The Rise and Fall of Alexandria (26 page)

That their attention would turn to Alexandria was inevitable. Between the death of Ptolemy IV and the accession of Ptolemy IX the Roman state had patiently watched 150 years of Egyptian economic decline. Rome had no need to humble Egypt as it had Carthage—Egypt was doing that on her own. When most of the work of conquest had been done, Rome finally chose to act, drawn to the Alexandrian flame by Egypt’s two remaining treasures: her potential to grow grain, and the greatest library and museum in the world.

If it was grain that actually brought the Romans to Alexandria, that was not its only attraction for her generals. Despite their republican protestations it was clear that some of the military leaders of the late republic—men like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony—craved a place in history alongside that greatest conqueror of them all: Alexander. To them the journey to Alexandria was as much pilgrimage as diplomatic mission, even if the tomb of Alexander himself was now closed, supposedly to protect the bodies of the Ptolemaic pharaohs who now rested alongside him. In truth, as the Romans probably well knew, it was to disguise the fact that the bankrupt Ptolemy IV had pawned Alexander’s golden coffin.

But Alexandria held one other attraction for the men of this new world power. By the Great Harbor, in a palace flanked with ancient obelisks, a new pharaoh ruled. She would be Egypt’s last and perhaps the most famous: Cleopatra.

The reign of Cleopatra will always be remembered for drawing the curtain on the Ptolemaic world, but in truth, by the time she ascended to the throne in 51 BC, Egypt was already lost. As far back as 80 BC her father, Ptolemy XII, had been little more than a puppet of the Roman dictator Sulla, having formally allied himself with Rome. Egypt’s ancient name had then been inscribed on the Roman “list of allies and friends,” the
amici et socii populi Romani
which proved to be the death warrant of so many independent states. Roman friendships were very one-way affairs, and despite Egypt’s paying a sizable tribute for the “privilege” of friendship, this formal alliance had not prevented Rome from seizing those Egyptian possessions it felt it needed, including the island of Cyprus, which had been ruled by Ptolemy’s brother. For his part, Ptolemy, already overawed by this new world power, sat quietly by and watched until the people of Alexandria, incensed at his inaction, forced him to flee to his friends in Rome. Eventually the Romans reinstalled him in Egypt, their “friendship” extending at least to him personally, but he would enjoy his kingdom for only another four years. In his will he left his country to his daughter Cleopatra and her brother (and husband), the ten-year-old Ptolemy XIII. Tellingly, he chose as his executor the people of Rome.

And so in the spring of 51 BC a succession of grossly corrupt and weak rulers whose lives were defined by little more than assassinations and revolts reached its end, and one last Ptolemy rose to the throne of Egypt. In Cleopatra, however, a free Egypt and a free Alexandria had one final flourish.

Cleopatra was the most remarkable Ptolemy for many generations. Crowned pharaoh while still a teenager, she was the antithesis of the gross caricature that later Romans would draw of her. For many of them, she was a convenient excuse for the bloody civil wars that led to the collapse of their beloved republic and the instigation of totalitarian imperial rule. She was cast as the lascivious temptress, an untrustworthy Eastern woman intent on polluting the moral virtue of Rome and its generals. It was a classic piece of Roman propaganda, and one so successful that it still dogs her memory to this day. The truth was very different.

Cleopatra had been born in Alexandria and, unlike so many of her predecessors, had clearly reveled in the intellectual life that still thrived in what were her dynasty’s greatest achievements, the library and museum. As a child she had shown an aptitude for languages, learning Greek, Aramaic, Latin, Ethiopic, and Hebrew—all the main languages of the library—as well as being the first and last Ptolemaic pharaoh ever to learn the native tongue of the country she ruled, Egyptian. She was not, if her coin portraits are to be more trusted than Roman propaganda, the great beauty that later romances and films have made her, but that is perhaps to pay her a compliment. She was no two-dimensional Helen, and her personal magnetism, which even Roman sources are forced to admit, came from a mind and personality molded in what was still the intellectual capital of the world. In fact, even the pro-Roman historian Plutarch concedes that she was much more than simply a beauty:

 
It was this that marked her out from so many previous Ptolemaic alsorans. Plutarch had no desire to eulogize Cleopatra, but even he could not help but record that her strength came not from her looks but from her mind. It would be another 1,550 years before the English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon would coin the dictum “Knowledge is power” (
Religious Meditations: Of Heresies
[1597]), but already in Caesar’s day, Cleopatra was proving it. Sadly, this alone would not be enough to stop Rome from interfering in her rule. Rome chose the stages on which it played out its story, and when it chose wealthy and desirable Egypt, Cleopatra and her people had little choice but to join in the drama.

 
 
The endgame of pharaonic Egypt was played out against the backdrop of the bloody struggles among Rome’s most powerful generals. In 49 BC, when Julius Caesar’s power-sharing arrangement with his ally Pompey collapsed, the seeds of Roman civil war were sown, and Egypt, feeling forced to back one side or the other, had provided ships, grain, and money for Pompey’s cause. It proved a mistake, and now, following his defeat at the battle of Pharsalus, the news came that Pompey was fleeing to Egypt. The timing could not have been worse, for there was no peace in Egypt either at that time; indeed, Cleopatra was at war with her brother. A more typical later Ptolemy by far, the young Ptolemy XIII was still under the thrall of three of his ministers: the eunuch Potheinos, Theodotus of Chois (his teacher of rhetoric), and the Egyptian Achillas. These three men had precipitated a split between the co-regents, and Cleopatra had been expelled from Alexandria. Ptolemy was now camped at Pelusium with his army, ready to bring his co-regency, and his sister’s life, to a bloody end, when news of Pompey’s arrival reached him.

