Antony and Cleopatra (60 page)

Her own daughter, Marcella, was thirteen, menstruating, and promising to be a great beauty. Dark like her father, she had her own nature, which was flirtatious, haughty, and imperious. Marcellus was eleven, another darkly handsome child. He and Antyllus, his coeval, couldn’t bear each other, and fought tooth and nail; nothing Octavia could do succeeded in making them like each other, so whenever Uncle Caesar was in town, he was called upon to administer whacks on the palm with a ruler. Privately Octavian considered Marcellus far the more likeable of the two, for he had a calm temperament and a better mind than Antyllus. Cellina, Octavia’s younger girl by Marcellus Minor, was eight; she was golden-haired, blue-eyed, and very pretty. A strong likeness existed between her and little Julia, who was a regular tenant of the nursery, as Octavia and Scribonia were good friends. Antonia, aged five, had sandy hair and greenish eyes—no beauty, alas, since she had Antony’s nose and chin. Her nature had turned proud and aloof, and she considered her betrothal to Ahenobarbus’s son, Lucius, beneath her. Surely, she was heard to complain often, there was someone better? The youngest child of all, Tonilla, had auburn hair and amber eyes, though luckily her features were Julian rather than Antonian. In character she was turning out to be resolute, intelligent, and fierce.

Iullus and Cellina were much the same age as Tiberius, while Antonia and Drusus would shortly be six.

No matter what intrigues and squabbles occurred when this brood of children were not in Octavia’s presence, they were well-mannered and cheerful. It soon became apparent that Drusus liked three-year-old Tonilla much better than he liked the whining Antonia; he proceeded to take her under his wing and enslave her. Things were more difficult for Tiberius, who turned out to be a shy child, unsure of himself and incapable of conversation. The kindest of the Marcelli, Cellina befriended him immediately, seeming to sense his insecurities, while Iullus, discovering that Tiberius knew nothing of horse riding, dueling with a play sword, or the history of Rome’s wars, regarded him with visible contempt.

“Do you think you’ll enjoy visiting Aunt Octavia?” Octavian asked as he led the boys home via the Forum Romanum, where he was greeted on all sides and stopped every few feet by someone anxious to obtain a favor or impart a morsel of political gossip. The boys were dazzled, not only by this first trip into the city, but also by Octavian’s retinue: twelve lictors and a German guard. Despite the diatribes and maunderings against Octavian that their father had uttered over the years, it was clear in this one walk that Octavian—Caesar, they must learn to call him—was far more important than Nero.

Their new pedagogue was a free man, a nephew of Burgundinus named Gaius Julius Cimbricus. Like all the descendants of Divus Julius’s beloved Burgundus, he was immensely tall and muscular, a fair, round-faced man with a snub nose and pale blue eyes. He was with them now, pointing out this and that, things he considered worthy of the boys’ attention. There was much to like in him, and nothing to fear. Not only would he teach them in the schoolroom, he would also give them exercises to do in their garden, and, in time, instruct them in military exercises so that, when each boy turned twelve, he would be able to go to the Campus Martius for military exercises not quite unskilled.

“Do you think you’ll enjoy visiting your Aunt Octavia?” asked Octavian a second time.

“Yes, Caesar,” Tiberius said.

“Oh, yes!” cried Drusus.

“And do you think you’ll like Cimbricus?”

“Yes,” they chorused.

“Don’t let your shyness overwhelm you, Tiberius. As soon as you grow used to your new life, it will fade.” Octavian gave his stepson a conspiratorial grin. “Iullus is a bully, but once you get a bit of muscle on those long bones, you’ll wallop him.”

A very comforting thought; Tiberius looked up at Octavian and essayed his first smile.

“As for you, young man,” Octavian said to Drusus, “I don’t see any sign of shyness. You were quite right to prefer Tonilla to Antonia, but I hope later on that you can find things in common with Marcellus, even though he’s a bit older than you.”

Livia Drusilla greeted the boys with a kiss and sent them to the schoolroom with Cimbricus.

“Caesar, I’ve had a brilliant idea!” she cried as soon as they were alone.

“What?” he asked warily.

“A reward for Marcus Agrippa! Well, two rewards, actually.”

“Agrippa isn’t in it for reward, dearest.”

“Yes, yes, I know that! Still, he ought to have rewards—they will keep him tied to you as the years go on.”

