There is no reason to suppose that Cleopatra had betrayed her husband, or that she was in any way a party to the desertions which had just taken place. The sudden collapse of their resistance, while yet it was but mid-morning, must have come to her as a staggering shock; and Antony’s accusations were doubtless felt to be only in keeping with the erratic behaviour which had characterised his last years. On the previous day Antony had offered a large sum of money to every one of Octavian’s legionaries who should desert; and it is more than likely that Octavian had made a similar offer to the Egyptian sailors and soldiers. Only a year previously these sailors had fraternised with the Romans of the Antonian party in the Gulf of Ambracia, and the latter, having deserted to Octavian after the battle of Actium, were now present in large numbers amongst the opposing fleet. The Egyptians were thus called upon to fight with their friends whose hospitality they had often accepted, and whose fighting qualities, now that they were combined with Octavian’s victorious forces, they had every reason to appreciate. Their desertion, therefore, needed no suggestion on the part of Cleopatra: it was almost inevitable.
Antony, however, was far too distracted and overwrought to guard his tongue, and he seems to have paced his apartments in the Palace in a condition bordering upon madness, cursing Cleopatra and her country, and calling down imprecations upon all who had deserted him. Presently those of his staff who had followed the Queen to her mausoleum brought him the news that she had killed herself, for so they had interpreted her message; and instantly Antony’s fury seems to have left him, the shock having caused a collapse of his energy. At first he was probably dazed by the tidings; but when their full significance had penetrated to his bewildered brain there was no place left for anger or suspicion. “Now Antony,” he cried, “why delay longer? Fate has taken away the only thing for which you could say you still wanted to live.” And with these words he rushed into his bedchamber, eagerly tearing off his armour, and calling upon his slave Eros to assist him. Then, as he bared the upper part of his body, he was heard to talk aloud to the Queen, whom he believed to be dead. “Cleopatra,” he said, “I am not sad to be parted from you now, for I shall soon be with you; but it troubles me that so great a general should have been found to have slower courage than a woman.” Not long previously he had made Eros solemnly promise to kill him when he should order him to do so; and now, turning to him, he gave him that order, reminding him of his oath. Eros drew his sword, as though he intended to do as he was bid, but suddenly turning round, he drove the blade into his own breast, and fell dying upon the floor. Thereupon Antony bent down over him and cried to him as he lost consciousness, “Well done, Eros! Well done!” Then, picking up the sword, he added, “You have shown your master how to do what you had not the heart to do yourself;” and so saying, he drove the sword upwards into his breast from below the ribs, and fell back upon his bed.
The wound, however, was not immediately mortal, and presently, the flow of blood having ceased, he recovered consciousness. Some of the Egyptian servants had gathered around him, and now he implored them to put him out of his pain. But when they realised that he was not dead they rushed from the room, leaving him groaning and writhing where he lay. Some of them must have carried the news to the Queen as she sat at the window of the mausoleum, for, a few moments later, a certain Diomedes, one of her secretaries, came to Antony telling him that she had not yet killed herself, and that she desired his body to be brought to her. Thereupon Antony eagerly gave orders to the servants to carry him to her, and they, lifting him in their arms, placed him upon an improvised stretcher and hurried with him to the mausoleum. A crowd seems now to have collected around the door of the building, and when the Queen saw the group of men bringing her husband to her, she must have feared lest some of them, seeking a reward, would seize her as soon as they had entered her stronghold and carry her alive to Octavian. Perhaps, also, it was a difficult matter to shoot back the bolts of the door which in her excitement she had managed to drive deep into their sockets. She, therefore, was unable to admit Antony into the mausoleum; and there he lay below her window, groaning and entreating her to let him die in her arms. In the words of Plutarch, Cleopatra thereupon “let down ropes and cords to which Antony was fastened; and she and her two women, the only persons she had allowed to enter the mausoleum, drew him up. Those who were present say that nothing was ever more sad than this spectacle, to see Antony, covered all over with blood and just expiring, thus drawn up, still holding up his hands to her, and raising up his body with the little force he had left. And, indeed, it was no easy task for the women; for Cleopatra, with all her strength clinging to the rope and straining at it with her head bent towards the ground, with difficulty pulled him up, while those below encouraged her with their cries and joined in all her efforts and anxiety.” The window must have been a considerable distance from the ground, and I do not think that the three women could ever have succeeded in raising Antony’s great weight so far had not those below fetched ladders, I suppose, and helped to lift him up to her, thereafter, no doubt, watching the terrible scene from the head of these ladders outside the window.
