Complete Works of Talbot Mundy, page 551
But Caesar only smiled and kept his intricate intentions to himself, although he did not quite deceive Apollodorus, who found frequent opportunity to discuss developments with Charmian, who, as fearful as she was loyal, drew a kind of Cassandra-satisfaction from having her fears confirmed.
“Caesar,” said Apollodorus, “having so few men, is in a mood just now to conquer by his personal endowments, Cleopatra having set him the example. He is combative by nature, and he and she are like two new horses in a team. It is not in Caesar’s nature to trust anyone, especially anyone who thinks He is in love with her, and he knows she complements his genius. But he also realizes she is likely to outlive him, and he is instinctively jealous of her on that account, although he does not recognize it; if he did, he would kill her.”
Caesar encouraged Apollodorus to array the banquet hall with all the splendor that the storehouse of the Ptolemies could yield; and he spent amusing hours in Cleopatra’s dressing-room, watching her try on robes and jewels, attempting to persuade her to wear the royal robes of Isis at the banquet and puzzled by her refusal. Nothing could have satisfied his own immeasurable vanity more subtly than to appear on the scene as the protector of the robed high priestess of the mystic Mother of the Universe.
Her superstition, as he classified it in his calmer moments, baffled him. He regarded spiritual life as an abstraction — possibly a product, like the smoke from temple altars. Knowing, as none knew better, that the secret of the power of Rome’s patricians was their patronage of the state religion (though their private skepticism verged, almost as a rule, on atheism), he was forced to accept Cleopatra’s own objections without understanding them:
“No, Caesar. Would you have me lose true music for the pattern of a harp? What are divine rights, if I use them rightly, would become a blasphemy and burn me utterly if I attempted to misuse them. I should lose all Egypt and my own soul, too.”
But she loved life vigorously. Caesar amused and excited her. She gloried in submitting to his wishes in so far as they concerned her personally. She satisfied his craving for extravagant display by covering herself in jewels and those half-diaphanous, glistening draperies that came from India in exchange for the emeralds of Egypt — emeralds of which she wore so many that their weight was an actual burden.
Caesar’s spies informed him that Potheinos hoped to arouse public sentiment in Prince Ptolemy’s favor by bringing him to the banquet without any royal diadem, pretending that all the Prince’s jewels had been sold in order to raise the money to meet Rome’s importunate demands. But Cleopatra readily consented to relieve her brother from that embarrassment, so Caesar sent the young man heaps of jewels from her treasure-chests, along with his own compliments and a request that he should keep them as a gift; for he was seldom less than generous with other peoples’ property, especially when he had in mind a means of presently appropriating more than he dispensed. Potheinos was an extremely wealthy individual, who owned emerald- and gold-mines. Caesar secretly gave orders, concerning the disposition of two picked companies of infantry, that made Calvinus raise one eyebrow and release a glimmer of a thin-lipped smile, his normal confidence returning since he knew how thoroughly Caesar could be trusted when awake to danger.
Slaves were none too plentiful, many of them having been pressed into Achillas’ service and killed or rendered useless by overwork with the transport when he made his forced march on Pelusium; but fifteen hundred of Caesar’s legionaries were told off to line the stairs and corridors, thus freeing numbers of merely ornamental functionaries for the serious task of keeping streams of food and wine continuously flowing to the banquet hall.
That hall was the only part of the maze of palace buildings that confessed to Egyptian influence, in the form of massive granite columns ornamented with Egyptian designs, and a pair of huge symbolic lions that guarded the royal dais; but the lions, although also of granite, had been overlaid with gold-leaf and behind them was an ivory screen that had been brought by yellow men to India, who sold it to Alexander’s admiral Nearchos when he explored the Indus.
There were flowers in such profusion that their scent was almost overpowering — festoons of roses hanging from the gilded beams and coiling serpent-wise around the columns; bowers and banks of roses to conceal the service passages that led, through stairs in the supporting masonry, to floors below; canopies of roses, held above the tables on the marble finger-tips of statues of the Goddess Aphrodite rising from the foam on tiptoe — and the very foam itself was roses, wind-whipped, as it might be, out of shallow vases on the floor. Lutes, harps, flutes and sistra were concealed in balconies behind billowing clouds of flowers.
