Augustus (26 page)

How could I answer so miserable a letter? It made me quiver with shame to read it, for I could not fail to read the bitter self-hatred and abandonment of virtue that informed it. I could not reply. I could not even show the letter to Agrippa. I publish it now merely for the record, that historians be not deceived.

I knew how low was the morale of Antony's legions, and sent my cavalry against them. Antony's heroes of so many encounters threw down their arms. 'Why die for nothing?' one centurion cried. 'Die for the General,' a staff-officer, bloodshot and distraught, cried out. The centurion looked him in the eye. 'The General is nothing', he said, and planted his sword-point deep in the sand.

Learning of this, Antony's last resolution failed him. He withdrew to his tent. What passed before his eyes at that moment? Did he see that morning when he stood with Caesar's bloodied toga in his hand, and harangued the people? Did he recall that morning on the island shrouded by river-mists when we met to re-order the world? Did he, I wonder, even envy Lepidus, whose insignificance had saved his life? But Antony could not be pictured living in dishonoured retirement. I could not have treated him as I treated Lepidus.

News was brought to him that Cleopatra had killed herself. At once he broke into a wail of lamentation in which mourning and reproach, love and hatred, were strangely mixed. When he had finished, and wept a little, he called for a cup of wine, drank it and composed himself to sleep. Towards evening he woke. The sun lay low across the desert. Antony stood in the doorway of his tent and looked at the world turning purple in the twilight. He called again for wine, but this time merely touched the rim of the cup with his lips. In the distance he could still hear the cries and moans of wounded men, but his camp, so diminished in size, so silent, with the silence of men waiting for fate, must have seemed a long way from the battlefields of Gaul, Spain or Armenia. The sands stretched out in all directions till they lost themselves in the evening mists.

He threw his head up, they say, called for his sword, told his bearers to hold it steady and launched himself against it.

Perhaps the man shrank from the task, or perhaps a last instinct held Antony back, for the sword did not pierce any vital organ, and, though he fell to the ground bleeding freely, he was not yet dead. He moaned with pain or disappointment, and begged his servant to deliver the final blow. But the man shrank again from doing so, and night closed about the bleeding general. In a little, when he had lost consciousness, they wrapped him in a blanket and carried him into his tent. Meanwhile, hearing the news, his soldiers drifted away, falling from the camp like autumn leaves.

Towards dawn Antony woke; his fearful servants approached and told him that the report received yesterday had been false. Cleopatra was not dead. She had instead taken refuge in the Royal Mausoleum, known sometimes simply as the Monument. He begged them to carry him there, and, very gently, with a devotion it touches me to recall, they lifted him on to a litter, and obeyed his last instructions.

They raised him to the Mausoleum. He was by now very weak and it is not known if he regained consciousness. He probably died in Cleopatra's arms, but it is not certain and the accounts are conflicting. One version has it that Cleopatra reviled him as the author of her ruin, and that the last words Antony heard were full of hatred and reproach; but this I do not believe. In her own way Cleopatra loved him and besides she had too fine a sense of the dramatic to let him die in such a manner.

Of course I mourned Antony when I heard of his death. How could I fail to? I have seen gladiators bedew the arena with their tears as they gazed on the comrade they had slain, and no gladiators have been joined as Antony and I were joined.

So died this most remarkable of men. Agrippa, with his characteristic generosity, observed that a rarer spirit never steered humanity. It is said Cleopatra swooned at the moment of his death, and I myself almost did so, having to seize Agrippa's arm to support myself against a moment of dizziness when the news was broken.

'I am both glad and sorry,' I managed to say. 'Glad for Antony's sake for life could have offered him nothing but sad decline, and glad too for Rome, since Antony's death brings this old barren division of the world to an end. I did not choose this war; he forced it on me, and has paid the price. How did he die?'

'Nobly, on his own sword, a Roman death . . .'

I nodded. 'It ought to make more noise,' I said. 'You would think the death of such a man would shake lions into the streets of Alexandria and send the citizens cowering to their hovels.'

'What did Cleopatra say?'

I do not know, why, after a pause, I had asked the question.

'She said, sir, that there was nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.'

'Do you remember, Agrippa, how he spoke of Brutus? "This was the noblest Roman of them all." Those were his words. They angered me then, for I could not share his opinion of Brutus. But now? Why do I feel like that? Why do I feel like a man who has shot a splendid bird, an eagle, or brought down a noble stag? I had no choice, yet half my heart is torn. He was my brother and my rival, my separated love, my friend and companion in countless fields; and now, a body for crows to pick at. Was it destiny tore us apart, were our stars irreconcilable? Where's the Queen of Egypt?'

'She takes refuge still in the Mausoleum, but has sent to know your will.'

'Agrippa,' I said, 'fetch her to me. You at least will be proof against her charms.'

How would she come?

'Like a right royal bitch,' Agrippa said. 'You never saw the like. I have attended theatres in many cities, but I never saw an actress like the Queen. You'd better be on your guard, lest she seduce you too. It would make a notable haul, wouldn't it? First Himself, then Antony and then you, Octavian. And she's capable of it. Don't fool yourself otherwise.'

She was simply attired, in mourning white, her hair loose; and she wore no jewels. She looked older than her age, wi
th little crevices of lines run
ning from the corners of her eyes and mouth. Only the eyes themselves contradicted this impression. Almond-coloured and rather large, they sparkled with an unquenchable vivacity. When she spoke her voice was deeper and harsher than I remembered it as being. Her manner was composed and confident.

She began with compliments. Her dead lord had spoken much of the nobility of my character. The war between us had been unfortunate, the result of a concatenation of circumstance and misunderstanding. She understood of course that I had been angered by Antony's abandonment of my sister, and his preference for her. But where the God Eros struck, mortals were powerless. Egypt had no quarrel with Rome, and indeed Egypt was sensible that its prosperity depended on the strength and vigour of Rome. She had been taught that early, by none other than my father.

