has announced publicly that Caesarion (known to be the child of his one-time friend, Julius Caesar) is heir to the throne of Cleopatra, and that the twins that the Queen has borne are to be considered his legitimate offspring. He has, moreover, increased the extent of Egypt's possessions many-fold; the Queen now has under her authority all of Arabia, including Petra and the Sinai Peninsula; that part of Jordan which lies between the Dead Sea and Jericho; parts of Galilee and Samaria; the whole of the Phoenician coast; the richest parts of Lebanon, Syria, and Cilicia; the whole of the Island of Cyprus, and a part of Crete. Thus I, who was once a Syrian Roman, might now consider myself a Syrian Egyptian; but I am neither. Like you, my old friend, I am a scholar, who would be a philosopher; and I am no more Roman or Egyptian than was our Aristotle a Greek, who never lost his love and pride for his native Ionia. I shall emulate that greatest of all men, and remain content to be a Damascene.
Yet as you yourself have so often said, the world of affairs is an extraordinarily interesting one; and perhaps neither of us, even in the arrogance of our youth, ought to have so removed ourselves from it in our studies. The way to knowledge is a long journey, and the goal is distant; and one must visit many places along the way, if he is to know that goal when he arrives at it.
Though I have seen her at a distance, I have not yet had an audience with the Queen by whom I am employed. Marcus Antonius is everywhere-jovial, familiar, and not at all forbidding. He is a little like a child, I think- though his hair is graying, and he is getting a bit fat.
I think I shall again be happy in Alexandria, as I was during our student days.
As I believe I mentioned in my last letter to you, I had seen the Queen only at a distance-at the wedding ceremony which united her to Marcus Antonius and the power of Rome, a ceremony which only those attached to the Royal household were allowed to attend.
The palace at Antioch is not so imposing as that in Alexandria, but it is grand enough; and at the wedding, I was crowded to the rear of the long hall, from which vantage I could make out very little, though an ebony dais had been raised, upon which Cleopatra and Antonius stood. All I could see of the Queen was her jeweled gown, which sparkled in the torchlight, and the great disk of gold representing the sun, which was set above her crown of state. She moved in a slow and grave manner, as if she were indeed the goddess that her title proclaims her to be. It was an extraordinarily elaborate ceremony (though described by some of my new friends as really rather simple), the significance of which I do not understand; priests marched about and chanted various incantations in that ancient form of the language which only they can speak; anointings with various oils were made; wands were waved. It was all very mystifying and (I must confess I thought) rather uncivilized, almost barbaric.
And so I went to my first audience with the Queen with an odd feeling, as if I were going into the presence of some Medea or Circe, neither quite goddess nor quite woman, but something more unnatural than either.
My dear Strabo, I cannot tell you how fortunately I was surprised, and how happy I was at my surprise. I expected to encounter a swarthy and rather hefty woman, such as one sees in the market place; I met a slender woman of fair skin and soft brown hair, with enormous eyes, who had poise and dignity and an extraordinary charm, who put me at ease at once and bade me sit near her on a couch no less luxurious than her own, as if I were a guest in a simple and friendly household. And we spoke at length upon those ordinary topics which constitute any civilized conversation. She laughs easily and quietly, and seems totally attentive to her audience. Her Greek is impeccable; her Latin is at least as good as mine; and she speaks casually to her servants in a dialect I cannot understand. She is widely and intelligently read-she even shares my admiration for our Aristotle, and assures me that she knows my own work upon his philosophy, and that her understanding has been enhanced by that knowledge.
I am not, as you know, a vain man; and even if I were, I believe my vanity would have been overwhelmed by my gratitude and my admiration for this most extraordinary of women. That one so charming could also rule one of the richest lands in the world is almost beyond belief.
I have been back in Alexandria for three weeks now, and I have begun my duties; Marcus Antonius and the Queen remain in Antioch, where Antonius is making preparations for his march, later in the year, against the Parthians. My duties are not heavy; I have as many slaves as I need for the management of the Queen's library, and the children take up little of my time.
