I 1607 Shakespeare returned to North's edition of Plutarch, from which eight years before he had taken material for Julius Caesar. Using Plutarch's biography of Mark Antony, Shakespeare wrote what was virtually a continuation of the earlier play, and made it the most Plutarchian of the three plays he derived from that source.
Antony and Cleopatra begins almost at the point where Julius Caesar had left off.
Brutus and Cassius have been defeated at the double battle at Philippi in 42 b.c. by the troops under Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar. These two, together with Lepidus, the third member of the Triumvirate (see page I-301), are now in a position to divide the Roman realm among themselves.
Octavius Caesar took western Europe for his third, with the capital at Rome itself. It was what he could best use, for it left him with the Senate and the political power-center of the realm. Octavius was a politician and the battles he could best fight (and win) were battles of words with the minds of men at stake.
Lepidus was awarded the province of Africa, centering about the city of Carthage. It was an inconsiderable portion for an inconsiderable man, and Lepidus was and remained a mere appendage of Octavius Caesar. Lepidus grew important only when someone was required to act as go-between where the two major partners were concerned.
Mark Antony had the East and this suited him very well. Except for the days immediately following Julius Caesar's assassination, Antony had never gotten along well in Rome. He preferred the Eastern provinces, which were far the richer and more sophisticated portion of the Roman realm. Mark Antony was a hedonist; he knew how to appreciate pleasure, and in the great cities of the East he knew he would find it.
He was also a soldier who welcomed war, and in the East he knew he would find that too. The Parthians were to be found there. Eleven years before they had destroyed a Roman army (see page I-257) and for that they had never been punished. Antony hoped to deliver that punishment.
... this dotage of our general's...
All Antony's plans went awry, however, when in 41 b.c. he encountered Cleopatra, the fascinating Queen of Egypt. He fell sufficiently in love with her to forget the necessity of beating the Parthians and to neglect the threat of the slow, crafty advance of Octavius Caesar in Rome.
The love story of Antony and Cleopatra has captured the imagination of the world, and has left generations sighing. (And never has it been as ap-pealingly and as majestically described as in this play.) In its own time, however, the affair must have been viewed with impatience by those soldiers who were bound to Antony and who found themselves neglected, their chance for loot and glory vanishing.
The play opens in Cleopatra's palace in Alexandria, the capital of Egypt Two soldiers, Demetrius and Philo, come onstage. Philo, who knows the situation, expresses his soldierly displeasure to Demetrius, who apparently is a newcomer fresh from Rome. Philo says:
Nay, but this dotage of our general's
O'erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes
That o'er the files and musters of the war
Have glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front.
- Act I, scene i, lines 1-6
The expression "tawny front" means "dark face" and this represents a misconception concerning Cleopatra that has been common in later times and that can never be corrected, in all likelihood. Because she was the ruler of an African land and because she was an "Egyptian," she has been presumed to be dark, dusky, swarthy, even perhaps part Negress. She may have been dark, to be sure, but she was no darker, necessarily, than any other Greek, for she was not of Egyptian descent.
Egypt had become the kingdom of Cleopatra's forebears back in 323 b.c. when Alexander the Great had died. Alexander had conquered the entire Persian Empire, of which Egypt was part, and after his death one of his generals, Ptolemaios (or Ptolemy, as he is known in English), seized Egypt. In 305 b.c. Ptolemy adopted the title of long and from then on, for two and a half centuries, his descendants, each named Ptolemy, ruled Egypt.
Ptolemy I, the first of the kings of Ptolemaic Egypt, was a Macedonian, a native of the Greek-speaking kingdom of Macedon, lying just north of Greece proper. All the Ptolemies married Greeks and all the rulers of Ptolemaic Egypt, down to and including Cleopatra, were completely Greek. Cleopatra's father had been Ptolemy XI, the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Ptolemy I. There had been a number of Ptolemaic queens, by the way, who bore the name of Cleopatra (a perfectly good Greek name meaning "glory of her father," and not Egyptian at all). The one in Shakespeare's play is actually Cleopatra VII, but she is the only one remembered today and the name without the numeral is enough. There is no danger of confusion with any of the first six.
The notion of Cleopatra as a dark African is carried on further as the speech continues, with Philo saying of Antony:
His captain's heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gypsy's lust.
- Act I, scene i, lines 6-10
The word "gypsy" means simply "Egyptian" here, but although Cleopatra was an Egyptian by nationality, she was not one by descent. Indeed, the true Egyptians were a "lower class" to the ruling Greeks, as the natives of India once were to the ruling British. Cleopatra would undoubtedly have been terribly offended to have been considered an "Egyptian."
Furthermore, the word "gypsy" by Shakespeare's time had come to be applied to a wandering group of men and women of unknown origin. Popular rumor had them coming from Egypt, hence "gypsy," but it is much more likely they came from India (see page I-149). To call Cleopatra a "gypsy," then, is to call up visions of swarthy women in markedly non-Western costume, both to Shakespeare's audience and our own.
The triple pillar of the world. ..
Antony, Cleopatra, and their train of maids and eunuchs are entering now, and Philo says of Mark Antony, more bitterly still:
Take but good note, and you shall see in him
The triple pillar of the world transformed Into a strumpet's fool.
- Act I, scene i, lines 11-13
Antony is one of the three members of the Second Triumvirate. All three together support and rule the Roman realm, hence "triple pillar."
