Cleopatra and Antony Page 19

  Antony was every bit as susceptible to women as Caesar had been, perhaps more so. Plutarch thought:

  His weakness for the opposite sex showed an attractive side of his character, and even won him the sympathy of many people, for he often helped others in their love affairs and always accepted with good humor the jokes they made about his own . . . Well versed in the art of putting the best possible face on disreputable actions, he never feared the audit of his copulations, but let nature have her way, and left behind him the foundations of many families.

  He was about to encounter another royal ruler ready to let nature have her way in pursuit of her goals and who would dominate the rest of his life.

  *Ballista gives us our word ballistic.

  *Shakespeare changed “stagnant water” to “stale of horses” when he cribbed this account from Plutarch, showing his masterly touch at heightening dramatic imagery.

  *According to Herodotus, Artemesia unsuccessfully urged Xerxes not to fight at Salamis. She herself fought bravely in the battle until his defeat and then escaped by sinking a ship in her way, causing Xerxes to remark, “My men have become women and my women men.”

  *The Greek god Dionysus was known to the Romans as Bacchus.

  *To further enhance his divine status, Octavian apparently claimed that his mother, Atia, had been ravished by Apollo in the form of a snake nine months before giving birth to him and had been left with a permanent mark on her stomach from the snake’s fangs.

  PART V

  Taming Heracles

  CHAPTER 13

  Mighty Aphrodite

  IN THE EARLY SUMMER OF 41, Antony arrived in Tarsus, future birthplace of St. Paul, on the river Cydnus in what today is southern Turkey. Pompey had made it the prosperous capital of the new Roman province of Cilicia but Antony found a city impoverished by Cassius’ tax demands. Appian described how “being pressed for payment with violence by Cassius’ soldiers, the people first sold all their public property and next they coined all the sacred articles used in religious processions and the temple offerings into money. When this was still not sufficient, the magistrates sold free persons into slavery, first girls and boys, afterward women and miserable old men, who brought a very small price, and finally young men.”

  Antony ordered any remaining citizens still enslaved to be freed, then turned his attention to one important ruler who had yet to account for her conduct during the recent civil war. Antony dispatched the clever, smooth-tongued Quintus Dellius to Alexandria to summon Egypt’s queen and Caesar’s former mistress to appear before him in Tarsus.

  Cleopatra must have been relieved by the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi. She also must have been pleased that Antony, whom she knew, rather than Caesar’s heir Octavian—an unknown quantity and potential threat to Caesarion—had emerged as the Roman Empire’s new leader in the east. Although there was a threat implicit in Antony’s summons, Dellius soothed any fears she might have had. Plutarch related that “as soon as Dellius, Antony’s messenger, saw what she looked like and observed her eloquence and subtle intelligence, he realized that the idea of harming such a woman would never occur to Antony . . . and he allayed her worries about Antony, describing him as the most agreeable and kind leader in the world.”

  Even without Dellius’ reassurances, Cleopatra was probably not unduly worried. She could readily defend her actions and point to the help she had tried to provide to Antony and Octavian. She was probably already looking beyond self-justification, assessing how to turn her meeting with Antony to her long-term advantage. Dellius, it seems, was her willing accomplice. Guessing that “she would come to occupy a very important place in his [Antony’s] life,” Dellius “set about ingratiating himself with the Egyptian and encouraging her to come to Cilicia dressed up in all her finery . . . Since she believed Dellius . . . she readily expected to bring Antony to her feet.”

  Eight years earlier, when she had been less experienced, Cleopatra had conquered Caesar. Now she was twenty-nine years old. She would be going to Antony, in Plutarch’s words, “at the age when the beauty of a woman is at its most dazzling and her intellectual powers are at their peak. So she equipped herself with plenty of gifts and money, and the kind of splendid paraphernalia one would expect someone in her exalted position from a prosperous kingdom, to take. Above all, however, she went there relying on herself and on the magical arts and charms of her person.”

