The Augustan Empire 43 BC

On i August Octavian attacked, and Alexandria fell. First came a naval fiasco in the harbour: Antony's whole fleet deserted to Octavian. Then came an infantry exchange, which Octavian once again won decisively. Antony returned to the palace, and he died. Plutarch and after him Shakespeare tell the story magnificently - the false news that Cleopatra is dead, the slow removal of the armour, the slave who kills himself rather than strike his lord, the bungled death-blow, the wretched writhing as Cleopatra and her maids haul him into the mausoleum. At least we can believe that in the tumult Antony heard confused reports, and he may well have falsely believed that Cleopatra had taken her own life: it was the natural thing to do. But in fact Octavian's men took her captive first, and she lived on for nine more days.³³¹

Octavian himself entered Alexandria without resistance, and in a careful speech announced his forgiveness of the city. But his mercy had

Plut. Ant. 7J.

Macrob. Sat. ш.9.6; Serv. ad Aen. xn.841; doubted by Rawson 1973 (f 203).

³³° Hall 1972 (в 240); Le Gall 1976 (d 210).

63

³³¹ For the date of her death (probably 10 August) cf. Skeat 1953 (c 219) 98-100.

its bounds. He took the treasure, of course. Caesarion was hunted down and killed; so was Antyllus, Antony's eldest son; there were other victims too, including Cassius Parmensis, the last of Iulius Caesar's assassins, and Canidius Crassus, the general of the Actium campaign. But many were spared, including Cleopatra's other children - at least for the present.[160] They were being kept for the triumph, and the taunts of the Roman crowd. And so, it seems, was Cleopatra herself: but here Octavian's plan went astray.

The story of her death is still more extraordinary than Antony's, and very hard to estimate. The ancient sources, especially Plutarch and Dio,[161] had no doubt that Octavian was trying to prevent her suicide, and used threats to her children to ensure that she stayed alive. This was, of course, to make certain that she would be displayed humiliatingly at his triumph in Rome; and, for the ancient sources, it was when Cleopatra realized the horror of this fate that she finally determined to kill herself. She bathed herself, and dressed in her finest regal attire - a strange version of the bathing and dressing that were important parts of a real funeral. Then she clasped the asp to her arm; she took her seat on the regal throne, flanked by the devoted maids Iras and Charmion who chose to join their mistress in death. The guards burst in to find them there in their tableau of death; Cleopatra had won her final marvellous victory. And it was the most appropriate of deaths, for the double cobra was an old Ptolemaic symbol, the uraeus-. on a Ptolemaic head-dress the cobras would rear up, as if to strike any enemy of the throne.[162] Now Cleopatra's very life had become hostile to her. It was right for the royal cobra to strike.

The version goes back very close to the events themselves. In outline it had taken shape by the time Horace wrote his Cleopatra Ode a few years later.[163] But modern scholars are sceptical.[164] They point to the advan­tages to Octavian of having her dead: even as it was, trouble continued in Egypt for some months,[165] and it would have been more perilous if Cleopatra had remained a potential figurehead. Would it not be better for Octavian to remove her? If actual murder was too crude, then at least he could leave poison, or indeed cobras, pointedly available — a glamorous equivalent of the revolver on the officer's table. Yet such a view raises more difficulties than it solves. It leaves it unclear why Octavian should have allowed her to live on for those nine days; we are even told that he foiled two earlier suicide attempts.[166] Octavian must have known his mind well before the city was taken. In the turmoil of the first day Cleopatra could readily have died, and it would have been easy to portray it as suicide, doubtless by a barbaric method. Octavian would have spoken regretfully of the mercy he would have shown: that sort of scene was to become commonplace in the early Principate. But the impli­cations of the story we have are very different, and much less flattering to Octavian. No one could escape the inference that he was trying to keep her alive against her will, but was outwitted. Octavian was usually a more accomplished propagandist than this. It is surely better to assume that, if he kept her alive at all, he genuinely did want her for the triumph, just as his supporters wished.[167] Some of the details may well be fictional[168] - perhaps the famous story of the basket of figs, for instance. But, at least in outline, her splendid, serene, triumphant death is probably history, not legend.

XIII. RETROSPECT