Rome is referred to here as "the world." In a way, it was to the ancients, for it included the entire Mediterranean basin and virtually all the lands that the Greeks and Romans considered "civilized."
Thus, in the Bible, the Gospel of St. Luke speaks of a decree by Caesar Augustus (the very same Octavius Caesar of this play-but a generation later) to the effect that the Roman realm be taxed. The biblical verse phrases it this way: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed" (Luke 2:1).
Of course, such phraseology is exaggerated. The Romans (and Shakespeare too) knew that the Roman government didn't rule over all the earth. There were barbarian tribes north of the northern limits of Rome, tribes who would make their presence felt all too painfully in a couple of centuries. And even if the view is confined to civilized areas, the Romans (and Shakespeare too) knew that the Roman government didn't rule over all the civilized earth. To the east of the eastern limits of Rome was the Parthian Empire, a civilized region that had already beaten Rome once and continued to remain a deadly danger to it. (There were also civilizations in China and India, but these lay beyond the Roman horizon.)
In this particular play, however, the transmutation of Rome into the world is dramatically advantageous. Antony is playing for the rule of the whole realm, and loses it, partly through his own miscalculations, and partly through his love affair with Cleopatra. It becomes intensely dramatic, then, to be able to say, he "lost the world." It becomes even more dramatic to say he lost it for love.
In fact, the English poet John Dryden in 1678 wrote his version of the tale of Antony and Cleopatra (far inferior to Shakespeare's), which he called, in the most romantic possible vein, All for Love; or the World Well Lost.
... tell me how much
Antony and Cleopatra speak now and they are engaged in the foolish love talk of young lovers. Cleopatra is pouting:
If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
- Act I, scene i, line 14
Yet Cleopatra is not a schoolgirl. She is an experienced woman who has lived and loved fully. She was born in 69 b.c., so she was twenty-eight years old when she met Antony.
Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XI, died in 51 b.c. and her younger brother, the thirteen-year-old Ptolemy XII, succeeded to the throne. Cleopatra, then nearly eighteen, ruled jointly with him. She got tangled up in palace politics, however, and fled to Syria to raise an army with which to seize undisputed control of the country.
It was at this time, 48 b.c., that Pompey appeared in Egypt, fleeing from the defeat inflicted on him at Pharsalia by Julius Caesar (see page I-257). Pompey was killed by the Egyptians and Julius Caesar landed in Alexandria soon after.
Cleopatra realized that the real power in the Mediterranean basin rested with Rome. Egypt was the only remaining independent power of any consequence along all the Mediterranean shore, and even she could not do a thing without Roman permission. She couldn't even play her game of internal politics if Rome seriously objected. Cleopatra also realized that Julius Caesar was now the most powerful Roman. If she could gain him to her side, then, he would certainly place her on the throne.
She had herself smuggled in to Julius Caesar (so the story goes) wrapped in a carpet. The later storytellers insist that when the carpet was unwrapped, she stepped out nude.
Julius Caesar did see the merits of her case (however persuaded) and spent a year in Alexandria, needlessly interfering in Egyptian politics and running considerable danger himself. During this interval, Cleopatra is supposed to have been his mistress. (He was fifty-two years old at the time, she twenty-one.) At least she bore a son which, she insisted, was his, and called him Ptolemy Caesar. The son was known, popularly, as Caesarion.
In 47 b.c. Caesar left Alexandria, went to Asia Minor to fight a brief battle, then turned westward to win victories in Africa and Spain, and finally came back to Rome as Dictator. He was assassinated just as he was about to make himself king.
There is a story that he brought Cleopatra to Rome and that she managed to get away and return to Egypt after the assassination. This, however, is based on an ambiguous line in one of Cicero's letters, and is very probably not so. Caesar was far too clever a politician to complicate his plans by bringing a "foreign queen" to Rome and setting her up as his mistress. What's more, Cleopatra was far too clever a queen to want to leave her turbulent country for others to control and loot just so she could be a hated mistress to an aging Roman politician.
She very likely stayed in Alexandria between 47 b.c., when Caesar left, and 41 b.c., when she met Mark Antony.
Fulvia perchance is angry. ..
The love murmurings of Antony and Cleopatra are interrupted, however, by messengers from Rome. Antony is annoyed at having his mood punctured and wants the messengers to be brief and leave. Cleopatra, however, is always petulant at any mention of Rome, any hint of the great affairs that might take Antony away from her as once they had taken Julius Caesar. She grows peevishly sarcastic:
Nay, hear them, Antony.
Fulvia perchance is angry...
- Act I, scene i, lines 19-20
Fulvia is Mark Antony's third wife; a fierce and ambitious woman, not inferior to Cleopatra in fire, but, presumably, lacking Cleopatra's sexual fascination. At least she didn't fascinate Antony.
Antony was her third husband. Her first husband had been that Publius Clodius who had been the occasion for Julius Caesar's divorce from his second wife (see page I-261) and who had turned into a gang leader who made Cicero his particular prey.
When Cicero was killed as a result of the proscriptions that followed the establishment of the Second Triumvirate (see page I-306), Fulvia had his head brought to her as proof of his death. When it was in her hands, she drove her hairpin through the dead tongue of the great orator with savage glee, as vengeance against the eloquence that had so lacerated two of her husbands, Clodius and Antony.