The guests, each bringing gifts, were marshaled in an anteroom while names were entered on Apollodorus’ scroll — then led to their places by rose-wreathed slaves who had been trained to walk like spirits. The illumination, dim and indirect, reflected upward toward silver mirrors set against the walls between Babylonian hangings, made the whole scene seem to swim in summer moonlight, so that the effect of the Eleusis revelries was subtly reproduced, with even the sea-sounds half heard through open windows.
Opposite the windows was a stage for entertainers, with a trap-door, hidden among flowers, that could toss the dancers forth or slowly raise them into view like spirits of the twilight seen against the orb of an enormous golden moon.
The singing-girls — half-naked, languorous silhouettes against a starry sky — were crowded on the outer balcony and only glimpsed between the window-curtains. They were temple-trained in the archaic art of so dispersing song that it appeared to be the voice of night itself, not human throat-notes.
The guests arrived through halls and passageways between ranks of Roman men-at-arms; the dais in the banquet-hall was guarded by Ahenobarbus and as many Romans as could stand with their backs to the rear wall like statues; wherever a sentry could be placed without obtruding stood a Roman peasant-conscript, gazing on the scene with pop-eyed wonder and a smile that was part embarrassment and part immodest confidence in Rome and discipline and Caesar.
Below the dais there were tables for Potheinos and his group of ministers, and for such distinguished Alexandrians as Apollodorus had seen fit to recommend.
It took an hour to arrange the others in order of their precedence. Apollodorus, splendid as Apollo, had to pass among them to decide disputes — even to threaten the noisiest with summary eviction — until at last a resounding trumpet chorus brought everybody to his feet. Apollodorus, with six assistant chamberlains, took his stand on the dais and there followed a long uncomfortable silence until he raised his hand as a signal for applause.
It was perfunctory. Young Ptolemy had spoiled the drama. To preserve the theoretical equality of brother and sister it had been prearranged that they should enter simultaneously through doors on opposite sides of the dais, thus meeting at the table in the center and greeting each other with exactly measured cordiality. But urged, and followed by Potheinos and a group of ministers, with about fifty slaves in attendance, Ptolemy came on to the dais in advance of Cleopatra, hoping to snatch for himself acclamation that might later on be interpreted as a popular demonstration in his favor. He looked pale, but alert and confident, affecting a half-mocking gesture of apology for having come too soon; then stood with the smile of a duelist to watch the other door through which Cleopatra was expected.
Seeing he had stolen precedence she kept him waiting until acclamation died and silence filled the vast hall. Then she sent her servants in ahead of her and came forth at last, with Charmian in pure white turning at the door to wait for her, to serve as contrast to her own pearl and emerald splendor and to receive the first smile, that Ptolemy might have had self-command enough to treat with condescending scorn. That gracious little interlude with Charmian provided time in which to grasp the situation.
Ptolemy forgot his part and scowled. She greeted him with playful ease of manner, kissed him, took him by the hand and led him toward the table, he ungraciously yielding amid tumultuous applause, which lasted all the while they took their places. Charmian sat with them on one of the four gilded couches between the golden lions, but Potheinos and his fellow-ministers filed down to the tables set immediately below the dais.
Suddenly then a trumpet-blast came clamoring from the main door. Silence fell, utter and unfriendly, in which Ptolemy’s high voice was heard answering some formal question that Cleopatra asked. Twelve lictors, solemn and important in their red cloaks, strode in and divided into two ranks facing inward. They raised their fasces and aroused a murmur of resentment; lictors were a red rag to the bull of Alexandria’s pride. But before the murmur gained much headway Caesar strode in, followed after a long interval by Calvinus and a group of officers.
Caesar was in his element. The golden wreath offset the sphinx-like pallor of his face. His smile was of intellectual delight in calm audacity — the consciousness of greatness. He was not indifferent to danger; he delighted in it. Grim silence, with which he was greeted, was a greater compliment to him, and more enjoyable, than tempests of applause that might have indicated passing popularity. He gloried in arousing hatred that he thoroughly despised and knew he could turn into crawling toadyism when it suited him.
