Kleopatra (15 page)

I
n the spring of Auletes’ twentieth regnal year, while Kleopatra passed her eleventh birthday, a tall, thin man sat in a suite
on the Via Sacra in Rome looking at a map of the world. Months before, he had been elected consul, the highest office a Roman
of senatorial rank might hold. Already he was Pontifex Maximus, the most illustrious religious official in the land, which
entitled him to this convenient office just a brisk walk from his home in town and from his new consular duties at the Forum.
He had decorated it sparsely, for he cared not at all about his surroundings. Or his foods or his wines. Or the fluffiness
of his beds or the sumptuousness of his sofas. He was not a creature for comforts. His friends and associates had developed
all sorts of voluptuous fetishes, which they supposed were the adjuncts of power. For these luxuries he cared not. He liked
power, not its accessories. But he did fuss about his garments and his bath. He was a fanatic for the soft caress of freshly
pressed linen against smooth clean skin. And he was delighted with the wardrobe of purple-edged togas that came with his religious
title, so flattering to his lean physique.

He had offended everyone in power with equanimity, but it had not seemed to matter in the end. He was a fish out of water,
the one who swam against the current. Whatever they believed was fine with him. The previous year, he had negotiated an alliance
among the extraordinarily rich Marcus Crassus, the awesomely powerful general Gnaeus Pompeius, and himself. Though slightly
younger than his two new allies, Caesar intended to exceed each man’s respective superiority by the time the game was up.
For the moment, however, they were essential. Crassus—may the gods bless him—had mobilized the equestrians in his favor. Pompey
made the patricians feel better about him. And the rabble loved him anyway.

It was called the Coalition. With Caesar’s preference for sparse, clean language, he characterized it thus, for now no other
existing coalition mattered. The arrangement had proved frighteningly simple to manipulate. Pompey charitably ignored Caesar’s
carnal relations with his wife, Mucia, calling her a latter-day Clytemnestra and promptly divorcing her, while Caesar conveniently
left town for Spain. And it was never spoken of again. That was what he admired so about Pompey; he was inordinately proud
and vain, but he never held a grudge. In return, what else could Caesar do but reject Mucia himself and marry the melancholy
Calpurnia, daughter of his rich supporter Piso? Then he offered his own coltish daughter, Julia, to Pompey. Julia was the
love of Caesar’s life, the child of his beloved first wife, Cornelia, who died when Julia was just a baby.

Despite the thirty-year difference in their ages, Julia was all for the marriage. “Oh, Father, the general is so, so handsome.”
That is what all women, no matter how young or old, thought of Pompey, who was a natural with the ladies. He had old-fashioned,
grand, formal ways, probably from emulating his mentor, Sulla, whereas Caesar, though only a few years his junior, had the
rakish, cavalier charm of the younger set. Women had always loved Caesar, too; loved his facile abilities with poetry and
words, his height—for women loved tall men—his dry wit, his impressive lineage, and, last but not least, the way he encouraged
their lusts. He was adored for many and varied reasons, though he was hardly a handsome man.

So the girl Julia was pleased with her Fate, and he was glad, for she was all he had left in the way of family besides his
sister, and they were no longer close. At the wedding, Pompey had given every indication that he would put his energy into
romancing her. And that suited Caesar, who intended to put his energies into surpassing Pompey in terms of square miles conquered
and added to Rome’s empire. Pompey looked tired; Caesar felt vigorous. Pompey dominated the east, but the west—Gaul—awaited
Caesar and he knew it. All he needed now was the funding.

He felt that he was a new man. Not a
novus homo
, a newcomer to the nobility like Cicero, for Caesar’s family was as old as Rome itself. Rather, he was a man for new times,
a new man from an old family, a patrician with populist leanings, a member of the intelligentsia who had the devotion of the
common throng. He had new ideas, vital ideas, and his opponents were those who clung to the old ways. He had no issue with
the old ways, but they were no longer applicable. He had no patience with those who did not share his vision—Cato, Cicero,
even Pompey.

