The other, which was inscribed upon his tomb, reads—
“Freed from a tedious life, I lie below.
Ask not my name, but take my curse and go.”
Such was the man whom Antony now desired to imitate; and for the present the fallen Autocrator may be left seated in glum solitude, while Cleopatra’s eager struggle for her throne occupies our attention. The Queen’s activities were now directed to urgent affairs of State. She engaged herself in sending embassies to the various neighbouring kingdoms in the attempt to confirm her earlier friendships. Alexandria and Egypt had to be governed with extreme firmness, in order to prevent any insurrections or riots in these critical days; and, at the same time, her subjects had to be heavily taxed so that she might raise money for her projects. The task of government must have been peculiarly anxious, and the dread of the impending reckoning with Octavian hung over her like a dark cloud. It was quite certain that Octavian would presently invade Egypt; but for the moment he was prevented from doing so, mainly by financial embarrassments. After his visit to Athens he had crossed into Asia Minor, and now he was making arrangements for an advance through Syria to Egypt, as soon as he should have collected enough money for the expedition.
Towards the close of the year B.C. 31, the Jewish King Herod seems to have come to Alexandria to discuss the situation with Antony, his former friend and patron. Herod’s dislike of Cleopatra, and his desire to put her to death when she was passing through his country, will be recalled;[126] and now, after paying the necessary compliments to the Queen, he appears to have engaged himself in earnest conversation with Antony, perhaps visiting him in his sea-girt hermitage. Josephus tells us that he urged the fallen triumvir to arrange for the assassination of Cleopatra, declaring that only by so doing could he hope to have his life spared by Octavian. Antony, however, would not entertain this proposal, for, though anxious to escape his impending doom, he was not prepared to do so at the cost of his wife. Herod’s object, of course, was to rid his horizon of the fascinating queen, who might very possibly play upon Octavian’s sympathies and retain her Egyptian and Syrian dominions, thus remaining an objectionable and exacting neighbour to the kingdom of Judea. But failing to obtain Antony’s co-operation in this plot, he returned to Jerusalem, and presently sailed for Rhodes to pay his respects to Octavian. Antony, hearing of his intention, sent after him a certain Alexis of Laodicea, to urge him not to abandon his cause, This Alexis had been instrumental in persuading Antony to divorce Octavia, and Cleopatra had often used him in persuading her husband to actions in regard to which he was undetermined; but he now showed the misapplication of the trust placed in him both by Antony and the Queen, for he did not return to Egypt from Herod’s court, going on instead to place himself at the disposal of Octavian. His connection with Octavia’s divorce, however, had not been forgotten by her revengeful brother, and his treachery was rewarded by a summary death. Herod, meanwhile, by boldly admitting that he had been Antony’s friend, but was now prepared to change his allegiance, managed to win the favour of the conqueror, and his throne was not taken from him, although practically all the other kings and princes who had assisted Antony were dispossessed.
About the beginning of February B.C. 30, Octavian returned to Italy to quell certain disturbances arising from his inability to pay his disbanded troops, and there he stayed about a month, sailing once more for Asia Minor early in March. Dion tells us that the news of his voyage to Rome and that of his return to Asia Minor were received simultaneously in Alexandria, probably late in April; but I think it very unlikely that the news of the first voyage was so long delayed, and, at any rate, some rumours of Octavian’s retirement to Rome must have filtered through to Cleopatra during the month of March.
