We go to Athens with Octavia, who is now with child and will deliver within three months. I have presented to Antonius a pair of identical greyhounds, which he has raced and of which he has become inordinately fond. On the day that Octavia's child is born, I shall cause the dogs to disappear. You must write him within the next few weeks of a dream that you had about the twins.
The child that Octavia has delivered is a daughter; thus there is no potential heir to his name. The God of the Sun has bowed to our will and has heeded our demands.
He quarrels with Octavius; they are reconciled by Octavia, who takes the part of her husband against her brother. Antonius's suspicions of her are almost gone, and he seems grudgingly fond of her, though he is still made impatient by her quietness and calm. Does Epiktetas perform faithfully the spell, as you instructed him?
He has had a dream of being bound to a couch while his tent burned around him. The soldiers of his army walked past the burning tent, and did not heed his calls, as if they did not hear him. Finally he burst his bonds, but the fire was around him so fiercely that he could not see which way to turn to escape. He awoke in fear, and called for me.
I fasted for three days, and gave him the portents of the dream. I told him that the fire was the intrigue in Rome, heaped and kindled by Octavius Caesar. That he was in a tent, I said, revealed two things: his position (he has no secure and permanent place in the Roman world), and his nature (that he is a soldier). That he was bound to his couch, I said, signified that by his inactivity he had betrayed his nature and allowed himself to become weak and hence impotent to the intrigues against him and to the circumstance of fate. That his soldiers did not heed his calls revealed that by his betrayal of his nature, he had lost control of his men; that he is properly a man of action, not of words; that men would bend to his deeds, not his talk.
He has become thoughtful, and he studies maps. I say nothing to him, but I believe he is again considering taking up arms against the Parthians. For this, he will come to know that he needs your aid. Discreetly, let him know that it is at his disposal. Thus, you may draw him again to our cause, and insure the future glory of Egypt.
IV. Letter: Cleopatra to Marcus Antonius, from Alexandria (37 B. c.)
My dear Marcus, you must forgive my long silence, as I have forgiven yours. And you must forgive me, too, if I write you now as a woman, rather than as the Queen who is your faithful ally and whose strength is ever at your disposal. For I have been most gravely ill these last few months, and have not wished to cause you concern for my infirmities; indeed, I should not write you now, had not my frailty and my heart overcome my Queenhood.
Sleep is reluctant to cover my eyes; my strength is stolen by fevers that even the skills of my physician, Olympus, cannot allay; I take little food; and despair is like a serpent that creeps into the emptiness of my spirit.
Oh, Marcus, how weary all this must make you! Yet I know your kindness, and know that you will indulge the weakness of an old friend, who thinks of you often and remembers many things.
Perhaps it is that remembering, rather than the advice of Olympus, which has persuaded me to take the journey from Alexandria to Thebes. Olympus says that in the temple there, the Supreme God, Amen-Ra, will take away my illness and return my strength. You used to tease me about my regard for these Egyptian gods; perhaps you were right in that, as you were in so many things. For I almost refused him; and then I remembered (it seems so long ago) another spring, when you and I floated down the Nile and side by side lay on our couch and watched the fertile banks slip by and felt upon our bodies the cool river breeze; and the farmers and herdsmen knelt, and even the goats and cattle seemed to pause in obeisance to us, raising their heads to watch our passing. And Memphis, where they held the bullfights in our honor, and Hermopolis and Akhetaton, where we were God and Goddess, Osiris and Isis. And then the Thebes of the Hundred Gates, and the drowsy days and gay nights…
Remembering this, I felt the beginnings of strength return to me; and I told Olympus that I would make the journey and enter the temple of Amen-Ra. But if I am returned to health, it will be from the nourishment I take from these memories along the way, which I hold as dear as my life.
V. Letter: Marcus Antonius to Octavius Caesar (37 B. c.)
You have broken our treaty with Sextus Pompeius, a treaty to which I pledged my word; it is rumored that you intend war upon him, though you have not consulted me in the matter; you intrigue against my reputation, though I have done neither you nor your sister any harm; you seek to subvert from me the little strength I have in Italy, though I have given you, out of my loyalty, much of the power you now have; in short, you have repaid my loyalty with betrayal, my honor with your treachery, my generosity with your self-interest.
