Antony and Cleopatra (39 page)

It was probably a minor concern to Octavian, since he was very busy. From 35 to 33
BC
he led three consecutive campaigns in the Balkans, fighting against several Illyrian tribes. Caesar had himself planned to campaign in the area, so perhaps there was an echo of the great commander in his choice. There were also defeats to avenge and lost standards to recapture, for Antony's old commander Gabinius had lost an army there back in 47 BC. The region was also near the border with the territory governed by Antony, and so a useful place to demonstrate the strength of his forces against any potential rival, including his colleague. Yet the main reason was the same as the one that had led Antony to attack the Parthians. Octavian wanted to prove himself a proper servant of the Republic and win the glory of defeating foreign enemies. In his case, even his victories over other Romans were tainted by rumours of cowardice and weakness.

In the campaigns that followed he took good care now to appear as heroic as possible, managing to get injured during an assault on a town. (It was probably not through direct enemy action, but the enemy was certainly close.) Like Antony he ordered at least one cohort to be decimated. There are other stories of his exemplary punishments that may date to these operations – for instance, having centurions stand at attention outside his tent. Sometimes a man's belt was undone, so that the long military tunic fell almost to his ankles and so looked unmartial and perhaps even feminine. They might also be made to hold up a piece of turf or a measuring pole. Barely thirty by the time the campaigns were over, Octavian wanted to establish a reputation as a stern commander in the traditional mould, a man who personified the
virtus
expected of a Roman aristocrat. Awarded a triumph, he chose to postpone it and busy himself with working on the Republic's behalf.
¹¹

The spoils of victory were pumped into rebuilding Rome. Octavian began a series of major projects and others were undertaken by other successful generals, many of them close associates. There was a spate of temple building, and the Regia and several basilicas were restored. Rome also for the first time acquired a permanent stone amphitheatre, while Asinius Pollio gave it a public library – something Caesar had planned, but not had time to create. In later life Augustus would boast that he ‘found Rome brick, and left it marble'. (He did not mean the incredibly strong, oven-fired red bricks visible today in so many of Rome's great monuments, for this was an innovation of the imperial period. Under the Republic cheap and simple mud bricks were one of the commonest building materials.)

The transformation of the city really began in these years. As important as the monuments themselves was the work and incomes provided for the inhabitants of Rome. Little construction work was ever done by slaves and these projects were important job creation schemes. A good deal of the improvements were highly practical. Agrippa became aedile in 33
BC
, an extraordinarily junior post for a man who had been consul in 37
BC
, but since he was technically still too young to hold either office this was a minor breach of tradition. He took on the task of improving the city's water supply and drainage system, and was remembered for sailing through the sewers in a boat to inspect them properly. Inspection was followed by a long programme of work. Agrippa repaired existing aquaducts and added a new one, the Aqua Julia, and made ‘700 cisterns, 500 fountainheads… 130 water towers'. Rome was not only to be beautiful, but also functional and a better place in which to live. The spoils of victory were to benefit the Roman people.
¹²

In
34 BC
Antony finally achieved a little revenge for the disaster in Media. He was still not in a position to seriously harm Phraates IV, and instead turned his attention to King Artavasdes of Armenia, the ally accused of letting the Romans down. In a limited operation Armenia was overrun and Artavasdes was taken prisoner, probably seized under cover of negotiations. Dellius had been the delegate chosen to negotiate with the king. The Romans found such methods acceptable if they helped to resolve a conflict, so in itself this was not too damaging an accusation. Yet in the end this was a minor operation, achieving victory over a recent ally with very little fighting. There was little glory in such a success, certainly nowhere near enough to balance the earlier failure. The operation was also not complete, since the Armenian nobility proclaimed the king's son as king, who was able to escape to Parthia.

Antony strengthened Rome's position in the border kingdoms by securing Armenia for the time being. Around this time the alliance with Artavasdes of Media was also strengthened, when Antony and Cleopatra's son Alexander Helios was betrothed to the king's daughter. Both were still young children, so the marriage could not meaningfully take place for at least a decade, but it was a pledge for the future. In many ways a more surprising wedding actually occurred a few years later when Antony married his eldest daughter Antonia to Pythodorus of Tralles, a wealthy and influential aristocrat from Asia Minor. Presumably he already had – or was given – Roman citizenship, but it remained an extremely unorthodox alliance for a senator's daughter. It is generally assumed that this Antonia was the offspring of his second marriage to his own cousin, also named Antonia, although perhaps it is possible that she was the child of his first wife, the freedman's daughter Fadia. Even more than his formal recognition of his children with Cleopatra, this went a stage further than previous emulation of Hellenistic royalty by Roman commanders. Antony is said to have boasted that founding dynasties from his own bloodline set him alongside his ancestor Hercules and that the best thing about Rome's dominance was what they gave to the provincial peoples.
¹³

The capture of Artavasdes was the biggest success Antony himself had enjoyed since Philippi seven years earlier. That in itself suggests his lack of personal focus on military adventures. Time and again he had felt called away to deal with crises in the west, as the triumvirate threatened to break apart. His visits to Italy and the need in the previous year to deal with Sextus Pompey were all important concerns, and yet it does contrast very strongly with the ruthlessly single-minded approach to campaigning of Pompey and Caesar, and indeed many less famous Roman commanders. These interruptions had certainly hindered preparations for the attack on Parthia and probably contributed to its rushed start and muddled conduct.

