Antony and Cleopatra (38 page)

For a while the enemy was deterred, but the food situation was becoming desperate. Many pack and draught animals had died or were now being used to transport the substantial numbers of wounded. This was good for morale, but the health of the remaining soldiers was also suffering. Small quantities of wheat changed hands at an exorbitant rate. The soldier's ration was normally issued unprepared, but there were now very few handmills left to grind the grain into flour. Men scrabbled desperately to find edible herbs and vegetables, and some fell ill and died as a result of these experiments. Men continued to perish even though the Parthian attacks had slackened a little.
²⁴

King Phraates again showed himself willing to negotiate and tried to persuade the Romans to turn onto an easier, lowland route, promising that they would be merely observed by the locals and not attacked. Antony received a message from Monaeses claiming that this was a trap. Apart from gratitude for Antony's past generosity, the former exile may not have been keen on the king winning such an overwhelming victory and so cementing his hold on power. The Mardian guide echoed these suspicions, and Velleius tells a story of one of Crassus' legionaries who was still in captivity, but somehow managed to slip across to the Roman outposts and warn them of the treachery. Antony ordered the army to move out under cover of darkness, in the hope of gaining some breathing space from the pursuit, and stuck to the more difficult route. The soldiers were ordered to carry water, so that there would be no need to halt and distribute this. The principle was sound, but by this time many had no vessel suitable for carrying.
²⁵

The Romans marched a thirsty 30 miles, but were caught by the Parthians before the day was too far advanced. Some were so desperate that in spite of warnings they drank from a polluted stream and were prostrated by stomach cramps as Antony rode amongst them, begging them to keep going until the next river. That night, discipline broke down altogether. What was left of the baggage train – and some officers seem to have still possessed substantial personal equipment and luxuries – was plundered and men murdered for their money. Dellius, the probable source for the surviving accounts, was with the army and said that at this time Antony even warned one of his bodyguards that he might need help to commit suicide.
²⁶

Order was eventually restored at daylight. They moved on and again fought off a series of Parthian attacks. It was the last day of fighting, as the pursuit was then abandoned. In a few days' time Antony's men reached the River Artaxes, the border with Armenia, twenty-seven days after they had left Phraata. Plutarch says that when Antony paraded his army he found that he had lost 20,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, which does not seem to include the legions wiped out with the heavy baggage train. Armenia was an ally, but for the moment the lacklustre performance of its king was overlooked.

The army's ordeal was not yet over. It was now late autumn and there was not enough food available to permit the soldiers to spend the winter until they had marched a considerable distance into Armenia. They had to keep moving, marching through the mountainous country in the teeth of snowstorms. Plutarch says another 8,000 men died of exhaustion, disease and exposure. As ever with numbers in our ancient sources, some caution is required. Velleius says that a quarter of his legionaries perished in the expedition and a third of the camp followers, along with virtually all the baggage. A loss of between one-quarter and one-third of Antony's entire army seems plausible, and fewer than half of these had fallen to enemy action. The bulk of the survivors can only have been exhausted and many probably in poor health. On top of the human casualties were the animals, lost with the heavy train or on the long march home. Horses, mules and oxen will tend to break down before men, or may simply be eaten when food supplies run out. Finally, there were the lost wagons and specialised equipment from the siege train. For the moment, Antony's army was crippled, incapable of launching another major operation and needing time to recover.
²⁷

Damage to his prestige would be even harder to repair. The Parthian War was supposed to bring him glory and wealth. Unlike Crassus, Antony had survived and brought away more than half of his army. Yet the Romans expected victory, not simply survival or feats of endurance. There was plenty of scope for criticising Antony's generalship. The initial plan seems to have been unclear about the objectives and how to achieve them. At best, it was probably too ambitious given the time scale, while the decision to let the siege train and heavy baggage follow on behind was predictably disastrous. Mistakes could be forgiven and excused if the outcome of the war was successful. Good Roman generals paraded their luck, since in the end it was winning that counted.