The Alexandrians were on their feet, but no one even bowed until he reached the dais, where Apollodorus did the honors. And then one of those strange incidents occurred that may mean little at the moment but over whose deep significance men ponder in the light of subsequent events. Young Ptolemy rose from his seat to welcome Caesar. The Alexandrian nobility gasped as if the very charter of their liberties were snatched away from them and burned before their eyes.
Cleopatra, curled up comfortably on her couch, was seen to whisper. Potheinos, scowling irritably, urged the boy to be seated, in a raucous whisper that amounted to a public reprimand. Ptolemy blushed, pretended he had stood to call a slave’s attention to the disorder of his cushions, and resumed his place, leaning toward Cleopatra to relieve his own embarrassment by cursing her in caustic undertones, she laughing, trying to restore his humor. She was willing yet to make her peace with Ptolemy.
Caesar saved that moment by attracting all attention to himself by the magnificence with which he greeted Cleopatra as he took his place between her and Charmian, facing Ptolemy, whom he saluted with a patronizing smile that offended the Alexandrians even more than it did Ptolemy himself.
Caesar appeared to be playing recklessly into Potheinos’ hands. There was a speech to be made before the banquet could begin. He let Potheinos make it, giving him opportunity to play, as it were, the overture preparing the guests’ minds for tragedy (for there is no weight, nor any enduring value in surprise without deliberate preparation for it).
Mingled in with platitudes and flowery compliments the eunuch managed to insert suggestive phrases:
“Our city, founded by the glorious Alexander, that has never suffered tyranny from aliens...They who accept the city’s destiny become the agents of the gods who suitably provide both means and opportunity to solve all riddles...Having lost a portion of that wonder of the world — our library — and with a great part of our fleet in ashes, it behooves us to take sensible preventives against future, and perhaps a more disastrous, loss...Justice is a satisfactory solution, unexpected though it sometimes be, and though it take surprising courses...He who is a faithful servant of his king is called upon to undertake responsibilities and even to ignore established precedents, the outcome justifying him...Our goal is peace, and they who stand in the way of peace must take the consequences.”
It was a strangely stirring and foreboding speech, but when he resumed his place he had said no word that, taken from its context, could be used against him. Nevertheless, he had more than half confirmed in the minds of the Alexandrians their premonition that surprises were in store. Even the music, song and dancing, that commenced immediately, and the fabulous supplies of food, and wines from the royal cellar, failed to break the spell of strained anticipation, it conveyed itself to the Roman sentries. They were nervous; a centurion made the rounds among them, issuing low-voiced reprimand.
While the food was gorged and the wine consumed by flagonsful continuous entertainment was provided on the stage. There were lions that danced with women, and then roared and wrestled. There was an ape, as huge and heavy as a Heracles, that had been taught to imitate a Roman officer in armor and helmet; be came nearer than anyone to relieving the tension, because somebody called him Calvinus, which aroused roars of Gargantuan laughter; but it made Calvinus swear so blasphemously that Caesar had to reprove him for it.
It was noticed that Caesar and Cleopatra partook very sparingly of wine and frequently let pass as many as a dozen dishes in succession; so that it soon began to be whispered, by those who did not know how abstemious they both were, that they were afraid of poison.
And Ptolemy’s young face was fascinated — therefore fascinating. He appeared to be aware of something pending and to be restraining excitement, watching Potheinos almost constantly and making only very perfunctory efforts to converse with Charmian. Caesar, on the other hand, appeared to be in the gayest possible spirit and kept Cleopatra and Charmian in gales of laughter, in which Ptolemy hardly ever joined.
