looked over the city and saw war and pestilence again. My heart ached as with the pain of seeing a boat carry a loved one into the wastes of the grey seas.
NINE
It is time now to speak of Cleopatra, and I find it hard to do so. It would be as easy to speak of snakes.
When I wrote to Antony, rebuking him for resuming his affair with her in breach of his promise to me at the Treaty of Brindisi, he replied with something of his old jocular insincerity. This is what he wrote: What on earth has come over you? What if I am sleeping with the Queen? She's my woman. Besides, it's nothing new. The thing started years ago, as you know, nine or ten I daresay. What about you? You're not really faithful to Livia, are you? I bet you're not. My congratulations – or commiserations – if between the time I write this and the time you get it, you haven't been to bed with Tertullia or Terentia or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia – or the whole bloody shooting- match. For heaven's sake, I ask you of all people, does it matter a legionary's oath (and we know what that's worth, don't we?) who or what, with, or where, or when, or how often you do it? Sex, dear boy, can be over- rated, take it from me… Such a defence was hardly defence at all. But that he should write in such terms to his wife's brother shows his state of mind. That was the effect Cleopatra had.
She had seduced my father when she was hardly more than a child. He refused to see her when he occupied Egypt because his plans for the kingdom did not include the Ptolemy family. So she had herself delivered to him wrapped up in a carpet. It was unfolded in his presence and all her charms were exposed, because, not unnaturally, though with some art, her scanty costume was agreeably disarranged, and she lay there giggling before him, mischievous as a kitten. (He called her 'kitten'.) Well, you may say – and you would be right – that it was about as difficult to seduce Julius Caesar as it is to eat the first strawberries of the season. Nevertheless, mark the sequel. She not only popped into his bed quicker than boiled asparagus; he popped her on to the throne of Egypt, having her brother (with whom she should have shared the kingdom) disposed of, at her request. What sort of a girl was it who at fourteen would sacrifice her brother for the sake of power? I find that much more remarkable than her ability to fascinate my father.
It wasn't her beauty. Oh, she was pretty, very pretty, as a young girl; small, sinuous, active, with dancing eyes and mobile features, and a voice that always seemed to be choking back a laugh. They talked Greek of course – you do know that the Egyptian royal family are Greeks, and no more Egyptian than, well, your father Marcus Agrippa, don't you? Her Greek was quaint and provincial – Alexandrian Greeks swallow up consonants and run their words together so that their conversation sounds like the chattering of sparrows under the eaves. She made a great many grammatical mistakes. As you know correct Greek prescribes that neuter plural subjects take singular verbs; Cleopatra ignored this. Of course only a pedant concerns himself with grammatical niceties, and it is quite gentlemanly to make the occasional error. Still, our Roman ladies take pride in speaking correct Latin. Cleopatra didn't care; she disregarded the subjunctive whenever she felt like it, for instance. She never troubled herself, by the way, to learn even a little Latin, for there is no doubt that from the start, despite her affairs with my father and Antony, her hatred and resentment of Rome ran deep.
Nothing could have been more deliberate than her assault on Antony. Its blatancy surpassed even her first meeting with Julius, which could be explained as a sort of childish prank and had certainly a childish charm. (As he said himself, 'Well, the last thing you expect from a carpet is to unroll a gorgeous piece of that sort of muslin.') I have already quoted to you one version of that encounter. Whose was it? Salvidienus's, I think. It was, I suppose, accurate enough. The arrival in the barge made an enormous impression and curiously most versions which I have heard agree. Certainly nobody who saw it forgot. Cleopatra was not really beautiful – her legs were too short for one thing (Livia always used to point that out, and add that, according to her information, she had very thick ankles too). But she was quite amazingly made up; her appearance when she set out to captivate Antony represented a superb triumph of art, if not of nature. Everyone agrees on that. What is often ignored is the extraordinary vulgarity of the spectacle. I admire the theatre myself, and I recognize that theatre is an indispensable part of politics too; but private life should eschew theatre, and, anyway, there should be a measure in all things. I really find it impossible to distinguish between Cleopatra's vulgar exhibitionism and the sort of disgusting spectacle put on for tourists in the red light district of Corinth; the only difference I can discern is that her show cost more. Morally, it was just the same sort of whore-display.
