Antony and Cleopatra (9 page)

Rejecting this appeal did not mean that the Romans actively supported the rule of Ptolemy XII. There was the real danger that the princes would try again or some other challenger would emerge. As a result Auletes worked steadily to win formal recognition by Rome, spending lavishly to cultivate influential senators. At the same time he put a lot of effort and money into pleasing his subjects, embarking on a grand building programme. Auletes was especially generous to the Egyptian cults and their temples. The costs were substantial at a time when the inundation produced a number of very poor harvests. Added to that was the impact of decades of sporadic civil war and internal tension throughout the two kingdoms. Royal officials needed to squeeze harder than ever to raise sufficient revenue. The recent upheavals had done little to promote efficiency within the bureaucracy and at the same time fostered corruption. There were more outbreaks of unrest amongst the hard-pressed peasantry, even if the priestly aristocracy were generally.
¹⁰

Pompey – fully, Cnaeus Pompeius – was a maverick general who first came to prominence when he raised an army at his own expense and led them to join Sulla in 83
BC
. He was just twenty-three, had never held office and thus had no right to command. The fact of the existence of his loyal army, raised mainly from his family estates, meant that this did not for the moment matter. Sulla employed him, and he repeatedly hammered the older Roman generals he faced in Italy, Sicily and North Africa. Pompey was young and fancied himself a new Alexander, aping the Macedonian's hairstyle and mannerisms. Sulla named him Magnus (the Great), although he may have intended it ironically. Others called him ‘the young butcher' because of his alleged enthusiasm for executions.
¹¹

When the dictator retired, the Senate he had created also chose to employ Pompey rather than try to force him into a more conventional and legal career. He was sent to Spain to fight a bitter war against Marian supporters who refused to surrender. For the first time Pompey was formally voted the power to command
(imperium),
although this was a special dispensation since he had still not held any elected office and was not even a senator. In 71
BC
Pompey returned victorious from Spain and demanded the right to begin his political career and seek election to the consulship for the next year. He was too young, but his popularity – and the fact that his army was camped not far from Rome waiting to celebrate his triumph – ensured that he was granted this special privilege.

Pompey was elected consul for 70
BC
, with Marcus Licinius Crassus as his colleague. The latter had just defeated the slave rebellion led by the gladiator Spartacus, and similarly had an army near the city. Both of them were Sulla's men and had done well out of the proscriptions, but there was little love lost between the consular colleagues. Crassus was some ten years older and had resented the praise and rewards received by Pompey during the civil war. The situation was not improved when Pompey destroyed a band of slaves fleeing from Crassus and tried to claim the glory for ending the war.

The pair were rivals and disliked each other intensely. They were also for the next decade and more by far the most influential and wealthiest men in the Republic. Crassus worked hard at politics, as he did in his business activities, steadily increasing his fortune. He owned property and maintained a large group of slave craftsmen to repair and construct buildings. Others acted as firemen at a time when there was no fire service in Rome. Crassus was wont to buy up property in the path of a blaze at a bargain price and then send in his slaves to control the fire, usually by demolishing buildings to create a firebreak. Later these could be rebuilt by his craftsmen. Crassus was a shrewd businessman, but did not simply use his money to make more money. He was generous in giving loans to other senators, and was equally generous with his time, often acting as an advocate in the courts. In this way a large proportion of senators were placed under obligation to him. Strikingly, Crassus was considered too dangerous for anyone else to prosecute.
¹²

Pompey had spent most of his life on campaign and did not know how to play the political game anywhere near as well. He relied far more on the glory of his victories. When these began to fade in the public consciousness, he decided that he needed new ones. In 67
BC
he was given an extraordinary command to deal with the pirate problem, which had grown even worse since the failure of Mark Antony's father. Pompey received massively greater resources than Antonius. He was also a good deal more competent, with a true genius for organisation. In a matter of months, he and his subordinates swept the Mediterranean clear of pirates. Looking for a long-term solution, many of the pirates were resettled on land where they could support themselves and their families without resorting to crime.
¹³

