Cleopatra the Great (41 page)

As Rome remained in a state of high alert waiting for Cleopatra and her hordes to cross the Adriatic, the time had long passed for any invasion of Italy to be successful — since Cleopatra, as a foreign invader, would turn Antonius' remaining Roman supporters against him. So Greece would remain the battleground. Having left Athens in the autumn, Antonius and Cleopatra moved west to Corinth to keep watch over the Gulf of Corinth. Linked to the fortress at Methone on the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese, it was part of Antonius' defensive chain stretching from Corcyra (Corfu) in the north down to Cyrene in the south, a means of keeping Egypt and the East safe while also forming a vital supply route to Alexandria.

Yet the bulk of their forces were concentrated around the Bay of Ambracia, the perfect harbour for more than four hundred warships ornamented with bronze prows representing Isis, armed Athena and centaurs together with brass spikes, forked prows and multiple rams. Armed with grappling irons, incendiary devices and catapults, each had a standard contingent of 120 soldiers plus a detachment of archers, while as many as 600 rowers, mixed crews of Egyptians, Phoenicians, Indians, Arabs and Sabaeans, were needed to manoeuvre up to ten banks of oars.

Late in 32
BC
, Antonius and Cleopatra arrived to make their winter camp at Aktion (Actium) on the bay's southern promotory, looking west to await Octavian. They were unaware that a traitor had been among them until Dellius defected to Octavian's side and, having made claims that Cleopatra had taken against him, revealed the couple's position and their battle plans. This allowed Agrippa to seize Methone and other key sites in Antonius' defensive network so that the vital supply chain from Alexandria fell apart.

As Octavian, Agrippa and some eighty thousand men made their camp only half a mile away north of the bay at a place named Toryne, meaning ladle', Antonius was cut off from his land forces strung out further north to protect the coast. With his advisers clearly alarmed at this situation, Cleopatra is said to have commented tersely ‘we may be frightened if Octavian has got hold of the ladle', mocking those still voicing their disapproval of her continued presence.

Such sentiments were certainly voiced in Octavian's camp where soldier-poet Horace claimed that ‘amid the soldiers' standards the sun shines on the shameful Egyptian pavilion', asking how any Roman could bring himself to ‘bear weapons at a woman's behest'. For Octavian would be facing Antonius ‘and — shocking! — accompanied by an Egyptian wife', spurring on her troops by shaking her ‘native sistrum' to summon up ‘all kinds of monstrous gods' as she challenged Rome's Neptune, Minerva and Venus. As these were all deities she herself worshipped and in one case even personified, claims that lecherous Canopus' prostitute queen dared to oppose her yapping Anubis against our Jupiter' likewise fell short of historical accuracy, since the couple's own coins bore the head ofjupiter, embellished with the rams' horns of Amun.

Then Octavian, having adopted the unprecedented title ‘Commander Caesar, son of the god' both to dismiss the existence of Caesarion and take on Living Isis, publicly prayed for victory to Mars before addressing his troops. He described Cleopatra as ‘this pestilence of a woman,' and Antonius as her effeminate, impotent appendage — let nobody consider him a Roman, but rather an Egyptian; let us not call him Antony but rather Serapis'. Then he dismissed the Egyptians as nothing but a ‘rabble' who ‘worship reptiles and beasts as gods, they embalm their bodies to make them appear immortal, they are most forward in effrontery, but most backward in courage. Worst of all, they are not ruled by a man, but are the slaves of a woman.'

Although he had only half as many ships as Antonius, he had Agrippa as his admiral, who on the basis of Dellius' intelligence was able to bring his fleet around to block the bay and trap most of the couple's ships. Yet despite the sparse nature of the surviving evidence, Antonius won a series of military encounters after crossing over to the north of the bay; one of these victories was revealed on coins, which named him ‘Imperator' for the fourth time as a title awarded by troops following a successful battle.

When Octavian turned down his offer of single combat, preferring an assassination attempt which nevertheless failed, simply played a waiting game as the summer temperatures rose. With most of their food supplies cut off, Antonius' men grew weaker. Then disease struck the camp: dysentery and malaria from marshy ground wiped out hundreds, until there were insufficient rowers to man the ships. Antonius was forced to burn 140 vessels to prevent them falling into enemy hands. Morale plummeted. Defections to Octavian included the consul Ahenobarbus, about whom Antonius joked that he must be missing his mistress. So, despite Cleopatra's fury, he sent his old comrade his staff and equipment, which he received shortly before he expired from fever.