It was midway through the banquet when Potheinos arose from his place to perform a ceremony that was considered the profoundest compliment a minister of state could pay. Slaves brought him an enormous dish (it was borne by two Syrian eunuchs) loaded with a favorite Alexandrian delicacy — rice, and olives stuffed with onion and fish-roe, smothered in a mushroom gravy. Helped by the slaves, Potheinos took the dish and, kneeling between Caesar and Cleopatra, offered it in token of submission, murmuring some compliment about his having caused the king of cooks to prepare his masterpiece for the master of Rome and the mistress of Egypt, equal owners, each of a half of the world.
Then, in accordance with inviolable custom, he tasted from the dish first, in proof that it was not poisoned; and it was noticed that Ptolemy watched him with excitement that was almost mesmeric; he put a napkin to his face when Cleopatra picked an olive from the dish with a pair of golden tongs and raised it to her lips.
But Caesar begged her for that olive and there was a moment’s lovers’ play between them before she dropped it in the palm of his right hand. He made as if to put it in his mouth, and she picked up another with the tongs, but dropped it when Caesar changed his mind and, suddenly and sternly glaring at Potheinos, ordered the nearest of the Syrian slaves, who knelt to support the dish, to take the olive from his hand and eat it.
The slave hesitated. But he read the cold glitter in Caesar’s eyes and chose a quick death rather than the crucifixion that he saw he could not otherwise escape. He swallowed the olive whole, not touching it with his teeth, and in a moment he had dropped the dish and was writhing in convulsions. On the floor of the hall there was sudden pandemonium, and then silence, as the guests pushed back their couches and stood to see better what was happening.
Cleopatra stared at Ptolemy. She made no comment. Ptolemy’s face remained behind the napkin.
Slaves rushed to clean up the spilled food, and in that moment’s confusion Potheinos sought to end his own life swiftly. He stooped to snatch a poisoned olive. But Calvinus made a handspring to the dais — pounced on him, and hurled him backward toward the screen at the rear, where Ahenobarbus held him until two of the sentries had tied his hands behind his back. A sentry stunned the other Syrian, who was trying to slip away unnoticed.
Caesar had not risen from his couch. In the abrupt and utter stillness that had fallen on the assembly his calm voice was heard addressing Calvinus:
“I think I promised you that at the proper time you should apply your remedy to that man. You will find an executioner waiting out there on the balcony.”
“One slave seems dead,” said Calvinus. “Shall I have this other crucified?”
“No. Let Potheinos have him. He may need him.”
The sentries hustled their victims out toward the balcony, where the singing-girls clustered in terrified groups. Calvinus followed to superintend, and somebody drew the Curtains. Caesar ordered the banquet to continue.
“So you knew?” said Cleopatra.
“Yes,” said Caesar. He, too, was staring now at Ptolemy. “I knew.”
Before the music could begin again, there came through the balcony curtains the sickening thwack of a heavy sword descending on a human neck. It was repeated. Ptolemy winced twice.
“Also,” said Caesar, watching him, “I had warning of armed men whom Potheinos had concealed in readiness to complete his treachery.”
A centurion, who had entered through the main door, smiled grimly, halted below the dais and saluted Caesar.
“Eight hundred and ten prisoners,” he reported. “They were hidden in the space between this ceiling and the roof, all armed with swords and daggers. Are they to be slain?”
“No. Keep them.” Caesar was still staring hard at Ptolemy. “It appears I shall not lack interesting captives for my triumph when I enter Rome!”
Cleopatra had begun whispering to an attendant, but Caesar’s eyes, that seemed to hypnotize young Ptolemy, continued gazing at him. “Do you know the custom?” he continued. “After they have been paraded through the streets, their leaders are decapitated. The remainder are disposed of more spectacularly.”
The entertainment and the music had resumed, but utterly unnoticed, although a woman on the stage had her head in the mouth of a hippopotamus, and a man, without using his hands, was climbing a ladder whose rungs consisted of sharpened sword-blades with their edges upturned. MI eyes were on Caesar and on Ptolemy, who stared at him, biting his lip.
“May I suggest to you,” said Caesar, “that now that you have lost that eunuch who misled you into unwise courses, you should be guided in future by your elder sister and by me?”