Pompey's success was spectacular, but he wanted far more and in 66
BC
was granted another extraordinary command to deal with Mithridates of Pontus. Once again there was more than a hint of poaching the glory of others, because the war had already almost been won by Lucullus, one of the consuls of 74
BC.
Pompey used the pretext of the war with Mithridates and his ally, King Tiridates of Armenia, to launch a series of eastern expeditions against various opponents. He expanded Roman territory and then systematically reorganised the eastern provinces. In the process he abolished the last rump of the Seleucid Empire. The Ptolemies were left as the only survivor of the three great Successor kingdoms.
¹⁴

Pompey did not visit Egypt, but Auletes took care to provide aid to his army, including the supplies necessary to support 8,000 cavalrymen. In addition, he sent lavish gifts, including a gold crown, to the commander himself. In the meantime, Crassus held the censorship in 65
BC
and began agitating to have Egypt declared Roman public land, which could then be distributed. He clearly hoped to be placed in charge of the process and so make a substantial profit, as well as placing large numbers of citizens in his debt. Julius Caesar – still only in his thirties, but extremely ambitious – was also involved, although it is not clear whether he supported Crassus or wanted to take charge of the process himself. Crassus was very influential and extremely rich – probably only Pompey could match his wealth – yet other senators had some wealth and some influence, and if enough of them combined to block a measure then there was no means of forcing it through. All proposals about Egypt made at this time were blocked.
¹⁵

The move to annex Egypt failed, and Crassus and Caesar both passed on to other schemes. It is vital to remember that Egypt was not at the centre of Roman public life. Occasionally it became an issue, usually as part of the personal ambitions of a leading senator, as each struggled to rise to the top. In late 64
BC
a law was proposed to make a widespread distribution of publicly owned land to poorer citizens. Egypt was wholly or partly to be included within this, but once again the measure was defeated and public life moved on to other concerns.
¹⁶

Pompey also discovered that there were limits to his real power when he returned to Rome in December 62
BC
. His prestige was colossal, his popularity huge and the triumph he celebrated shortly afterwards more spectacular than any ever seen before. Yet for all that he failed to gain the Senate's approval for eastern settlement or secure land for the soldiers due for discharge from his army. Time and again attempts to secure these things were blocked. Other senators, including Crassus and the supplanted Lucullus, were eager to cut the great general down to size. None wanted to see the Republic dominated by Pompey, and at the same time thwarting him helped to build up their own influence and reputation. The issues were almost irrelevant. Pompey's eastern settlement was sensible and thorough, the desire to reward his soldiers reasonable. This did not in any way restrain other senators from blocking them and Pompey was not a skilful enough politician to find a way round.
¹⁷

It may have been Julius Caesar who came up with the idea of bringing Pompey and Crassus together in a secret alliance known to scholars (although not at the time) as the ‘first triumvirate'. On their own, neither Crassus nor Pompey could get what they wanted. Working together, and with Caesar as consul for 59
BC
, all three men were far harder to resist. That did not prevent rival senators – including Caesar's consular colleague Bibulus – from trying to block them every step of the way. Both sides in turn escalated the conflict, and there was intimidation and violence that stopped just short of serious bloodshed. Pompey's settlement was ratified and his veterans given land, while Crassus won a favourable deal for the
publicani
with many of whom he had close connections. Caesar forced through a law redistributing public-owned land in Italy to poor citizens and secured himself an extraordinary military command for five years.
¹⁸

Auletes had cultivated Pompey for some time and the king scented an opportunity now that the latter and his allies were so strong at Rome. At last Ptolemy XII gained formal recognition, being named as king and a ‘friend and ally of the Roman people' by a law passed by Caesar in 59
BC.
The price tag was enormous. Auletes promised to pay 6,000 talents – somewhere between half and all the annual revenue of Egypt. The bulk of this went to Pompey and Caesar, although Crassus may also have profited. Ptolemy's representatives borrowed on a huge scale from Roman bankers to make the initial down payment.
¹⁹

