Alexandria: The Last Night of Cleopatra Read online

  These days of returning to childhood passions and student studies have been peculiar in many ways. I am both a better and worse classicist than I once was. Like so many others who have learnt Latin and Greek, I read as a child what I barely understood and have understood as an adult what I barely now can read. I had only a few answers for Duke back then. I have a few more now.

  Lucius Munatius Plancus was, as James Holladay said and V could see, one of those men who live and strive just below the surface of politics. Although he does not appear in Shakespeare’s plays or on screen alongside Elizabeth Taylor, he is a serious figure in Rome’s history books. For example, while Antony was at Tarsus waiting for Cleopatra’s barges, Plancus was in Italy arranging the land that Antony had promised to his veterans. This was much the more difficult of the two challenges. Not everyone can be part of the love story. Some do not even like the love story. Duke certainly did not.

  In the summer of 41 BC there was a brief, brutal war between Antony and Octavian, Caesar’s two heirs still nominally in alliance. No commander knew what to do, whether and where to win or how much to win by. Plancus played a typical part, as victor in an unintended battle, advancing, retreating, halting, waiting and then retreating again – before Octavian took decisive action and the most devastating revenge on those nearest to him at the time.

  A full civil war was looming – with one side backed by the wealth of Egypt. Timing was critical for both sides. Antony had a chance to deploy his bigger navy against Octavian but, with Plancus as his counsellor, chose instead uneasy peace. Both men had a mass of unfinished business. Antony promoted Plancus to command the rear of his coming eastern campaign against the Persians.

  In Italy the civil war was by propaganda. Octavian branded Antony as the plaything of a royal whore, a debauchee and a drunk. Antony claimed Julius Caesar’s military mantle and argued that there was honour in being a drunk. Octavian’s brutality began to outweigh the popularity of his land grants. Antony’s eastern ambitions fell close to collapse. Both sides struggled to match words with reality.

  Occasionally there was better news for Antony from the East. After one small success, Antony began some boundary reorganisation of the empire in favour of Egypt, moving new peoples and countries under Alexandrian control. When I told the Big Oil men about Cleopatra’s modest bitumen business on the fringes of Arabia, that was one of her gains at this time, territory given to her as a down payment in anticipation of much bigger things to come.

  Antony soon found that he had no choice but to fight Octavian directly for the right to rule Rome. The great Antonians, Plancus and Canidius to the fore, headed fast for Alexandria where Cleopatra generously rewarded her Roman allies. The Ptolemies had always known the power of bribes. Some of Antony’s officers hated everything about her but her money. Some were not bribed enough – or smelt arrogance and the possibility of defeat. But most could be paid and swayed – by cash and by parties, routs and revels.

  Cleopatra and Antony were lovers, sexual partners, partners in politics. No one can know which partnership was the most important. Some have been honest enough not to ask or answer that question. At massive coronation ceremonies, they promoted their children, and the boy they called Caesar’s child too. Lands and titles flowed to Ptolemy Caesarion, and to their young twins, Alexander the Sun and Cleopatra the Moon. These were rewards which, like the bitumen business, would be followed after victory by much more.

  Both sides were readying rapidly. Octavian’s admiral, Agrippa, captured bases along the western coast of Greece. The sea belonged to Octavian. Suddenly, characteristically and critically, Plancus changed sides and divorced himself from Antony. He sensed that he was on the wrong side.

  Canidius Crassus had his ginestho, his promise of eternal financial security from the Ptolemies. Confident in Antony’s army too, he stayed loyal. Antony and Cleopatra began a tour of Greece and Asia to raise further funds and forces. More would be needed than even the wealth of Egypt could supply.

  Over the twelve months of our occasional conversations in 1979 Duke lost his battle. He wanted the right to run the printing plants on behalf of the owners, to use modern computers instead of machinery of the medieval guilds, to decide who worked and what they were paid, to ensure that the papers were printed each night without stoppages, strikes and sudden demands for more pay. The unions were determined not to lose what they saw as ancestral rights to their own money and mercenary power.

