Lover, Mother, Warrior and Queen (The Story of Cleopatra)

Author: (German) Emil Ludwig (Lodwig, E.) wrote, translated by Du Changzhong et al., reviewed by Xu Chongxin
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-12-01
Features: The eunuch's tearful gaze falls upon the princess, as if making a silent complaint. He thinks, she is so fair, while her sister Berenice's skin is yellow, and her father's skin is almost brown. However, 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 tokill her sister so easily. If she entrusts this matter 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, andaccusations 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 children; he always carefully conceals his love stories, yet he is also a Roman who publicly mourned his wife's death; he is a complete man, but an old scandal keeps appearing in new satirical poems, suggesting he had an affair with King Nicolaus Demos in his youth. It is said that he was even betrayed once. At a banquet of Dionysus, 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, but he was indeed very elegant. It is said that he carried marble slabs and mosaic floors with him during his campaigns. His life was always like that of a nobleman, yet the common people liked him. In the old schoolgirls' dormitory, the matron warned them to be careful of seducers, yet his surroundings were filled with handsome young men. People said he paid high prices for elegant slaves and even forbade setting up branch offices for such transactions. What kind of person was this Caesar? Who would like him? Strangely enough, the lower classes, freemen, artisans, and small people. Because he gave them food and gladiatorial performances. Once, before a festival, he had all the common people get free haircuts. This won him thousands of votes. On the battlefield, he sat with the soldiers, ate with them, and called them comrades. How did he speak? Not like a tribune, who was witty and humorous, nor like Cicero, who was obscure and pretentious. He spoke plainly, naturally, with a low, deep voice. What everyone praised and could not understand was how quickly he moved from one place to another and how swiftly he obtained information. His slaves and messengers 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 how much money? He did not mind the cost. 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 would not let him go to Spain until he found a wealthy guarantor. Later, it is said that even after becoming a magistrate, he took a large amount of gold from the treasury of Jupiter's temple and replaced it with gilded copper. Of course, this allowed him to give double pay to his troops and his three hundred slaves, and to 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 withmany children and did not collect rent. His only child, Julia, who was born when he was twenty, clearly 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 was involved in procuring for her own daughter. Caesar's affair with Servilia was once one of the main scandals in the salons of the Mediterranean region, 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 swayed by beauty. Could this Egyptian queen not do it? She did not have those rare treasures, gold cups, and fine silks he had never seen, which his barbaric eyes had never beheld? 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, dancers, 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 gave them important positions; 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 hunted. If it had not been so, at least not now, otherwise why would he send someone to invite her? The wealth he sought was not at the edge of the desert; it was the grain, cloth, and taxes in the treasury of Alexandria. The wealth was with him, not with her. And he had sent people twice to find her. She knew very well that he expected her! Everything indicated that she should appear before this spoiled man in a new way, to give him an extraordinary surprise. This required her to be cautious, because the enemy factions in the palace certainly had more spies than this foreigner, who could easily plot to have her disappear by the canal or in the shade of the date palm groves. Cleopatra stood up. 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 was also derived from his political foresight. He was Caesar because he combined imagination with the talent for governance. He wanted to give bread to thousands of unemployed people. The solution was to have them build large public buildings. Free men and craftsmen flocked to his banner, contributing to his construction plans and preparing to fight the following year. He demanded compulsory loans from all regions, nationalized taxes, and passed a law requiring the wealthy to buy state land. This way, 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, since he was now emperor. All this money did not really exist! It might be in Persia or India. Because, as usual after every civil war, no one was satisfied. They received allowances, but everyone still felt some disappointment, so Caesar had to conquer other places. The more he resembled a king, the more he seemed to crave the favor of the public, but once he became king, he no longer needed it. Cleopatra watched all this, amazed. She could not determine 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, which was now a love for Caesarion, this intuition would never be shaken by the shock of public opinion. Her enemies in Rome, as well as her enemies abroad, were still Octavian, 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; her concern grew as long as he remained an enemy of Octavian. But these two men sometimes had friendly relations; when this happened, even Anthony was useless to her. However, according to intelligence reports, the defeated Anthony was the one who truly shared her sentiments. They described how Anthony crossed the Alps to find the legion of his old friend Lepidus, whom he had helped reconcile with Caesar; they also told her how Anthony had arrived in black clothes, disheveled, covered in mud, to find 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 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 denounce Octavian; claiming that as a descendant of Caesar, he had taken no revenge for Caesar's death, had not returned Caesar's inheritance 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 about not starting the sixth civil war; Octavian, the ruthless descendant of Caesar, kept the gates of Caesar's house open to please the people he despised, yet secretly, like his usurer 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 came 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. If the forces of revenge were to go and make peace with Caesar's adopted son, what would happen? Yet it had already happened, and it was only half a year after Anthony's defeat and exile. This time, too, it was in the north, where 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. 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 put them to death. To the common people, this was a farce; but these people were still useful: they served as soldiers and paid taxes, filling the coffers of these leaders with blood and money. How pathetic the moral decline was! 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 restarting 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.