Cleopatra the Great (40 page)

Meanwhile Antonius had once more travelled north and, after meeting with their ally the Median king, wrote to the Senate to explain the true nature of the Donations in order to counter Octavian's accusations. He then arrived in Ephesus, where he sent for Cleopatra and prepared for New Year's Eve. This was the date when the second Triumvirate came to an end: at midnight on 31 December 33
BC
.

As East and West held their breath, waiting for the two ex-triumvirs to make their next move following the bitter war of words which had raged throughout 33
BC
, Antonius gained the upper hand when his powerful colleagues Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Gaius Sosius were both appointed consul for 32
BC
. Having received Antonius' report regarding his command of the East and the Donations, Ahenobarbus was unwilling to divulge its potentially inflammatory contents. But Sosius took the initiative, finally reading it out in February before a packed Senate who learned that the Donations were simply the confirmation of territories already awarded in Antonius policy of governing the East. Antonius then played his trump card by offering to lay down his powers if Octavian would do the same. Left with little room to manoeuvre, Octavian and his supporters began to insult the consuls, intimidating them with an armed guard whose presence in the Senate was illegal. The meeting broke up amid volatile scenes recalling those which had followed the murder of Caesar.

But then an extraordinary thing happened. Both consuls and almost half the Senate publicly aligned themselves with Antonius, and some three to four hundred men left Rome to set up a new Senate in Ephesus. The harbour there was suddenly swamped by ships ‘coming in from all quarters to form the navy'. Cleopatra herself arrived in her royal flagship
Antonias
at the head of a personal squadron of sixty ships followed by 140 warships, to be hailed as monarch by the Ephesian people.

When Canidius Crassus appeared with his legions from Armenia the commanders reassembled their mighty force of 75,000 legionaries, the vast majority drawn from the Greek-speaking nations, together with 25,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, 500 warships and 300 smaller vessels, all largely funded by Cleopatra who had brought with her the royal war chest containing 20,000 talents in bullion. The couple's mint in Lebanon was now able to produce the coins needed to pay their troops; each legion was to be paid in coinage featuring their own legionary standard backed by the image of a war galley. Such resources far outweighed those of Octavian, who was forced to levy a deeply unpopular 25 per cent income tax across Italy where Antonius and Cleopatra had already begun distributing well-placed funds to their remaining supporters. If they had marched into Italy during the spring of 32
BC
they would surely have been victorious, but they did not yet make their move.

Residing at Antonius' Ephesus HQ which he referred to as ‘the Palace', Cleopatra maintained the same high public profile as she would have had in Alexandria: ‘she visited the market place [forum] with Antony, presided with him over festivals and the hearing of lawsuits, rode around with him on horseback even in the cities, or else was carried in a litter'. She was also present at Antonius' planning meetings as she almost certainly had been at Caesar's, but some newly arrived allies began to voice objections, complaining that women surely belonged in the home and their presence in camp would bring bad luck. The peculiarly aggressive behaviour of swallows nesting in the stern of Cleopatra's flagship was regarded as a bad omen. Perhaps nervous that she would uncover certain financial irregularities regarding her money, Plancus and his nephew Titius were among those muttering against her; Ahenobarbus even refused to use her royal form of address, curtly referring to her as ‘Cleopatra' and bluntly requesting that she return to Egypt.

Yet she was having none of it. She was backed by the other consul, Sosius, an admiral who recognised the crucial importance of the ships she contributed, but her strongest support came from Canidius Crassus, commander of the land forces, who claimed that her presence was needed to sustain the morale of their Egyptian troops. He also told his fellow officers that ‘it was not just that one that bore so great a part in their charge of the war should be robbed of her share of glory', especially as she was in no way inferior ‘in prudence to any one of the kings that were serving with him; she had long governed a great kingdom by herself alone, and long lived with him [Antonius], and gained experience in public affairs'. So, regardless of any dissent, Cleopatra was staying where she was.

