Augustus

How much of this romantically tragic ending is true? Mists of propaganda have clouded the historical record, and a degree of skepticism is in order. Octavian would surely have found the queen’s survival more inconvenient than otherwise. Executing a woman was not the Roman way, and her appearance at his triumph in Rome might well have been counterproductive; he will have recalled how her half sister, Arsinoe, had won the crowd’s sympathy when led in chains in one of Julius Caesar’s triumphs. No, far better for the queen to be persuaded to do away with herself. It may be that, when she showed no signs of taking this step, Dolabella, probably half her age and far from being sincerely her cavaliere servente, was instructed to leak his employer’s travel plans in the hope that the information would edge her over the precipice, as indeed it did.

As for the method of Cleopatra’s death, it is safest to agree with Dio’s judgment that “no one knows clearly in what way she perished.” The story of the asp is problematic, for an individual one is typically about eight feet long, rather large for a basket of figs and inconvenient to handle. Also, a single bite by an asp is not necessarily fatal, and even when it is, as much as two hours may pass before life is extinguished.

It is possible that Octavian arranged for Cleopatra’s murder and put about the fiction that she killed herself. However, there is no evidence for this. All that can be said is that the queen’s removal was to his advantage, and that he showed no qualms in having the boys Caesarion and Antyllus caught and killed. Their coming-of-age ceremony was their death warrant, for it had qualified them as culpable adults. (The younger children, the twins Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, and Ptolemy Philadelphus, were spared. After adorning Octavian’s triumph, they joined the stable of youngsters being looked after by the kindly Octavia. When Cleopatra Selene grew up, she married the scholarly King Juba of Numidia, by whom she had a son and a daughter. She probably took her brothers with her to North Africa; nothing more is heard of them and we may guess that they led quiet lives, doing their best to avoid the world’s dangerous attention.)

Octavian enjoyed being a tourist, but unlike many Romans abroad he was no looter of beautiful and costly objects; the only item he personally took away from the palace of the Ptolemies was a single agate cup. He visited some of the sights of Alexandria, dazzling in white limestone and marble.

The first and foremost of these was the tomb of Alexander the Great, which stood at the crossroads of the city’s two main avenues. Alexander had died in 323 B.C. His embalmed body in its gold and crystal coffin was the new city’s most sacred relic. Not a trace of the corpse or the building that housed it, the Soma, remains, although it probably stood on the site of today’s Mosque of the Prophet Daniel.

At thirty-three, Octavian was the same age as Alexander when he died. A great admirer of the Macedonian, he wanted to see the mummy and honor it; so it was temporarily removed from its coffin and burial chamber and displayed in public.

The young Roman gazed at the body for a time, then paid his respects by crowning the head with a golden diadem and strewing flowers on the trunk. He was asked, “Would you now like to visit the Mausoleum of the Ptolemies?” To which he retorted, “I came to see a king, not a row of corpses.”

The Alexandrians were doubtless impressed by Octavian’s admiring curiosity, but the effect may have been lessened when he accidentally knocked off part of Alexander’s nose.

Octavian’s friend Areius may have introduced him to the Mouseion, or Place of the Muses. This was a group of buildings in the palace grounds, linked by colonnaded walks and facing the Soma. They included richly decorated lecture halls, laboratories, observatories, a park, and a zoo. Generously funded by the Ptolemies, the Mouseion was a center for scientific research and literary studies.

Its library was world renowned. Staffed by many famous Greek writers and literary critics, it contained a vast collection of books, perhaps about 500,000 in all, and was open to anyone who could read. (Julius Caesar was accused of having accidentally burned it down during his brief Alexandrian war of 48–47 B.C.; in fact, only a part of it was destroyed.)

All in all, Octavian’s stay in Alexandria will have given him a clearer concept of what a capital city might be, both architecturally and culturally. Here the art of state persuasion, whether recorded in carved stone or on inked papyrus, was at its most refined. In particular, the Ptolemies had shown how intellectuals and artists could flourish in a form of tamed liberty, or free and de luxe bondage. Rome could not be rebuilt in a day, but Octavian returned from Egypt determined to create a city whose public symbols manifested an appropriate splendor.