Cleopatra the Great (43 page)

As he began to undermine the couple's support within Egypt, Octavian knew it was vital that any native force should be dealt with as soon as possible. Hearing that Cleopatra's subjects had offered to march north and help in the armed struggle, he acted swiftly to eliminate their figurehead and spiritual leader, the high priest of Memphis. As Egypt's highest native authority, its members related to the crown, the Memphite dynasty offered unwavering support for the monarchy which made it the natural focus for native unrest. So, regardless of his young age, Petubastis had to be removed. Although classical sources are completely silent on a domestic matter of no particular interest to them, Egyptian evidence reveals that the sixteen-year-old high priest met his untimely death on 6th Mesore, 31 July 30
BC
, a date which seems far too coincidental for this not to have been an assassination. With the Memphite dynasty effectively terminated, there remained only the monarchy in Alexandria, where Cleopatra was determined to retain her treasure. Antonius was equally determined to fight, but his offer of hand-to-hand combat with Octavian was once again refused and the suggestion made that Antonius might prefer to find some other way to die.

So that was it. There would be no life in exile, and there was now only one option for Antonius. But as a true soldier he would fight to the last, so he planned his last battle on land and sea with their remaining troops. On the evening of 31 July, the ‘Synapothanoumenoi' met for the last time. As the die-hard members of the Suicide Club gathered for a final great banquet, Antonius revealed he could never hope to win and simply desired an honourable death. He may even have contemplated Cleopatra's suggestion they take flowers she had already poisoned from their hair and drop them into their wine, ‘having gathered the fragments of his chaplet into his cup'.

In the sombre atmosphere of that hot summer night, the city had already fallen quiet when an unearthly music was heard, ‘the sound of all sorts of instruments, and voices singing in tune, and the cry of a crowd of people shouting and dancing, like a troop of bacchanals on its way'. The disembodied procession seemed to pass through the centre of the city and out through the eastern gate, then suddenly grew very loud before disappearing into the distance towards the enemy camp. Interpreted as Dionysos leading his ghostly band of revellers away from the palace for the last time as Antonius' god finally deserted him, the event was in fact far more ominous: Dionysos was abandoning the very dynasty he had for so long protected.

At dawn on 1 August, the Egyptian 8th Mesore, Cleopatra and Antonius made what they believed to be their final farewell. Having briefed the remaining fleet, Antonius reviewed the troops and defiantly led them out of the eastern Canopic Gate and up to rising ground. From there they overlooked the enemy camp, watching as the fleet moved out towards the rising sun to engage Octavian's ships.

Yet there was to be no engagement. Hopelessly outnumbered, the couple's remaining ships simply pulled alongside the enemy, saluted them, and became part of the larger fleet which then advanced as one towards the city. Having seen their naval comrades defect, Antonius' cavalry did likewise; only the small infantry force attempted a halfhearted attack before they too began to melt away, leaving Antonius alone. Unable to gain any satisfaction from Octavian, he had no choice but to return to the palace as Alexandria formally surrendered.

As the remnants of her once mighty fleet joined with the enemy, Cleopatra assumed the worst and, believing Antonius had been killed, told her remaining servants to report to any enquiry that she too was dead. Taking up her dagger she went straight to her tomb, accompanied by Charmion and Eiras, perhaps also her attendant Mardion. Once inside they would have operated the mechanism to seal the great stone entrance as they presumably prepared to take their lives.

Yet Antonius was still very much alive. As he returned to the palace to search for Cleopatra, he was told that she had gone to her tomb. With her personal physician Olympus providing an eyewitness account of the unfolding drama, Antonius apparently mused aloud, ‘Why delay any longer? Fate has snatched away the only thing for which I still wanted to live. I'm not so troubled, Cleopatra, that you have gone, for I shall soon be with you. But it distresses me that so great a general should be found to be less courageous than a woman.' Passing into his personal chambers, he stripped off his armour and handed his sword to his servant Eros, who instead turned the weapon on himself and fell dead at Antonius' feet. ‘Well done, Eros, well done, you've shown your master how to do what you hadn't the heart to do yourself, he declared as he drove the blade into his stomach.