The Armenian victory was a small one, but it was all that he had had for such a long time and Antony decided to celebrate on a grand scale. What followed soon became deeply controversial and the reality of what happened smothered in hostile propaganda, so that the whole truth is probably impossible to establish. Antony had decided to spend another winter in Alexandria and entered into the city in a grand procession. Once again he appeared as Dionysus –Bacchus or Liber Pater, the ‘Free Father' to the Romans. The triumvir rode in a Bacchic carriage and wore a wreath of ivy, a robe of saffron and gold, as well as the buckskins associated with the god, and carried his sacred wand, known as the
thrystus.
None of this was new, and it was a more tactful way of displaying power to a Hellenistic audience, appearing as a personification of the great god of celebration and victory and not as a blatantly Roman overlord.
¹⁴

Artavasdes walked in the procession, along with many other prisoners. The king was in chains, but in deference to his rank these were symbolic and made of precious metal – silver or gold, depending on the source. The column followed a route into the city, past cheering crowds, and eventually was received by Cleopatra, sitting on a golden throne on a lavishly decorated platform within the traditions of Ptolemaic spectacle. This was probably in front of the Serapeion, the great temple to Serapis, the god created by the Ptolemies. Artavasdes and the Armenian nobles were said to have refused to salute or bow to the queen, in spite of every effort to persuade or intimidate them.
¹⁵

Octavian's allies soon painted the parade as a triumph in all but name and thus a mockery of one of the Romans' most ancient and revered rituals. A triumph could only be held at Rome and end with a sacrifice to Capitoline Jupiter. The victory was for Rome and the Roman people, granted by Rome's gods. It could not be transferred to a foreign city and marked with foreign rituals, worst of all centred around a foreign monarch.

Antony is very unlikely to have intended the ceremony to be a triumph. Some of the Roman rituals had their origin in Dionysiac processions, which added to the similarities and made it easier to criticise. It was surely intended for a Hellenistic audience, although it also reflected his own love of theatre. He could enjoy his success, before spending another pleasant winter in Alexandria. His continuing power would no doubt have secured him a real triumph had he returned to Rome, but everyone would have known that this was a sham. On top of that he had no intention of returning to Italy yet, before he had achieved a genuinely major victory, or at the very least further built up his wealth and the influence this gave him. A Hellenistic display, much like the formal entry of any great king into a city, advertised his power throughout the region and his sympathy for the local culture.

There seems to have been a similar motive behind the even more bizarre ceremony held a few days later. It occurred in the great gymnasium of Alexandria, that most Hellenistic institution of the largest Greek city in the world. Later it became known as the Donations of Alexandria, but it is unclear how Antony and Cleopatra would have described the event. It is not certain how he was dressed, but his lover appeared as the New Isis, so was probably clad in the black robes of the goddess. The Roman triumvir and Ptolemaic queen sat side by side on golden thrones. In front of them, and a little lower down, the thirteen-year-old Caesarion, the six-year-old twins Alexander and Cleopatra Selene and the two-year-old Ptolemy Philadelphus occupied smaller thrones. of Armenia, Media and Parthia, while his twin sister was given rule of Cyrenaica and Libya. Ptolemy was granted the rest of Syria, Phoenicia and Cilicia. The infant was dressed up in Macedonian military cloak and boots and wore a traditional hat topped by a royal diadem. Alexander Helios wore a version of Median royal costume, with a much more eastern royal tiara. Their mother was also named ‘Queen of Kings, whose sons are kings' and variations of these slogans soon began to appear on coins and official documents.

Antony formally pronounced Cleopatra and Caesarion rulers of Egypt, Cyprus and part of Syria. Alexander Helios was named king

Cleopatra's superiority over her children was confirmed, for even her co-ruler Caesarion was seated below her and received no new titles. Dio claims that Antony formally proclaimed the boy as the son of Caesar. If this was so, then he made no attempt to have him made a citizen or legitimised in Roman law. The Ptolemaic tradition allowed the existing monarch to mark out any of his or her children as co-ruler and rightful successor, regardless of age or details of parentage. Therefore Caesarion did not need to have a declared father to hold power. However, the fame of Caesar as father could do no harm and, if it was rarely mentioned within Egypt, it is possible that it was more important in their other territories.
¹⁶

Yet in practical terms the most striking thing about the Donations is how little difference they made to anything. Media remained an allied kingdom under its own monarch and the Parthians were not about to give up their independence to accept the rule of a small boy with no claim whatsoever to rule there. Roman provinces and allied communities given to the children continued to run their affairs as they had done before the ceremony. Alexander and Ptolemy were supposedly given bodyguards of Armenians and Macedonians respectively, at least for the day of the ceremony itself. They were not given guardians or regents, nor any machinery of government created around them.

The Donations were marvellous theatre, popular with the Alexandrian crowd who liked a good show and no doubt highly enjoyable for Antony and Cleopatra themselves. They were well within the traditions of Ptolemaic celebrations and demonstrated the queen's dominance through the support of her Roman lover. What is much less clear is how Antony hoped to benefit from them. Perhaps he felt that the promise of future rule suggested long-term stability for the settlement he was creating in the eastern Mediterranean. Promise was the most it could be, since nothing was actually changed by the ceremony and, in any event, the inclusion of Parthia gave everything an air of fantasy. It was if Antony was pretending to be a real conqueror, so far taken in by his own propaganda to believe (or to want to believe) himself truly a Dionysus, Hercules or Alexander the Great.

For Octavian it provided splendid ammunition to blacken his colleague's name. Antony appeared deluded and was acting like a monarch, freely giving provincial and allied territory won by the legions to his children at the behest of a foreign queen. Antony's allies in the Senate are supposed to have suppressed his own report on the campaign and the ceremonies, since it was so discreditable to him. For little or no gain, he damaged himself badly in Rome and Italy in general. Even at the time, many people struggled to understand just what Antony planned for the future. He and Octavian were still triumvirs, although the second five-year term for the triumvirate was due to expire at the end of 33
BC
. The big question was when and how did Antony plan to return home?