Antony had not won and clearly failed in all of his objectives. No territory had been taken and not only had no eagles or captives been recovered, but the Parthians had also gained fresh trophies of victory. He stayed with his army until the troops were safely back in billets in Syria. His personal courage had been exemplary throughout the campaign and he had shared the danger and the hardship with his men. Antony was still popular, but then so was Lord Raglan in the British Army he led so badly in the Crimea. A general needs to be far more than just physically brave to do his job well. Antony had failed in the one field of endeavour most central to the identity of a Roman aristocrat.
²⁸

His men safe, Antony hurried to the coast of Syria and sent for Cleopatra.

Antony chose an obscure location for his rendezvous with Cleopatra. Leuce Come – literally, ‘the white port' – lay between Berytus (modern-day Beirut) and the old Phoenician city of Sidon. Both of the latter were substantial cities, but instead of going to them he waited in what was little more than a village. Perhaps he was afraid that the Parthians would take advantage of his retreat to counterattack into Syria and so felt the major cities were more attractive targets to the enemy. Yet it was probably December 36
BC
or January 35
BC
by the time he reached the coast and at such a season a major raid was unlikely. Apart from that, the walls of somewhere like Tyre were far more likely to offer safety than a small place like Leuce Come.

More probably he chose such a minor port because this was not to be a great occasion of ceremony and pomp, but a private reunion –or at least as private as was possible when a Roman triumvir met such an important client monarch. He instructed her to bring money and supplies for his troops, so that there was an element of business, but if that had been the main issue there was no need for him to summon the queen in person. That need was personal.

Antony was mentally and physically exhausted. In less than a year he had travelled well over 2,000 miles, prosecuted a siege and fought a succession of skirmishes and other engagements. During the retreat, he had driven himself hard to keep his army going and had at least once seriously contemplated suicide. As commander, he had made the key decisions and was responsible for their disastrous consequences. He had failed, and this failure would overshadow the rest of his life.

Cleopatra offered a chance to forget this for a while. Antony could rely on her to be lively, entertaining and uncritical company. She would listen when he wanted to talk and her comments would be plausibly encouraging. They could feast and celebrate, continuing to live ‘inimitable' lives, as well as making love. The queen was a mistress who needed to keep his backing. It is also hard to believe that there was not at least a degree of genuine love on both sides. Most important of all, Cleopatra was not Roman. With her, Antony could pretend to be a Hellenistic ruler, or Hercules or Dionysus if he preferred. He did not have to be the Roman noble who had fallen short of the military prowess so important to his class.

Antony waited impatiently for his lover to arrive. Plutarch talks of him wandering restlessly and getting up in the middle of meals to go and look out to sea in the hope of spotting her ships. He began to drink even more heavily as the days stretched into weeks and Cleopatra had not arrived. There is no hint that she deliberately delayed. It was only a matter of months since she had given birth to their third child together, a boy given the name Ptolemy Philadelphus. The name was a reminder of the second king of her line, who had presided over the empire at its greatest extent. Perhaps Cleopatra had not yet recovered from the birth and did not feel immediately able to travel. As importantly, the summons was unexpectedly urgent and preparations needed to be made. Antony wanted money and clothes for his ragged army. Obtaining ten thousand or more tunics or pairs of boots inevitably took time, as did obtaining sufficient coin in the right sort of denomination to be issued as pay to the soldiers, and both were bulky to transport.

When Cleopatra eventually arrived, she brought considerable quantities of clothing, but less money than Antony had requested. It may not have been available in the time and, in any case, he still had substantial reserves of his own. The troops were paid – quite probably a generous bounty in addition to their normal salary, for the legions had become accustomed to such things in the last decade or so. Antony was accused of telling his men that the money was a generous gift from Cleopatra, even though it was not. His spirits certainly recovered now that the queen was with him. Soon, they both went back to Alexandria.
¹

