Antony and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  “Of course. I’ll be ready.”

  That evening she didn’t appear for supper, pleading a stomach still churning from its maritime ordeal, and Antony was tired of the usual group who surrounded him, jockeying for his attention, forcing him to assume a bonhomie he didn’t feel. In fact, the only one he was drawn to was Fonteius, whom he bade join him for supper, just the two of them.

  Shrewd in the manner of a natural diplomat and fonder of Antony than he was of himself, Fonteius accepted gracefully. He had long divined that Antony wasn’t happy, and maybe tonight was his chance to probe Antony’s wound, see if he could find the poisoned dart.

  It was an ideal evening for intimate talk; the lamp flames flickered crazily in tendrils of the wind roaring outside, rain hissed against the shutters, a small torrent gurgled as it rushed down the hill. Coals glowed red in several braziers to take the chill out of the room, and the servants moved like lemures in and out of the shadows.

  Perhaps because of the atmosphere, or perhaps because Fonteius knew exactly how to trigger the right responses, Antony found himself pouring out his fears, horrors, dilemmas, anxieties, with little logic or order.

  “Where is my place?” he asked Fonteius. “What do I want? Am I a true Roman, or has something happened to make me less a Roman than I used to be? Everything at my fingertips, great power—and yet—and yet—I seem to have no place to call my own. Or is place the wrong word? I don’t know!”

  “It might be that when you said place, you meant function,” said Fonteius, picking his way delicately. “You love to revel, to be with the men you deem your friends and the women you desire. The face you show to the world is bold, brazen, uncomplicated. But I see many complications beneath that exterior. One of them led you to a peripheral participation in the murder of Caesar—no, don’t deny it! I do not blame you, I blame Caesar. He killed you too, by making Octavianus his heir. I can only imagine how deeply that cut you! You had spent your life to that time in Caesar’s service, and a man of your temperament couldn’t see why Caesar condemned some of your actions. Then he left a will that didn’t even mention you. A cruel blow that utterly destroyed your dignitas. For men wondered why Caesar left his name, his legions, his money, and his power to a pretty-boy youth rather than to you, his cousin and a man in his prime. They interpreted Caesar’s will as a sign of his colossal displeasure at your conduct. That wouldn’t have mattered were it not that he was Caesar, the idol of the People—they have made him a god, and gods do not make wrong decisions. Therefore—you were not worthy to be Caesar’s heir. You could never become another Caesar. Caesar made that impossible, not Octavianus. He stripped you of your dignitas.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Antony slowly, hands clenching. “The old boy spat on me.”

  “You are not naturally inward-turning, Antonius. You like to deal with concrete facts, and you have Alexander the Great’s propensity to use a sword on knotty problems. You don’t have Octavianus’s ability to burrow beneath society’s skin, to whisper defamations as truths in a way people come to believe. The source of your dilemma is the stain upon your reputation that Caesar put there. Why, for instance, did you choose the East as your part of the Triumvirate? You probably think you did because of the riches and the wars you could fight there. But I don’t think that’s why at all. I think it was an honorable way out of being in Rome and Italia, where you would have had to display yourself before people who know Caesar despised you. Dig down inside yourself, Antonius! Find your injury, identify it for what it is!”

  “Luck!” said Antony, shocking Fonteius. Then, louder, “Luck!

  Caesar’s luck was proverbial, it was a part of his legend. But when he cut me out of his will, he passed his luck to Octavianus. How else has the little worm survived? He has Caesar’s luck, that’s how! While I lost mine. Lost it! And that’s the crux of it, Fonteius. Whatever I do is unlucky—how does anyone deal with that? I know I can’t.”

  “But you can, Antonius!” Fonteius cried, recovering from this extraordinary development. “If you choose to regard your present melancholy as loss of luck, then make your own luck in the East! It’s not a task beyond you. Retrieve your reputation with the knights by creating an East perfect for business opportunities! And take yourself an eastern adviser, someone of the East and for the East.” He paused, thinking of Pythodorus of Tralles, bound to Antony by marital ties. “An adviser with power, influence, wealth. You have five more years as Triumvir thanks to the Pact of Tarentum—use them! Create a bottomless well of luck!”

