Thus, little by little, under the influence of the Egyptian Queen and in the power of his own sleepless ambitions, Cæsar began to give serious thought to the possibilities of creating a world-empire over which he should rule as king, founding a royal line which should sit upon the supreme earthly throne for ages to come. Obviously it must have occurred to him that kings must rule by right of royal blood, and that his own blood, though noble and though said to be of divine origin, was not such as would give his descendants unquestionable command over the loyalty of their subjects. A man who is the descendant of many kings has a right to royalty which the son of a conqueror, however honourable his origin, does not possess. So thought Napoleon when he married the Austrian princess, founding a royal house in his country by using the royal blood of another land for the purpose. Looking around him with this thought in view, Cæsar could not well have chosen anybody but Cleopatra as the foundress of his line. There was no Roman royal house extant, and therefore a Greek was the best, if not the only, possible alternative; and the Ptolemaic Kings of Egypt were pure Macedonians, deriving their descent, by popular belief, if not in actual fact, from the royal house of Cæsar’s hero, Alexander the Great. He may well, then, have contemplated with enthusiasm the thought of the future monarchs of Rome sitting by inherited right upon the ancient throne of Macedonian Egypt; and Cleopatra on her part was no doubt inspired by the idea of future Pharaohs, blood of her blood and bone of her bone, ruling Rome by hereditary authority.
Cleopatra of necessity had to find a husband. Already she had postponed her marriage beyond the age at which such an event should take place; and any union with her co-regnant brother could but be of a formal nature. Cæsar now had come into her life, capturing her youthful affections and causing himself to be the parent of her child; and it is but natural to suppose that she would endeavour by every means in her power to make him her lifelong consort, thus adding to her own royal stock the worthiest blood of Rome. There can be no doubt that whether or not she might succeed in making Cæsar himself Pharaoh of Egypt, she intended to hand on the Egyptian throne to her child and his, adding to the name of Ptolemy that of the family of the Cæsars. Thus it may be said, though my assumption at first seems startling, that the Roman Empire to a large extent owes its existence to the Egyptian Queen, for the monarchy was in many respects the child of the union of Cæsar and Cleopatra.
These as yet undefined ambitions and hopes found a very real and material expression in Cæsar’s eagerness to know whether the expected babe would be a girl, or a son and heir; and it seems likely that his determination to remain in Egypt was largely due to his unwillingness to depart before that question was answered. This, and the paternal responsibility which perhaps for the first time in his sordid life he had ever felt, led him to postpone his return to Rome. He seems to have entertained feelings of the greatest tenderness towards the Queen, whom he was beginning to regard as his wife; and he was, no doubt, anxious to be near her during the ordeal through which the young and delicately-built girl had, for the first time, to pass. It has been the custom for historians to attribute Cæsar’s prolonged residence in Egypt, after the termination of the war and the settlement of Egyptian affairs, to the sensuous allurements of Cleopatra, who is supposed to have held him captive by the arts of love and by the voluptuous attractions of her person; but here a natural fact of life has been overlooked. A woman who is about to render to mankind the great service of her sex, has neither the ability nor the desire to arouse the feverish emotions of her lover. Her condition calls forth from him the more gentle aspects of his affection. His responsibility is expressed in consideration, in interest, in sympathy, and in a kind of gratitude; but it is palpably absurd to suppose that a mere passion, such as that by which Cæsar is thought to have been animated, could at this time have influenced his actions. If love of any kind held him in Egypt, it was the love of a husband for his wife, the devotion of a man who was about to become a parent to the woman who would presently pay toll to Nature in response to his incitement. Actually, as we have seen, there was something more than love to keep him in Egypt; there was ambition, headlong aspiration, the intoxication of a conqueror turning his mind to new conquests, and the supreme interest of a would-be king constructing a throne which should be occupied not only by himself but by the descendants of his own flesh and blood for all time.[40]
British Museum.]
[Photograph by Macbeth.
CLEOPATRA.
While waiting for the desired event Cæsar could not remain inactive in the Palace at Alexandria. He desired to ascertain for himself the resources of the land which was to be considered as his wife’s dowry; and he therefore determined to conduct a peaceful expedition up the Nile with this subject in view. The royal dahabiyeh or house-boat was therefore made ready for himself and Cleopatra, whose condition might be expected to benefit by the idle and yet interesting life upon the river; and orders were given both to his own legionaries and to a considerable number of Cleopatra’s troops to prepare themselves for embarkation upon a fleet of four hundred Nile vessels. The number of ships suggests that there were several thousand soldiers employed in the expedition; and it appears to have been Cæsar’s intention to penetrate far into the Sudan.[41] The royal vessel, or thalamegos, as it was called by the Greeks, was of immense size, and was propelled by many banks of oars.[42] It contained colonnaded courts, banqueting saloons, sitting-rooms, bedrooms, shrines dedicated to Venus and to Dionysos, and a grotto or “winter garden.” The wood employed was cedar and cypress, and the decorations were executed in paint and gold-leaf. The furniture was Greek, with the exception of that in one dining-hall, which was decorated in the Egyptian style.[43] The rest of the fleet consisted, no doubt, of galleys and ordinary native transports and store-ships.
From the city of Alexandria the fleet passed into the nearest branch of the Nile, and so travelled southwards to Memphis, where Cleopatra perhaps obtained her first sight of the great Pyramids and the Sphinx. Thebes, the ancient capital, at that period much fallen into decay, was probably reached in about three weeks’ time; and Cæsar must have been duly impressed by the splendid temples and monuments upon both banks of the Nile. Possibly it was at his suggestion that Cleopatra caused the great obelisk of one of her distant predecessors to be moved from the temple of Luxor at Thebes and to be transported down to Alexandria, where it was erected not far from the Forum,[44] an inscription recording its re-erection being engraved at the base. The journey was continued probably as far as Aswan and the First Cataract, which may have been reached some four or five weeks after the departure from Alexandria; and it would seem that Cæsar here turned his face to the north once more. Suetonius states that he was anxious to proceed farther up the Nile, but that his troops were restive and inclined to be mutinous, a fact which is not surprising, since the labour of dragging the vessels up the cataract would have been immense, and the hot south winds which often blow in the spring would have added considerably to the difficulties. The temperature at this time of year may rise suddenly from the pleasant degree of an Egyptian winter to that of the height of intolerable summer, and so remain for four or five days.
Be this as it may, Cæsar turned about, having satisfied himself as to the wealth and fertility of the country, and, no doubt, having obtained as much information as possible from the natives in regard to the trade-routes which led from the Nile to Berenice and India, or to Meroe, Napata, and the Kingdom of Ethiopia. The expedition arrived at Alexandria probably some nine or ten weeks after its departure from that city—that is to say, at the end of the month of June; and it would seem that in the first week of July Cleopatra’s confinement took place.