Cleopatra: A Life (26 page)

He had too an admirable past on which to trade. As a young officer he had urged clemency at the Egyptian frontier, when on his return Cleopatra’s father had condemned his disloyal troops to death. Antony had intervened, to secure their pardons. He had arranged for a royal burial for Berenice’s husband, also against Auletes’ wish. The goodwill was not forgotten. The Alexandrians happily embraced Antony and played along with his disguises, by which they were hardly fooled. Like their queen, they joined in his
“coarse wit
” and met him on his merry terms.
They declared themselves much obliged to him for donning “the tragic mask with the Romans, but the comic mask with them.” Antony effectively tamed a people that only seven years earlier had met Caesar with javelins and slingshots, as much a tribute to Cleopatra’s firm grasp of power as to Antony’s charm. Certainly it was easier to take to a Roman, who—unlike Westerners before and since—did not play the superiority card. Antony moreover appeared in a square-cut Greek garment rather than a Roman toga. He wore the white leather slippers that could be seen on the feet of every Egyptian priest. He made a very different impression than had his red-cloaked commanding officer, whose influence still hung heavily in the air. It enhanced Cleopatra’s allure. If Caesar could feel with Cleopatra as if he were cozying up to Alexander the Great—and no Roman ever marched east without the image of Alexander before him—Antony could feel as if he were communing with Caesar as well.

Appian has Antony exclusively in the company of Cleopatra,
“to whom his sojourn
in Alexandria was wholly devoted.” He sees in her a poor influence. Antony
“was often disarmed by Cleopatra
, subdued by her spells, and persuaded to drop from his hands great undertakings and necessary campaigns, only to roam about and play with her on the sea-shores.” More likely the opposite was true. And while Cleopatra focused exclusively and intently on her guest, she did so without sacrificing her competitive spirit, her sense of humor, or her agenda. Here are the two on an Alexandrian afternoon, relaxing on the river or on Lake Mareotis in a fishing boat, surrounded by attendants. Mark Antony is frustrated. He commands whole armies but on this occasion somehow cannot coax a single fish from the teeming, famously fertile Egyptian waters. He is all the more mortified as Cleopatra stands beside him. Romance or no, to prove so incompetent in her presence is a torture. Antony does what any self-respecting angler would: Secretly he orders his servants to dive into the water and fasten a series of precaught fish to his hook. One after another he reels these catches in, a little too triumphantly, a little too regularly; he is an impulsive man with something to prove, never particularly
good at limits. Cleopatra rarely misses a trick and does not miss this one. She feigns admiration. Her lover is a most dexterous man! Later that afternoon she sings his praises to her friends, whom she invites to witness his prowess for themselves.

A great fleet accordingly heads out the following day. At its outset Cleopatra issues a few furtive orders of her own. Antony puts out his line, to instantaneous results. He senses a great weight and reels in his catch, to peals of laughter: From the Nile he extracts a salted, imported Black Sea herring. Cleopatra profits from the ruse to prove her superior wit—Antony was not the only one who felt compelled to impress—but also to remind her lover deftly, firmly, sweetly, of his greater responsibilities. She is no scold, having instead mastered that formula for which every parent, coach, and chief executive searches: She has ambition, and no trouble encouraging the same in others.
“Leave the fishing rod
, General, to us,” Cleopatra admonishes, before the assembled company. “Your prey,” she reminds Antony, “are cities, kingdoms, and continents.” An expertly mixed cocktail of flattery, one that answered perfectly to Plutarch’s definition:
“For such a rebuke
as this is just like the bites of a lecherous woman; it tickles and provokes, and pleases even while it pains you.”

If Cleopatra treated Antony like a schoolboy on holiday, that was precisely how he appeared in Rome, to which he turned his back over these convivial months. He celebrated his forty-third birthday in Alexandria and yet distinguished himself mostly for his capers and caprices, ironic given that his original charge against Octavian was that he was a mere boy. (Few accusations stung a Roman more deeply. This one so riled Octavian that he would pass a law prohibiting anyone from referring to him as such.) Where Cleopatra failed to urge Antony toward his public responsibilities, dire dispatches that arrived at the end of the winter did. From the east came word that the Parthians were causing a commotion. They had invaded Syria, where they had murdered Antony’s newly installed governor. From the west came equally disturbing word. Fulvia
had created a dangerous diversion. With Antony’s brother, she had incited a war against Octavian, in part to lure her husband away from Cleopatra. Having met with defeat, she had fled to Greece.