Antony had headed east, after his division of the world with Octavius Caesar and Lepidus, without bothering to take the formidable Fulvia with him. (No doubt that was not an oversight, either.) Any mention of his fierce wife undoubtedly embarrassed Mark Antony, and Cleopatra knew it.
... the scarce-bearded Caesar ...
Cleopatra went further than that. The news might not be merely from Fulvia; it might be from Octavius Caesar. She says:
... or who knows
If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent
His pow'rful mandate to you.
- Act I, scene i, lines 20-22
This must sting. Antony is forty-one years old when the play opens; a grizzled warrior more than a score of years in the field. Octavius Caesar is nineteen years his junior, only twenty-two years old now. Antony had to resent the fact that so young a man should be able to hold himself on an equal plane with the mature warrior.
(Incidentally, in this play Octavius Caesar is always referred to as "Caesar," where he was always referred to as "Octavius" in Julius Caesar. I shall call him "Octavius Caesar" in order to avoid confusing him with Julius Caesar.)
Cleopatra gets what she wants. The baited Antony cries out:
Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space,
- Act I, scene i, lines 33-34
He refuses to hear the messengers and leaves.
... prized so slight
The soldiers, Philo and Demetrius, who have watched these proceedings with surprise and disapproval, cannot believe that Antony can be so careless of his own interests. Demetrius says:
Is Caesar with Antonius prized so slight?
- Act I, scene i, line 56
Demetrius, fresh from Rome, knows what Octavius Caesar is doing, if Antony does not.
Octavius Caesar, young though he was, was one of the master politicians of history. He lost no time in frivolity of any kind. He was a cold, shrewd man, who never made a serious mistake, and whose destiny it was to carry through to a conclusion the plans of his great-uncle, Julius Caesar. He was not, perhaps, as brilliant as the great Julius in war or literature, but he was even wiser in politics, for he carried through the necessary governmental reforms without ever making use of the hated word "king," but making himself in the end far greater than a king.
Nor did Octavius Caesar have the romantic appeal of Antony, or Antony's ability to orate, or his talent for putting on a kind of bluff, hail-fellow-well-met exterior that made him tremendously popular with the soldiers. Octavius could never be loved till age, and the realization at last of his greatness, had made him a father figure to the people.
Antony always underrated him and did not realize that the young man was building a network of alliances with politicians and generals, binding them to himself by self-interest rather than love, and weaving a net that would end by making him all-powerful.
Shakespeare too underprizes him, but this is necessary for the sake of the drama. The audience sympathy must be with the lovable profligate and not with the cool politician.
Nevertheless, though all audiences must "root" for Antony (for Shakespeare wills it so, and wins me over too), truth compels one to say that Octavius Caesar was by far the greater man of the two and that it would have been a world tragedy if circumstance had allowed Mark Antony to beat him.
... the common liar... Demetrius goes on to say:
I am full sorry
That he approves the common liar, who
Thus speaks of him at Rome;
- Act I, scene i, lines 59-61
Octavius Caesar, in his ceaseless war against Antony, made skillful use of propaganda. When the two triumvirs were at peace, Octavius carefully sapped the other's strength in the West by spreading tales of his profligacy.
Cicero's fiery and vituperative speeches in the last year of his life had covered Antony with slime. And though Cicero's invective was remorselessly exaggerated, much of it stuck. Antony, who did carouse and who loved luxury, gave all too much ground for believing much worse about him than was true.
Octavius Caesar made use of Cicero's speeches and also made use of the new matter that Antony offered. Antony was with this "foreign queen." Rome had fought many wars with Eastern monarchs and it was easy to escalate this affair with Cleopatra into threatened treason.
In contrast, Octavius Caesar never stopped playing the part of the true Roman, industrious, grave, honorable, and devoted to public affairs.
He himself was in love with no exotic temptress. He had been married twice to fine Roman girls. He had had no sons, though. His first wife was childless and his second had one daughter. He was soon to marry a third and last time, however, to the best one yet, a girl named Livia.
Livia was not yet twenty, but she was already married, had a fine young son, and was pregnant with (as it turned out) a second son. She divorced her husband to marry Octavius Caesar, but there was no stigma attached to divorce in those days. She became a model Roman matron, who remained Octavius' wife for the rest of his long life; they remained married for fifty-two years, a phenomenal length of time for a marriage in those days. Livia then lived on as his revered widow for fifteen more years. What's more, although she had no children by Octavius Caesar, her own children by her earlier marriage proved capable warriors and one of them succeeded his stepfather to the rule of all Rome.
The city of Rome was filled, then, with talk of how wicked Mark Antony was and how noble and good Octavius Caesar was, and this played an important part in Octavius' schemes. It was part of Antony's folly that he continually gave men cause to look upon these exaggerated rumors as true (as Demetrius points out) and that he never made an effort to set up effective counterpropaganda of his own. He was entirely too trusting in his own reputation and capacity as a warrior. -As though that were everything.
... Herod of Jewry...
The scene shifts to Cleopatra's palace, where we find the Queen's ladies in waiting having fun at the expense of a soothsayer, who nevertheless makes some statements which turn out to have dramatic irony. He predicts, for instance, that Cleopatra's lady in waiting Charmian will outlive her mistress, and so she does in the end-by about a minute.
At one point, though, Charmian asks him to predict some ridiculous fortunes, including:
... let me have a child at fifty, to whom
Herod of Jewry may do homage.. .
