The Memoirs of Cleopatra
Chapter 20 : "A name to blazen forth both sides of his inheritance," I said. "Ptolemy

"A name to blazen forth both sides of his inheritance," I said. "Ptolemy Caesar."

Olympos looked startled. "Do you dare to bestow the familial name of Caesar without permission of that family?"

"I do not need permission from that family! What have they to do with it? The leading member of that family is the child's father. It is between him and me," I said.

"Did he agree to this?" Iras asked quietly.

"He told me it was entirely up to me what I named him."

"But he probably did not a.s.sume you would appropriate his own name," said Olympos. "He probably only meant he didn't care if it was Ptolemy or Troilus."

"Troilus?" I gave a hoot of laughter, but it was so painful I stopped abruptly. "Troilus!"

"A fine name, from the great story of Troy," said Olympos, with a smile. "A fitting heroic name. Or how about Achilles, or Ajax?" We all laughed. But then Olympos continued, "I am not sure you have the legal right to use the name Caesar. There are many rules about it in Rome--"

"I am the Queen of Egypt! Sink Rome and her laws! Gaius Julius Caesar is the father of this child, and it shall bear his name!" I shouted.

"Calm yourself," said Iras. "Calm yourself. Of course it shall bear his name. He would not hear of it otherwise."

"You will force him to recognize the child, then," said Olympos. "You will put him to the test with this name." His voice was full of admiration.

He did not understand. What he said was true enough. But I wanted my son to bear the name of his father. It was as simple as that.

"He will not fail me," I said quietly. "He will not fail him." I kissed the top of the baby's head. But Olympos had put fear in my heart. I knew that in Rome, a father must formally formally acknowledge his child. Would Caesar do that? acknowledge his child. Would Caesar do that?

The next few days were days beyond happiness. That simple word cannot begin to convey the joy, the ecstasy, that filled my being. I felt as light as a feather from the wing of a falcon, and it was not just being delivered of the weight and bulk of the baby, but the exhilaration of being still mysteriously united to him. The baby was entirely himself, but he was always and forever part of me, as well. As I held him, and nursed him, I had the overwhelming conviction that I would never be alone again.

I knew, intellectually, that that was not true. We were not one person, and there is no way another person can keep you from that ultimate aloneness that we all fear. Yet it felt felt that way to me; I felt complete at last. that way to me; I felt complete at last.

Olympos did not approve of my nursing him. He said it was demeaning, and I should find a wet nurse. I promised to do so in a little while, but for the first few weeks, while I watched and wondered where Caesar was and what he was doing, I needed to hold my son close to me every few hours.

Every day little Caesar--for the people of Alexandria nicknamed him Caesarion, "little Caesar," thus skipping all the legal niceties and going straight to the heart of the matter--changed. His little face stopped glowing fiery red, the wrinkles smoothed away, and his eyes grew rounded and lost that odd, slitted, stretched look of a newborn. Now the game of looking for likenesses could start in earnest.

My features are strong ones. My nose is long and my lips are very full, as full as any of the Hps carved on stone statues of the Pharaohs. (Note that I said the Pharaohs, and not their wives, who had dainty faces.) My face is long and thin, and the full mouth helps to offset it, but by itself it is, truthfully --too large. Caesar's features are the opposite; they are all very fine, for a man. In our child, surprisingly, it was the fine features that triumphed over the more prominent ones. Caesarion favored his father, not me. That gave me great happiness.

I decided there must be some way I could celebrate this birth, some way despite Caesar's absence to salute it in an official way. No parades or public festivals; they were too ephemeral. I wanted something substantial, something lasting. I would issue a coin commemorating it.

"No!" said Mardian, when he heard of it. More and more he was becoming my foremost councillor, in spite of his youth. I trusted him, and he had shown very good judgment in every task I had given him so far; his supervision of the rebuilding of Alexandria had been superlative.