The twins-Alexander of the Sun and Cleopatra of the Moon -are only a few months more than three years old, and therefore not capable of taking any instruction; but I have been directed to speak to them each day, for a few moments at least, in Greek and (at the Queen's insistence) even in Latin, so that when they grow older the sounds of the language will not be unfamiliar to their ears.
But Ptolemy Caesar-called Caesarion by the people-who is almost twelve years old, is another matter. I believe I would have guessed that he might be the son of the great Julius Caesar, even had I not known it. He recognizes his destiny, and he is prepared for it; he swears that he remembers his father from his mother's residence in Rome, just before the assassination- though he could hardly have been four years old at the time of that event. He is serious, utterly without humor, and oddly intent on whatever he does. It is as if he never had a childhood, and did not want one; he speaks of the Queen as if she were not his mother at all, but only the powerful sovereign that she is; and he awaits the day of his assumption of the Queen's throne, not impatiently, but with the same certainty that he waits the morning sunrise. He would frighten me a little, I believe, if he were to hold the vast power that his mother now has.
But he is a good student, and it is a pleasure to teach him.
For those who put stock in such things, it has been an ominous winter-almost no rainfall, so that the crops will be sparse this year; and a series of cyclones has swept across the lands of Syria and Egypt from the east, laying waste whole villages before spending themselves in the sea. And Antonius has marched from Antioch against the Parthians with what is said to be the greatest expeditionary army since the time of the Macedonian, Alexander the Great (whose blood, it is said, flows in the veins of Cleopatra)-more than sixty thousand seasoned veterans, ten thousand troops of horse from Gaul and Spain, and thirty thousand auxiliary forces recruited from the kingdoms of the Eastern provinces to support the regulars. My young Caesarion, with the innocent ruthlessness of youth (he has recently become interested in the art of warfare), has said that such an army is wasted against the Eastern barbarians; were he king, he says- as if war were truly the game that it seems to him now-he would turn the army toward the west where there is more than plunder to be gained.
The Queen has returned from Antioch, by way of Damascus, and will remain in Alexandria until Antonius concludes his campaign against the Parthians. Knowing that Damascus was my birthplace, she was kind enough to call me into her chambers and give me the news. It is extraordinary how thoughtful and human the great can be. For in Damascus, she had a meeting with King Herod on some business regarding the rents from some balsam fields; and remembering an earlier conversation with me, she inquired after the health of my father, and asked Herod to have conveyed to him greetings from his son and from the Queen.
I have not heard from him since those greetings were conveyed, but I am sure he is pleased. He is growing old, and is becoming feeble in his age. I suspect that at such a time one looks back upon one's life and wonders at its worth, and needs the kindness of some assurance.
II. Letter: Marcus Antonius to Cleopatra, from Armenia
(November, 36 B. c.)
My dear wife, I now thank my Roman gods and your Egyptian ones that I did not succumb to my own desires and to your determination, and allow you to accompany me on this campaign. It has been even more difficult than I anticipated; and it is clear that what I had hoped would be concluded this fall will now have to wait until spring.
The Parthians have proved to be a wily and resourceful foe, and they have made more intelligent use of their terrain than I might have foreseen. The maps made by Crassus and Ventidius on their campaigns here have proved worse than useless; treasons among some of the provincial legions have harmed our cause; and this abominable countryside does not furnish sufficient food to keep my legions in health through the winter.
Thus I have withdrawn from my siege of Phraaspa, where we could not have endured the cold; and for twenty-seven days we have made our way across the country, nearly all the way from the Caspian Sea, and now rest in the comparative safety of Armenia, though we are tired, and illness pervades the camp.
Yet all in all, the campaign has, I believe, been a successful one, though I fear that many of my weary soldiers would not agree with me. I know the Parthian tricks now; and we have mapped the territory with sufficient accuracy to serve us next year. I have sent to Rome the news of our victory.
But you must understand that, despite the tactical success of the campaign, I am now in most desperate straits. We cannot stay in Armenia; I do not fully trust my host, King Artavasdes, who deserted me at a crucial