Dragging him through the window the women carried him to the bed, upon which he probably swooned away after the agonies of the ascent. Cleopatra was distracted by the pitiful sight, and fell into uncontrolled weeping. Beating her breast and tearing her clothes, she made some attempts, at the same time, to stanch the scarlet stream which flowed from his wound; and soon her face and neck were smeared with his blood. Flinging herself down by his side she called him her lord, her husband, and her emperor. All her pity and much of her old love for him was aroused by his terrible sufferings, and so intent was she upon his pain that her own desperate situation was entirely forgotten. At last Antony came to his senses, and called for wine to drink; after which, having revived somewhat, he attempted to soothe the Queen’s wild lamentations, telling her to make her terms with Octavian, so far as might honourably be done, and advising her to trust only a certain Proculeius amongst all the friends of the conqueror. With his last breath, he begged her, says Plutarch, “not to pity him in this last turn of fate, but rather to rejoice for him in remembrance of his past happiness, who had been of all men the most illustrious and powerful, and in the end had fallen not ignobly, a Roman by a Roman vanquished.” With these words he lay back upon the bed, and soon had breathed his last in the arms of the woman whose interests he had so poorly served, and whom now he left to face alone the last great struggle for her throne and for the welfare of her son.
CHAPTER XX.
THE DEATH OF CLEOPATRA AND THE TRIUMPH OF OCTAVIAN.
Cleopatra’s situation was at this moment terrible in the extreme. The blood-stained body of her husband lay stretched upon the bed, covered by her torn garments which she had thrown over it. Charmion and Iras, her two waiting-women, were probably huddled in the corner of the room, beating their breasts and wailing as was the Greek habit at such a time. Below the open window a few Romans and Egyptians appear to have gathered in the sun-baked courtyard; and, I think, the ladders still rested against the wall where they had been placed by those who had helped to raise Antony up to the Queen. It must now have been early afternoon, and the sunlight of the August day, no doubt, beat into the room, lighting the disarranged furniture and revealing the wet blood-stains upon the tumbled carpets over which the dying man’s heavy body had been dragged. From the one side the surge of the sea penetrated into the chamber; from the other the shouts of Octavian’s soldiers and the clattering of their arms came to Cleopatra’s ears, telling her of the enemy’s arrival in the Palace. She might expect at any moment to be asked to surrender, and more than probably an attempt would be made to capture her by means of an entry through the window. She had determined, however, never to be made prisoner in this manner, and she had, no doubt, given it to be clearly understood that any effort to seize her would be her signal for firing the funeral pyre which had been erected in the adjoining room and destroying herself upon it. To be made a captive probably meant her degradation at Octavian’s Triumph and the loss of her throne; but to surrender by mutual arrangement might assure her personal safety and the continuity of her dynasty. With this in view, it seems likely that she now armed her two women to resist any assault upon the windows, and told them to warn all who attempted to climb the ladders that she, with her priceless jewellery and treasures, would be engulfed in the flames before ever they had reached to the level of her place of refuge.
