“And what exactly is it that you see dimly, as through amber?” asked Livia Drusilla, eyes shining.
“A commitment. Of Antonius to Cleopatra. A non-Roman who will not be content with what relatively paltry gifts Antonius has bestowed upon her—Cyprus, Phoenicia, Philistia, Cilicia Tracheia, and the balsam and bitumen concessions. He excluded Syrian Tyre and Sidon, and Cilician Seleuceia—the important entrepôts where the real money is. Though I will be going back to the Senate in about another month to complain of these bequests to the Queen of Beasts—don’t you think that’s a good name for her? From now on, I’m going to lump her name in with Antonius’s constantly. Harping on her foreignness, her holding Divus Julius in thrall. Her high ambitions. Her designs on Rome through the person of her eldest son, whom she calls Caesar’s son when the whole world knows the boy is base-born, the child of some Egyptian slave she used to slake her voracious sexual appetites. Ugh!”
“Jupiter, Caesar, that’s genius!” cried Maecenas, rubbing his hands together gleefully. Then he frowned. “But will it go far enough?” he asked. “I can’t see Antonius’s abrogating his citizenship, nor even Cleopatra’s encouraging him to. He’s more useful to her as a Triumvir.”
“I can’t answer that, Maecenas, the future is too clouded. However, he doesn’t have to abrogate his citizenship formally. What we have to do is make it seem he has.” Octavian swung his legs off the back of his couch and waited until a clap produced a servant to tie on his shoes. “I shall start my people talking,” he said, holding out his hand to Livia Drusilla. “Come, my dear, let’s look at the new fish.”
“Oh, Caesar, that one is pure gold!” she exclaimed, face awed. “Not a flaw!”
“A female, and gravid.” He squeezed her fingers. “What’s her name? Any suggestions?”
“Cleopatra. And that huge fellow over there is Antonius.”
Along swam a much smaller carp, velvety black, with the lines of a shark. “That’s Caesarion,” Octavian said, pointing. “See? He cruises below notice, still a child, but dangerous.”
“And that one,” said Livia Drusilla, indicating a pale gold fish, “is Imperator Caesar Divi Filius. Most beautiful of all.”
18
By May the last of Antony’s troops reached Leuke Kome and the tender ministrations of Cleopatra’s hundreds of slave helpers; unaware of the political undercurrents surging below the surface of her presence alongside Antony, the soldiers were very grateful to her. Most of the frostbite victims were beyond saving, but a few still retained their blackened digits, and Egyptian medicine was better than Roman or Greek. As it was, some ten thousand of the legionaries would never pick up a sword again, or sustain a long march. To Antony’s baffled surprise, his Athenian fleet came into Seleuceia Pieria early in that month to deliver forty-three thousand oaken chests (three ships had gone down in a gale off Cape Taenarum) containing Antony’s share of Sextus Pompey’s hoard. It was greeted with relief, for Cleopatra had brought no money with her, and swore she would not donate more funds to fruitless campaigns against the Parthians. Antony was able to give his maimed soldiers big pensions and load them aboard the galleys, returning to Athens and decommissioning; their seaworthy years were over. The windfall also enabled him to begin assembling a new army liberally laced with the veterans of his first, bitterly disappointing endeavor.
“Why on earth did Octavianus do that?” Cleopatra asked.
“Do what, my love?”
“Send you your share of Sextus’s treasure.”
“Because he’s made a whole career out of shining goodness. It sits well with the Senate, and what does he need money for? He is Triumvir in Rome, he has the Treasury at his disposal.”
“It must be stuffed to the ceilings,” she said thoughtfully.
“So I gather from Octavianus’s accompanying letter.”
“Which you haven’t given me to read.”
“You’re not entitled to read it.”
“I disagree. Who brought you aid in this benighted place? I did, not Octavianus! Give it to me, Antonius.”
“Say please.”
“No, I will not! It is my right to read it! Hand it over.”
He poured a goblet of wine and drank deeply. “You’re getting too big for your shoes,” he said, burping. “What do you want, a pair of military boots?”
“Perhaps,” she said, snapping her fingers. “You’re in my debt, Antonius, so hand it over.”