- Act I, scene ii, lines 27-28
This serves to set the time of the play in a way peculiarly useful to Shakespeare's audience. It is the time in which Herod "the Great" is on the throne of Judea.
Judea had lost its independence in 63 b.c. (twenty-two years before the time this play opens), when Pompey (see page I-255) had absorbed it into the Roman realm. It had been given some internal freedom, however, and Pompey made the capable Antipater its king. Antipater was from Idumaea (the biblical Edom) and was not a Jew by birth, though he had become one by conversion. He was assassinated in 43 b.c., just a year after Julius Caesar had been.
His eldest surviving son, Herod, also a converted Jew, and now thirty years old, was the natural successor, but the Eastern provinces were in a ferment. Brutus and Cassius were trying to strengthen themselves for the fight against Mark Antony and Octavius, and the Parthians were doing their best to take advantage of the disorder in Rome. In fact, after the Battle of Philippi, the Parthians swarmed all over Syria and Judea, and Herod was forced to flee.
He came to Antony for support, and this Antony gave him and continued to give him even though Cleopatra bitterly opposed Herod. Herod became King of Judea, then, at just about the time that Charmian refers to him so jestingly. Still, things didn't settle sufficiently for Herod actually to enter Jerusalem and take the throne till 37 B.C.
The reference to the child to whom Herod might do homage is clear enough too. Whenever the political fortunes of the Jews declined, then-hopes for an ideal king or "anointed one" rose. (The Hebrew word for "anointed one" is "Messiah.")
Now that the briefly independent Jewish kingdom under the Maccabees had fallen and the Romans were in control, Messianic hopes rose. All Judea seemed to wait for some child to be born who would be the ideal king and under whom the world system would finally break apart, with Jerusalem becoming the capital of the world and all the nations confessing the one true God.
Undoubtedly, non-Jews heard of these longings and were amused. Charmian suggests, then, that perhaps when she is fifty she may give birth to this Messiah, this true King of the Jews, to whom Herod, a mere earthly king, will have to do homage. And, indeed, Jesus was born before the end of Herod's reign at a time when Charmian, had she lived, would have been not much more than fifty.
Good Isis.. .
The mischievous Charmian also asks the soothsayer to prophesy for the courtier Alexas, who had brought the soothsayer to court for Cleopatra's amusement. She asks that a series of unsatisfactory wives be foretold for him. She says, laughingly:
Good Isis, hear me this prayer,
though thou deny me a matter of more weight: good Isis,
I beseech thee!
- Act I, scene ii, lines 68-70
Isis was the chief goddess of the Egyptian pantheon. For the most part, the Egyptian deities made little impact on the culturally snobbish Greeks and, therefore, on the Western world, which draws most of its culture from Greek sources.
Isis was the chief exception. For one thing, she was an extraordinarily attractive goddess; a thoroughly human female amid an array of animal-headed deities. She plays a sympathetic role in the Egyptian version of the vegetation-cycle myth (see page I-5). Her brother-husband, Osiris, was killed through treachery by Set, the god of darkness. Osiris' body was cut to pieces and scattered throughout Egypt. The lovely and sorrowing Isis painstakingly searched the land, collected the pieces, put them together, and brought Osiris back to life.
Isis' influence was felt outside the borders of Egypt. As the beautiful "Queen of Heaven" her worship penetrated Rome itself in the dark days of Hannibal's onslaught, when the Romans felt the shortcomings of their own gods and snatched at others. In the days of the Roman Empire (in the centuries following the time of Antony and Cleopatra) temples to Isis were built and her rites celebrated, even in the far-off island of Britain, two thousand miles from the Nile.
After Christianity was established, the spell of Isis still continued to make itself felt. As the goddess of birth and motherhood, she was frequently portrayed with her child, Horus, on her lap. The popular concept of mother and child was transferred to Christianity in the form of the Virgin and the infant Jesus, so that the aura of Isis lingers over the world even now.
A Roman thought. ..
In comes Cleopatra in dark humor, for she can't find Antony. She says:
He was disposed to mirth; but on the sudden
A Roman thought hath struck him.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 83-84
The thought of the messengers and what the news might be had apparently gnawed at Antony. Part of him is Roman still, and he left to find them.
... my brother Lucius
The news is disturbing indeed, for it deals with war, and a particularly embarrassing one too, for it is Antony's wife, of all people, who is conducting it. The Messenger says:
Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.
- Act I, scene ii, line 89
Fulvia, her eyesight sharpened, perhaps, by the anger and humiliation she felt at her husband's preoccupation with the Egyptian enchantress, saw what Mark Antony did not-that Octavius Caesar would win it all if he were not stopped.
She therefore did her best to instigate war against Octavius, raising an army and putting it in the field. It probably did not escape her calculation that if she caused enough mischief, her husband's hand would be forced and he would have to come back to Italy to fight-and rejoin her.
Mark Antony is stupefied. He asks:
Against my brother Lucius?
- Act I, scene ii, line 90
Lucius was Mark Antony's younger brother, and had held a variety of important political posts. In 41 b.c., after the Battle of Philippi and the following division of Rome among the triumvirs, Lucius Antony was made consul.
Actually, the consulate had become an unimportant office by now, for Octavius Caesar was the only real power in Rome, but it still had its prestige. It was a bow to Mark Antony's importance that his brother should be consul. Furthermore, it gave Mark Antony a foothold, so to speak, in the capital, though unfortunately for Antony, not a very competent one.
