Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997)

by Margaret George

  My prediction came true: After spending some time in Athens, Brutus made his way over to Macedonia, and Cassius came to Asia. They would unite and make their stand in the east. There would be a war.

  Cassius set about unseating Dolabella from his governorship, and Dolabella appealed for help to me, asking for the Roman legions. Again, it was as I had foreseen. I had no choice but to yield them, because if they were not sent to Dolabella, Cassius would demand them. But before they could reach Dolabella, they were captured by Cassius.

  My legions were in the hands of the enemy--Caesar's assassin! And then he pursued Dolabella over Syria, surrounding him at last in the city of Laodicea. Knowing he was beaten, Dolabella committed suicide. Cassius was victor, and now commanded all of Asia Minor, as well as Syria, and had fourteen legions, eight of which were contributed by the governors of Syria and Bithynia, Allienus's four captured en route from Egypt, and the two from the defeated Dolabella. Fourteen legions! And then the hardest blow of all-he persuaded Serapion, my governor in Cyprus, to surrender all the ships of my new fleet stationed there to him. They sailed off to Asia, joining Cassius.

  The perfidy of it! The assassins were not only making their stand, but they were appropriating my forces!

  Cassius next turned his eyes toward Egypt, and announced that he planned to invade and capture us, since we had sent the legions to aid Dolabella. It was time, he said, for us to be punished, and to yield our resources to them-- the Liberators, as they called themselves.

  Plague was raging; it had followed hard on the heels of the famine. The heavens seemed to be hurling thunderbolts at my kingdom, as if determined to topple it. I fought back, to the utmost of my strength.

  More meetings with my ministers--Mardian, Epaphroditus, and Olympos got very little rest during those weeks. Every morning there were mounds of people who had died during the night. They couldn't be embalmed, for no one wanted to touch them; instead they were burned like trash.

  One morning after a particularly bad night, Olympos brought me a manuscript and said I should read it; the author had written a brilliant description of the disease.

  "What good is a description?" I asked. "Who cannot describe it? Fever, thirst, eruption of boils, black swellings that burst open, quick death. But how can it be stopped? That's the question."

  "Please, do read this. He has ideas about how it spreads." Olympos thrust it into my hand.

  "Very well. I am ready to do anything to halt the disease." I looked at Epaphroditus. "I suppose there is something about this in your scriptures!"

  He grinned. "How did you know?"

  "What isn't in there? Well, what cured it?"

  "Nothing cured it," he admitted. "There was a succession of plagues--of frogs, of gnats, of flies, of locusts, of boils--but they were sent to make a point. They weren't natural."

  "What point is this plague making? I cannot believe that the gods are aiding our enemies! Am I now to expect plagues of flies, frogs, and locusts as well?"

  We were almost bankrupted by the combination of the plague, the famine, and the loss of half the fleet. Work continued on the other half, based in Alexandria. Let Cassius come and get it, and die trying!

  A messenger rode all the way from Syria on the bidding of his master, Cassius, who was now attacking Rhodes to get money and ships. I received the man in my audience hall, seated on my elevated throne, in my most formal attire.

  He marched into the hall, his Roman soldier's uniform bringing old memories sharply into focus. It was like seeing a shell of Caesar--the breastplate that I had loved, the leather lappets that made a slapping noise when he strode forward, the cloak slung over his shoulder. It seemed a travesty for this runty little man to be wearing the same clothes.

  He barely bowed. But he had to wait for me to acknowledge him before he could speak.

  "What do you wish?" I asked coldly.

  "I come in the name of Gaius Cassius Longinus," he said. "My commander requests that you send the remainder of your navy to him in Syria. Immediately."

  As much as I hated and despised the assassins, I knew that craft and dissemblance, delays and prevarication are weapons as powerful as outright defiance. The man who cannot control his face and words before an enemy is soon overthrown. So I put a false smile on my face and spread my hands helplessly.

  "I would comply willingly," I said, the words sounding abominable in my own ears, "but my country is devastated by plague. The fleet is not finished yet, and I can get no workmen to continue, let alone sailors to man it. We are in dire straits. In fact, you are a very brave man to have come within our borders--risking your own life!"

  He shifted a little on his feet. I noticed that he was bandy-legged. "Indeed?" His voice was gruff.

  "Yes. The plague attacks where it will. And one of our physicians has recently written a paper in which he puts forward a theory that it travels through the air." I rolled my eyes about the room. "That would explain its mysterious ability to attack from nowhere. No one is safe. Especially not foreigners, who seem especially susceptible."

  "I feel well enough," he said truculently.

  "Mars be praised!" I said. "May it continue!"

  "We'll send our own men to man the ships," he said. "They must be yielded to us immediately."

  "Of course," I said. "But there is no need to send them while the plague rages and the fleet is yet unfinished. They cannot sail ships without keels or masts. We shall complete the fleet as soon as possible, and deliver them to you."

  "We will brook no delays!" he said. "Do not toy with us!"

  I nodded to one of my attendants, who nodded to two men standing just outside the hall. They marched in, carrying a litter with a corpse on it, and laid it down at the man's feet. He recoiled from the sight of the swollen, stench-ridden body, and leapt to one side.