“He will never not be tied, because the feeling comes from who and what he is.”

“Yes, yes,
yes
! But wouldn’t it be a great match for him, if he married Marcella?”

“She’s thirteen, Livia Drusilla.”

“Thirteen going on thirty, more like. In four more years she’ll be seventeen—old enough for marriage. Fewer and fewer of the Famous Families adhere to the old custom of keeping girls at home until they’re eighteen.”

“I’ll certainly consider it.”

“Then there’s Agrippa’s daughter, Vipsania. I know that when old Atticus dies, his fortune will go to Attica, but I hear tell that if Attica should die, his will stipulates that everything must go to Agrippa,” Livia Drusilla said eagerly. “That makes the child extremely eligible, and since Tiberius’s inheritance is so paltry, I think he should marry Vipsania.”

“He’s eight, and she’s not yet three.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Caesar, stop being so blockheaded! I am aware how old they are, but they’ll be grown up enough to marry before you can say Alammelech!”

“Alammelech?” he asked, mouth twitching.

“It’s a river in Philistia.”

“I know, but I didn’t know that you know.”

“Oh, go and jump in the Tiber!”

While his domestic existence was becoming more and more a joy to Octavian, his public and political doings were not bearing much fruit worth the picking. Monger rumors though they did, whisper calumnies against Mark Antony though they might, Octavian’s agents failed to sway those seven hundred senators in their conviction that Antony was the man to follow. They genuinely believed that he would soon return to Rome; indeed, he had to, if only to celebrate a triumph for his victories in Armenia. His letters from Artaxata had boasted of huge plunder, from solid gold statues six cubits high to chests of Parthian gold coins and literally hundreds of talents of rock lapis lazuli and crystal. He was bringing the Nineteenth Legion with him, and had already demanded that Octavian find land for them to retire on.

If Antony’s influence had extended no further than the Senate, it might have been overcome, but the entire First and Second Classes, many thousands of men engaged in some kind of business or other, swore by Antony’s brilliance, integrity, military genius. To make matters worse, tribute was coming into the Treasury at an ever-increasing rate, the
publicani
tax farmers and plutocrats of all description were buzzing around Asia Province and Bithynia like bees around flowers dripping nectar, and now it seemed there would be immense booty to add to the Treasury. The solid gold statue of Anaitis was to be Antony’s gift to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, but most of the other works of art, as well as the jewelry, would be sold. The general, his legates, and his legions would receive their legal shares, but the Treasury would get the rest. Though it was years since Antony had been in Rome for more than a few days—and the last visit of all had been four years ago—his popularity endured among the people who mattered. Did these people care about Illyricum? No, they didn’t. It held no promise of commercial activities, and few who lived in Rome and had villas in Campania and Etruria cared a rush whether Aquileia was razed to the ground or Mediolanum flattened.

The only positive thing Octavian had managed to do was to make the name Cleopatra known to all Italia from highest to lowest. Of her, everyone believed the worst; the trouble was that they couldn’t be brought to see that she controlled Antony. Had the enmity between Octavian and Antony not been so well known, Octavian might have established his point, but everyone who liked Antony simply dismissed Octavian’s allegations as a part of that enmity.

Then Gaius Cornelius Gallus arrived in Rome. Good friend of Octavian’s though he was, this impoverished poet with a warlike streak had begged Octavian’s pardon and set out to serve as one of Antony’s legates just in time to miss the retreat from Phraaspa. So he had idled in Syria while Antony drank, using his time to compose lyrical, beautiful odes in the style of Pindar, and writing occasionally to Octavian. Bemoaning the fact that his purse was no heavier, he clung to Syria until Antony shook off the effects of the wine and marched for Armenia. His hatred of Cleopatra was hot and obdurate; no one rejoiced more than he did when she returned to Egypt and left Antony to do without her.

Thirty-four years old when he sought an interview with his erst-while friend Octavian, Gallus was extremely handsome in a rather cruel way that was more an accident of physiognomy than a character trait. His love elegies,
Amores
, had already made him famous, and he was an intimate of Virgil’s, with whom he had much in common racially; they were both Italian Gauls. He was not, therefore, a patrician Cornelius.

“I hope you can lend me some money, Caesar,” he said as he took the goblet of wine Octavian handed him. A rueful smile creased the corners of his splendid grey eyes. “I’m not on the cadge, exactly,” he continued. “It’s just that I spent what I had on buying swift passage from Alexandria to Rome, knowing that winter would make news of what happened in Alexandria slow in reaching Rome.”

