walls as he was in life, Caesar.”
Octavian gave a small, self-satisfied smile, and I realized why he had wanted to come. Facially, there did not appear much difference between the painting of Alexander and Octavian. Both men were fair, with small mouths, straight noses, and light eyes. Now Octavian imagined himself as Alexander’s heir, the next conqueror not just of Egypt, but of the world. Hadn’t his great-uncle, Julius Caesar, already begun the conquest for him?
We reached a flight of stairs descending into greater darkness, and I heard Ptolemy whimper. “It’s only a few steps down,” I whispered, and when I saw that he was going to protest, I put my finger to my lips.
The priest led the way, and the only noise was the whisper of our footsteps and the crackling of torches. Juba was the last to descend. When the door swung shut behind us, my brother let out a frightened cry. Immediately, Alexander put his hand to Ptolemy’s mouth.
“Not here,” he whispered angrily. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
But no one was paying attention to Ptolemy. In the dimly lit chamber, the men’s gazes were fixed on the crystal coffin of the world’s greatest king. The air smelled heavily of embalming spices: cinnamon, myrrh, and cassia.
Octavian approached the coffin with hesitant steps, and the priest pulled back the lid so that everyone could observe Alexander as he had been. There was a gasp of admiration throughout the chamber, and even Ptolemy wanted to draw closer.
“Only thirty-two,” Octavian said. The king’s face was beautiful in its three-hundred-year repose; his arms against the muscled cuirass were still pink with flesh and strikingly large. Octavian called Agrippa and Juba to his side, and although Octavian’s hair was a similar gold, it was Juba, with his broad shoulders and impressive height, who most resembled Alexander. In the poor light of the tomb, I studied the Numidian prince. From his hobnailed sandals to his scarlet cloak, he was every bit a Roman soldier, and only his long dark hair betrayed his ancestry.
“Agrippa, the crown,” Octavian said, and from the folds of his cloak Agrippa produced a thin golden diadem of twisted leaves. Octavian placed it carefully on Alexander’s head, and as he straightened, he caught sight of the Conqueror’s ring. He bent closer to inspect it, and when he saw that it had been engraved with Alexander’s profile, he announced, “This shall be the ring of Imperial Rome.”
“But, Caesar, that belongs—”
Agrippa turned, and the priest’s protest died on his lips.
Octavian held the stiff hand of Alexander, but as he tugged on the ring his elbow swept back and there was a sickening crunch.
“His nose!” the priest cried. Octavian had broken off Alexander’s nose.
There was a moment of terrified silence. Then Octavian exclaimed, “What does it mean?” He spun around. “Shall I send for the augurs?”
“No,” Juba said.
“But then what does it portend?”
“That you will break the Conqueror’s hold on the world and reconquer it yourself,” Juba replied. His dark eyes gleamed, and though I thought he was being sarcastic, Agrippa nodded.
“Yes, I agree.”
But Octavian didn’t move, and his hand with the golden signet ring was frozen over the king’s body.
“It can only be a good sign,” Agrippa repeated.
Octavian nodded. “Yes…. Yes, a sign from the gods,” he suddenly declared, “that I am the successor of Alexander the Great.”
The priest asked meekly if Octavian wished to visit the rest of our ancestors. But Octavian was too full of his prophecy.
“I came to see a king, not a row of corpses.”
I looked back at the shattered face of the great man who was responsible for the long reign of the Ptolemies, and wondered if Egypt would have a similar fate.
Although Juba and Agrippa had proclaimed the breaking of Alexander’s nose a good portent, Octavian’s retinue fell into an uneasy silence as we made our way up the stairs through the Soma. But the throngs of people in the streets—soldiers, Alexandrians, foreign merchants, even slaves—were loud enough to wake the gods. The soldiers were rounding up every Alexandrian they could find.
“What’s happening?” Ptolemy worried.
“We’re going to the Gymnasium,” Alexander said.
“Where Father gave me a crown?”
Juba raised his brows. Although Ptolemy had only been two and could not have had many memories from that time, he clearly recalled the Donations of Alexandria, when our father had seated himself with our mother on a golden throne and proclaimed our brother Caesarion not just his heir, but the heir to Julius Caesar as well. That evening, he’d announced his marriage to our mother, even though Rome had refused to recognize it. Then he’d given Alexander the territories of Armenia, Media, and the unconquered empire of Parthia. I’d received Cyrenaica and the island of Crete, while Ptolemy became king of all the Syrian lands. Although the Ptolemies wore simple cloth diadems bedecked with tiny pearls, our father had presented us with gold-and-ruby crowns, and this was what had stayed in Ptolemy’s memory. Only now, those crowns were being melted to pay Octavian’s men, and we were the inheritors of dust.
Alexander’s lips turned down at the corners, and I knew he was fighting back tears as well. “Yes, that is where Father made you a king.”
We approached the Gymnasium, longer than two stadia, and a murmur of surprise passed among the soldiers. Surrounded by shaded groves, the porticoes had been carefully plastered with gypsum so that even in the moonlight they glittered. But Octavian didn’t stop to appreciate the beauty. He twisted the ends of his belt in his hands.
“Repeat to me what I wrote,” he instructed.
Agrippa quickly unfurled a scroll he had been keeping in his cloak. “First is the matter of the city itself,” he said.
Octavian nodded. “And then?”
“The matter of how many citizens will become slaves in Rome.”
Octavian shook his head curtly. “None.”
Agrippa frowned. “Your uncle took a hundred and fifty thousand men from Gaul. When Marius …”
“And what did he get for it?”
“Spartacus,” Juba broke in contemptuously. “An uprising of slaves who didn’t appreciate what Rome had given them.”
“That’s right. There is enough gold in the queen’s mausoleum to pay every man who’s ever fought for me. This time, we don’t pay them in slaves.”
“And the men who wish to take women?” Agrippa asked.
“Let them pay for whores.”
We reached the steps of the Gymnasium, and a phalanx of soldiers with heavy shields formed a wall between us and the people. Suddenly, I couldn’t go on.
“What are you doing?” Alexander hissed.
But I was too afraid to move. Armed men surrounded the Gymnasium, and I wondered what would happen if Octavian decided to set fire to the building. There would be chaos, women and children crushed as men scrambled over their bodies to escape. But their paths would be blocked by Roman soldiers. The doors would be barred, as they were at my mother’s mausoleum. I stood at the base of a long flight of steps, and Agrippa came to my side.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Caesar wouldn’t have kept you alive this long if he intended to kill you tonight.”
I followed Agrippa’s red cloak up the stairs. Inside the Gymnasium, thousands of people fell to their knees in silent obeisance.
