Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (26 page)

In May 36, Antony resumed his Parthian campaign, starting with a long and tiring march northwards through Syria, then eastwards through Armenia. The campaign began well but quickly turned into a humiliating disaster, with the loss of over 30,000 men – approximately two-fifths of his army. Antony, left with just twenty-five legions under his command, was forced to make a weary winter retreat to Syria. Once again Cleopatra was summoned from Egypt, and once again she hesitated, perhaps because she had just given birth, or because she needed time to collect supplies, or because she needed time to consider her position. For Antony’s Parthian humiliation had coincided with Octavian’s defeat of Sextus, and Octavian had further strengthened his position by forcing Lepidus into retirement and seizing his remaining territories. The balance of power had shifted and Octavian was beginning to pose a serious challenge to Antony’s authority. In January 35, Cleopatra met Mark Antony in the obscure Phoenician port of Leuce Come (White Village). She brought supplies of warm clothing and food, but not enough money to pay the troops. A few weeks later both Antony and Cleopatra retired to Alexandria.

Octavia, meanwhile, had been living the virtuous life of a true Roman matron, caring for her own and Antony’s various children, and dividing her time between Athens and Rome. In the spring of 35 she left Rome for Greece on the first leg of a journey, planned by her
brother, to bring 2,000 troops (not the 20,000 promised) and seventy ships from Octavian to Antony, plus a contribution of money, cattle and gifts from her own purse. Disconcerted, Antony ordered Octavia to stay in Rome (according to Dio) or Athens (Plutarch), but to send the soldiers on. Plutarch tells us that this very public rejection of Octavia was Cleopatra’s fault; that she had used all her feminine wiles to persuade Antony not to receive his wife:

Cleopatra perceived that Octavia was coming into a contest at close quarters with her, and feared lest, if she added to the dignity of her character and the power of Caesar her pleasurable society and her assiduous attentions to Antony, she would become invincible and get complete control over her husband. She therefore pretended to be passionately in love with Antony herself, and reduced her body by slender diet; she put on a look of rapture when Antony drew near, and one of faintness and melancholy when he went away. She would contrive to be often seen in tears, and then would quickly wipe the tears away and try to hide them, as if she would not have Antony notice them. And she practised these arts while Antony was intending to go up from Syria to join the Mede [attack the Parthians]. Her flatterers, too, were industrious in her behalf, and used to revile Antony as hard-hearted and unfeeling, and as the destroyer of a mistress who was devoted to him and him alone. For Octavia, they said, had married him as a matter of public policy and for the sake of her brother, and enjoyed the name of wedded wife; but Cleopatra, who was queen of so many people, was called Antony’s beloved, and she did not shun this name nor disdain it, as long as she could see him and live with him; but if she were driven away from him she would not survive it …
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Plutarch’s explanation is most unlikely, as is Dio’s claim that Cleopatra used witchcraft to turn Antony against Octavia. It is more reasonable to assume that, with his relationship with Octavian fast breaking
down, Antony’s political marriage had become an irrelevance. He had decided that the way ahead lay with Cleopatra. This was not the first time that Antony had discarded a no longer useful wife. But his rejection of the virtuous Octavia in favour of an illicit alliance with a foreigner did not go down well in Rome, where Octavia, still considering herself married, continued to look after Antony’s children in his house. Octavia was as strong in her own way as Fulvia had been. As a conspicuously wronged wife, she had an important role to play in her brother’s propaganda and, as Antony’s reputation plummeted to an all-time low, Octavia’s grew from strength to strength. In 33 Octavian, happy to make political capital out of his virtuous sister, gave her
sacrosanctitas
(sacrosanctity: the right to be protected), the highest honour that could be awarded to a married Roman woman. For the time being at least, she eclipsed her sister-in-law Livia as Rome’s most prominent woman.

Cleopatra and Antony spent the winter of 35/4 in Alexandria. The following spring Cleopatra travelled with Antony as far as the Euphrates, then made a lengthy royal progress home through her new territories, stopping at Apamea on the Orontes, Emesa, Damascus and Jerusalem, where she again met Herod and, according to Josephus, made an unsuccessful attempt to seduce him:

When she was there, and was very often with Herod, she endeavoured to have criminal conversation with the king; nor did she affect secrecy in the indulgence of such sort of pleasures; and perhaps she had in some measure a passion of love to him; or rather, what is most probable, she laid a treacherous snare for him, by aiming to obtain such adulterous conversation from him: however, upon the whole, she seemed overcome with love to him. Now Herod had a great while borne no good-will to Cleopatra, as knowing that she was a woman irksome to all; and at that time he thought her particularly worthy of his hatred, if this attempt proceeded out of lust; he had also thought of preventing her intrigues, by putting her to death, if such were her endeavours. However, he refused to comply with her proposals, and called a counsel of his friends to consult with them whether he should not kill her, now he had her in his power; for that he should thereby deliver all those from a multitude of evils to whom she was already become irksome, and was expected to be still so for the time to come; and that this very thing would be much for the advantage of Antony himself, since she would certainly not be faithful to him …
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No other historian tells this tale, which is, to say the least, highly unlikely. In fact Cleopatra and Herod had much in common and would have done well to set aside their territorial dispute and join forces. However, Cleopatra’s blatant interference in Jewish politics, and her friendship with his forceful mother-in-law Alexandra, did not endear her to Herod. In 36 Alexandra had written to Cleopatra, asking her to influence Herod’s choice of high priest. Cleopatra had referred the matter to Antony, and Alexandra’s seventeen-year-old son, Aristobulus, had been duly given the position. When Aristobulus was (most predictably) murdered within a year of his appointment, Alexandra again wrote to Cleopatra asking her to help avenge her son’s murder. Cleopatra again referred the matter to Antony, and Herod was summoned to Rome to account for his deeds. Returning home, Herod had resolved his domestic problems by having the more troublesome members of his family either jailed or killed.