Antonius lay down to wait for the end, but it did not come quickly and, in considerable pain, he called out for someone to finish him off. Although the servants had already scattered in fear, one had evidently informed Cleopatra that Antonius was alive, so she had sent orders via her secretary Diomedes that he should be brought to her. At the news that she too was still alive, Antonius insisted he go to her, and with assistance managed to reach the tomb.

With its entrance already sealed, Cleopatra looked down from one of the high windows and, with the help of her two women, let down rope winches, either left over from building work or left in place to manoeuvre her heavy coffin into position. As they hauled up the wounded Antonius, ‘it was no easy task for the women; and Cleopatra, with all her force, clinging to the rope, and straining with her head to the ground, with difficulty pulled him up, while those below encouraged her with their cries, and joined in all her efforts and anxiety'. Although he was bleeding heavily, he was successfully brought into the tomb, ‘still holding up his hands to her, and lifting up his body with the little force he had left'. Eyewitnesses claimed that ‘nothing was ever more sad than this spectacle', which even now was being reported to Octavian.

With the dying Antonius helped to a bed which was presumably part of the funerary furniture, Cleopatra covered him in her sheet-like mantle and began to mourn in traditional fashion, ‘beating her breast with her hands, lacerating herself, and disfiguring her own face with the blood from his wounds, she called him her lord, her husband, her emperor, and seemed to have pretty nearly forgotten all her own evils, she was so intent upon his misfortunes'. As he did his best to calm her, he ordered wine from the funerary stocks and, after drinking his last, advised her to put her trust in Gaius Proculeius, one of Octavian's staff but an honourable man. Reminding her that he had lived a full life and had been the most illustrious and powerful of men, he told her not to grieve but to remember their past happiness together. And then he died in her arms.

Panicking that the distraught Cleopatra would kill herself and torch her treasure, Octavian sent for Proculeius and ordered him to get her out alive. Unable to gain access via the sealed entrance, Proculeius requested she came out, to which she agreed providing Octavian would allow Caesarion to rule Egypt. Assuring her she could trust Octavian, Proculeius then had his colleague Cornelius Gallus keep her talking while he and the freedman Epaphroditus used scaling ladders to gain entrance through one of the upper-storey windows. As her servants shouted out to warn her of the men's arrival, Cleopatra pulled out her dagger to stab herself but was forcibly seized by Proculeius who removed the weapon. And, given her well-known interest in toxicology, or perhaps following a tip-off, he then ‘shook her dress to see if there were any poisons hid in it'.

Taken prisoner, she was escorted back to the palace with Epaphroditus as her guard, and, although allowed to keep her retinue, was placed under house arrest in quarters which had no doubt been thoroughly searched for any means by which she might harm herself. This action may also have been influenced by the suicide of her eunuch attendant Mardion, who ‘had of his own accord delivered himself up to the serpents at the time when Cleopatra had been seized . . . and after being bitten by them had leaped into a coffin prepared for him'.

Meanwhile, Octavian himself finally entered Alexandria, promising his troops a financial incentive if they did not sack the city. Clearly unsure of the reception he might receive from the notoriously violent citizens, he decided to appear with the Alexandrian philosopher Arius Didymus, his newly appointed adviser on Egyptian affairs, ‘holding him by the hand and talking with him' as Octavian called a public meeting in the Gymnasion. The citizens of Alexandria had mixed feelings for Cleopatra as a Roman collaborator, and now listened as their new Roman master, flanked by his massed ranks of troops, told them they were all free of blame. Of the Roman supporters of Cleopatra's regime Canidius Crassus, Quintus Ovinius and various others had been summarily executed, and only the admiral and former consul Sosius spared. But Octavian declared he would spare the citizens too because their city was so large and beautiful, because of his feelings for his new friend Didymus and, he announced, for the sake of the great Alexander, whose tomb Didymus now took him to see.