  Prickles of exhilarations sparkled through Antony, banishing his megrims. Suddenly he saw his way clear, how to regain his luck.

  “Would you undertake a long voyage for me on winter seas?” he asked Fonteius.

  “Anything, Antonius. I’m genuinely concerned for your future, which isn’t in harmony with Octavianus’s Rome. That’s another factor causing melancholy—that the Rome Octavianus is intent upon making is alien to the Roman men who prize Rome as she used to be. Caesar started tampering with the rights and prerogatives of the First Class, and Octavianus is determined to continue that work. I think that, when you find your luck, you should aim at bringing Rome back to what she used to be.” Fonteius lifted his head, listened to the sounds of wind and rain, smiled. “The gale is blowing itself out. Where do you want me to go?” It was a rhetorical question: Tralles and Pythodorus, he knew.

  “To Egypt. I want you to see Cleopatra and persuade her to join me in Antioch before winter is over. Will you do that?”

  “It is my pleasure, Antonius,” Fonteius said, concealing his dismay. “If there’s a ship in harbor here in Corcyra seaworthy enough to sail the Libyan Ocean, I’ll go at once.” A rueful look appeared. “However, my purse isn’t deep. I’ll need money.”

  “Money you shall have, Fonteius!” Antony huffed, his face transfigured with happiness. “Oh, Fonteius, thank you for showing me what to do! I must use the East to force Rome to reject the machinations of Caesar and Caesar’s heir!”

  When Antony passed by the door of Octavia’s room on his way to his own, he was still fizzing with excitement, and full of a new urgency to reach Antioch. No, he wouldn’t stop in Athens! He would sail directly to Antioch. The decision made, he opened Octavia’s door and entered to find her snuggled up in bed. He sat on the edge of it and pushed a wisp of hair off her brow, smiling.

  “My poor girl!” he said tenderly. “I should have left you in Rome, not subjected you to the Ionian Sea near the equinox.”

  “I’ll be better in the morning, Antonius.”

  “And so you may be, but here you stay until you can obtain passage to Italia,” he said. “No, don’t protest! I’ll have no arguments, Octavia. Go back to Rome and have our baby there. You miss the children, who are in Rome. I’m not going to Athens, I’m going straight to Antioch, no place for you.”

  Sadness washed over her; she gazed into those reddish eyes with pain in her own. How she knew it, she had no idea, but this was going to be the last time she ever saw Marcus Antonius, her beloved husband. Good-bye on the island of Corcyra—who could ever have predicted that?

  “I will do whatever you think best,” she said, swallowing.

  “Good!” He got up, leaned to kiss her.

  “But I will see you in the morning, won’t I?”

  “You will, definitely you will.”

  When he was gone she rolled over, pushed her face into the pillow. Not to weep; the agony was too great for tears. What she looked at was the loneliness.

  Fonteius got away first. A Syrian merchantman had also put in to wait out the tempest, and since its captain had to brave the Libyan Ocean anyway, he said, he wasn’t averse to an extra stop in Alexandria for a nice fat fee. His holds were loaded with Gallic iron-tired wagon wheels, copper pots from Nearer Spain, some firkins of garum flavoring, and, to fill up the spaces, linen canvas from the lands of the Petrocorii. This meant his vessel sat low but well in the water, and he was willing to give up his cabin under the poop
for this foppish senator with his seven servants.

  Fonteius waved Antony good-bye, still stunned. How horribly it had all gone wrong! And how presumptuous he had been, to think that he could read the mind of Antonius, let alone manipulate it! Why had the man fixed on luck, of all things? A phantasm, a figment of the imagination. Fonteius didn’t believe luck existed as an entity of itself, no matter what people said about Caesar’s luck. Yet Antony had soared over the top of the truth he ought to have seen, to fix on luck. Luck! As for Cleopatra! Ye gods, what was he thinking about, to choose her as his eastern adviser? She’d tweak and twist, compounding his confusion. The blood of King Mithridates the Great flowed in her veins, along with a bevy of murdering, amoral Ptolemies, and a few Parthians to boot. To Fonteius, she was a distillation of all that was worst about the East.

