Pharaoh (43 page)

The crowd grew restless and began taunting the lion, who started prowling nervously. This will simply be no fun, Octavian
thought. The lion, so large, so fast, so revered, will surely make a fast meal of this reptile. The lion was so clearly agitated
by the noise of the crowd that he began to roar back, an angry retort to their contempt. He seemed insulted by their jeers,
shaking his head at them, baring his feral teeth in their direction. Oh, he was a formidable creature. The crocodile, on the
other hand, refused to move. Slowly, however, his tail wiggled ever so slightly, almost like a snake. The lion, disturbed
by the slight motion, hurled himself upon the creature, and Octavian’s heart leapt. Finally, some action, even if it was to
be short-lived and, in the end, so unevenly matched. The lion fell upon the crocodile with a vengeance, so that all that could
be seen of the reptile was his tail. He is done for now, Octavian thought. But then the lion threw back his head. The crocodile
had the beast’s neck in his great gaping jaws, the lion’s hot red blood spilling out onto the green grass, almost making a
crimson watershed over the reptile. The crocodile-could he weigh half of what the lion weighed?-threw the big cat over on
his back. Tightening his jaw, he crushed the lion’s throat, and the poor beast died gagging on his own blood.

The crowd went crazy. Rarely had a lion been defeated in the ring. Octavian must find the clever fellow who thought of pitting
those two mismatched creatures against each other and reward him. It was so rare to be treated to a surprise at the games.

T
o Kleopatra, this was the crowning moment of her dreams and ambitions, the achievement of all that she had begun to put into
motion with Julius Caesar so many years ago. She hosted the Declaration of the Eastern Empire in the giant hall of the Gymnasium.
It had been only days since Antony had marched into Alexandria in his triumphal parade after his conquest of Armenia. But
for Kleopatra, that triumph was merely the beginning.The purpose of the Declaration was to demonstrate to the people of Egypt
the wisdom of their queen in her alliance with the Roman general and the Roman dictator before him. Kleopatra had always known
that she was acting on behalf of her nation in aligning with the Romans, but her subjects hadn’t always agreed. Her father
had been chased out of his country for his patronage of Rome. Now she could show them how she had elevated Egypt and all its
inhabitants by this association.

At the ceremony of the Declaration, Antony and Kleopatra sat high upon golden thrones on solid silver platforms, flanked by
their children, with the exception of Antyllus, who had been sent back to Rome to resume his studies. They displayed themselves
as Aphrodite and Dionysus once more, and with a massive portion of the Alexandrian community looking on, Antony gifted Kleopatra
and the children with the territories of their ancestors that had been chiseled away from the vast empire of the earlier Ptolemies.

“By all the powers invested in me as Imperator of Rome and General of the Eastern forces of the Empire, I declare Kleopatra
VII Ptolemy Queen of Kings and Queen of her Sons who are Kings.” Antony was an orator by nature and by inheritance; his grandfather
had been one of Rome’s most renowned speakers. His voice rang through the hall, reverberating in the cavernous hollow of the
massive ceiling. He possessed all the authority of a god, she thought, and that was how the people responded to him. Everyone
stood and repeated Kleopatra’s new title so joyously that it sounded like a song written especially for the occasion: “All
hail Mother Egypt, the Lady of the Two Lands, and ruler of the island of Cyprus and Koile Syria. Queen of Kings! Queen of
Kings!”

