inserted into her belt; it could not have been the first time she did so. And she had long before dispatched Caesarion up the Nile. She knew she could ask no favors on her eldest child’s count. With his tutor, Rhodon, and a small fortune, he was to make his way overland to the coast and to sail for India, the established source of Ptolemaic ivory and dyes, spices and tortoiseshell. Proculeius made little progress, though he did have ample opportunity to survey the mausoleum, to which he returned with Gaius Cornelius Gallus—who had entered Egypt from the west, at the head of Antony’s legions—for a second interview. Gallus outranked Proculeius. A poet and an intellectual, he enjoyed a facility with language; he was a pioneer of the love elegy. (Ironically, he addressed his work to the actress who had been Antony’s mistress.) Again he faced one of Antony’s women. Perhaps he could negotiate a surrender. Gallus met Cleopatra outside the door for a prolonged conversation, presumably little different from the one she had had with Proculeius. She remained intransigent.
Meanwhile Proculeius fixed a ladder to the side of the building and climbed in the upper-story window through which Antony had been carried. Two servants scurried up the wall behind him. Once inside the three descended to the ground floor, where they stole up on Cleopatra, at the mausoleum door. Charmion or Iras noticed the intruders first and cried out: “Wretched Cleopatra, you are taken alive!” At the sight of the Romans, Cleopatra reached for the dagger to stab herself, but Proculeius was quicker. Throwing himself upon her, he enveloped Cleopatra in both arms. He wrested away the dagger and searched the folds of her clothing for poisons, all the while affably reassuring her, as he had been instructed. She should not act rashly. She did herself a disservice, and Octavian too. Why rob him of the opportunity to prove his kindness and integrity? He was after all—she had heard the claim before, from a messenger who had defected, about a man whose lifeless body lay upstairs in a pool of blood—“the gentlest of commanders.”
Octavian installed a freedman named Epaphroditus at Cleopatra’s side. He had firm instructions. He was to keep the queen of Egypt alive “by the strictest vigilance, but otherwise to make any concession that would promote her ease and pleasure.” All instruments by which she might again attempt to kill herself were confiscated. Presumably the pile of treasure was at this juncture carted away as well. Cleopatra was, however, supplied with all she requested—incense, and oils of cedar and cinnamon—with which to prepare Antony for burial. She spent two days purifying the body, a courtesy Octavian was no doubt happy to grant. He could win points for honoring an unwritten code of warfare while at the same time delivering the scandalous burial that he claimed Antony had requested. Octavian’s men removed none of Cleopatra’s retinue or attendants, “in order that she should entertain more hope than ever of accomplishing all she desired, and so should do no harm to herself.” The three children were treated sympathetically and as befit their rank, for which she had reason to be grateful. Octavian’s men tracked down Antyllus, betrayed by his tutor, entranced by the priceless gem he knew the sixteen-year-old to be wearing under his toga. Antony’s son had sought refuge in a shrine, probably within the massive walls of the Caesareum. He begged for his life. Octavian’s men dragged him out and beheaded him. The tutor lost no time in snatching the jewel from the corpse, for which he was later crucified.
Cleopatra asked for and obtained permission to bury Antony herself. Accompanied by Iras and Charmion, she did so “in sumptuous and royal fashion.” A first-century woman grieved with much ritual screaming and thrashing and clawing at the skin, and Cleopatra was no exception: her display was so extreme that her chest was inflamed and ulcerated by the end of the funeral on what was probably August 3. Infection set in, accompanied by a fever. She was pleased; if she now swore off food, she could, she reasoned, manage a quiet, Roman-free death. She confided as much in Olympus, who counseled her and promised his assistance. Her method was hardly subtle, however; Octavian learned quickly enough of her compromised state. He had a trump card as great as Cleopatra’s treasure. He “plied her with threats and fears regarding her children”—another kind of warfare, concedes Plutarch, and a most effective one. Cleopatra surrendered to food and treatment.
Octavian had by now bought some goodwill, which may have partly reassured Cleopatra. He called for a public assembly; late on the afternoon of August 1, the day of Antony’s death, he rode into the city with a prepared scroll. He always wrote out what he meant to say in Latin; this speech was afterward translated into Greek. In the gymnasium where Antony and Cleopatra had crowned their children Octavian ascended a specially built platform. The terrified Alexandrians prostrated themselves at his feet. Octavian bade them stand. He meant no harm. He had resolved to pardon their city for three reasons: In honor of Alexander the Great; because of Octavian’s great admiration for their home, “by far the richest and greatest of all cities”; and to gratify Areius, the Greek philosopher at his side. The truth of the matter, concedes Dio, is that Octavian did not dare “inflict any irreparable injury upon a people so numerous, who might prove very useful to the Romans in many ways.”
