We have seen how Antony allowed his more refined instincts full play in Alexandria, and how, in order to win the Queen’s admiration, he showed himself devoted to the society of learned men. In like manner Cleopatra gave full vent to the more frivolous side of her nature, in order to render herself attractive to her Roman comrade, whose boyish love of tomfoolery was so pronounced. Sometimes in the darkness of the night, as we have already seen, she would dress herself in the clothes of a peasant woman, and disguising Antony in the garments of a slave, she would lead him through the streets of the city in search of adventure. They would knock ominously at the doors or windows of unknown houses, and disappear like ghosts when they were opened. Occasionally, of course, they were caught by the doorkeepers or servants, and, as Plutarch says, “were very scurvily answered and sometimes even beaten severely, though most people guessed who they were.”
Cleopatra provided all manner of amusements for her companion. She would ride and hunt with him in the desert beyond the city walls, boat and fish with him on the sea or the Mareotic Lake, romp with him through the halls of the Palace, watch him wrestle, fence, and exercise himself in arms, play dice with him, drink with him, and fascinate him by the arts of love. The following story presents a characteristic picture of the jovial life led by them in Alexandria during this memorable winter. Antony had been fishing from one of the vessels in the harbour; but, failing to make any catches, he employed a diver to descend into the water and to attach newly-caught fishes to his hook, which he then landed amidst the applause of Cleopatra and her friends. The Queen, however, soon guessed what was happening, and at once invited a number of persons to come on the next day to witness Antony’s dexterity. She then procured some preserved fish which had come from the Black Sea, and instructed a slave to dive under the vessel and to attach one to the hook as soon as it should strike the water. This having been done, Antony drew to the surface the salted fish, the appearance of which was greeted with hearty laughter; whereupon Cleopatra, turning to the discomfited angler, tactfully said, “Leave the fishing-rod, general, to us poor sovereigns of Pharos and Canopus: your game is cities, provinces, and kingdoms.”
During this winter Antony and the Queen together founded a kind of society or club which they named the Amimetobioi, or Inimitable Livers, the members of which entertained one another in turn each day in the most extravagant manner. Antony, it would seem probable, was the president of this society; and two inscriptions have been found in which he is named “The Inimitable,” perhaps not without reference to this office. A story told by a certain Philotas, a medical student at that time residing in Alexandria, will best illustrate the prodigality of the feasts provided by the members of this club. Philotas was one day visiting the kitchens of Cleopatra’s palace, and was surprised to see no less than eight wild boars roasting whole. “You evidently have a great number of guests to-day,” he said to the cook; to which the latter replied, “No, there are not above twelve to dine, but the meat has to be served up just roasted to a turn: and maybe Antony will wish to dine now, maybe not for an hour; yet if anything is even one minute ill-timed it will be spoilt, so that not one but many meals must be in readiness, as it is impossible to guess at his dining-hour.”
As an example of the food served at these Alexandrian banquets, I may be permitted to give a list of the dishes provided some years previously at a dinner given in Rome by Mucius Lentulus Niger, at which Julius Cæsar had been one of the guests; but it is to be remembered that Cleopatra’s feasts are thought to have been far more prodigious than any known in Rome. The menu is as follows: Sea-hedgehogs; oysters; mussels; sphondyli; fieldfares with asparagus; fattened fowls; oyster and mussel pasties; black and white sea-acorns; sphondyli again; glycimarides; sea-nettles; becaficoes; roe-ribs; boar’s ribs; fowls dressed with flour; becaficoes again; purple shell-fish of two kinds; sow’s udder; boar’s head; fish pasties; ducks; boiled teals; hares; roasted fowls; starch-pastry; and Pontic pastry. Varro, in one of his satires, mentions some of the most noted foreign delicacies which were to be found upon the tables of the rich. These include peacocks from Samos; grouse from Phrygia; cranes from Melos; kids from Ambracia; tunny-fish from Chalcedon; murænas from the Straits of Gades; ass-fish from Pessinus; oysters and scallops from Tarentum; sturgeons from Rhodes; scarus-fish from Cilicia; nuts from Thasos; and acorns from Spain. The vegetables then known included most of those now eaten, with the notable exception, of course, of potatoes.[91] The main meal of the day, the cœna, was often prolonged into a drinking party, known as commissatio, at which an Arbiter bibendi, or Master of Revels, was appointed by the throwing of dice, whose duty it was to mix the wine in a large bowl. The diners lay upon couches usually arranged round three sides of the table, and they ate their food with their fingers. Chaplets of flowers were placed upon their heads, cinnamon was sprinkled upon the hair, and sweet perfumes were thrown upon their bodies, and sometimes even mixed with the wines. During the meals the guests were entertained by the performances of dancing-girls, musicians, actors, acrobats, clowns, dwarfs, or even gladiators; and afterwards dice-throwing and other games of chance were indulged in. The decoration of the rooms and the splendour of the furniture and plate were always very carefully considered, Cleopatra’s banquets being specially noteworthy for the magnificence of the table services. These dishes and drinking-vessels, which the Queen was wont modestly to describe as her Kerama or “earthenware,” were usually made of gold and silver encrusted with precious stones; and so famous were they for their beauty of workmanship that three centuries later they formed still a standard of perfection, Queen Zenobia of Palmyra being related to have collected them eagerly for her own use.
