Cleopatra and Antony Read online

  Her eloquence apparently moved Octavian. However, he also knew expedience dictated that now, while Sextus was still a threat, was no time to break with Antony, however much he might have yearned to do so. Therefore he agreed to meet him on the banks of the estuary of the river Taras near Tarentum. With his massive fleet bobbing at anchor, Antony drew up his troops on one side of the river and waited. Octavian arrived late, but Antony, no doubt urged by Octavia, lingered until his brother-in-law at last appeared, with his troops and entourage, including the poets Horace and Vergil, on the other bank. The scene was farcical rather than dignified. Each leader climbed into a small boat and had himself rowed out into midstream. There, under the eyes of all their troops, they debated which of them should cross to the other’s side. Eventually, Antony gave way to Octavian’s argument that he wished to visit his sister. Symbolically taking no bodyguard with him, Octavian spent that night in Antony’s camp and the result was yet another compact—the Treaty of Tarentum.

  The treaty provided for the triumvirate, whose formal life span had lapsed at the end of 38, though no one had wished to point out this inconvenient fact, to be renewed for five years, until the end of 33. It formally recorded Antony’s support for the war against Sextus. It also provided for Antony immediately to hand over “a hundred bronze-rammed warships” and twenty further vessels to supplement Octavian’s navy, in exchange for twenty thousand Italian troops—four legions—to be provided by Octavian at some future date for the Parthian campaign.

  Antony was, despite his previous experience, once more taking a great deal on trust. Indeed, Octavian would only supply 10 percent of the troops he had promised and only after a delay of two years. Perhaps Octavia suspected something of this, which was why she coaxed her brother into giving her husband a thousand picked men immediately in return for an additional ten ships. The pact was sealed by the betrothal of Antony’s son by Fulvia, the nine-year-old Antyllus, to Octavian’s two-year-old daughter, Julia. Coins depicting the conjoined heads of Antony and Octavian and sometimes that of Antony alone facing Octavia were minted to celebrate the peace she had brokered. Such coins as these were a novelty for Rome, but not in the Hellenic world, where Isis and Serapis, as well as kings and queens, were often depicted thus, particularly when the aim was to emphasize the harmony between them.

  Given what was about to happen, Octavia’s intervention may also have been prompted by fears for her marriage. In the autumn of 37, she and Antony sailed once more for the east, but at Corcyra (Corfu) her husband ordered her to return to her brother in Italy. The excuse he gave was that this would be safer for her, their daughter and their unborn child than accompanying him on his Parthian campaign. Octavia dutifully obeyed and returned first to Athens and then back to Rome.

  Though Antony’s action in sending her home was not unusual—Roman commanders on campaign routinely left their wives behind—it was telling that he waited until Corfu. Antony might have hoped his marriage to Octavia would protect him from Octavian’s neurotic suspicions and expedient and disrespectful disregard of promises, and perhaps he blamed her for them. Or perhaps he was growing preoccupied with the military challenges ahead and feared distraction. Or perhaps something—or someone—else was to blame. Plutarch had no doubt: “The awful calamity which had been dormant for a long time, his love for Cleopatra, which seemed to have been charmed away and lulled to sleep by better notions, blazed up again with renewed power the nearer he approached Syria.”

  Before long, Octavia had no further cause to wonder. News reached her and all of Rome that Antony had summoned Cleopatra to Antioch. Their affair had resumed with a passion undiminished, perhaps even heightened, by the years they had spent apart, and Octavia’s marriage of barely three years was over in all but name.

  PART VI

  Gods of the East

  CHAPTER 17

  Sun and Moon

  THE LARGE CITY OF ANTIOCH in northern Syria was a good choice for a military command center. As Antony waited for Cleopatra to join him, he planned the political reordering of the east that was an essential precursor of his campaign against Parthia. The eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor had to be securely under his control before he could safely march out with his legions. Egypt was central to his plans, and Antony’s summoning of the mistress he had not seen for nearly four years had at least as much to do with politics as with passion. He had for obvious reasons been unable to summon her to Rome as Caesar had done. Yet on several occasions he had been close enough to have engineered a diversion to Alexandria and still had made no effort to see her—a fact that would not have escaped her. While he could not have doubted that, despite his neglect, Cleopatra was still his political ally, like any man who extracts himself from a highly charged, sexually engrossing extramarital affair, he must have felt a certain awkwardness about the coming reunion and the reactions of his former lover.

