Colleen McCullough - 6. The October Horse - A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

Terrible news from Rome, Cassius. I am sending this at the gallop in the hope that it reaches you before you set out to invade Egypt. That is now quite impossible. Octavianus and Quintus Pedius are consuls. Octavianus marched on Rome and the city gave in without a murmur. It seems likely that there will be civil war between them and Antonius, who has allied himself with the governors of the western provinces. Antonius and Lepidus are both outlawed, and the Liberators tried and condemned nefas in Octavianus's court. All our property is forfeit, though Atticus writes assuring me that he is looking after Servilia, Tertulla and Junilla. Vatia Isauricus and Junia will have nothing to do with them. Decimus Brutus is defeated in Italian Gaul and has fled, no one knows where. This is our best opportunity to win Rome. If Antonius and Octavianus should patch up their differences (though I admit that does not seem likely), then we will spend the rest of our lives outlawed. Therefore I say that if you haven't yet started for Egypt, don't. We have to stick together and make a move to take Italy and Rome. We might have been able to conciliate Antonius one day, but Octavianus? Never. Caesar's heir is obdurate, all the Liberators must die disenfranchised and poverty-stricken. Leave what legions you deem necessary to garrison Syria in your absence and march to join me as soon as you can. I conquered the Bessi and have a great quantity of grain and other foodstuffs, so our combined army will eat. Some parts of Bithynia and Pontus have also produced crops, which will belong to us, not to Octavianus to keep Rome pacified. I hear that Italy and the West are as dry as all Greece, Africa and Macedonia. We must act now, Cassius, while we can feed our men and while we still have money in our war chests. Porcia is dead. My mother says suicide. I am desolate.

Cassius wrote back immediately. Yes, he would march for Asia Province, probably inland through Cappadocia and Galatia. Was it Brutus's intention to go to war against Octavianus and then hope to make a deal with Antonius? An answer came swiftly: yes, that was what Brutus hoped to do. March at once, we will meet in Smyrna in December. Send as many ships as possible. Cassius picked his two best legions and sat them down, one in Antioch, one in Damascus, then appointed his loyalest follower, an ex-centurion named Fabius, as temporary governor. Leaving noblemen to govern, in Cassius's experience, only meant trouble. A sentiment Caesar would have echoed heartily. Just before he left the vicinity of Antioch to head north, he learned from Herod that the ingrate Malichus had poisoned his benefactor Antipater in Jerusalem, and rejoiced in his deed. "I have him prisoner," wrote Herod. "What shall I do?" "Have your revenge" was Cassius's answer. Herod did. He took the fanatically Judaic Malichus to Tyre, home of the purple-dye industry and home of the hated god Baal. Therefore a religiously anathematic place to a Jew. Two of Cassius's soldiers led the naked and barefoot Malichus out into the middle of a stinking mass of putrefying shellfish carcasses, and there very slowly killed him while Herod watched. The body was left to rot among the murex. Learning of Herod's revenge on Malichus, Cassius laughed softly. Oh, Herod, you are a very interesting man! At the pass through the Amanus range called the Syrian Gates, Tillius Cimber, the Liberator governor of Bithynia and Pontus, joined Cassius with a legion of Pontic troops. That brought the army up to eleven legions, plus three thousand cavalry as many horses as the practical Cassius thought the countryside would bear this side of grassy Galatia.

Cimber and Cassius agreed that their progress would have to be leisurely enough to squeeze as much money as possible out of every land they traversed. In Tarsus they fined the city the fantastic sum of fifteen hundred gold talents, and insisted that it be paid before they left. The terrified city councillors melted down every precious object in the temples, then sold the free Tarsian poor into slavery; even that didn't begin to approach the sum, so they went on selling Tarsians into slavery, ascending the social ladder. When they managed to gather five hundred gold talents, Cassius and Cimber pronounced themselves satisfied and departed up through the Cilician Gates to Cappadocia. They had sent their cavalry on ahead to demand money from Ariobarzanes, who said flatly that he had none, and pointed to the holes in his doors and window shutters where once golden nails had resided. The old king was killed on the spot and his palace plus the temples of Eusebeia Mazaca plundered to little effect. Deiotarus of Galatia donated infantry and cavalry as his share, then stood aside and watched his temples and palace pillaged. You can tell, he thought wearily, that Brutus and Cassius are in the moneylending business. Nothing is sacred except money. At the beginning of December, Cassius, Cimber and the army entered Asia Province through the wild and beautiful mountains of Phrygia, then followed the course of the Hermus River down to the Aegean Sea. Reunion with Brutus was only a short ride down a good Roman road. If everyone they encountered looked poor and downtrodden, if every temple and public building looked shabby and neglected, they chose not to notice. Mithridates the Great had made a far worse chaos of Asia Province than any Roman.

