Antony and Cleopatra. Colleen McCullough

it. So I will learn to use the gladius and the longsword, I will shoot arrows and throw rocks from slings, I will practice casting my pilum and my hasta, I will run, hurdle and swim. But I will not box or wrestle. Tata wouldn’t approve, no matter what my instructors say. I told them to desist, not to come running to you – does my command count for less than yours?’

      She was too busy marveling at how much he remembered about Caesar to hear the message implicit in his last words. His father died before the child turned four.

      But it was not the argument over contact sport or other small dissatisfactions that gnawed at her; what hurt was his aloofness. She couldn’t fault his attention when she spoke to him, especially to issue an order, but he had shut her out of his private world. Clearly he felt an ongoing resentment that she couldn’t dismiss as petty.

      Oh, she cried to herself, why do I always make the wrong decisions? Had I only known what effect excluding him from Tarsus would have, I would have taken him with me. But that would have been to risk the succession on a sea voyage – impossible!

      Then her agents reported that the situation in Italia had deteriorated into open war. The instigators were Antony’s termagant wife, Fulvia, and Antony’s brother, the consul Lucius Antonius. Fulvia snared that famous fence-sitter and side-switcher Lucius Munatius Plancus and bewitched him into donating the veteran soldiers he was settling around Beneventum – two full legions – for her army; after which she persuaded that aristocratic dolt, Tiberius Claudius Nero, whom Caesar had so detested, to raise a slave revolt in Campania – not an appropriate task for one who had never in his life conversed with a slave. Not that Nero didn’t try, just that he didn’t even know how to start his commission.

      Having no official position save his status as Triumvir, Octavian slid in careful Fabian circles on Lucius Antonius’s perimeter as the two legions that Lucius himself had managed to recruit moved up the Italian peninsula toward Rome. The third Triumvir, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, took two legions to Rome to keep Lucius out. Then the moment Lepidus saw the glitter of armor on the Via Latina, he abandoned Rome and his troops to a jubilant Fulvia (and Lucius, whom people tended to forget).

      The outcome actually depended upon the ring of great armies fencing Italia in – armies commanded by Antony’s best marshals, men who were his friends as well as his political adherents. Gnaeus Asinius Pollio held Italian Gaul with seven legions; in Further Gaul across the Alps sat Quintus Fufius Calenus with eleven legions; while Publius Ventidius and his seven legions sat in coastal Liguria.

      By now it was autumn. Antony was in Athens, not far away, enjoying the entertainments this most sophisticated of cities had to offer. Pollio wrote to him, Ventidius wrote to him, Calenus wrote to him, Plancus wrote to him, Fulvia wrote to him, Lucius wrote to him, Sextus Pompey wrote to him, and Octavian was writing to him every single day. Antony never answered any of these letters – he had better things to do. Thus – as Octavian for one realized – Antony missed his great chance to crush Caesar’s heir permanently. The veterans were mutinous, no one was paying taxes, and all Octavian could scrape up were eight legions. Every main road from Bononia in the north to Brundisium in the south reverberated to the rhythmic thud of hobnailed legionary caligae, most of them belonging to Octavian’s avowed enemies. Sextus Pompey’s fleets controlled both the Tuscan Sea to Italia’s west and the Adriatic Sea to Italia’s east, cutting off the grain supply from Sicilia and Africa. Had Antony hoisted his bulk off his plush Athenian couch and led all these elements in an outright war to squash Octavian, he would have won easily. But Antony chose not to answer his letters and not to move. Octavian breathed a sigh of relief, while Antony’s own people assumed that Antony was too busy having a good time to bother with anything beyond pleasure.

      But in Alexandria, reading her reports, Cleopatra fretted and fumed, considered writing to Antony to urge him into an Italian war. That would really remove the threat from Egypt! In the end she didn’t write; had she, it would have been a wasted effort.