The news of this respite once more fired the Queen with hope, and she determined to make the best possible use of this precious gift of time. It will be remembered that her son Cæsarion, if I am not in error, was born at the beginning of July B.C. 47;[127] but a short time afterwards, some eighty days were added to the calendar in order to correct the existing inexactitude,[128] the real anniversary of the boy’s birthday thereby being made to fall at about the middle of April.[129] The preparations for the celebration in this year B.C. 30, of his seventeenth birthday, were thus beginning to be put into motion at the time when Octavian was still thought to be struggling in Rome with his discontented troops. Cleopatra therefore determined to mark the festival by very great splendour, and to celebrate it more particularly by a public declaration of the fact that Cæsarion was now of age. I do not think it can be determined with certainty whether or not the seventeenth birthday was the customary age at which the state of manhood was supposed to be reached by an Egyptian sovereign, but it may certainly be said that the coming of age was seldom, if ever, postponed to a later period. Cleopatra seems to have wished to make a very particular point of this fact of her son’s majority, which would demonstrate to the Alexandrians, as Dion says, “that they now had a man as King.” Let the public think, if they were so minded, that she herself was a defeated and condemned woman; but from this time onwards they had a grown man to lead them, a son of the divine Julius Cæsar, for whose rights she had fought while he was a boy, but who was henceforth capable of defending himself. Whatever her own fate might be, her son would, at any rate, have a better chance of retaining his throne by being firmly established upon it in the capacity of a grown man. In future she herself could work, as it were, behind the scenes, and her son could carry on the great task which she had so long striven to accomplish.
When the news of the coming celebrations was conveyed to Antony in his hermitage, he seems to have been much disturbed by it. Cæsarion and his rights had been to a large extent the cause of his ruin, and he must have been somewhat frightened at the audacity of the Queen in thus giving Octavian further cause for annoyance. Here was Alexandria preparing to celebrate in the most triumphant manner the coming of age of Octavian’s rival, the claimant to Julius Cæsar’s powers and estate. Was the move to be regarded as clever policy or as reckless effrontery? Leaving the passive solitude of his little Timonium, he seems to have entered once more into active discussions with Cleopatra; and as a result of these conversations, he appears to have received the impression that his wife’s desire was now to resign her power to a large extent into her son’s hands, thus leaving to the energy of youth the labours which middle age had failed to accomplish. This aspect of the movement appealed to him, and he determined in like manner to be represented in future by a younger generation. His son by Fulvia, Antyllus, who was a year or so younger than Cæsarion, was living in the Alexandrian Palace; and Antony therefore arranged with Cleopatra that the two youths should together be declared of age (ephebi), Antyllus thenceforth being authorised to wear the legal dress of Roman manhood. Cleopatra then appears to have persuaded her husband to give up his ridiculous affectation of misanthropy, and either to make himself useful in organising her schemes of defence, or to leave Egypt altogether. Antony was by this time heartily tired of his solitary life, and he was glad enough to abandon his Timonian pose. He therefore took up his residence once more in the Palace, and both he and Cleopatra made some attempt to renew their old relationship. Their paths had diverged, however, too far ever to resume any sort of unity. Antony had brooded in solitude over his supposed wrongs, and he now regarded his wife with a sort of suspicion; and she, on her part, accepted him no longer as her equal, but as a creature deserving her contempt, though arousing to some extent her generous pity.
The birthday celebrations were conducted on the most magnificent lines, and the whole city was given over to feasting and revelling for many days. The impending storm was put away from the minds of all, and it would have been indeed difficult for a visitor to Alexandria during that time to believe that he had entered a city whose rulers had recently been defeated by an enemy already preparing to invade Egypt itself. Cleopatra, in fact, could not be brought to admit that the game was up; and in spite of the misery and anxiety weighing upon her mind she kept a cheerful and hopeful demeanour which ought to have won for her the admiration of all historians. Antony, on the other hand, was completely demoralised by the situation; and the birthday festivities having whetted his appetite once more for the pleasures of riotous living, he decided to bring his life to a close in a round of mad dissipation. Calling together the members of the order of Inimitable Livers, the banqueting club which he had founded some years before,[130] he invited them to sign their names to the roll of membership of a new society which he named the Synapotha-noumenoi or the “Die-togethers.” “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die,” must have been his motto; and he seems to have thrown himself into this new phase with as much shallow profundity as he had displayed in his adoption of the Timonian pose. Having no longer a world-wide audience before whom he could play the jovial rôle of Bacchus or Hercules, he now acted his dramatic parts before the eyes of an inner love of pretence; and with a kind of honest and boyish charlatanism he paraded the halls of the Palace in the grim but not original character of the reveller who banqueted with his good friend Death. Antony actually had no intention of dying: he hoped to be allowed to retire, like his late colleague, Lepidus, the third triumvir, into an unmolested private life; but the paradoxical situation in which he now found himself, that of a state prisoner sent back, as it were, on bail to the luxuries of his home, could not fail to be turned to account by this “colossal child.”