You may do what you want in Rome; I will no longer be concerned. When we agreed to extend the triumvirate earlier this year, I hoped that we might, at last, work together. We cannot.
I send your sister and her children to you. You may inform her upon her arrival that she is not to return to me. Though she is a good woman, I want no tie with your house. As for divorce, that I will leave entirely to your discretion. I know that you will decide that matter in terms of your own interest. I do not care.
I shall not dissemble with you; I have no need to; I fear neither you nor your intrigues.
I shall begin my Parthian campaign this spring, without the legions you promised and did not deliver to me. I have summoned Cleopatra to Antioch. She will supply the troops that I need.
If Rome is dying in the web that you weave around her, Egypt will thrive in the power that I will give her. I bequeath the corpse to you; for myself, I prefer the living body.
VI. Letter: Marcus Antonius to Cleopatra (37 B. c.)
Empress of the Nile, Queen of the Living Suns, and my beloved friend-take this letter from Fonteius Capito; I have asked him to deliver it into your hands alone. You may trust him as you have trusted me, and question him about all those matters upon which this letter does not touch. I am-as you have so often and wisely observed-a man of action, not of words.
Thus my words cannot tell you of the despair I felt when I learned you were ill, nor of the joy that overwhelmed sorrow when I learned that on the journey back from the Thebes that we both remember, your health was returning, like a bird returning home. You wonder how I know this? I must confess-I have had my benevolent spies in your midst, who, out of love for us both and out of respect for my deep solicitude, have kept me informed of your welfare. For despite the circumstances that have kept us apart, my concern for you has never wavered; and if sometimes I have not written, it is for the reason that such a reminder of our past happiness would give me a pain of loss I could not bear.
But as Fonteius will tell you, I have awakened as if from a dream. Oh, my little kitten, who are a Queen, do you know the bitter cost to me of our long separation? Of course you do-and I know you understand. I remember your telling me of your unhappiness when, as a young girl, for reasons of dynasty, your father would have wed you to your young brother so that you might have begotten children to continue the line of the Ptolemies. Yet your womanhood prevailed; and even as an Isis must become a woman, so must a Hercules become a man. It is too burdensome always to remain God and Goddess, King and Queen.
Will you let Fonteius bring you to Antioch, where I will be awaiting you? Even if your love for me has gone, I must see you again, so that I may see for myself that you are well. And there are matters of state that we may discuss, even if you are to refuse the matters of the heart. Come to me, if only out of respect for what we both must remember.
VII. The Memoirs of Marcus Agrippa: Fragments (13 B. c.)
After the battle of Philippi, the triumvir Antonius being occupied with his adventures in the Eastern world, it remained for Caesar Augustus to repair the harms of the civil wars, and to bring order into the Italy of Rome. He walked among the treasons of his colleague, Antonius, and did not falter; at Perusia, the armies under my command quieted the insurrection raised by Antonius's brother Lucius; and Caesar Augustus, in his mercy, spared his life, though his crime had been grave.
But of all the impediments that lay between Caesar Augustus and the order that was necessary for the salvation of Rome, the gravest was that raised by the traitor and pirate, Sextus Pompeius, who unlawfully governed the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and whose ships roamed the seas at will, plundering and destroying those merchant vessels that supplied the grain for Rome's survival. So serious were the depredations of Sextus Pompeius that the city came to be in danger of famine; and in their desperation and fear, the people rioted in the streets, to no end save to relieve themselves of a creeping despair. Caesar Augustus, in his pity for the people, offered Pompeius terms; for we had not the strength to meet him in battle. A treaty was signed, and for a period grain flowed back into Rome; and I was sent by Caesar Augustus to Transalpine Gaul as governor, where I was to organize the Gallic legions against the growing hostility of the barbarian tribes before returning to Rome the
