The Murder of Cleopatra (17 page)

A very fascinating facet of Octavian's life and luck centers around his health. He was considered a weakling and a frail child, and this image carried into adulthood and stayed with him all his life until his death at seventy-seven years of age! I am sure countless enemies held out hope that he would keel over at some opportune time, but this never happened. Which leads me to question how physically challenged he really was. Did Octavian actually fall victim to as many illnesses as have been reported, or was he “incapacitated” at convenient times? Was Octavian feigning illness and playing people at the same time? Certainly, he was a master manipulator, so it could very well be that his precarious health was nothing but a ploy to get out of certain situations he felt he would benefit from avoiding. Did he play his role as fragile and frail to fool people into overlooking the crafty mastermind behind the near “invalid” who would soon deal a fatal blow to them?

I think we may be looking at a combination of reality and spin. Early on Octavian may have learned from some real event how useful it could be to play sick and unable to rise to physical activities like going to battle. How convenient! Mocking aside, although skipping the fight doesn't do much for one's image as a general, sometimes it makes more sense to stay alive and be the man behind the scenes, delegating the job of general to someone like the brilliant Agrippa, Octavian's
finest general, rather than get oneself killed trying to impress people. I believe Octavian realized he would never rise to the level of as beloved a general as his uncle, Julius Caesar, or his adversary, Mark Antony; so, being a thinking man, he chose to pull the strings behind the curtain instead of risking misfortune on the battlefield.

It is claimed that he had headaches and epileptic seizures that grew worse as he grew older. Yet it is also stated that he ate a simple diet and was an excellent horseman who could ride bareback at full gallop, which meant he had strong leg muscles and he was capable of withstanding long journeys. But he was also quite often reported to be ill, unable to fight or travel, or indisposed at certain times. Let's look at the reported incidents of illness and see if we can detect a pattern that might indicate Octavian was dissembling about his health or if such times really inconvenienced him and were true debilitating sicknesses.

One of the first reported incidences of Octavian falling ill at a very important moment occurred during the combined efforts of Antony and Octavian to attack Philippi and take down Brutus and Cassius. It was said that he had dropsy, a fluid accumulation in his body. I am not sure why he should have suffered this malady since there is no particular cause for such a response in the body that is mentioned. Some think it was psychosomatic, that he freaked out when it came to having to go to battle and risk his life. I think he held back with this excuse in order to let Antony take the risk alone since the outcome of the battle was very much in doubt. It would be a win-win situation for Octavian. If Brutus and Cassius were vanquished, these two enemies would be taken care of and Octavian would still be around to take advantage of fewer opposing factions. If Antony was killed in battle, then Octavian would be ahead of the game. I think it may have been a strategic decision and as a new player, so young and frail-looking, he probably reasoned that he could get away with not leading his men into battle.

As it turned out, Antony got himself into a bad situation, not one that ended in his death but one that meant a lack of success for the mission;
he needed reinforcements, so Octavian, still ill, somehow managed to crawl out of bed and take his men in. However, when Cassius later attacked Octavian's camp and speared all his men, Octavian's body was not on the ground with them. Yes, he had removed himself in his “illness” to a safer location and survived the rout. He was called a coward, but somehow I think his decision served him well. Being the lesser of two evils, an image of weakness could be used as a ruse to attract opponents to a fight that they would find was more in Octavian's favor than they thought. Octavian also made up for his wimpy image by having his henchmen brutally kill selected victims and watching with ice in his veins. He may not have shown himself to be courageous in battle, but he was a rather scary, sadistic guy to be feared in many other ways.

In his book
Augustus
, Anthony Everitt writes of Octavian's return to Rome after he and Antony shared the victory over Brutus and Casius, and, apparently, I am not the only one to question Octavian's use of sickness as a ruse:

Octavian was carried back to Italy, where his arrival was awaited with fear and loathing. His illness flared up again dangerously on the journey, and he stayed for a while at Brundisium. He was thought unlikely to survive and at one point a rumor circulated that he was actually dead. Some thought his sickness was a charade, that he was delaying his return because he was planning some devilish new scheme for fleecing the citizenry. Despite his reassurances to the contrary, people hid their property or left town.
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Being sick or dying or dead is a great way to buy time, toy with people's emotions, and get sympathy. With Octavian being a master manipulator, I tend to lean toward his use of his health as a foil.

When Octavian went off on another joint venture with Antony at Brundisium with far more troops, his illness, yet again, forced him to let Antony take the lead, alone. Even during his victorious final battle against Sextus, Octavian was flat on his back while Agrippa won the day.

It is no wonder Antony did not like the man.

As the showdown with Antony and Cleopatra was yet to come, I am sure both Cleopatra and Antony were hoping Octavian wasn't faking all his illnesses and would do them a favor and die during one of them. Although that never did happen (and, as it turned out, Octavian lived a long, long life), neither of them could be absolutely sure he was totally faking these incidents. The hope that illness might slow him down or do him in always must have been in the back of their minds as one possibility that could change the course of events. Even putting him in physically or emotionally stressful situations could be a tactic to try to force a change of outcome. Outlasting Octavian, I believe was always something Cleopatra kept in mind to the bitter end, that one more day before any showdown was one more day that might mean Octavian's health would decide the fate of all involved.

As an amusing side note, here is but another example of why Cleopatra chose to partner with Antony and not Octavian. When Lepidus was eliminated from the triumvirate (sent into exile) and the uprising of Sextus was ended (Sextus escaped but was found and executed), it was just Antony or Octavian who held the future of the Roman people in their hands. The remaining republicans, who still held onto some hope that Rome would escape the rule of an emperor, were willing to accept a dictator who they felt would rule in a less autocratic way or would at least be a bit flexible. Whom did they choose to throw their weight behind? Antony, the lesser of two evils, for many of the same reasons Cleopatra preferred him to Octavian: he was more amenable to others and a hell of a lot more fun.