Ptolemy stood up at last and everyone below the dais rose immediately. Music ceased, again. The boy glared at Cleopatra. His lips moved, but he said nothing audible. Gathering his robes around him, summoning his attendants with a gesture, he turned his back and left the dais by the door behind the screen.
“Caesar,” said Apollodorus, “having so few men, is in a mood just now to conquer by his personal endowments, Cleopatra having set him the example. He is combative by nature, and he and she are like two new horses in a team. It is not in Caesar’s nature to trust anyone, especially anyone who thinks He is in love with her, and he knows she complements his genius. But he also realizes she is likely to outlive him, and he is instinctively jealous of her on that account, although he does not recognize it; if he did, he would kill her.”
Caesar encouraged Apollodorus to array the banquet hall with all the splendor that the storehouse of the Ptolemies could yield; and he spent amusing hours in Cleopatra’s dressing-room, watching her try on robes and jewels, attempting to persuade her to wear the royal robes of Isis at the banquet and puzzled by her refusal. Nothing could have satisfied his own immeasurable vanity more subtly than to appear on the scene as the protector of the robed high priestess of the mystic Mother of the Universe.
Her superstition, as he classified it in his calmer moments, baffled him. He regarded spiritual life as an abstraction — possibly a product, like the smoke from temple altars. Knowing, as none knew better, that the secret of the power of Rome’s patricians was their patronage of the state religion (though their private skepticism verged, almost as a rule, on atheism), he was forced to accept Cleopatra’s own objections without understanding them:
“No, Caesar. Would you have me lose true music for the pattern of a harp? What are divine rights, if I use them rightly, would become a blasphemy and burn me utterly if I attempted to misuse them. I should lose all Egypt and my own soul, too.”
But she loved life vigorously. Caesar amused and excited her. She gloried in submitting to his wishes in so far as they concerned her personally. She satisfied his craving for extravagant display by covering herself in jewels and those half-diaphanous, glistening draperies that came from India in exchange for the emeralds of Egypt — emeralds of which she wore so many that their weight was an actual burden.
Caesar’s spies informed him that Potheinos hoped to arouse public sentiment in Prince Ptolemy’s favor by bringing him to the banquet without any royal diadem, pretending that all the Prince’s jewels had been sold in order to raise the money to meet Rome’s importunate demands. But Cleopatra readily consented to relieve her brother from that embarrassment, so Caesar sent the young man heaps of jewels from her treasure-chests, along with his own compliments and a request that he should keep them as a gift; for he was seldom less than generous with other peoples’ property, especially when he had in mind a means of presently appropriating more than he dispensed. Potheinos was an extremely wealthy individual, who owned emerald- and gold-mines. Caesar secretly gave orders, concerning the disposition of two picked companies of infantry, that made Calvinus raise one eyebrow and release a glimmer of a thin-lipped smile, his normal confidence returning since he knew how thoroughly Caesar could be trusted when awake to danger.
Slaves were none too plentiful, many of them having been pressed into Achillas’ service and killed or rendered useless by overwork with the transport when he made his forced march on Pelusium; but fifteen hundred of Caesar’s legionaries were told off to line the stairs and corridors, thus freeing numbers of merely ornamental functionaries for the serious task of keeping streams of food and wine continuously flowing to the banquet hall.
That hall was the only part of the maze of palace buildings that confessed to Egyptian influence, in the form of massive granite columns ornamented with Egyptian designs, and a pair of huge symbolic lions that guarded the royal dais; but the lions, although also of granite, had been overlaid with gold-leaf and behind them was an ivory screen that had been brought by yellow men to India, who sold it to Alexander’s admiral Nearchos when he explored the Indus.
There were flowers in such profusion that their scent was almost overpowering — festoons of roses hanging from the gilded beams and coiling serpent-wise around the columns; bowers and banks of roses to conceal the service passages that led, through stairs in the supporting masonry, to floors below; canopies of roses, held above the tables on the marble finger-tips of statues of the Goddess Aphrodite rising from the foam on tiptoe — and the very foam itself was roses, wind-whipped, as it might be, out of shallow vases on the floor. Lutes, harps, flutes and sistra were concealed in balconies behind billowing clouds of flowers.
