The Murder of Cleopatra (16 page)

It can get very interesting during those times when psychopathic or highly narcissistic personalities have to deal with each other, when they have to get along for the benefit of both parties, or wind up dueling to the death. One thing is for certain: I doubt Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Octavian, or Cleopatra trusted each other. They each recognized that just as they considered certain individuals useful to them until they were not, their counterparts saw them in exactly the same light. It was always a cat-and-mouse game, even with those they bedded, married, or confronted in battle. If two psychopaths or narcissists end up together, they often can't get along and so quickly go their separate ways; at other times, they become a dangerous team that goes out with a bang like Bonnie and Clyde; or one of them eventually out-psychopaths the other.

Pompey lost out to Caesar, Caesar to Antony, and, now, the stage was set for the final throw down. With a “republic” that had not really been one since before Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 BCE) and clearly was not going to return to a democratic state with such strong personalities and such a massive amount of power and money to be controlled by anyone who could rise to the top, the Roman
Senate knew all too well that the best it could do was attempt to divide the power among three dictators, a triumvirate, in a somewhat-poor attempt to avoid being ruled by a king. In fact, all the Senate did was delay the inevitable and encourage civil war between those who had their eye on total power. I do believe, though, that the Senate, having chosen Octavian as one of the triumvirate, might have considered this choice to be their last hope of regaining the republic. At that time (about 45 BCE), Octavian was playing a very good game of appealing to the Roman senators with intelligent discourse, words rather than war, and he appeared to support the idea of a true republic; and, being a man of diminutive physical stature, maybe the Senate thought Octavian preferred to use his brain rather than brawn to rule, to share power, and to delegate without damning those around him. Octavian, I am sure, made them believe this; he was a very patient and careful tactician. They wouldn't know what had happened until it was too late. Somehow he convinced them that he would restore the republic, yet all the while he was chipping away at their liberties and rights. Eventually he had them convinced that only an emperor could possibly govern a massive Roman empire—and they agreed. Octavian was truly the heir to Julius Caesar's rule, the only one with the incredibly high level of intelligence, ruthlessness, dispassionate decision making, and political savvy to overcome the other contenders—and, lucky for him, no one realized that one of the most brilliant psychopaths ever to rise in the political world was one of their own, until it was too late.

Cleopatra no doubt knew just how dangerous Octavian was by the time she and Antony teamed up against their common enemy. She knew she would need more than Antony's military skills and Egypt's wealth to prevail or even survive. She would have to outsmart the man at some point in the game.

Octavian grew up without a father, rarely seeing him when he was a tot and losing him to illness when he was just a boy of four. Octavian was raised by his grandmother and then by his mother, a seeming combination of overbearance and overindulgence. However,
his father and stepfather were both politicians, and he didn't lack a good education during his youth. He learned to compensate for his lack of physical stature with a quick mind and the ability to size up situations and people to his advantage. By the time he came into Caesar's life as a teenager, he had great skill at sliding into a role that pleased Caesar; obviously he did a pretty good job in a short time, considering how Caesar made him heir so soon after. Manipulation is a key trait of psychopathy, and a smart and educated psychopath can essentially con everyone with whom he comes in contact. Considering Octavian's meteoric rise, he likely was a master at it.

After Caesar's murder, Octavian really milked his connection, roused the emotions of Caesar's supporters both in the political sphere and among the populace, and he waged a propaganda campaign, his first major one, due to Antony's own poor behavior. Antony managed to get control of Caesar's finances by convincing his widow, Calpernia, that he should handle them. Not long thereafter, a large sum of money went missing. Antony suddenly was doing quite well in the financial department. Octavian took this opportunity to spread rumors about Antony to everyone who would listen. Of course, Octavian was a thief himself, somehow getting hold of the Parthian campaign money and then using it to pay the citizens what Caesar had promised them before his death, showing up Antony quite effectively.

Antony struck back with his own slander campaign, accusing Octavian of trying to assassinate him. Back and forth it went, each man trying to turn the populace or the army or the Senate against the other and win their affections. In other words, it was politics as usual in ancient Rome. Then Octavian learned to lead an army, and in spite of the stories that he was never around when the action started, there at least was a claim in circulation that he actually appeared in the middle of a foray he led against Antony. Now the Senate established the New Triumvirate and for a period of time, they were civil to each other, even though Octavian got the short stick of the distributed territories and Lepidus was just a yes-man for Antony. Antony ended
up with the greatest power of the three, including the best part of the Roman territory to govern. But Antony and Octavian did join forces in a reign of terror on their adversaries in Rome by executing more than three thousand of the upper class; so neither one of them could be called a nice guy. Then they joined militarily to attack the ousted Cassius and Brutus, who were mounting a campaign against the duo. Their eventual defeat of these killers of Caesar eliminated that political annoyance. This occurred in 42 BCE. Then Pompey's son, Sextus, attacked Antony and Octavian, and this part of the civil war lasted for the next six years. There were other outbreaks of unrest and other civil wars, so this was no time of peace for the Romans. Cleopatra, however, was likely quite pleased that the Romans were busy trying to kill each other off, leaving Egypt out of the fray for the time being.

Antony and Octavian continued to tolerate each other, and in 40 BCE, Antony married Octavian's sister, Octavia. For three years, Antony and Octavian managed to continue to get along, and when they both were finding themselves on the losing end of battles, Octavian against Sextus, and Antony in his failing Parthian campaign, they renewed the triumvirate. This political move lasted one year until Octavian defeated Sextus and got rid of Lepidus behind Antony's back.