"Why not?" I was reclining on a couch in my favorite large room, the one where the sunlight came in on all four sides, and the breezes met and played within the chamber. Silken curtains billowed like a s.h.i.+p's sails, and scented rushes from Lake Gennesareth rustled in their vases. Caesarion lay on a black panther skin in the middle of the floor, his eyes following the whipping movement of the curtains. I had recovered entirely from childbirth, and was bursting with energy. "Why not?" I asked again.

"Would it not seem to be--well, conceited?" he said. "And it would raise more questions. For example, what about your husband, little Ptolemy? Would he be on the coin?"

Little Ptolemy was like another child of mine. He had accepted Caesarion as his little brother. He never made any demands, other than to be allowed a larger sailboat to sail in the inner harbor. I almost forgot about his existence.

"Of course not," I said.

"No Ptolemaic queen has ever issued coinage in her own right, alone," Mardian reminded me. He spent hours researching just such things, and I took his word for it. "Even your exalted ancestor Cleopatra the Second would never have dared."

I popped a large, chilled grape into my mouth and enjoyed the sensation of bursting its skin against my palate. The thin, tingling juice squirted out. "Then perhaps I should put Caesar on it as well?" I asked innocently.

Mardian just shook his head indulgently. He understood my humor. "Oh yes, try that. That should shake them up in Rome." He paused. Unlike Olympos, he knew better than to oppose me when my mind was made up. "What sort of coinage are you considering?"

"Cyprus. I shall mint a coin in Cyprus."

"Oh, you do tempt Rome!" He could not help chuckling. "Caesar's gift of Cyprus was controversial. He just gave away Roman territory. Not a popular thing to do. Of course he covered it up by saying he was forced to conciliate the Alexandrians, since he was hemmed in by hostile forces at the time. But that excuse no longer holds. After all, he won the Alexandrian War. He should have quietly taken Cyprus back. There has been a lot of grumbling about it in Rome."

I always admired Mardian's astounding ability to collect gossip from far-flung places. It was as if he had an outpost in Rome. How did he do it?

"It is the international brotherhood of eunuchs," he once said, and I half believed him. Nothing else could account for it.

"What else are they saying at Rome?" This was delicious.

"That he lost his reason in Egypt, dillydallied when he should have been going about manly Roman tasks like pursuing the last of Pompey's rebels, indulged himself with the effeminate pleasures of the Nile, and so on. It's done wonders for your reputation and created quite a sensation: a woman whom Caesar actually changed his plans for! His veterans made up verses about it, something to the effect that 'Old Caesar wallowed in the mud with the daughter of the Nile, and swelled her banks'... I don't, er, remember the rest."

"Of course not," I agreed. I felt my ears grow warm. I've often been thankful that my face does not blush with embarra.s.sment, but only my ears. And they were invisible beneath my hair today. "Now, about the coin. I think it should be bronze. And it will show me nursing Caesarion."

"Like Isis," he said flatly. He understood the significance.

"Yes," I said. "Like Isis and Horus. And Venus and Cupid. Cyprus was, after all, the birthplace of Venus."

"And Venus is Caesar's ancestress."

"Yes."

"How a simple coin can send so many messages!" he exclaimed, nodding in admiration.

I was posing for the coin. One of our Alexandrian artists had come to make the likeness, and I was seated on a backless chair, holding Caesarion. He kept grabbing at my hair, and I kept gently removing the hands. They were fat, soft little things, as smooth as yogurt. A baby's hands give you immense sensual pleasure just to touch; a miracle that soon fades--like tender new leaves, like the mist of early dawn, like all new things that cannot last, but change into something more prosaic as the day goes inexorably on. Caesarion's hands were still precious.

The artist was making a model in clay, and I would have to approve it. I wished I had more conventional beauty. Although I now knew that my features, taken all together, produced a pleasing effect, they looked best when viewed from the front. A profile showed only the size of my nose and lips, not the harmony of the whole. Nonetheless, coin portraits traditionally showed a profile. Oh, for the profile of Alexander!

