Cleopatra: A Life (36 page)

The winter passed in a fever pitch of inertia. For the second time the usually rash Antony appeared slow to open a campaign, one for which Cleopatra could only have been impatient. With every month she was running up considerable expenses. (The rule of thumb was 40 to 50 talents per legion per year, which put Cleopatra’s summer outlay for the infantry alone in the vicinity of 210 talents.) It was difficult to escape the impression that Antony, the most famous soldier alive, had no desire for an epic battle. Of an earlier occasion it would be said of Caesar that
“he sought a reputation
rather than a province,” an assertion that was arguably more true of his protégé. Octavian invited Antony to an absurd staged encounter. Antony challenged Octavian to a duel. Neither materialized. Mostly the two sides confined themselves to insults and idle threats, to
“spying upon and annoying
each other.” The air pulsed with rumor, much of it generated by Octavian. In 33 he expelled the multitude of astrologers and soothsayers from Rome, ostensibly to purge the growing Eastern influence, actually better to control the story line. In their absence it was easier to elicit the kinds of omens Octavian preferred; he wanted to be the only one in the prophecy business. So it was that Antony and Cleopatra’s
statues in the Acropolis
were said to have been struck by lightning and to lie in sorry ruins. Eighty-five-foot-long two-headed serpents appeared. A marble statue of Antony oozed blood. When the children of Rome divided themselves into Antonians and Octavians for a fierce two-day-long street battle, the miniature Octavians prevailed. The truth was closer to that suggested by two talking ravens. Their equitable trainer had taught the first to squawk,
“Hail Caesar
, our victorious commander.” The other learned: “Hail Antony, our
victorious commander.” A smart Roman had every reason to hedge his bets—and to believe that with their hotheaded rhetoric, their personal agendas, Antony and Octavian were perfectly interchangeable. Even those on intimate terms with both conceded that each
“desired to be the ruler
, not only of the city of Rome, but of the whole world.”

While the funds and experience were largely on Antony and Cleopatra’s side, so too were the ambiguities, beginning with the matter—not necessarily more transparent in 32 than it is today—of their marriage. As a foreigner, Cleopatra could not under Roman law become Antony’s wife, even after his divorce. Only by the more supple, accommodating logic of the Greek East could the two have been said to have married. From the Egyptian point of view the question was irrelevant. Cleopatra had no need to be married to Antony, who was without any official
status in Egypt
, which she ruled with Caesarion. Antony was there a queen’s consort and patron, not a king. That was unproblematic in Egypt. It was a muddle to Rome. Was Cleopatra meant to play a role in the West? Again there was no category for her, or rather there was: If she was not a wife, she was by definition a concubine. In which case why did Antony stamp her image on Roman coins? Antony and Cleopatra’s joint intentions too were murky. Did they mean to realize the dream of Alexander the Great, to unite men across national boundaries and under one divine law, as the prophecy had it? Or did Antony intend to set himself up as an Oriental monarch, with Cleopatra as empress? (He made it easy for Octavian: a Roman surrendered his citizenship if he formally attached himself to another state.) Their agenda may have been better defined—probably they meant to establish two capitals—but generally they taxed the category-loving Roman mind. And they turned the client king arrangement on its head. A foreigner was meant to be subservient, not equal, to a Roman. As such, it was easy for Octavian to make a case for the transgressive, insatiable woman, intent on conquest. He did so convincingly and enduringly.
One of the greatest twentieth-century classicists
has Cleopatra working through Antony, like a parasite, to realize ambitions she may never have considered. The military intentions were opaque as
well. For what precisely was Antony fighting? He might well mean to restore the Republic, as he claimed, but what then to make of the mother of his three half-Roman children?

