Cleopatra, page 6
Caesar realized that it would be foolish to alienate Ptolemy XIII, who was popular with the Alexandrians. Even when active fighting had broken out and the boy king’s army was attacking the Romans, Caesar insisted that the conflict was not the work of Ptolemy but of his rogue advisers, an assertion that was probably true, given the boy’s age and lack of political experience. The character and quality of Achillas’s army was of little interest to Plutarch but of great concern to Caesar. He reports on the unsavory character of the troops from backgrounds that, he suggests, might make them at once disorganized and especially ferocious.
The army he describes was composed of the Gabiniani, who had remained in Egypt after defending Auletes against his daughter. Ill-disciplined and removed from the “orderly conduct” of Roman soldiers, these exiles, former citizens of the empire, criminals, and runaway slaves, had little regard for the higher ideals and principles of the Roman military: “By a long-established custom of the Alexandrian army, these men habitually demanded that friends of the king be put to death, plundered the property of the rich, laid siege to the king’s residence to win higher pay, and removed some and appointed others to the throne.”
Ultimately, the moral character of the Egyptian soldiers mattered less than the fact that Caesar’s forces were greatly outnumbered. Fighting broke out in the streets of Alexandria, and Achillas seized control of the city, except in the district where Caesar had taken refuge in the royal palace. Achillas attempted to break into the royal compound, but Caesar’s men, tactically deployed in the streets of Alexandria, thwarted the assault. The most serious fighting took place in the harbor; it was clear that whoever seized control of the port would probably win the war. Caesar ordered that his own ships be burned to prevent the enemy from gaining control of them; in the ensuing chaos, he was able to seize control of the lighthouse (the Pharos) and the narrow waterway that controlled access to the port.
The fighting lasted all through the fall of 48 BCE. In most ways Plutarch’s account follows Caesar’s, though he suggests—and quickly glosses over—that the burning of the fleet resulted in the destruction of the library of Alexandria after the flames were blown to shore. He adds that Caesar, forced to swim to safety, held a number of manuscripts in his hand. “Though he was continually darted at, and forced to keep his head often under water, yet he did not let go, but held them up, safe from wetting in one hand, whilst he swam with the other.” (Caesar was famous for his expert swimming.)
Were they scrolls rescued from the burning library or, more likely, manuscripts of his own writings? Caesar’s preservation of the manuscripts is one of those memorable and convincing details, like Pompey’s funeral pyre having been built from the wrecked boat.
And so the ruin or partial ruin of a miraculous collection became a story about a superhero who knew the value of the written word.
Over the intervening years, there has been considerable debate about how much of the library was burned and how the fire started. One theory suggests that Caesar accidentally ignited the blaze when he ordered his own ships burned in the harbor to prevent Achillas’s army from using them against the Romans. Others have cited a later date for the damage to the collection and blamed the Roman emperor Theodosius and the Muslim caliph Omar. The library seems to have existed when Strabo visited Alexandria in 24 CE, and Suetonius tells us that it survived well into the first century CE, when a new wing was added to contain the massive number of books written by the emperor Claudius.
But it also seems that the library’s decline may have begun much earlier, when Ptolemy VII replaced the librarian, a Homeric scholar, with his crony, a military man. As Duane Roller notes, “Filling senior administrative posts with ideologues is clear evidence of the kingdom’s decline. This pattern seems to have continued into the next generation, when Ptolemy also appointed a confidant as Librarian.” It is also possible that the library was not destroyed suddenly by fire but deteriorated slowly over time, damaged by the elements and a series of natural disasters.
As the war continued, a secondary power struggle broke out when Cleopatra’s sister and former ally, Arsinoe, went over to the side of her brother, then quarreled with Achillas and was forced to resort to bribing their soldiers to retain their support. Though Pothinus continued to exhort Achillas to prolong the fighting, his messengers were arrested, and Pothinus was put to death. The story of Caesar’s barber and the overheard plot to poison the emperor does not appear in Caesar’s account, which is more concerned with military and political problems and solutions than with gossip.
