Antony and Cleopatra

  Antony wasn’t away nearly as long as Dellius expected, but he had his tale ready when the Triumvir of the East stormed into his Athens residence fuming about Octavian, who hadn’t turned up nor sent word as to why. To add insult to injury, once again Brundisium refused to lower its harbor chain and admit the visitor. Instead of going to another port to land, Antony turned around and came back to Athens in high dudgeon.

  Dellius half listened to the diatribe, too used to Antony’s hatred for Octavian to take much notice. This was an ordinary temper tantrum, not one of those nundinum-long affairs that would terrify a Hector, so Dellius waited for the period of calm that followed the ranting and raving. Once it ensued, Antony buckled down to work again as if he found the outburst beneficial.

  Most of his work at this time concerned the vital decisions he had to make about which man would rule each of the many kingdoms and principalities dotted around the East—places Rome did not administer in person as provinces. Antony in particular was firmly convinced that client-kings were the correct solution, not extra provinces. It was shrewd policy that saw the local rulers inherit the odium of tax and tribute collection.

  His desk was piled high with reports about every candidate for each job. Each man had a dossier that would be gone into thoroughly; Antony often asked for additional information, and sometimes commanded that this or that candidate appear in Athens.

  However, it wasn’t long before he returned to the subject of Samosata and the siege, his displeasure undiminished.

  “It’s the end of June, and still no word,” Antony said with a scowl. “There sit Ventidius and seven legions before a town the size of Aricia or Tibur! It’s scandalous!”

  Now was his chance to pay Ventidius back for that humiliating interview in Tarsus! Dellius struck. “You’re right, Antonius, it’s scandalous. From what I hear, anyway.”

  Arrested, Antony focused his gaze on Dellius’s sorrowful face, irritation dying before curiosity. “What do you mean, Dellius?”

  “That Ventidius’s investment of Samosata is a scandal. Or so, at least, a correspondent of mine in the Sixth Legion said in his last letter to me. It arrived yesterday, surprisingly fast.”

  “And the name of this legate?”

  “I’m sorry, Antonius, I can’t tell you that. I gave my word that I wouldn’t divulge my source of information.” Dellius spoke softly, eyelids lowered. “I was told in strictest confidence.”

  “Are you at liberty to tell me the nature of the scandal?”

  “Certainly. That the siege of Samosata goes nowhere because Ventidius accepted a thousand-talent bribe from Antiochus of Commagene. If the siege drags on long enough, Antiochus hopes that you’ll order Ventidius and his legions to pack up and leave.”

  Stunned, Antony said nothing for a long moment. Then his breath hissed between his teeth, his fists clenched. “Ventidius accept a bribe? Ventidius? No! Your informant is mistaken.”

  The small head snaked from side to side to intimate a sad skepticism. “I understand your reluctance to believe ill of such an old comrade in arms, Antonius, but tell me this—why should my friend in the Sixth lie? What profits it him? More than that, it appears the bribe is common knowledge among the legates of all seven legions. Ventidius has made no secret of it. He’s fed up with the East and yearns to go home to celebrate his triumph. There is also a rumor that he doctored the account books he’s sent to the aerarium along with the spoils of his entire campaign. That, in fact, he’s skimmed another thousand talents off the booty. Samosata is such a mean place that he knows he won’t get much out of it, so why try to take it at all?”

  Antony leaped to his feet, roaring for his steward.

  “Antonius! What do you mean to do?” Dellius asked, paling.

  “What any commander-in-chief does when his second-in-command betrays his trust!” said Antony curtly.

  The steward edged in apprehensively. “Yes, domine?”

  “Pack my chest, including armor and weapons. And whereabouts is Lucilius? I need him.”

  Off went the steward in a hurry; Antony began to pace.

  “What are you going to do?” Dellius repeated, sweating now.

  “Go to Samosata, of course. You can come with me, Dellius. Rest assured, I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  His whole life flashed before Dellius’s eyes; he swayed, gurgled, fell to the floor and went into convulsions. The next thing Antony was on his knees beside him, shouting for a physician. Who took an hour to arrive, during which time Dellius was put to bed, apparently in extremis.

