The Murder of Cleopatra (24 page)

But then the question would be, if this is so, why did she waste time dragging her ships over the Isthmus, and why didn't her ships ever make it to the Red Sea before Octavian invaded Egypt? I believe the problem lies not in Cleopatra's failure to have the canal finished in time, but in that she had to wait until the Nile inundation filled the canal satisfactorily enough to get let ships through.

In other words, Cleopatra really needed Octavian to stay away from Egypt until August. If he had left Rome a month later, history might have turned out very differently.

I returned to Alexandria. As I stood on the dock staring past the colorful fishing boats floating tranquilly in the harbor, I thought of Octavian over on the other shore in Italy. Cleopatra must have stood on this very same spot wondering just how soon her enemy would push off his shores and come to destroy her. Cleopatra knew that, like a cancerous brain tumor that needed to be cut from his head, Octavian would need to remove her from his mind and his world with a swift and lethal blow.

The motive for Octavian's murder of Cleopatra is quite clear. This woman dared to create an heir with Julius Caesar (whether or not that heir was truly his biological child); joined with his enemy, Antony, to wage battle against him; and, most outrageously, continued to mock him with her existence and her incredible wealth. And, even though Cleopatra and Antony were badly beaten at Actium and fled to Egypt in mid-battle, Octavian knew she would never give up. She might retreat temporarily, but she would never surrender. If she fled, she would be back. He would have to march on Egypt and destroy her, along with her Roman general and her royal line. Only in this way could Octavian ever hope to be the last man standing and in total control of the Roman Empire.

Back in Egypt, after she failed to drag her ships across the Sinai
Desert to the Red Sea, Cleopatra could do nothing but wait and hope that the Nile inundation would come before Octavian did. Meanwhile, she continued building her Caesarium and taxing her people. She didn't let on that as soon as the canal waters rose, she would be absconding with her fleet and her treasure; it wouldn't do her any good if word got out that she expected to lose the war if Egypt was invaded.

It might seem that she was deserting her people like a captain jumping a sinking ship and leaving his men aboard (as some say she and Antony did at Actium), but staying with her people only to be humiliated and then executed while the conqueror took control of her entire military and all her riches would hardly do much for the country anyway. It is far better to retreat for the time being, allow the victor to quietly take control of your country and then return with a vengeance when the time is right and win back your land. Cleopatra's plan to leave was not one of cowardice; it was simply expedient. In fact, many of the Ptolemies—and even Cleopatra herself—had left Egypt when someone had managed to take over the throne and the ruler's life was threatened. They fled, they waited, they gathered forces, and they returned when the time was right to recapture their title of pharaoh. If one simply allowed oneself to be killed, the dynasty might end right there, but if one survived to fight another day, the Ptolemaic line would continue. Cleopatra seemed to be behaving as any Ptolemy would.

Then Cleopatra received horrific news. Octavian was on his way even though winter was barely over. Unless he was detained along the way or took ill, he would reach Egypt before the Nile floods. If he arrived before August, her only hope would be that her general at Pelusium could withstand a siege that might keep Octavian busy long enough for the rains to come and the Nile to rise; and then she could rush her fleet to the canal and get through it before he was any the wiser. I am sure she wished she could have already had her fleet in place on the Nile where the canal begins, waiting for the moment the waterway filled sufficiently, but the Nile route was most likely one
that Octavian would choose to advance his armies toward Alexandria (as did Alexander before him), and it would end Cleopatra's plans if she were caught like a sitting duck with her fleet bunched up at the canal entrance.

Apparently, either her general sold out, gave up, or simply could not withstand Octavian's forces. Pelusium fell in a day. Plutarch writes:

Accordingly, the war was suspended for the time being; but when the winter was over, Caesar again marched against his enemy through Syria, and his generals through Libya. When Pelusium was taken there was a rumour that Seleucus had given it up, and not without the consent of Cleopatra; but Cleopatra allowed Antony to put to death the wife and children of Seleucus.
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Plutarch certainly got a dig in at Cleopatra, insinuating that she purposely had her general give up Pelusium in order to gain favor from Octavian and then was so nasty that she had his family murdered to make it look like he had betrayed her and not the other way around. I doubt that this was at all true, considering how important it was to keep Octavian occupied at the border and that Cleopatra knew full well that no favors were going to sway Octavian from having her eliminated. More likely, the claim that she murdered Seleucus's family is a Plutarch fabrication, or it could be that Cleopatra was really angry at Seleucus for doing such a bad job of protecting the border. It could also be that Seleucus simply surrendered to save his own skin, which would have unquestionably sent Cleopatra over the edge.

Octavian was in Egypt prior to the Nile inundation. Now Cleopatra's position had become dire. Yet all hope was not lost, even if her odds of success were increasingly bleak. Cleopatra still saw a glimmer on the horizon, and that was carrying out Plan C by staging Actium Two at Alexandria. By using the strategy that allowed Antony and Cleopatra to escape Actium with a good portion of their fleet, Cleopatra hoped a replay of that maneuver might allow her to sail to the canal and out of Egypt.

While Cleopatra was waiting in Alexandria for the floodwaters to rise and Octavian was almost at the eastern border of Egypt, Antony had rushed over to the western border, to the fort of Paraetonium (today's Marsa Matrouh), 149 miles west of Alexandria, to try to keep his legions from defecting and to prevent Roman general Cornelius Gallus from entering the country.