3

When Cleopatra had arrived in Alexandria that June three months after the death of Caesar, she had found Caesarion safe and well in the custody of Mithridates of Pergamum, wept on her uncle's bosom, thanked him lovingly for his care of her realm, and sent him home to Pergamum laden down with a thousand talents of gold. Gold that Mithridates was to find very handy when Brutus demanded tribute; he paid the specified amount and said nothing about the large surplus of bullion still in his secret coffers.

Now three years of age, Cleopatra's son was tall, golden-haired, blue of eye and growing more like Caesar every day. He could read and write, discuss affairs of state a little, and was fascinated by the work his birth had made his lot. A happy chance. Time then to say goodbye to Ptolemy XIV Philadelphus, Cleopatra's half brother and husband. The fourteen-year-old boy was handed over to Apollodorus, who had him strangled and gave out to the citizens of Alexandria that their king had died of a familial trouble. True enough. Caesarion was elevated to the throne as Ptolemy XV Caesar Philopator Philomator Ptolemy Caesar, father-loving and mother-loving. He was anointed Pharaoh by Cha'em, high priest of Ptah, and became Lord of the Two Ladies, He of the Sedge and Bee; he was also given his own physician, Hapd'efan'e. But Caesarion could not marry Cleopatra. Father-daughter or mother-son incest was religiously unacceptable. Oh, for the daughter Caesar had never given her! A mystery and clearly the will of the Gods, but why? Why, why? She, the personification of Nilus, had not quickened, even during those last months when she and Caesar were together in Rome for many nights of love. When her menses began to flow as her ship had put out from Ostia, she had fallen to the deck and howled, screeched, torn her hair, lacerated her breasts. She had been late, been sure she was with child! Now there would never be a full sister or brother for Caesarion. In about the time that it would have taken for news that Egypt had a new king to travel from Alexandria to Cilicia and back again, Cleopatra received a letter from her sister Arsino. Despite Caesar's plans that she would spend the rest of her days in service to Artemis of Ephesus, Arsino had escaped as soon as she learned of Caesar's assassination. She had gone to earth in the temple kingdom of Olba, where, it was said, the descendants of Ajax's archer brother, Teucer, still ruled. It was described in some of the Alexandrian texts, which Cleopatra had consulted the moment she learned Arsinos whereabouts, hoping to find a clue as to how she could eliminate her sister. Hauntingly beautiful, said the texts, with its gorges, white and racing rivers, jagged peaks of many colors; its people lived in roomy houses cut inside the cliffs, warm in winter, cool in summer, and made exquisite lace that procured an income for Olba. What she read discouraged Cleopatra. Arsino was safe enough there to think herself inviolate, untouchable. Her letter asked that she be allowed to return to Egypt and take up her rightful place as a princess of the House of Ptolemy. Not, swore Arsino on the paper, to attempt to usurp the throne! There was no need for that. Let her come home, she begged, to marry her nephew, Caesarion. That would mean children of the true blood for Egypt's throne within little more than a decade. Cleopatra wrote one word back: NO! She then issued an edict to all her subjects that forbade the Princess Arsino to enter Egypt. If she did, she was to be put to death at once and her head sent to the Pharaohs. This edict found favor with her subjects of Nilus, but not with her Macedonian and Greek subjects in Alexandria, whom Caesar had tamed beyond any thought of insurrection, but who still thought it a good idea for Caesarion to have a suitably Ptolemaic bride. After all, he couldn't marry someone without a drop of the same blood in her veins!