In April 32
BC
, as the campaign season fast approached, she and Antonius travelled to the island of Samos, summoning to join them ‘all kings, princes and governors, all nations and cities within the limits of Syria, the Maeotid Lake, Armenia and Illyria'. Each was told to provide troops, provisions and ‘theatrical artists' — the couple's preparations for war involved several weeks of Ptolemaic-style ‘high festivities' in honour of Dionysos, personified by their supreme commander Antonius who led the procession as ‘this one island for some days resounded with piping and harping, theatres filling and choruses playing. Every city sent an ox as its contribution to the sacrifice and the kings that accompanied Antonius competed who should make the most magnificent feasts and the greatest presents' to gain divine support for the war ahead. Plans were already in place for their forthcoming Triumph, which would, like Julius Caesar's, feature Roman-style games with gladiators to celebrate Octavian's defeat. In May the couple left Samos for the Greek mainland, the border between their world and that of Octavian and the place where all their fates would soon be decided.

On two previous occasions Antonius had fought and won here to decide Rome's future, first with Caesar against Pompeius at Pharsalus, and then with a largely absent Octavian against Brutus and Carsius at Philippi. He must have felt the gods were surely with him for a third time as he and Cleopatra viewed their vast force and equally impressive navy.

Sending their fleet west around the Peloponnese to create a line of defence, the couple themselves travelled on to Athens to pass the summer of 32
BC. AS
Antonius' former home and a place that Cleopatra seems to have visited as a girl, the city had close links to the Ptolemies whose statues stood on the Acropolis. The Athenians now set up Cleopatra's statue as Isis alongside a companion figure of Antonius as Osiris, and, holding court in Antonius' sumptuous Athenian home as she had done in Caesar's Roman villa twelve years earlier, Cleopatra ‘courted the favour of the people with all sorts of attentions. The Athenians in requital, having decreed her public honours, deputed several of the citizens to wait upon her at her house; amongst whom went Antony as one, he being an [honorary] Athenian citizen and he it was that made the speech'.

After paying great honours to the wife who sat before him he initiated divorce proceedings against the other, and ‘sent orders to Rome to have Octavia removed from his house. She left it, we are told, accompanied by all his children, except the eldest by Fulvia, who was then with his father.' Amidst much ‘weeping and grieving that she must be looked upon as one of the causes of the war', it was said they ‘pitied not so much her as Antonius himself, and more particularly those who had seen Cleopatra, whom they could report to have no way the advantage of Octavia either in youth or in beauty' — the classic responses to a jilted woman. Having replaced Octavia as the face of female divinity in Athens, and now as Antonius' sole wife, Cleopatra must have been ecstatic. Nevertheless she must have realised that Antonius' decision finally to divorce Octavia was first and foremost a political move designed to sever dramatically the last remaining tie with his bitter enemy Octavian. Later it was claimed that Antonius ‘drove away his lawful Roman wife to please the foreign and unlawful woman. And so . . . Antony procured his ruin by his marriage'.

Just as intended, the divorce of his sister provoked Octavian into action, making him appear the aggressor and presenting him with a real problem. For having only just made a name for himself as the great saviour who had personally ended Rome's civil war, he could hardly resume hostilities against a fellow Roman. And so he initiated moves to sideline Antonius and target Cleopatra as the ‘enemy without'. She was a foreigner, a monarch and a woman, each guaranteed to repel much of the Roman establishment, so Octavian cast himself as her brave opponent and, despite the fact that the cities of Bononia (Bologna) and Palaestrina remained loyal to Antonius and Cleopatra, Octavian would claim that ‘all Italy took a personal oath to me voluntarily, demanding me as their leader in the war'.

Exploiting Rome's long-standing suspicion of the East, he told his fellow citizens they faced the gravest of dangers, since Cleopatra and her Eastern hordes could at any moment swarm into their city and destroy their very way of life. In line with the Sibylline Oracle's prophecy ‘O Rome . . . the Queen crops off your delicate head of hair and uttering judgements will hurl you to earth from the sky', Octavian's poets claimed that Cleopatra wanted ‘to demolish the Capitol, and topple the empire.'