It was Lucius Antony's duty as consul to oppose the rebellious Fulvia, so that at the very first they seemed to be at war with each other. This was what occasioned Antony's surprise, that his wife should begin a war that would have to be against his brother.
Apparently, that war did not last long. Fulvia talked Lucius into joining her. The Messenger explains:
... soon that war had end, and the time's state
Made friends of them, pointing their force 'gainst Caesar,
Whose better issue in the war, from Italy
Upon the first encounter drave them.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 92-95
It wasn't quite that quick a victory for Octavius Caesar, but it was quick enough. Octavius' armies drove the forces of Fulvia and Lucius northward and penned them up in the city of Perusia (the modern Perugia, a hundred miles north of Rome). There the forces lay under siege for some months before the city was taken. This short conflict is called the Perusine War.
The war was a disaster for Mark Antony, because he knew everyone would believe that he was behind it (though he was not) and it would give Octavius Caesar all the excuse he needed to picture himself as the innocent victim of wanton aggression.
If Fulvia had to fight, she might at least not have been so quickly defeated, so that Antony might have had something to offset the propaganda victory that had been handed Octavius Caesar. Worse still was the manner of the defeat. The food supply in the city was small and it was reserved for the soldiers of Fulvia and Lucius, who let the civil population starve. Moreover, the final surrender was made on condition that the army's leaders be spared. So they were, but the city itself was sacked in 40 b.c.
This callousness on the part of Fulvia and Lucius Antony, who saved their skins at the expense of thousands of common people, was not lost on the Roman populace. They were execrated and some of the execrations were bound to fall on Mark Antony, whose reputation in Italy took another serious drop.
... with his Parthian force
But there is worse news still. It is not only inside the Roman realm that army fights army. The external enemy is tearing at the Eastern provinces and has reached a peak of power. The Messenger says:
Labienus-
This is stiff news-hath with his
Parthian force Extended Asia; from Euphrates
His conquering banner shook, from Syria
To Lydia and to Ionia,
- Act I, scene ii, lines 100-4
Quintus Labienus had fought on the side of Brutus and Cassius and had refused to abandon the cause even after the Battle of Philippi and the death of the two conspirators. Instead, he fled to the Parthians, whose armies hovered along the course of the Euphrates River, east of Asia Minor and Syria.
Parthia was originally the name of an eastern province of the Persian Empire. It was conquered by Alexander the Great and, after Alexander's death in 323 b.c., it was incorporated hi the Seleucid Empire (see page I-183). The Seleucid grip remained rather loose.
In 171 b.c., while Antiochus IV was the Seleucid king (see page I-183), Mithradates I became ruler of Parthia. He made his land fully independent, and under the weak successors of Antiochus IV, the Parthians drove westward. In 147 b.c. they took over control of the Tigris-Euphrates valley, the home of the ancient civilizations of Sumeria and Babylonia, and in 129 b.c. they founded their own capital of Ctesiphon on the Tigris River.
The last Seleucid kings were penned into the constricted area of Syria itself, with Antioch as their capital, and in 64 b.c. that was made into a Roman province by Pompey.
Across the Euphrates, Rome and Parthia now faced each other. Under Orodes II, Parthia defeated Crassus in 53 b.c.; he was still king when the Battle of Philippi was fought in 42 b.c. He remained eager to do Rome all the harm he could and when Labienus, a trained Roman soldier, defected to him, he was delighted and promptly placed a Parthian army at his disposal.
In 40 b.c. the Parthians under Labienus moved westward, and in short order almost all of Syria and Asia Minor was occupied, with various Roman garrisons joining the renegade general. Lydia was an ancient kingdom in western Asia Minor (and still served as the name of a region of the peninsula when it was under Roman domination), while Ionia was the territory along the western seacoast of Asia Minor. The mention of the two districts by the Messenger shows that all of the peninsula was now under Parthian control. (It was from this Parthian advance that Herod fled, and in 40 b.c. the Parthians, for the only time in their history, marched into Jerusalem.)
All this is bitter for Mark Antony, for it took place in his half of the realm. He, the great soldier, has done nothing to prevent it, and he himself realizes that to Rome it will now look as though he lounged languidly with Cleopatra even while foreign armies were tearing Rome apart.
Mark Antony must realize that while he can get away with mere profligacy as long as he can win battles, the loss of his military reputation as well will cause him to lose everything. He mutters:
These strong Egyptian fetters
I must break Or lose myself in dotage.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 117-18
From Sicyon...
But another Messenger waits and Antony calls for him:
From Sicyon, ho, the news!
- Act I, scene ii, line 114
Sicyon is a Greek city in the northwest Peloponnesus, fifty miles west of Athens. It was at the peak of its power about 600 b.c. when it was the rule of three generations of benevolent "tyrants," a one-man rule that lasted longer without interruption than in any other case in Greek history. After the fall of the tyranny in 565 b.c., Sicyon was usually dominated by the larger and more powerful cities of Sparta or Corinth. Only after Corinth was destroyed by the Romans in 146 b.c. did Sicyon experience another period of prominence. When Corinth was rebuilt, however, Sicyon began its final decline and the event that the Messenger is about to tell is very nearly the last of importance in its history.