The author of The Alexandrian War—believed to be Aulus Hirtius, a military subordinate of Caesar’s who rose (briefly) to the position of consul after the emperor’s death—is, like Caesar, focused on strategy when he describes how the city was fortified after Arsinoe ordered that Achillas be killed. For Arsinoe had by then declared herself queen and replaced the leader of her brother’s army with her tutor, the eunuch Ganymedes, who persuaded her that Achillas was planning to betray the fleet and should therefore be punished.
Meanwhile a revolutionary fervor was arising in the Egyptian capital in the midst of the war. Alexandria’s leaders reminded their people of how long they had been fending off Rome’s incursions and warned that if Caesar were permitted to remain among them their kingdom would be reduced to a Roman province.
Through an elaborate feat of military engineering, Ganymedes cut off the water supply to the neighborhood in which Caesar was staying, enraging Caesar’s Alexandrian neighbors. And now Hirtius’s narrative breaks into the uncharacteristic first person as, presumably speaking for his commander, he rails against the people with whom Caesar was at war. “If I had to defend the Alexandrians against the charges of deceitfulness and opportunism, I could speak for a long time to no purpose; indeed, the moment you recognize their race you also recognize their character, and no one can doubt that this is a people made for treachery.”
Reading these lines, one may think of Claude Rains, preening in the moonlight, asking if the pale moon glow was really the only reason he looked whiter than the Egyptians. In the phrase “a people made for treachery,” we hear the imperialist accepting his sacred duty to bring civilization and morality to a population. Hirtius is speaking in the voice of a Roman leader who within a few years would be brutally assassinated by his own people on the floor of the Senate.
Even as Caesar was ordering his men to dig wells and find fresh water, reinforcements arrived to shore up the Egyptian army, though not enough to resist the brilliant deployment of the Roman naval forces mustered in an effort to intimidate their opponents. More fighting followed, further attacks and retreats, until the Alexandrians, who had believed that they were (in Hirtius’s words) “our equals” were disheartened and demoralized.
Impressed by the Romans’ resolve and military acumen, the Alexandrians came to Caesar and asked him to release Ptolemy from Roman custody and in the process to deliver them from Arsinoe and the tyrannical Ganymedes.
Arsinoe was exiled to Ephesus, a decision for which Aulus Hirtius credits Caesar. (“He decided to remove from the kingdom the younger girl, Arsinoe.”) The most famous painting of Cleopatra’s younger sister is Tintoretto’s ca. 1560 The Deliverance of Arsinoe. It purports to show Arsinoe’s escape from Alexandria after Caesar helped her sister gain control of Egypt. Two men and two women in a boat are about to head out onto the roiling ocean. Both women have beautiful bodies and are naked but for some heavy, strategically draped chains. We are not intended to wonder why they would have decided to take this dangerous sea voyage naked, or why the woman in the soldier’s arms is supposed to be the Egyptian princess who attempted to steal her sister’s throne.
The later killing of her younger sister in 41 BCE is one of the sibling murders that Cleopatra is considered to have ordered, and to have asked Mark Antony to carry out for her. Arsinoe was purportedly dragged out of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and slaughtered on its steps.
Tiring of the costly war and distressed by the growing number of casualties, the Alexandrians promised to surrender if Caesar came to their aid, a request that inspires yet another tirade from Aulus Hirtius about the deceitful people, “always keeping one aim in view and pretending to another.”
Still attempting to arrange a peaceful settlement, Caesar prevailed upon Ptolemy to think of his country and his people. In tears, the young pharaoh agreed, and Caesar released him, although he had no faith in the young pharaoh, because of his youth and his lack of education. “Then the king, like a racehorse given his head, started to wage war against Caesar with such energy that the tears he had shed when talking to Caesar were obviously tears of joy.” Ptolemy drowned in the midst of the fighting: “It is generally agreed that the king himself got away from the camp, and was taken on board ship, but died when the ship sank under the numbers of men who swam out to the nearest vessels.”
Cleopatra is notably absent from these accounts, suggesting that she remained in the royal palace and waited to see how the conflict would be resolved.