Octavian frowned. “Alexandria? What were you doing there?”

“Trying to prise my entitled percentage of the Armenian spoils out of Antonius and that monstrous sow, Cleopatra.” He shrugged. “I didn’t succeed. Nor will anyone else.”

“The last I heard,” said Octavian, settling into his chair, “Antonius was engaged in touring southern Syria—what, that is, he didn’t sign over to Cleopatra.”

“A blind,” Gallus said, scowling. “I’ll bet no one in Rome knows yet that Antonius took every last sestertius of the Armenian spoils to Alexandria. Where he held a triumphal parade for the delectation of the citizens of Alexandria—and their queen, high on a golden dais at the junction of Royal and Canopic Avenues.” He drew a breath, drank deeply. “After he triumphed, he dedicated everything to Serapis—his own share, his legates’ shares, the legions’ shares, and the Treasury’s. Whereupon Cleopatra refused to pay any army shares, though Antonius managed to convince her that the troops
had
to be paid, and quickly. Men like me were so lowly that we weren’t even invited to the public spectacles.”

“Ye gods!” Octavian said feebly, shocked to his marrow. “He had the temerity to give away what isn’t his to give away?”

“Oh, yes. Eventually I’m sure the entire army will be paid, but the Treasury won’t be. I bore Alexandria after the triumph, but when Antonius held what Dellius calls the Donations, I felt such a hankering for Rome I had to come, still uncompensated.”

“Donations?”

“Oh, a wonderful ceremony in the new gymnasium! Acting on his authority as Rome’s representative, Antonius publicly proclaimed Ptolemy Caesar the King of Kings and ruler of the world! Cleopatra was named Queen of Kings, and her three children by Antonius got most of Africa, the Parthian Kingdom, Anatolia, Thrace, Greece, Macedonia, and all the islands at the eastern end of Our Sea. Amazing, isn’t it?”

Octavian sat with jaw dropped, eyes wide. “Incredible!”

“Perhaps, but real for all that. It’s fact, Caesar,
fact
!”

“Did Antonius offer his legates any explanation?”

“A curious one, yes. What Dellius knows is beyond me—he enjoys a special position. The rest of us—all junior legates—were told that he had vowed the spoils to Cleopatra, that his honor was involved.”

“And the honor of Rome?”

“Was nowhere to be found.”

During the course of the next hour Octavian got the full tale out of Gallus, in the meticulous detail of one who saw his world as a poet does. The level of the wine flagon went down, but Octavian grudged neither that nor the hefty sum he would pay Gallus for getting this information to him ahead of everyone else in Rome. A fabulous trove! The winter this year had been early and very long; little wonder that so much time had elapsed. The triumph and the Donations had happened in December, and it was now April. However, Gallus warned, he had reason to believe that Dellius had written to Poplicola with all this news at least two months ago, on a ship that had survived.

Finally one last oddity was all that remained to be imparted. Octavian bent forward, elbows on his desk, chin propped on his hands. “Ptolemy Caesar was proclaimed higher than his mother?”

“Caesarion, they call him. Yes, he was.”

“Why?”

“Oh, the woman dotes on him! Comparatively speaking, her sons by Antonius don’t matter. Everything is for Caesarion.”

“Is he my divine father’s son, Gallus?”

“Undoubtedly,” said Gallus firmly. “The image of Divus Julius in every way. I’m not old enough to have known Divus Julius as a youthful man, but Caesarion looks as I imagine Divus Julius must have looked at the same age.”

“Which is?”

“Thirteen. He’ll be fourteen in June.”

Octavian relaxed. “Still a child, then.”

“Oh, no, anything but! He’s well into puberty, Caesar—has a deep voice, the air of a grown man. I understand that his intellect is as profound as it is precocious. He and his mama have some spectacular differences of opinion, according to Dellius.”

“Ah!” Octavian rose to his feet and stretched out his arm to Gallus, shook Gallus’s hand strongly and warmly. “I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for your zeal, so I will let something more tangible speak for me. Go to Oppius’s bank next
nundinum
and you will find a nice present. What’s more, as I am now the custodian of my stepson’s property, I can offer you Nero’s house for the next ten years at a peppercorn rent.”