The Murder of Cleopatra (31 page)

The show of civility was fleeting. As the doors closed behind her, her children were sent with their caretakers in one direction and Cleopatra and her handmaidens were taken to a far room in the palace that had served Cleopatra quite well when she wished to keep a political prisoner close by. Now the tables were turned and she was locked in the room with her two ladies.

The room had been swept clean. Before Cleopatra was locked in
the cell with her ladies, their clothes were removed, and their bodies checked for weapons and hidden poisons. All three women were handed simple slips to wear in their confinement.

When evening came, the guards returned and removed the handmaidens. Cleopatra was left alone. She hadn't eaten since leaving the Caesarium, and hunger was beginning to trouble her. She had little time to dwell on the sensation. The door to the small chamber opened, and a man of slight stature entered with three larger men who hung back and closed the door gently behind them. The most muscled of the entourage held his arm close to his side, his fist closed around a handle from which sprouted long leather straps that reached the floor.

The lead man, his chiseled face devoid of expression, placed a slim sheaf of papyrus papers, a small container of ink, and a quill on the floor in front of the bed on which Cleopatra was sitting.

“Write a list. Octavian wants a full report on the locations of your treasure.”

Cleopatra ignored the request.

“Tell Octavian that I will only release the treasure if I continue to be its comptroller.”

“Octavian commands you to write and will not take no for an answer.” The man's face remained a stone.

“He will get no other answer from me.”

Cleopatra kept her gaze steady as she faced her inquisitor.

The man stepped back and motioned for the three men to come forward. A smile imperceptibly played on his lips.

“They will change your mind.”

Cleopatra knew what the men could do, two holding her arms immobile, the third wielding his whip. But she was still queen, the immortal Isis, and the great Cleopatra.

“Never.”

The men moved in, and the whip fell upon her.

Three days passed with no food and no water, only the daily visits from the three men and their instrument of persuasion.

On the fourth morning, Cleopatra lay unmoving on her cot, angry
welts crisscrossing her back, her breasts, and her shoulders, with a few stray marks on her arms where the whip had veered off course. Her face was untouched but drawn, and her eyes were shadowed underneath from agonizing pain and exhaustion. Fever raged in her body, the result of untended infections in the mangled flesh of her torso.

She was brought a guest—her treasurer, Seleucus.

Standing haggardly in the doorway, bent with the pain he too suffered at the hands of Octavian's torturers, he gasped when he saw Cleopatra.

He turned with rage toward the Romans.

“How could you?” he bellowed at them with contempt. “She is the pharaoh, the great goddess Isis, the Mother of Egypt!” His eyes were tormented with the vision of his fallen Cleopatra.

“Bastards! Enough! I will tell you what you want to know.”

He covered his eyes to block out the sight of the ravaged queen, and then cupped his hands over his ears when he heard her cry out as he hobbled away, “No! No! You fool! You mustn't tell him!”

Cleopatra moaned as the door slammed shut. What a pathetic, gutless man! How could he give in just at the sight of her, as if she hadn't borne all the pain for a purpose? Now the weakling, the only other being in Alexandria who knew the locations of the treasure, had given away her kingdom, her one last bit of power.

She sat silently in her empty cell, waiting for the arrival of her death. She knew when the door opened, Octavian would not be standing there. He would come neither to ask her for her last wishes nor to gloat. He was not the type of man either to feel the need to do the right thing or to waste time rejoicing over the extermination of an annoying insect. She knew she would be dispatched without ceremony, she and her country, into the footnotes of Roman history.

She heard their steps and she saw two soldiers enter through the door of her cell. She rose unsteadily to her feet, nodded, and turned silently away from them, clasping her hands behind her back. A shadow, an arm, a bit of pressure to her neck, and the pharaonic era was over.

It has been quite a journey since my first visit to Egypt in 2003 for the filming of
The Mysterious Death of Cleopatra
. I have traveled through the ancient world of the pharaohs and visited their cities, their temples, and their tombs. Today I board a small local bus, filled entirely with men, to my final destination, an archeological site called Tapasoris Magna, thirty miles west of Alexandria. I have in my hand a note from Dr. Zahi Hawass, to show to the archeologist managing the dig for Dr. Hawaas and the Dominican archeologist Kathleen Martinez, who believe Cleopatra may have been buried in a tomb in the desert, away from the prying eyes of the Alexandrian mob.