Apparently visiting the Soma to pay his respects — while seeing how much of the Ptolemies' famous wealth remained there — Octavian entered the subterranean burial chamber and ‘had the sarcophagus containing Alexander the Great's mummy removed from the mausoleum . . . and, after a long look at its features, showed his veneration by crowning the head with a golden diadem and strewing flowers on the trunk'. Unfortunately while viewing the body he ‘actually touched it, with the result that a piece of the nose was broken off, so the story goes. Yet he was unwilling to look at the remains of the Ptolemies, although the Alexandrians were very anxious to show them; Octavian commented, “I wished to see a king, not corpses”.'

Presumably unimpressed that the famous treasure was no longer present, save for Alexander's gold breastplate which it would have been impolitic to take, Octavian declined the offer to visit the city's temples. Instead he sent his troops into the Caesareum, the great temple of his adoptive father Julius Caesar, following a tip-off from Antyllus' tutor Theodoras that Antonius' son had taken refuge there. When the fourteen-year-old was found cowering at the feet of Caesar's statue he was ‘dragged from the image of the god Julius, to which he had fled, with vain pleas for mercy'. He was then beheaded, allowing his tutor to steal the necklace from what remained of Antyllus' neck before he was captured himself and crucified on the orders of Octavian in punishment for having tried to steal from the body and perhaps to silence him too.

Troops were sent south to seek out Caesarion and his three half-siblings. The three youngest were tracked down to their hiding place in Thebes and sent back to Alexandria under guard while Caesarion, trying to leave the country with a large amount of treasure, was persuaded by his tutor Rhodon to return to Alexandria and negotiate his future. Hearing that the pharaoh was making his way back to the royal city, Octavian ‘sent cavalry in pursuit' to bring him back under guard too.

Having seized one half of Cleopatra's treasure from Caesarion, Octavian turned his attentions to the rest and, after managing to reopen the tomb, began to remove its precious contents. Chief among these was the body of Antonius which Octavian wished to see for himself. Well known for according full honours to his own fallen enemies, news of his death made such an impact on his former allies that ‘many kings and great commanders made petition to [Octavian] for the body of Antonius to give him his funeral rites, but he would not take the corpse away from Cleopatra by whose hands he was buried with royal splendour and magnificence, it being granted to her to employ what she pleased on his funeral'.

With no further details known, she presumably ordered his body to be washed and laid out ‘in state, clothed in splendid raiment'. Although Roman tradition favoured cremation, as had been done for Caesar, there is no mention of this for Antonius who, the ancient sources claim, was ‘embalmed'. Yet since his burial ‘is not likely to have been delayed more than one or two days' after his death, the standard seventy-day procedure would have been impossible. So either his body was left untreated and simply interred in Cleopatra's mausoleum in a sarcophagus already in situ, or she made arrangements for the body to be handed over to the embalmers who would then have begun their ten-week task, perhaps within her funerary complex, while she initiated the mourning rites which traditionally lasted for the duration of the embalming process.

Isis incarnate, now the archetypal grieving widow, genuinely mourned her dead Osiris-Dionysos, savagely tearing her face and chest as she lamented the death of Antonius and the end of their dreams. Black eye paint running down her bloodied cheeks would have mingled with the dust she threw over her head until, completely breaking down, she was taken back to the palace, still under guard, her physician Olympus reporting that ‘in this extreme of grief and sorrow' she had ‘inflamed and ulcerated her breasts with beating them'. Yet, regardless of his treatment, ‘she fell into a high fever' between 3 and 8 August and, refusing all food and drink, simply wished to die, asking Olympus to help her do so.

At this point Octavian intervened, and, using ‘menacing language about her children', informed her that death was not an option. She must eat and take suitable medication since, so the ancient sources claim, he wanted her alive so that she and her remaining family could appear in Rome to star in his Triumph. Although the reality of a widowed mother and her children might not quite measure up to the terrifying character he had created, some believe he simply wanted her to disappear as soon as possible with no blame on his part. Her execution would certainly damage his reputation for clemency, while, if allowed to live, she would always be a figurehead for rebellion. Yet the ancient sources were almost certainly correct in their belief that she was to feature in his Triumph, for if Octavian had truly wanted her dead he could simply have allowed her to die as she had wished instead of threatening her children.