Cleopatra: A Study. Henry Houssaye
sesterces which remained due of the thirty-three thousand talents which Ptolemy had promised to pay Cæsar and Pompey if by the assistance of the Romans he should recover his crown.
Pothinus, however, thought he had done enough for Cæsar in offering him the head of Pompey. He urged him, therefore, to reëmbark and to go whither he was called by much more important matters than the disputes of Ptolemy and Cleopatra: to Pontus, whence Pharnaces was driving his lieutenant Domitius, to Rome where Cœlius was exciting the plebeians. To the claims of Cæsar, he replied that the treasury was empty; to his offers of arbitration between the heirs of Ptolemy, he objected that it was not proper for a foreigner to interfere in this quarrel, that such an interference would rouse all Egypt. In support of his words, he reminded him that the people of Alexandria, regarding the fasces borne before Cæsar as an outrage on the royal dignity, were enraged at it; that daily new riots arose, that every night Roman soldiers were assassinated, that the Alexandrian population was very numerous, and that the army of Cæsar (numbering only three thousand two hundred legionaries and eight hundred cavalry) was very small.
But his refusals, his counsels, his implied menaces availed nought against the will of Cæsar. His prayers exhausted, he commands. Pothinus is ordered formally to invite in his name Ptolemy and Cleopatra to disband their armies and to present themselves before his consular tribunal to settle their differences. The eunuch was forced to yield, but, as cunning as Cæsar was persistent, he hoped to turn this intervention, which he at first dreaded, to secure the success of his designs. With this purpose he sent to Cleopatra Cæsar’s command to disband her troops, but without telling her she was expected at Alexandria, and he wrote to Ptolemy to repair at once to Cæsar but still to keep his soldiers under arms. Pothinus calculated by these means to free himself from Cleopatra’s army and to secure to the young king the favor of Cæsar, since Ptolemy alone of the two heirs of Auletes summoned by the consul paid due attention to his invitation. A few days after, Ptolemy actually arrived in Alexandria. He offered to Cæsar the warmest protestations of friendship, in which he was joined by Pothinus, Achillas, and the other ministers; he explained the disputes between himself and Cleopatra, laying all the blame on her. Cæsar, however, was not so easily duped. Pothinus had supposed that the absence of Cleopatra would irritate Cæsar against her, but Cæsar could not believe that the young queen had, through contempt, declined his invitation to repair to Alexandria. He thought it more probable that some machination of Pothinus had prevented her coming. In order to satisfy himself of this he secretly despatched a messenger to Cleopatra, whom he knew to be still at Pelusium.
The queen was waiting impatiently for news from Cæsar. On the receipt of his first message, but partially transmitted by Pothinus, she had hastened to disband her army. She already felt full confidence in the favor of the great leader who was called “the husband of all women,” but she knew that she must see Cæsar, or rather that Cæsar must see her. But the days passed and the invitation to Alexandria did not arrive. Finally the second message reached her, and she learned that Cæsar had already sent for her to go to him, but that Pothinus had taken measures to prevent her knowing it. The thing was plain enough; her enemies were not willing that she should have an interview with Cæsar, and now that their trick was discovered they would employ force; no doubt they were on their guard and laid their plans accordingly. If Cleopatra sought to reach Alexandria by land she would be taken by the outposts of the Egyptian army encamped before Pelusium; by sea, her royal trireme could not escape the vessels of Ptolemy cruising about the entrance to the port. Even should she succeed in reaching Alexandria she would run the risk of being torn to pieces by the populace, incited by Pothinus. Even in the king’s palace, where Cæsar resided as the guest of Ptolemy, that is to say with an Egyptian guard of honor, she might be seized and slain by the sentinels.
Cleopatra, abandoning the idea of entering Alexandria with the trappings of a queen, bethought herself of a plan to do so not merely under a disguise, but as a bale of goods. Accompanied by a single devoted attendant, Apollodorus, the Sicilian, she embarked from near Pelusium in a decked bark which, in the middle of the night, entered the port of Alexandria. They landed at a pier before one of the lesser gates of the palace. Cleopatra enveloped herself in a great sack of coarse cloth of many colors, such as were used by travelers to pack up mats and mattresses, and Apollodorus bound it round with a strap, then taking the sack upon his shoulders, entered the gate of the palace, went straight to the apartments of Cæsar, and laid his precious burden at his feet.
