The Enemies of Rome by Stephen Kershaw

Author:Stephen Kershaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2019-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar

From the moment she ascended to the throne in 51 BC, Cleopatra had to fight for it. Egypt was in a bureaucratic mess, riddled with insurgency, its currency was weak, and these problems were aggravated by hostility within Cleopatra’s own circle. Her youngest sister, Arsinoë, coveted her position, while her brother-husband was under the control of three hostile and manipulative advisors: a eunuch, Photinus; a soldier Achillas; and a rhetorician Theodotus. But the teenage queen soon demonstrated her political acumen. She devalued the currency, engaged in a new religious policy, and when two sons of the Roman proconsul of Syria were assassinated in Alexandria in 50 BC, she delivered the alleged killers to him to demonstrate her pro-Roman sentiments. Egypt was nominally independent, but that freedom was exercised very much at Rome’s discretion. Cleopatra knew that a good relationship with Rome was essential to her ambitions, but choosing precisely who to deal with was always going to be fraught with difficulty, especially as Rome descended into civil war within two years of her accession. Interestingly Cleopatra sent soldiers to Pompey during his rivalry with Julius Caesar, and rumour had it that she had a liaison with Pompey’s son, Gnaeus Pompeius, when he visited Alexandria as an envoy. Her stance is understandable, since Pompey had supported her father Ptolemy XII, accommodating him at Rome when he had been expelled by his subjects in 57 BC.

On home soil Cleopatra’s younger siblings Ptolemy and Arsinoë fomented a revolt which forced her to flee from Alexandria in early 48 BC. She quickly raised an army of mercenaries, and the rival armies would have done battle had not Pompey himself arrived unexpectedly at Pelusium in Egypt on 28 September, in the aftermath of his crushing defeat by Caesar’s troops at the Battle of Pharsalus in Greece.24 Given his guest-friendship with Ptolemy XIII’s father, Pompey had hoped to receive a favourable welcome. But he was disappointed. Theodotus recommended assassinating him: ‘Then he smiled and, we are told, added the words: “Dead men don’t bite.”’25

Caesar described the murder:

The favourites of [Ptolemy XIII], who were administering the kingdom for him on account of his youth . . . either (as they alleged later) swayed by the fear that Pompey might suborn the royal army and seize Alexandria and Egypt, or from contempt of him in his misfortune (it is usually the case that friends become enemies in adversity), gave to all appearances a very generous response to the envoys he had sent and bade him come to the king; but they themselves conferred together secretly and then sent Achillas, an officer of the king, a man of singular audacity, and Lucius Septimius, a Military Tribune, to kill Pompey. Pompey was addressed by them courteously and was induced to approach by some acquaintance with Septimius, who had led a Century under him in the war against the pirates. So he boarded a little boat, with a few of his companions; and there he was killed by Achillas and Septimius.

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