  Plutarch was critical of Cleopatra, depicting her as a cold-blooded siren who as well as seducing Caesar had bedded Gnaeus, son of Pompey the Great, an accusation for which there is no supporting evidence. Yet his conclusion that Cleopatra intended to dazzle and “vanquish” Antony was probably entirely correct. With her gift for spotting a good opportunity, she planned her campaign with as much care and calculation as her former lover Caesar had planned his military ventures, assessing her target’s vulnerabilities, one of which, she knew, was a predilection for beautiful, flamboyant women.

  Cleopatra had also noted Antony’s enthusiastic reception in the East as the “new Dionysus.” This title had once been accorded her own father, Auletes, and was deeply intertwined with the Ptolemies since Dionysus was their legendary ancestor and an especial patron of the royal house of Egypt. One Ptolemaic king even had the god’s ivy leaves tattooed on his body. Cleopatra’s ancestor Ptolemy II had introduced a lavish festival, the Ptolemaia, held every four years. Accounts of one festival describe a riotous procession that took two days to pass through the broad streets of Alexandria. The high point was a fifteen-foot vine-and-ivy-decked statue of Dionysus in a robe of purple and gold drawn by 180 sweating, heaving men. Behind him, on another cart, sixty men dressed as satyrs trampled grapes in a vast wine press in time to the piping of flutes while a further cart bore a straining, overflowing wineskin stitched from leopard skins and holding twenty-six thousand gallons, ready to be dispensed to the clamorous spectators. All three were followed by a 150-foot long golden penis embellished with a three-foot-wide starburst at its tip to emphasize the priapic aspect of the god.

  Dionysus, who was closely identified with Osiris, was not simply the god of wine and joyous physical abandon whose diaphanously clad followers indulged in wild sexual rites but a deity of deep mystical significance. He was worshipped as brave and benevolent and his manifold virtues were closely associated with Alexander the Great, whose triumphs in the east were often depicted as an inspired Dionysian progress and whose golden image was also carried in the procession.

  As well as playing at being Dionysus, Antony also deliberately evoked his own supposed divine ancestor, the hero-god Heracles, who was believed to feast at Dionysus’ table. The image of the muscular, lion-skin-clad strongman overcoming obstacle after obstacle chimed with Antony’s growing vision of himself. Plutarch painted a convincing picture of a man who modeled himself on a heroic deity:

  There was a noble dignity about Antony’s appearance. His beard was well-grown, his forehead broad, his nose aquiline, and these features combined to give him a bold and masculine look, which is found in the statues and portraits of Heracles. In fact there was an ancient tradition that the blood of the Heracleidae ran in Antony’s family, and Antony liked to believe that his own physique lent force to the legend. He also deliberately cultivated it in his choice of dress, for whenever he was going to appear before a large crowd of people, he wore his tunic belted low over his hips, a large sword at his side, and a heavy cloak.*

  If Antony wished to play the god, Cleopatra was more than equipped to outdo him in the divinity stakes. Not only was she regarded by her people as a living goddess, the personification of Isis, but the Ptolemies claimed Heracles as well as Dionysus as an ancestor. The mother of Ptolemy I was supposedly a direct descendant of Heracles.

  To arouse Antony’s interest and heighten his expectations, Cleopatra did not rush to obey his summons but took her time. Plutarch related that “although she received many letters from both Antony and his friends demanding her presence,” she treated
them with scorn. In addition to being determined to show Antony she was an independent ruler and her own mistress, there was another motive for Cleopatra’s delay: she genuinely needed time to prepare. In an age when the great majority of the population in Alexandria or Rome was illiterate, spectacle was the medium for communicating with the masses. Just as Caesar’s magnificent Triumphs celebrating Rome’s mastery of the world had wrung roars of approval from near-hysterical crowds, so Cleopatra intended to create a pageant of royal wealth and divine beauty that would not be easily forgotten. Thus she chose her own moment to depart with her royal barge and its accompanying escort of ships across the Mediterranean for Tarsus.