The news is brief, for the Messenger says:
Fulvia thy wife is dead.
- Act I, scene ii, line 119
Fulvia reached Sicyon in her flight from Italy and then died there in 40 b.c. Antony is stricken. Now that she is gone, he recognizes in her that energy and drive which has recently been missing in himself and says:
/ must from this enchanting queen break off:
Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
My idleness doth hatch.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 129-3la
... Enobarbus
Antony is doing his best to make up his mind to leave Cleopatra, and he calls his most reliable aide:
Ho now, Enobarbus!
- Act I, scene ii, line 131b
Enobarbus is a shortened form of Ahenobarbus, and the person being called is, in full, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. His father had fought with Pompey against Caesar and had died at the Battle of Pharsalus.
Enobarbus himself had fought with Brutus and Cassius against Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar and had commanded the fleet, in fact. Even after the Battle of Philippi, Enobarbus had held out as a pirate until he was won over by Mark Antony in 40 B.C., just before this play opens. He then became one of the most ardent of Antony's adherents.
... Sextus Pompeius
It is not surprising that Antony must leave for Rome. He must take care of the Parthian menace and he cannot do it if he leaves an angry Octavius Caesar in his rear. He must mend fences there, explain away the actions of his wife and brother, and patch up an understanding. Then, and only then, can he turn on the Parthians. In addition, there is trouble in the West, for that matter. Antony says to Enobarbus:
... the letters too
Of many our contriving friends in Rome
Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius
Hath given the dare to Caesar and commands
The empire of the sea.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 183-87
Sextus Pompeius (also called Pompey the Younger) was the younger son of Pompey the Great. He had been in Greece with his father when the Battle of Pharsalus had been lost and he was in the ship with his father when Pompey fled to Egypt. He remained in the ship as his father was rowed to the Egyptian shore and witnessed his father being stabbed and killed when he reached that shore. He was about twenty-seven years old then.
Some years later Sextus was in Spain when his older brother, Gnaeus Pompeius, held out against Julius Caesar. He was at the Battle of Munda, in which Gnaeus was defeated and slain in 45 b.c. (see page I-258). Sextus escaped and during the confusion that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar, quietly built up his strength at sea.
By 40 b.c. he was in control of the Mediterranean. He had seized Sicily soon after the assassination and was still holding it. This cut off Rome's grain supply, part of which came from Sicily itself, with the rest coming from Africa and Egypt in ships that Sextus could easily intercept. What it amounted to was that this younger son of Pompey had his hand at the throat of Rome, and Octavius Caesar, who lacked a navy, could do nothing about it.
Naturally, since nothing succeeds like success, there was the danger that Sextus' increasing power would breed still further access of power. As Antony says:
Our slippery people,
Whose love is never linked to the deserver
Till his deserts are past, begin to throw
Pompey the Great and all his dignities
Upon his son;
- Act I, scene ii, lines 187-91
(In this play Sextus' lines are identified as those of "Pompey," but I shall call him Sextus or Sextus Pompeius in order not to confuse him with his father, Pompey the Great.)
... Nilus' slime...
Enobarbus tells Cleopatra of the forthcoming separation (Antony has been with her a year), and she goes seeking Antony himself to confirm the news.
Poor Antony is in a dilemma. He is no match for Cleopatra and can only fluster and fume. He tries to be consoling and reassuring, but she will have none of it. He even tries to explain to her that her greatest fear (that he will return to his wife, Fulvia) is gone, since Fulvia is dead. She turns even that against him, saying:
O most false love!
Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill
With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see,
In Fulvia's death, how mine received shall be.
- Act I, scene iii, lines 62-65
In view of what is to happen in Act IV, this is dramatic irony, for Antony will react quite differently to the report of Cleopatra's death.
In frustration, Antony protests that he is faithful to her even though he must leave. He says:
By the fire
That quickens Nilus' slime, I go from hence
Thy soldier-servant ...
- Act I, scene iii, lines 68-70
Egypt is a desert land where it never rains. What makes life possible there is the presence of the Nile River. (The name is of unknown origin. The Egyptians called it simply "The River"; but the Greeks named it "Neilos," which is "Nilus" in Latin spelling and "Nile" to us.)
The Nile is an unfailing source of water for drinking and irrigation. Once a year, moreover, its level rises as the snow on the distant Abyssinian and Kenyan mountains melt. The river waters flood the banks and deposit silt brought down from east-central Africa. The water-soaked fresh soil is outstandingly fertile and in the hot African sun ("the fire that quickens Nilus' slime") generous harvests grow.
... this Herculean Roman...
When Cleopatra's perversity finally moves Antony to rage, she still fleers at him, accusing him of merely pretending anger. She says:
Look, prithee, Charmian,
How this Herculean Roman does become
The carriage of his chafe.
- Act I, scene iii, lines 82-84
The sneer refers to one of Antony's more ridiculous pretensions (though it was taken seriously in his time). Roman noblemen liked to pretend they were descended from the gods and from mythical heroes. The Julian family, of which Julius Caesar was a member, was supposed to have descended from Venus. In similar fashion, the Antonian family, of which Mark Antony was a member, claimed to be descended from Anton, a mythical son of Hercules. Mark Antony himself did everything he could to model himself on the strong man of legend.
In the end, then, Mark Antony is forced to leave angrily, defeated in the battle of words with Cleopatra.