  Fonteius wanted civil war, if civil war was what it took to get rid of Octavian. And the only man who could successfully beat Octavian was Mark Antony. Not the Antony whom Fonteius had seen emerging over the past years; it needed the Antony of Philippi. Cleopatra? Oh, Antonius, a bad choice! Fonteius had been friendly with Caesar’s widow, Calpurnia, before she took her life, and Calpurnia had given him a fairly comprehensive sketch of the Cleopatra she and other women had known in Rome. A sketch that didn’t inspire hope in Antony’s ambassador.

  Who arrived in Alexandria after a month’s passage due to a storm that forced them to spend six days in Paraetonium—what a place! But the captain had found laserpicium there, and tossed enough canvas overboard to make room for twenty amphorae of it.

  “My fortune is made!” he told Fonteius jubilantly. “With Marcus Antonius coming to live in Antioch, there will be so much over-indulgence that I’ll be able to ask a fortune for one dose! At several thousand spoonfuls per amphora—ah, bliss!”

  Though he hadn’t been to Alexandria before, Fonteius wasn’t very impressed by the city’s undeniable beauty, its layout of wide streets. Maecenas, he reflected, would have called it a desert of right angles. However, thanks to each succeeding Ptolemy’s passion for erecting a new palace, the Royal Enclosure had charm. Two dozen palaces at least, plus an audience chamber.

  There, amid a blaze of gold that had awed every Roman who had seen it, he met two marionettes. That was the only word he could attribute to them, they were so stiff, wooden, and painted. A pair of dolls made in Saturnia or Florentia, their strings manipulated by an invisible master. The audience was brief; he was not asked to state his business, simply to convey greetings from the Triumvir Marcus Antonius.

  “You may go, Gaius Fonteius Capito,” said the white-faced doll on the higher throne.

  “We thank you for coming,” said the red-faced doll on the lower throne.

  “A servant will conduct you to dinner with us this afternoon.”

  Removal of the maquillage and paraphernalia revealed two small people, though the boy wasn’t going to be a small man. Fonteius knew his age—ten—and thought he looked more like thirteen or fourteen, save that puberty had not yet started. Caesar’s image! Another player on the stage of the future, and an unexpected but immensely urgent reason why Antony should not be associating with this woman. Caesarion was the sole object of her affections, it shone out of her magnificent golden eyes every time they rested on him. For the rest, she was skinny, tiny, almost ugly. The eyes and a beautiful skin saved her; she also had a low, melodious, and cleverly used voice. Both mother and son spoke to him in Latin he could not fault.

  “Did Marcus Antonius send you to warn us he is coming here?” the son asked eagerly. “Oh, I have missed him!”

  “No, Your Majesty, he isn’t coming here.”

  The bright face fell, its vivid blue eyes looked away. “Oh.”

  “A disappointment,” the mother observed. “Why are you here, then?”

  “By this time Marcus Antonius should have taken up residence in Antioch,” said Fonteius, thinking that the freshwater shrimp he was eating lacked flavor. With Our Sea at the foot of her palace steps, why didn’t she direct her fishing fleets to catch saltwater ones? While his mind dealt with this conundrum, his lips continued to speak. “He plans to make his stay there a permanent one, for two reasons.”

  “One of which,” said the boy, “is its proximity to the lands of the Parthians. He’ll jump off from Antioch.”

  The rude little monster! thought Fonteius. Butting into an adult conversation! What’s more, his mother thinks that’s normal as well as wonderful. All right, little monster, let’s see how smart you really are! “And the second reason?” Fonteius asked.

  “It’s truly east, which can’t be said of Asia Province, and certainly not of Greece or Macedonia. If Antonius is to regulate the East, he should be situated somewhere truly east, and Antioch or Damascus is ideal,” said Caesarion, unabashed.

  “Then why not Damascus?”

  “A better climate, but too far from the sea.”

  “Just what Antonius himself said,” Fonteius answered, too much the diplomat to let his displeasure show.

  “So why are you here, Gaius Fonteius?” the Queen asked.

  “To invite you, Your Majesty, to Antioch. Marcus Antonius is very anxious to see you, but more than that. He is in need of advice from someone who is eastern by birth and culture, and thinks you are by far the best candidate.”

  “He considered other people?” she asked sharply, frowning.

  “No, I did,” said Fonteius quietly. “I brought forward names, but for Antonius there was only the one—yours.”