Ah, but Pompey had played his part beautifully as a supporter of innovation when Caesar pressed him to do so. Had not he stood
with a serene smile before the popular assembly and said before many a stunned senator that
yes
, he was fully in support of Caesar’s land bill because it would grant plots of land to his own deserving and loyal soldiers?
Pompey had stationed those very same men all around the Forum to demonstrate just how far he was willing to go in support
of Caesar. And then, in a beautiful moment, the imbecile Bibulus, Caesar’s co-consul, opened his mouth to disparage the bill,
and a basket of excrement was showered upon his head by men who quickly escaped. A gorgeous piece of theater. Bibulus, poor
fool, went back to his house and didn’t leave it for the remainder of his days in office.

But then people began to complain that Caesar had gone too far, and began to call his year in office the consulship of “Julius”
and “Caesar.” And Bibulus coined the annoying little joke—now in widespread use throughout the city—that Pompey was king and
Caesar was queen. No matter. Caesar was content with the role of queen until the king abdicated. Besides, women were perfectly
capable of ruling both nations and men, he reminded his detractors. Semiramis had once ruled all of Syria, and the Amazons
terrorized the better part of Asia. He would dance on the heads of his enemies. Let them call him Woman.

Caesar had been staring at the map for some time. His elegant fingers swept past the kingdom of Judaea, where Pompey had just
made a puppet out of the Jewish king, and reached Egypt. He paused, stroking the country with his index finger from south
to north, for that, he heard, was how the Nile River flowed. Stroked it as if it were a pet, a cat, perhaps. A sacred pet.
A pet he desired for himself. True, Pompey had the crazy old king in his pocket. True, Crassus had tried to annex it to Rome
years before and was shot down by Cicero and the elderly statesman Catulus. But this time Caesar would make contact on his
own.

Cicero. Surely he would keep his orator’s mouth shut when Caesar collected what he needed from Egypt. Surely he would not
take a stand against a simple influx of money into the treasury. By the time he traced the origin of the funds, it would be
too late, and Caesar and his men, bought and paid for with Egypt’s money, would be far, far away. And by the time he succeeded
in Gaul—an outcome he never questioned—public sway would be so strong in his favor that it would no longer matter what Cicero
said.

Cato was another story. When Caesar married Calpurnia and gave Julia to Pompey, Cato accused the men of horse-trading in daughters.
An aspersion upon his child. An insult upon the House of Venus. A slight to the noble Piso family. And then to say that the
senate had installed a king in the castle, simply because Caesar had gotten his way. Every time Caesar had an idea he wished
to see to fruition, Cato set himself to pointing out how Caesar ignored the Constitution, weakened the Republic, and usurped
the senate’s power. Sanctimonious beyond reason, he was like the ghost of one’s dead discarded morals—stalking, haunting,
reminding one of the way things used to be. He was a symbol of the old ways, the old days of the Republic, the days no one
wanted to return to in reality, but wanted to reminisce over and cherish.

Pompey and Crassus agreed that Cato must be gotten rid of, and they had left the details to Caesar. No one would miss his
self-righteous breast-beating once he was gone.

“Publius Clodius Pulcher to see you, sir,” announced Caesar’s footman. He stepped aside quickly so as to not impede the brisk
stride of Caesar’s guest.

“Busy, darling?” Clodius was a bit shorter, a bit stockier, a bit younger, and from a bit more illustrious patrician family
than Caesar. He was every bit as intelligent, too, though hampered by an instability that caused him to crave attention. Not
satisfied with the kind of quiet, dignified power that was a matter of birthright, Clodius desired the adoration of the rabble
and had no aversion to the use of coarse methods to get it. Caesar had seen him use unnecessary violence against his enemies—violence
that would cause a man not engaged in a war to flinch. He had a gang of thugs—there was no other way to describe them—who
inflicted pain and humiliation upon any person who displeased Clodius. Yet Clodius had a tender side, sometimes alarmingly
so. It was said that he was in love with his sister, Clodia, the city’s most beautiful inhabitant and known to be the infamous
and inconstant Lesbia of Catullus’s poems. The rumor was that Clodius had had a love affair with his sister, from which he
had never recovered.

