ОH, LOVE: two rulers of Rome and one Macedonian woman from Egypt

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Mayakovsky called poetry an «old but formidable weapon», yet there is a force even older and more formidable — sex. Of course, it is not limited to that: it is also a basic instinct, a wonderful hobby, a charming pastime, a rather dangerous game, a benefit for health, a giant business, and much more. But a weapon, without doubt, forbidden, condemned for such use, and at the same time widely practiced. I will now try to tell the story of a woman who wielded this weapon with virtuosity, holding off the onslaught of the most powerful empire of her time for quite a while.

WHO RULES EGYPT

aesar first arrived in Egypt while pursuing Pompey. That pursuit ended there, because those ruling Egypt at the time — the eunuch Pothinus and the general Achillas — decided that Pompey would never be able to withstand Caesar anyway, and that if they promised to receive Pompey with honors but stabbed him during the reception, Pompey could hardly be offended, and Caesar would even thank them.

Here they miscalculated: Caesar did not want the death of his former ally and the husband of his own daughter (it had been a very happy marriage, but she died young in childbirth), and in general, he consistently showed mercy to the defeated. For example, after quarreling with Caesar, Pompey loudly declared that all who were not his friends were his enemies, to which Caesar calmly replied that all who were not his enemies were his friends — with an entirely predictable result (I find myself recalling this very often nowadays). So Caesar left the Egyptians in anger and buried with honors Pompey’s head, presented to him as a gift by those idiots, Pothinus and Achillas.

Was it dangerous to quarrel with Egypt? Not particularly. The previous king, Ptolemy XII, after a futile war with his relatives over succession, appealed to Rome for help and, so that the Romans would not betray him, came up with a brilliant move — he borrowed such vast sums from them that his overthrow could have shaken even Roman finances. He bequeathed the throne to his children — a son and a daughter — after first marrying them to each other, which was customary for pharaohs, lest they risk marrying beneath their station. The ten-year-old son bore a predictable name, while the eighteen-year-old daughter was called Cleopatra, a name so common in that milieu that on the throne she was known as Cleopatra VII. And it is her story I will tell.

THE BEAUTY IN A BAG

Cleopatra had the reputation of being no ordinary young lady. Above all, she was extremely well educated. In languages she knew not only Greek and Egyptian, but also Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Median, Parthian, Ethiopian, and, if we are to believe Plutarch, she could even converse cheerfully with the Troglodytes in their own tongue.

Cleopatra also stood out for her brilliant eloquence, and even for her unusual skill with weapons (not very fitting for women, but allowed for princesses). And with the weapon we are speaking of? Yes, without a doubt — soon she would prove it. For the record, let us note that at the age of 14, she could not have failed to meet her father’s Roman envoy, a man named Mark Antony. I suspect he did not notice her then, but I am not so sure about the reverse…

Pothinus and Achillas tried to keep this extraordinary young woman away from politics, but their efforts failed. Cleopatra’s confidant Apollodorus, a man of great physical strength, managed to reach Caesar while pretending to be a palace servant and dropped a bed sack at his feet. Nowadays, such items are forgotten, and so in Bernard Shaw’s play Caesar and Cleopatra and in the famous film, it is replaced with a rolled-up carpet. But the meaning is the same — inside this bundle was Cleopatra!

Toward a woman who arrived in such a fashion, Caesar — already renowned throughout the world for his amorous escapades — simply could not fail to feel interest. True, he was 31 years older — Cleopatra had just turned 22 — but what a man! The ruler of Rome, an educated figure, high priest, invincible general, gifted writer whose prose is still eagerly read today — what more could one want? Their interest in one another was mutual and only grew stronger with time.

EGYPT — AND THEN ROME?

Caesar tried to settle matters peacefully, suggesting that the royal couple — brother and sister — be restored to the rule of Egypt. But Pothinus and Achillas were used to governing the country themselves — naturally, war broke out. Caesar fought in it as befits a man in love — brilliantly, even though the enemy’s forces outnumbered his many times over. The outcome was clear: the enemies were defeated, Pothinus and Achillas executed, and Cleopatra’s underage husband — also her brother — drowned in the Nile before reaching his fourteenth year. Thus, Cleopatra was a widow, but also the sole queen of Egypt.

True, not without Caesar’s involvement, she was at once married to yet another brother, this one still a small child — but that was the Egyptian custom. For Caesar, as you may guess, this marriage was no obstacle. Symbolically, it meant that Caesar had already agreed to leave Egypt to Cleopatra. But this was not enough for her — she wanted to reign over the vast Roman Empire itself as the wife of its sole master. She never received a firm refusal — not even when Caesar returned to Rome. She knew perfectly well that her old but formidable weapon had not merely wounded Caesar but had harpooned him, and he would not break free from that harpoon.

Soon after Caesar returned to Rome, a son was born to him in Egypt. In his mother’s family, sons were given no other names but Ptolemy, yet the whole people called him nothing but Caesarion. To us, this name seems honorable, but in truth, it was a rather rough nickname, which might best be translated as «Little Caesar». Not an insult, but more a badge of pride for the Alexandrian street crowd, that their queen had borne a son to the number one man in the world at that time.

But Cleopatra, like all women, wanted a stamp in her passport (or in whatever passed for a passport with the queen of Egypt), and at the first opportunity she set out for Rome with her son to have him legitimized and to become Caesar’s official wife. The old and formidable weapon she wielded so masterfully told her that this was possible.

