Antony and Cleopatra (69 page)

While the troop transports poured across the Adriatic from Brundisium, Marcus Agrippa detached half his four hundred galleys and struck at Antony’s base of Methone. He was completely victorious, especially because, having killed Bogud, destroyed half his ships, and pressed the other half into his own service, Agrippa went on to do the same thing to Sosius at Leucas. Sosius himself escaped, a very small joy. For Antony and Cleopatra were now completely cut off from any grain and foodstuffs coming by sea, no matter where their point of origin. Suddenly the only way to feed the land and sea forces was overland, but Antony was adamant that his Roman soldiers were not going to be made beasts of burden—or even lead beasts of burden! Let Cleopatra’s indolent Egyptians do something for a change! Let them organize the overland trek!

Every donkey and mule in the east of the country was commandeered and loaded to maximum tolerance. But Egyptian overseers, it turned out, had scant respect for animals, neglected to water them, and indifferently watched them die as the cavalcades came over the mountains of Dolopia. So Greek men by the thousands were forced at swordpoint to shoulder bags and jars of supplies and walk the eighty hideous miles between the end of the Gulf of Malis and the Bay of Ambracia. Among these wretched porters was a Greek named Plutarch, who survived his ordeal and entertained his grandchildren ever after with lurid tales of dragging wheat over eighty awful miles.

By the end of April, Agrippa controlled the Adriatic and all Octavian’s troops had been safely landed around Epirote Toryne, in the lee of Corcyra. After deciding to make Corcyra his main naval base, Octavian pressed on south with his land forces in an attempt to surprise Antony at Actium.

Until this moment all Antony’s wrong decisions had stemmed from the adverse effect Cleopatra had on his legates. But now he committed a cardinal mistake: he penned up every ship he had within the Bay of Ambracia, a total of four hundred and forty vessels even after his losses at Agrippa’s hands. Given the size and slowness of his ships, it was impossible except under the most ideal conditions to get the bottled-up fleets out of the bay through a gullet less than a mile wide. And while Antony and Cleopatra sat impotent, the rest of their bases fell to Agrippa: Patrae, the entire Gulf of Corinth, and the western Peloponnese.

Octavian’s effort to move fast enough to surprise Antony’s land army failed; it was wet, the ground was boggy, and his men were sickening with colds. Acting on reports from his scouts, Antony and the assassin Decimus Turullius set out with several legions and Galatian cavalry and defeated the leading legions; Octavian was compelled to halt.

Desperately needing a victory, Antony made sure his soldiers hailed him imperator on the field (for the fourth time in his career) and grossly inflated his success. Between illness and increasingly poor rations, morale in his camps was extremely low. His command chain was severely disaffected, for which he had Cleopatra to thank. She made no attempt to keep in the background, toured the area regularly to carp and criticize, and comported herself with icy hauteur. According to her lights, she did nothing wrong; though her association with Romans now dated back a full sixteen years, she still hadn’t managed to grasp the concept of egalitarianism, which incorporated no automatic reverence for any man or woman, even one born to wear the ribbon of the diadem. Blaming her for the mess they were in, ordinary legionaries jeered, booed, and hissed at her, yammered like a thousand little dogs. Nor could she command that they be punished. Their centurions and legates simply ignored her.

Octavian finally camped on good dry ground near the north headland of the bay, connecting his vast compound to a supply base on the Adriatic shore by “long walls” fortifications. An impasse ensued, with Agrippa blockading the bay from the sea and Octavian depriving Antony of the chance to relocate where his own ground was less swampy. Hunger reared its ugly head higher, and desperation followed it.

On a day when the westerlies blew less constantly, Antony sent out a part of his fleet under the command of Tarcondimotus. Agrippa came bustling to meet it with his trusty Liburnians and trounced it. Tarcondimotus himself was killed; only a sudden change in wind direction enabled most of the Antonian fleet to struggle back inside its prison. Agrippa was puzzled by the fact that the sally had been led by a client-king and that no vessel held any Roman troops, but interpreted the move as doubt in Antony’s mind that he could win.