Now there were just the two, Octavian and Antony, pitted against each other. And this time there would be no reconciliation; one would emerge victorious to win the title of emperor. At this point, Cleopatra and Egypt found themselves in trouble. When, not if, one of the Roman generals became solo dictator, Egypt would be under his thumb, in some fashion. Cleopatra's only hope would be to attempt a repeat of the type of relationship she had with Caesar, one in which her new partner would see the reasonableness of her continued rule in Egypt with her son as long as she gave Rome what it needed. She saw that linking herself to Antony, offering him her vast wealth, troops, and ships to defeat Octavian, was her best option; she would get on his good side early and hope that he would win the day, and she could continue to be of use to him in her own Ptolemaic way.
She knew there was no point in trying to partner with Octavian, and it didn't matter if he hated her for hooking up with Antony and supporting Antony's offense against him. Being fully aware of the kind of man Octavian was, Cleopatra knew he would not tolerate her continuing as pharaoh, nor would he even desire her to remain alive after aligning herself with his adversary. So it seemed to Cleopatra that the only prudent thing to do was throw all her weight behind Antony and hope that he would win. I agree; she made the wisest decision, indeed the only decision she could under the circumstances.

For Cleopatra it wasn't about increasing the Ptolemaic Empire; the Ptolemies never worried much about extending their territory; they preferred to annex nearby nations in order to protect their country, their ports, and their trade routes. Unlike Philip, Alexander, the Persians, the Parthians, and the Romans, the Egyptians were content to control their own lands since they were terribly wealthy already, in wheat and in gold and in their control of valuable trade routes; so other than timber that they obtained from a few locations outside Egypt, they were quite happy to stay within their own borders. History has been quite unfair to Cleopatra in this matter, often claiming she was terribly greedy and used Antony to further her own imperialistic desires, but I see little truth in this. She appeared to be content being the Egyptian pharaoh, as had the entire Ptolemaic line for centuries. She didn't need expansion; she needed protection, and Antony was her only hope.

Some historians fault Cleopatra for teaming up with Antony, claiming that she was poison for him, that she caused him to lose the battle of Actium and then deserted him in the midst of fighting to save her own skin, at least for the moment. They believe that Antony was so enamored with Cleopatra that he was blind to her foolish choices that ended up depleting his manpower and causing him the loss to Octavian; and that then, so shackled by his love for her, he left his men to their doom as he chased after Cleopatra, following her to Egypt and committing suicide with her when there was no escape left. In other words, Cleopatra ruined Antony and took him down with her. According to this view, Octavian won by taking advantage of their mistakes and, had it not been for Cleopatra, maybe Antony would have been the victor and eventually become emperor of the Roman Empire.

That is quite a bit of anti-Cleopatra spin, courtesy of Octavian, Plutarch, and a host of future detractors. In reality, neither Cleopatra nor Antony made particularly bad choices, and Octavian was one lucky guy at Actium. Well, at least luck played a part in his success, and it is hard to determine how much was strictly unexpected good fortune and how much of the “luck” was actually of his own doing.

Luck is a funny thing; some people seem to have great things come
to them, and it appears those fortuitous events “just happened.” Yet much of what passes for luck is actually a combination of hard work, risk taking, networking, and clever strategy. When the “lucky” thing happens, people are unaware of what the individual did to get to the point where he was in the position to be the beneficiary of something good, or they have forgotten the past entirely. For example, Antony wouldn't have had the “luck” of having Caesar bring him back to Rome as consul if he hadn't first made himself useful or needed. Likewise, Octavian wouldn't have received his windfall in Caesar's will if he hadn't impressed Caesar through his behavior or, perhaps, sex. And Cleopatra wouldn't have become partner with Caesar or Antony if she hadn't polished her political and social skills and maneuvered herself into a position to pitch her usefulness to each of them.

Sometimes bad luck is not accidental, either. Ptolemy XIII had bad “luck” when Caesar chose Cleopatra over him, but then he beheaded Pompey and acted foolishly around Caesar, which didn't exactly inspire confidence in his ability to rule Egypt or work well with the Romans. Cleopatra's and Antony's less-than-stellar treatment of King Herod and the Nabataeans (Anthony had given their balsam groves to Cleopatra, and then Cleopatra had incited war between Herod and the Nabataeans, causing both parties to have negative feelings toward them) probably created the bad “luck” Cleopatra encountered when she needed their help or at least needed them not to turn on her (like when the Nabataeans burned her ships when she first attempted to flee Egypt after the Actium debacle).

Then again, certain things truly are just luck, like weather and outside players popping up out of nowhere and creating havoc, or the unexpected murder of Caesar. These events are quite often just bad luck and unfortunate timing. While Caesar may have made his own misfortunes because of his attitude and dictatorship style, the impact on Cleopatra was collateral damage. As we follow the history of the intersection of Cleopatra, Antony, and Octavian, I will attempt to separate the events caused by the behaviors of each player from those that were truly beyond their control, whether for good or ill.

Octavian certainly worked hard to raise his status and level of power after he benefited tremendously from the assassination of Caesar, courtesy, in my opinion, of his nemesis, Antony. On the one hand, he could have been raised up politically by Caesar had the latter not been murdered, but who knows how patient the ambitious Octavian would have been and how long he could have stood being in Caesar's shadow. He may have eventually been forced into making some “luck” of his own by eliminating Caesar in the same manner as Antony. Of course, he may have been Antony's target of assassination if Antony didn't take kindly to being displaced by the nephew of Caesar. We will never know how history would have played out if the Ides of March had gone by peacefully.