  The conflict seems like ancient history now – with causes barely recognisable to journalists today, whose worries are elsewhere. At the time it was like an ancient siege, a contest over which side could best endure the hardships of not working. Both sides bluffed and counterbluffed. Both sides threatened and blustered. But the unions in the end could endure the longer. All newspaper owners had bribed their printers for decades – and had no strength to manage without them.

  There was the business question of whether any Times or Sunday Times readers would be left if the fight lasted too long. But there was a battle of political will too. The owners were the ones who lost heart. We returned to work in conditions hardly different from those we had left. We were still using typewriters rather than computers although, for me, any keyboard was a technological advance.

  The Cleopatra project progressed well during the war but failed with the demands of a phoney peace. I moved with Harold Evans, from The Sunday Times to The Times. The present became more consuming than the past. Margaret Thatcher squeezed out Cleopatra, as Lew had hoped she would. The Times itself was turbulent. Duke’s hopes and the unions’ fears were merely postponed. Coming very soon was the last year in which newspapers would be made with molten lead on museum-grade machinery. Rising soon, on the other side of the City, past Tower Bridge towards what were still then the old Docklands, a new print works was being built, one which would be revolutionary until the next revolution – that of Web and wireless – overtook us in turn.

  In the Calthorpe, the Blue Lion, the Pakenham and the Apple Tree no one knew how soon the change would come. But beside the Thames, barely more than a mile away, it was already beginning to happen. Every news editor, sub-editor and reporter already had a desk planned for him or for her, in ‘work-stations’ linked by computers, in an office that no one had seen and most did not know even existed.

  Duke was by then not controlling the company any longer. As soon as his campaign had failed, his authority became more honorary than real. Among his gentler responsibilities was a party to boost morale, a bicentenary ball for The Times, a celebration which he called a Rout, a name from the Georgian royal court that seemed to him to strike the right tone. Not everyone agreed with him – either about the name or about whether we should have a ball of any name or kind.

  ‘A Rout’, said the Literary Editor to the Labour Editor, reading from a dictionary: ‘a large evening party or fashionable gathering much in vogue in the eighteenth century; a company of rioters; an assembly of persons leading to an unlawful act; a disorderly retreat of defeated troops.’ There was consensus in favour of the fourth definition, or possibly the third.

  This was a year when no one could manage anyone except by force, when printers, miners and politicians combined to cry havoc, when there were Irish assassinations, a freezing winter when sterling stood at all-time lows as though in sympathy with the thermometer. And this was the year when Duke brought in acrobats, tumblers, royal processions, fancy dress, commemorative champagne, escapologists of every variety, all for the great Rout of Hampton Court, all in the great Alexandrian tradition of partying problems away.

  Mahmoud came back an hour later than he had promised. He sat down with his back to the sea insisting that I should enjoy what remained of the view. He seemed in good spirits. He was going away for a few days, to Athens, the only city to which Alexandria was connected by direct flights. Did I want to go with him? Had Cleopatra ever visited Athens? Would it be pleasant to continue the story somewhere else?

  Yes, I said. Cleopatr
a had visited Athens. She was a minor goddess there. He smiled. The Ptolemies had their own temple in Athena’s city. Four hundred years after its prime it was still wealthy, still looking to become powerful again. As the last battle loomed of Rome’s civil wars, the Athenians, like everyone else, were keen to identify the winner. I could hear myself sounding like a bore and he looked suddenly very bored.

  But, no. I did not want to leave Alexandria. I had promised myself that I would not leave till my book was finished or, at least, certain to be finished. I knew Athens well and I could readily imagine Cleopatra there if that was what I wanted to do. I was not sure that it was.

  He began objecting. Surely it would be easier to write in Athens about Cleopatra in Athens? Was not that just what I liked to do? He frowned. He looked down to where I had been sitting in the gardens. A wind was rippling though King Farouk’s collection of trees. By the shore there were reeds swaying and there was a line of men in brown suits, standing straight and gently swaying too.