  “Ah!” She lay back on her couch and smiled like the tawny cat that lay at her elbow. One thin hand went out to stroke the creature’s back, and it turned its smile on her.

  “You like cats,” he said.

  “Cats are sacred, Gaius Fonteius. Once upon a time, perhaps twenty-five years ago, a Roman businessman in Alexandria killed a cat. The people tore him into little pieces.”

  “Brr!” he said with a shiver. “I am used to grey cats with stripes or spots, but I have never seen one this color.”

  “She is Egyptian. I call her Bastella—to call her Bast would be sacrilegious, but I got good omens for the Latin diminutive.” Cleopatra turned from the cat, reached to eat a date. “So Marcus Antonius commands me to come to Antioch?”

  “Not commands, Your Majesty. Requests.”

  “In a pig’s eye!” said Caesarion, chuckling. “He commands.”

  “You may tell him I will come.”

  “And I!” said the boy quickly.

  A curious little dumb show followed between mother and son; no word was said, though she yearned to speak. A tussle of wills. That the boy won it was no surprise to Fonteius; Cleopatra had not been born an autocrat, circumstances had made her one. Whereas Caesarion was an autocrat formed in the womb. Just like his tata. Fonteius experienced a frisson of fear that streaked down his backbone and stood his hair on end. Imagine what Caesarion would be like when fully grown! The blood of Gaius Julius Caesar and the blood of eastern tyrants. He would be unstoppable. And it is because Cleopatra knows it that she will pimp and pander for poor Antonius. Caring nothing for Antonius or his fate. Wanting her son by Caesar to rule the world.

  Fonteius was advised to set off overland, accompanied by an Egyptian guard Cleopatra said was necessary; Syria was full of brigands since the various principates had foundered during the Parthian occupation.

  “I will follow you as soon as I can,” she told Fonteius, “but I do not think it will be before the New Year. If Caesarion insists upon coming, I’ll have to arrange for a regent and a council, though Caesarion won’t be staying in Antioch more than a few days.”

  “Does he know that?” Fonteius asked slyly.

  “Certainly,” Cleopatra said stiffly.

  “What about Antonius’s children?”

  “To see them, Antonius must come to Alexandria.”

  A month later he found Antony in residence in Antioch and working hard. Lucilius ran to obey one order after another, while Antony sat at his
desk and reviewed stacks of papers, a very few scrolls. His only recreation was parading his troops, back in winter camp after a brisk campaign into Armenia that Publius Canidius had conducted as efficiently as Ventidius had the previous campaigns; Canidius himself had stayed in the north with ten of the legions, waiting for the spring, the rest of the legions, the cavalry, and Marcus Antonius. The only thing Canidius did wrong in Antony’s eyes was to warn him in every letter that King Artavasdes of Armenia was not to be trusted, for all his protestations of loyalty to Rome, enmity for the Parthians. A prophecy Antony chose to ignore, more wary of the other Artavasdes, King of Media. He too was making overtures of friendship.

  “I see the city is filling up with potentates and would-be potentates,” Fonteius said as he sank into a chair.

  “Yes, I’ve finally got all of them sorted out, so I summoned them to hear their fates,” Antony said with a grin. “Is she—is she coming?” he added, the amusement fading before anxiety.

  “As soon as she can. That impudent brat Caesarion has insisted on coming with her, so she has to find a regent.”

  “Impudent brat?” Antony asked, frowning.

  “So I consider him. Insufferable, actually.”

  “Oh, well, he participates in the monarchy as his mother’s equal—both of them are Pharaoh.”

  “Pharaoh?” Fonteius asked.

  “Aye, supreme ruler of river Nilus, the true kingdom of Egypt. Alexandria is considered non-Egyptian.”

  “I agree with that, at any rate. Very Greek indeed.”

  “Oh, not inside the Royal Enclosure.” Antony tried to look disinterested. “When exactly is she coming?”

  “Early in the new year.”

  Crestfallen, Antony waved a vague hand of dismissal. “Tomorrow I’m going to hand out Rome’s largesse to all the potentates and would-be potentates,” he said. “In the agora. Custom and tradition say I should wear a toga, but I hate the things. I’m wearing gold armor. Have you got a dress set with you?”