Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

But that New Year's Day, so auspiciously begun, was to end with some long delayed bad news from Alexandria. Ptolemy Alexander the Younger's time had finally come at the beginning of the year just gone, the second year of Sulla's reign. Word had arrived then from Alexandria that King Ptolemy Soter Chickpea was dead and his daughter Queen Berenice now ruling alone. Though the throne came through her, under Egyptian law she could not occupy it without a king. Might, the embassage from Alexandria humbly asked, Lucius Cornelius Sulla grant Egypt a new king in the person of Ptolemy Alexander the Younger? What happens if I deny you?'' asked Sulla. "Then King Mithridates and King Tigranes will win Egypt," said the leader of the delegation. "The throne must be occupied by a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty. If Ptolemy Alexander is not made King and Pharaoh, then we will have to send to Mithridates and Tigranes for the elder of the two bastards, Ptolemy Philadelphus who was called Auletes because of his piping voice." "I can see that a bastard might be able to assume the title of King, but can he legally become Pharaoh?" asked Sulla, thus revealing that he had studied the Egyptian monarchy. Were he the son of a common woman, definitely not'' was the answer. "However, Auletes and his younger brother are the sons of Ptolemy Soter and Princess Arsinoe, the royal concubine who was the eldest legitimate daughter of the King of Nabataea. It has long been the custom for all the small dynasts of Arabia and Palestina to send their oldest daughters to the Pharaoh of Egypt as his concubines, for that is a more august and respectable fate than marriage to other small dynasts and brings greater security to their fathers, who all need Egyptian co operation to carry on their trading activities up the Sinus Arabicus and across the various deserts." "So you're saying that Alexandria and Egypt would accept one of the Ptolemaic bastards because his mother was royal?'' "In the event that we cannot have Ptolemy Alexander, that is inevitable, Lucius Cornelius." "Mithridatid and Tigranic puppets," said Sulla thoughtfully. As their wives are the daughters of Mithridates, that too is inevitable. Tigranes is now too close to the Egyptian border for us to insist the Ptolemy bastards divorce these girls. He would invade in the name of Mithridates. And Egypt would fall. We are not militarily strong enough to deal with a war of that magnitude. Besides which, the girls have sufficient Ptolemaic blood to pass on the throne. In the event," said the delegation's leader suavely, "that the child of Ptolemy Soter and his concubine the daughter of the King of Idumaea fails to grow up and provide Auletes with a wife of half Ptolemaic blood." Sulla looked suddenly brisk and businesslike. "Leave it with me, I'll attend to the matter. We can't have Armenia and Pontus in control of Egypt!" His own deliberations were already concluded long since, so without delay Sulla set off for the villa on the Pincian Hill and an interview with Ptolemy Alexander. "Your day has arrived," said the Dictator to his hostage, no longer such a very young man; he had turned thirty five. "Chickpea is dead?" asked Ptolemy Alexander eagerly. "Dead and entombed. Queen Berenice rules alone." "Then I must go!" Ptolemy Alexander squawked, agitated. "I must go! There is no time to be wasted!" "You can go when I say you can go, not a moment before," said Sulla harshly. "Sit down, Your Majesty, and listen to me." His Majesty sat with his draperies flattening limply around him like a pricked puffball, his eyes very strange between the solid lines of stibium he had painted on both upper and lower lids, extended out toward the temples in imitation of the antique Eye of Egypt, the wadjet; as he had also painted in thick black brows and whitened the area between them and the black line of the upper lids, Sulla found it absolutely impossible to decide what Ptolemy Alexander's real eyes held. The whole effect, he decided, was distinctly sinister and probably intended to be. "You cannot talk to a king as to an inferior," said His Majesty stiffly. "There is no king in all the world who is not my inferior," Sulla answered contemptuously. "I rule Rome! That makes me the most powerful man between the Rivers of Ocean and Indus. So you will listen, Your Majesty and without interrupting me! You may go to Alexandria and assume the throne. But only upon certain conditions. Is that understood?" What conditions?'' "That you make your will and lodge it with the Vestal Virgins here in Rome. It need only be a simple will. In the event that you die without legitimate issue, you will bequeath the Kingdom of Egypt to Rome." Ptolemy Alexander gasped. "I can't do that!" "You can do anything I say you must do if you want to rule in Alexandria. That is my price. Egypt to fall to Rome if you die without legitimate issue." The unsettling eyes within their embossed ritual framework slid from side to side, and the richly carmined mouth full and self indulgent worked upon itself in a way which reminded Sulla of Philippus. "All right, I agree to your price." Ptolemy Alexander shrugged. "I don't subscribe to the old Egyptian religion, so what can it matter to me after I'm dead?" "Excellently reasoned!" said Sulla heartily. "I brought my secretary with me so you'd be able to make out the document here and now. With every royal seal and your personal cartouche attached, of course. I want no arguments from the Alexandrians after you're dead." He clapped for a Ptolemaic servant, and asked that his own secretary be summoned. As they waited he said idly, "There is one other condition, actually." "What?" asked Ptolemy Alexander warily. "I believe that in a bank at Tyre you have a sum of two thousand talents of gold deposited by your grandmother, the third Queen Cleopatra. Mithridates got the money she left on Cos, but not what she left at Tyre. And King Tigranes has not yet managed to subdue the cities of Phoenicia. He's too busy with the Jews. You will leave those two thousand talents of gold to Rome." One look at Sulla's face informed His Majesty that there could be no argument; he shrugged again, nodded. Flosculus the secretary came, Ptolemy Alexander sent one of his own