Cleopatra the Great (38 page)

So, with his detested enemy now his guest, Herod planned Cleopatra's assassination. But when his advisers pointed out Antonius' likely reaction to the murder of'a woman who held the greatest position of any living at that time' he settled for character assassination instead, claiming she had tried to seduce him in order to discredit him with Antonius and acquire his entire kingdom. The story is certainly consistent with the tactics of a king who killed one of his ten wives, three of his sixteen sons, an uncle, his unfortunate brother-in-law Aristobulus when his plan to escape to Egypt with his mother was discovered, and all first-born boys in Judaea so as to eliminate the long-awaited ‘King of the Jews' prophesied across the ancient world. Yet, in contrast to the unfortunate Aristobulus and Alexandra, Jesus and his mother Mary escaped Herod's wrath by their flight into Egypt, a journey that Cleopatra and her unborn child also undertook when ‘instead of having her murdered, he plied her with gifts and escorted her on the way to Egypt'.

It must surely have been a spectacular homecoming as the pregnant monarch made her triumphal return to Alexandria after restoring virtually all the Ptolemies' fabled empire. It was an achievement she marked by taking the unique title ‘Philopatris', ‘Fatherland Loving', usually assumed to refer to Cleopatra as a lover of Egypt. Yet this Greek title is equally likely to have referred to Macedonia, homeland ‘of Alexander and Egypt's dynastic family. She was a Macedonian . . . and since Cleopatra's patris [homeland] was Macedon, she was looking back to old Greece and to the home of her forefathers'. But given her ability to appear as all things to all people, the title may have been intentionally ambiguous as she reached out across vast swathes of territory to pursue Alexander's own achievements, announcing her intentions in her titles ‘New Thea, Father Loving and Fatherland Loving', Cleopatra, ‘renowned in her ancestry'.

In September 36
BC
the thirty-three-year-old gave birth to her fourth child, whom she named Ptolemy Philadelphus. Again she was using the magical power of names, since the baby's namesake, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, had ruled the territories she gained at her marriage, the time when her child had been conceived. And with her children by Antonius a key part of her foreign policy, her eldest child Caesarion remained her co-ruler within Egypt and, in 36
BC
, aged eleven, was elevated to the throne as full co-regent.

As Cleopatra revelled in her glorious renaissance in Alexandria, Antonius was already on the long march to Parthia with a force so great it ‘made all Asia shake'. Having brought together a force of a hundred thousand comprising sixty thousand Roman soldiers, ten thousand Celtic and Spanish cavalry and thirty thousand infantry provided by his Eastern allies, he had made a decision to set out following the news that the Parthian king had just been assassinated by his brother Phraates. During the ensuing purge of rivals to the throne, the Parthian governor Monaises came over to Antonius' side; having installed him as his client king east of Antioch, Antonius followed Caesar's original plans by sending his forces north to Armenia. After his general Publius Canidius Crassus defeated the Armenian king Artavasdes, bringing him over to the Roman cause as an ally, Antonius and the bulk of the army continued south into the Parthian vassal state of Media (modern Azerbaijan), from where they would launch their ultimate attack on the Parthian heartland.

But, as their cumbersome baggage train travelled on behind, guarded by troops under Antonius' officer Oppius and the new Armenian ally Artavasdes, a surprise attack by the turncoat Monaises and fifty thousand mounted archers destroyed all their supplies and siege equipment. At this setback, Artavasdes withdrew his own forces to Armenia. All this was unknown to Antonius, who waited in vain outside Media's fortified capital for the siege engines he needed in order to attack the city. Stuck in a barren landscape with no supplies, against an enemy who refused to face him on the field, he was eventually forced to return west where twenty thousand of his men fell victim to dysentery, hunger and repeated attacks. And on the retreat over the Armenian mountains to Syria, another eight thousand were lost in severe blizzards at the onset of a bitter winter.

Yet at that same moment at the other end of the Roman world, deploying the ships loaned by Antonius, Octavian was celebrating victory over Sextus Pompeius. Octavian himself had been too ill to take part, and ‘could not even stand up to review his fleet when the ships were already at their fighting stations; but lay on his back and gazed up at the sky, never rising to show that he was alive until his admiral Marcus Agrippa had routed the enemy'. As Sextus fled east and many of his troops were crucified — a traditional form of Roman execution — the elimination of his senatorial support so alarmed Lepidus that he feared he might be next. He therefore seized Sicily, but Octavian's men easily retook the island and Lepidus was stripped of his powers, losing both Sicily and Africa Nova to Octavian. With the three-way power base now reduced to two-way, world politics were suddenly polarised between East and West, between Alexandria and Rome, and between the two remaining triumvirs, Antonius and Octavian.