  Mahmoud turned sullen. He pressed me again. He looked out at the men in brown. I asked what he was anxious about. Nothing at all, he snapped. Oddly shocked, I thought, that I would not join him on his Athenian trip, he ordered little and ate less.

  After half an hour a car arrived, with two men inside, one in the front passenger seat the other in the back. The first left the car and stood with his face towards the palace gardens, waiting for Mahmoud to join him, to take the spare place in the back and be driven away.

  16.1.11

  Place Saad Zaghloul

  I have slept for most of today in Room 114. Mahmoud was right. I do need to see the world of 32 BC as Cleopatra saw it. I do want to think what she was thinking. It takes concentration and quiet to come close to another’s mind. There is never complete quiet in the Place Saad Zaghloul but tonight I do not need to sleep.

  So, yes, I will try to see Cleopatra in Athens, the city where once upon a time (precise dates do not help) she came down Singrou Street (let me choose that street, any street) looking for men and money. This was a route that has always been there, the way to and from the sea, the straight line to the open port. I have often stayed there. It is one of the most easily imagined lines in the city, easy to imagine Cleopatra surveying her prospects there.

  Nine years have passed since Tarsus, the seduction of Antony on her barge (not so hard) and their political alliance (always a little harder). Much is well. At home her throne is secure. There have been no more pretenders. Antony has given her Cyprus, Armenia, Parthia, Syria, Cilicia and Libya. Her children have new crowns. The Egyptian crowds had new achievements to cheer. Antony is a popular ally. The Alexandrians like his boyish fondness for fishing trips, fancy food, masqued balls and pranks. Her lover wears the two theatrical masks of the Greeks, the Comic in Alexandria and the Tragic in Rome. Long may that continue.

  Her sister, Arsinoe, is long dead, almost forgotten now. Antony ordered her to be strangled. After Tarsus it was almost the first order that he gave. In Ephesus no one seemed to have missed Arsinoe. Or no one said so while Cleopatra and Antony could hear. They were both royally welcomed in that great Greek city of Amazon heroines carved in stone, of lion-hunting children, of massive eyeless masks above the theatrical arches.

  In Italy there have been a few troubles. Antony’s official Roman wife – ‘the cunt’ as the soldiers jovially used to call her – waged her own war on Octavian, courageous in its way but irritating rather than even wounding him. And then this would-be Amazon died, mourned by her soldiers but leaving an empty place at Rome, an opportunity for Antony to marry Octavian’s sister. This was a common enough form of peace-pact, a very temporary pact in this case. Antony did not want Octavia for any other reason. To Cleopatra the marriage was inconvenient, socially awkward among Athenians who for some reason rather liked Octavia, even upsetting on some nights, but not important.

  Only the Queen of Egypt has Antony’s twins, Sun and Moon, new arrivals soon after Tarsus, child monarchs now in their own right. They are both her retort to Rome and her recompense for entering the Roman world. Antony was generous to Octavia (he is a practical man) but he left her as soon as leaving her was necessary. He came home to Alexandria and married Cleopatra under Egyptian rites, the only rites that mattered.

  Celebrations after that were incessant – also essential. The people needed a distraction. Further east Antony was neither so decisive nor successful. His war against the Persians failed badly. Great propaganda skills were needed to ensure that his failure was not total. He was defeated by heat, cold and traitors. But, according to Roman oracles, only a king could ever defeat the Persians. Antony might yet be a king in Rome as Julius Caesar might have been. There would be time for many foreign victories once Octavian was dead. Meanwhile there were enough prisoners of war for the theatre directors of Alexandria to confect a magnificent triumph.

  Plancus is no longer her friend. Antony’s sometime second-in-command is not even her ally. He has defected to the other side. She should not be upset. He could not change his character, only his mind. His faithlessness proved as fixed as the stars. Plancus is in Rome as Octavian’s man now, spreading malice about the madness of Alexandria to anyone who cares to hear. The drunken parties that he so enjoyed are suddenly the poison that he had to drink, the debauches he was forced to endure.