While on the bus, I read the final words of Plutarch on the days following the deaths of Cleopatra and Antony.

As for the children of Antony, Antyllus, his son by Fulvia, was betrayed by Theodorus his tutor and put to death; and after the soldiers had cut off his head, his tutor took away the exceeding precious stone which the boy wore about his neck and sewed it into his own girdle; and though he denied the deed, he was convicted of it and crucified. Cleopatra's children, together with their attendants, were kept under guard and had generous treatment. But Caesarion, who was said to be Cleopatra's son by Julius Caesar, was sent by his mother, with much treasure, into India, by way of Ethiopia. There Rhodon, another tutor like Theodorus, persuaded him to go back, on the ground that [Octavian] invited him to take the kingdom. But
while [Octavian] was deliberating on the matter, we are told that Areius said:—

“Not a good thing were a Caesar too many.”

As for Caesarion, then, he was afterwards put to death by [Octavian], —after the death of Cleopatra; but as for Antony, though many generals and kings asked for his body that they might give it burial, [Octavian] would not take it away from Cleopatra, and it was buried by her hands in sumptuous and royal fashion.

But [Octavian], although vexed at the death of the woman, admired her lofty spirit; and he gave orders that her body should be buried with that of Antony in splendid and regal fashion. Her women also received honourable interment by his orders. When Cleopatra died she was forty years of age save one, and had shared her power with Antony more than fourteen. Antony was fifty-six years of age, according to some, according to others, fifty-three. Now, the statues of Antony were torn down, but those of Cleopatra were left standing, because Archibius, one of her friends, gave [Octavian] two thousand talents, in order that they might not suffer the same fate as Antony's.

Antony left seven children by his three wives, of whom Antyllus, the eldest, was the only one who was put to death by [Octavian]; the rest were taken up by Octavia and reared with her own children.
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So the brutalized Cleopatra is strangled and quietly removed to a sealed tomb to spend eternity with her Roman consort. With all-out war averted with the surrender of Cleopatra and Antony's forces and the cleverly concocted story of Cleopatra's iconic suicide released to the public, the country passes quietly into the hands of the Roman conqueror. There is no citizen revolt. Once the Lagide treasure is safely in hand and the last Ptolemy, Caesarion, the alleged son of Julius Caesar, is located down in Berenice and eliminated, Octavian's major problems are solved. He is the undisputed ruler of the Mediterranean world; he had money to pay his troops and make his country wealthy; and he would never have a Ptolemy challenge him again.
This
was Octavian's Great Triumph.

I arrived at the site of Tapasoris Magna and was greeted by the archeologist and given a tour of the ruins. I asked if there had been any proof yet that this was the burial site of Cleopatra and Antony, and he told me that, in spite of many interesting artifacts indicating this was clearly a temple of importance, including a number of coins bearing Cleopatra's head that had been found and a necropolis that had been uncovered behind the temple, there was not yet proof that this was Cleopatra's and Antony's final resting place. So the mystery of where they are buried continues.

One week before the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, I walked across Tahrir Square, the site of the massive protest, eating an ice cream, totally unaware of the unrest about to explode. Cairo is a bustling city, but it suffers from years of oppression, unemployment, and the suppression of women, albeit to a lesser degree than some of the neighboring countries. It had been over two thousand years since Cleopatra, a woman, ruled Egypt; and rarely have women held such lofty positions of power since her day. I wondered just how much the people here in modern Egypt and elsewhere actually know about Cleopatra VII, the tough and amazing woman who ruled successfully for nearly twenty years under conditions that would have been trying for any ruler, let alone a female, which was quite an amazing feat. Understanding just how brilliant and determined the last pharaoh was should be an inspiration to girls and women everywhere. Since females have been noticeably absent from power positions in the history of humankind, a clearer portrayal of a woman of Cleopatra's caliber should be a great addition to our knowledge of world politics and sociology.

No longer seen as merely a seductive, overly emotional woman who made poor choices and ended up cowering in her tomb, Cleopatra
can now take her rightful place as a political figure with brains and brawn, equal to any man of her time or in any century thereafter.

Aegyptus Antiqua Mandato Serenissimi Delphini Publici Juris Facta.
J. B. B. D'Anville,
Complete Body of Ancient Geography
(London: Laurie and Whittle, 1795).

The Nile at sunset in Cairo.
Photo by Pat Brown
.

Cairo from the Citadel.
Photo by Jennifer Walker
.