In 34 Antony captured King Artavasdes of Armenia, along with most of his family and his treasure. This was hardly the major eastern victory that he had anticipated. Nevertheless, that autumn Antony re-entered Alexandria dressed in the golden robe of Dionysos, crowned with ivy leaves and carrying a
thyrsos
wand. Before his chariot walked Artavasdes, his wife and two sons, festooned with either silver or golden chains. Cleopatra received Antony sitting on a golden throne
on a silver dais before the temple of Serapis, but his captives refused to pay homage to her. Dio, rather chillingly, tells us:

the barbarians addressed no supplications to her, nor made obeisance to her, though much coercion was brought to bear upon them and many hopes were held out to them to win their compliance, but they merely addressed her by name; this gave them a reputation for high spirit, but they were subjected to much ill-treatment on account of it.
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Octavian, watching from Rome, was not amused. Antony’s Dionysiac celebration too closely resembled a triumph, a strictly Roman sacred celebration. Antony, it seemed, considered Alexandria a capital to rival Rome.

Soon after Antony’s triumphal return came the elaborate public celebration known today as the ‘Donations of Alexandria’. The ceremony was held in the packed gymnasium, where the royal couple appeared before their people on a silver dais. Cleopatra, splendid in the robes of the New Isis, sat on a golden throne, while Antony sat on a silver throne beside her. The royal children were given lesser thrones slightly beneath their parents. Antony delivered a lengthy speech, ostensibly in honour of Julius Caesar, during which he outlined ambitious plans for his eastern lands. Cleopatra was officially recognised as the ‘Queen of Kings and her Sons who are Kings’. Her coruler Caesarion, now formally acknowledged by Antony as the legitimate son of Caesar, took his rightful place as pharaoh of Egypt, ‘King of Kings’, yet was still expected to sit below his mother and stepfather. The younger children had been dressed in the national clothing of the rulers of Persia (Alexander Helios), Cyrenaica (Cleopatra Selene) and Macedonia (Ptolemy Philadelphos). The message was again clear and unsubtle. Cleopatra and Caesarion were the joint rulers of Egypt and the associated territories of Cyprus, Libya and Coele-Syria.
In addition, Caesarion was the true heir to Rome and her western territories. Alexander Helios was destined, somewhat optimistically, given that Egypt did not yet own the bulk of these lands, to rule all territories to the east of the Euphrates, including Armenia and Parthia. Cleopatra Selene was to rule Cyrenaica and Crete, while Ptolemy Philadelphos was given parts of Syria and Cilicia, plus all Roman lands to the west of the Euphrates. The three young children would acknowledge allegiance to Cleopatra and Caesarion, while Antony, as head of the royal family, would effectively rule the world. Nothing could have been calculated to displease Octavian more. For the first time, he started to criticise Antony in pubic.

Octavian and Antony were still in correspondence. A private letter from Antony to Octavian survives in Suetonius:

What has come over you? Do you object to me sleeping with Cleopatra? But we are married; and it is not even as if this is anything new – the affair started nine years ago. And what about you? Are you faithful to [Livia] Drusilla? My congratulations if, when this letter arrives, you have not been to bed with Tertulia, or Terentilla, or Rufilla, or Salvia Titisenia – or all of them. Does it really matter so much where, or with whom, you perform the sexual act?.
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Here, more than ever, the translation of the original Latin affects our understanding of Antony’s message. The verb
ineo
, translated as ‘sleeping with’, is a rather crude term often used to describe animal mating. Octavian would have understood that Antony was not being over-polite about his relationship with Cleopatra, and some modern authorities have stressed this point by using the translation ‘screwing’ or ‘fucking’ the queen.
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But the interesting phrase from our point of view is
uxor mea est
, which can with equal validity be translated as a statement, either ‘she is my wife’ or – as in Robert Graves’s translation quoted above – ‘we are married’, or as a question – ‘is she my wife?’
Either way, it seems that Antony, legally still married to Octavia, considers himself somehow married to Cleopatra. It has been argued that this might mean a theoretical, divine marriage, the union of Dionysos/Osiris with Aphrodite/Isis. Certainly, any mortal marriage that the already married Antony might undertake and, indeed, any marriage with a foreigner could have had no validity under Roman law.

It is generally assumed that Cleopatra would have wished to be legally married to Antony.
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Quite why modern historians should make this assumption – reducing the powerful Cleopatra to the status of a weak mistress who longs to be an ‘honest woman’ – is not clear. She is unlikely to have been over-concerned about her children’s legitimacy as, in Egypt and her territories, their position as children of the world’s most powerful queen goddess would have been unchallenged. In any case, under Egyptian law, there was no formal civil or religious wedding ceremony and a marriage simply required that a couple should live together for the purpose of begetting children. Cleopatra might therefore have legitimately considered herself married to Antony and Caesar, even if they did not consider themselves married to her. The Romans, who looked long and hard at Cleopatra, never saw a wife. They saw an unnatural, immodest woman who preyed on other women’s husbands. From this developed the myth of the sexually promiscuous Cleopatra, and claims of torrid affairs with Gnaeus Pompey, Pompey the Great, Ptolemies XIII and IV (incest!), Caesar, Antony, Herod and countless others, including slaves. A harsh legacy indeed for a woman who probably had no more than two, consecutive, sexual relationships.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Death of a Dream

For Rome, who had never consented to fear any nation or people, did in her time fear two human beings: one was Hannibal and the other was a woman.