Faced with this growing crisis, late in August 31
BC
Antonius called a council of war in an attempt to find the best way out of a no-win situation. Since most preferred a land-based solution, Canidius Crassus advised them to abandon the fleet, send Cleopatra back to Alexandria and then retreat inland north to Macedonia, joining with the Dacians to attack Octavian by land. Yet this was an all-or-nothing strategy that Cleopatra felt was too risky. Unwilling to hand over the fleet to give Octavian control of the sea, she believed they should try to save as many of their ships as possible, using the afternoon's offshore winds to break out, sail to Egypt and regroup to fight again. She was accused of forcing this strategy on Antonius against his better judgement, but he knew the opposition too would prefer a land battle; by using the element of surprise, they could still break out of the bay and turn to fight at sea, taking out as many of Octavian's ships as possible in the process.

So, ordering Canidius Crassus to take the army back to Egypt via Asia Minor, Antonius press-ganged unfortunate locals to fill the shortfall of rowers while the sails usually left ashore during fighting were taken on board for the flight ahead. And with the war chest loaded on to Cleopatra's flagship by night, they waited for a spell of rough sea to subside. When the morning of 2 September 31
BC
dawned calmly, Antonius, resplendent in his purple cloak, urged his men to fight on board ship as well as they did on land. Then as he boarded his flagship, Cleopatra, ‘rich in gaudy robes' and highly visible, boarded hers to await the breeze, which began to build up toward noon.

As their remaining fleet of around 240 ships moved slowly out of the bay, Cleopatra's squadron kept to the rear while Antonius, with his admiral, Sosius, to his left, sailed out towards Agrippa's ships on the right. Although they did not respond, he had little choice but to launch his attack to break the stalemate. For several hours the air was thick with arrows, javelins, spears, catapult missiles and fire-balls. It was said that ‘from the fifth to the seventh hour it raged with terrific losses on both sides', and with ‘Roman corpses floating in the sea', increasing quantities of debris were washed ashore as ships on both sides succumbed to the onslaught.

Although Octavian spent the battle laid low with sea-sickness, his ships drew Sosius out and, as a gap developed in the fighting, Cleopatra, keeping to the prearranged plan to escape and regroup, saw her chance and headed for open sea. Yet, surrounded by the smaller, lighter vessels of the enemy, Antonius could not go after her and was forced to transfer to a smaller craft to do so. The rest of their fleet, caught up in heavy fighting, were unable to follow and in rising seas had little choice but to surrender.

It was claimed that in the thick of battle Antonius decided suddenly to chase after his fickle wife who, ‘as a woman and as an Egyptian', had treacherously fled to save herself. Despite the fact that the sails each vessel carried clearly indicated that she was acting according to plan, Cleopatra has been condemned as a coward ever since and Antonius taken to be so besotted that he simply followed. Later compared to the Trojan prince Paris in his love for Helen of Troy, Antonius, ‘like another Paris, left the battle to fly to her arms; or rather, to say the truth, Paris fled when he was already beaten; Antony fled first, and, following Cleopatra, abandoned his victory', a tragic tale of doomed love yet complete nonsense.

The couple had broken out with around a hundred ships as opposed to ‘hardly one' as claimed by the enemy. Aktion had been ‘no heroic battle but a series of skirmishes on land and a few exchanges at sea', and although later transformed into legend by Octavian's poets, their subsequent eulogies were clearly ‘out of proportion with the actual events', since the poorly reported encounter had been no resounding victory or defeat for either side.

Octavian may have won by default, but Cleopatra and Antonius had succeeded in their plan for escape and lived to fight another day. And as her flagship pressed on south, the pragmatic Cleopatra was already making plans for the next stage in a war she still fully intended to win.

Having pulled off their successful escape from Aktion, Cleopatra and Antonius headed south down the coast of the Peloponnese. Still planning their next move, they reached Cape Taenarum after three days' sailing and despatched orders to Canidius Crassus who was leading the army overland to Egypt. But soon they received devastating news.

