After listening to the speech Apollodorus and I had prepared for the occasion, the governor invited the child Isis to his palace, unaware it was a child, reverencing her like Isis herself. I saw my maids beaming with delight, and my noble and faithful Charmian happy as could be.
The Cilicians were going through a serious crisis. Not long before, they had been masters of the Mediterranean, so much so that both merchant ships and those of the Roman state preferred to travel in stormy weather, storms being less perilous than pirates. To combat them, Caesar had given Pompey unprecedented resources. The Senate designated him sole general, selected from the consuls, with supreme command from the pillars of Hercules to Syria and the Pontus, and all territories twenty leagues inland. He had an army of a size never seen before. He had the authority to appoint twenty-five lieutenants, all with praetorial rank and powers, and two treasurers with the rights of quaestors, and under them he had marshaled 120,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry, and 500 ships. It stands to reason that he had already routed a great number of the Cilicians’ allies. The Cilicians themselves were untouched; on perceiving the threat of the Roman attack, they had lived up to their reputation as formidable adversaries and shut up their women, children, and treasures in the castles of the Taurus.
I arrived at a court where there was not a single woman, and I ate my meals from wooden plates. The court was composed of adventurers and desperadoes from all nations, of licensed mercenaries, citizens exiled from the destroyed cities of Italy, Spain, and Asia, soldiers and officers from the armies of Fimbria and Sertorius, runaways and outlaws from towns everywhere. They had holed up here originally because the magnificent forests of Cilicia afforded them excellent timber to construct ships, but over the course of time the governor of Cilicia proved himself the best kind of governor pirates could hope for, by his dash, his cunning, his bravery, his astonishing strategic ability, his coolness in crisis, his sense of justice, and his inveterate hatred of Romans. I should never have left that place. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here on the brink of death, trapped where I don’t deserve to be, before a mean-spirited and graceless enemy. If Caesar had defeated me! If Antony had! If Pompey had! That I could take. But this, never. I cannot continue with my story. Cleopatra’s time has come.
Diomedes the Informer
Almost, almost, almost. . she almost spoke the way I have written, those were almost her words, or they would have been if Cleopatra had not spoken very different ones. They are not exactly out of tune with her. At least they approximate her tone, and if maybe I shifted them around, if I tossed them into a saucepan and stirred them, as though concocting a potion, they would not be too far from the ones Cleopatra uttered that day. But this is not the time for saucepans and these were not her actual words. I have to confess it. If I acted like a Roman slave in my first effort, in this second I have only my own defects to lay the blame on: my mental laziness, my pettiness, my clumsy tongue that forces me to make her speak in this misleading fashion. . Face the truth and call me what I am, lazy, insignificant, gauche, but also add that I am pigheaded, because I am going to try for yet a third time. This will be my final attempt. I tense my bow. My arrow cannot miss its target. This time there will be no mistakes, though I am a veritable seedbed of errors. Because here I am not going to leave evidence of my own imaginings. I simply want to reproduce her words. I do not wish to die in the condition of a liar. Come on, Diomedes! Stop dithering! Concentrate, remember! So listen now: thus spake Cleopatra, bathed in the blood of Antony, to give testimony of her passage through life:
The Queen Dismounts with a Single Leap
The queen dismounts with a single leap. All her company does the same. They glide to the ground, abandoning their mounts.
We reached the gates of Pelusium before nightfall. We did not rein in our mounts even when the fortress came in sight. Still faithful, the city embraced us, set there, well-weaponed and flying its blood-red flags, in the desert zone that acted as a second wall of defense.
It was ten months since the intrigues of my husband’s and brother’s Ruling Council had driven me to lay my traps, devices that had won me the popular voice of Egypt. Like all good weapons, it was two-edged; I used it both to promote myself and to expel the troops of Gabirius and the rest of the Roman leeches. Regardless of the veracity of the propaganda I spread far and wide, I managed to gain the favor of the fickle mob but at the same time brought on myself the enraged displeasure of my brother’s minions, who clung to him to suck out the riches of the Nile, for as long as they could avoid my eagle-eyed supervision and the enmity of Gabirius’s men.
The legionaries that Aulus Gabirius had left in Egypt to protect the throne of the reinstated Auletes had enjoyed five years of the easy life of Egypt. My lasting seduction of Upper Egypt and my momentary and partial appeasement of Alexandria sat badly with their airy pretensions to imperial status. It was the visit of Gnaius Pompey that broke the spell I had cast over the city. He had come to ask for help in the civil war against Caesar. Along with Ptolemy’s Ruling Council, we sat down behind closed doors and deliberated on whether to help him or not. While we were meeting, the young Ptolemy fell asleep from all the wine they had poured into him, polluting my air with all kinds of gastric discharges. As had happened with Auletes my father under different circumstances, the wretches had bloated the boy-king physically and mentally, flattering and corrupting him, poisoning his mind with frequent stories of how I was refusing to let him exercise his powers as commander in chief and husband.
Despite our deliberations we reached no easy accord. The only thing that passed off with moderate ease was Ptolemy’s falling asleep, but finally we reached the conclusion it would be wise to help Pompey. We would send out with all speed sixty ships and the soldiers of Gabirius. But exactly how many of them? Potinus and Achilles, the boy-king’s key advisors, wanted to keep the number laughably small. Given a choice, they would have sent none. They had secret links with the restless legionaries, by now half-Roman, half-Alexandrian, and counted on their support, based as it was on their joint hatred of Cleopatra. Protarcus, my chief minister, handled the matter adroitly. We sent ships and food supplies, along with five hundred of the finest men of Gabirius, those who would obey Achilles without discussion.
The Ruling Council and the Court of Ptolemy broadcast this support to the four winds, attributing it solely to me, inflating the numbers and setting the people of Alexandria against me. Their slanders painted me as a Rome-loving traitor to Egypt, terming me a liar because, they claimed, I said one thing and did another. My earlier wooing of Alexandria was made to work against me.
The remaining soldiers of Gabirius greedily stoked the fires of revolt. This was exactly what they had been waiting for. If their Roman leanings had predisposed them against me when I preached against the scandalous bloodletting of their fellow countrymen, they had declared themselves my open enemies since the first days of my mandate, over their bitter dispute with Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus. It occurred at the time the Parthians routed the troops of Crassus, who had then been assassinated. Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus had just been appointed governor of Syria. The Parthians were poised to swoop down over the frontier and he had only a handful of men to defend it. There were no reinforcements in Syria. Bibulus sent his two sons to Egypt, to recruit, in the name of Imperial Rome, the urgently needed soldiers of Gabirius.