... the queen of Ptolemy
The scene now shifts to Octavius Caesar's house in Rome. Octavius Caesar is not much better off in Rome than Mark Antony is in Alexandria. He too is beset with problems, and he is annoyed that Mark Antony's inaction makes it necessary for himself to be all the more industrious. He is saying bitterly to Lepidus (the third member of the Triumvirate) as he reads a letter:
From Alexandria
This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike
Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy
More womanly than he;
- Act I, scene iv, lines 3-7
The phrase "the queen of Ptolemy" brings up an additional point that made Cleopatra unpopular with the Romans. In ancient Egypt it had long been the custom of the Pharaohs to marry their sisters. Since the Pharaonic blood was considered divine, it would not do to have one marry a mortal. Only a woman of the same line was a fit consort. At least, that was the rationalization.
When the Ptolemies ruled Egypt, they made it a point to adopt as many Egyptian customs as possible, in order to keep the populace quiet. This included brother-sister marriages, and Cleopatra was born of a family that had many times been involved in incest (see page I-185), something that was as repulsive to the Romans as it would be to us.
In fact, when Cleopatra's father died, Cleopatra and her brother, Ptolemy XII,.were made joint rulers and were, in fact, married. It was expected that eventually they might have offspring who would succeed to the throne. Ptolemy XII, however, died in the course of Julius Caesar's small war in Alexandria in 48 b.c., and Cleopatra's rule was joined with a still younger brother, Ptolemy XIII.
Ptolemy XIII was only ten years old at the time, and in 44 B.C., when the news of Julius Caesar's assassination reached her, Cleopatra had the boy killed and then ruled jointly with her son, Caesarion, only three years old at the time. The new king was Ptolemy XIV.
Octavius Caesar's reference to her as "queen of Ptolemy" stressed the fact that she had been married to her brothers, and we can be sure that this was included in the whispering campaign that was conducted against Mark Antony.
... beaten from Modena...
Messages of disaster greet Octavius Caesar as they had greeted Antony. Octavius learns that Sextus Pompeius grows stronger along the coast and that pirates control the sea where Sextus himself does not. Daily Octavius Caesar's control over Rome grows shakier as its food supply dwindles. Octavius Caesar broods resentfully over the fact that he isn't being helped by Antony. Unaware that Antony is on his way westward, Octavius Caesar cries out:
Antony
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow, whom thou fough'st against
(Though daintily brought up) with patience more
Than savages could suffer.
- Act I, scene iv, lines 55-61
The reference is to the period following the assassination of Julius Caesar and deals with events not mentioned in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The events fall in the interval between Acts III and IV of that play (see page I-301).
Decimus Brutus (called "Decius" by Shakespeare) was in control of Cisalpine Gaul in northern Italy, and Mark Antony led an army northward to attack him. Decius fortified himself in Mutina, the modern Modena, 220 miles north of Rome. While Mark Antony fought there, Octavius Caesar, back in Rome, persuaded the Senate to declare war against Antony and to send an army against him led by the consul Hirtius; then another, led by the other consul, Pansa.
Mark Antony left his brother, Lucius, to conduct the siege of Mutina with part of the army, and then led the remainder against the consuls. Antony was badly defeated, but both Roman consuls were killed. (This was a stroke of luck for Octavius, for with both consuls dead, he was in full control of a victorious army.)
Antony had to retreat over the Alps into Gaul, and that retreat was attended by extraordinary suffering and hardship. Antony, in one of his better times, shared that suffering with his men and did so with such stoic patience that he endeared himself to the army. The tale of his nobility in this respect was undoubtedly told and retold with exaggeration, as we can see from the repulsive details Shakespeare has Octavius list:
Thou didst drink
The stale [urine] of horses and the gilded [scum-covered]
puddle Which beasts would cough at.
- Act I, scene iv, lines 61-63
The demi-Atlas.,.
Back in Alexandria, Cleopatra already misses Antony and is in a state of delicious self-pity. She says:
Give me to drink mandragora.
- Act I, scene v, line 4
Mandragora is an older form of "mandrake," a plant of the potato family which is native to the Mediterranean region. It has its uses as a cathartic, emetic, and narcotic. Which effect predominates depends on the dose, but Cleopatra thinks of the narcotic aspect, for when asked why she wants it, she says:
That I might sleep out this great gap of time
My Antony is away.
- Act I, scene v, lines 5-6
She thinks longingly of Antony, saying:
O, Charmian,
Where think'st thou he is now?
Stands he, or sits he?
Or does he walk?
Or is he on his horse?
O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!
Do bravely, horse, for wot'st thou whom thou mov'st?
The demi-Atlas of this earth. ..
- Act I, scene v, lines 18-23
Atlas was one of the Titans who warred against Jupiter (see page I-11). In fact, he may have been their general, for he was punished worse than the others. He was condemned to support the heavens on his shoulders.
As time went on, it became difficult to picture Atlas as holding up the sky. The Greeks learned more about astronomy and knew that there was no solid sky to support. The notion arose, then, of Atlas supporting the earth rather than the sky.
Cleopatra pictures Antony here as supporting the weight of the problems of the Roman world. He shared this weight with Octavius Caesar, of course, so he himself was but a demi-Atlas; that is, half an Atlas.
... Phoebus' amorous pinches...