Cleopatra, on the other hand, was prepared for all eventualities; and, while she hoped somehow to be able to win her way out of her dilemma, she did not fail to make ready for the death which she might have to face. The news of Octavian’s return to Asia Minor was presently received in Alexandria, and she must have felt that her chances of successfully circumventing her difficulties were remote. She therefore busied herself in making a collection of all manner of poisonous drugs, and she often went down to the dungeons to make eager experiments upon the persons of condemned criminals. Anxiously she watched the death-struggles of the prisoners to whom the different poisons had been administered, discarding those drugs which produced pain and convulsions, and continuing her tests and trials with those which appeared to offer an easy liberation from life. She also experimented with venomous snakes, subjecting animals and human beings to their poisonous bites; and Plutarch tells us that “she pretty well satisfied herself that nothing was comparable to the bite of the asp, which, without causing convulsion or groaning, brought on a heavy drowsiness and coma, with a gentle perspiration on the face, the senses being stupefied by degrees, and the victim being apparently sensible of no pain, but only annoyed when disturbed or awakened, like one who is in a profound natural sleep.”[131] If the worst came to the worst, she decided that she would take her life in this manner; and this question being settled, she turned her undivided attention once more to the problems which beset her.
By May Octavian had marched into Syria, where all the garrisons surrendered to him. He sent Cornelius Gallus to take command of the legions which had surrendered to him in North Africa, and this army had now taken possession of Parætonium, where Antony had stayed after his flight from Actium. The news that this frontier fortress had passed into the hands of the enemy had not yet reached Alexandria, but that of Octavian’s advance through Syria was already known in the city, and must have caused the greatest anxiety. Cleopatra thereupon decided upon a bold and dignified course of action. Towards the end of May she sent her son Cæsarion, with his tutor Rhodon, up the Nile to Koptos,[132] and thence across the desert to the port of Berenice, where as many ships as she could collect were ordered to be in waiting for him. The young Cæsar travelled, it would seem, in considerable state, and carried with him a huge sum of money. He was expected to arrive at Berenice by about the end of June; and when, towards the middle of July,[133] the merchants journeying to India began to set out upon their long voyage, it was arranged that he should also set sail for those distant lands, there to make friends with the Kings of Hindustan, and perhaps to organise the great amalgamation of eastern nations of which Cleopatra had so often dreamed. She herself decided to remain at Alexandria, first to negotiate with Octavian for the retention of her throne, and in the event of this proving unsuccessful, to fight him to the death. No thought of flight entered her mind;[134] and though, with a mother’s solicitous care, she made these adventurous arrangements for the safety of her beloved son, it does not seem to have occurred to her to accompany him to the East, where she might have expected at any rate to find a temporary harbour of refuge. Her parting with him must have been one of the most unhappy events of her unfortunate life. For his safety and for his rights she had struggled for seventeen years; and now it was necessary to send him with the Indian merchants across perilous seas to strange lands in order to save him from the clutches of his successful rival Octavian, while she herself remained to face their enemies and to fight for their joint throne. Her thoughts in these days of distress were turning once more to the memory of the boy’s father, the great Julius Cæsar, for often, it would seem, she gazed at his pictures or read over again the letters which he had written to her; and now as she despatched the young Cæsar upon his distant voyage to those lands which had always so keenly interested his father, she must have invoked the aid of that deified spirit which all the Roman world worshipped as Divus Julius, and, in an agony of supplication, must have implored him to come to the assistance of his only earthly son and heir.