In or just before April Antony sprang into action, marching overland to meet the Parthians. He got no farther than northern Syria when he received a miserable letter from Fulvia. It left him with little choice but to renounce his offensive and—with a fleet of two hundred newly built ships—change course for Greece. Antony had not been unaware of his wife’s activities, about which both sides had written him repeatedly. A winter delegation had further expanded on the details. He had evidenced little interest; he was as ill inclined to reproach his wife as to break with Octavian. Fulvia’s disturbances may well have kept her husband in Alexandria every bit as much as did Cleopatra’s diversions. Certainly Antony was slow to bestir himself, for which he would be taken to task later. As Appian acidly notes of the repeated and increasingly urgent communiqués:
“Although I have made enquiries
, I have failed to find out with any certainty what Antony’s replies were.” Fulvia felt herself to be in danger. She feared even for their children, not unreasonably. A century later she was largely forgotten. It was tidier to indict the Alexandrian Antony for being
“so under the sway
of his passion and of his drunkenness that he gave not a thought either to his allies or to his enemies.”

THE REUNION IN
Greece was stormy. Antony was severe with his wife. She had overstepped her bounds and overplayed his hand. Plutarch thought Cleopatra much in Fulvia’s debt,
“for teaching Antony
to endure a woman’s sway, since she took him over quite tamed, and schooled at the outset to obey women.” Fulvia may well have taught her husband to obey a woman but could not persuade him either to challenge Octavian or to aspire to more than half an empire. Repeatedly she exhorted him to ally with Pompey’s son, Sextus. Together the two could handily eliminate Octavian. Antony would not hear of it. He had signed an accord. He did not violate his agreements. (Weeks later, on the high seas, Antony confronted one of Caesar’s assassins. He had been proscribed, had
opposed Antony at Philippi, and now approached swiftly, with a full fleet. A terrified aide suggested that Antony turn aside. He would consider no such thing, swearing
“that he would rather die
as a result of a breach of treaty than be recognized as a coward and live.” He sailed on.) To repair the damage with Octavian, Antony left without saying good-bye. Fulvia was ill when he did so. Many of the charges against her may have been invented; impugning independent-minded women was a subspecialty of the Roman historian. And Fulvia had had plenty of accomplices. Antony’s procurer had encouraged her, having repeatedly and maliciously pointed out
“that if Italy remained at peace
, Antony would stay with Cleopatra, but if there were a war, he would come back without delay.”

With his new fleet Antony headed to the Adriatic. In his absence Fulvia became seriously depressed and died. The cause is unclear. Appian supposes she may have taken her own life out of spite
“because she was angry with Antony
for leaving her when she was sick.” She may simply have been exhausted from the incessant meddling. She could not have been much mourned in Alexandria. Antony on the other hand was deeply affected by the death, for which he berated himself. He had not even returned to see his wife in her illness. Others held him responsible too, writing the neglect down—as Dio chides—to
“his passion for Cleopatra
and her wantonness.” Fulvia had been handsome and serious-minded and devoted. She had come to the marriage with money, influential friends, and shrewd political instincts. She had borne Antony two sons. If in truth she was a virago, she was, as has been pointed out,
“at least an infinitely loyal
virago.” Antony had thrived at her side.

Fulvia’s death was arguably her most pacific act. It opened the way for a reconciliation between Octavian and Antony,
“now rid of an interfering woman
whose jealousy of Cleopatra had made her fan the flames of such a serious war.” As it was easy to write an absurd and costly war down to a woman’s machinations, so it was easy to write off an accord to her demise, the more so as no one was inclined to fight in the first place. Sextus Pompey remained active at sea. He had vigorously blocked the grain
routes to Rome. Incessant war had destroyed Italian agriculture. Rome was a starving, unruly city, at the limits of its endurance. The countryside was in revolt. Soldiers lobbied for the funds Antony was to have obtained abroad and had yet to distribute. Friends stepped in as go-betweens, again reconciling the two men, who again divided the world between them, with Octavian making out more handsomely than he had two years earlier.