Although the men had followed orders as far as Macedonia, they had been intercepted by Octavian's forces and, during week-long negotiations, had wavered when offered a deal which included returning to their Italian homeland — something Antonius could never offer them. Despite Canidius' refusal to betray Antonius, his men finally switched sides. While he and his fellow officers made their escape to Egypt, Octavian claimed they had simply chosen to abandon their troops whose surrender he accepted.

The news that his men had deserted was far more of a disaster for Antonius than the shambolic encounter at Aktion, and as Cleopatra's flagship resumed its journey south over the Mediterranean he spent the crossing in silence at the prow of the ship. Although her servants did what they could to bring the couple together to eat and sleep, he slid into a deep depression while Cleopatra maintained her steely determination. Given that they still had troops in the East, together with part of their fleet, she was fully aware that the Mediterranean need not be the only theatre of operations, nor was it Egypt's only coastline. And having survived previous situations when her very life had hung in the balance, New Isis came increasingly to the fore in the face of her husband's increasing inertia.

Before heading for Alexandria, the couple sailed 125 miles west to the key communications base at Paraetonium (Mersa Matruh) on Egypt's western border, from where they intended to organise a counter-attack. Yet not only did they receive confirmation that their forces in Greece had defected, they discovered that their four remaining legions in Cyrene had also gone over to Octavian whose name had already begun to appear on Cyrene's coinage. To prevent the turncoat legions being sent over the border into Egypt, Antonius decided to remain at Paraetonium and do what he could to fortify the region. Since this was the place from which Alexander had launched his trailblazing expedition to Siwa, the Ptolemies had created a subterranean shrine here in his honour, and filled it with ancestral portraits including images of Cleopatra's grandfather Ptolemy IX. It seems highly likely that she followed Ptolemaic tradition by invoking the powers of her great ancestor to help restore Antonius' spirit.

Leaving him with around forty of their remaining ships, she took her sixty-strong squadron east to Alexandria, sailing into harbour with purple sails unfurled. With garlands about her prow, and flying the flags of victory to deny any rumour of defeat, she disembarked to flute music and hymns, ‘The Glorification of Cleopatra Philopator' honouring the ‘divine protectress of the country'.

Her confident facade allowed her to resume control of the administration. It was said that ‘as soon as she reached safety, she slew many of the foremost men, since they had always been displeased with her and were now elated over her disaster'. No doubt the recent betrayals by Dellius, Plancus and Ahenobarbus were foremost in her mind as she eliminated those within the Alexandrian elite who wished to exploit her weakened position. The most prominent victim of her purge was Artavasdes, former king of Armenia, who had not only betrayed Antonius during the first Parthian campaign but refused to pay her homage. She sent his head as a gift to his sworn enemy the king of Media, whose young daughter was already betrothed to Cleopatra's son Alexander Helios.

As she continued to renew alliances with Antonius' remaining vassals, no doubt unsurprised that Herod of Judaea, who had once named his palace ‘Antonia', was already planning his harbour city of Caesarea in honour of his new overlord Octavian, the latter was still in no position to invade Egypt since Aktion had not been as decisive as was later claimed. There were still centres of fierce resistance: the community of gladiators the couple had established at Cyzicus in Asia Minor marched south through Syria, for as soon as they heard what had happened they started for Egypt to help their rulers — and if necessary would fight to the death. So, needing to secure Greece and counter the couple's remaining popularity, Octavian began to work back through the couple's recent itinerary from Athens to Samos until he received news of serious rebellion in Italy. Although a conspiracy led by the son of the former triumvir Lepidus had been put down and its leader executed, Agrippa was sent back to maintain calm and the thousands of soldiers who had been promised so much by Octavian were now demanding their rewards.

Left with little choice, Octavian was forced to return to Italy in winter seas so stormy they claimed the life of his personal physician. When he finally reached Brundisium he was met by the Senate, but his hero's welcome was marred by jeering crowds of angry veterans demanding payment. Although temporarily appeasing them with land previously awarded to Antonius' troops, Octavian knew that in the long term he desperately needed the fabled wealth of the Ptolemies which Cleopatra still possessed and planned to use.