Octavian now returned to Rome a hero, having freed the seas, brought an end to civil war and finally secured peace. The contrast with Antonius' situation could not have been more stark. Having lost more than a quarter of his entire force as a result of bad weather and treachery, the dejected triumvir finally reached the Phoenician coast, once more summoning Cleopatra to come and meet him with money and supplies. Even though she had recently given birth and it was the middle of winter, when rough seas normally closed the Mediterranean to traffic, Cleopatra bravely set sail. Antonius waited so impatiently he ‘could not hold out long at table, but in the midst of the drinking would often rise or spring up to look out, until she put into port'. After they returned to Alexandria in early 35
BC
, the couple received news that the king of Media had quarrelled with his overlord Phraates over the division of Roman booty, and was now offering them an alliance to include the use of his deadly cavalry when Antonius renewed the invasion. New plans were drawn up. Cleopatra would take responsibility for the navy needed to guard the Mediterranean. But Antonius still needed to augment his reduced land forces, since the twenty thousand men Octavia and her brother had promised him never materialised. A mere two thousand were eventually sent out only as far as Athens in the spring of 35
BC
, along with just seventy of the 130 ships that Antonius had originally lent him. And Octavian sent these reinforcements in the company of his most deadly weapon, his sister Octavia.

Keen to take back her husband in order to restore her position as wife and mother while competing with Cleopatra's contribution to the war effort, Octavia was the ultimate political pawn whose role as ‘dutiful wife', so skilfully exploited by her brother, created an obvious trap. If Antonius went to Athens to accept the troops and Octavia, he would risk losing Cleopatra's vital support. Yet the small number of soldiers on offer made this an unlikely scenario, and it seems that Octavian wanted him to repudiate Octavia. In so doing Antonius would be casting himself in an even weaker position following his recent military defeat.

While Antonius considered his options Cleopatra is said to have resorted to hysterical tactics, declaring undying love, feigning tears, throwing tantrums and apparently starving herself, ‘bringing her body down by slender diet'. Although later sources claimed that such unlikely behaviour decided the matter for Antonius, he could surely weigh up the two clear choices before him. For in the West were Octavia, their two daughters and a brother-in-law whose very existence threatened all that Antonius wanted to achieve. Against this in the East were Cleopatra and their three children, all descendants of Alexander whom he might still emulate through his military abilities. And in the Octavian-free East, Antonius could be his own man. Since his future as an independent force clearly lay with Cleopatra, Antonius wrote to Octavia in Athens, telling her to send him the troops, the ships and Antyllus, his eldest son by Fulvia, while she must return to her brother in Rome and care for Antyllus' younger brother and their two daughters. As expected of any Roman wife, she obeyed her husband while he continued gathering his forces at his Syrian base, Antioch, in preparation for the renewed war against Parthia.

As Cleopatra helped fund his expedition and maintained alliances across the East, the couple had sealed their agreement with the king of Media by betrothing their son Alexander Helios to the Median princess Iotape (Jatapa). They almost accepted an alliance from Sextus Pompeius until he joined with the Parthians and continued to undermine Roman authority by setting fire to Roman shipping. Eventually, however, he was captured by one of Antonius' client kings and executed by Antonius' general Marcus Titius, nephew of the Syrian governor Plancus.

Antonius had also sent out his envoy Dellius to Artavasdes of Armenia, giving him a final chance to redeem himself by suggesting he once again join with them to invade Parthia. His refusal provided sufficient reason for Antonius' forces to invade Armenia in spring 34
BC
. Artavasdes and his family were sent back to Egypt as prisoners, a Roman garrison installed under Canidius Crassus, and Antonius and Cleopatra issued coins bearing the news ‘Armenia conquered'. Their victory had been a ‘brilliant success', not only providing them with a solid base from which to take on Parthia the following summer, but opening up new markets to Roman traders and providing lands for Roman settlers. This news was so well received in Rome that it became imperative for Octavian to prove his own military abilities amidst well-founded rumours of cowardice.

