Cleopatra by Francine Prose;

Author:Francine Prose;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

The Snake

Cleopatra and Antony grew increasingly desperate as they attempted to negotiate with Octavian, who after the couple’s humiliating defeat at Actium had little reason to negotiate himself. Yet they continued to beg for mercy from a notoriously unmerciful opponent, whose record showed the lengths he would go to exact revenge. In the war against Caesar’s assassins, a captive begged to have his body buried after he was executed, and Octavian said he would leave that matter to the birds. He ordered a father and son to decide which of them would die first, then killed them both, one after the other. Three hundred prisoners who pleaded for their lives were told, “You must die,” and slaughtered. This militates against the idea, so important to Julius Caesar and others, that one measure of Roman superiority was the compassion that they—unlike their barbarian enemies—showed to their conquered foes.

Octavian’s pressing concern in his dealings with Antony and Cleopatra was to ensure that the couple could not recoup their forces and continue the war. The odds against this might seem overwhelming unless we factor in the Romans’ belief that the Egyptian queen was capable of magic. They also had some worry that the defeated couple might find a sanctuary in a region (possibly Gaul) that would accept them and, more to the point, welcome Cleopatra’s gold. Octavian feared that her fortune might slip forever out of Rome’s grasp.

As Antony grew more melancholy and less helpful, the queen seems to have understood that she was fighting not only for her country but for her life and the lives of her children. In Cassius Dio’s account, Antony seems increasingly pathetic. Appealing to Octavian, man to man, he defended “his connexion with the Egyptian woman and recounted all the amorous adventures and youthful pranks that they had shared” (book 51), apparently forgetting that this was the last thing he should have been telling a leader who, despite his own infidelities, prided himself on being upright and moral.

All Antony’s overtures to Octavian received responses that were, at best, sarcastic and dismissive. When Antony again offered to engage Octavian in hand-to-hand combat, Octavian replied that Antony would have to find another way of killing himself. Antony offered to commit suicide if Cleopatra were allowed to live. That he was said to have been suicidal since the defeat at Actium makes this voluntary self-sacrifice appear considerably less selfless and dramatic than it otherwise might.

Antony sent Antyllus, his son with Fulvia, to deliver a generous payment, which Octavian confiscated before sending Antyllus back with nothing to show for his efforts. Cleopatra’s gifts to Octavian included a gold throne, a crown, and a scepter, signals of her willingness to cede her relative independence in return for . . . what? Underneath everything else was Rome’s growing sense that Egypt was weak, its leadership chaotic, and could be had almost for the asking and with little loss of Roman life.

The annexation of Egypt would be a coup that would accomplish what

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