Events, Cleopatra would have noticed, were moving quickly. Urgently she requested an interview with Octavian, granted on August 8. While in broad outline Plutarch and Dio’s accounts of that meeting are similar, the mise-en-scene differs radically. Plutarch is writing for Puccini, Dio for Wagner. There may be more art than truth in both versions; either way, it was quite a performance. (It made too for a revealing contrast to Herod’s interview.) Plutarch sends up the curtain with Cleopatra lying frail and disheveled on a simple mattress, clad only in a tunic, without any kind of cloak. Octavian has elected to surprise her. At the sight of her caller she springs up and throws herself at his feet. The wretched week has taken its toll: “Her hair and face were in terrible disarray, her voice trembled, and her eyes were sunken. There were also visible many marks of the cruel blows upon her bosom; in a word, her body seemed to be no better off than her spirit.” Dio prefers Cleopatra in her regal splendor and at her histrionic best. She has prepared a luxurious apartment and an ornate couch for her visitor. She is groomed to perfection, superbly turned out in mourning clothes that “wonderfully became her.” As Octavian enters she leaps girlishly to her feet, to find herself face to face with her mortal enemy, for what was almost certainly the first time. Octavian had come into his looks, or into his panegyrists; he was highly attractive to women, “for he was well worth beholding,” as Nicolaus of Damascus put it later. Cleopatra must have experienced a certain relief. “To be so long prey to fear is surely worse than the actuality we are afraid of,” Cicero had observed. Before Cleopatra stood after all only a man, about five feet seven, with tousled blond hair, benign in his expression, more comfortable in Latin than in Greek, six years her junior, sallow, stiff, and ill at ease.
Someone embroidered on the sources, and it is difficult to believe that was not Dio. His account is so cinematic as to be suspect, too purple even for a Hellenistic queen. On the other hand, had Cleopatra lacked a flair for drama, she would not have come this far. On the couch beside her she has laid out various busts and portraits of Caesar. At her breast she carries his loving letters. She greets Octavian as her master but at the same time wishes him to understand her earlier distinction. He should know in what esteem the divine Caesar, his father, her lover, held her. To that end she proceeds to read selections from the correspondence, limiting herself to the most ardent passages; Octavian was not the only one who knew how to excerpt a document. She is shy, sweet, subtle. They are related! Surely Octavian had heard of the many honors he had accorded her? She is a friend and ally of Rome; Caesar had crowned her himself! Throughout this performance “she would lament and kiss the letters, and again she would fall before his images and do them reverence.” As she does so, she repeatedly turns her eyes on Octavian, offering up melting looks, subtly attempting to swap one Caesar for another. She is seductive, eloquent, audacious—though naturally no match for Octavian’s Roman rectitude, which may have been Dio’s point. Octavian betrays no glimmer of emotion. He is immune to tender glances. He prided himself on the burning intensity of his gaze but on this occasion refuses to so much as make eye contact, preferring instead to study the floor. Nor will he make any commitment. He will speak—he was laconic to the point of awkwardness, and here probably did not dare wander far from his prepared remarks—neither of love nor of Egypt’s future nor of Cleopatra’s children. Dio focuses on Octavian’s dispassion but something else is noticeably absent from the interview: Cleopatra demands no credit for having yielded Pelusium, for having delivered up Antony’s fleet, or for having induced Antony to kill himself, presumably because there was none to be had. If she had held up her end of a prior bargain, she would surely have demanded her reward now. Finally she bursts into tears and throws herself at Octavian’s feet. She had, she sobbed, no wish to live. Nor could she continue to do so. In memory of his father, would Octavian not grant her a single favor? Could she not join Antony in death? “Grudge me not burial with him,” she begs, “in order that, as it is because of him I die, so I may dwell with him even in Hades.” Again she failed to move Octavian either to pity or a hint of a promise. He could only exhort her to be of good cheer, resolving all over again to sustain her hopes. He wanted her alive. She would brilliantly ornament his triumph.
Cleopatra is physically more disheveled, mentally more dignified in Plutarch’s version, not necessarily more accurate for having derived from Cleopatra’s doctor; everyone was a propagandist now. Gracefully, Octavian bids her to return to her pallet. He seats himself nearby. Cleopatra unfurls a ribbon of justifications similar to that she had unfurled in Tarsus, ascribing her actions “to necessity and fear of Antony.” When Octavian refutes her argument point by point, she changes tack, resorting to pity and prayers. Ultimately she begs for her life. She is desperate and