Much had changed since Antony had set out for Armenia. In 36
BC
Octavian launched a major offensive against Sextus Pompey. Lepidus had helped, bringing his own forces from Africa to invade Sicily. Sextus showed some of his old skill, and his men their usual courage, but this time they were outclassed. Agrippa had spent a year creating a larger and very well-trained navy, which included the 120 warships loaned to his colleague by Antony. He won the first battle of the year. Sextus soon struck back, defeating Octavian. However, he could not prevent both Octavian and Lepidus from landing armies in Sicily. Much of the island was soon overrun. There were some 300 ships on each side at the decisive battle fought off Cape Naulochus. Octavian watched from the shore as Agrippa virtually destroyed the Pompeian fleet, making use of a newly invented device called the
harpax,
which made it easier to grapple the enemy vessels. Once held, they could be boarded and captured. Agrippa had bigger vessels carrying larger numbers of legionaries acting as marines and so was always likely to win such encounters.
²

Sextus' power was broken and he fled. Lepidus chose this moment to try and regain the power and prominence he had once enjoyed. Perhaps he hoped to dispose of Octavian altogether, or at least renegotiate their alliance. Lepidus assumed control of the combined armies in Sicily. The details are a little unclear and much clouded by propaganda, but there is no doubt that it was all quickly over. The young Caesar went into Lepidus' camp in person. The legionaries now defected to him, just as they had flocked to join Antony's men in 43 BC. Lepidus was stripped of his powers as triumvir, but allowed to live out the remainder of his life in comfortable retirement. It was a display of clemency reminiscent of Julius Caesar and unlike the savagery of the proscriptions. Lepidus remained
Pontifex Maximus,
although he cannot have actually performed the role in practice. Only when he died, more than twenty years later, did Octavian – by now having assumed the name Augustus – assume the priesthood. From then on, it remained the prerogative of the emperors until the collapse of the Western Empire in the fifth century
AD
, when it passed to the pope, who still holds the title.
³

Octavian celebrated an ovation for the defeat of Sextus, just as Crassus had once performed this lesser ceremony to mark his victory over Spartacus. At one point, Octavian himself had freed large numbers of slaves to provide manpower for the fleet, but his propaganda painted Sextus as the leader of runaway slaves rebelling against the natural order. Thousands of prisoners were crucified in another reminder of Spartacus. It was claimed that they were former slaves whose previous owners could not be found. Perhaps this was true, although more important was the propaganda message denying that this was another civil war. Instead, it was a matter of restoring order, of dealing with a pirate and not the son of Pompey the Great.
⁴

It was still a success, which contrasted strongly with Antony's defeat in Media. The latter's despatches to the Senate concealed the scale of the losses and painted some of the skirmishes as great victories. For the moment, at least in public, Octavian and his associates did not question the truth of Antony's version. Rumour would have flourished anyway, for no doubt many of his officers wrote their own versions of events. At the very least, it was soon clear that the expedition had made few, if any, tangible gains.
⁵

Octavia travelled to Athens in the spring of 35
BC
, intent on joining her husband. She brought with her 2,000 praetorians and also a substantial quantity of money, supplies and draught animals. Appian also mentions a unit of cavalry. Around the same time, Octavian sent back to Antony the ships he had borrowed at Tarentum. Only seventy remained, reflecting the heavy losses in the struggle with Sextus. The promised legionaries – whether two legions or 20,000 men – were not included. Plutarch thought that Octavian sent his sister with less than the pledged aid as a deliberate provocation and modern commentators have been inclined to agree. If Antony welcomed his wife, then he could be seen to accept without question whatever assistance his triumviral colleague chose to grant. More probably he would be insulted and might rebuff the well-respected Octavia. Scorning a Roman wife in favour of a mistress who was not only foreign, but royal, was bound to damage Antony's reputation.
⁶

Yet it was natural enough for Octavia to go again to Athens, bringing aid to her husband, and everything she brought – including the praetorians – was presented as a personal gift from her, not from her brother. It would have been a strange thing to stop her. On the other hand, in the past she had never gone further east than Athens. Antony sent word telling her to remain in the city, since he planned to campaign once again. A Roman wife was not supposed to follow her husband to war itself. He accepted the gifts she brought, although he was understandably – and no doubt publicly – annoyed by the failure of her brother to fulfil his promises. Octavian's lack of support was a convenient thing for Antony to blame as an excuse for his own mistakes. More soldiers are very unlikely to have made any major difference to the outcome of the expedition in 36
BC.