slaves for his seals and cartouche, and the will was soon made and signed and witnessed. "I will lodge it for you," said Sulla, rising, "as you cannot cross the pomerium to visit Vesta." Two days later Ptolemy Alexander the Younger departed from Rome with the delegation, and took ship in Puteoli for Africa; it was easier to cross the Middle Sea at this point and then to hug the African coast from the Roman province to Cyrenaica, and Cyrenaica to Alexandria. Besides which, the new King of Egypt wanted to go nowhere near Mithridates or Tigranes, and did not trust to his luck. In the spring an urgent message had come from Alexandria, where Rome's agent (a Roman ostensibly in trade) had written that King Ptolemy Alexander the Second had suffered a disaster. Arriving safely after a long voyage, he had immediately married his half sister cum first cousin, Queen Berenice. For exactly nineteen days he had reigned as King of Egypt, nineteen days during which, it seemed, he conceived a steadily increasing hatred of his wife. So early on the nineteenth day of his reign, apparently considering this female creature a nonentity, he murdered his forty year old wife/sister/cousin/queen. But she had reigned for a long time in conjunction with her father, Chickpea; the citizens of Alexandria adored her. Later during the nineteenth day of his reign the citizens of Alexandria stormed the palace, abducted King Ptolemy Alexander the Second, and literally tore him into small pieces a kind of free for all fun for all celebration staged in the agora. Egypt was without king or queen, and in a state of chaos. "Splendid!" cried Sulla as he read his agent's letter, and sent off an embassage of Roman senators led by the consular and ex censor Marcus Perperna to Alexandria, bearing King Ptolemy Alexander the Second's last will and legal testament. His ambassadors were also under orders to call in at Tyre on the way home, there to pick up the gold. From that day to this New Year's Day of the third year of Sulla's reign, nothing further had been heard. "Our entire journey has been dogged by ill luck," said Marcus Perperna. We were shipwrecked off Crete and taken captive by pirates it took two months for the cities of Peloponnesian Greece to raise our ransoms, and then we had to finish the voyage by sailing to Cyrene and hugging the Libyan coast to Alexandria." "In a pirate vessel?" asked Sulla, aware of the gravity of this news, but nonetheless inclined to laugh; Perperna looked so old and shrunken and terrified! "As you so shrewdly surmise, in a pirate vessel." "And what happened when you reached Alexandria?" "Nothing good, Lucius Cornelius. Nothing good!" Perperna heaved a huge sigh. "We found the Alexandrians had acted with celerity and efficiency. They knew exactly whereabouts to send after King Ptolemy Alexander was murdered." "Send for what, Perperna?" "Send for the two bastard sons of Ptolemy Soter Chickpea, Lucius Cornelius. They petitioned King Tigranes in Syria to give them both young men the elder to rule Egypt, and the younger to rule Cyprus." "Clever, but not unexpected," said Sulla. "Go on." By the time we reached Alexandria, King Ptolemy Auletes was already on the throne, and his wife the daughter of King Mithridates was beside him as Queen Cleopatra Tryphaena. His younger brother whom the Alexandrians have decided to call Ptolemy the Cyprian was sent to be regent of Cyprus. His wife another daughter of Mithridates went with him." "And her name is?" "Mithridatidis Nyssa." "The whole thing is illegal," said Sulla, frowning. "Not according to the Alexandrians!" "Go on, Perperna, go on! Tell me the worst." "Well, we produced the will, of course. And informed the Alexandrians that we had come formally to annex the Kingdom of Egypt into the empire of Rome as a province." "And what did they say to that, Perperna?" "They laughed at us, Lucius Cornelius. By various methods their lawyers proceeded to prove that the will was invalid, then they pointed to the King and Queen upon their thrones and showed us that they had found legitimate heirs." "But they're not legitimate!" "Only under Roman law, they said, and denied that it applied to Egypt. Under Egyptian law which seems to consist largely of rules made up on the spur of the moment to support whatever the Alexandrians have in mind the King and Queen are legitimate." "So what did you do, Perperna?" "What could I do, Lucius Cornelius? Alexandria was crawling with soldiers! We thanked our Roman gods that we managed to get out of Egypt alive, and with our persons intact." "Quite right," said Sulla, who did not bother venting his spleen upon unworthy objects. "However, the fact remains that the will is valid. Egypt now belongs to Rome." He drummed his fingers on his desk. "Unfortunately there isn't much Rome can do at the present time. I've had to send fourteen legions to Spain to deal with Quintus Sertorius, and I've no wish to add to the Treasury's expenses by mounting another campaign at the opposite end of the world. Not with Tigranes riding roughshod over most of Syria and no curb in the vicinity now that the Parthian heirs are so embroiled in civil war. Have you still got the will?" "Oh yes, Lucius Cornelius." "Then tomorrow I'll inform the Senate what's happened and give the will back to the Vestals against the day when Rome can afford to annex Egypt by force which is the only way we're going to come into our inheritance, I think." "Egypt is fabulously rich." "That's no news to me, Perperna! The Ptolemies are sitting on the greatest treasure in the world, as well as one of the world's richest countries." Sulla assumed the expression which indicated he was finished, but said, it appeared as an afterthought, "I suppose that means you didn't obtain the two thousand talents of gold from Tyre?'' "Oh, we got that without any trouble, Lucius Cornelius," said Perperna, shocked. "The bankers handed it over the moment we produced the will. On our way home, as you instructed." Sulla roared with laughter. "Well done for you, Perperna! I can almost forgive you the debacle in Alexandria!" He got up, rubbing his hands together in glee. "A welcome addition to the Treasury. And so the Senate will see it, I'm sure. At least poor Rome didn't have to pay for an embassage without seeing an adequate financial return."