  Plutarch lusciously described how Cleopatra made the final twelve miles of her journey up the river Cydnus to Tarsus:

  She came sailing in a barge with a poop of gold, its purple sails billowing in the wind, while her rowers caressed the water with oars of silver which dipped in time to the music of the flute, accompanied by pipes and lutes. Cleopatra herself reclined beneath a canopy spangled with gold, dressed in the character of Aphrodite as we see her in paintings, while on either side to complete the picture stood boys costumed as Cupids who cooled her with their fans. Instead of a crew the barge was lined with the most beautiful of her waiting-women attired as Nereids and Graces, some at the rudders, others at the tackle of the sails, and all the while an indescribably rich scent, exhaled from countless incense burners, was wafted from the vessel to the river-banks. Great crowds accompanied this royal progress, some of them following the queen on both sides of the river from its very mouth . . . And the word spread on every side that Aphrodite had come to revel with Dionysus, for the happiness of Asia.

  The imagery suited Cleopatra perfectly. Aphrodite, born from the shimmering waves of the sea, was not only a counterpart to the divine Isis, whose living reincarnation she claimed to be, but, like her Roman equivalent Venus, the goddess of sexual pleasure and patroness of the sexually passionate wife. Furthermore, Tarsus had been known for four centuries as the place where the goddess of love had encountered and made love with Dionysus, divine ruler of the east. What better way to signal her intentions than to arrive as Aphrodite made flesh?

  Antony, at whom this sensual assault was principally aimed, was, as no doubt intended, left feeling and looking rather foolish. He had been seated at the public tribunal in the marketplace ready to receive his royal visitor but she had not disembarked and come to him as he had anticipated his status—his dignitas—required. Instead, as frenzied excitement surged through the city at the arrival of the Egyptian queen, the crowds hurried off to the riverbank to see the amazing sight for themselves, leaving Antony alone with a few guards and attendants. Somewhat nonplussed, he sent Cleopatra an invitation to dine with him that night but, unwilling either to surrender the initiative or to break the spell she had cast, she bade him instead come to her aboard her royal barge. Also her barge was her own territory—in a subtle, clever way she was reversing Antony’s summons to her and making Antony come to Egypt.

  Feasting is an age-old metaphor for sexual pleasure as well as its frequent precursor in practice. Cleopatra had prepared a scene to arouse and tantalize. Antony was greeted by a spectacular sight. With the care of a film director, Cleopatra had arranged an “amazing multitude of lights.” Plutarch wrote of “so many lights hanging on display all over the place, and ordered and disposed at such angles to one another and in such intricate arrangements—some forming squares, others circles—that the sight was one of rare delight and remarkable beauty.” Purple tapestries shot through with silver and gold gleamed on the walls. Soft, silken dining couches awaited the Roman guests, the tables before them spread with golden drinking vessels and dishes crusted with precious jewels. Antony the triumvir was reduced to the uncertainty of a naïve boy, stammering his amazement at such opulence. Cleopatra apologized that in the time available she had been unable to make more suitable arrangements for his reception. Next time, she promised, she would provide better. In the meantime she nonchalantly made him a present of everything used at the feast—couches, goblets and all.

  The following night, Antony dined again with Cleopatra on her barge in the heady incense-laden air that was an Egyptian specialty. Egyptian perfumes had been celebrated since the days of the pharaohs for their intensity and also their subtlety. Helen of Troy was said to have been trained in their use in Egypt. As Cleopatra had promised, the magnificence of the previous night’s banquet was eclipsed. As well as being given everything they had used during the banquet, the principal guests were presented with Arab horses with gold trappings and borne home on litters with lithe Ethiopian boys, flaming torches in their hand, running lightly ahead through the dark streets of Tarsus.

  The next day, Cleopatra agreed to dine with Antony as his guest. The forty-year-old general “desperately wanted to outdo the brilliance and thoroughness of her preparations but he was outdone and defeated on both counts by her. He was the first to make fun of his meagre offerings.” It must have amused her to see the great general abashed and embarrassed by what Plutarch calls a “rustic awkwardness.” Cleopatra read Antony’s character with ease, quickly deducing how to appeal to him. His jokes revealed to her that “there was a wide streak of the coarse soldier in him. So she adopted this same manner towards him . . . in an unrestrained and brazen fashion.” The disapproving Plutarch also lamented that Cleopatra unlocked latent vice in Antony. “For a man such as Antony there could be nothing worse than the onset of his love for Cleopatra. It awoke a number of feelings that had previously been lying quietly buried within him, stirred them up into a frenzy, and obliterated and destroyed the last vestiges of goodness, the final redeeming features that were still holding out in his nature.”