  "Is this toying with you? Is this victim joking?"

  The man covered his nostrils and turned his head away. I indicated that the litter should be removed.

  "You seem to have a strong enough stomach," the messenger finally said, breathing again. "Do not think to put us off with such dramatic, repulsive displays!"

  "Why, how could I? You see worse at the Roman games," I said. "No real man would be bothered by the sight of a flyblown corpse. Yes, you shall have the fleet, as soon as you may."

  "My commander will be seeing you soon enough in person, when he marches to Egypt. Do not flatter yourself that he can be put off with such tricks." I hated the way he kept rolling his shoulders. I wanted to tell him it made him look like a juggler. Now he squared them. "You should know what has happened to Marc Antony, that Caesarian dog. He attempted to wrest the province of Near Gaul away from Decimus--"

  Decimus, the vile traitor! Decimus, who, like the evil Trebonius, had helped himself to the province Caesar had entrusted him with! It was too much to be borne!

  "--in defiance of the Senate, which declared him a public enemy--"

  The Senate! What had Cicero done to them?

  "--and besieged him at Mutina. But Decimus and an army sent by the Senate routed him, and he had to flee across the Alps with his legions. He is struggling there now, starving, we have heard, stranded in shoulder-high snow and reduced to eating roots. That's the end of him." He nodded, his chin making stabbing motions of satisfaction.

  I felt a sickening, swooping sensation, as if my throne had dipped and plunged. Antony stranded in the snow, starving, freezing! It could not be. Only then did I realize how much confidence I had had in him to prevail, to set the times right again. I am Caesar's right hand, he had said. Was Caesar's right hand now to be stilled?

  And . . . the only remaining Roman I had liked and respected would disappear, plunging the world into true chaos, where one could choose only between one villain and another, with no honorable men anywhere. Antony had failings, but they were failings of the flesh, not of the spirit--unlike his enemies, who were the opposite.

  The man was watching my face. Had my thoughts been visible?
"What has happened to Decimus?" I asked calmly.

  He scowled. "Decimus had to flee," he conceded. "Octavian could not see his way clear to--cooperating with him."

  Hardly. Octavian would never ally himself with Caesar's murderer.

  "Where has he gone?"

  "He--he tried to go to Greece, to join Brutus, but Octavian's army blocked his way, so he had to flee to Gaul, where he wandered as a fugitive. It seems that a chieftain there has slain him."

  Joy surged through me. Another assassin dead, killed!

  "They say the chieftain was an agent of Antony's," the man admitted.

  O glory! O praise to Antony!

  "But Antony will not live to know it," he said. "Undoubtedly he is dead now, a frozen corpse, eaten by wolves."

  No. I refused to let myself picture it. "All that is in the hands of the gods," I finally said. "What dreadful things were set in motion by the Ides of March, we cannot know until they run their course."

  "The deed itself was noble/' he insisted, "and the Liberators acted from the highest motives."

  "The gods will judge," I said. Even my iron will could not steel itself to make a polite answer, when I longed to strangle the man. And all I had to do was signal my guards to kill him. But why give Cassius the satisfaction, the excuse to revenge himself on me? I meant to win the battle of wills, and if fate was kind to me, to stab Cassius myself, using his own dagger, the one that had taken my love away from me. I needed to get close enough to him to do it. I would embrace him, only to kill him. Thus I must lull his natural caution, let him think it was safe to approach. Yes. Let him come to Alexandria! And such a feast I would give him, such a welcome . . . wine, song, food, and his own dagger, buried up to its hilt in his lean belly.

  * * *

  I approached the shrine of Isis daily, pouring her sacred water before her as an offering, and begged for the life of Antony with a passion I thought I had lost. I had not thought consciously about him until Cassius's envoy had delivered that devastating message about his fate. His absence from the world would diminish it in a way I was hard put to explain to myself. Only it seemed that with Antony's disappearance, the sun would slip below the horizon for good and true night come, never to depart. Was it only because he shone with the reflected light of Caesar? Was it because all the other Romans were so despicable? As I said, I could not explain it, I only knew that I beseeched Isis to help him, ready to promise her anything in return for his life.

  And once again, as she had done so long ago, she hearkened to me. Word came that he had survived the ordeal of the retreat across the Alps, and had emerged a hero.

  The report came from a letter intercepted on its way to Brutus in Greece, copied secretly, resealed, and then the copy sent on to me.

  I had retired into my most private chamber to read it. The words leapt out at me, written as they were for someone else's eyes.

  .

  Antony was defeated, and both the Consuls were slain. Antony, in his flight, was overtaken by distresses of every kind, and the worst of them was famine. But it is his character in calamities to be better than at any other time. Antony, in misfortune, is most nearly a virtuous man. It is common enough for people, when they fall into great disasters, to discern what is right, and what they ought to do; there are but few who in such extremities have the strength to obey their judgment, either in doing what it approves or avoiding what it condemns. And a good many are so weak as to give way to their habits all the more, and are incapable of using their minds.

