch also describes. Having gone fishing with Cleopatra, Antony was embarrassed at his lack of luck and quietly asked one of his fishermen to dive below the boat and attach to the line a fish they had caught earlier. The trick seemed to work and Cleopatra appeared impressed by the sudden haul which followed. She was no fool, however, and had noticed. The next day she gathered large numbers of courtiers together for another fishing trip so they might witness Antony’s prowess. When he dropped his line overboard she signaled to her fisherman, who dived down and attached a salted herring to his line. When he pulled it in there was great laughter, and the queen turned to her champion, saying, “Imperator, hand over thy fishing-rod to the fishermen of Pharos and Canopus; thy sport is the hunting of cities, realms, and continents” (Plutarch, Life of Antony, in Parallel Lives, 29).

  Then there were the love tokens. He gave Egypt back its foreign territories in Asia Minor, and in return she directed the vast wealth of Egypt to his ambition. The following summer, as if to seal the deal, she bore him twins: Alexander Helios (the sun) and Cleopatra Selene (the moon). In return he gave her the one present every Ptolemy coveted.

  The wealthy kingdom of Pergamum (in what is today Turkey) had recently been acquired by the Roman state, having, rather unusually, been left to Rome in the will of its last king. For the Romans it was a rich trading nation and a welcome source of revenue. But for any Alexandrian it held something worth more than gold—a library of some two hundred thousand volumes, the second largest collection of books on earth. This was Antony’s gift to Cleopatra, a suitable recompense for Caesar’s damage to the great library and an investment in its future. It was the greatest gift an Alexandrian could receive.

  But the heirs of Julius Caesar had no desire to see another Alexander arise in Egypt, and what was more, their leader, Octavian, had personal reasons to distrust Mark Antony, who was still, at least in name, married to his sister. Now Antony was, in Octavian’s view, under the control of that evil Eastern temptress who had ruined Julius Caesar. She was everything Rome stood against—a foreigner, a competitor, a political player, and, perhaps worst of all, a woman in an era when Rome viewed women as simply their fathers’ or husbands’ possessions. Despite several reconciliations, it was clear that Octavian’s desire to rule Rome and Mark Antony’s dreams of an empire in the East were set to clash head-on. In the end, driven on by Cleopatra, Antony abandoned his wife—in the process snubbing Octavian—and returned to Alexandria to plan one final bid for glory. Together they fueled a propaganda campaign to have themselves associated with Dionysus and Aphrodite—or for their Egyptian subjects, Osiris and Isis. They were to be living gods destined to rule over a new Alexandrian empire. He would provide the military might, she the money, and together they would achieve Alexander’s dream and rule an Eastern empire from the city he had founded for that purpose. So enchanted with the prospect was Cleopatra that she instigated a new system for counting dates. This would now be the year 1.

  In 36 BC, however, that dream began to crumble. An overconfident Antony suffered a crushing defeat on his expedition against Parthia, leading many of his senior military commanders to doubt both his judgment and his motives. These were Roman troops, after all, and though they had followed Anton
y across the Middle East, they had done so in the name of Rome, not Alexandria. Many were also aware that his rivalry with Octavian was now beyond reconciliation. Caesar’s adopted heir was no fool and clearly saw in Mark Antony’s expeditions a personal ambition that far outstripped the orders he received from Rome. He also saw behind him a son of Cleopatra’s, Caesarion, a true heir to Julius Caesar.

  The excuse for a final war came when Antony made his plans public, in a lavish ceremony in the gymnasium at Alexandria. Here a silver dais was set up with two golden thrones upon it, one for himself and one for Cleopatra, and other seats for Cleopatra’s children. Then he declared his lover, who was dressed as Isis, queen of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya, and Coele-Syria, to share that throne with Caesarion, her son by Caesar. He then proclaimed his own son by Cleopatra “king of kings” and allotted to him further territories, including the vast expanses of Armenia, Parthia, Media, Syria, and Phoenicia. In short, he had claimed half the known world.

  The resolution of the Roman senate against him and his Egyptian queen (who was now, thanks to Octavian’s brilliant propaganda, known in Rome as “the ruinous monster”) made war inevitable. The Alexandrian dream had seduced Rome’s greatest general, and now he would have to fight for it.