For Octavian, by contrast, all was crystalline and categorical, or at least it was once he had passed off a personal vendetta as a foreign war. His argument had cleaner lines and better visuals. He made a splendid, splashy appeal to xenophobia. Surely his men—
“we who are Romans
and lords of the greatest and best portion of the world”—were not going to be rattled by these primitives? Not for the last time, the world divided into a masculine, rational West and a feminine, indefinite East, on which Octavian declared a sort of crusade. He fought against something but for something as well: for Roman probity, piety, and self-control, precisely those qualities his former brother-in-law had shrugged off in his embrace of Cleopatra. Antony was no longer a Roman but an Egyptian, a mere cymbal player, effeminate, inconsequential, and impotent,
“for it is impossible
for one who leads a life of royal luxury, and coddles himself like a woman, to have a manly thought or do a manly deed.”
^*
Octavian savaged even Antony’s literary style. And incidentally, had anyone noticed that Antony drank? Octavian stressed his role as Caesar’s heir less often. Instead he went in for tales of his own divinity, which he broadcast widely. Few in Rome failed to hear of his descent from Apollo, to whom he was dedicating a fine new temple.

In reducing Antony to a cymbal player Octavian accomplished an especially difficult feat. He publicly acknowledged what many men who have faced a woman across a tennis net have since noted:
in such a contest
, there is greater pride to be lost than glory to be gained. By the Roman definition, a woman hardly qualified as a worthy opponent. Coaxing a tinny accusation into a series of resonant chords, later scored for a full orchestra, Octavian rhapsodized about Cleopatra. He endowed
her with every kind of power, to create an enduring grotesque. This brutal, bloodthirsty Egyptian queen was no latter-day Fulvia. She was a vicious enemy, with designs on all Roman possessions. Surely the great and glorious people who had subdued the Germans, trampled the Gauls, and invaded the Britons, who had conquered Hannibal and burned Carthage, were not going to tremble before
“this pestilence of a woman”
? What would their glorious forefathers say if they learned that a people of singular exploits and vast conquests, to whom every region of the world had now submitted, had been trodden underfoot by an Egyptian harlot, her eunuchs, and her hairdressers? Indeed they faced a formidable array of forces, Octavian assured his men, but to win great prizes, one waged great contests. In this one the honor of Rome was at stake. It was the obligation of those destined
“to conquer and rule
all mankind” to uphold their illustrious history, to avenge those who insulted them, and “to allow no woman to make herself equal to a man.”
^*

EARLY IN 31
Octavian’s superb admiral, Agrippa, made a swift, surprise crossing to Greece. A longtime friend and mentor to Octavian, he supplied the military acumen his commander lacked. Agrippa disrupted Antony’s supply lines and captured his southern base. In his wake, Octavian transferred 80,000 men from the Adriatic coast across the Ionian Sea. The move forced Antony north. His infantry was not yet in place; he was wholly taken aback. Cleopatra attempted to calm him by making light of the enemy’s sudden presence in a fine natural port (it was probably modern Parga) on a spoon-shaped promontory.
“What is there dreadful in Caesar’s
sitting at a ladle?” she scoffed. Straightaway, Octavian offered battle, which Antony could not yet manage. His crews were incomplete. By an early morning feint he forced Octavian to withdraw. Weeks of taunts and skirmishes followed, as Octavian roamed freely among the harbors of western Greece, and as Antony settled his legions on a sandy spit of land at the southern entrance to the Ambracian Gulf.
Actium offered an excellent harbor, if in a damp, desolate area; Antony and Cleopatra could not have been long in realizing that the swampy lowland, thick with ferns and grasses, was
infinitely more suitable as a battle site
than as a campsite. The weeks passed in attempted engagements and attenuated decisions. Octavian could not lure Antony out to sea. Antony could not coax Octavian out on land. He remained more intent on cutting Antony’s supply lines, at which, over the spring and early summer, he proved highly proficient. Cleopatra may have affected perfect insouciance about his landing but the truth was that in the wake of a series of inexplicable, slow-motion decisions—they may not have made sense even before Octavian’s eulogists got hold of them—Antony and Cleopatra began to cede the advantage. Meanwhile the question of strategy hung heavily over Antony’s head: to meet Octavian on land or at sea? For the most part the two armies glared at each other across the narrow strait, from one grassy promontory to the other.