  Appian believed that Antony succumbed to Cleopatra’s charms “at first sight.” “Antony was,” he wrote, “amazed at her wit as well as her good looks, and became her captive as though he were a young man, although he was forty years of age. It is said that he was always very susceptible in this way.” Appian also believed, with the benefit of hindsight, that “this passion brought ruin upon them and upon all Egypt besides.” Whether Cleopatra and Antony’s affair indeed began in Tarsus is unclear but seems very probable. Like Caesar, Antony saw himself as a great lover. He was certainly a great womanizer who enjoyed sex.

  On the fourth night, Cleopatra entertained Antony in a saloon on her barge whose floors were strewn with drifts of fragrant rose petals eighteen inches deep. Some ancient writers claim that to further impress Antony with her wealth, if any more demonstrations were needed, Cleopatra wagered that she could spend an almost unimaginable sum—10 million sesterces—on a single meal. Antony, who loved a bet, accepted eagerly and waited to see what new extravagances she would conjure. The banquet duly took place but though again extremely lavish, one of Antony’s companions calculated that it could not have cost anywhere near the obscene sum promised by the Egyptian queen.

  A smiling Cleopatra waved a hand and a small table was set before her. Upon it was placed a single goblet. She then removed one of the two huge, glistening pearls she was wearing in her ears and held it up for all to see. Pearls were immensely valuable in the ancient world. Pliny the Elder wrote that “the topmost rank among all things of price is held by pearls.” The company readily agreed that Cleopatra’s translucent gem was worth more than the outstanding sum. Cleopatra at once tossed the pearl into the goblet, which, unknown to Antony, she had ordered filled with vinegar. The pearl disintegrated and she drank the contents of the goblet, swallowing the expensive draught under the astonished gaze of her lover. She then reached for her other earring to consign it to the same fate, but her guests assured her she had already won the wager and so the second pearl was saved.

  This story of the dissolving pearl seems pure fiction—pearls do not instantly disintegrate in vinegar or anything else quaffable.* But the fact that the tale was so widely related and readily believed shows a reputation for wanton extravagance that must
have had some substance. In fact, Cleopatra would remain associated with the power and opulence of pearls. In the sixteenth century Rabelais punningly invented a role for her in the afterlife as an onion seller in Hell—the word onion coming from the Latin unio, meaning “an enormous pearl.”

  Cleopatra’s extravagant playacting clearly touched an answering chord in Antony. The historian Socrates of Rhodes related how not long after these encounters while in Athens Antony “prepared a very superb scaffold to spread over the theatre, covered with green wood such as is seen in the caves sacred to Bacchus; and from this scaffold he suspended drums and fawn-skins and then sat there with his friends getting drunk . . . and after that he ordered himself to be proclaimed as Bacchus throughout all the cities in that region.”

  Yet amidst the revelry and pageantry and passion there was hard business to attend to. As she had doubtless anticipated, Cleopatra had little difficulty convincing Antony that she had resisted the threats of his enemies and done nothing to help them. She pointed out that she had sailed in person with her fleet from Alexandria, intending to aid Antony and Octavian against Brutus and Cassius, and had been prevented only by a sudden storm. She had also attempted to send legions from Egypt to help Dolabella in Syria. It was hardly her fault that they had defected to the enemy.

  Antony was anyway far more interested in Cleopatra’s future help than her past behavior. His desired model for governing the east, at least for the present while he dealt with Parthia, was no different from that of his Roman predecessors. Like Pompey and Caesar, he wished Rome’s eastern empire to consist of a core of pacific, prosperous provinces administered directly by Rome. Their safety and security would be guaranteed by a buffer zone of surrounding client kingdoms whose rulers understood the rewards of loyalty to Rome—and the risks of disloyalty. Within this tidy, Romanized world Antony intended Cleopatra’s Egypt to continue to occupy her traditional place. Under the Ptolemies the country had, of course, long been an ally of Rome. Her wealth, strategic importance and judicious wooing of Rome at the right moments had retained for Egypt a unique position with continuing independence beyond that of any ordinary client state.