It was an invidious situation for any monarch. With Pompey in Egypt, Julius Caesar could not be far behind. If the pharaoh protected the one, he would become the other’s enemy, and in either case he would be an enemy of Rome. And so, according to Plutarch, he, or rather his advisers, took a gamble. With Pompey’s trireme riding at anchor off the treacherous shore, Achillas was sent out in a rowboat to bring the Roman over the shoals to shore and into the presence of the king. Pompey himself was nervous, fearing a trap but powerless to resist. As Achillas rowed up he held out a hand to help Pompey into the little tender. The general turned to his wife and son and embraced them, quoting a line of Sophocles:

He then climbed on board and was rowed silently toward the beach. It was a long row, and during the trip he took out the speech he had prepared for the king and read it through. Then, as the boat grounded and he was being helped to his feet, his assassins struck and he was repeatedly stabbed. To the accompaniment of his wife’s screams carrying from the far-off trireme, his head was hacked off and his body unceremoniously dumped in the sea.

It was a bloody murder but of a type in which both Egyptians and Romans occasionally indulged in the name of politics. His head was taken to Ptolemy, who, when Caesar’s fleet arrived off Alexandria just two days later, sent a messenger with the gruesome gift.

But if Ptolemy thought that assassinating Caesar’s enemy would make him Caesar’s friend, or that it would encourage the Romans to fight their civil wars elsewhere, he had seriously misunderstood Roman politics. In fact, he had provided Caesar with the perfect excuse. Had Caesar ordered Pompey killed he would have alienated at least a part of his own people. Now he could portray Pompey as a man whom he had disagreed with but a fellow Roman all the same. It had been the treacherous and untrustworthy Egyptians who had killed him—all the more reason to interfere in and perhaps annex their country. Plutarch describes without a hint of irony the moment when Caesar received Pompey’s head, and the crocodile tears began to flow: “From the man who brought him Pompey’s head he turned away with loathing, as from an assassin; and on receiving Pompey’s seal-ring, he burst into tears” (Plutarch,
Life of Pompey,
in
Parallel Lives,
80).

Caesar could now play the avenging Roman angel while conveniently ignoring the fact that it had been he who had driven Pompey to his death. Instead of taking the war away from Egypt, as Ptolemy had hoped, Caesar ordered his troops to land and occupy Alexandria.

Caesar quickly sent for reinforcements and meanwhile set up his head-quarters in the royal palace and did his best to look like a peaceful visitor. According to Lucan (
Pharsalia,
book 10, line 21), he admired the sights of the city, including the tomb of Alexander, and according to Appian (
The Civil Wars,
book 2, chapter 89), he even joined the crowds listening to the public philosophy lectures given by the scholars of the museum. He also attempted to play the peacemaker between the claimants to the throne, Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra, whom he asked to appear before him. For Cleopatra it was a risk. Her forces were not in control of Alexandria or Egypt, and she did not have the support of the Alexandrians, or perhaps many Egyptians. Nor could she know what deal, if any, her treacherous brother had struck with the Roman. Her only hope was to use her skills to influence Caesar in private, so she got word to him asking for a secret audience. Smuggled back into the city under a coverlet (or rolled in a carpet, in some versions of the tale), she found herself in the presence of the most powerful man on earth. He was fifty-two years old, she was not yet twenty-two, but in a single night she persuaded him to make her queen again. Lucan in his
Pharsalia,
reveling in his own imaginings of that evening, describes how

 
It was the beginning of the greatest love story in antiquity but the beginning of the end for a free Alexandria and a free Egypt.

Cleopatra had seen which way the wind was blowing, and during that night she successfully distanced herself from both Pompey and her brother the co-regent, so that he would take the full blame for Egypt’s ill-considered interference in a Roman civil war. With the deadly calculation and lack of filial love that the Ptolemies were famed for, she now appealed to an unassailable Julius Caesar to reinstall her as pharaoh alongside her truculent brother.

The next day Ptolemy XIII arrived in the palace to find Cleopatra at Caesar’s side. In an act almost certainly orchestrated by his adviser Potheinos he then cried out that he was betrayed and ran from the palace, tearing the crown from his head. It was a brilliant move. The people of Alexandria immediately swarmed to the man who appeared to be holding out against Roman occupation, and threatened to storm the palace. Caesar managed on this occasion to calm the Alexandrians, reading Ptolemy XII’s will to them and giving his guarantee that it would be fulfilled (i. e. , that Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra would rule), but he decided to take the young Ptolemy XIII into “protective custody” just in case. The scene was now set for the Alexandrine War, a war which would witness the partial destruction of the thing the Ptolemies held most dear: their library.

Caesar had miscalculated. In purely military terms it made a lot more sense to support Ptolemy XIII and his advisers, who still had a sizable army and the support of many in Alexandria. But one night with Cleopatra had changed his mind. Her wit, charm, and political brilliance—the assets of an Alexandrian scholar—had put him in her thrall, and he would pay a high price for it. But while an enchanted Caesar promised the return of Cyprus to Egypt’s control and the rebuilding of Cleopatra’s power base, he had more immediate problems closer to home. Potheinos had summoned the royal army to besiege Caesar in Alexandria, knowing him to have come to Egypt with only a small force. Unable to field his inferior army in open battle, Caesar was forced to watch from the palace walls as most of Alexandria fell under Potheinos’s control and its people, including slaves, were formed into armed militias in protest against what looked to them like Roman military rule.

Caesar had called for reinforcements, but these would take time to arrive. In the meantime he was forced to look for a stronghold that might at least give him control of the Great Harbor. His sights fell on Pharos, and he left us with one of the few eyewitness descriptions of this wonder of the world: