Alexandria — Octavian, Antony and Cleopatra: The War for the World
Alexandria, 30 BC. Antony positions his infantry on the hills before the city and watches his ships sail out. He waits to see what they will do. Plutarch records what happened: when the crews came close, they saluted Octavian’s ships with their oars, and after being answered went over to his side.
Cleopatra, frightened of his anger, shuts herself in the tomb and has word sent to him that she is dead. Antony believes the news and wounds himself with his own sword. When he learns she is alive, he has himself carried to the tomb. Cleopatra does not open the door, but lowers ropes from a window and, with two maidservants, hauls him inside herself. Antony dies in her arms. Plutarch and Dio describe it, and scholars see the scene as a literary set piece, reminiscent of Greek tragedy.
One of Antony’s guardsmen, Dercetaeus, takes his sword and runs with it to Octavian, the first to bring him news of the death. Soon Proculeius, Octavian’s man, enters the tomb by a ladder through the same window through which Antony was hauled in, and takes Cleopatra alive.
Octavian enters Alexandria. He talks with the philosopher Areius, giving him his right hand so that everyone can see. In the gymnasium, on a platform, he proclaims mercy for the city. According to Dio, he does so for the sake of Serapis, of the founder Alexander and of Areius. Plutarch gives it slightly differently: for the sake of Alexander, of the greatness and beauty of the city, and of Areius.
That leaves the children. And one of them bears the same name as Octavian: Caesar.
Plutarch records that Antony’s son by Fulvia, Antyllus, was betrayed by his tutor and killed. Cleopatra’s son Caesarion, believed to be Caesar’s son, was sent by his mother with treasure toward India, but his teacher Rhodon persuaded him to return. When Octavian hesitated, the philosopher Areius spoke up:
Caesarion was put to death on Octavian’s orders, after his mother’s death. Otherwise Octavian behaves like a man who wants his mercy remembered. He visits the tomb of Alexander the Great and lays a golden crown and flowers on it. Asked whether he also wants to see the tomb of the Ptolemies, he answers curtly: I wanted to see a king, not corpses. Suetonius describes the scene, and Dio adds that when Octavian touched Alexander’s body, a piece of its nose fell off.
A few days later Octavian visits Cleopatra himself. She lies on a wretched pallet, in a bare tunic, but springs up at the sight of him and falls at his feet. Hair and face in disorder, voice trembling, eyes sunken. On her chest are the marks of blows she dealt herself in mourning. Octavian leaves Antony’s body to her, though commanders and kings had asked for it. She buried him with her own hands, in royal fashion (Plutarch, Antony 82–84).
Cleopatra and her children remain under guard. Dolabella warns her in a secret letter that in three days she will be sent to Rome with her children to adorn a triumph. Cleopatra asks permission to make offerings at Antony’s tomb, and then leaves a letter asking to be buried with him. When Octavian’s messengers burst into her chamber, it is all over. How did she die? Plutarch himself writes that no one knows the truth, and Dio records several versions. Octavian, as Plutarch writes, was angry but admired her greatness, and had her buried with Antony in royal style.
According to Plutarch she was thirty-nine and had shared power with Antony for more than fourteen years. He was, according to some, fifty-six, according to others fifty-three (Plutarch, Antony 86). Her children by Antony, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, walk in Octavian’s triumph, in which an image of Cleopatra on a couch was also carried. Octavian spares the life of Alexander and his brother Ptolemy, and Selene is later given in marriage to Juba, the future king of Mauretania.
Egypt becomes a Roman province, and the kingdom of the Ptolemies ceases to exist. In Rome Octavian celebrates three triumphs on three successive days: for Dalmatia, for Actium and for Alexandria, as Suetonius writes.
Cleopatra came from the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty. She was neither a Roman nor, as is usually assumed, an Egyptian by descent. Plutarch writes that she usually spoke with foreigners without an interpreter.
The rivals are gone. Octavian is not quite thirty-three and holds the whole world in his hand. But Caesar was killed because he had too much power. What will the man who bears his name do, now that he has seen how it ends?
In the next episode: the Senate will give him the name Augustus. He himself would have liked to be called Romulus, the second founder of the city, but that is too close to a king. So he chooses a title that sounds like something between a god and a magistrate. How do you rule alone and live to old age?