  Unlike Cleopatra’s tardy, teasing response to Antony’s summons to Tarsus in 41, this time she responded quickly. Antony’s abandonment of her had not made the thirty-three-year-old queen either bitter or unduly sentimental. Even if she longed for his return to share her bed and support her in her lonely autocratic role, she was wise enough to know that his reason for wishing to see her that winter was above all strategic. She could also reflect that she was in a different league from the other regional rulers whom he was wooing. She was no parvenu adventurer or grateful princeling but the descendant of an ancient line. Her kingdom—rich, stable and with a long and proven history of loyalty to Rome—was easily the most important to Antony’s plans. If she was clever, she could drive a hard bargain politically.

  On the personal level, Cleopatra knew that she and Antony were compatible. She had charm, intelligence and charisma and she also had some emotional ammunition. Octavia had given Antony a daughter but she had borne him a son. Though she easily could have chosen to leave them behind, she disembarked at Antioch with the young twins, Alexander and Cleopatra, whom Antony had never seen. Between three and four years old, they would have been an appealing sight and an effective reminder of the bonds that had once bound the Inimitable Livers.

  Whether sentiment, lust or political expedience was the prime catalyst, Cleopatra and Antony very quickly resumed their affair. On Antony’s side, the speed and completeness with which he returned to Cleopatra’s arms suggest that he had reached a watershed. He was yielding with relief, indeed relish, to a life that suited him far better than that of Rome. He was once again the “new Dionysus” with, as his consort, no demure Roman matron but the powerful queen of the east.

  Antony himself now added to the Egyptian queen’s powers. Within a few weeks—probably by the close of 37—Cleopatra had coaxed enormous concessions from her once more fervent lover. In the Levant, Antony gave her a string of wealthy coastal cities along the Syrian coast, where only the ports of Tyre and Sidon remained independent. Further inland, Cleopatra acquired the kingdom of Ituraea, whose ruler Antony had executed for colluding with the Parthians. South of Ituraea, Cleopatra took control of some of the Decapolis—meaning “ten cities”—along what is today the border between Israel and Jordan. Along the southeastern coast of Asia Minor, Cleopatra gained territories in Cilicia, including two important harbor towns.

  Cleopatra also wanted lands in Judaea that were key to the trade route between Syria and the Persian Gulf, which was a potential rival to Egypt’s lucrative trading links via the Nile and the Red Sea. Herod had only recently regained his kingdom when, thanks to Sosius, he had finally defeated Antigonus and taken Jerusalem. Sosius had dispatched Antigonus in chains to Antony, who had had him executed. Herod, meanwhile, had preserved the city and its temple from looting by buying off the Roman soldiery with lavish bribes. Perhaps Cleopatra felt that now was a good time to target Herod, still shakily establishing himself and loathed by many of the Hasmonaean faction.

  However, on this Antony dug in his heels. Just as Cleopatra had feared when she learned that the Senate had agreed to make Herod it
s king, a strong, independent Judaea was integral to Antony’s strategy and he refused to deliver the kingdom up to her. It was not in her nature to give up, though. So relentless were her claims that Antony sought to appease her by forcing Herod to renounce most of his coastline so that the only port left to him was Gaza. This gave Cleopatra almost the entire seaboard from Egypt to the far north of modern Lebanon. Antony also made Herod hand over his valuable plantations of date palms and balsam near Jericho, some fifteen miles from Jerusalem. Herod’s palm groves—nicknamed “hangover palms” for the potency of the wine pressed from the luscious dates—were the finest in the ancient world, while his two balsam groves produced the so-called balm of Gilead, sold at enormous profit for both perfume and medicine. Cleopatra allowed Herod to lease back his groves, but only in return for an immense annual rent.