Antony succumbed of course, for his own taste was ever deficient. He couldn't see how essentially comical the spectacle was – all the more comical because Cleopatra's very real intelligence allowed for a degree of self- parody. She was playing a part. She knew it. And she enjoyed it. She was the kind of woman who cannot help despising the men she deceives and, from that first meeting, she always retained a certain contempt for Antony. She had not despised Julius because she saw that he approached sex in the same spirit of irony as she did herself. Besides, she was then a child; he was the greatest man in the world; it is possible that even Cleopatra was dazzled by him. She did not love him, for that was not her nature. She was incapable of the dependency without which real love is impossible; she could not lose anything of herself in another.
Antony was a different matter. True, at first he preserved some detachment. When he told me at Brindisi that it was politics – 'politics and sex, boy – she's a great lay, the Queen' – I believe he was speaking the truth. He was overwhelmed in the first days, but his intelligence and will reasserted themselves. The proof of that is that he was able for three years to abide by the agreement we made; in that time he never once saw Cleopatra alone.
She didn't resent this. Why should she? She was vain (she would spend three hours a day before her looking-glass) and self-absorbed; but she was without that peculiarly feminine emotional vanity which demands a man's total surrender and is piqued when it is refused. You may find this surprising, but I believe it to be true. Their first affair had achieved her purpose. She had guaranteed her continued control of Egypt; she had placed Antony in her debt. Power was her chief interest, not love.
Yet Antony never quite escaped her. I have talked of this with Octavia. She said, 'Of course I never truly loved Antony. I married him because you asked me to. I could not love him, for I could not respect him. I admired much. Who could fail to? I responded to the grandeur of his gestures. I came close, I confess, to loving the little boy in him; that is something which women find appealing in a man till one day, quite unexpectedly, it revolts us. He was kind to me, and considerate, and gentle; he made love with unexpected gentleness and took pleasure in doing what pleased me. Yet I knew all the time that I never possessed his heart. There was a part in him that always lusted after Cleopatra. Of course, there was another part that was grateful to me for protecting him from the Queen, for I am quite clear that deep down he feared her. What was it he said? 'No Roman can stand without Rome.' He knew that Cleopatra would lure him to disaster. He knew too that there was something in himself that welcomed that prospect. He feared it. He could never quite deny it. You see, Antony was far more complicated than people realized. They saw the bluff soldier; that was no more than a part of him, perhaps no more than a facade.'
But I never denied Antony's complicated nature. I had after all good reason to know it.
When Antony turned away from Octavia and turned his face back to the East and let his eyes dwell on the Queen, he surrendered to all that was self-destructive in his nature.
They used to drink heavily together. Stories of their drinking bouts are legion. They would tope through the night and then stagger into the morning street where Antony would pick fights with costermongers and the keepers of fried-fish stalls, and Cleopatra would hold his coat while he exchanged blows with them. At other times they lay for days downing flask after flask as they sprawled on cushions and rose-petals and slaves wafted branches of palm trees over them. Reports came to us in Rome of Antony's effeminacy: how he had put on women's clothes and tended Cleopatra's toilet. Of course I didn't believe such stories; yet the fact that they were so freely relayed was not only disquieting (and politically dangerous); it showed how Antony had fallen away from the old Roman standards. 'No smoke without fire,' men said.
Cleopatra would emerge from these debauches, bright-eyed and keen-witted. 'If all that's said is truth,' Agrippa grumbled, 'that Queen must have a liver like a senior centurion's.' Antony however was said to be prostrated with nausea after their sessions, sometimes taking as many as four or five days to recover. No doubt it was, as Agrippa said, largely a question of their different livers. Yet I knew there was more to it. Abstemious myself – you have never seen me drink wine without adding water to it; a practice I have adhered to since my late twenties – I have yet made close observation of those addicted to wine. It always represents some degree of