Scowling, he gave her the single sheet of Fannian paper, which she read, as Caesar had been able to do, at a glance. “Pah!” she spat, screwing it up and throwing it into a corner of the tent. “He’s semiliterate at best!”
“Satisfied that there’s nothing in it?”
“I never thought there was, but I am your equal in power, in rank, in wealth. Your full partner in our eastern enterprise. I must be shown everything, just as I must be present at all your councils and meetings. Something Canidius understands, but not mere nothings like Titius and Ahenobarbus.”
“Titius I’ll grant you, but Ahenobarbus? Far from a nothing. Come, Cleopatra, stop being so prickly! Show my colleagues that side of you that I alone seem to see—kind, loving, considerate.”
Her little foot, sheathed in a gilded sandal, tapped the earthen floor of the tent, and her face grew even grimmer. “I am so tired of Leuke Kome, that’s the trouble,” she said, biting her lip. “Why can’t we move to Antioch, where there is accommodation that doesn’t creak and groan every time the wind blows?”
Antony blinked. “No reason, really,” he said, sounding quite surprised. “Let’s move to Antioch. Canidius can carry on here, get the troops ready.” He sighed. “It will be next year before I can lead them back to Phraaspa. That traitorous cur, Monaeses! I’ll have his head, I swear it!”
“If you have his head, will you drink less?”
“Probably,” he said, and put the goblet down as if it held lava. “Oh, don’t you understand?” he cried, shuddering. “I have lost my luck! If I ever had any luck. Yes, I did have luck—at Philippi. But only at Philippi, it seems to me now. Before and since—no luck at all. That’s why I have to continue to fight the Parthians. Monaeses made off with my luck as well as my two Eagles. Four, if you include the two Pacorus stole. I have to get them back, my luck and my Eagles.”
It goes around and around, she thought, always the same old conversation about lost luck and the triumph of Philippi. Drunkards do talk in circles, the same subject over and over, as if in it is some pearl of wisdom with the power to cure every misfortune or evil in the world. Two months of Leuke Kome, listening to Antonius go around and around, swallowing his own tail. Perhaps when we get to a new and different place, he will improve. Though he has no name for what ails him, I call it deep melancholy. His moods are flat, he sleeps far too long, as if he doesn’t want to wake and set eyes on his life, even with me in it. Does he feel that he should have committed suicide, that night of threatened mutiny? Romans are strange, they have this honor thing that pushes them to fall on their swords. Life isn’t priceless to them, it has a cutoff point involving dignitas, and they are not afraid of dying as most peoples are, including Egyptians. So I have to dig Antonius’s melancholy out by the roots or it will strangle him. Give him back his dignitas. I need him, I need him! Whole and entire, the old Antonius. Capable of defeating Octavianus and putting my son on the throne of Rome, which has been vacant for five hundred years. Waiting for Caesarion. Oh, how I miss Caesarion! If we get as far as Antioch, I can work on getting Antonius to Alexandria. Once he’s there, he will recover.
But Antioch held shocks, none of them pleasant. Antony found a pile of letters from Poplicola in Rome, each dated on its outside so he could read them in order.
The letters detailed Octavian’s campaign against Sextus Pompey in graphic terms, though they made it clear that Poplicola’s chief gripe was his exclusion from what he called a very smooth operation. Nor had Octavian hidden in the Italian equivalent of a marsh, even during heavy fighting a
fter he finally landed at Tauromenium. The wheezes, he said cheerfully to anyone prone to listen, had quite gone since his marriage. Huh! thought Antony. Cold fish and cold fish swim well together.
The news of Lepidus’s fate angered him; under the terms of their pact, he was entitled to vote on an issue like expelling Lepidus from all his public offices and provinces, but Octavian hadn’t bothered to contact him, pleading as his excuse Antony’s isolation in Media. Thirty legions! How had Lepidus managed to accumulate half that number in a backwater like Africa Province? And the Senate, including his, Antony’s, adherents, had voted to exile poor Lepidus from Rome herself! He pined in his villa at Circeii.