Gallus afterwards accompanied Octavianus [Octavian] to the battle of Actium, B.C. 31 when he commanded a detachment of the army. After the battle, when Octavianus was obliged to go from Samos to Italy, to suppress the insurrection among the troops, he sent Gallus with the army to Egypt, in pursuit of Antony. In the neighbourhood of Cyrene, Pinarius Scarpus, one of Antony's lieutenants, in despair, surrendered, with four legions, to Gallus, who then took possession of the island of Pharus, and attacked Paraetonium. When this town and all its treasures had fallen into the hands of Gallus, Antony hastened thither, hoping to recover what was lost, either by bribery or by force; but Gallus thwarted his schemes, and, in an attack which he made on Antony's fleet in the harbour of Paraetonium, he sunk and burnt many of the enemy's ships, whereupon Antony withdrew.
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The battle didn't go well for Antony, so he returned to Alexandria to do what he could to protect the city and implement Plan C's Actium reenactment. It's important to point out, however, that Suetonius's description of Gallus's sinking or burning many of Antony's ships is not repeated anywhere else nor is there any particular number of ships documented as having been destroyed. This detail is important because if Cleopatra and Antony's Plan C was to work, a combined Roman and Egyptian fleet would have to confront Octavian's ships as they did at the first battle of Actium. Antony's ships had to engage Octavian's while Cleopatra's ships waited to sail off when the battle was at its height. Without evidence to the contrary, and recalling the fact that Gallus possessed some two hundred ships to attack Arabia a few years later, I speculate that Antony may have lost some ships
in his attempt to stop Cornelius Gallus at Paraetonium, but he did not lose his entire fleet. In fact, there is some corroboration of this in Plutarch's description of the final Alexandrian battle. He writes: “At daybreak, Antony in person posted his infantry on the hills in front of the city, and watched his ships as they put out and attacked those of the enemy.”
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His
ships. Not Cleopatra's. Of course, this could just be poor writing on the part of Plutarch, but then the very next description of what those ships did seems to validate that he was indeed speaking very specifically of Antony's fleet:

. . . and as he expected to see something great accomplished by them, he remained quiet. But the crews of his ships, as soon as they were near, saluted Caesar's crews with their oars, and on their returning the salute changed sides, and so all the ships, now united into one fleet, sailed up towards the city prows on.
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Now, just a bit further on in Plutarch's rendition of that day, he does have Antony suspecting Cleopatra of stabbing him in the back and ordering the surrender of her navy in the Alexandria harbor, but I find it rather interesting that, if this were true, shouldn't we have Plutarch saying that Antony saw
Cleopatra's
ships go out toward the enemy and
Cleopatra's
ships salute Caesar's crews with their oars? No, Plutarch specifically states that they were Antony's ships, which is one reason he was so shocked; his ships would be under his command and his command was to engage Octavian's fleet in battle.

It is important to establish that Antony did still have enough of a fleet to at least attempt to engage Octavian's fleet and that it was his fleet that was heading out to meet with Octavian's. So where was Cleopatra's fleet? It may have been positioned behind Antony's, closer to the shore, and simply isn't mentioned because her ships never moved out of place. I will return to that last battle of Alexandria in a bit. For now, I simply want to establish that Antony had failed at the western border and returned to Alexandria with what remained of
his fleet. Meanwhile, Octavian had just taken over Pelusium, and the month of July was not starting off well for Cleopatra.

She needed four more weeks, at least, to get her ships to the canal. At that point in time, the ships were likely with her in Alexandria, because if they were down in Memphis in the harbor waiting for the canal to fill, it wouldn't make sense that Cleopatra was in Alexandria when Octavian arrived there, and he would have seen her fleet while making his way to the city.

We really do not know, however, exactly by what method Octavian arrived at Alexandria or how long it took him. Since he entered the city on August 1, one can guess that he might have taken four weeks or more to march his army through the Nile delta. What little is written about these events comes, again, from Plutarch, who states that “at the same time [whilst Cleopatra was repeatedly sending him messages asking for mercy and likely determining his progress in her direction] that [Octavian] advanced with his army against the city.”
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One might think that Octavian didn't need to have that big of an army, and he didn't need a fleet since he moved in from the east along the coast. But I think there is good reason to believe he at least had a reasonable number of legions with him and likely a fleet, or at least part of his fleet, to bring along food and water, especially since they traversed the Sinai Peninsula from Gaza to Pelusium. This is a rather unpleasant and treacherous stretch for an army to cover, but it would have been foolish to embark upon such a march without having a way to supply the soldiers with food and drink. A good description of how Octavian likely proceeded with his legions comes from the description of Alexander the Great's own travels along this route:

Thus, the army will have journeyed from Gaza to Pelusium sometime in October, if not earlier. Of all the months of the year, September and October, are absolutely the worst to travel in the Sinai. Rains do not begin here until November, and the few wells along the coast, which are often too brackish to drink in any case, would be dry or virtually dry just before the onset of the rains. The coast of Sinai from Gaza to Pelusium is entirely covered with sand dunes, and the army would
have to march along the shore wet by the ocean lest the horses and wagons sink in the sand. There is no vegetation along the coast from Raphia to the Bitter Lakes. Even if supplies were collected at Gaza, the rations would not last more than four days. The fleet sailed alongside the army by the coast, and they undoubtedly set up magazines of provisions before sailing on to Pelusium. Notably, the march passed without incident, and Alexander covered the 127 miles in only seven days—undoubtedly to conserve provisions.
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It makes sense that Octavian also would have his fleet alongside him to carry provisions for his men as they traveled to Gaza and then Pelusium. The next question is, after Pelusium fell, by which route did Octavian proceed to bring his army to Alexandria? Although there is some possibility that he somehow went due west across all the Nile branches, using bridges and whatever roads existed, there is nothing in the literature that speaks of any particularly direct route straight to Alexandria (at the Canobic mouth) from Pelusium (at the Pelusiac mouth). According to the description by Strabo of the delta area between Pelusium and Alexandria, during the Nile inundation the land would be comprised of a marshy mishmash of elevated land areas and small canals to navigate from one area to the other.