Thus, with feasting, merry-making, and amusements of all kinds, the winter slipped by. To a large extent Plutarch is justified in stating that in Alexandria Antony “squandered that most costly of all valuables, time”; but the months were not altogether wasted. He and Cleopatra had cemented their alliance by living together in the most intimate relations; and both now thought it probable that when the time came for the attempted overthrow of Octavian they would fight their battle side by side. By becoming Cleopatra’s lover, and by appealing to the purely instinctive side of her nature, Antony had obtained from her the whole-hearted promise of Egypt’s support in all his undertakings; and these happy winter months in Alexandria could not have seemed to him to be wasted when each day the powerful young Queen come to be more completely at his beck and call. The course of Cleopatra’s love for Antony seems to have followed almost precisely the same lines as had her love for Julius Cæsar. Inspired at first by a political motive, she had come to feel a genuine and romantic affection for her Roman consort; and the intimacies which ensued, though largely due to the weaknesses of the flesh, seemed to find full justification in the fact that her dynastic ambitions were furthered by this means. Cleopatra thought of Antony as her husband, and she wished to be regarded as his wife. The fact that no public marriage had taken place was of little consequence; for she, as goddess and Queen, must have felt herself exempt from the common law, and at perfect liberty to contract whatever union seemed desirable to her for the good of her country and dynasty, and for the satisfaction of her own womanly instincts. Early in the year B.C. 40 she and Antony became aware that their union was to be fruitful; and this fact must have made Cleopatra more than ever anxious to keep Antony in Alexandria with her, and to bind him to her by causing him to be recognised as her consort. He was not willing, however, to assume the rank and status of King of Egypt; for such a move would inevitably precipitate the quarrel with Octavian, and he would then be obliged to stake all on an immediate war with the faction which would assuredly come to be recognised as the legitimate Roman party. This unwillingness on his part to bind himself to her must have caused her some misgiving; and, as the winter drew to a close, I think that the Queen must have felt somewhat apprehensive in regard to Antony’s sincerity.
Setting aside all sentimental factors in the situation, and leaving out of consideration for the moment all physical causes of the alliance, it will be seen that Antony’s position was now more satisfactory than was that of the often sorely perplexed Queen. By spending the winter at Alexandria the Roman Triumvir had kept himself aloof from the political troubles in Italy at a time when his presence at home might have complicated matters to his own disadvantage; he had obtained the full support of Egyptian wealth and Egyptian arms should he require them; and he had prepared the way for a definite marriage with Cleopatra at the moment when he should desire her partnership in the foundation of a great monarchy such as that for which Julius Cæsar had striven. He had not yet irrevocably compromised himself, and he was free to return to his Roman order of life with superficially clean hands. Nobody in Rome would think the less of him for having combined a certain amount of pleasure with the obvious business which had called him to Egypt; and his friends would certainly be as easily persuaded to accept the political excuses which he would advance for his lengthy residence in Alexandria as the Cæsarian party had been to admit those put forward by the great Dictator under very similar circumstances. Like Julius Cæsar and like Pompey, Antony was certainly justified in making himself the patron of the wealthy Egyptian court; and all Roman statesmen were aware how desirable it was at this juncture for a party leader to cement an alliance with the powerful Queen of that country.