  Plancus left her because he thought that the young Octavian, backed by impressionable allies, would defeat Antony, backed by Cleopatra and the treasure of Egypt. Worse, Plancus thought that Cleopatra’s backing was not an advantage for Antony at all, that instead she was a personal distraction, a barbarian temptress, a prime target for Roman propagandists. The war that Octavian has just declared is against Egypt, against Cleopatra, not against Antony, his fellow citizen, former brother-in-law and friend. Officially, she is the sole enemy now.

  Yet is it not a gain for her to be without Plancus? For a decade he read almost every letter that Antony ever sent. He was closer to both of them than any man. Better by far the enemy without than the enemy within. Plancus always wanted to be better than he was. There were so many men like that. In leaving her he was at least, for the first time in his life, a leader not a follower. He jumped without being pushed. The Roman who slithered among the mermaids of her court, who played judge when she melted pearls into wine, changed sides without even waiting to join a crowd. At last he was what he wanted to be.

  How many others might follow? How many towns and cities too? It is hard to say. Cleopatra knows her Romans better than she knows her realms. The boundaries of the Ptolemies encompass places where no Ptolemy has ever been. There is that pretty, pear-shaped port on the western end of Crete, closest to Italy, whose people used to send her ancestors bulls made of clay, their horns gilded as though by apprentice butchers or master-makers of toys.

  Every year the Kydonians sacrifice these replicas of the real animals that the grander gods of Egypt demand. In Kydonia there are deep tombs where mourners stare year after year at the sealed dead of their kings, where magicians are wreathed in golden snakes, where women twist their hair with dazzling blue stones and combs from the bones of river monsters, ornaments as old as the oldest Egyptians, or so the magicians say.

  Kydonia is not quite her domain. She is realist enough to know when she can freely enter a town and when she cannot, even a town that she has never seen. Have the Kydonians of Crete truly turned their back on their Ptolemaic past? Have they really chosen Octavian as their Roman ruler? It is hard to know. Cretans are easily overexcited. From the bottom of their cups stare big eyes warning the drinker not to take too much. Like some at her own banquets, sometimes even the perfect Antony himself, they do not take proper heed.

  And anyway, all Cretans are liars. So one of their philosophers once said, presumably excluding himself since otherwise there would be all sorts of logical problems, the kind with which librarians tired her mind. Is there any sure answer to anything? Maybe merely most Cretans are liars. Plancus too is a liar. Both Plancus and
the Kydonians will pay appropriately when the coming war is over.

  Canidius is still her ally, a privileged Egyptian landowner now, the type of man on whom a monarch can rely. When Antony’s officers were arguing about tactics, Canidius said that Plancus was wrong about her impact on the war. To Canidius she was not just a financial necessity; she was a political necessity too. The coming war would be fought in Greece. The Romans regularly fought their civil wars in Greece. Antony’s Greek legions and eastern allies cared more that she, Cleopatra, someone like them, should win, much more than that one member of Julius Caesar’s party should triumph over another. That was surely true.

  Canidius is a wise man. She readily signed her ginestho on the document that promised him an eternity of profits from wine and grain. Tax-exemptions are so much more effective than cash bribes. This one sealed both his own support for her and his heirs’ support for her successors. No Roman likes paying tax. They are not used to it. This will be one of many such signatures in preparation for the conflict that will determine so much.

  Canidius commands the army with which she and Antony are going to conquer Octavian. Egypt’s is the finest fleet. Octavian, for all his posturing diplomacy, is weak, inexperienced, often sick, seasick always it is said. The war has begun. A battle is coming. After her victory the bribes that she is paying now will be money well spent. Octavian will be as dead as Pompey. Octavia? She will soon be fortunate if divorce is her only fate. Plancus? He will either be dead or suddenly remembering with pride all his services for Antony and Cleopatra.