There was a letter from him too, full of excuses and self-pity. His wife, Brutus’s sister Junia Minor (Junia Major was the wife of Servilius Vatia), had not always been faithful to him, and was making life hard now that she couldn’t escape from him. Moan, moan, moan. Antony grew tired of Lepidus’s woes, and tore his letter up half read. Perhaps Octavian had some right on his side; certainly the little worm had dealt smartly with Lepidus’s troops. How well he did that sweet young lad act!
Octavian’s version of the Lepidus incident was somewhat different, though he had things to say too about enlisting the enemy’s legions in a Roman’s own, as Lepidus had done with Sextus Pompey’s.
“I thought it high time that the Senate and People of Rome saw clear as water that the days when enemy troops were treated leniently are over; leniency cannot help but rankle, especially when Rome’s legionaries have to endure the presence alongside them of men they fought last nundinum. Knowing these detested men will be dowered with land when they retire just as if they never took up swords against Rome. I have changed that. Sextus Pompeius’s soldiers, sailors, and oarsmen have been dealt with very harshly,” Octavian’s letter said. “It is not Roman custom to take prisoners, but neither is it Roman custom to free the conquered enemy as if they were Roman. Sextus Pompeius had few Romans in his legions or his crews. Those he did have were hostis. Under other conditions I might have sold them into slavery, but instead I chose to make an example of them.
“Sextus Pompeius himself escaped, together with Libo and two of my divine father’s assassins, Decimus Turullius and Cassius Parmensis. They have fled eastward, thus becoming your problem, not mine. It is rumored they have sought asylum in Mitylene.”
Which was by no means all that Octavian had to say. He went on blandly, his words assured and strong; this was a new Octavian, victorious, dowered with superb luck and conscious of it. Not a letter Antony could spit at and tear up.
“You will have received your share of Sextus Pompeius’s hoard together with my covering letter by now, and I take leave to tell you that this enormous sum of money, paid in coin of the Republic, cancels any obligation I have to send you twenty thousand soldiers. You are, of course, free to come to Italia to recruit them, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to do your dirty work for you. What I have done is choose two thousand of the very best men, all willing to serve with you in the East, and will ship them to Athens shortly. As I saw for myself that seventy of your war galleys were on their beams with rot and barnacles, I will donate you seventy newly built fives from my own fleets, as well as some excellent artillery and siege equipment to help replace what you lost in Media. No triumphs have been awarded for the campaign against Sextus Pompeius, who must be classified as Roman. I do, however, highly commend Marcus Agrippa, who proved as brilliant an admiral as he is a land general. Lucius Cornificius, junior consul this year, was brave and clever in command, as were Sabinus, Statilius Taurus, and Messala Corvinus. Sicilia is at peace, charge of it given permanently to Marcus Agrippa, the only one gifted with an old-style latifundium there. Taurus has gone to govern Africa Province; I sailed with him to Utica and supervised the start of his term, and can assure you that he will not exceed his mandate. In fact, nobody will exceed his mandate, from consuls through praetors to governors and junior magistrates. And I have given notice to Rome’s legions that no more big bonuses will be paid to them. In future they fight for Rome, not any one man.”
And so on, and so forth. Finished the lengthy scroll, Antony tossed it to Cleopatra. “Here, read this!” he snapped. “The pup fancies himself a wolf, and leader of the pack at that.”
Done with it in a tenth of the time it had taken Antony, she put it down with fingers that trembled slightly, and fixed her golden eyes on Antony’s face. Not good, not good! While Antony failed in the East, Octavian had succeeded in the West. No half measures, either; a complete and stunning victory that had poured wealth into the Treasury, which meant Octavian had the funds to equip and train fresh legions as he needed them, and maintain fleets too.
“He is patient” was her comment. “Very patient. He waited six years to do it, but when he did, it was all-encompassing. I think this Marcus Agrippa must be an extraordinary man.”
“Octavianus is welded to him,” Antony growled.
“Rumor says they’re lovers.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me.” Antony shrugged, picked up the next letter, shorter by far. “From Furnius, in Asia Province.”