The guests, each bringing gifts, were marshaled in an anteroom while names were entered on Apollodorus’ scroll — then led to their places by rose-wreathed slaves who had been trained to walk like spirits. The illumination, dim and indirect, reflected upward toward silver mirrors set against the walls between Babylonian hangings, made the whole scene seem to swim in summer moonlight, so that the effect of the Eleusis revelries was subtly reproduced, with even the sea-sounds half heard through open windows.
Opposite the windows was a stage for entertainers, with a trap-door, hidden among flowers, that could toss the dancers forth or slowly raise them into view like spirits of the twilight seen against the orb of an enormous golden moon.
The singing-girls — half-naked, languorous silhouettes against a starry sky — were crowded on the outer balcony and only glimpsed between the window-curtains. They were temple-trained in the archaic art of so dispersing song that it appeared to be the voice of night itself, not human throat-notes.
The guests arrived through halls and passageways between ranks of Roman men-at-arms; the dais in the banquet-hall was guarded by Ahenobarbus and as many Romans as could stand with their backs to the rear wall like statues; wherever a sentry could be placed without obtruding stood a Roman peasant-conscript, gazing on the scene with pop-eyed wonder and a smile that was part embarrassment and part immodest confidence in Rome and discipline and Caesar.
Below the dais there were tables for Potheinos and his group of ministers, and for such distinguished Alexandrians as Apollodorus had seen fit to recommend.
It took an hour to arrange the others in order of their precedence. Apollodorus, splendid as Apollo, had to pass among them to decide disputes — even to threaten the noisiest with summary eviction — until at last a resounding trumpet chorus brought everybody to his feet. Apollodorus, with six assistant chamberlains, took his stand on the dais and there followed a long uncomfortable silence until he raised his hand as a signal for applause.
It was perfunctory. Young Ptolemy had spoiled the drama. To preserve the theoretical equality of brother and sister it had been prearranged that they should enter simultaneously through doors on opposite sides of the dais, thus meeting at the table in the center and greeting each other with exactly measured cordiality. But urged, and followed by Potheinos and a group of ministers, with about fifty slaves in attendance, Ptolemy came on to the dais in advance of Cleopatra, hoping to snatch for himself acclamation that might later on be interpreted as a popular demonstration in his favor. He looked pale, but alert and confident, affecting a half-mocking gesture of apology for having come too soon; then stood with the smile of a duelist to watch the other door through which Cleopatra was expected.
Seeing he had stolen precedence she kept him waiting until acclamation died and silence filled the vast hall. Then she sent her servants in ahead of her and came forth at last, with Charmian in pure white turning at the door to wait for her, to serve as contrast to her own pearl and emerald splendor and to receive the first smile, that Ptolemy might have had self-command enough to treat with condescending scorn. That gracious little interlude with Charmian provided time in which to grasp the situation.
Ptolemy forgot his part and scowled. She greeted him with playful ease of manner, kissed him, took him by the hand and led him toward the table, he ungraciously yielding amid tumultuous applause, which lasted all the while they took their places. Charmian sat with them on one of the four gilded couches between the golden lions, but Potheinos and his fellow-ministers filed down to the tables set immediately below the dais.
Suddenly then a trumpet-blast came clamoring from the main door. Silence fell, utter and unfriendly, in which Ptolemy’s high voice was heard answering some formal question that Cleopatra asked. Twelve lictors, solemn and important in their red cloaks, strode in and divided into two ranks facing inward. They raised their fasces and aroused a murmur of resentment; lictors were a red rag to the bull of Alexandria’s pride. But before the murmur gained much headway Caesar strode in, followed after a long interval by Calvinus and a group of officers.
Caesar was in his element. The golden wreath offset the sphinx-like pallor of his face. His smile was of intellectual delight in calm audacity — the consciousness of greatness. He was not indifferent to danger; he delighted in it. Grim silence, with which he was greeted, was a greater compliment to him, and more enjoyable, than tempests of applause that might have indicated passing popularity. He gloried in arousing hatred that he thoroughly despised and knew he could turn into crawling toadyism when it suited him.
