The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March (28 page)

Clodia to Catullus.

[
By return messenger
.]

Yes, it is true, dear Gaius. I am going into the country and alone, entirely alone. That is, only with Sosigenes the astronomer. The life of the city has become tiresome. I shall write you frequently. I shall think of you with affection. I am unhappy to hear that you have been ill. I think it would be wise for you to go to your home. I am sending presents for you to give to your mother and your sisters.

You ask me to assign you a task. What task could I assign you that your genius has not already whispered in your ear? Forget all that I have ever said about your verses and remember only this: you and Lucretius alone have made Rome a new Greece. You once said that the writing of tragedies was not your work. At another time you said that you might be able to write a ‘Helena.’ Any verses you write would give me happiness; if you also wrote a ‘Helena,’ we could play it when I return from the country. I shall leave on the morning after the Queen’s reception and shall return a few days before the festival [
of the Good Goddess
].

Take every care of your health. Do not forget your ‘Oxeyed.’

Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

1008. [Of Cleopatra’s admiration for the wine of Capri.]

1009 [
Apology for tardiness in sending off the packet
.]

1010. [
Of love poetry
.] We are all vulnerable to the songs of the country people and of the market place. There have been times when I have gone about tormented for days by some song heard over the garden wall or sung by my soldiers around their campfires.
‘Don’t say no, no, no, little Belgian,’
or
‘Tell me, moon, where is Chloe now?’
But when the verses are of a sovereign hand, it is no torment, but – Hercules! – an enlargement. My stride is doubled and I am twice my height.

Today I can hardly refrain from blurting out to the faces of all my callers some lines – no need to cite the verses of Greece for, by the Immortal Gods, we now fashion our own songs in Rome.

Ille mi par esse deo videtur,

Ille, si fas est, superare divos,

Qui sedens adversus itentidem te
Spectat et audit

Dulce ridentem. . . .

[
That man to me seems equal to a God,
That man surpasses the Gods – if such
a thought be allowed –
Who sitting before you
Gazes and hears you
Sweetly laughing
. . . .]

Those are the words of Catullus, written in what were for him happier times. I have reason to suspect that he is now the unhappiest of men. He captured his noontime in song; I am now at high noon and he has heightened its blaze for me.

Notes from Clodia to Marc Antony.

[
Toward the end of October.
]

Court was very brilliant today. The oldest portions of the Roman wall have fallen before the invader: Servilia; Fulvia Manso; Sempronia Metella.

Your absence was noted. Majesty deigned to speak graciously of you, but I know her now and that pinched expression about her mouth.

Tell my dear Incomparable [
Cytheris
] that the Queen has been inquiring about her. She said that the Dictator has spoken of her, the Incomparable, with great admiration.

After you left the Nile was overflowing its banks with ill-contained rage. She muttered to me that there was an Egyptian proverb that said: ‘All the braggart’s wounds are on his back.’ I protested and was taken into the boudoir and given some pastries. I told of your bravery at Pharsalia; your bravery against Aristobulus. I have no doubt you were very brave in Spain, too, but I knew no details so I invented a towering exploit for you before Cordova. It is now history. She abruptly, too abruptly, changed the subject.

[
October 27
.]

All is ready.

Egypt is certainly yours, if you do exactly what I tell you. And when I tell you. All depends on the when.

Arrive early at the reception and pay little attention to her.

The Master of the Citadel will certainly be going home early with his wife and aunt.

I shall arrive late. I shall tell her that you are going to propose to show her the greatest feat of daring ever exhibited in Rome and I shall urge her not, oh not, not to consent to see it. And is not that what it will be? – the greatest feat of daring ever seen in Rome?

Do not forget your promise, however. You are not to fall in love with her. If there is any danger of that, I refuse to help you and all wagers are off.

Destroy this note, or rather give it to my messenger so that I may destroy it.

The Lady Julia Marcia to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

[
October 28
.]