  Not that Antony had remained with him; as soon as Dellius was carried away, he was rapping orders to Lucilius and making sure the servants knew how to pack for a campaign—a fool decision, not to have his batman or his quaestor with him!

  Octavia walked in with the physician, her face alarmed. “My dear Antonius, what is the matter?” she asked.

  “I’m off to Samosata in less than an hour. Lucilius found a ship I can hire to take me to Portae Alexandreia. That’s on the Sinus Issicus, the closest I can get.” He grimaced, remembered to kiss her hand. “From there I have a three-hundred-mile ride, meum mel. If Auster blows, the voyage will take almost a month, but if he doesn’t, more like two months. Add the ride, and you have two to three months just getting there. Oh, curse Ventidius! He’s betrayed me.”

  “I refuse to believe that,” she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Ventidius is an honorable man.”

  Antony’s eyes went over her head to the physician, bowing low and trembling at the knees. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Oh, this is Themistophanes,” said Octavia. “He’s the doctor who has just seen Quintus Dellius.”

  Having forgotten all about Dellius, Antony blinked. “Oh! Oh, yes. How is he? Still alive?”

  “Yes, lord Antonius, he lives. A crisis of the liver, I think. He managed to tell me that he is to go to Syria with you today, but he cannot—I am firm about that. He needs poultices of charcoal, verdigris, bitumen, and oil applied to his chest several times a day, as well as regular purgations and phlebotomy,” the physician said, looking terrified. “An expensive treatment.”

  “Oh, well, he’d better stay here,” said Antony, annoyed that he wouldn’t have Dellius to point out the tattling legate. “Apply to my secretary, Lucilius, for your fees.”

  Another hug and kiss for Octavia, and Antony was gone. She stood, bemused, then lifted her shoulders in a shrug and smiled. “Well, that’s the last I’ll see of him until winter,” she said. “I must break the news to the children.”

  Upstairs, safely tucked in his bed, Dellius thanked all the gods for giving him the presence of mind to collapse. From what Themistophanes said, he was in for considerable discomfort, if not outright pain—a small price to pay for salvation. That Antony would set out for Samosata was the one thing he hadn’t bargained for; why would he, when he hadn’t moved a muscle to eject the Parthians? Perhaps, Dellius decided, it would be a good idea to make a miraculous recovery and spend some months in Rome being nice to Octavian.

  Auster did blow, and the ship, carrying no cargo save Antony and his gear, could afford to have two shifts of oarsmen aboard. But a south wind wasn’t ideal and the ship’s captain disliked the open sea, so hugged the coastline all the way from making landfall in Lycia to Portae Alexandreia. Just as well, thought the restless Antony, that Pompey the Great had scoured all the pirates out of those convenient coves and strongholds along Pamphylia and Cilicia Tracheia. Otherwise he would have been captured and held to ransom like many Romans, including Divus Julius.

  Even reading was difficult, as the ship had a tendency to bob up and down; though Our Sea had no ocean swell and minimal tides, it was choppy and could be dangerous in a storm. Those at least he was spared at this summer season, the best time of year to sail. About the only way he could assuage his impatience was to play dice with the crew for mere sesterces, and even then, he was careful to lose. He also walked the deck around and around, kept
his muscles in condition by lifting water barrels and other feats of strength beyond the crew. Hardly a night went by that the captain didn’t insist on putting into port or anchoring off some deserted beach. A seven-hundred-mile voyage at the rate of thirty miles a day on a good day. At times Antony felt as if he’d never get there.

  When all else failed, he leaned on the ship’s rail and stared into the water, hoping to spot some gigantic sea monster, but the closest he came to that were the big dolphins that leaped and frolicked around the hull, playing games amid the two rudder oars and flying past like marine hares. Then he discovered that gazing so for too long provoked a wave of loneliness in him, a sense of abandonment, of weariness and disenchantment, and wondered what was happening to him.

