Having thus calmed the citizens, who now must have hailed him as a kind of deliverer and saviour, he retired to his quarters, whence, in his sardonic manner, he appears to have issued orders for the immediate slaughter of those members of the court of Cleopatra and Antony for whom Areius had not any particular liking. The unfortunate Antyllus, Antony’s son, having been betrayed to Octavian by his faithless tutor Theodorus, was at once put to death in the temple erected by Cleopatra to Julius Cæsar, whither he had fled. As the executioner cut off the boy’s head, Theodorus contrived to steal a valuable jewel which hung round his neck; but the theft was discovered, and he was carried before Octavian, who ordered him to be crucified forthwith. A strict guard was set over the two children of Cleopatra, Ptolemy and Cleopatra Selene,[141] who were still in Alexandria; and Octavian seems to have given Cleopatra to understand that if she attempted to kill herself he would put these two children to death. Thus he was able to assure himself that she would refrain from taking her life, for, as Plutarch says, “before such engines her purpose (to destroy herself) shook and gave way.”
Antony’s body was now, I suppose, prepared for burial. Though mummification was still often practised in Alexandria by Greeks and Egyptians, I do not think that any elaborate attempt was made to embalm the corpse, and it was probably ready for the funeral rites within a few days. Out of respect to the dead general a number of Roman officers and foreign potentates who were with Octavian’s army begged to be allowed to perform these rites at their own expense; but in deference to Cleopatra’s wishes the body was left in the Queen’s hands, and instructions were issued that her orders were to be obeyed in regard to the funeral. Thus Antony was buried, with every mark of royal splendour and pomp, in a tomb which had probably long been prepared for him, not far from his wife’s mausoleum. Cleopatra followed him to his grave, a tragic, piteous little figure, surrounded by a group of her lamenting ladies; and, while the priests burnt their incense and uttered their droning chants, the Queen’s fragile hands ruthlessly beat her breasts as she called upon the dead man by his name. In these last terrible hours only the happier character of her relationship with Antony was remembered, and the recollection of her many disagreements with him were banished from her mind by the piteous scenes of his death, and by the thought of his last tender words to her as he lay groaning upon her bed. In her extreme loneliness she must have now desired his buoyant company of earlier years with an intensity which she could hardly have felt during his lifetime; and it must have been difficult indeed for her to refrain from putting an end to her miserable life upon the grave of her dead lover. Yet Octavian’s threat in regard to her children held her hand; and, moreover, even in her utter distress, she had not yet abandoned her hope of saving Egypt from the clutch of Rome. Her own dominion, she knew, was over, and the best fate which she herself could hope for was that of an unmolested exile; yet Octavian’s attitude to her indicated in every way that he would be willing to leave the throne to her descendants. She did not know how falsely he was acting towards her, how he was making every effort to encourage hope in her heart in order that he might bring her alive to Rome to be exhibited in chains to the jeering populace. She did not understand that his messages of encouragement, and even of affection, to her were written with sardonic cunning, that his cheerful assurances in regard to her children were made at a time when he was probably actually sending messages post-haste to Berenice to attempt to recall Cæsarion in order to put him to death. She did not understand Octavian’s character: perhaps she had never even seen him; and she hoped somehow to make a last appeal to him. She had played her wonderful game for the amalgamation of Egypt and Rome into one vast kingdom, ruled by her descendants and those of the great Julius Cæsar, and she had lost. But there was yet hope that out of the general wreck she might save the one asset with which she had started her operations—the independent throne of Egypt; and to accomplish this she must live on for a while longer, and must face with bravery the nightmare of her existence.
Coming back, after the funeral, to her rooms in the mausoleum, wherein she had now decided to take up her residence, she fell into a high fever; and there upon her bed she lay in delirium for several days. She suffered, moreover, very considerable pain, due to the inflammation and ulceration caused by the blows which she had rained upon her delicate body in the abandonment of her despair. Over and over again she was heard to utter in her delirium the desolate cry, “I will not be exhibited in his Triumph,” and in her distress she begged repeatedly to be allowed to die. At one time she refused all food, and begged her doctor, a certain Olympus, to help her to pass quietly out of the world.[142] Octavian, however, hearing of her increasing weakness, warned her once more that unless she made an effort to live he would not be lenient to her children; whereupon, as though galvanised into life by this pressure upon her maternal instincts, she made the necessary struggle to recover, obediently swallowing the medicine and stimulants which were given to her.
Thus the hot August days passed by, and at length the Queen, now fragile and haggard, was able to move about once more. Her age at this time was thirty-eight years, and she must have lost that freshness of youth which had been her notable quality; but her brilliant eyes had now perhaps gained in wonder by the pallor of her face, and the careless arrangement of her dark hair must have enhanced her tragic beauty. The seductive tones of her voice could not have been diminished, and that peculiar quality of elusiveness may well have been accentuated by her illness and by the nervous strain through which she had passed. Indeed, her personal charm was still so great that a certain Cornelius Dolabella, one of the Roman officers whose duty it was to keep watch over her, speedily became her devoted servant, and was induced to promise that he would report to her any plans in regard to her welfare which Octavian should disclose.
