The Barge at Tarsus — Octavian, Antony and Cleopatra: The War for the World

Tarsus in Cilicia, 41 BC. Antony summons the queen of Egypt to explain why her people helped Caesar’s killers. He sends letter after letter. She laughs at them, as Plutarch writes, and sails in only when she pleases.

The barge has a gilded stern, purple sails and silver oars, and the rowers pull in time to flutes, pipes and lutes. Cleopatra lies under a canopy and looks like Aphrodite. An entrance like that is hard to refuse.

So Plutarch describes it, writing nearly a century and a half later. Appian tells it differently: the queen comes when summoned and, instead of defending herself, lists her services in the war against Caesar’s killers. Scholars such as Maarten Schmaal urge a careful reading of such scenes: the image of Cleopatra the seductress is largely the work of Octavian’s propaganda.

Scholars point out that this was an alliance of practical calculation: Cleopatra needed recognition of her kingdom, and Antony needed ships, grain and money. Plutarch writes that Antony goes with her to Alexandria and wastes time on amusements. Meanwhile in Rome his wife Fulvia and his brother Lucius start a war against Octavian, and the Parthians prepare an invasion of Syria. It takes two pieces of news arriving together to tear him away from Alexandria: Fulvia and Lucius have lost, and the Parthians are overrunning Asia.

Antony returns to Italy. The reconciliation with Octavian is sealed by a marriage: Antony marries Octavia, Octavian’s sister. Fulvia is already dead. It is a political union meant to last, and it does last, for about eight years.

The year 36 BC. Antony leads a great expedition against the Parthians and ends it in defeat. Plutarch tallies it up: the army lost twenty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry, and more than half died of disease, not by the sword. They marched for twenty-seven days from Phraata and won eighteen battles, but the pursuits were short and ineffective, so the victories brought nothing lasting. Plutarch blames Artavasdes, king of Armenia, who had earlier led his own cavalry away.

A year later Octavia wants to sail to her husband. Octavian lets her, as most authors claim, not out of kindness but to have a pretext for war if she were slighted. In Athens Octavia receives a letter from Antony telling her to wait where she is. Cleopatra sees a real threat in her. Plutarch writes that she feared the dignity of that woman, the power of her brother and her gentleness toward Antony would make Octavia invincible. So she plays on feeling and tears until Antony believes he would die without her.

In 34 BC Antony returns to Armenia. According to Cassius Dio, he lures King Artavasdes into the camp, feigning friendship, arrests him and seizes the country, partly by agreements, partly by force. He betroths his son to the daughter of the king of Media, to gain an ally. He leads the captive and his family in chains to Alexandria and stages a sort of triumph there. Plutarch adds that the Romans hold it against him that he handed Roman rites over to the Egyptians for Cleopatra’s sake (Antony 50; Dio 49.40).

Then he does something that gives his enemies the greatest pretext. In Alexandria he assembles the people in the gymnasium and seats himself and the queen on golden thrones. Plutarch records that his passion for Cleopatra had flared up in him anew even earlier, as he was approaching Syria, and that he then gave her Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus and part of Cilicia. Now Cleopatra is proclaimed queen of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya and Coele-Syria, together with Caesarion, and Antony’s sons by her receive the title “kings of kings” and lands from Armenia to Phoenicia, including Parthia, which has not yet been conquered. So Plutarch and Cassius Dio describe it, though they differ in the details.

In Rome this looks like giving away land that is not his, and an insult to Rome. Antony is called the New Dionysus and lives in the Eastern manner. Octavia, whom Octavian ordered to return to her own home, nevertheless stays with her husband, raises his children, including those by Fulvia, and asks her brother not to start a civil war on her account: it would be a disgrace to both commanders (Plutarch, Antony 54). In 32 BC Antony sends men to Rome to throw her out of his house. Octavia leaves, taking the children, and weeps that she too will be counted among the causes of the war (Antony 57).

Octavian has everything he needs for a war. Everything except a justification. He needs a story in which Antony is not his rival but a traitor to Rome. He will have it handed to him in the form of a will.