In actual fact, it stemmed out of dissent in the councils a despondent Mark Antony still held regularly. Antony and the Romans wanted a land battle, but Cleopatra and the client-kings wanted a sea battle. Both factions could see that they were trapped in a no-win situation, and both factions were beginning to see that they had to abandon the invasion of Italia in favor of returning to Egypt to regroup and think out a better strategy. If they were to do this, however, they had first to defeat Octavian badly enough to enable a mass retreat.

Sufficient food kept trickling in over the mountains to keep starvation at bay, but short rations had to be enforced. In this respect Cleopatra suffered a defeat that was rapidly alienating the non-Roman contingents, fully seventy thousand strong. Antony was furtively feeding bigger portions to his sixty-five thousand Roman soldiers—but not furtively enough. The secret leaked to the client-kings, who objected strenuously and loathed him for it. And deemed Cleopatra weak, since she was unable to persuade or hector Antony into ceasing this unfair practice.

Ague and enteric fever ran through the camps as summer came in. No one, Roman or non-Roman, had the forethought—or the enthusiasm—to drill the land forces or exercise the sea forces. Almost a hundred and forty thousand Antonian men sat around, idle, hungry, ill, and discontented. Waiting for someone at the top to think of a way out. They didn’t even clamor for a battle, a sure sign that they had given up.

Then Antony thought of a way out. Rousing himself from gloom, he summoned his staff and explained.

“We’re quite lucky here, we’re close to the river Acheron,” he said, pointing to a map. “And here is Octavianus—not nearly as lucky. He has to bring fresh water from the river Oropus, a long way from his camps. It’s ducted through halves of hollowed tree trunks which he’s replacing with terra-cotta pipes Agrippa brings from Italia. But at this moment, his water situation is precarious. So we’re going to cut off his supply and oblige him to withdraw from his present position to one nearer the Oropus. Unfortunately, the distance we have to travel to achieve surprise negates a full-scale infantry attack, at least in the beginning.”

He continued, using his right index finger to illustrate the relevant areas, and he sounded very confident; the mood in the command tent lightened, especially when Cleopatra kept silent.

“Therefore, Deiotarus Philadelphus, you’ll take your cavalry and the Thracian cavalry—Rhoemetalces will be second-in-command—and spearhead the action. I know you’ll have a very long detour around the east of the bay, but Octavianus won’t be watching anything happening there, it’s too distant. Marcus Lurius will take ten of the Roman legions and follow as hard on your heels as he can. In the meantime I’ll take rafts of infantry across the bay and set them up in a camp just under Octavianus’s walls. He won’t be particularly dismayed, and when I offer battle, he’ll ignore me. He’s too firmly entrenched to be alarmed. When your infantry, Lurius, meet Deiotarus Philadelphus’s cavalry, you’ll rip miles of Octavianus’s ducting out and then plunder his northern food caches. Once he hears what’s happening, he’ll pull out to relocate along the Oropus. And while he’s in the middle of that—and while Agrippa is helping him—we’ll evacuate for Egypt.”

Excitement spread; it was an excellent maneuver, with a very good chance of succeeding. But disaffection had grown amain since news that the Roman troops were being better fed; a Thracian commander deserted, went to Octavian, and gave the scheme away in great detail. Octavian was able to intercept the cavalry with some of his own Germans. There was no battle. Deiotarus Philadelphus and Rhoemetalces went over to Octavian on the spot, and then, combined with the Germans, went to crush the approaching foot soldiers. Who turned and fled in the direction of Actium.

When he heard of the disaster Antony marshaled the last of his horse, the contingent from Galatia under Amyntas, and set out in person to turn his legions around. But when Amyntas met up with his colleagues and the Germans, he deserted, offering himself and his two thousand horse troopers to Octavian.

Thwarted and despairing, Antony took his legions back to Actium, convinced that no land engagement could be won in this awful place.

“I don’t know how to break free!” he cried to Cleopatra, hopes as black and shriveled as a mummy. “The gods have deserted me, so has my luck! If the winds had blown as they always do, Octavian would never have been able to cross the Adriatic! But they blew to favor him, and undid all my plans! Cleopatra, Cleopatra, what am I to do? It’s all over!”

“Hush, hush,” she crooned, stroking the stiff, curly hair, and noticing for the first time that it was greying. Frosted almost overnight!