To augment the 20,000 talents remaining in her war chest, later sources claimed she ‘plundered her country's gods and her ancestors' sepulchres' and ‘did not exempt even the most holy shrines' in a charge of sacrilege which has long been accepted even though she had a tradition of funding the temples as a means of maintaining native support. And clearly the Egyptians did continue to support her, since a delegation from southern Egypt demonstrated their willingness to bear arms on her behalf to defend their country against Octavian, and her statues continued to be venerated in temples throughout the land by a clergy headed by her royal relative, the high priest Petubastis. So if temple funds were indeed forthcoming, they must have taken the form of voluntary contributions.

Certainly one of Cleopatra's very first acts after returning home was to honour Isis and Min in their joint temple at Koptos, with a stone stela dated 21 September 31
BC
inscribed ‘year 22 which is equivalent of year 7, first month of akhet, day 22 of the female pharaoh, the bodily daughter of kings who were on their part kings born of kings, Cleopatra, the beneficent father-loving goddess and of pharaoh Ptolemy called Caesar, the father and mother loving god'. Only Caesarion was portrayed, perhaps promoted alone in case anything should happen to his mother and co-ruler. The text then referred to royal payments to the Buchis bull cult and the wages for local linen weavers who prepared the creature's funerary wrappings. Yet such royal favour may well have been prompted by the fact that Koptos was the main access point from the Nile to the Red Sea, the route guarded by Min and Isis whose assistance Cleopatra sought in her forthcoming plans to safeguard her treasure, her children and herself.

For while Egypt was surrounded to the east, west and north, the south remained free, and this is where Cleopatra planned her next move. Having accepted that the Mediterranean belonged to Octavian, she decided against moving to Spain to join Pompeius' few remaining supporters and instead staked her future on Egypt's other coastline. As a region beyond Octavian's reach yet familiar to the Ptolemies, particularly to Cleopatra who spoke many of its languages, the Red Sea region encompassed much of southern Egypt — even if enemy forces invaded the Delta, the south would continue to regard itself as an independent region strongly supportive of her regime. Relocation to an area on the direct sea route with India would also offer new opportunities for travel and trade. A fine bronze figurine of Isis' son Harpokrates with his characteristic sidelock and the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, manufactured in Alexandria but found in the Punjab, was perhaps advance propaganda for plans she began to implement by means of'a most bold and wonderful enterprise'.

What she did was transport her remaining fleet of sixty ships, which were presumably far too large to pass through the existing canal, ‘over the small space of land which divides the Red Sea from the sea near Egypt'. It was said that ‘the narrowest place is not much above 300 furlongs [about 40 miles] across' so ‘over this neck of land Cleopatra had formed a project of dragging her fleet and setting it afloat in the Arabian Gulf, using Egyptian-style wooden rollers or perhaps a wheeled transporter system like one she may have recently seen in Corinth in which ships were transported overland.

But although the plan gave real scope for the future, it ended in sudden disaster when her great ships were destroyed by ‘the Arabians of Petra' led by their ruler Malchus. Having long resented the Ptolemies' territorial incursions and trade links, the Arabs had never forgiven Cleopatra's seizure of their lucrative bitumen trade. Their devastating arson attack, supported by Octavian's newly appointed governor of Syria and Herod of Judaea, settled some old scores.

If Antonius' lowest point had been the defection of his land forces, the destruction of her fleet, which had offered them all a means of survival, was surely Cleopatra's darkest hour. Yet even through this she remained active, for while she still had her treasure she had her power. With Antonius back from Paraetonium, having done what he could to safeguard the western routes into Egypt, Cleopatra gave orders that the eastern approach via Pelusium was to be secured while she prepared to take on Octavian, using the treasury he so desperately needed as a bargaining tool. Deciding to split the wealth, she would keep half in Alexandria within her vault-like mausoleum while entrusting the rest to her teenage co-ruler Caesarion who would in due course be sent abroad, far away from Octavian who was already on his way.