From the distance Antony’s camp must have offered a splendid sight, with its vast and variegated armies, the flashes of gold-spangled purple-red robes. Towering Thracians in black tunics and bright armor mingled with Macedonians in fresh scarlet cloaks, Medians in richly colored vests. A Ptolemaic military cloak, woven with gold, might feature a royal portrait or a mythological scene. The scruffy Greek lowland blazed with costly equipment, with gleaming helmets and gilded breastplates, jeweled bridles, dyed plumes, decorated spears.
^*
The bulk of the soldiers were Eastern, as were an increasing number of rowers, many of them raw recruits. With them assembled an ecumenical collection of arms: Thracian wicker shields and quivers joined Roman javelins and Cretan bows and long Macedonian pikes.

Cleopatra footed much of the bill but contributed something else too; unlike Antony, she could communicate with the assembled dignitaries
of the East. She spoke the language of the Armenian cavalry, the Ethiopian infantry, the Median detachments, as well as that of royalty. There was a code of behavior among Hellenistic sovereigns. Most had experience of powerful queens. And Canidius had not misspoken. By her presence, Cleopatra reminded her fellow dynasts that they were battling for something other than a Roman republic, in which they had no interest. They had little sympathy for either Antony or Octavian, against either of whom they might just as easily have aligned, as they had aligned against Rome in 89, with Mithradates. Had she not launched herself directly into the heart of Roman affairs with her call on Caesar in 48, Cleopatra would have been in precisely their position. She and Antony turned away only one sovereign, naturally the most enthusiastic of the bunch. Herod arrived with money, a well-trained army, equipment, and a shipment of grain. He delivered as well
some familiar advice
. Were Antony only to murder Cleopatra and annex Egypt, his troubles would be over. Herod’s army and provisions remained but his stay in camp was brief. For his priceless counsel he was packed off to fight Malchus, the Nabatean king, said to be delinquent with his bitumen payments. Simultaneously Cleopatra ordered her general in that stony region to frustrate both monarchs’ efforts. She preferred that they destroy each other.

Closer up all was not quite so rosy. The wait—in a vast, multiethnic military camp, under less than salubrious conditions—took its toll. As the temperature rose, conditions deteriorated. Cleopatra’s presence did little for morale. No doubt accurately, Herod wrote his dismissal down to her. That she occupied a vital position in camp and did little to apologize for that position is clear; as Egypt’s commander in chief, she believed war preparations and operations to be her duty. She seems to have assumed that Antony was the only friend she needed. She was unwilling to be silenced, ironic given how little of her voice survives; there would be none of Queen Isabella of Spain’s deferential
“May your Lordship
pardon me for speaking of things which I do not understand.” It is impossible to say what came first, the Roman humiliation at Cleopatra’s presence, or Cleopatra’s superciliousness with the Romans. Antony’s
officers were said to be ashamed of her and of her status as equal partner. His closest companions objected to her authority. She had backed herself into a corner: To relax her guard was to be sent home. To maintain it was to offend. She may have been rattled too. There were stormy scenes with Antony.

Cleopatra failed in particular to endear herself to Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, arguably Antony’s most distinguished supporter. A proud Republican, Ahenobarbus had led the consuls who had fled to Ephesus the previous spring. He was resolute and incorruptible. From the start he and Cleopatra had trouble. He refused to address her by her title; to him she remained simply “Cleopatra.” She attempted to buy him off, only to discover that Ahenobarbus was as straight-spined as Plancus was invertebrate. True to his reputation, Ahenobarbus was vocal, too. He made no secret of his opinion that she was a liability. And he believed a war could be avoided. Implicated in and condemned for Caesar’s murder, later proscribed, Ahenobarbus had fought at Philippi against Antony. The two reconciled afterward, since which time Ahenobarbus had occupied every high office and counted among Antony’s most devoted adherents. He had been instrumental in opposing Octavian. He had fought to suppress the damaging news of the Donations. Already Ahenobarbus’s son was promised to one of Antony’s daughters. Together the two men had survived all kinds of adversity: They had been through
Parthia together, where Ahenobarbus
proved himself stalwart and a leader. When Antony had been too despondent to do so himself, Ahenobarbus had addressed the troops on their commander’s behalf. As morale deteriorated in Actium the senior statesman this time took a different route. In a small boat, he defected to Octavian. Antony was devastated. True to form, he sent his former colleague’s baggage, friends, and servants to join him. Cleopatra disapproved of his magnanimity.