On August 28th, as she lay upon a small pallet-bed in the upper room, gazing in utter desolation, as I imagine, over the blue waters of the Mediterranean, her women ran in to her to tell her that Octavian had come to pay his respects to her. He had not yet visited her, for he had very correctly avoided her previous to and during Antony’s funeral; and since that time she had been too ill to receive him. Now, however, she was convalescent, and the conqueror had arrived unexpectedly to congratulate her, as etiquette demanded, upon her recovery. He walked into the room before the Queen had time to prepare herself; and Plutarch describes how, “on his entering, she sprang from her bed, having nothing on but the one garment next her body, and flung herself at his feet, her hair and face looking wild and disfigured, her voice trembling, and her eyes sunken and dark. The marks of the blows which she had rained upon herself were visible about her breast, and altogether her whole person seemed to be no less afflicted than was her spirit. But for all this, her old charm and the boldness of her youthful beauty had not wholly left her, and, in spite of her present condition, still shone out from within and allowed itself to appear in all the expressions of her face.”
The picture of the distraught little Queen, her dark hair tumbled over her face, her loose garment slipping from her white shoulders, as she crouches at the feet of this cold, unhealthy-looking man, who stands somewhat awkwardly before her, is one which must distress the mind of the historian who has watched the course of Cleopatra’s warfare against the representative of Rome. Yet in this scene we are able to discern her but stripped of the regal and formal accessories which have often caused her to appear more imposing and awe-inspiring than actually her character justified. She was essentially a woman, and now, in her condition of physical weakness, she acted precisely as any other overwrought member of her sex might have behaved under similar circumstances. Her wonderful pluck had almost deserted her, and her persistence of purpose was lost in the wreck of all her hopes. We have often heard her described as a calculating woman, who lived her life in studied and callous voluptuousness, and who died in unbending dignity; but, as I have tried to indicate in this volume, the Queen’s nature was essentially feminine—highly-strung, and liable to rapid changes from joy to despair. Keen, independent, and fearless though she was, she was never a completely self-reliant woman, and in circumstances such as those which are now being recorded we obtain a view of her character, which shows her to have been capable of needing desperately the help and sympathy of others.
Octavian raised her to her feet, and, assisting her once more on to her bed, sat himself down beside her. At first she talked to him in a rambling manner, justifying her past movements, and attributing certain actions, such, I suppose, as her hiding in the mausoleum, to her fear of Antony; but when Octavian pointed out to her the discrepancies in her statements she made no longer any attempt to excuse her conduct, begging him only not to take her throne from her son, and telling him that she was willing enough to live if only he would insure the safety of her country and dynasty, and would be merciful to her children. Then, rising from the bed, she brought to Octavian a number of letters written to her by Julius Cæsar, and also one or two portraits of him painted for her during his lifetime. “You know,” she said,[143] “how much I was with your father,[144] and you are aware that it was he who placed the crown of Egypt upon my head; but, so that you may know something of our private affairs, please read these letters. They are all written to me with his own hand.”
Octavian must have turned the letters over with some curiosity, but he does not seem to have shown a desire to read them; and, seeing this, Cleopatra cried: “Of what use are all these letters to me? Yet I seem to see him living again in them.” The thought of her old lover and friend, and the memories recalled by the letters and portraits before her seem to have unnerved her; and, being in so overwrought and weak a condition, she now broke down completely. Between her sobs she was heard to exclaim, “Oh, I wish to God you were still alive,” as though referring to Julius Cæsar.
Octavian appears to have consoled her as best he could; and at length she seems to have agreed that, in return for his clemency, she would place herself entirely in his hands, and would hand over to him without reserve all her property. One of her stewards, named Seleucus, happened to be awaiting her orders in the mausoleum at the time, and, sending for him, she told him to hand over to Octavian the list which they together had lately made of her jewellery and valuables, and which now lay with her other papers in the room. Seleucus seems to have read the document to Octavian; but, wishing to ingratiate himself with his new master, and thinking that loyalty to Cleopatra no longer paid, he volunteered the information that various articles were omitted from the list, and that the Queen was purposely secreting these for her own advantage. At this Cleopatra sprang from her bed, and, dashing at the astonished steward, seized him by the hair, shook him to and fro, and furiously slapped his face. So outraged and overwrought was she that she might well have done the man some serious injury had not Octavian, who could not refrain from laughing, withheld her and led her back to her seat. “Really it is very hard,” she exclaimed to her visitor, “when you do me the honour to come to see me in this condition I am in, that I should be accused by one of my own servants of setting aside some women’s trinkets—not so as to adorn my unhappy self, you may be sure, but so that I might have some little presents by me to give to your sister Octavia and your wife Livia, that by their intercession I might hope to find you to some extent disposed to mercy.”
Cæsar was delighted to hear her talk in this manner, for it seemed to indicate that she was desirous of continuing to live; and he was most anxious that she should do so, partly, as I have said, that he might have the satisfaction of parading her in chains through the streets of Rome, and partly, perhaps, in order to show, thereafter, his clemency and his respect to the late Dictator’s memory by refraining from putting her to death. He therefore told her that she might dispose of these articles of jewellery as she liked; and, promising that his usage of her would be merciful beyond her expectation, he brought his visit to a close, well satisfied that he had won her confidence, and that he had entirely deceived her. In this, however, he was mistaken, and he was himself deceived by her.