Aphrodite rose radiant from the sea: Cleopatra less pretendingly from a sack; but Cæsar was none the less moved at the surprise and ravished with the apparition. Cleopatra, who was then nineteen, was in the flower of her marvelous and seductive beauty. Dion Cassius calls the queen of Egypt the most beautiful of women, but Plutarch finds one epithet insufficient to depict her, and expresses himself thus: “There was nothing so incomparable in her beauty as to compel admiration; but by the charm of her physiognomy, the grace of her whole person, the fascination of her presence, Cleopatra left a sting in the soul.” This is her veritable portrait. Cleopatra did not possess supreme beauty, she possessed supreme seductiveness. As Victor Hugo said of a celebrated theatrical character, “She is not pretty, she is worse,” which suggestive expression may well apply to Cleopatra. Plutarch adds, and his testimony is confirmed by Dion, that Cleopatra spoke in a melodious voice and with infinite sweetness. This information is valuable in a psychological point of view. Certes, this charm of voice, divine gift so rarely bestowed, this pure and winning caress, this ever new delight was not one of the least attractions of the Siren of the Nile.
This first interview between Cæsar and Cleopatra probably extended far into the night. It is certain that, with the earliest dawn, Cæsar sent for Ptolemy, and told him he must be reconciled to his sister and associate her in the government. “In one night,” says Dion Cassius, “Cæsar had become the advocate of her of whom he had erewhile thought himself the judge.” Ptolemy was resisting the thinly disguised commands of the consul, when Cleopatra appearing, the young king, mad with rage, cast his crown at the feet of Cæsar and rushed from the palace uttering the cry: “Treason! treason! to arms!” The mob, excited by his cries, rose and marched on the palace. Cæsar feeling himself too weak to resist (he had but a handful of legionaries about him) ascended one of the terraces and harangued the multitude from a distance. He succeeded in restoring a calm by his promises of satisfying the Egyptians in their demands. Just at this time his legionaries arrived from the camp, surrounded the young prince, separated him from his partisans, and with every mark of respect reinstated him willy-nilly in the palace where he might serve as a hostage for Cæsar. The next day the people were assembled in the public square, and Cæsar, accompanied by Ptolemy and Cleopatra, went thither in great state with his escort of lictors. Every Roman was under arms, ready to suppress the first symptom of sedition. Cæsar read aloud the testament of Ptolemy Auletes, and declared solemnly in the name of the Roman people that he would insist on carrying out the last will of the late king. By this the two elder of his children were to reign conjointly over Egypt. As for the other two children of the king, he, Cæsar, made them a gift of the island of Cyprus, and handed over to them the sovereignty of it.
This scene overawed the Egyptians; nevertheless, Cæsar, fearing an insurrection, hastened to summon to Alexandria the new legions which he had formed in Asia Minor of the wrecks of Pompey’s army. But long before these reënforcements could reach him, the Egyptian army from Pelusium, on secret orders from Pothinus, entered the city to drive out the Romans. At the same time, Arsinoë, the young sister of Cleopatra, assisted by the eunuch Ganymede, made her escape from the palace, and in default of Ptolemy, still Cæsar’s prisoner, was received with acclamations both by the army and people as the daughter of the Lagidæ. This army, commanded by Achillas, amounted to eighteen thousand foot and two thousand horse, and the people of Alexandria made with it common cause against the foreigner.
Cæsar had but four thousand soldiers and the crews of his triremes. He was in extreme peril; occupying with this handful of men the palaces of the Bruchium, he was attacked from the city by the troops of Achillas and the armed populace, and his fleet, which was at anchor in the greater harbor, was virtually captive, since the enemy held the passes of Taurus and Heptastadium. He even feared that this inactive fleet might fall into the hands of the Alexandrians, who would have made use of it to intercept his supplies of men and munitions. Cæsar averted this danger by setting fire to his vessels.