Setting out with Agrippa to secure Italy's north-eastern borders against any future attacks from the east, they subdued volatile Illyricum (former Yugoslavia) as far as the Macedonian border and seized large amounts of booty. By injuring his knee, Octavian could finally claim to have received ‘honourable wounds' in battle. When he returned to Rome in late 34
BC
the Senate awarded Octavian a Triumph, which he postponed to allow public celebrations for Antonius' Armenian campaign and the death of Sextus. This was no magnanimous gesture, but aimed to draw maximum public attention to Antonius' continuing absence from Rome and from Octavia. The Senate set up public statues of Antonius and Octavian in the Forum and voted similar honours to their Roman wives Octavia and Livia. Both women were elevated to the rank of Vestal Virgin, the highest status a Roman woman could attain. Their modestly swathed statues would have proved a stark contrast to that of Cleopatra standing in Caesar's temple of Venus. The same comparisons were drawn between their menfolk, who similarly divided public opinion: images of their alter-egos Apollo and Herakles battling it out adorned the temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, where Octavian set up his own cult to counter the divine aura fostered by Antonius and Cleopatra. As Octavian knew full well, Antonius would not return to Rome to celebrate a traditional Triumph, for he had travelled back to Alexandria in the autumn of 34
BC
to be greeted as the second Alexander by an adoring public led by Cleopatra.

The couple celebrated their military success by reviving the great Ptolemaia festival initiated to honour her dynasty's lineage from both Alexander and Dionysos through displays of Eastern wealth. Painted scenes of Alexander at Narmouthis in the Fayum portrayed him Dionysos-like in triumphant procession, an image Caesar chose to repeat in his own Ptolemaic-style Triumph in Rome and which now Antonius was reviving, playing his favourite role of Dionysos to the hilt. Preceded by a vast retinue of celebrants, divine statuary and exotic spoils, Antonius appeared before the crowds, having given orders that he should be called Dionysos, his head bound with the ivy wreath, his person enveloped in the saffron robe of gold and wielding Dionysos' pinecone-topped thyrsos wand.

Riding down the great central highway of Alexandria in a splendid gold chariot, Antonius may well have replicated the route of the previous ‘Neos Dionysos', Auletes. He was described as ‘coming forth in procession around the temple of Isis by his war chariot ... to alight at the temple of Isis, lady of the Mound-of-Egypt', presumably referring to the Serapeum complex which was built on high ground, its walls sheathed in gleaming metal atop a great sweep of one hundred white stone steps. The black-robed Cleopatra sat enthroned above the proceedings to receive the conquering hero. As he formally presented her with all the spoils of war, including the Armenian king and his fellow prisoners secured in chains of silver as befitted their regal status, the entire city would have bowed down before her in thanksgiving in rites overseen by the youthful high priest Petubastis, who may also have led further celebrations to confirm the marriage of a couple who were now portrayed by artists as Isis and Dionysos. Yet the great triumphal procession was only a preliminary to the main event known to history as the ‘Donations of Alexandria'.

It was the culmination of everything that Cleopatra and Antonius had so far achieved. Surviving details suggest a spectacle initiated by Antonius but almost certainly stage-managed by Cleopatra. Taking place in Alexandria's huge Gymnasion stadium, traditional stage of the Ptolemaia festival, it featured displays of lavish wealth that demonstrated to all the power of this ultimate celebrity couple and their growing dynasty, and repeated the same ceremony of 52
BC
when Auletes presented his own four children to the Alexandrians.

At the centre of the proceedings a two-tiered platform of gleaming silver held six gold thrones, the two largest, on the higher tier, occupied by the glittering couple themselves. The royal consort Antonius, in full Roman military dress as Triumvir, Imperator and commander of the eastern provinces, was flanked by Roman legionary standards and a Roman bodyguard beneath a fine linen canopy topped by the twin Ptolemaic eagles; his wife Cleopatra ‘was then, as at other times when she appeared in public, dressed in the habit of the goddess Isis and gave audience to the people under the name of the New Isis'. With her black robes sharply defined against the Gymnasion's brilliant white marble walls and the colourful costumes of those around her, she was accompanied by her four children each enthroned on the second tier: the thirteen-year-old pharaoh Caesarion, the six-year-old twins Helios and Selene, and two-year-old Ptolemy Philadelphus.