Kleopatra went through the ceremony slightly dizzy and distracted. She assumed a demeanor of solemn dignity for her subjects,
but in her mind, she was watching all the pieces of the puzzle she had dreamed of assembling begin to come together. Caesarion,
thirteen years old and in a particularly gangly phase under his purple ceremonial robes, was crowned King of Kings. “Come
forward, son of Caesar,” Antony exclaimed. The boy bowed to his stepfather as Antony placed the golden crown upon his head,
wiping the strands of the stringy hair he had inherited from Caesar away from his eyes as he raised his head. Alexander Helios,
“my son,” Antony was careful to say, was proclaimed king of Armenia and Media and all the eastern regions of Parthia. Kleopatra
Selene, “my daughter,” was made queen of Cyrene. Just six years old, the twins were very tall for their age and solemnly accepted
their new imperial titles, bowing and waving just as Kleopatra had instructed them to do. They were dressed in the costumes
of the regions they had just been granted and were flanked by soldiers in uniforms from those lands. Ptolemy Philadelphus,
not even three years old, won the hearts of the crowd in his bright purple cloak and tiny golden diadem, wearing a very small
replica of the Macedonian boots seen on the feet of Alexander on all his statues throughout the town. He was named king of
Syria, Phoenicia, and Cilicia, his bright eyes glittering as his name was chanted, aware only of the fact that much of this
pomp was for himself, and delighting in it. And with that proclamation, the picture was complete, and every inch of the ancestral
empire of the Ptolemies was restored to Kleopatra, their rightful descendant, and
secured now for her descendants. Not only had she restored the greatness of Egypt’s most glorious days, she also now controlled
much of the former empire of Seleucus, companion of Alexander and friend to Ptolemy I. She had succeeded beyond the dreams
and achievements of each and every Ptolemy who had come before her.

She thought of her father, so long dead now, his jolly disposition and his good health eviscerated by the tyranny and greed
of Rome, which had lost him the goodwill of his people. He had made her queen on her eighteenth birthday, had believed in
her loyalty and her abilities, and had elevated her above all women. She promised him on his deathbed that she would always
honor the meaning behind her name,
glory to her father,
and on this day she delivered the ultimate evidence of her vow. The single element that prevented her joy from being complete
was his absence. But honoring one’s ancestors was as important in the eyes of the gods as honoring the living. Honor aside,
she missed him and longed to hear the lilting melodies of his flute in her court. Was ever a king such an artist? Since his
death, no musician could please her. He was mocked by Rome for his artistic ways and for his fervent patronage of the god
Dionysus, just as Antony was mocked in his own country now for demonstrating his love of the ways of the people of Egypt and
the eastern territories he governed. Her father was fat and effeminate while Antony was muscled and manly, but she had not
realized until this very moment how many similarities they shared, including the willingness to acknowledge her capabilities
and govern with her.

She did not even realize that she was crying until she felt the coarse skin of Antony’s finger wipe away a tear.

Finally, after all her efforts and all her struggles, she had fulfilled the promise she had made more than twenty years ago
at the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, the city she would soon return to as Queen of Kings and of her Sons who are Kings, and
the exulted partner of Rome’s greatest general. Just as she had promised the goddess on that day, she had not stooped to the
humiliation and subjugation of her ancestors before the monster that was Rome. Instead, she had put herself and her kingdom
in a position of equality with the Romans. The Declaration of the Empire of the East was the moment that represented the culmination
of her entire life’s efforts. It was all she had ever wanted, and now she had it.

Weeks later Kleopatra found out how little Rome welcomed equal partners. Octavian distorted every one of Antony’s actions,
making it appear that everything he did was a signal that he was stealing the Roman empire to slake Kleopatra’s thirst for
conquest.

“But you have done nothing for me that you have not done in one form or another for any of your monarchical allies,” she had
protested to Antony.

“That is correct. If I have given you more, it is because you have given me more.”

Much more, she thought. More money. More troops. More ships. More grain. She had lain her country’s resources at his feet.
More to the point, after the failure in Parthia of so many Roman generals past, Antony, like Caesar, figured that he could
not win that war without her. Was she not supposed to enhance her own prestige for her continued efforts to help Rome subdue
its most menacing foe?

But that was not the story circulated by Octavian. He used Kleopatra’s assistance in building up the eastern forces as evidence
that she was planning her own full-scale war against Rome. He put this idea into circulation so successfully that Kleopatra
began to think that she no longer had any choice but to do it. Antony had made dozens of attempts to make peace with Octavian,
but it was clear that Octavian did not desire peace, at least not peace between himself and Antony. Antony had sent numerous
letters to Rome explaining the logic of his alliance with Kleopatra, and listing her many efforts on behalf of the empire.
Somehow, those missives were never read before the senate as intended.