So the noble, masculine West prepared to embark on its great crusade against the corrupt and feminised East, and all memory of the unpopular war tax receded as Octavian's henchman Calvisius described the corrupt lifestyle that Cleopatra had forced upon Antonius. As a result of her influence he had unlawfully seized the Library of Pergamum to give to her, had forced the Ephesians to salute her as monarch and had read her love letters in the presence of leading statesmen. Inferring that he paid more attention to a woman's words, it was asserted that he had once lost interest in a speech being made by a leading Roman orator simply at the sight of her and had even been seen rubbing her feet in public.

Although some dismissed Calvisius' take on such events, the orator Marcus Valerius Messala published a booklet duplicating his claims and adding that Antonius used a golden chamber pot of ‘an enormity that even Cleopatra would have been ashamed'. It was also claimed that he ran behind her litter in Eastern dress, as emasculated as the court eunuchs, described as ‘her squalid pack of diseased half-men'; Octavian even commented that ‘the generals they would have to fight would be Mardion the eunuch, Pothinus, Eiras, Cleopatra's hair-dressing girl and Charmion, who were Antony's chief state-councillors'.

When the couple's former ally, the ‘pathologically treacherous' Plancus came over to Octavian, claiming that Cleopatra's presence in meetings had upset his sensibilities — but failing to mention that he had once painted himself blue and crawled naked along the floor to amuse her — he too enumerated Antonius' apparent crimes before the Senate. He also claimed to know the contents of his will, which had apparently been sent back to Rome and deposited with the Vestal Virgins. After the chief priestess refused to hand it over, Octavian seized it by force.

With the reading out of wills, genuine or otherwise, something in which Roman statesmen had long specialised in their dealings with Ptolemaic Egypt, Octavian made a great show of reading out edited highlights from the last will and testament of Marcus Antonius. Reaffirming Caesarion as the legitimate son of Caesar, something Antonius had already done at the Donations, he then stated his apparent wish to leave generous legacies to his children by Cleopatra, even though Roman law did not allow children of a non-Roman citizen to inherit — something Antonius knew full well. This clause was almost certainly invented by Octavian, who then added with a final flourish that, if Antonius were to die in Rome, he had requested burial with Cleopatra in Alexandria.

Even if he had voiced such a wish privately, it hardly seems credible that Antonius would have provided written proof in the very city controlled by his great adversary. Yet despite those who were outraged at the violent treatment of the sacred Vestals and the disclosure of such a private document, Octavian's masterful propaganda hit the mark. Whether his audience believed him or not they were smart enough to realise the tide might well be turning, regardless of the methods used to turn it. So, as defections to Octavian's cause began, Antonius' supporters attempted damage limitation. They concluded that the only way to silence Octavian was to remove Cleopatra from the equation.

Gaius Geminius was sent to Athens to speak urgently with Antonius, but Cleopatra was immediately suspicious and kept him waiting. When finally made to state his business over dinner, he answered that he would explain himself on a more sober occasion, although ‘one thing he had to say, whether sober or drunk, was that all would go well if Cleopatra would return to Egypt'. Despite Antonius' angry response, Cleopatra is said to have simply congratulated him, with the words, ‘You have done well, Geminius, to tell your secret without being put on the rack.'

Antonius' remaining support in Rome now began to fall away, while claims that Cleopatra wanted to move the capital to Alexandria developed into the widespread belief that she wished to become ‘queen of Rome'. She was said to have referred to the day when ‘I shall one day give judgement on the Capitol', the sacred heart of Rome itself, and such stories gained sufficient support from the remaining members of the Senate to allow Octavian's plans to be pushed through.

Stripping the absent Antonius of his remaining powers and ‘denying him the authority which he had let a woman exercise in his place', Octavian finally denounced Cleopatra as an enemy of the state in the autumn of 32
BC
. Formally declaring war on the thirty-seven-year-old mother of four, he processed through Rome to the Field of Mars and the temple of the war goddess Bellona where he made a vitriolic speech against her. Then, taking up a blood-smeared javelin, he hurled it east into land representing enemy territory, if not the enemy herself, Cleopatra the ‘fatale monstrum' or deadly force. It has famously been stated that ‘Rome, who had never condescended to fear any nation or people, did in her time fear two human beings; one was Hannibal, and the other was a woman.'