  Finally, Cleopatra made gains at the expense of Malchus, king of the Nabataean Arabs, whose lands ran south along the Red Sea and southwestward to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Sinai Peninsula and included the stronghold of Petra.* In particular, she acquired territory on the southern end of the Dead Sea, where the Nabataeans harvested the bitumen or asphalt that collected on the surface of the salty water and had a variety of profitable uses, from mortar and medicine to insecticides and embalming dead bodies. As with Herod’s date palms and balsam, Cleopatra was happy to lease the bitumen deposits back to the original owners. To placate the dangerous and covetous queen, and also to give himself scope to interfere in the affairs of his Arab neighbors, Herod offered to gather the moneys on the Egyptian queen’s behalf—an offer she gladly accepted. Not only was this an effortless way of collecting revenue, but there was a good chance that Herod and the Nabataean king might fall out over it, which could only be to her advantage.

  Herod’s concessions to Cleopatra did not lessen her antipathy to him as a rival influence on Antony nor her wish to erode his state. Indeed, she soon revealed her continuing hostility by intervening in Judaean affairs. In the spring of 37, shortly before the capture of Jerusalem, Herod had married the beautiful, highly strung Mariamme, a princess of the Hasmonaean (Maccabee) dynasty he had replaced. The Hasmonaeans, as descendants of an ancient priestly line, had combined the role of ruler with the important post of high priest. Hyrcanus, Mariamme’s grandfather, had been high priest until the usurping Antigonus had deposed him and, according to Josephus, savagely “cut off Hyrcanus’s ears” to prevent him ever holding the office again, since the law required high priests to be “complete and without blemish.” The Parthians had subsequently released Hyrcanus, who had returned to Judaea but could not of course resume his duties. Herod, as an Idumaean with no venerable priestly forebears, lacked the necessary pedigree for the post, leaving Mariamme’s sixteen-year-old brother, Aristobolus, apparently as beautiful as his sister, as the obvious choice. Herod, however, feared giving his brother-in-law so much influence and, citing his young years as an excuse, appointed another man.

  This gave Cleopatra her opportunity. The mother of Aristobolus and Mariamme, Alexandra, who was Hyrcanus’ daughter, was a longtime friend of Cleopatra’s. Angered by Herod’s treatment of her son, in late 37 this forceful and formidable woman entrusted a message pleading for help to a musician, who duly carried it to Cleopatra in Antioch. She in turn interceded with Antony, who ordered Herod to depose his candidate and appoint Aristobolus in his place. Herod had no choice but to obey.

  Despite the irritant of Judaea, Cleopatra must have been delighted by the extent of Antony’s gifts, which far exceeded his concessions when, four years earlier, she had sailed upriver to Tarsus in her gilded barge. Antony had, in Plutarch’s words, presented her “with no slight or trivial addition to her possessions.” The net effect of his new concessions was almost completely to restore the great Egyptian empire of the early Ptolemies. Papyrus records and coins minted around this time in Syria reveal that an exultant Cleopatra recalculated the start of her joint rule with Caesarion to begin in the year 37–36 as if everything before this had been a mere overture.

  Antony’s acknowledgement of their children was another bonus for Cleopatra. At Antioch the twins were honored with highly symbolic additional names. The little boy was named Alexander Helios and the girl Cleopatra Selene. In Greek eyes, Helios the sun and Selene the moon were themselves twins and close associates of Victory. In the Greek world, people associated the sun with the dawning of a golden age when east and west would dwell in harmony, and Romans too ascribed a special significance to it, as shown in Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue. After his victory at Philippi in 42, Antony had issued coins bearing the image of a blazing sun. Now, to mark the designation of his young son Alexander as Helios, Antony ordered fresh coins depicting the glory of the sun’s rays, as if he and Cleopatra were about to usher in a shining new age. The golden child who would heal the world would be their son, not any future son of Antony and Octavia’s, as Vergil had perhaps been suggesting. The choice of “moon” for little Cleopatra implied that, like her mother, she was an earthly representation of Isis, goddess of the moon. The imagery was also a studied swipe at Parthia, whose king claimed the title “Brother of the Sun and Moon.” By appropriating the names, Antony was showing his contempt for the pretensions of his enemy.