With what joy, my dear boy, I received your letter and learned that I may write to you. And that I may visit you. Let me come soon after the new year. All my thoughts are bent now on the Ceremonies [
of the Good Goddess
]; then I must return to my farm, put the year’s accounts in order, and supervise the Saturnalia in our hill village. That done I shall come to the South – with what joy!

You say that you have time to read long letters and I generally have all too much time to write them. This will not be a long letter, I trust; it is just a word to acknowledge yours and to tell you of the events of last night which I think will interest you. You assure me that you have channels whereby you learn the externals of what passes in Rome and I shall try to restrict my account to such matters as I observe personally and as are not likely to have reached you by other hands.

Last night took place the reception at which the Queen of Egypt opened her palace to Rome. You will be told by others, no doubt, of the magnificence of the appointments, the lakes, the shows, the games, the tumult, the food, and the music.

I have made a new friend where least I expected to acquire one. There are perhaps reasons why the Queen should go to considerable lengths to ingratiate herself with me, but I think I am not easily deceived and I can say that the interest we took in one another was not feigned. Each was an object of curiosity to the other, each of an extreme difference; such contrasts with a touch of distrust may turn to contempt and ridicule, with a touch of good will to delighted friendship.

I arrived by boat with my nephew and his wife; we were greeted by the Queen at the gate which had been built as a reproduction of the Temple of Philae on the Nile. Our Tiber was all Egyptian and of new beauty; and such was the Queen. There are those who deny it; surely their eyes are askew with prejudice. Her skin is the colour of the finest Greek marble and as smooth; her eyes are brown, large and most living. From them and from her low but ever-varying voice proceeds an unbroken message of happiness, well-being, amusement, intelligence, and assurance. Our Roman beauties were there in number and I became aware that Volumnia and Livia Dolabella and Clodia Pulcher were stiff, ill at ease, and as it were haunted by an imminent irritability.

The Queen was dressed, I am told, as the Goddess Isis. The jewels she wore and the embroidery on her gown were of blue and green. She led us first through the gardens, directing her remarks chiefly to Pompeia who seemed struck with fright and could find no answers, I am sorry to say. The Queen’s manner is completely simple and should be able to banish constraint from all who address her; so it did with me. She led us to her throne and presented to us the nobles and ladies of her court. She then turned to greet the long lines of guests who had been waiting while her attention was given to the Dictator.

I had intended to return early to bed, but lingered viewing the countless diversions with friends of my generation and tasting the extraordinary dainties (much to the fright of Sempronia Metella who assured me that they had been poisoned). Suddenly I felt a hand brush my arm. It was the Queen asking me if I would sit down with her. She led me to a sort of bower, warmed by braziers, and seating me beside her on a couch smiled at me for a moment in silence.

‘Noble Lady,’ she said, ‘it is the custom in my country when one woman meets another to ask certain questions . . .’

‘I am delighted, great Queen,’ I said, ‘to find myself in Egypt, and to observe the customs of that country.’

‘We ask one another,’ she replied, ‘how many children we have had and whether the confinements were difficult.’

At this we both burst out laughing. ‘That is not a Roman custom,’ I said, thinking of Sempronia Metella, ‘but I think it very sensible.’ And I told her my history as a mother and she told me hers. She drew from a cabinet beside her some admirable paintings of her two children and showed them to me. ‘All else,’ she whispered, ‘is like a mirage of our deserts. I adore my children. I could wish to have a hundred. What is there in the world to equal one of those darling heads, those darling fragrant heads? But I am a Queen,’ she said, looking at me with tears in her eyes, ‘I must go on journeys. I must be busy with a hundred other things. Have you grandchildren?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘None.’

‘Do you understand what I mean?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Majesty, I do.’

And we sat silent. My dear boy, that is not the conversation I expected to have with the Witch of the Nile.

We were interrupted by my nephew bringing forward Marc Antony and the actress Cytheris. They were indeed taken aback to see the two of us sitting in tears amid the loud orchestras and the high torches.

‘We were talking of life and death,’ said the Queen, rising and passing her hand across her cheeks. ‘My party is the happier for it.’

