Though Fulvia, the faithful wife of Antony, could scarcely keep together his party at Rome against the power of Octavianus, his colleague in the triumvirate, and though Labienus, with the Parthian legions, was ready to march into Syria against him, yet he was so entangled in the artful nets of Cleopatra, that she led him captive to Alexandria; and there the old warrior fell into every idle amusement, and offered up at the shrine of pleasure one of the greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of his time. The lovers visited each other every day, and the waste of their entertainments passed belief. Philotas, a physician who was following his studies at Alexandria, told Plutarch’s grandfather that he was once invited to see Antony’s dinner cooked, and among other meats were eight wild boars roasting whole; and the cook explained to him that, though there were only twelve guests, yet as each dish had to be roasted to a single turn of the spit, and Antony did not know at what hour he should dine, it was necessary to cook at least eight dinners. But the most costly of the luxuries then used in Egypt were the scents and the ointments. Gold, silver, and jewels, as Pliny remarks, will pass to a man’s heirs, even clothes will last a few months or weeks, but scents fly off and are lost at the first moment that they are admired; and yet ointments, like the attar of roses, which melted and gave out their scent, and passed into air when placed upon the back of the hand, as the coolest part of the body, were sold for four hundred denarii the pound. But the ointment was not meant to be used quite so wastefully. It was usually sealed up in small alabaster jars, which were made in the town of Alabastron, on the east of the Nile, and thence received their name. These were long in shape, without a foot, and had a narrow mouth. They were meant never to be opened, but to let the scent escape slowly and sparingly through the porous stone. In these Egyptian jars scented ointment was carried by trade to the banks of the Tigris and to the shores of the Mediterranean.
The tenth and eleventh years of the queen’s reign were marked by a famine through the land, caused by the Nile’s not rising to the wished-for height and by the want of the usual overflow; and an inscription which was written both in the Greek and Egyptian languages declares the gratitude of the Theban priests and elders and citizens to Callimachus, the prefect of the Theban taxes, who did what he could to lessen the sufferings in that city. The citizens of Alexandria on those years received from the government a smaller gift of corn than usual, and the Jews then felt their altered rank in the state. They were told that they were not citizens, and accordingly received no portion whatever out of the public granaries, but were left like the Egyptians to take care of themselves. From this time forward there was an unceasing quarrel between Greeks and Jews in the city of Alexandria.
Cleopatra, who held her power at the pleasure of the Roman legions, spared no pains to please Antony. She had borne him first a son named Ptolemy, and then a son and daughter, twins, Alexander Helius and Cleopatra Selene, or Sun and Moon. She gamed, she drank, she hunted, she reviewed the troops with him, and, to humour his coarser tastes, she followed him, in his midnight rambles through the city, in the dress of a servant; and nothing that youth, beauty, wealth, and elegance could do to throw a cloak over the grossness of vice and crime was forgotten by her. The biographer thought it waste of time to mention all Cleopatra’s arts and Antony’s follies, but the story of his fishing was not to be forgotten. One day, when sitting in the boat with her, he caught but little, and was vexed at her seeing his want of success. So he ordered one of his men to dive into the water and put upon his hook a fish which had been before taken. Cleopatra, however, saw what was being done, and quietly took the hint for a joke of her own. The next day she brought a larger number of friends to see the fishing, and, when Antony let down his line, she ordered one of her divers to put on the hook a salted fish. The line was then drawn up and the fish landed amid no little mirth of their friends; and Cleopatra playfully consoled him, saying: “Well, general, you may leave fishing to us petty princes of Pharos and Canopus; your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms.”
Antony’s eldest son by Fulvia came to Alexandria at this time, and lived in the same princely style with his father. Philotas the physician lived in his service, and one day at supper when Philotas silenced a tiresome talker with a foolish sophism the young Antony gave him as a reward the whole sideboard of plate. But in the middle of this gaiety and feasting Antony was recalled to Europe by letters which told him that his wife and brother had been driven out of Rome by Octavianus. Before, however, he reached Rome his wife Fulvia was dead; and, wishing to strengthen his party, he at once married Octavia, the sister of Octavianus and widow of Marcellus.
In that year Herod passed through Egypt on his way to Rome to claim Judæa as his kingdom. He came through Arabia to Pelusium, and thence he sailed to Alexandria. Cleopatra, who wanted his services, gave him honourable entertainment in her capital, and made him great offers in order to persuade him to take the command of her army. But the Jewish prince saw that a kingdom was to be gained by offering his services to Antony and Octavianus; and he went on to Rome. There through the friendship of Antony he was declared King of Judæa by the senate. He then returned to Syria to collect an army and to win the kingdom which had been granted to him; and by the help of Sosius, Antony’s lieutenant, he had conquered Jerusalem when the war broke out between Antony and Octavianus.