The Alexandrians were on their feet, but no one even bowed until he reached the dais, where Apollodorus did the honors. And then one of those strange incidents occurred that may mean little at the moment but over whose deep significance men ponder in the light of subsequent events. Young Ptolemy rose from his seat to welcome Caesar. The Alexandrian nobility gasped as if the very charter of their liberties were snatched away from them and burned before their eyes.
Cleopatra, curled up comfortably on her couch, was seen to whisper. Potheinos, scowling irritably, urged the boy to be seated, in a raucous whisper that amounted to a public reprimand. Ptolemy blushed, pretended he had stood to call a slave’s attention to the disorder of his cushions, and resumed his place, leaning toward Cleopatra to relieve his own embarrassment by cursing her in caustic undertones, she laughing, trying to restore his humor. She was willing yet to make her peace with Ptolemy.
Caesar saved that moment by attracting all attention to himself by the magnificence with which he greeted Cleopatra as he took his place between her and Charmian, facing Ptolemy, whom he saluted with a patronizing smile that offended the Alexandrians even more than it did Ptolemy himself.
Caesar appeared to be playing recklessly into Potheinos’ hands. There was a speech to be made before the banquet could begin. He let Potheinos make it, giving him opportunity to play, as it were, the overture preparing the guests’ minds for tragedy (for there is no weight, nor any enduring value in surprise without deliberate preparation for it).
Mingled in with platitudes and flowery compliments the eunuch managed to insert suggestive phrases:
“Our city, founded by the glorious Alexander, that has never suffered tyranny from aliens...They who accept the city’s destiny become the agents of the gods who suitably provide both means and opportunity to solve all riddles...Having lost a portion of that wonder of the world — our library — and with a great part of our fleet in ashes, it behooves us to take sensible preventives against future, and perhaps a more disastrous, loss...Justice is a satisfactory solution, unexpected though it sometimes be, and though it take surprising courses...He who is a faithful servant of his king is called upon to undertake responsibilities and even to ignore established precedents, the outcome justifying him...Our goal is peace, and they who stand in the way of peace must take the consequences.”
It was a strangely stirring and foreboding speech, but when he resumed his place he had said no word that, taken from its context, could be used against him. Nevertheless, he had more than half confirmed in the minds of the Alexandrians their premonition that surprises were in store. Even the music, song and dancing, that commenced immediately, and the fabulous supplies of food, and wines from the royal cellar, failed to break the spell of strained anticipation, it conveyed itself to the Roman sentries. They were nervous; a centurion made the rounds among them, issuing low-voiced reprimand.
While the food was gorged and the wine consumed by flagonsful continuous entertainment was provided on the stage. There were lions that danced with women, and then roared and wrestled. There was an ape, as huge and heavy as a Heracles, that had been taught to imitate a Roman officer in armor and helmet; be came nearer than anyone to relieving the tension, because somebody called him Calvinus, which aroused roars of Gargantuan laughter; but it made Calvinus swear so blasphemously that Caesar had to reprove him for it.
It was noticed that Caesar and Cleopatra partook very sparingly of wine and frequently let pass as many as a dozen dishes in succession; so that it soon began to be whispered, by those who did not know how abstemious they both were, that they were afraid of poison.
And Ptolemy’s young face was fascinated — therefore fascinating. He appeared to be aware of something pending and to be restraining excitement, watching Potheinos almost constantly and making only very perfunctory efforts to converse with Charmian. Caesar, on the other hand, appeared to be in the gayest possible spirit and kept Cleopatra and Charmian in gales of laughter, in which Ptolemy hardly ever joined.
It was midway through the banquet when Potheinos arose from his place to perform a ceremony that was considered the profoundest compliment a minister of state could pay. Slaves brought him an enormous dish (it was borne by two Syrian eunuchs) loaded with a favorite Alexandrian delicacy — rice, and olives stuffed with onion and fish-roe, smothered in a mushroom gravy. Helped by the slaves, Potheinos took the dish and, kneeling between Caesar and Cleopatra, offered it in token of submission, murmuring some compliment about his having caused the king of cooks to prepare his masterpiece for the master of Rome and the mistress of Egypt, equal owners, each of a half of the world.