"Head higher," murmured the artist, and I lifted my chin.

"You have a regal neck," said the artist. "It has a lovely curve."

A pity that necks are not dwelt upon in poetry, I thought. No one ever mentions necks.

"Your hair should show up well on the coin," he said. "Shall I portray the curls?"

"Certainly," I said. They always portrayed Alexander's tousled curls. My own hair was thick and wavy, not unlike Alexander's. But mine was black, whereas his was fair. The advantage to black hair was that you could rinse it with herbs and oils and make it s.h.i.+ne like a raven's wing.

"The eyes. Shall I have you looking straight ahead?"

"As you wish."

It was almost impossible to show life in the eyes from the side. And of course you could never indicate color. I had found it curious that Caesar, the Roman, had had dark eyes while mine were a lighter, amber green. Caesarion's had darkened; they would be like his father's. Had I not borne him, I would wonder what I had contributed to Caesarion's heredity.

I sat for what seemed hours. I had to hand Caesarion over to Iras, because he began to squirm and cry. Just when I thought I could bear it no longer, the artist said, "I believe I am finished. Would you care to look?"

There is always a moment of dread in first looking at one's portrait. It is how another perceives you, and you are sure their view must be truer than yours. I got out of the chair--my legs were almost asleep--and came around to look at what he had created.

It was ugly!

Without thinking, I burst out, "Is this what I look like?"

He looked crestfallen. "I--I--"

"This woman looks like an old Hitt.i.te axe!" I cried. Stolid, jaw clenched, the matron glared out across the coin. The infant at her breast--was it an infant or a stone globe? It had no features but an abnormally large, round head.

The ridiculous infant made me feel better. I knew that Caesarion looked nothing like that.

"You have to change it!" I said. "I know I am not as beautiful as Aphrodite, but neither do I look like I am sixty years old. I am not the size of the Apis bull! And my child has eyes!"

"I thought--I thought you wanted to stress the dignity of the throne," the artist said.

"I do," I said. "But age and size do not automatically confer greatness. Look at the rotting old hulks of burnt-out wars.h.i.+ps! Come to think of it, that is what you have made me look like here!"

"Forgive me, forgive me! But I thought, your being a woman--that it would be better--I mean--"

I knew what he meant. For unknown reasons, if one wished to show that a woman was powerful, or intelligent, the way to signify it was to portray her as being physically unattractive. For a man, however, it was the opposite. Alexander's beauty was not felt to detract from his generals.h.i.+p. Nowhere was it hinted that a handsome man could not be a good ruler, or clever, or strong, or brave. In fact, people longed for a resplendent king. But for a woman . . . I shook my head. It was as if beauty in a woman rendered all other traits suspect.

"I know there is a hidden code in all this, and coins must abide by the code," I said wearily. "A young woman who has any physical charms at all is seen as incompatible with queens.h.i.+p. That is the convention. But this is too much!"

"Gracious Majesty, I will change it," he said. "Please allow me to adjust it to your approval."

Mardian and I were looking at the almost-finished product. A facsimile of the coin had been rendered in bronze by another artist, and then a die would be cut. a.s.suming, of course, that it met with my approval this time.

"Well," said Mardian, trying to suppress a giggle. He failed.

"Have you ever seen anything so--grim?" I asked. The artist had made little change.

"It serves you right," he said. "It is an antidote to your vanity."

"I am not vain!" I believe this is true. I have never dwelt on myself, but I do try to have an honest appraisal of my traits, that is all.

"It was vain of you to think of the coin at all," he insisted.

"It was a political statement, pure and simple."

"It was a political statement, but not pure and simple." He rotated the coin. "You do look formidable. Rome will tremble." He laughed. "They will also wonder what Caesar saw in you."

I sighed. I was anxious to know what had happened to him, how he was faring. Why had he not written me?

"Mardian," I said, trying not to sound plaintive, "have you had any word about his whereabouts?" If anyone knew, Mardian would.