She appeared to ignore my great-nephew, but she addressed Cytheris: ‘Gracious lady,’ she said, ‘I have been told – and by no mean judge – that no one speaks the Latin language, nor the Greek, more beautifully than you do.’

This letter is already too long. I shall be writing you again before I see you. Your last request I shall indeed comply with explicitly. Your letter and the prospect of my visit have made me very happy.

Cytheris, the Actress, to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

[
October 28
.]

I have been looking forward with happy expectation, my dear friend, to my visit to you in December. We shall talk and we shall read and again I shall climb all the heights and descend to all the coves. No cold and no storm will discourage me.

Something took place last night which renders this voyage doubly grateful. A long and dear association of my life came to an end; a bell rang; a music ceased. You are the only person who will ever hear any word of it from me. You, who have heard so much of its progress, will hear its ending. The life that I have lived with Marc Antony for fifteen years has come to an end.

Since long before the arrival of the Queen of Egypt, Marc Antony had been engaged in mocking her reputation for fascination and astuteness. He boasted to me of how he had been able to irritate the Dictator by representing himself as superior to any meretricious charms that Cleopatra might cast over natures less firmly rooted than his own. Few can have been in the position that I have been to observe the unbelievable patience with which the Dictator has supported the thoughtlessness of his nephew, a patience which has borne provocations of greater consequence than the one I am describing – though they could scarcely have been more exasperating.

Since the Queen’s arrival, Marc Antony has attended her court frequently, and reports have reached me that there he has harassed her with an ironic gallantry. The Queen, apparently, did not counter this impertinence with playful superiority as she could well have done; but on several occasions in full presence she rebuffed him with undisguised anger. Rome began talking.

Last night we attended together her great reception. My friend was in the highest spirits. On the way I noticed for the first time that his remarks about her betrayed true admiration and a sort of amazed delight. I knew then that, still unknown to himself, he was the victim of passion.

When I see you I shall describe to you the magnificence of the palace and of the entertainment offered to us. I do not know how such receptions are conducted in Alexandria, but I suspect that the Queen was amazed to see how ill we Romans behave at large gatherings.

As usual the women withdrew into constrained groups, standing or sitting by themselves. In other portions of the grounds the younger men, drinking heavily, became boisterous and engaged in those inevitable contests of daring and strength which are their only pastime. You may well imagine that Marc Antony was in the forefront. They built first one and then another bonfire and forming in long lines raced across the gardens to jump them. I have learned to turn my back to these hazards; but I was soon aware that my friend was climbing trees and leaping from bough to roof followed by those whom he had challenged. Accidents occurred; heads and limbs were broken, but the tumultuous drunken singing only rose the higher. The exquisite pageants which the Queen had prepared were left to be viewed by a few women and a few grandfathers.

By midnight the men began to tire of these sports; many lay in drunken sleep among the bushes; the bonfires died down. A ballet was staged amid many-coloured torches on an island and the artificial lake was filled with swimming girls.

The Dictator came upon me watching this show and did me the honour of sitting beside me. His wife had not enjoyed the evening and was pressing him to take his leave. I am now convinced that what then took place had been contrived by Clodia Pulcher, though she had worked with material all too ready to her hand. Clodia, like Marc Antony, had been attending the Queen’s court almost daily. Rightly or wrongly, she had come to regard herself as the Queen’s intimate and principal confidante in Rome. I had had occasion to witness Clodia’s arrival at the party. She came late, accompanied by her brother and a sprinkling of gallants from the Aemilian Draughts and Swimming Club. The Queen had long since left her station before the throne and was mingling with the guests. Throughout the greater part of the evening the Dictator had remained by his wife’s side and had merely paid the Queen the most objective deference; but at this moment they were advancing side by side toward the avenue, returning from a fight between lions and tigers which had taken place in the stockade for wild beasts. Clodia saw before her a situation in which she could never participate: a woman who envied no one in the world; a Dictator twenty years younger; and a happiness that was then expressing itself in a laughter that meant ill-will to no one. I have known Clodia for many years; I could divine the pain that this spectacle cost her.