On Antony’s fiftieth birthday, he decided that he must make a will. He named his Roman children his heirs in Rome-for legally,
he could do nothing else-and made separate provisions in Alexandria for his children with Kleopatra. He had the will drawn
up in Rome by a Roman solicitor and filed, according to custom, with the Vestal Virgins in Rome, the holy temple considered
a sacred depository for private documents. But Octavian, who now went everywhere with a bodyguard, burst into the temple and
took Antony’s will by force from the High Priestess. He made a great show of reading it to the senate, although what he read
bore no resemblance to what Antony had written. He declared that Antony had disinherited his Roman children in favor of
Kleopatra’s children, and that his fondest wish was to be buried in Alexandria so that he never again would have to leave
the queen’s company.

Octavian began to send letters to Antony “accusing him” of sharing Kleopatra’s bed. In letters and pamphlets and speeches,
he asked the question over and over-did Antony not realize that this sexual liaison was against the Roman moral code? Antony
was furious and wrote to Octavian asking why he had waited nine years before he decided that it was morally wrong to sleep
with the queen, and then listed Octavian’s many mistresses by name.

“The man’s staff goes about Rome tearing girls away from their families for his sexual delight,” Antony told Kleopatra. “He
is remorseless in this, as if he’s a brothel master! This, after breaking up a perfectly good and legal Roman marriage that
had produced two male heirs and forcing the man to give up his wife! Serves him well that she remains barren.”

“After producing two sons with another man?” Kleopatra asked. “Livia is not barren. She despises Octavian, and takes secret
herbs to prevent conceiving his child.”

“Interesting,” Antony said. “Do such potions exist?”

“If one is schooled in the old ways of medicine,” Kleopatra said. “Greek doctors know nothing of these remedies. The old women
keep the ingredients secret and pass them down to their young apprentices only by word. They also say that sometimes a woman
remains barren if she is unhappy.”

“Then I take it Your Majesty is fiercely happy,” Antony said, and they both laughed. “But if you were forced to divorce your
husband and leave your sons, would you not be unhappy?”

“Yes, but there is not a man on earth who is able to make me do that,” she replied, taking his face into her hands and kissing
him. He had let his beard grow again for the winter, and she ran her fingers through its fuzz. “Either his wife is punishing
him, or the gods are punishing him. I cannot decide which. But whichever the case, it is not punishment enough for his evil.”

To:Kleopatra VII, Queen of Kings
From: Hammonius in the city of Rome
Dear Your Majesty,

I am writing to inform you that I will sail with this letter away from the city of Rome for good. I have been here for many
years now serving the needs of your kingdom and those of your father before you. While I have successfully operated as an
importer of goods, many here know my true purpose. It is no longer safe for one who serves the queen of Egypt so closely to
rest on Roman soil.

And so with Your Majesty’s permission-for I am so certain it is coming that I am leaving Rome today-I will sail to the port
of Piraeus, make a short pilgrimage to Eleusis where I shall be reinitiated in the Mysteries, and then I shall make for the
place of my retirement, an olive plantation outside the city of Athens. I will not be lonely there, for it is the home of
Archimedes’ father-in-law. Archimedes has married at last, a lovely young Greek girl who cannot yet be twenty. When he enters
the room, she regards him each time as if he is a hero returned from the Trojan War. I am certain they will have an enormous
brood of very fine children who will sit on my lap in my old age as you used to do when you were but a girl.

Your Majesty, I am seventy years old and still fat, healthy, and enjoying the pleasures of love whenever I may, but soon I
shall be old and blind and bent over a cane. I hope that I have served you well. Archimedes and I are bound by oath to protect
and serve you until we breathe our last. But now, you are under the protection of the great Marcus Antonius. With such a man
as your husband and ally, and with an army of one hundred thousand at his command, what more might two poor Greeks-one elderly,
the other now middle-aged and in search of peace in his life-do in your service? And yet if there is such a mission you wish
us to undertake, we are at your command.

After all the many covert means by which we have corresponded over the years, I must now ask you to reach me by more mundane
methods. I may be found at the plantation of Demosthenes of Brauron, that sacred town founded by the children of Orestes.
There I shall eat olives and drink wine in the sun while young maid-ens-they are all named Iphegenia there-worry over my health,
or so Archimedes has promised.

I hope to see you again before you find yourself staring at the flames of my funeral pyre. I will offer a sacrifice in Eleusis
in your name.

Your eternal and humble Kinsman and servant,

Hammonius