"I have heard that he landed in Antioch, then made his way to Ephesus. I think he is still there."

"What is the date?"

"He was reported to have reached Ephesus in the latter part of Quintilis."

It was now the last day of Quintilis. He had sailed away in early June. Caesarion had been born on June twenty-third, almost exactly the summer solstice. Why had I not received a single message from him?

"Is he going directly to Pontus, then?"

"That is the a.s.sumption," said Mardian. "He wants to strike quickly."

"That is what he always does," I said.

He strikes quickly and then moves on, I added to myself. He moves on and never looks back.

Chapter 17.

Veni, vidi, vici: vidi, vici: I came, I saw, I conquered. I came, I saw, I conquered.

Even today, those words have the power to excite my soul. They were the three laconic words Caesar used to describe what happened when he finally met King Pharnaces of Pontus. After traveling hundreds of miles, Caesar pursued the King into his own territory, and then, on the very day of sighting him, joined battle. It lasted only four hours, and ended in the utter defeat of the braggart King. The forces of Pharnaces were flushed with enough bravado to attempt a chariot charge uphill toward Caesar's stronghold. The result was inevitable. Later Caesar reportedly said that it was no wonder that Pompey had been regarded as an invincible general, if such was the caliber of his enemies.

The battle had taken place on the first day of the Roman month of s.e.xtilis, less than two months since he had left Alexandria with his one-quarter legion. Once again his speed and feat had seemed superhuman.

I wish those words, veni, vidi, vici veni, vidi, vici, had been written to me, along with a description of the battle, but they were not. They were in a letter addressed to a certain Gaius Matius in Rome, an old confidant of Caesar's. Of course, spies picked them up and echoed them throughout the world. The same spies, as well as Mardian's "international brotherhood of eunuchs," reported that he returned to Rome in September, after redistributing offices and appointments in the troubled territories.

I made my way almost every day to your shrine, O Isis, to give you thanks for his deliverance. My constant apprehension about his safety was difficult to bear. I felt, even then, that the G.o.ds were almost mocking him, as if they were preparing him for a sacrifice. We pamper the bulls and pigeons we have selected for the altar, as if we thereby render them more choice. We deck them with garlands and give them the sweetest gra.s.s and corn. We shelter them from the heat of the noonday sun and the chill of night. Nothing can touch them. Nothing but their supposed guardians. But you, Isis, alone of the G.o.ds, are compa.s.sionate. You have known the sorrow of a wife and the joy of motherhood. I knew that you would not turn a deaf ear to my pleas and prayers.

Almost at the same time as Caesar's victory over Pharnaces, the Nile began its annual rise. At the time I took it as a good omen, meaning that both our fortunes were swelling on a great tide upward. It was the New Year of the Egyptian calendar, and all along the riverbanks the festivals began to welcome the first perceptible rise of the water. At Thebes, the sacred boat of Amun-Re was taken in procession by the priests, with thousands of lanterns swaying in the warm night. At Coptos and Memphis, they flung open the gates of the ca.n.a.ls to welcome the water, to let it take possession of the land like a man with a woman. This turned into a great festival of love, nights of feasting and marriages, as young men sang: .

Light my bark upon the water And my head is wreathed with flowers Hastening to the temple portals And to many happy hours.

Great G.o.d Ptah, let my beloved Come to me with joy tonight That tomorrow's dawn may see her Lovelier still with love's delight.

Memphis! Full of sound and perfume For the G.o.ds a dwelling bright.

And his sweetheart would answer: .

My heart is sick with longing heart is sick with longing Till my lover comes to me.

I shall see him when the waters Hurry through the opened ways Give him wreaths for wreaths of flowers Loose my hair for him to praise Happier than Pharaoh's daughters When I lie in his embrace.

I would hear Iras singing this song, and it filled me with longing for Caesar, as I thought of all the lovemaking and night festivals going on up and down the land, while I, only twenty-two years old, remained in the palace alone in my bed, in a room that suddenly seemed stifling.