  .

  Yes, that was true. But enough of the lecture. What had happened?

  .

  Antony, on this occasion, was a most wonderful example to his soldiers. He, who had just quitted so much luxury and sumptuous living, made no difficulty now of drinking foul water and living on wild fruits and roots. Nay, it is related they ate the very bark of trees, and, in passing over the Alps, lived upon creatures that no one before had ever been willing to touch.

  .

  A flash of excitement and admiration went through me. Yes, I could picture the struggling troops, and Antony willingly abasing himself to survive and fight again. . . .

  .

  The design was to join the army on the other side of the Alps, commanded by Lepidus, whom he imagined would stand his friend, he having done him many good offices with Caesar. On coming up and encamping near at hand, finding he had no sort of encouragement offered him, he resolved to push his fortune and venture all. His hair was long and disordered, nor had he shaved his beard since his defeat; in this guise, and with a dark-colored cloak flung over him, he came into the trenches of Lepidus, and began to address the army. . . .

  .

  It was the very spirit of Caesar, such as I had not thought to see again. I was much moved.

  The rest of the letter described his pact with Lepidus. Together they now had seventeen legions and a magnificent cavalry of ten thousand horse, and were marching on Rome. They were on their way to a pact with Octavian, to join forces and pursue the assassins.

  They would pursue them from the west, and if fate granted me the opportunity, I would slay them from the east. I still meant to stab Cassius by any means possible. Nothing less would satisfy me than turning the dagger upon him with my own hand.

  Where it had hung unmoving before, time now seemed to speed up. The year rushed forward. The plague abated, the granaries kept starvation at bay, and Egypt survived.

  On the first day of the Roman New Year, the Senate formally declared Caesar a god. So those who would not have him as their leader would now have him for their god! The irony could not fail to amuse Caesar as he looked down upon all this. But events at Rome were even more surprising. Having used Cicero's sponsorship and prestige to the utmost to build himself up to Antony's height, Octavian--or divi filius, son of the god, as he now called himself--coldly discarded him, and sacrificed the gray old head to a grisly end.

  Octavian joined forces with Lepidus and Antony, and together they proclaimed themselves the Triumvirate that would rule Rome for the next five years--discarding the Senate as easily as Cicero. Next they announced that the assassins were traitors and must be hunted down and punished.

  Both sides desperately needed money. The assassins were plundering the east--Cassius and Brutus attacked Rhodes, Xanthus, Lycia, Patara, and Tarsus--and the Triumvirs launched a program of proscriptions, whereby all enemies must yield up their persons and their treasures. They said they would not make Caesar's mistake of clemency; they would not set out for the east leaving enemies behind their backs in Rome.

  They bargained lives and swapped names--my uncle for your tutor--and Octavian yielded up Cicero without a murmur. The man he had flattered and called "father" was turned over to the executioners. They tracked him to his country villa, where he was attempting to flee. But his slaves set down the litter, and Cicero, like one of the sacrificial oxen I had seen at the Triumphs, stuck out his neck for the blow.

  They say it was Fulvia, Antony's wife, who demanded that the right hand be cut off as well, the one that wrote the speeches against Antony--that it was she who set the head at their table and stuck pins through the tongue, until Antony had it taken away to be set on the Rostra. It must have been then that Antony developed his revulsion against her, for he was never bloodthirsty. To triumph over a foe is one thing, to bathe in his blood another. When defecting soldiers were executed, it was Fulvia who stood near enough, laughing, that the blood splashed on her gown.

  Such fierce, primitive bloodlust is alarming enough. But what Octavian had, and was, I realized with a sudden insight that left me shaken. I could see what had been veiled, unclear, before.

  I had been reading dispatches describing the rapid changes in Rome, when suddenly I remembered bits and snatches of impressions of Octavian, and they floated together to make a portrait of his true face, behind the innocent beauty.

  Why, Cicero had even spun some tale about him--what was it? Yes, that he had dreamed of seeing the sons of
senators passing before the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, for Jupiter to select one to be the chief ruler of Rome. In the dream, lines of youths had passed by the god, until he had stretched his hand out to one. Then he had declared, "O ye Romans, this young man, when he shall be lord of Rome, shall put an end to all your civil wars." Cicero had seen the face clearly, but did not know the boy. The next day, as he saw boys returning from exercising in the Campus Martius, he recognized the very boy in his dream. When he inquired who it was, he was told it was Octavian, whose parents had no special eminence.

  Was this true? Had Cicero seen it? Or was it a tale Octavian himself had circulated? Octavian ... he fooled Cicero, who declared that he had easily controlled the boy "until now." He fooled Caesar, the gods only know how! Now he was attempting to fool Lepidus and Antony.

  He would use Antony and Lepidus, then discard them as soon as they had served their purpose. And as for Caesarion--only one "son of the god" could be permitted. He knew that. And so did I.

  I leaned against the marble frame of the window, pressing my forehead against it to stave off the sweat that had suddenly sprung up on my brow. I saw it all so clearly--why did not anyone else? Why did I alone feel threatened, and by this boy, six years younger than I?