“Never too busy for you, my most excellent friend.” A fortuitous arrival. Caesar noticed that he only had to have need of
someone for them to appear. He wondered if this owed to his being descended from the goddess Venus on his mother’s side. He
dismissed the secretaries with a wave of his long hand. “I was just thinking of our friend Cato.”

“I, too, think of Cato, though I think ill of Cato. In fact, thinking of Cato at all makes me ill.” Clodius laughed at his
own joke, exposing his full mouth of unusually blunt teeth and shaking his unfashionable shaggy curls. He had little round
cheeks and small, intense blue eyes, which appeared innocent until his laugh gave voice to the nasty spirit that possessed
him. Caesar often pictured his former wife Pompeia and Clodius in bed. Lusty Pompeia and the madman who burst into the celebration
of the goddess dressed as a woman in order to possess her. Each probably in the thrall of some magical potion to help them
lose their heads. It must have been fun. Like Pompey, Caesar held no grudge against his former wife’s former lover. Pompeia
was beautiful, she was married to Caesar, and Clodius, like all men, enjoyed the momentary usurpation of another man’s power
through his wife’s vaginal canal. No matter.

“I think Cato’s begun to annoy even Cicero,” Caesar said.

“For all their like thinking?”

“Cicero told me that he is weary of Cato pretending to be a citizen in Plato’s Republic and not a man in the real world.”

“So he will not balk and carry on when we rid ourselves of Cato?”

“I think not. Have you given the matter further thought, Brother?” Caesar asked.

Caesar appreciated Clodius’s gift for chicanery coupled with his willingness to exceed the boundaries of both law and taste,
not to mention his spritish delight in mischief. It was Clodius who had arranged for the men to dump shit upon the head of
Bibulus. But Bibulus was a fool and easily humiliated. Though Cato annoyed everyone, he was still revered.

“I have pondered it,” he said, tossing his curls about like a girl. Clodius was the kind of man who could act effeminate because
he was so dangerous. It was one of the many traits the two men shared. “I cannot stop meditating on the king of Cyprus.”

“I thought we were meditating on Cato.” Clodius’s plots were woven like spider’s webs, in circuitous strokes, never linear,
never direct.

“I despise the king of Cyprus. Did you know that?”

“Brother, it happened twenty years ago,” said Caesar. Clodius told the story every time he got drunk. He had been kidnapped
by Cypriot pirates who demanded his ransom from the king of Cyprus. The king refused to pay, and Clodius was so humiliated
that the pirates felt sorry for him and let him go.

“You should have done what I did in that situation,” said Caesar. When young and in the service of the king of Bithynia, Caesar,
too, had been taken by pirates. “I promised that they would die for their crime and I lived up to my word.” For thirty-eight
days, he amused himself with the pirates, demanding that they be quiet while he slept long hours, writing verse about them,
and vowing to crucify them as soon as he was freed.

“You were sleeping with the king of Bithynia. You knew he would pay,” said Clodius. “I neglected to bugger old Ptolemy of
Cyprus.”

The king did pay, and Caesar made good on his promise. He was such a gay and sanguine hostage that the pirates were amazed
at his vengeance. They died stunned, mouths twisted in horror and irony, protesting as they were tied to the crosses that
Caesar couldn’t possibly have arranged the executions because he was their friend.

But here was Clodius still seeking revenge. Caesar realized that his policy of never mixing procrastination and vengeance
was a good one. He had not thought about the pirates in years. “Poor Clodius. You mustn’t carry these grudges. It gives way
to a sour spleen.”

“I’ve procured a document from my old seafaring friends confessing that the king was their partner in piracy against the Republic.
It’s all down in ink—shipments confiscated, duties withheld. Wonderful stuff and so well documented.”