She too had acknowledged that same impotence, a terrible dread that her own gods as well as Rome’s had taken Octavian’s side in this. Why else had he been able to cross the Adriatic out of season? And why else had he been gifted with a commander as great as Agrippa? But, most urgent question of all, why hadn’t she abandoned Marcus Antonius to his inevitable fate, fled home to Egypt?
Loyalty?
No, surely not! What did she owe Antony, after all? He was her dupe, her tool, her weapon! She had always known that! So why now was she cleaving to him? He didn’t have the skill or the stomach for this quest, he never had. Simply, loving her, he had tried to be what she needed. It’s Rome, she thought, stroking, stroking. Not even a monarch as great and powerful as Cleopatra of Egypt can dig the Roman out of a Roman. I almost succeeded. But only almost. I couldn’t do it to Caesar, and I can’t do it to Antonius. So why am I here? Why, over these last
nundinae,
have I found myself growing softer with him, stopped flogging him? Been kind to him, I who am not kind?

Then it dawned upon her with the terror of some sudden natural catastrophe—an avalanche, a wall of water, an earthquake:
I love him!
Cradling him protectively, she kissed his face, his hands, his wrists, and, stupefied, realized the identity of this new emotion that had crept upon her so stealthily, invaded her, conquered her.
I love him, I love him!
Oh, poor Marcus Antonius, finally you have your revenge! I love you as much as you love me—utterly, boundlessly. My walled-up heart has convulsed, cracked, gaped open to admit Marcus Antonius, the wedge that did it his own love for me. He has offered me his Roman spirit, gone out into a night so dense and black that he sees nothing beyond me. And I, in taking his sacrifice, have come to love him. Whatever the future holds, it is the same future for both of us. I cannot desert him.

“Oh, Antonius, I love you!” she cried, embracing him.

As summer wore on legates deserted Antony in dozens, senators flocked to Octavian in hundreds. It was as easy as rowing across the bay, for Antony, plunged into despair, refused to stop them. Their pleas for asylum always revolved around That Woman, the cause of ruin. Though a spy reported a curious thing to Cleopatra: Rhoemetalces of Thrace was particularly acidic in his criticisms of Antony until Octavian rounded on him.

“
Quin taces!
” he snapped. “Just because I like treason does not mean I must like traitors.”

For Antony, the worst blow came late in Julius; making no secret of his loathing for Cleopatra—hoarsely declaiming it, in fact—Ahenobarbus quit.

“Not even for you, Antonius, can I stand another day of That Woman. You’re aware that I’m ill, but you probably don’t know that I’m dying. And I want to die in a properly Roman environment, free from the slightest whiff of That Woman. Oh, what a fool you are, Marcus! Without her, you would have won. With her, you don’t have a chance.”

Weeping, Antony watched the rowboat carry Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus across the bay, then sent all Ahenobarbus’s possessions after him. Cleopatra’s strenuous objections fell on deaf ears.

The day after Ahenobarbus quit, Quintus Dellius followed him, together with the last of the senators.

The day after that, Octavian sent Antony a graceful letter. “Your most devoted friend, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, died peacefully last night. I want you to know that I had welcomed him and treated him with great consideration. As I understand it, his son, Lucius, is betrothed to your elder daughter by my sister, Octavia. The betrothal will be honored, I gave Ahenobarbus my word. It will be interesting to watch the offspring of a couple linking the blood of Divus Julius, Marcus Antonius, and the Ahenobarbi, don’t you agree? A metaphorical tug-of-war, given that the Ahenobarbi have always opposed the Julii.”

“I miss him, I miss him!” Antony said, uncontrolled tears rolling down his face.

“He was my obdurate enemy,” Cleopatra said, tight-lipped.

On the Ides of Sextilis Cleopatra summoned a council of war. So few of us, so few! she thought as she tenderly inserted Mark Antony into his ivory curule chair.

“I have a plan,” she announced to Canidius, Poplicola, Sosius, and Marcus Lurius, the only senior legates left. “However, it may be that someone else also has a plan. If so, I would like to hear it before I speak.” Her tone was humble, she sounded sincere.

“I have a plan,” Canidius said, very grateful for this unexpected opportunity to air it without needing to call a council himself. It was months since he had been able to place any confidence in Antony, who had turned into a remnant of what he used to be.
Her
fault, no one else’s. And to think that once he had championed her! Well, no more of that.