This was the Treaty of Brundisium, of early October 40. By its terms, Antony was to battle the Parthians, while Octavian was to fend off or reach an agreement with Sextus Pompey. Some eight months later, the three men would accordingly sign a new agreement in Misenum, across the bay from Naples, the summit of Pompeii in the background. No sooner had those pacts been drafted, no sooner had the men embraced, than
“a great and mighty shout
arose from the mainland and from the ships at the same moment.” Even the mountains resounded with joy. In the ensuing harborfront chaos many were trampled, suffocated, or drowned, as “they embraced one another while swimming and threw their arms around one another’s necks as they dived.” Armed conflict had again been averted, although the all-night Brundisium celebrations spoke as loudly as did the agreements themselves. In tents along the coast both camps feted each other through a day and a night. (Octavian did so in the Roman fashion, Antony in the Asiatic and Egyptian style, which passed without comment.) All the same, when they did so at Misenum
“their ships were moored
close by, guards were stationed around, and those actually attending the dinner carried daggers concealed beneath their clothing.” Conspiracies brewed and plots were extinguished throughout the cordial banqueting.

To join the two men personally after Brundisium, Octavian offered up his adored half sister to Antony. Here was the one realm in which a Roman woman commanded a premium: She made for an invaluable personal guarantee, especially when it came to closing a political deal. Circumspect and sober, Octavia had at twenty-nine all the makings of the
long-suffering political wife. She was intelligent but not independent, a mediator rather than a manipulator. While she had studied philosophy, she harbored no political ambitions.
“A wonder of a woman
,” she was an acknowledged beauty, graceful, fine-featured, with a glossy mane of magnificent hair. Conveniently, she had been widowed months earlier. She was precisely what the situation required, an eminently qualified counterweight to Cleopatra, from whom she was intended to divert Antony. By his own admission he remained under that faraway spell. “His reason was still battling with his love,” as Plutarch has it, and as Antony’s men well knew. They ribbed him mercilessly about the affair. By law a widow was to wait ten months before remarrying, to allow for the birth of any progeny. All parties counted so fervently on Octavia to “restore harmony and be their complete salvation” that the Senate hurriedly passed an exemption. At the end of December 40 the Brundisium festivities continued in Rome, where Antony and Octavia celebrated their marriage.

Rome was hardly in a festive mood—it was famished, plundered, exhausted—but the news must especially have rankled in Alexandria. The pacts of 40 and 39 could not have surprised but may have alarmed Cleopatra. Antony’s marriage was one thing, his commitment to his brother-in-law another. It was not in Cleopatra’s best interest for Antony and Octavian to join forces. Octavian was her mortal enemy, a walking, plotting insult to her son. On the other hand, she knew her man. Antony would be back. She did not need to make any advances, as the Parthians could be counted on to do so. She may well have come to feel perversely grateful to the Parthians, who distracted the Romans from Egypt. They accentuated her importance; Antony could hardly effect his part of the Brundisium bargain without her. Cleopatra had fair reason to believe that reconciliation fragile if not hollow. Antony and Octavian could reconcile as many times as they liked. The enmity—as Fulvia had forcefully argued months earlier—would not vanish. Cleopatra could have guessed at the daggers and did not need to. She had informers in Antony’s
camp, who conveyed news of every detail—of the plots and counterplots, the skirmishing and banqueting—to Alexandria.

She was in contact at least indirectly with Mark Antony, to whom she sent a caller that winter. The Parthians swept through Phoenicia, Palestine, and Syria, to plunder Jerusalem at the end of the year. Herod, the thirty-two-year-old Judaean tetrarch, or prince—Rome would crown him king only the following year—managed a harrowing escape. Having settled his family at the fortress of Masada, he cast about for asylum. It was not immediately forthcoming; his neighbors were unwilling to displease the invaders. Herod made his way finally to Alexandria, where Cleopatra received him in style. She knew him primarily as an excitable friend of Antony’s and as a fellow Roman client but had additional reason to be favorably disposed toward him: Herod’s father had twice assisted in Ptolemaic restorations, both hers and that of her father. In 47 he had personally launched a vigorous, artful assault on the eastern frontier and rallied Egypt’s Jews to Caesar’s cause. Like their fathers, Cleopatra and Herod were former Pompeians, late converts to Caesar. They had a common enemy in the Parthians.