In the next year (B.C. 38) Antony was himself in Syria, carrying on the war which ended with the battle of Actium; and he sent to Alexandria to beg Cleopatra to join him there. On her coming, he made her perhaps the largest gift which lover ever gave to his mistress: he gave her the wide provinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, part of Cilicia, part of Judæa, and part of Arabia Nabataea. These large gifts only made her ask for more, and she begged him to put to death Herod, King of Judæa, and Malichus, King of Arabia Nabataea, the former of whom had advised Antony to break through the disgraceful ties which bound him to Cleopatra, as the only means of saving himself from being crushed by the rising power of Octavianus. She asked to have the whole of Arabia and Judæa given to her. But Antony had not so far forgotten himself as to yield to these commands; and he only gave her the balsam country around Jericho, and a rent-charge of two hundred talents, or one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a year, on the revenues of Judæa. On receiving this large addition to her kingdom, and perhaps in honour of Antony, who had then lost all power in Italy but was the real king of Egypt and its Greek provinces, Cleopatra began to count the years of her reign afresh: what was really the sixteenth of her reign, and had been called the sixteenth of Ptolemy, her elder brother, she called the first of her own reign, and she reckoned them in the same way till her death. Cleopatra had accompanied Antony on his expedition against Armenia, as far as the river Euphrates, and returned through Damascus to Judæa. There she was politely received by her enemy Herod, who was too much in fear of Antony to take his revenge on her. She farmed out to him the revenues of her parts of Arabia and Judæa, and was accompanied by him on her way towards Egypt. But after wondering at the wasteful feasts and gifts, in which pearls and provinces were alike trifled with, we are reminded that even Cleopatra was of the family of the Lagido, and that she was well aware how much the library of the museum had added to the glory of Alexandria. It had been burnt by the Roman troops under Cæsar, and, to make amends for this, Antony gave her the large library of the city of Pergamus, by which Eumenes and Attalus had hoped to raise a school that should equal the museum of Alexandria. Cleopatra placed these two hundred thousand volumes in the temple of Serapis; and Alexandria again held the largest library in the world; while Pergamus ceased to be a place of learning. By the help of this new library, the city still kept its trade in books and its high rank as a school of letters; and, when the once proud kingdom of Egypt was a province of Rome, and when almost every trace of the monarchy was lost, and half a century afterwards Philo, the Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, asked, “Where are now the Ptolemies?” the historian could have found an answer by pointing to the mathematical schools and the library of the Serapeum.
But to return to our history. When Antony left Cleopatra, he marched against the Parthians, and on his return he again entered Alexandria in triumph, leading Artavasdes, King of Armenia, chained behind his chariot as he rode in procession through the city. He soon afterwards made known his plans for the government of Egypt and the provinces. He called together the Alexandrians in the Gymnasium, and, seating himself and Cleopatra on two golden thrones, he declared her son Cæsarion her colleague, and that they should hold Egypt, Cyprus, Africa, and Coele-Syria. To her sons by himself he gave the title of kings the children of kings; and to Alexander, though still a child, he gave Armenia and Media, with Parthia when it should be conquered; and to Ptolemy he gave Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Cleopatra wore the sacred robe of Isis, and took the title of the New Isis, while the young Alexander wore a Median dress with turban and tiara, and the little Ptolemy a long cloak and slippers, with a bonnet encircled by a diadem, like the successors of Alexander. Antony himself wore an Eastern scimetar by his side, and a royal diadem round Ins head, as being not less a sovereign than Cleopatra. To Cleopatra he then gave the whole of his Parthian booty, and his prisoner Tigranes.
But notwithstanding Antony’s love for Cleopatra, her falsehood and cruelty were such that when his power in Rome fell he could no longer trust her. He even feared that she might have him poisoned, and would not eat or drink in her palace without having the food first tasted herself. But she had no such thoughts, and only laughed at him for his distrust. One day to prove her power, and at the same time her good faith, she had the flowers with which he was to be crowned, as he reclined at her dinner-table, dipped in deadly poison. Antony dined with these round his head, while she wore a crown of fresh flowers. During the dinner Cleopatra playfully took off her garland and dipped it in her cup to flavour the wine, and Antony did the same with his poisoned flowers, steeping them in his own cup of wine. He even raised it to his lips to drink, when she hastily caught hold of his hand. “Now,” said she, “I am the enemy against whom you have latterly been so careful. If I could have endured to live without you, that draught would have given me the opportunity.” She then ordered the wine to be taken to one of the condemned criminals, and sent Antony out to see that the man died on drinking it.