Antony headed to Libya, where he had posted four legions. He planned to regroup. Cleopatra, her fleet lost, her treasure partly dispersed, her ally ruined, hurried to Alexandria. She had left Actium before anyone else, and in a powerful, well-equipped ship. If she moved rapidly she could outsail news of the fiasco. She knew what it was to return to Egypt under catastrophic conditions and took precautions: she ordered some quick floral arranging. When she glided past the lighthouse of Alexandria the following day she did so serenely, her ships garlanded with wreaths of flowers. Accompanied by flute players, an on-deck chorus chanted victory songs. To those who rowed out to meet her Cleopatra imparted the news of her extraordinary triumph, presumably without a trace of dryness in her throat. Nearly simultaneously, Antony’s nineteen legions and 12,000 cavalry—having finally given up hope that their commander would return to them, and after a week of stubborn negotiation—surrendered to Octavian, who was only just beginning to grasp the scale of his victory.
IX
THE WICKEDEST WOMAN IN HISTORY
“I was equal to gods, except for the mortal part.”
—EURIPIDES
MISFORTUNE, WENT THE saying, has few friends; Cleopatra did not wait to discover if the adage was true. If her ruse had not already been discovered it was confirmed quickly enough now, in blood. The Alexandrian elite had disapproved of her before. She feared their reaction on learning of the Actium debacle; they could now fairly accuse her of having delivered Egypt to Rome. She did not care to watch them exult in her defeat. Nor did she care to be replaced on the throne. She no sooner returned than she embarked on an unbridled killing spree, ordering her most prominent detractors arrested and assassinated. From their estates she confiscated great sums. She appropriated additional monies wherever she could find them, seizing temple treasures. For whatever came next a fortune was required. It would be expensive to buy off the inevitable; in one form or another, Octavian would come calling. She equipped new forces and cast about for allies, whom she courted baldly. Artavasdes, the defiant Armenian king, had remained a prisoner in Alexandria, where his three years of captivity now came to an end. Cleopatra sent his severed head some 1,200 miles east, to his Median rival. She calculated that he would need no further encouragement to rise to her assistance. He demurred.
As in the past, she reached out to the East, where she had trade contacts and longtime partisans, where Octavian was without traction, and where royalty was royalty. When Antony returned to Alexandria he found her consumed by “a most bold and wonderful enterprise.” An isthmus separated the Mediterranean from the Gulf of Suez, at the eastern frontier of Egypt. With a large force Cleopatra attempted to lift her ships out of the Mediterranean and haul them forty miles overland, to be relaunched via the gulf into the Red Sea. With her men and money she proposed to make a new home for herself, well beyond the borders of Egypt, possibly even in India, “far away from war and slavery.” In a blind alley it seemed Cleopatra’s nature to envision broad, unbounded horizons; the grandiosity and bravado were staggering, practically enough to suggest that she truly had contemplated an assault on the Roman world.
Cleopatra’s Red Sea venture was not impossible in a country that had for centuries hauled immense stone blocks across vast distances. A monstrosity of a two-prowed Ptolemaic vessel—it was said to have been nearly four hundred feet long and to sit sixty feet above the water—had centuries earlier been launched along wooden rollers, set at even intervals along a harborside ditch. Greased hides occasionally served the same purpose. Ships could be broken as well into sections. The enterprise was less feasible for a sovereign who had antagonized the tribe on the far side of the isthmus. Those happened to be the Nabateans, the shrewd, well-organized traders who had spent a year fighting Herod, thanks in part to Cleopatra’s sabotage. They did not need Herod—who had finally just defeated them—to remind them that Cleopatra was their common enemy. The Nabateans set fire to each of the Egyptian ships as it was drawn ashore. For Cleopatra the failure was particularly bitter. This was the corner of the world from which she had successfully relaunched herself in 48.
Herod was of course the obvious ally; in the desert, Octavian would be no match for their combined forces. To no one, however, was Cleopatra’s misfortune so profoundly satisfying. Cleopatra had dealt Herod a get-out-of-jail-free card in dismissing him from Actium; he lost no time in making his peace with Octavian. Probably in Rhodes that fall the Judaean king made a great show of contrition. Dressed as a commoner, he removed his diadem as he set foot on shore. Before the new master of the Roman world he was frank and forthright. Indeed he had been loyal to Antony. Such, alas, was his nature. Integrity was his stock-in-trade. In his book, explained Herod, a friend ought to risk “every bit of his soul and body and substance.” Had he not been off assailing the Nabateans he would, he assured Octavian, be at Antony’s side even at that very moment. He abandoned his good friend of over two decades now only on account of that Egyptian woman, he admitted, proceeding to cough up the official version of Octavian’s war on Cleopatra. He had told Antony to do away with her. There is no indication of how Herod got through this speech with a straight face. At its end Octavian professed himself grateful to Cleopatra. She had, he reassured his caller, bequeathed him a fine ally. (Herod had reason to be doubly grateful to Cleopatra. He owed his crown to Roman fears of her in the first place.) Graciously, Octavian replaced the diadem on Herod’s head. He sent him off with Roman reinforcements. Meanwhile Cleopatra continued tirelessly to court neighboring tribes and friendly kings. She was able to mobilize only a troop of gladiators, highly skilled fighters who had been training for what were presumed to be Antony and Cleopatra’s victory celebrations. Answering her call, they headed south from what is today modern Turkey. Herod saw to it that they got no farther than Syria.
Failing the East, Cleopatra could look in the opposite direction. Rome had not fully conquered Spain, a restive region, hugely fertile and rich in silver mines. Even if the Mediterranean were closed to her, even if she were unable to continue the war against Octavian, she might sail west via the Indian Ocean, circumnavigating Africa. With her vast resources she and Antony might stir up Spain’s native tribes and found a new kingdom. It was not such a far-fetched idea; Cleopatra had before her the example of another linguistically gifted, charismatic leader. In 83 a rogue Roman proconsul had seized control of Spain, to the horror of his countrymen. Hailed by his native recruits as “the new Hannibal,” Sertorius had incited a revolt. He had very nearly gone on to establish an independent Roman state.* Cleopatra considered the prospect seriously; Octavian worried that she would manage to repeat Sertorius’s coup. A military operation at home was after all unlikely; with the defections of Herod and of Antony’s Cyrenean troops, Egypt was all that remained. It was firmly behind Cleopatra—in Upper Egypt her partisans offered to rise up on her behalf, an effort she discouraged—but unlikely to hold out long against Octavian. She had at best four hundred fiercely loyal Gaulish bodyguards, a modest number of troops, and a remnant of a fleet.