Her arrival in Rome played into the hands of Caesar’s political enemies, who accused him of trying to make himself king in Rome (rex, of course, since the word «tsar» would arise centuries later from Caesar’s own name). Caesar, naturally, observed the proprieties: when a diadem was offered to him in the circus (by none other than Mark Antony), he ostentatiously rejected it before the crowd. Still, rumors swept through Rome that Caesar would soon marry Cleopatra (he already had a Roman wife, Calpurnia — so what?), move the capital to Alexandria, seize absolute power that in truth he already possessed, and declare Caesarion his heir.

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HOW TO WIN ANTONY’S FAVOR

The Ides of March changed everything — Caesar was stabbed to death in the Senate, his will made no mention of Caesarion, and Cleopatra fled back to Egypt, hoping at least to hold on to him. Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius, lost the civil war to Caesar’s avengers, Octavian and Mark Antony (yes, that very one), and Mark Antony summoned Cleopatra to answer for the fact that her subjects had aided Brutus and Cassius (they were forced, but what difference did it make?). There was a real chance Cleopatra could be left without her throne, or even without her head. Militarily, she had almost nothing, but she still had one weapon left — that same old and formidable one.

The condition for victory is good intelligence. Cleopatra learned that Antony had poor taste, was boastful, coarse, loved wild pomp and luxury, tended toward crude jokes beyond the bounds of propriety, was emotional, trusting, and weak when it came to women. For such a man, she prepared her first meeting — aboard a ship with purple sails, silver-plated oars, and a gilded stern, dressed as Aphrodite (there were also clothed statues of the Cyprian goddess), with boys costumed as cupids at her side, while her maidservants, dressed as nymphs, rowed the ship.

Of course, she risked Antony falling into an unstoppable fit of hiccups at the sight and having her executed for regicide, but she somehow escaped that fate, and in all else, Antony was smitten. Cleopatra’s status instantly shifted from that of a suspect subject to a friend, ally, and lover (I suspect even before negotiations were over).

Once in Alexandria, the infatuated pair began to revel with such abandon that even the world-weary locals stared in shock. Cleopatra drank like a horse, cursed like a coachman, quarreled with Antony, and did not shy away from slapping him — well aware that he could kill her with a snap of his fingers, but knowing that if he hadn’t yet, he never would.

Some of their antics would have belonged only in the crudest of shows — for example, Cleopatra’s bet with Antony that she could consume a dinner worth ten million sesterces. She won it by dissolving an enormous pearl in vinegar and drinking the resulting solution. It’s doubtful (for a pearl to dissolve in a reasonable time, the vinegar would have had to be so strong that even Cleopatra couldn’t have drunk it), but legends are not born without reason.

DEFEAT AND DEATH

All this was intolerable to Octavian, and the fact that Antony returned to Rome, married his sister Octavia, and then abandoned her the moment Cleopatra crooked her finger, buried any chance of compromise. Octavian responded by declaring war on Cleopatra — he didn’t even bother to declare it on Antony. The decisive battle of this war was the naval clash at Actium. Cleopatra counted on victory — in her love battle with Antony, her old but formidable weapon had crushed all resistance, so who could withstand her now? She convinced herself that any weapon was within her power and assumed personal command of the Egyptian fleet.

But in the middle of the battle, when it was still completely unclear who would prevail, she suddenly decided all was lost, and at her command, the entire Egyptian fleet fled. Antony, with a few ships, rushed after her, and his fleet, panicked by the flight of their commanders, lost all will to fight. Soon, his ships were either captured or sunk. Learning of the naval defeat, Antony’s land forces also capitulated. It was over.

Once back in Alexandria, the only thing they did was form a «Suicide Pact» for those who intended to die with them. It seems that from gluttony and drunkenness — for about ten months, they did little else — until Octavian approached Alexandria. A last offer was sent to him — to leave Cleopatra only Egypt, and to allow Antony to withdraw from political life. Octavian responded with a firm «no», and secretly promised Cleopatra leniency if she herself would do away with Antony.

The queen gave no reply. Was she thinking it over? Perhaps that was why she sent Antony word that she had killed herself, hoping he would do the same, after which she could tell Octavian the deed was done. Everything unfolded according to this plan — Antony fell on his own sword. And then it became clear that Cleopatra’s old but formidable weapon was double-edged and no less dangerous for her. She begged that the wounded Antony be brought to her at any cost, and they managed to deliver him before his death — the lovers said farewell, and Antony died in Cleopatra’s arms.

SHE MANAGED TO DIE BEAUTIFULLY

At Antony’s funeral, Cleopatra walked at the head of the procession — according to a contemporary, «like a tragic and pitiful shadow». Her last hope was that same weapon, old and formidable. But it did not work on Octavian — after all, she was thirty-eight, with a son by Caesar, three children by Antony, and obvious difficulties with her physical charms. Octavian promised to show her all possible mercy — but nothing more.

And then, a Roman named Cornelius Dolabella, who had suddenly fallen in love with her, let slip that in three days she would be taken to Rome, where during Octavian’s triumph she would be paraded in chains behind his chariot. She neither wanted nor could bear to live to see that — she was found in her chamber together with her two most loyal maids. All, of course, were dead. On Cleopatra’s body were the marks of a faint bite; not long before, a basket of figs had been brought to her, and in theory a snake could have been hidden inside it — but then, who bit the maids? In any case, however painful it may have been…

Cleopatra’s son by Caesar was executed by Octavian — he had no need of such a man’s heir as a rival. Her children by Antony were given to his sister (the same one, Antony’s former widow) to be raised; little is known about them. As for the queen of Egypt, she was buried in her tomb, completed at Octavian’s expense, but not beside Antony, as she had asked in her farewell letter. Now her wishes no longer mattered — her greatest weapon had died with her. It was almost impossible to pass it on as an inheritance, and that is why many do not believe in its existence — until it is used against them. Perhaps it is not a weapon at all? But then, what is it?

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