      Lucius Antonius marched north on the Via Flaminia to Perusia, a magnificent town perched high on a flat-topped mountain in the middle of the Apennines. There he inserted himself and his six legions within Perusia’s walls and waited to see not only what Octavian would do, but also what Pollio, Ventidius and Plancus would do. It never occurred to him that the latter three wouldn’t march to his rescue – as Antony’s men, they had to!

      Octavian had put his spiritual brother Agrippa in command – a shrewd decision; when the two very young men concluded that neither Pollio and Ventidius nor Plancus were going to rescue Lucius, they erected massive siege fortifications in a ring all the way around Perusia’s mountain. No food could reach the town and, with winter coming on, the water table was low, and lowering.

      Fulvia sat in Plancus’s camp and railed at the perfidy of Pollio and Ventidius, clustered miles away; she also railed in person at Plancus, who put up with it because he was in love with her. Her state of mind was alarmingly unstable: one moment frenzied tantrums, the next bursts of energy recruiting more men. But what ate at her most was a new hatred of Octavian. The supercilious pup had sent his wife, Fulvia’s daughter Clodia, back to her mother still virgo intacta. What was she going to do with a skinny girl who did nothing but weep and refuse to eat? In a war camp? Worst of all, Clodia insisted that she was madly in love with Octavian, and blamed Octavian’s rejection on her mother.

      By late October, Antony likened himself to Aetna just before an eruption. His colleagues felt the tremors and tried to avoid him, but that was not possible.

      ‘Dellius, I’m going to winter in Alexandria,’ he announced. ‘Marcus Saxa and Caninius can stay with the troops at Ephesus. Lucius Saxa, you can come with me as far as Antioch – I’m making you governor of Syria. There are two legions of Cassius’s troops in Antioch, they’ll be enough for your needs. You can start by making the cities of Syria understand that I want tribute. Now, not later! Whatever a place paid Cassius, it will pay to me. For the moment I’m not changing my dispositions elsewhere – Asia Province is quiet, Censorinus is coping in Macedonia, and I can’t see the need for a governor in Bithynia.’ He stretched his arms above his head exultantly. ‘A holiday! The New Dionysus is going to have a proper holiday! And what better place than at the court of Aphrodite in Egypt?’

      He didn’t write Cleopatra a letter either. She knew that he was coming only through her agents, who managed to give her two nundinae of notice. In those sixteen days she sent ships out in search of fare that Egypt did not stock, from the succulent hams of the Pyreneae to huge wheels of cheese. Though it wasn’t usually on the menu, the palace kitchens could produce garum for flavoring sauces, and several breeders of suckling pigs for Roman residents of the city found their entire piggeries bought out. Chickens, geese, ducks, quails and pheasants were rounded up, though at this time of year there would be no lamb. More importantly, the wine had to be as good as plentiful; Cleopatra’s court hardly touched it, and Cleopatra herself preferred Egyptian barley beer. But for the Romans it must be wine, wine, wine.

      Rumors floated around Pelusium and the Delta that Syria was restless, although no one seemed to have concrete evidence as to the nature of the problem. Admittedly the Jews were in a ferment; when Herod had returned from Bithynia a tetrarch, there were howls from both sides of the Sanhedrin, Pharisee and Sadducee; that his brother Phasael was also a tetrarch didn’t seem to matter as much. Herod was hated, Phasael tolerated. Some Jews were intriguing to spill Hyrcanus from the throne in favor of his nephew, a Hasmonaean prince named Antigonus; or, failing success, at least to strip Hyrcanus of the high priesthood and give that to Antigonus.

      But with Mark Antony due to arrive any day, Syria didn’t get the attention from Cleopatra that it deserved. It was a matter of some urgency only because Syria was right next door.

      What preoccupied Cleopatra most was a crisis that hinged on her son. Cha’em and Tach’a had been instructed to take Caesarion to Memphis and keep him there until Antony left.

      ‘I will not go,’ Caesarion said very calmly, chin up.

      They were far from alone, which annoyed her. So she answered curtly. ‘Pharaoh orders it! Therefore you will go.’

      ‘I too