The young Ptolemy’s death brought an end to the civil war. The Egyptian army surrendered. Greeted as a hero and a victor, Caesar accepted the Alexandrians’ defeat and celebrated with his men. “Now that he was in control of Egypt and Alexandria, Caesar established on the throne the monarchs whom Ptolemy had appointed in his will and bound the Roman people by oath to see were not altered. Since the elder of the two boys, who had been king, was no more, Caesar gave the throne to the younger boy [Ptolemy XIV] and to Cleopatra, the elder of the two daughters, who had remained loyal to him.”
Cleopatra, the elder of the two daughters, who had remained loyal to him. And that’s it. Nowhere in either The Civil War or The Alexandrian War does Caesar or Hirtius mention the emperor’s romance with Cleopatra; nowhere do they refer to his being trapped in her palace; nowhere do they raise the possibility that the burning of his fleet led to the destruction of the great library; nowhere do they acknowledge the celebratory voyage along the Nile that Caesar and Cleopatra were said to have taken.
Nor does either of these authors write anything to suggest that the Egyptian queen has had, or would have, Caesar’s child. This view of their relationship and of the power balance between them would lead the historian Ronald Syme to conclude, “Cleopatra was of no moment whatsoever in the policy of Caesar the Dictator” (quoted in Roller).
Plutarch tells a different story: a version of events that supports his case against Cleopatra for interfering in the affairs of Rome and that at the same time makes Caesar seem even more heroic than he appears in his own account.
Though Caesar reports that his military intervention in Egypt was inspired purely by the desire to broker a peace and persuade a brother and sister to share the throne, Plutarch insists that he would never have gotten involved in the Alexandrian war if not for his infatuation with Cleopatra, although, Plutarch also suggests, it was possible that he was enraged by Pothinus’s plotting against him, by the eunuch’s arrogance, and by the insults—most of them concerning the fortunes that Pothinus accused Caesar of stealing from Egypt—leveled against the emperor and his soldiers.
Cassius Dio also acknowledges the central role played by Caesar’s affection for Cleopatra, suggesting that Caesar’s reluctance to claim Egypt for Rome was a consequence of his fondness for the Egyptian queen, “for whose sake he had waged the conflict.” But because of his fear that the Egyptians might rebel again if a woman assumed control of the country, “he commanded her to ‘marry’ her other brother, and gave the kingdom to both of them, at least nominally. For in reality Cleopatra was to hold all the power alone, since her husband was still a boy, and in view of Caesar’s favor, there was nothing that she could not do. Hence her living with her brother and sharing rule with him was a mere pretence which she accepted, whereas in truth she ruled alone and spent her time in Caesar’s company” (book 42).
Yet another detail, missing from The Civil War and The Alexandrian War, appears in Plutarch’s brief aftermath to the Roman victory: “Leaving Cleopatra reigning in Egypt—she soon bore him a son, whom the Alexandrians called Caesarion.” An inscription on the Serapeum in Memphis suggests that Caesarion was born near the end of June 47.
Caesar and Cleopatra are said—though this too has been disputed—to have celebrated their victory in the spring of 47 with a cruise along the Nile, accompanied by a fleet of four hundred ships. Writes Suetonius, “With her too, he journeyed by royal barge deep into Egypt, and would have reached Ethiopia but his army refused to follow him.” Allegedly the flotilla also included a royal barge as spacious, luxuriously furnished, and comfortable as a floating villa.
However, early in that same spring, after approving plans for a temple dedicated to him, Caesar left Egypt for Anatolia, where an anti-Roman insurrection had broken out. He seems not to have been present in Alexandria that June, when Caesarion—officially, Ptolemy Philopator Philometor Caesar—was born. Suetonius again: “The child born to her he allowed to be called by his name. Indeed, several Greek writers record that he was like Caesar in both appearance and bearing. Mark Antony confirmed to the senate that Caesar had actually acknowledged the child . . . and others of Caesar’s friends were aware of this.” This claim was disputed by Gaius Oppius, who published a book asserting that Caesarion was not Caesar’s child. And despite what Suetonius wrote, it seems clear that Caesar never publicly acknowledged Caesarion’s paternity.