Antony had been dead but a few minutes when Proculeius, of whom he had spoken to Cleopatra just before he expired, arrived upon the scene, demanding, in the name of Octavian, an audience with the Queen. He knocked upon the barred door of the main entrance to the mausoleum, calling upon Cleopatra to admit him, and the sound must have echoed through the hall below and come to her ears, where she listened at the top of the stairs, like some ominous summons from the powers of the Underworld; but, fearing that she might be taken prisoner, she did not dare open to him, even if she could have shot back the heavy bolts, and she must have paced to and fro beside her husband’s corpse in an agony of indecision. At last, however, she ran down the marble staircase to the dimly-lighted hall below, and, standing beside the barricade which she had constructed against the inner side of the door, called out to Proculeius by name. He answered her from the outside, and in this manner they held a short parley with one another, she offering to surrender if she could receive Octavian’s word that her Kingdom of Egypt would be given to her son Cæsarion, and Proculeius replying only with the assurance that Octavian was to be trusted to act with clemency towards her. This was not satisfactory to her, and presently the Roman officer returned to his master, leaving Cleopatra undisturbed until late in the afternoon. He described the Queen’s situation to Octavian, and pointed out to him that it would probably not be difficult to effect an entrance to the mausoleum by means of the ladders, and that, with speed and a little manœuvring, Cleopatra could be seized before she had time to fire the pyre. Thereupon Octavian sent him with Cornelius Gallus,[139] who had now reached Alexandria, to attempt her capture, and the latter went straight to the door of the mausoleum, knocking upon it to summon the Queen. Cleopatra at once went down the stairs and entered into conversation with Cornelius Gallus through the closed door; and it would seem that her two women, perhaps eager to hear what was said, left their post at the window of the upper room and stood upon the steps behind her. As soon as the Queen was heard to be talking and reiterating her conditions of surrender, Proculeius ran round to the other side of the building, and, adjusting the ladders, climbed rapidly up to the window, followed by two other Roman officers. Entering the disordered room, he ran past the dead body of Antony and hurried down the stairs, at the bottom of which he encountered Charmion and Iras, while beyond them in the dim light of the hall he saw Cleopatra standing at the shut door, her back turned to him. One of the women uttered a cry, when she saw Proculeius, and called out to her mistress: “Unhappy Cleopatra, you are taken prisoner!” At this the Queen sprang round, and, seeing the Roman officer, snatched a dagger from its sheath at her waist and raised it for the stroke which should terminate the horror of her life. Proculeius, however, was too quick for her. He sprang at her with a force which must have hurled her back against the door, and, seizing her wrist, shook the dagger from her small hand. Then, holding her two arms at her side, he caused his men to shake her dress and to search her for hidden weapons or poison. “For shame, Cleopatra,” he said to her, scolding her for attempting to take her life; “you wrong yourself and Octavian very much in trying to rob him of so good an opportunity of showing his clemency, and you would make the world believe that the most humane of generals was a faithless and implacable enemy.” He then seems to have ordered his officers to remove the barriers and to open the door of the mausoleum, whereupon Cornelius Gallus and his men were able to assist him to guard the Queen and her two women. Shortly after this, Octavian’s freedman, Epaphroditus, arrived with orders to treat Cleopatra with all possible gentleness and civility, but to take the strictest precautions to prevent her injuring herself; and, acting on these instructions, the Roman officers seem to have lodged the Queen under guard in one of the upper rooms of the mausoleum, after having made a thorough search for hidden weapons or poisons.
Just before sunset Octavian made his formal entry into Alexandria. He wished to impress the people of the city with the fact of his benevolent and peace-loving nature, and therefore he made a certain Alexandrian philosopher named Areius, for whom he had a liking, ride with him in his chariot. As the triumphal procession passed along the beautiful Street of Canopus, Octavian was seen by the agitated citizens to be holding the philosopher’s hand and talking to him in the most gentle manner. Stories soon went the rounds that when the conqueror had received the news of Antony’s death he had shed tears of sorrow, and had read over to his staff some of his enemy’s furious letters to him and his own moderate replies, thus showing how the quarrel had been forced upon him. Orders now seem to have been issued forbidding all outrage or looting; and presently the frightened Alexandrians ventured from their hiding-places, most of the local magnates being ordered to gather themselves together in the Gymnasium. Here, in the twilight, Octavian rose to address them; and as he did so, they all prostrated themselves upon the ground before him in abject humiliation. Commanding them to rise, he told them that he freely acquitted them of all blame: firstly, in memory of the great Alexander who had founded their city; secondly, for the sake of the city itself which was so large and beautiful; thirdly, in honour of their god Serapis;[140] and lastly, to gratify his dear friend Areius, at whose request he was about to spare many lives.