The World

The Ptolemies needed to back Roman winners: as Pompey was rowed ashore, he was beheaded. Elected dictator, Caesar left Antony, magister equitum – master of horse (the traditional deputy of a dictator) – to govern Rome while he sailed for Alexandria with a mere 4,000 troops, chasing Pompey. On arrival the Egyptians presented Pompey’s head. Caesar wept and mourned his former son-in-law, then took up residence at the palace, demanding that the rival siblings, Ptolemy and Cleopatra, present themselves. Cleopatra refused to be judged, arranging to be delivered to Caesar in a laundry bag carried by a strapping factotum. Even if Caesar was not already the sort of man to be delighted with her haughty charisma, he was dazzled by this sexy coup de théâtre. He was fifty-two, she was twenty-two.

WHO I SCREW: CLEOPATRA, CAESAR AND ANTONY

Yet they were well matched. Both were political animals, theatrical maestros and born survivors and killers. Caesar was a perennial practitioner of the adventurous style of politics; she was the heiress of the world’s grandest dynasty, proprietress of the body of the great Alexander, which Caesar visited. The queen was educated, intelligent, possibly a virgin, and polyglot, speaking Greek, Latin, ‘Ethiopian’, Egyptian (the first Ptolemy to do so; her mother may have been Egyptian) and the language Caesar most respected: power. If she lost her struggle with her brother, she would be killed. She needed Caesar.

Caesar was ill prepared for street fighting but he backed Cleopatra. Ptolemy rallied the mob while his troops besieged Caesar and Cleopatra in the palace. The fighting was vicious; Caesar was risking the world for a girl he barely knew. His small force retreated: the museum caught fire. Finding himself trapped, Caesar dived into the harbour and swam to one of his ships – quite an exploit at his age. With reinforcements, who included Jews sent from the high priest of Jerusalem and Arabs sent from the Nabataean king, Caesar routed Ptolemy, who was drowned, and secured Alexandria.

Caesar and Cleopatra celebrated on a Nilotic cruise – his first rest in ten years. Leaving a pregnant Cleopatra as pharaoh with a younger brother, Caesar hastened to crush Mithridates’ son, Pharnaces, who had seized Pontus and ordered the castration of Roman citizens. Caesar defeated him so easily he boasted, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ When he had finished mopping-up operations in Asia, Hispania and Africa, where typically he had an affair with the Berber queen, Eunoe of Mauritania, he celebrated a unique quadruple triumph^* and was appointed the first ever dictator perpetuus; he was further honoured by having his face put on the coinage and his name added to the calendar as the month of July. Caesar did not liquidate his opponents but instead boasted of his mercy. Cleopatra was visiting Rome with their son Little Caesar – Ptolemy Caesarion. But Caesar grew bored in Rome and planned to emulate Alexander and avenge Crassus by striking Dacia (Romania), before attacking Parthia and going on to conquer Scythia (Ukraine). Knowing that Caesar might never return, Cleopatra tried to get the three-year-old Caesarion recognized as his heir. But while she lived in one of his villas, Caesar only discussed his Egyptian family with intimate friends. Romans were fascinated by her and the baby: Cicero was received by her, and grumbled about her arrogance. When Caesar made his will, he did not mention Cleopatra’s baby, instead naming a great-nephew Octavian, aged nineteen, who had joined him in Spain, as his heir.

The Perpetual Dictator thrice turned down the diadem of kingship offered by Antony but his enemies, led by Brutus, son of his lover Servilia, loathing his near-monarchy, planned to kill him before he departed. A prophetess warned Caesar about the Ides of March; Antony and Calpurnia warned of plots; but Caesar dismissed his Spanish bodyguards and walked to the senatorial meeting at Pompey’s Theatre where, in the portico, Brutus and a cadre of familiar faces approached. One asked for a signature and then all drew daggers and stabbed him. Such was the frenzy that the assassins also stabbed each other. Caesar defended himself with his stylus, a sharp writing tool, but when he saw Brutus, Servilia’s son whom he had pardoned, he just said, ‘You too, my child,’ falling to the ground and covering his head with his toga. He was stabbed twenty-three times (though the second strike to the chest was said to be fatal).