Allegedly in love with Cleopatra even before their affair began, Antony was later said to have been smitten by his first sight of her when she was a girl. He would have had a compelling reason to support the claim that her son was Caesar’s heir—a fact that she spent much time and effort attempting to establish. Antony’s own fate might have turned out differently had his lover’s son, instead of Caesar’s grandnephew Octavian, been designated by Julius Caesar to rule the Roman Empire after his death. In any case, Caesar chose Octavian as his heir, a decision that would have serious, indeed fatal, consequences for both Antony and Cleopatra.
After Caesar’s departure, Cleopatra was left with the task of repairing the damage that the war had inflicted on Alexandria. The gymnasium that so impressed Strabo was reconstructed, as was the lighthouse on the island of Pharos, a landmark that had not only a practical purpose but a highly symbolic significance in the life of the city. She also initiated the building of a large complex, the Caesareum, dedicated to Julius Caesar, and of her own tomb, appropriately located near the Temple of Isis. This crypt, allegedly impossible to open once it had been closed, would factor heavily in the story of her death and that of Antony, as well as in the works of art and literature that these events inspired.
In addition to all her civic projects and responsibilities, Cleopatra was also the mother of four children: a son with Julius Caesar and fraternal twins (a girl and a boy) and another son with Mark Antony. Given the ready availability of contraception and abortion, skills and techniques at which the Egyptian doctors were said to be adept, it seems likely that these were children she wanted. By luck or design, their arrivals were evenly spaced, giving the queen ample time to recover from the strains of pregnancy and childbirth, physical demands that would have compromised her ability to function at full capacity and strength. Though the war against her brother had eliminated one threat to her power, it would still have seemed unwise to relax her vigilance for an extended period of time.
We have already seen how twisted, frayed, and easily severed family bonds were among the Ptolemies. Having children with powerful men was no guarantee of safety, as it might be today. Cleopatra not only protected her children but fought for them. With her family history and Egypt’s unstable position, she might well have suspected that their survival depended on hers, and that she could not safely assume her children would outlive her.
That she appears to have lobbied Caesar to acknowledge their son as his heir and successor reveals her maternal passions combined with her own ambition. Since Caesarion was just a baby, and since (despite his heroic swim) Caesar was known to be aging and in declining health, the emperor’s death and the installation of Caesar and Cleopatra’s son in his place would have meant that Cleopatra acted as regent for Caesarion—and controlled not only Egypt but the entire Roman Empire. After Caesar’s assassination and the death of her last remaining brother, Ptolemy XIV, Cleopatra had Caesarion appointed as her co-ruler.
Later, after his mother’s death, Caesarion, then just thirteen, was executed by Octavian. He had been smuggled out of Egypt, but Octavian tricked him into returning. The other three children were taken to Rome and given over to the care of Octavian’s sister, Octavia the Younger, Antony’s former wife, with whom Antony had had two children.
In 46, the year after her son’s birth, Cleopatra traveled to Rome and stayed in Caesar’s Trastevere villa, where Caesar gave her the run of his luxurious house and lush gardens. These were located near where the Villa Farnesina—now a museum with magnificent wall paintings by Raphael, del Piombo, and others—stands today. The Villa Farnesina was constructed in the early sixteenth century, but we can assume that the banker, Agostino Chigi, who built it recognized, as did Caesar, an especially beautiful spot. Located on the west bank of the Tiber, across the river and some distance from the Forum, it would have helped Caesar keep Cleopatra away from the disapproving eyes of the senators. The Renaissance villa that stands on the site of the ancient one occupies a lovely strip of flat land (now bisected by a somewhat sooty stretch of the via della Lungara) abutting the jungly greenery of the Janiculum Hill that rises above it.
Officially, the queen’s visit signified a formal attempt to recognize and strengthen the treaties that her father had forged, at such great financial cost, with Rome. It is not known whether Cleopatra brought Caesarion with her. If her real mission was to have Caesar recognize his son, bringing the baby along might or might not have made this more likely.
