Lovers, Mothers, Warriors and Queens: The Story of Cleopatra

Author: Emil Ludwig
Translator: Du Changzhong et al. / Country: Germany
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-12-01
Features: The castrated man's tearful gaze falls upon the princess, as if complaining silently. He thinks, she is so fair, while her sister Berenice has a yellow complexion, and her father's skin is almost brown. Yet she won't always be this fair. Soon, love and wine will make her blush. Why is her nose flaring? She must be thinking of how to poison her sister so easily. If she entrusts this to me, I will do it without delay. Her voice alone is enough to drive one mad. My father killed her uncle, only to be beheaded himself. We all have a day of death. He stares at the princess. But reports about Caesar's friends, women, legends, factions, and slander are all contradictory. He is an outstanding connoisseur of women, but he is already over fifty; he has married three or four times but has no sons; he always carefully conceals his love stories, yet he is also a Roman who publicly eulogized his wife's death; he is a complete man, yet an old scandal keeps appearing in new satirical poems, suggesting he had an affair with King Nicomedes in his youth. It is said that he was even betrayed once. At a Dionysian banquet, his wife had an affair with a shameless young man dressed as a woman, mingling among the nuns. When people accused her of such reckless behavior, Caesar solemnly declared he did not believe it. But he still divorced her. Because Caesar's wife cannot be suspected. Cleopatra thought, how mysterious he is! One thing is certain: he is very tall. Some say his skin is quite fair, like me. And he often bathed, even during wars. His belt was always loosely tied, yet he was indeed very refined. It is said that he carried marble slabs and mosaic floors with him even during his campaigns. His life was always that of a nobleman, yet the common people liked him. In the old school's dormitory, the female dormitory supervisor warned the girls to be careful of seducers, yet his surroundings were full of handsome young men. People said he paid exorbitant prices for elegant slaves and even prohibited setting up branch offices for such transactions. What kind of person was this Caesar? Who would like him? Strangely enough, the lower classes, freedmen, artisans, and small people liked him. Because he gave them food and gladiatorial performances. Once, before a festival, he had all the common people have their beards shaved for free. This earned him thousands of votes. On the battlefield, he sat with the soldiers, ate with them, and called them comrades. What was his way of speaking? Not like the tribunes, who were witty and humorous, nor like Cicero, who was obscure and pretentious. He spoke plainly, naturally, with a low, deep voice. What everyone praised and yet could not understand was how quickly he moved from one place to another and how swiftly he obtained information. Slaves and messengers of his were spread across the Mediterranean. His concise speeches were like the wind, quickly reaching their destination and becoming orders. People said Caesar was the fastest man today. For this, he spent money without counting. His generosity was like his speed, his wealth like his greatness—such a reputation had already spread far and wide! What an extraordinary magistrate! It is said that he was very extravagant in his youth, to the point that his creditors refused to let him go to Spain until he found a wealthy guarantor. He even looted the temples of the Gauls to pay off his debts. Later, it is said that after becoming magistrate, he took a large amount of gold from the treasury in Jupiter's temple and replaced it with gilded copper. Thus, of course, he could give double pay to his troops and his three hundred slaves, and make his daughter's funeral banquet the most magnificent ever seen by Romans. Cleopatra thought: Why did he do this? Was it because he particularly loved children? As magistrate, he distributed land to those with many children and did not collect rent. His only child, Julia, who was born when he was twenty, surely proved his fertility. Perhaps he divorced his wife because she could not give him children. Wasn't he giving Servilia many jewels and property? Maybe it was just because he believed her son Brutus was his child. It is said that she attracted Caesar for the longest time, until she introduced her own daughter to him. The affair between Caesar and Servilia was once one of the main scandals in the salons of the Mediterranean, but it has long been forgotten. Yet it kept recurring in Cleopatra's shrewd calculations. This woman was several years older than him when he was still a luxurious and handsome servant. He had a reputation for sexual perversion in his youth. He had no sons but wanted them. All this made her excited imagination picture an old man who might be easily deceived by beauty. Could this Egyptian queen not do it? She had no such treasures as gold cups and silks, which his barbaric eyes had never seen? In this court, which had three hundred years of Eastern erotic secrets, what could not satisfy the desires of this elderly Roman nobleman? Slaves of various complexions, dancing, young courtesan slaves. At a glance, they seemed as tempting as delicacies. She had already listed these delicacies. But if he was not interested in any of these and had only heard of Cleopatra, what would happen? Perhaps that night he was lying in her bed, holding her portrait taken from the basement. Because they had long hidden her portrait. Perhaps this Caesar, who acted swiftly, was generous, forgave his enemies, and trusted them with important tasks; perhaps Caesar—the Roman, the dictator, the master of the world—had decided to find this young queen in the Nile Delta. The story of this proud young queen had spread throughout Rome. She was certain that Caesar's