AS ANTONY MADE his excruciating trip to the mausoleum, one of his bodyguards sped—with Antony’s sword secreted under his cloak—to Octavian’s camp, outside the city. There he produced the heavy blade, still smeared with blood, and an early account of the botched suicide. Octavian retired immediately to his tent, to weep the same brand of crocodile tears that Caesar had wept for Pompey, “a man who had been his relation by marriage, his colleague in office and command, and his partner in many undertakings and struggles.” The relief must have been great; dispensing with Antony had been a problem. While Antony lay dying in Cleopatra’s arms Octavian indulged in a little ceremony of self-justification, producing copies of the letters that he and his former brother-in-law had exchanged over the previous years. These he read aloud to his assembled friends. Was it not remarkable “how reasonably and justly he had written, and how rude and overbearing Antony had always been in his replies”? (He took care later to burn Antony’s side of the correspondence.) After the dramatic reading Proculeius set off. He was on Cleopatra’s doorstep within minutes of Antony’s death.
To the end Antony proved overly trusting. Proculeius had two commissions. He was to do all in his power to extract Cleopatra from the mausoleum. And he was to see to it that the treasure Octavian so urgently needed to settle his affairs did not go up in flames. Herod had supplied him with a taste of the East; Octavian could not afford to sacrifice the fabulous hoard of Egypt, the subject of dreams and exaggerations since the time of Homer, to a funeral pyre. His debts were his only remaining obstacle in Rome. He also needed a live Egyptian queen, which he calculated would “add greatly to the glory of his triumph.” Dio devotes a great deal of attention to Cleopatra’s wiles and feints over the next days but knew he was writing of two slippery characters, both deeply invested in the duplicity business. Octavian wanted to seize Cleopatra alive, Dio allows, “yet he was unwilling to appear to have tricked her himself.” Mild-mannered Proculeius was to keep her hopes up and her hand from the fire.
Despite Antony’s assurances, Cleopatra refused to grant Proculeius an interview in the mausoleum. If he wanted to speak to her, he would have to do so through the well-bolted door. Octavian had made her certain promises. She wanted guarantees. She threatened to burn her treasure without them. Repeatedly she pleaded that her children—three of them were under respectful guard, with their attendants—might inherit the kingdom. Repeatedly Proculeius circumvented the request. He assured her that she had no worries. She could trust Octavian entirely. She was unconvinced on that front and had taken various precautions. She wore a small dagger at her hip, inserted into her belt; it could not have been the first time she did so. And she had long before dispatched Caesarion up the Nile. She knew she could ask no favors on her eldest child’s count. With his tutor, Rhodon, and a small fortune, he was to make his way overland to the coast and to sail for India, the established source of Ptolemaic ivory and dyes, spices and tortoiseshell. Proculeius made little progress, though he did have ample opportunity to survey the mausoleum, to which he returned with Gaius Cornelius Gallus—who had entered Egypt from the west, at the head of Antony’s legions—for a second interview. Gallus outranked Proculeius. A poet and an intellectual, he enjoyed a facility with language; he was a pioneer of the love elegy. (Ironically, he addressed his work to the actress who had been Antony’s mistress.) Again he faced one of Antony’s women. Perhaps he could negotiate a surrender. Gallus met Cleopatra outside the door for a prolonged conversation, presumably little different from the one she had had with Proculeius. She remained intransigent.
Meanwhile Proculeius fixed a ladder to the side of the building and climbed in the upper-story window through which Antony had been carried. Two servants scurried up the wall behind him. Once inside the three descended to the ground floor, where they stole up on Cleopatra, at the mausoleum door. Charmion or Iras noticed the intruders first and cried out: “Wretched Cleopatra, you are taken alive!” At the sight of the Romans, Cleopatra reached for the dagger to stab herself, but Proculeius was quicker. Throwing himself upon her, he enveloped Cleopatra in both arms. He wrested away the dagger and searched the folds of her clothing for poisons, all the while affably reassuring her, as he had been instructed. She should not act rashly. She did herself a disservice, and Octavian too. Why rob him of the opportunity to prove his kindness and integrity? He was after all—she had heard the claim before, from a messenger who had defected, about a man whose lifeless body lay upstairs in a pool of blood—“the gentlest of commanders.”
Octavian installed a freedman named Epaphroditus at Cleopatra’s side. He had firm instructions. He was to keep the queen of Egypt alive “by the strictest vigilance, but otherwise to make any concession that would promote her ease and pleasure.” All instruments by which she might again attempt to kill herself were confiscated. Presumably the pile of treasure was at this juncture carted away as well. Cleopatra was, however, supplied with all she requested—incense, and oils of cedar and cinnamon—with which to prepare Antony for burial. She spent two days purifying the body, a courtesy Octavian was no doubt happy to grant. He could win points for honoring an unwritten code of warfare while at the same time delivering the scandalous burial that he claimed Antony had requested. Octavian’s men removed none of Cleopatra’s retinue or attendants, “in order that she should entertain more hope than ever of accomplishing all she desired, and so should do no harm to herself.” The three children were treated sympathetically and as befit their rank, for which she had reason to be grateful. Octavian’s men tracked down Antyllus, betrayed by his tutor, entranced by the priceless gem he knew the sixteen-year-old to be wearing under his toga. Antony’s son had sought refuge in a shrine, probably within the massive walls of the Caesareum. He begged for his life. Octavian’s men dragged him out and beheaded him. The tutor lost no time in snatching the jewel from the corpse, for which he was later crucified.