Cleopatra did dictate to me, at one point, a funeral eulogy over Caesar. We keep it in a separate place, apart from the other royal documents. She did not consider it quite proper for the monarch of Egypt to lament the death of Caesar publicly, either as the father of her son or the ally who consolidated her position on the throne, in case people might read into it a submission to Rome. So she forbade copies of “The Funeral Eulogy over Caesar” to be circulated and stopped her signature being stamped on the sole existing copy. We made copies of all her other works for the library of Alexandria, for the library at Pergamum (which Antony kindly presented to her), and for that of the Seleucids, as well as extra copies to be given as special presents to visitors and envoys and to be sent out via her embassies.
Recently we made an inventory of all the scrolls, as detailed and orderly as the queen herself. Augustus made us hunt down every single one, so determined was he to silence her voice. He ordered that all the copies be placed at his feet before being burned, treating them like living prey. I said “hunt” deliberately. When he got; hold of one, he had it locked away, forbidding anyone to touch it, let alone read it. Someone once said, “I hope there isn’t a curse on it,” and he exploded with rage, swearing that he was not going to allow legends to be created about the pamphlets of a slut. Perhaps this is the reason he had all those who hunted down the scrolls executed.
I was the only one left alive. It was no accident. Augustus wanted me to corroborate, as an eyewitness, his most fantastic misrepresentations of Cleopatra. All the others whom he used to track down the scrolls, he had eliminated.
If I were to comment on his image of her, I’d have to say that nobody perverted it as much as he did. His contempt for her was rooted deep in his being, above and beyond the natural Roman disdain for all things Egyptian, above and beyond the misogyny that resents a woman controlling a kingdom. She was also the mother of Caesar’s only natural son, and at any moment he could have asserted his rights to his father’s legacy. Caesarion was an obstacle to many of his ambitions, a living impediment, and an invincible one if his mother sided with him. As soon as she was overthrown, he had Caesarion decapitated by the hand of his personal tutor, his guardian. To his failure to implement the terms of his uncle’s will, he added a reckless disobedience to his wishes, a mocking defiance. As Cleopatra has already stated, Caesar left explicit instructions that his son be given the best of educations. But Augustus ordered the tutor — whose salary, incidentally, was not paid out of his father’s legacy but out of the pocket of his mother — to cut off his head, so that Caesarion suffered the same fate as Pompey’s child, beheaded by the hand of his protector.
Thus Augustus hurled himself into the business of eliminating her, even her image. So how did some of her statues survive? It was the work of Archibius, her friend, who gave Octavius-Augustus two thousand talents to save the statues from the obliterating fate that befell those of Mark Antony. But it wasn’t the money (though the miser stuffed it gladly into his pocket), nor the plea of Archibius that saved the statues from destruction, but the desire of Augustus to confine the queen to her fancy hairdo and in her woman’s robes, void of ideas, plans, and strategies, for those stone effigies with their bronze and gold adornments are unthinking objects. On the other hand, he did not leave intact one tablet, one scroll, one inscription, so furious was his rage against her memory.
Now I am employed in destroying those scrolls, without still having finished saying what she was really like when she dictated the last of them to me. Before she even spoke, I knew from the way she looked at me that she was dictating. It was the voice of a queen, as I told you. More than once the Romans have written that on that fatal morning Cleopatra had scratched her whole body, pulled out chunks of her hair, and thrown herself down in grief and despair. Not so. I saw her without a single scratch. There were no bald patches in her hair, though it was matted thick with the triumvir’s blood. I was an eyewitness. Her body was in no way damaged. As night drew on, she tenderly hugged the body of the man she had loved, unafraid of the presence of death. At daybreak she spoke. But she did not speak the words that the mirror of my slavish mind has reflected here.
Remember, I penned them in an enemy city. For I am now in Rome. Here old age has suddenly overtaken me. Here my legs refuse to serve me. Here I have grown elderly, and like any elderly soul, I have become a little child again. Here I once enjoyed moderate wealth, thanks to Augustus. I am as sure as I am in Rome that, on that fatal day, Cleopatra did not inflict a single scratch on herself nor tear out one strand of hair. Why did the Romans scratch her in their version of her grief? In order to add a touch of pathos? No, enraged against her, detesting her, they depicted her in this final portrait as a queen wounded by her own hands. They loathed her but at the same time recognized her power. Nobody but herself, they implied in unwitting tribute, could wound her, but their hate also portrayed her before the world as unhinged, as a woman who had lost control of everything, even of herself.