Then, in accordance with inviolable custom, he tasted from the dish first, in proof that it was not poisoned; and it was noticed that Ptolemy watched him with excitement that was almost mesmeric; he put a napkin to his face when Cleopatra picked an olive from the dish with a pair of golden tongs and raised it to her lips.
But Caesar begged her for that olive and there was a moment’s lovers’ play between them before she dropped it in the palm of his right hand. He made as if to put it in his mouth, and she picked up another with the tongs, but dropped it when Caesar changed his mind and, suddenly and sternly glaring at Potheinos, ordered the nearest of the Syrian slaves, who knelt to support the dish, to take the olive from his hand and eat it.
The slave hesitated. But he read the cold glitter in Caesar’s eyes and chose a quick death rather than the crucifixion that he saw he could not otherwise escape. He swallowed the olive whole, not touching it with his teeth, and in a moment he had dropped the dish and was writhing in convulsions. On the floor of the hall there was sudden pandemonium, and then silence, as the guests pushed back their couches and stood to see better what was happening.
Cleopatra stared at Ptolemy. She made no comment. Ptolemy’s face remained behind the napkin.
Slaves rushed to clean up the spilled food, and in that moment’s confusion Potheinos sought to end his own life swiftly. He stooped to snatch a poisoned olive. But Calvinus made a handspring to the dais — pounced on him, and hurled him backward toward the screen at the rear, where Ahenobarbus held him until two of the sentries had tied his hands behind his back. A sentry stunned the other Syrian, who was trying to slip away unnoticed.
Caesar had not risen from his couch. In the abrupt and utter stillness that had fallen on the assembly his calm voice was heard addressing Calvinus:
“I think I promised you that at the proper time you should apply your remedy to that man. You will find an executioner waiting out there on the balcony.”
“One slave seems dead,” said Calvinus. “Shall I have this other crucified?”
“No. Let Potheinos have him. He may need him.”
The sentries hustled their victims out toward the balcony, where the singing-girls clustered in terrified groups. Calvinus followed to superintend, and somebody drew the Curtains. Caesar ordered the banquet to continue.
“So you knew?” said Cleopatra.
“Yes,” said Caesar. He, too, was staring now at Ptolemy. “I knew.”
Before the music could begin again, there came through the balcony curtains the sickening thwack of a heavy sword descending on a human neck. It was repeated. Ptolemy winced twice.
“Also,” said Caesar, watching him, “I had warning of armed men whom Potheinos had concealed in readiness to complete his treachery.”
A centurion, who had entered through the main door, smiled grimly, halted below the dais and saluted Caesar.
“Eight hundred and ten prisoners,” he reported. “They were hidden in the space between this ceiling and the roof, all armed with swords and daggers. Are they to be slain?”
“No. Keep them.” Caesar was still staring hard at Ptolemy. “It appears I shall not lack interesting captives for my triumph when I enter Rome!”
Cleopatra had begun whispering to an attendant, but Caesar’s eyes, that seemed to hypnotize young Ptolemy, continued gazing at him. “Do you know the custom?” he continued. “After they have been paraded through the streets, their leaders are decapitated. The remainder are disposed of more spectacularly.”
The entertainment and the music had resumed, but utterly unnoticed, although a woman on the stage had her head in the mouth of a hippopotamus, and a man, without using his hands, was climbing a ladder whose rungs consisted of sharpened sword-blades with their edges upturned. MI eyes were on Caesar and on Ptolemy, who stared at him, biting his lip.
“May I suggest to you,” said Caesar, “that now that you have lost that eunuch who misled you into unwise courses, you should be guided in future by your elder sister and by me?”
Ptolemy stood up at last and everyone below the dais rose immediately. Music ceased, again. The boy glared at Cleopatra. His lips moved, but he said nothing audible. Gathering his robes around him, summoning his attendants with a gesture, he turned his back and left the dais by the door behind the screen.