By spring 30
BC
he was already in Rhodes, where Cleopatra sent word she was willing to abdicate on condition that her children were allowed to rule Egypt. She accompanied her message with a large bribe and the royal insignia of an Eastern monarch, in much the same way that Rome had once sent Ptolemy IV a toga in place of his favoured Dionysiac garb — no doubt making a point to Octavian, who famously insisted on the toga as a means of emphasising the difference between Romans and effete Easterners. Although he kept the money, and presumably the exotic ensemble, his response was non-commital and it was repeated when she sent the tutor Euphronios with another bribe to put the same request.

While Cleopatra and her children continued to live in the palace at Alexandria, quite possibly on Antirrhodos, a despondent Antonius preferred his own company in the light of continuing defections which had even included his old ally Herod. Sharing the sentiments of the misanthrope Timon of Athens and his famous epitaph ‘here I am laid, my life of misery done, ask not my name, I curse you every one', Antonius gave form to his feelings by extending a promontory into the sea to build the Timoneum, a granite and marble retreat close to Cleopatra's palace on Antirrhodos to the west but completely separated by water, allowing her to see him but not to reach him.

He sent Octavian his son Antyllus, once engaged to Octavian's infant daughter Julia; the boy passed on the message that his father simply wanted to live as a private citizen in Alexandria, or in Athens if that were not possible. Although Octavian kept the money accompanying his request, he sent his answer back only to Cleopatra, telling her ‘there was no reasonable favour which she might not expect, if she put Antonius to death or expelled him from Egypt'.

Although Antonius then offered to kill himself on condition Cleopatra would be spared, it was jealousy that finally roused him from his inertia. Octavian's handsome young freedman Thyrsos was enjoying such prolonged audiences with Cleopatra that he gave orders for Thyrsos to be flogged for his impertinence. Sending him back to Octavian with a note claiming his ‘busy impertinent ways had provoked him', Antonius added that Octavian could even the score by flogging Antonius' own freedman Hipparchus, who had recently gone over to Octavian's side.

Finally leaving his self-imposed exile, Antonius decided to enjoy what was left of his life and ‘was received by Cleopatra in the palace and set the whole city into a course of feasting, drinking and presents'. Although she kept her own thirty-ninth birthday celebrations purposefully low-key, she must have been deeply relieved to have him back, insisting that his fifty-second was celebrated on 14 January 30
BC
with such magnificence ‘that many of the guests who sat down in want went home wealthy men'.

To make a symbolic severance from the traitors Plancus, Titius and Dellius, the couple formally dissolved ‘The Inimitable Livers' and in its place founded the ‘Synapothanoumenoi', ‘Those who will die together' or ‘The Suicide Club'. Made up of hard-core supporters who wore chaplets of poisoned flowers, each vowed they would die with the couple when the time came, including Canidius Crassus who had bravely defied Octavian and made it back to Egypt.

Wishing to find a painless means to end her life should the need arise, Cleopatra was determined to follow the example of her uncle Ptolemy of Cyprus who had commited suicide when the Romans had taken his kingdom. At all costs she wished to avoid the fate of her half-sister Arsinoe who had been forced to walk in chains through Rome, the city she herself had once ruled with Caesar. With no intention of ever returning, certainly not in any Triumph of Octavian, Cleopatra adamantly declared, ‘I will not be shown in a Triumph'.

So to this end, ‘her daily practice' involved research within the Mouseion on the subject of toxicology, and ‘busied in making a collection of all varieties of poisonous drugs and in order to see which of them were the least painful in the operation, she had them tried upon prisoners condemned. But finding that the quick poisons always worked with sharp pains and that the less painful were slow, she next tried venomous animals, and watched with her own eyes whilst they were applied, one creature to the body of another.' Alexandria's first librarian Demetrios of Phaleron was said to have chosen to die by the bite of an asp, a form of execution used in Alexandria and considered by the Greek doctor Galen a humane method. Indeed, it was said that ‘she pretty well satisfied herself that nothing was comparable to the bite of the asp, which without convulsion or groaning brought on a heavy drowsiness and lethargy with a gentle sweat on the face, the sense being stupefied by degrees; the patient, in appearance, being sensible of no pain, but rather troubled to be disturbed or awakened like those that are in a profound natural sleep'. So she kept snakes and ‘other reptiles to end her life', no doubt in the royal zoo.