  Cleopatra awarded herself a new title in celebration of her new lands. The Syrian cities of which she was now overlord hailed her as Thea Neotera or “Youngest Goddess,” another reminder that she was Isis incarnate, divine mother, ever youthful, ever giving. Silver coins minted in Antioch around this time portray her as strong-jawed, hawk-nosed, powerful in an almost masculine sense, and her image was complemented on the other side of the coin by an equally commanding depiction of Antony. The message was clear: this was an alliance almost of equals in which the military might of Rome would be bolstered by Egyptian wealth.

  Opinion in Rome was, predictably enough, outraged. Some of Cleopatra’s new possessions had previously been administered by Rome, so Antony was effectively handing Roman territory to Egypt. Plutarch believed that

  what was particularly infuriating about the honors he conferred on Cleopatra was the shame of it all. And he only highlighted the scandal by acknowledging the twin children she had borne him whom he . . . surnamed respectively Sun and Moon. But he was good at glossing over disgraces, and so he used to say that the greatness of the Roman empire manifested itself not in what Romans took but in what they gave, and that if one had noble blood it should be spread by begetting heirs from many sovereigns . . . he used to claim that his own ancestor was fathered by Heracles, a man who did not rely on just a single womb for the conception but followed his natural inclinations.

  However, after Antioch, Antony became a one-woman man. Not even his critics’ propaganda suggested Antony had any other lover than Cleopatra thereafter. But even if, with the benefit of hindsight, Antioch was a tipping point in the relationship between Cleopatra and Antony, when they began to commit their destinies, both personal and political, to each other, Antony’s gifts to Cleopatra were not the mindless acts of a man wallowing in sensuality or even in a love deepened and renewed. He had not, as his critics later suggested, lost all self-control and sense of duty—sins unforgivable in Roman eyes. Instead, his actions reflected practical politics. Although, unlike his other major allies, Cleopatra was not expected to provide contingents of soldiers, she had a major role in the forthcoming struggle against Parthia—not only to provide a large proportion of the necessary funds but also to build, equip and man a navy for him. The squadrons Antony had yielded to Octavian under the Treaty of Tarentum had depleted his forces and her help with replacements was essential. Many of Cleopatra’s new lands were richly forested with groves of oak and forests of cedar. There would be no shortage of timber for the Egyptian-built fleet that Antony intended should patrol the eastern Mediterranean on his behalf while he was fighting in Parthia.

  Antony’s expansion of Egypt and bolstering of its resources was also part of his wider strategy. Just as he had been intending before Ful
via and his brother had rebelled against Octavian and disrupted his plans, he still wished to remodel the east into a coherent core of provinces to be directly administered by Rome and protected by a buffer zone of loyal kingdoms. Egypt with her enhanced possessions would, as in the past, enjoy the special status justified by her long and loyal relationship with Rome. Antony intended the other kingdoms to be ruled by Hellenic Asian monarchs of his own choosing. In some cases he selected able men with no dynastic connections with the lands they were to govern and whose loyalty would therefore be to him, such as Amyntas in the central kingdom of Galatia and Polemo in Pontus to the northeast. In addition, Antony awarded Cappadocia, to the southeast, bordering Parthia on the Euphrates, to Archelaus, son of the beautiful Cappadocian princess Glaphyra, with whom Antony had once had an affair. In Judaea, Antony knew he could rely on Herod, who owed his position entirely to Rome.

  As Antony negotiated alliances and contributions of troops with Asian rulers, he recognized that success against Parthia would make Rome beyond doubt the most powerful state in the known world and—equally beyond doubt—himself the most powerful Roman, entirely eclipsing Octavian. Cras-sus would be avenged and his legionary eagles recovered, and the road to India and beyond would lie open to Antony as it had previously only to Alexander.