  In the end he concluded that the defection of Ventidius had destroyed some part of his core, imbued him not with his customary rage, which was a kind of fighting spirit, but with black despair. Yes, he thought, I dread the meeting with him. I dread to find the proof of his perfidy right there under my nose. What can I do? Fire him, of course. Banish him to Rome and that wretched triumph he’s so set upon. But with whom do I replace him? Some whining cur like Sosius? Who else is there, than Sosius? Canidius is a good man. And my cousin Caninius. Yet—if Ventidius could accept a bribe, why not any of them, not attached to me by years in Further Gaul and Caesar’s civil war campaigns? I am forty-five, but the rest are ten and fifteen years younger. Calvinus and Vatia are for Octavianus, and so too, I am told, Appius Claudius Pulcher, the most important consul since Calvinus. Maybe that’s the nucleus of it? Infidelity. Disloyalty.

  In exactly a month his ship docked at Portae Alexandreia, and he had to set about finding mounts for his servants. He had brought Clemency with him, his dappled grey Public Horse that was tall and strong enough to bear him. Still in that null, grim mood, he rode for Samosata.

  Which, as he came up the Euphrates, loomed like a black brick. Shocked, Antony discovered that Samosata was a big city with the same kind of walls as Amida, for it had belonged to the Assyrians when they ruled all this part of the world. Black basalt of the kind the Greeks called Cyclopean—smooth, immensely high, and impervious to rams or siege towers. From that moment on he knew that Dellius had misled him; what he didn’t know was whether Dellius had done so deliberately, or simply been duped by his Sixth Legion correspondent. This was no Cappadocian village in a tufa cliff, this was a daunting task even for a Caesar, whose siege experience had been very different. Nothing Ventidius had seen in any of Caesar’s wars could have prepared him for this.

  Still, there was always the possibility that Ventidius had taken a bribe anyway; stiff and sore, Antony slid off Clemency in the camp assembly area, right alongside the general’s quarters.

  Ventidius came out to see what all the fuss was about, a solid man who looked his age, tight grey curls turning his pate into something that resembled astrakhan. His face lit up.

  “Antonius!” he cried, coming to embrace Antony. “What in Jupiter’s name brings you to Samosata?”

  “I wanted to see how the siege is going.”

  “Oh, that!” Ventidius laughed jubilantly. “Samosata asked for terms two days ago. The gates are open and Antiochus is gone, the crafty irrumator.”

  “On the giving end, is he?”

  “Well, in that respect. In every other, he takes.”

  Ventidius gave Antony a field chair and went to the flagons. “Horrible red, worse white, or nice Euphrates water?”

  “Red, half and half with Euphrates water. Good, is it?”

  “Tasty for water. The city has neither an aqueduct nor any sewers. They dig wells rather than take their drinking water from the river, then dig their cesspits right alongside their wells.” He pulled a face. “The fools! Enteric fevers are rife in summer and winter. I’ve built an aqueduct for my men and forbidden them to come in contact with the Samosatans. The river is so deep and wide that I’ve just pushed the camp sewers back into it. Our swimming holes are upstream, though the current’s dangerous.” The hospitality taken care of, Ventidius sank into his curule chair and stared at Antony shrewdly. “There’s more to it than curiosity about my siege, Antonius. What’s wrong?”

  “Someone in Athens told me that you’d taken a thousand-talent bribe from Antiochus to keep the siege going.”

  “Cacat!” Ventidius sat up straight, the pleasure fading from his eyes. He grunted. “Well, your arrival says you believed the worm—who is he? I think I’m entitled to know.”

  “First, a question. Are you having trouble with the command chain in the Sixth?”

  Ventidius’s eyes widened. “The Sixth?”

  “Yes, the Sixth.”

  “Antonius, I haven’t had the Sixth here since April. Silo is having trouble putting Herod on his throne, and asked for another legion. I sent him the Sixth.”

  Feeling suddenly sick, Antony got to his feet and walked across to a window in the mud-brick wall. That answered everything except why Dellius had made his story up. How had Ventidius offended him?

  “My informant was Quintus Dellius, who said he corresponded with a legate in the Sixth. This legate told him about the bribe, and insisted the whole army knew.”

  Ventidius’s color had paled. “Oh, Antonius, that hurts! I’m cut to the quick! How could you take the word of a miserable little pander like Dellius without even writing to me to ask what’s going on? Instead, here you are in person! That says you believed him implicitly. Against me! What kind of proof did he offer?”