One thing that is rather deceptive and causes us not to quite understand why things happened the way they did in the ancient world is that time is often “condensed” in the books we read. From one page to the next, years may pass, but there is a tendency not to realize exactly how much time actually went by. Also, with what are sometimes long distances being covered by foot, horse, camel, and ship during the days of Cleopatra, the time that may pass from the moment one decides to invade a country or embark on a visit to when that invasion or visit actually takes place may be months or even years. Travel was extraordinarily slow, relative to today's standard, and because of this, there was always a big problem with carrying enough provisions to make the trek. One had to bring them, purchase them along the way at outposts or major centers of trade, or confiscate them from the local people—essentially force the locals to turn over whatever is needed for the survival of one's men. Even obtaining drinking water could be a major problem.

Here is the way some people think of the history of Cleopatra: Cleopatra becomes queen and soon Julius Caesar shows up. She beds him, has a baby, and soon thereafter Caesar is murdered. So,
a few months later, she hooks up with Mark Antony and soon she has twins; and then a few more months later, they go off to fight Octavian at Actium. They lose and run back to Egypt. A few weeks pass, Octavian shows up, and both Cleopatra and Antony die. If you ask a number of people how long it was between the time Cleopatra became queen and date of her death, they would say two hours—the length of a film! Yes, I am joking; but, seriously, some would say, “Maybe, five or six years. . . . Maybe seven.”

In reality, nearly twenty years passed. To get a good feel of the time frame of all the events, let me lay them out.

Cleopatra's birth—69 BCE

Cleopatra becomes queen—51 BCE (age 18)

Cleopatra hooks up with Caesar—48 BCE (age 21)

Caesar is murdered—44 BCE (age 25)

Cleopatra hooks up with Antony—41 BCE (age 28)

Battle of Actium—31 BCE (age 38)

Cleopatra dies in Alexandria—30 BCE (age 39)

From this time line, one can see that Cleopatra was with Caesar for four years and with Antony for eleven years; the struggle between Octavian and Antony carried on for fourteen years; and it took Octavian nearly a year to arrive and deliver the final blow to Cleopatra and Antony in Alexandria after their loss at Actium. With such large blocks of time, anything can happen in the interim, and this is important to keep in mind when we try to get inside the heads of Cleopatra, Antony, and Octavian. Life had a different pace in ancient Egypt and Rome (and decisions were made on the way things worked back then—how fast one could accomplish one's goals and what might slow one down or completely disrupt one's plan).

Two other issues are extremely important to keep in mind when it comes to how Cleopatra and her Roman counterparts would make decisions: the prevailing weather conditions and the current status of ongoing wars and military actions. The entire region was a war
zone for the whole of their lives, and one always had to take into account who might attack, who might keep your enemy busy and at bay, or the chances that your land would get caught up in the power struggles of someone else's war. The other major factor was weather, which had a massive influence on how things often turned out. I believe the biggest “luck” factor was indeed the weather, which is the most difficult factor to predict and one that could completely upend one's plans and lead to disaster. Invasions could be stalled or entire fleets run aground in a storm.

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After Caesar's murder, Cleopatra escaped to Egypt and waited things out. I have no doubt that she hoped the Roman civil wars would end with the empire crumbling and Egypt being left alone or, even better, her native land would rise up and become a stronger player again among the Mediterranean nation-states.

She enjoyed three years of peace while the Romans were at war with each other. Then Antony came calling or, shall I say, called for her. It was an invitation she had little choice but to accept, even though Plutarch writes that she played coy for a while before agreeing to visit him. One has to give her credit for arriving with such outrageous style. She made it appear as though she were honoring Antony with a seat at her parade rather than arriving to answer a call from the future occupier. Although Plutarch may be exaggerating Cleopatra's arrival in Tarsus (a quite cultural Turkish city of the time, just a few miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea), one can get a feel from his prose that Cleopatra was working to impress Antony with her wealth and lifestyle, two things Antony would be interested in. He needed her funding for his military plans, especially the Parthia campaign, and, besides, he was a sucker for a good time. Just as Cleopatra was wise in how she approached Caesar, she was also bright enough to tailor her meeting with this new Roman man to his unique needs and desires so that she could
ensure herself a secure place in his future and make her own future as bright as possible. As Plutarch wrote:

She had received many letters from Antony and his friends summoning her but she disdained and mocked the man by sailing up the River Cydnus in a ship with its stern covered in gold, with purple sails fluttering, with rowers pulling with silver oars as flutes played accompanied by pipes and lyres. Cleopatra reclined beneath a canopy embroidered with gold, decked out to resemble a painting of Aphrodite, and boys, made to look like the Erotes we see in art, stood on either side and fanned her. Likewise, her most beautiful maids, dressed as Nereids and Graces, stood, some by the rudders and some by the ropes. The marvelous scent of copious incense fills the riverbanks. Some of the men escort her from either side, directly from the river, while others come down from the city to see the sight. As the crowd thinned in the marketplace finally Antony was left alone sitting on the speaker's platform. The news went around that Aphrodite had come to revel with Dionysus for the good of Asia. Then he sent word inviting her to dinner; instead she suggested he come to her. He, wishing to display his courtesy and kindness, accepted and went. He found the preparations beyond words and was struck most of all by the multitude of lights. Indeed it is said that so many were suspended and displayed everywhere at once and were ordered and positioned at such intricate angles to one another and in such patterns, like squares and circles, that it was a sight of beauty and delight for the viewer.
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