Auletes' younger brother in Cyprus was unable to afford the cost of similar recognition. In 58
BC
an ambitious Roman senator persuaded the People's Assembly to pass a law granting a free dole of grain to every citizen in Rome. To meet the cost of this, the law authorised the seizure of Cyprus – or at least royal property there – by the Republic in accordance with Ptolemy X's will. The king was offered comfortable retirement, but chose suicide instead when all his protests were unavailing.
²⁰

The Alexandrians seem to have welcomed the formal recognition of Auletes by Rome, but the annexation of Cyprus provoked deep resentment and a sense of humiliation. Auletes had done nothing to save his brother or resist the seizure of one of the oldest parts of the Ptolemaic Empire. At the same time the royal bureaucracy was especially aggressive in its collection of revenue, since the king needed to pay his debt to the triumvirate. Resentment festered. Romans became unpopular – we hear of one member of a delegation being lynched after accidentally killing a cat. Cats were sacred in Egypt (and this is one respect where elements of the Greek population had taken on existing beliefs), but the outburst was probably as much anti-Roman as anything else.
²¹

The king himself was seen as weak because he fawned to the Romans, and repressive because of his efforts to pay them. There may well have been other factors at work, and ambitious members of the court scented an opportunity for personal advantage. Late in 58
BC
, Ptolemy XII Auletes left Alexandria and travelled to Rome, where he claimed that he had been driven out. Certainly, it was some years – and only by force – before he returned. His eldest daughter, Berenice IV, was proclaimed as queen in his absence and clearly against his will. We do not know how old she was, or whether she or her senior advisers were the prime movers in this coup. She was unmarried and took as co-ruler another member of the family called Cleopatra.
²²

This was definitely not our Cleopatra, who was only eleven at the time. Auletes married his sister Cleopatra V Tryphaena soon after he became king. She may have been his half-sister, especially if he was in fact the son of Cleopatra IV, which would suggest he was some twenty years older than her. In that case, her mother could well have been an unknown concubine. Solving one problem with the Ptolemaic family tree often seems only to create different questions.
²³

Cleopatra V Tryphaena was certainly the mother of Berenice IV, but ceased to be named in official documents late in 69
BC
. From November of that year only Ptolemy himself is mentioned and it has often been assumed that the queen must have died. Reliefs on the temple at Edfu bearing her name seem to have been deliberately covered up at about the same time. This would seem odd if the queen had died and hints that she was withdrawn from public life, either in disgrace or for reasons of health. For whatever reason, Auletes did not marry again. If Cleopatra V Tryphaena was still alive in 58
BC
then Berenice may have ruled jointly with her mother.
²⁴

The Geographer Strabo, writing at the end of the first century
BC,
mentions casually that Ptolemy Auletes had ‘three daughters, of whom one, the eldest, was legitimate'. The eldest was Berenice, and this implies that she was the only child the king had with his wife. Our Cleopatra was born before Cleopatra Tryphaena disappeared and therefore it is chronologically possible that the latter was her mother, even if she died soon afterwards. Many slurs and insults were hurled at Cleopatra during and after her lifetime, but it is significant that no other source claims that she was illegitimate — in marked contrast to her father Auletes. It is very hard to believe that something ofthat sort would not have been used against her.

So there are two main possibilities. One is that Strabo's throwaway comment was correct, even though the point is never mentioned anywhere else. This would make Cleopatra, her younger sister Arsinoe and their two brothers the offspring of a liaison between Auletes and one or more concubines. If Cleopatra Tryphaena was still alive after the end of 69
BC
, then she was either incapable of producing more children or the king was disinclined to have them with her. There is no positive evidence for the existence of a royal mistress or mistresses. Since we do not even know whether this woman or women existed, it is important to emphasise that we have no idea at all about their identity. The suggestion made by some that she was an Egyptian from one of the priestly families is pure conjecture.