So far, she had spoken as if to persuade me by reason. Though I was of course aware of the depths of her hypocrisy, I still felt the charm of her manner and personality and the strength of her intellect working on my mind and imagination. Now, having introduced Julius' name, she paused.

'Everything I know I learned from your great and most noble father,' she said. 'He was my teacher and master as well as my lover. His presence was intoxicating. He came on me with the freshness of a spring morning, and I blossomed like a summer flower in his Sun's rays. You, Caesar, are, I see now, his most worthy heir, the inheritor of his genius and his vision. He told me he saw Egypt as the garden and granary of Rome, and I as

its gardener and farmer. An unromantic role for a young girl, you may say, but he told me that with a laugh, and I found him as convincing as he was irresistible. Caesar, I have erred in opposing you, and my error rested in my willingness to be guided by my dead lord. Antony was a great man, and a noble man, and there is no shame in my memory of him. But there is regret. Regret, because my love for Antony led me to stray from Caesar's precepts, and to follow Antony in his mad ambition which led to war against Caesar's heir. Only now that Antony's splendour can no longer dazzle me, do I see the error of my ways. And so, Caesar, I have come to lay Egypt at your royal and conquering feet, to throw myself on your generous mercy, to remind your father's son of what I meant to your father and to pray that we may together resume the work, the great work of harmony between Rome and Egypt on which we embarked, Caesar and I. For, most noble General, I say this to you: Rome and Egypt are bound together as Egypt is wedded to the Nile and Rome to the Middle Sea; and I am Egypt and you, most puissant General, are Rome'; and, saying this, she threw her head back in proud self-assertion, and sank to her knees before me.

What a performance.

I felt her power, her quite remarkable seductiveness. It was like listening to the deepest most desirable temptation; it held promises of bliss and power. I understood how Antony had found himself caught like a beast in a net. I looked away.

'Great Queen,' I said, 'your words touch me. I too loved Antony and regret the separation of our ways. I too revere the memory of my father, and I recognize that Egypt and Rome are bound together. But this great war has displaced much, and this is not the moment
to make any speedy decision on t
he nature of the future relationship between our countries. I shall ponder all you have said. Rest assured that you will be treated in a manner worthy of your great name and nature, and that your fate will not be less than your deserts.'

Her face grew pale. She quivered a moment, then, very slowly and now unwaveringly, rose to her feet. The audience was over.

I gave orders that she be escorted to the Palace, and kept there with due honour, but under secure guard.

'She shall appear in my Triumph,' I said to Agrippa, 'in chains, that Rome may be relieved of its long anxiety. And then we shall see what should be done.'

A letter was brought me from Livia:

Do not forget that the Queen is a woman and you honour yourself in treating her with honour and moderation. But I should be nervous and unhappy my dear, if you expose yourself to her charms. Her reputation frightens me . . .

Octavia wrote:

No woman, and no man either, has done me more bitter wrong than Cleopatra. And yet I find I pity her. To have dared so much and to have lost so completely stops my heart. I rejoice in your victory, brother, but I mourn Antony as the father of my children . . . What do you plan to do with his children by the Queen? I shudder to think of their significance.

Cleopatra's fate was not of course my only concern, hardly even the chief one. The most urgent was the treatment of Egypt itself. I decided it was too rich and too important to be left in its semi-independent state; Julius had surely blundered in deciding so. Egypt must become a Roman province, for the food supply of Rome itself depended on its harvests. Moreover, I thought it best to keep it, for the time being at least, under my direct control. I therefore appointed Cornelius Gallus, a man in whom I reposed infinite trust, as its governor.

Antony's legions had all laid down their arms. Some I incorporated into my own army, but it was obvious that with the triumphal end of the Civil Wars, it would be both possible and desirable to reduce the military establishment, and so I began to plan for the demobilization and settlement in colonies of the greater number of Antony's men. This work of reduction and resettlement was to dominate the next three years, and I may fairly but modestly claim that in its performance I met with a success that

none of the great generals of the Republic had equalled, not even Pompey.

Among those who tried to resist and were captured were Antyllus, Antony's son by Fulvia, and the boy called Caesarion, who had been proclaimed Julius' son by Cleopatra. Antyllus behaved shamefully, having to be dragged from the Temple of the Divine Julius, screaming for mercy. He tried indeed to cling to my father's image and the soldiers had to prise his fingers off it. Caesarion was captured by a cavalry patrol and accepted his fate with a dignity that did credit to his putative paternity. I ordered both to be put to death; they were too obvious foci for disaffection to make it possible to spare their lives.

Cleopatra cheated my intentions. Fearing the mockery of the Roman crowd, realizing that her plea to be treated as a reigning Queen and confirmed in office had failed, she contrived to have a little snake, called an asp, smuggled to her bedchamber in a basket of figs. She then applied it to her breast. They say she did so lovingly and smiled as the poison worked. I could not be sorry, for, though she would have made a splendid show in my Triumph, I knew that I would have been unable to condemn her to death afterwards (as custom decrees) and that indeed Livia would not permit me to do so. Her continued presence could only be an embarrassment, and, on reflection, I was glad she had removed herself.

I gave orders that she be buried beside Antony, and that their mausoleum be completed. May I be paid like honour by those I have wronged when my time comes!

I was eager to leave Egypt, for its vice and corruption continued to disgust me, and I felt evil in the air. Only the pink delicacy of early mornings before the extreme heat of the day, when the Nile shimmered in awakening light, gave me any pleasure. But there is that in Egypt that can demean a man, and I felt both fear and loathing of the brooding presence of its ancient and obscene gods.