  Antony forced himself to turn from the window. “He didn’t. Said his informant wanted to be anonymous. But it went farther than that—the bribe, I mean. You were also accused of doctoring the account books for the Treasury.”

  Tears coursing down his seamed face, Ventidius turned one shoulder on Antony. “Quintus Dellius! A sycophant, a sucker-up, a contemptible crawler! And on his word alone, you’ve made this journey? I could spit on you! I should spit on you!”

  “I have no excuse,” said Antony miserably, wishing there was somewhere he could go—anywhere but here, anywhere! “It’s life in Athens, I suppose. So far from the action, wading through endless mountains of paper, out of it completely—Ventidius, I cry pardon from the bottom of my heart.”

  “You can cry pardon from here to your pyre and back, Antonius. It will make no difference.” Ventidius wiped the tears away with the back of one hand. “We’re finished, you and I. Finished. I’ve taken Samosata and I throw my account books open to whomsoever you choose as an auditor. You’ll find no discrepancies, not even a bronze votive. I ask leave of you, my commander, to let me return to Rome. I insist on my triumph, but I’ve fought my last campaign for Rome. Once I’ve laid my laurels at the feet of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, I’m going home to Reate to breed mules. I’ve nearly broken my back fighting your wars for you, and the only thanks you give me is an accusation from the likes of Dellius.” He got up and went to a door. “Through there are my own quarters, but by tonight I’ll be out of them. You can move in and make what dispositions you want. You trusted me! And now this.”

  “Publius, please! Please! We can’t part enemies!”

  “You’re not my enemy, Antonius. Your worst enemy is yourself, not a Picentine muleteer who walked in Strabo’s triumph fifty years ago. You’re why we Italians still have the short end of the stick—Dellius is a Roman, after all. That makes his word better than mine, that makes him better than me. I’m sick of Rome, I’m sick of war, field camps, the company of none but men. And don’t rely on Silo—he’s another Italian, he might take a bribe. He’ll be going home with me.” Ventidius sucked in a breath. “Good luck in the East, Antonius. It suits you, it really does. Corrupted arse lickers, cock twiddlers, greasy oriental potentates who lie even to themselves…” His face twisted in pain. “That reminds me—Herod is here. So is Polemon of Pontus, and Amyntas of Galatia. You won’t lack company, even if Dellius was too craven to come.”

  After Ventidius shut the door behind him, Antony thre
w his watered beverage through the window and poured the beaker full of the strong, slightly toxic red wine.

  It couldn’t have been worse, nor could he have conducted an interview more ineptly. Ventidius is right, Antony thought as he gulped the liquid until it was gone. When he got up to refill his cheap pottery vessel, he brought the flagon back with him. Yes, Ventidius is right. Somewhere along the way I’ve lost myself, my direction, my self-esteem. I couldn’t even flog myself into a rage! What he said was true. Why did I believe Dellius? It all seems so long ago, that day in Athens when Dellius poured his poison into my eager ear. Who is Dellius? How could I possibly have taken credence in a tale that had no evidence to back it up, let alone proof? I wanted to believe it, that’s all I can think. I wanted to see my old friend disgraced, I hungered for it. And why? Because he fought a war that belonged to me, a war I couldn’t be bothered fighting myself. That might have meant hard work. It’s become Roman tradition for the commander-in-chief to take all the credit. Gaius Marius started it when he took the credit for the capture of Jugurtha. He should not have. Sulla did the deed, expertly, brilliantly. But Marius just couldn’t bear to share the laurels, so he never even mentioned it in dispatches. If Sulla hadn’t published his memoirs, no one would ever have known the truth.

  I wanted to pack the campaign against the Parthians in snow, preserve the final confrontation for myself after a better man softened them up. Then Ventidius stole my thunder. A titan bold enough to see how to do it—crack, boom! Away went my thunder. How angry I was, how frustrated! I underestimated him and Silo—never even occurred to me how good they were. And that is why I believed Dellius. There can be no other reason. I wanted to destroy Ventidius’s achievements, I wanted to see him disgraced, maybe even put to the sword like Salvidienus. That was my doing too, though Salvidienus was less of a man, less of a commander. I was so absorbed in Octavianus that I let the East slip from my hands, gave the reins to Ventidius, my trusty muleteer.