Nor would they have been of much immediate use in the following summer. The remnants of his army had not had enough time to recover from the hardships of the retreat. In particular, the cavalry mounts must have been in poor shape and the mounted arm was of vital importance in any operation against the Parthians. Even more serious were the losses in baggage animals and wagons, and those brought by Octavia are unlikely to have made up for these. Without transport a major offensive was simply impossible. Fortunately, the enemy had fallen to bickering over the spoils of their recent victory. Artavasdes of Media sent messengers to Antony offering alliance against the Parthian king.
⁷

There seemed to be an opportunity for limited operations, suitable for his currently limited resources, when Antony was suddenly forced to deal with a wholly unexpected threat. Sextus Pompey had fled eastwards and landed in the province of Asia. At first he offered alliance with Antony against Octavian. Then, hearing of the disaster in Media, he seems to have decided either that the eastern triumvir was vulnerable or perhaps that it was better to negotiate from a position of strength. Sextus began enrolling legions of his own. After a brief campaign he was suppressed by the nearest governors and executed. It is unclear whether or not Antony himself gave this order. Octavian would later contrast his own generosity to Lepidus with his colleague's summary killing of Sextus. Yet it is difficult to imagine that he would not have killed Pompey's son if Sextus had fallen into his hands, and it would certainly have been hard to reconcile with the concerted effort to portray him as a pirate. Nor was there any real incentive for Antony to spare him. At the time Octavian publicly celebrated the execution in Rome.
⁸

Faced with these distractions, and with the bulk of his army still exhausted, Antony achieved very little before the autumn made campaigning impractical. He may still have been very tired himself. Cleopatra was with him for much of the year, either in Alexandria or afterwards probably in Antioch. Plutarch says that she feared Octavia and was reluctant to let her lover spend the winter with his wife. Antony responded to affection and, although she was Octavian's sister, Octavia was a similar age to the queen, was clever and widely considered beautiful. Her love for her husband may well also have been genuine and her sense of duty was clearly very strong. Therefore, Cleopatra was supposed to have worked on Antony, showing utter delight when he was with her and ‘letting' him catch glimpses of her quickly hidden tears when he was not. She deliberately lost weight, while her courtiers, and quite possibly some of his Roman friends whom she had taken care to cultivate, spoke to him of her utter devotion.
⁹

Cleopatra relied on Antony to hold on to power. Love may well have grown, whether or not it was there from the start. Together they had had three children, and there were very few men indeed whom Cleopatra could see as her equal and so a worthy companion as well as a lover. Genuine passion probably fuelled the political dependency. Antony had left her for years in 40BC, returning to Italy and a new wife. At some point he was bound to return to Rome and the heart of the Republic, which had given him power. If he joined Octavia, then this could well happen sooner rather than later and remove his direct support from the queen. The Roman wife was a dangerous rival.

She was also a reminder to her husband of his recent failure. If Antony joined her, then he renewed the close connection with her brother, but more than that would once again become fully the Roman senator. His administrative reorganisation of the east had generally been successful, renewing and sometimes improving on the work of Pompey. Yet unlike Pompey he could not boast of genuine victories. Nor was there any prospect of fighting another campaign on the same scale – and with as good a chance of success –for several years. His career had gone badly wrong and that was not a pleasant thought. This truth would have been much harder to ignore in the company of Octavia, and so would the knowledge that her brother was bound to capitalise on his weakness.

It was not a very attractive prospect, in contrast to staying with Cleopatra, who was a much more pleasant and encouraging companion. With her he could live pleasantly and try to forget about the future. Perhaps it was also easier to believe that he could do something to repair the damage of his defeat. Antony sent word to Octavia telling her to return to Rome. Like a good Roman wife she obeyed and returned to their house – the property once owned by Pompey the Great. She continued to use her influence on behalf of Antony's friends. Rumour said that her brother suggested that she divorce her husband, but that she staunchly refused.
¹⁰