The day Mark Antony died, her voice sounded solid and firm as she began to dictate. Without any alteration in tone, she moved her feet, as if preparing to take off her shoes. Her maids darted forward to help her, but she checked them with a raised hand. Down onto her spotless white feet, the blood dripped from her robe and highlighted her sorry condition. With the sole of one foot, she rubbed the instep of the other, for the drips must have given her an itch there. The naturalness of the gesture, the way she wiggled her toes, was deeply saddening for me. The heart in my breast, usually so carefully guarded against any emotional shock, received a heavy blow. I almost lost my composure. The manicured feet of the queen, painted with the blood of the arrogant and once-powerful triumvir, sent a shock wave through me. Her feet kept moving and moving. But not from place to place. They made simple little gestures, delicate but demonstrative. In a way they were expressive of the queen’s countenance. It wasn’t because this was the first time I had seen them without sandals, but because Cleopatra’s life normally was so attached to all the rituals proper to the dignity and elegance of her position. She surrounded herself with an unalterable aura of glory, and never lost even an iota of her autocratic majesty. If she did act drunk or confused from time to time, it was always a studied drunkenness or confusion. If she set ceremony aside, it was to burst into triumphant celebration, but even then the joy that shone out of her was glorious and covered her with a veil of awe. If she disguised herself as a slave, it was so that she could go out and dance with Antony in the streets of Alexandria. As the pair of inimitable party-goers went from house to house, begging for drinks and followed by a throng of musicians, they were acting out another scene of her glory. Only on one night did I see her fail to act majestically. That was shortly before she had them stamp “methe” (intoxication) as her name on her ring. One afternoon in Alexandria, on the beach near the Hippogeium of the Mercenaries, I accompanied her and Antony. She had summoned me because the two of them wanted to state in writing their purpose in the upcoming war against the Parthians. They thought Ares would favor them, for they had Eros as an ally. As Eros is superior to Ares, Ares would obviously bow to his force. They soon forgot my presence, the war, and the Parthians, and spoke only of erotic matters, if they bothered to speak at all. They were there to amuse themselves with masses of kisses and caresses, in order to reinforce their alliance with Eros and guarantee their success in battle. At least that was what they told themselves. Up to this point they were still acting out yet another scene of their glory. Then in a burst of high spirits, Cleopatra stripped off all her clothes and dragged Mark Antony to the sea’s edge. There she stripped off his clothes too, and the two of them, like undisciplined children, rushed carelessly into the water. They pressed on through the foam and hugged each other. I had never learned to swim and from the shore I nervously watched the two heads bobbing in the distance to the action of the waves. I was scared of the sea, of both its currents and its creatures. I had never seen anybody on the beach of Alexandria enter the sea out of choice, still less frisk around in it, as those two were doing, leaping among the waves. With good reason the people of Alexandria fear the sea. But this was Cleopatra and her Antony, and they loved each other, and the sea seemed to carry them on its bosom. I lowered my gaze when they came out of the water, arm in arm. I can’t say why but at that moment I thought of Robirius. I thought about why we, who so often fed the avarice of the North, insisted on being ourselves. I thought that the opulence of Rome existed at our expense, that the Romans depended on us. At the back of my thoughts, I heard the laughter of Cleopatra and then the voice of Mark Antony turning into moans. Out of delicacy I turned my thoughts back to Robirius, who was reputed to be the moneylender to King Auletes. He certainly lent the king great sums of money at exorbitant rates of interest, sums that were then showered on senators and consuls and other powerful Romans to ensure they voted in favor of furthering the aims of the throne of Egypt. And who ended up paying for those sums and all that interest? Egypt itself! The Egypt that had rewarded Robirius with a public position, for Ptolemy, you see, had kept him on as his Minister of Finance till the end of his reign. The Roman had practiced corruption, unimpeded. There was no transaction that did not pass through his ministry, and for each one enormous bribes had to be paid, and their only function was to add to the wealth of the loathsome Robirius. This went on till Cleopatra assumed the throne. She got rid of him, a good-for-nothing whose only aim in life was to line his pockets. I was thinking about all this, for no particular reason, while Mark Antony and Cleopatra frolicked on the beach. Then I half-opened my eyes and peered through the lashes. The ladies-in-waiting had hurriedly picked up the clothes so carelessly cast aside and had spread a blanket on the beach. They had lit candles on three sides of it and then left, forgetting all about me.