coming to Egypt was to seek her, not Pompey, who was being pursued. If it were not so, why would he send someone to summon her? The wealth he sought was not at the edge of the desert; it was the grain, cloth, and taxes in the treasury of Alexander. The wealth was with him, not with her. And he did not send someone once, but twice to seek her. She knew very well that he expected her! Everything suggested it should be so: she must appear before this spoiled man in a new way, to give him an extraordinary surprise. This required her to be cautious, for the enemy factions at home certainly had more spies than this foreigner, and they could easily plot to have her disappear by the canal or in the shade of the date palm groves. Cleopatra rose. Now she had formulated a plan, she knew how to capture Caesar without anyone knowing. But if all this was born of some creative imagination, then it also came from his political foresight. He was Caesar because he combined imagination with the gift of governance. He wanted thousands of unemployed people to have bread. The way was to have them build grand public buildings. Free men and craftsmen flocked to his banner, contributing to his construction plans and preparing for the battles of the following year. He demanded compulsory loans from all regions, nationalized taxes, and passed a law requiring the wealthy to buy state land, so that he could pay each of his forty thousand soldiers three hundred sesterces (an ancient Roman coin), as he had promised them land and money before the Battle of Pharsalus, naturally, adding an extra hundred sesterces as interest, because he was now emperor. All this money did not really exist! It might be in Persia or India. Because, as always after each civil war, no one was satisfied. They received subsidies, but everyone still felt some disappointment, so Caesar had to conquer other places. The more he resembled a king, the more he was eager to win the favor of the public, but once he became king, he no longer needed this. Cleopatra watched all this, amazed. She could not decide whether Caesar made these plans out of love for his people or because he despised them. On the other hand, Cleopatra did not want bad news to shake her sympathy for Anthony. Her intuition was far more certain than Cicero's. Driven by a strong love, a love for Caesar, now for Caesarion, this intuition would not be shaken by the shock of public opinion. Her enemies in Rome, her enemies abroad, were still Octavian—he was another Caesarion. She had realized this even before the assassination and had been aware of it for the fourteen long years since then. Meanwhile, she was particularly concerned about Anthony's fate; the more he was an enemy of Octavian, the more her concern grew. But sometimes these two men were also friendly; when this happened, even Anthony was useless to her. However, according to intelligence reports, this defeated Anthony was the one who truly understood her. They described how Anthony crossed the Alps to seek the legion of his old friend Lepidus, because Anthony had helped him make peace with Caesar; they also told her how Anthony, in black clothes, disheveled, and covered in mud, found the legion, playing the role of someone persecuted by dark forces yet loyal to Caesar. He spoke to Lepidus across a small river. Lepidus's men all recognized him and supported him. Anthony tried to persuade them with empty words; Lepidus, helpless, ordered the trumpets to sound to drown out his voice! Cleopatra also heard them say that Fulvia gave various speeches in the open square, trying to accuse Octavian; saying that as the descendant of Caesar, he had taken no revenge for Caesar's death, had not returned Caesar's legacy to the people, but had instead sought Anthony's life. Whenever Cleopatra heard these messages, the queen far away sometimes even liked that fierce Fulvia. She knew all the cunning and vanity of the Romans, as if she could see everything across the sea. Among these four groups in Rome, everyone wanted to lure others out and devour them; Cicero, though not too bad in the first five civil wars, now lectured everyone not to start the sixth civil war; Octavian, the young descendant of Caesar, was ruthless; he opened Caesar's gates to please the people he despised, yet secretly, like his usurious grandfather, he hoarded the money left to him; everyone wanted to flatter the once invincible old generals, hoping to buy their weapons! All this made the woman in Egypt, who knew everything, laugh. But only a few weeks later, new news reported that the legions wanted to negotiate with the descendants of Caesar, because they did not want to fight their own comrades. Cleopatra was greatly alarmed upon hearing this: the party that assassinated Caesar was her enemy, and if the forces of revenge were to seek peace with Caesar's adopted son, what would happen? Yet it had already happened, and it was only six months after Anthony's defeat. This time, too, in the north, two opposing forces united and were to form a new triumvirate with Lepidus. Fourteen years earlier, Caesar had formed the first triumvirate with his rivals Pompey and the wealthy Crassus, and now it had provided a model for this group of treacherous people. Everyone in this group wanted to use false treaties to buy time, then betray them and quickly bring them to their deaths. To the common people, it was a farce; yet these people were still useful: they served as soldiers and paid taxes, filling the coffers of these leaders with blood and money. How sad a moral decline! The successor to Caesar was only his nephew; while the successor to the great noble Pompey the Great was a lustful general! Yet the parties reviving the first triumvirate all believed they would be the next Caesar. Octavian even added Gaius, Julius, and Caesar before his own name, hoping that thirty years later, people would believe there had never been a Caesar before him.