On the part of Cleopatra, however, the circumstances were far less happy. She had staked all on the alliance with Antony—her personal honour and prestige as well as her dynasty’s future; and in return for her great gifts she must have been beginning to feel that she had received nothing save vague promises and unsatisfactory assurances. Without Antony’s help not only would she lose all hope of an Egypto-Roman throne for herself and her son Cæsarion, but she would inevitably fail to keep Egypt from absorption into the Roman dominions. There were only two mighty leaders at that time in the Roman world—Octavian and Antony; and Octavian was her relentless enemy, for the reason that her son Cæsarion was his rival in the claim on the Dictator’s worldly and political estate. Failing the support of Antony there were no means of retaining her country’s liberty, except perhaps by the desperate eventuality of some sort of alliance with Parthia. It must have occurred to her that Egypt, with its growing trade with southern India, might join forces with Parthia, whose influence in northern India must have been great, and might thus effect an amalgamation of nations hostile to Rome, which in a vast semicircle should include Egypt, Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, India, Scythia, Parthia, Armenia, Syria, and perhaps Asia Minor. Such a combination might be expected to sweep Rome from the face of the earth; but the difficulties in the way of the huge union were almost insuperable, and the alliance with Antony was infinitely more tangible. Yet, towards the end of the winter, she must constantly have asked herself whether she could trust Antony, to whom she had given so much. She loved him, she had given herself to him; but she must have known him to be unreliable, inconsequent, and, in certain aspects, merely an overgrown boy. The stakes for which she was fighting were so absolutely essential to herself and to her country: the champion whose services she had enlisted was so light-hearted, so reluctant to pledge himself. And now that she was about to bear him a son, and thus to bring before his wayward notice the grave responsibilities which she felt he had so flippantly undertaken, would he stand by her as Cæsar had done, or would he desert her?
Her feelings may be imagined, therefore, when in February B.C. 40, Antony told her that he had received disconcerting news from Rome and from Syria, and that he must leave her at once. The news from Rome does not appear to have been very definite, but it gave him to understand that his wife and his brother had come to actual blows with Octavian, and, being worsted, had fled from Italy. From Syria, however, came a very urgent despatch, in regard to which there could be no doubts. Some of the Syrian princes whom he had deposed in the previous autumn, together with Antigonus, whose claims to the throne of Palestine he had rejected, had made an alliance with the Parthians and were marching down from the north-east against Decimus Saxa, the governor of Syria. The Roman forces in that country were few in number, consisting for the most part of the remnants of the army of Brutus and Cassius; and they could hardly be expected to put up a good fight against the invaders. Antony’s own trusted legions were now stationed in Italy, Gaul, and Macedonia; and there were many grave reasons for their retention in their present quarters. The situation, therefore, was very serious, and Antony was obliged to bring his pleasant visit to Alexandria to an abrupt end. Plutarch describes him as “rousing himself with difficulty from sleep, and shaking off the fumes of wine” in preparation for his departure; but I do not think that his winter had been so debauched as these words suggest. He had combined business and pleasure, as the saying is, and at times had lost sight of the one in his eager prosecution of the other; but, looking at the matter purely from a hygienic point of view, it seems probable that the hunting, riding, and military exercises of which Plutarch speaks, had kept him in a fairly healthy condition in spite of the stupendous character of the meals set before him.
The parting of Antony and Cleopatra early in March must have contained in it an element of real tragedy. He could not tell what difficulties were in store for him, and at the moment he had not asked the Queen for any military help. He must have bade her lie low until he was able to tell her in what manner she could best help their cause; and thereby he consigned her to a period of deep anxiety and sustained worry. In loneliness she would have to face her coming confinement, and, like a deserted courtesan, would have to nurse a fatherless child. She would have to hold her throne without the comfort of a husband’s advice; and in all things she would once more be obliged to live the dreary life of a solitary unmated Queen. It was a miserable prospect, but, as will be seen in the following chapter, the actual event proved to be far more distressing than she had expected; for, as Antony sailed out of the harbour of Alexandria, and was shut out from sight behind the mighty tower of Pharos, Cleopatra did not know that she would not see his face again for four long years.