No good news from Asia Province either. Furnius wrote that Sextus Pompey, Libo, Decimus Turullius, and Cassius Parmensis had arrived in the port of Mitylene on the island of Lesbos at the end of last November, and had not been idle. Their stay there was not long; by January they were in Ephesus, and recruiting volunteers from among the veterans who, over the years, had taken up land in Asia Province. By March they had three full legions, and were ready to make a bid to conquer Anatolia. A frightened Amyntas, King of Galatia, had joined forces with Furnius. By the time Antony received this letter, Furnius fully expected that war would have broken out.
“You should have snuffed out Sextus Pompeius’s light years ago,” said Cleopatra, opening an old wound.
“How could I, when he kept Octavianus busy and off my back?” Antony demanded, reaching for the wine flagon.
“Don’t!” she said sharply. “You haven’t read Poplicola’s latest letter yet. If you must drink, Antonius, do so after your business is finished.”
Childlike, he obeyed, which satisfied her that he needed her good opinion more than he needed the wine. Only what was she going to do when he needed the wine more than her? A thought popped into her mind: an amethyst! Amethysts had magical powers over wine, prevented dependence upon it. She would commission the royal jeweller in Alexandria to make him the most magnificent amethyst ring in the world. Once he wore it, he would overcome his need for wine.
Of course Poplicola had always known that Antony’s campaign against the Parthians had failed; it was he who had spread the story far and wide throughout Rome that Antony had won a great victory, on the theory that whoever got in first with one version of events would succeed. He had written earlier in jubilant mood to tell Antony that Rome and the Senate believed his version, and chuckled over the fact that none other than Octavian himself had voted Antony a thanksgiving for his “victory.” This most recent of his letters was very different. The bulk of it was a verbatim report of Octavian’s speech in the Senate describing Antony’s campaign as an abysmal failure; the agents Octavian had sent to the East had found out every tiny detail.
By the time he had mumbled his way through the scroll, the tears were rolling down Antony’s face; Cleopatra watched with sinking heart, snatched the scroll, and read that biting, intensely political diatribe. Oh, how dared Octavian recount her own part in those events as malign! The Queen of Beasts! “I want my mama!” Brilliant mud-slinging. How was she going to mend Antony now?
I curse you, Octavianus, I curse you! May Sobek and Tawaret suck you into their nostrils and drown you, chewed and trampled!
Then she saw her way, wondered that she hadn’t thought of it before. Antony would have to be weaned away from Rome, made to see that his fate and his luck dwelled in Egypt, not in Rome. She would make a nest for him in Alexandria, so comfortable and flattering, so stuffed with dive
rsions that he would never want to be anywhere else. He would have to marry her; what good fortune that a monogamous people like the Romans ignored foreign marriages as illegal! If for the time being Antony had to cleave to Octavia, that didn’t matter. In reality his Egyptian union would count for far more among those to whom his private relationships held significance—his client-kings, his minor princes.
She sat with Antony’s head in her lap and fixed her eyes on a bust of Caesar, the perfect partner taken from her. It was from Aphrodisias, whose sculptors and painters were unparalleled, and everything about it was right, from the shade of the pale gold hair to the piercing eyes, palest blue surrounded by inky dark rings. A wave of grief swept over her, was ruthlessly suppressed. Make do with what you have, Cleopatra, don’t yearn for what might have been.
It will be war, it has to be war. The only question is, when? Octavianus lies through his teeth about no more civil wars—he will have to fight Antonius or lose what he has. But not yet, from that speech. He plans to train his legions to peak condition by subjugating the tribes of Illyricum, and he says up to three years of campaigns. That means we have three years to prepare, and then—we invade the West, we invade Italia. I will have to let Antonius finish with the Parthians inside his mind, in a way that will weld his legions without destroying them. For Antonius is not in Caesar’s class as a general of troops. I must always have known that, but I believed that, with Caesar dead, no one alive could rival Antonius. But now that I know him better, I realize that the flaws he demonstrates as a man also affect his ability to general troops. Ventidius was his superior; so, I think, is Canidius. Let Canidius do the real work while Antonius, enjoying the reputation, dazzles the world with the illusory tricks of a magician.