In contrast, the self-pitying Cleopatra seems to herself to be ugly and old. She says:
Think on me,
That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black
And wrinkled deep in time. Broad-fronted Caesar,
When thou wast here above the ground, I was
A morsel for a monarch; and great Pompey
Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow;
- Act I, scene v, lines 27-32
Phoebus is, of course, the sun, and to be black with the sun's pinches would be to be sun-tanned. A queen like Cleopatra, however, would certainly not allow herself to grow sun-tanned. That was for peasant girls.
What is meant is that she is dark by nature because she dwelt in a tropic land. It is part of the Egyptian-Negress notion of Cleopatra, the usual false picture.
Nor is she honestly "wrinkled deep in time." At this point in the story, she is twenty-nine years old; past her first youth, perhaps, but by no means old and wrinkled.
Still it is human for her to think of herself as she was nine years before, only twenty-one, when Julius Caesar knew her; and even earlier when she met not Pompey himself, but his older son, who bore the same name.
Her opulent throne...
But now comes a messenger to Cleopatra from Antony, with the gift of a pearl and with a pretty speech. He says:
"Say the firm Roman to great Egypt sends
This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot,
To mend the petty present, I will piece
Her opulent throne with kingdoms.
All the East (Say thou) shall call her mistress."
- Act I, scene v, lines 43-46
The story was indeed spread in Rome that Antony was planning to hand over Roman provinces to Cleopatra; even to make her Queen of Rome (with himself as king, of course); that a foreign ruler would thus raise an exotic throne upon the Capitol. In the end, this, more than anything else, was to embitter Rome against Antony.
Shakespeare gets a little ahead of history here. The threat of turning the East over to Cleopatra comes later.
At the moment, Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar, each waist-deep in trouble, were going to have to be friends whether they liked it or not, for only by working together could they survive.
But Cleopatra is not concerned with practical politics now. She is delighted with Mark Antony's remembrance and is ashamed of herself for so much as remembering Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius. When Charmian teases her with her onetime love of Julius Caesar, she dismisses it with a much quoted line, saying:
My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,
- Act I, scene v, lines 73-74
And indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of this play is that it is a paean to the ecstasies of mature love, rather than of the teen-age passions so often celebrated.
... every hour in Rome
The second act opens in Messina, Sicily, at the camp of Sextus Pompeius, who is in conversation with his captains, Menecrates and Menas. Sextus is rather euphoric, confident that his hold on Rome's food supply gives him the trump card and that Octavius Caesar and Lepidus can do nothing without Antony's military ability. As for Mark Antony, Sextus has full confidence in Cleopatra's charms. He says:
Mark Antony
In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make
No wars without doors.
- Act II, scene i, lines 11-13
He is, however, overconfident. Another one of his captains, Varrius, conies with unwelcome news:
This is most certain, that
I shall deliver: Mark Antony is every hour in Rome
Expected.
- Act II, scene i, lines 28-30
There is hope, of course, that upon arrival, Mark Antony will fall to quarreling with Octavius. This is tentatively advanced as a possibility by Menas, but Sextus shakes his head. They may have cause enough to quarrel, but as long as the danger from the sea exists, they will have to make friends. At the end of the short scene, things look as bad for Sextus as, at the start, they had looked good.
Hark, Ventidius
In Rome, in Lepidus' house, it is now late in 40 b.c. The confrontation between Octavius Caesar and Mark Antony is about to take place and poor Lepidus is in a sweat lest the two collide destructively. He has undoubtedly done his best to influence Octavius Caesar to be accommodating, and he pleads with Enobarbus to do the same with respect to Mark Antony.
From opposite sides approach the two triumvirs, each with friends, and each pretending to be deep in private discussion so that, for effect, he can seem to be ignoring the other.
Antony speaks first to the general at his side-his thoughts, to all appearances, on military matters in the East:
// we compose well here, to Parthia.
Hark, Ventidius.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 15-16a
Here he goes off, apparently, into military talk unheard by the audience and undoubtedly meant to impress Octavius.
Ventidius is Publius Ventidius Bassus, who in early life had been a poor man who made a living renting mules and carriages. He rose to become a general serving under Julius Caesar in Gaul and remained loyal to Julius Caesar during the war with Pompey. After the assassination of the great Julius, Ventidius served Mark Antony and has remained loyal to him since.
Maecenas; ask Agrippa
As for Octavius Caesar, he is speaking with two men. Of what we can't say, but it is probably politics. Octavius affects carelessness. All we hear him say is:
/ do not know, Maecenas; ask Agrippa.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 16b-17
Maecenas and Agrippa are Octavius Caesar's closest associates, then and afterward. Gaius Cilnius Maecenas was a man of peace. He was several years older than Octavius Caesar and had been a friend of his since the latter was a schoolboy. In later years Maecenas was always left at home to take care of Rome when Octavius Caesar was forced to be away on war or diplomacy. In his eventual retirement, Maecenas used the wealth he had gathered to support and patronize writers and artists. So earnestly did he do this and so great were those he helped that forever after a patron of the arts has been called "a Maecenas."
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, on the other hand, was the man of war, the good right arm of Octavius Caesar, the general who fought all his master's battles, and who made it possible for Octavius to win military victories. (Why didn't Agrippa win them for himself? Because he was intelligent enough to know that he needed Octavius' brain to direct his arm. In the same way, Mark Antony needed Julius Caesar's brain to direct his arm, but he never really understood that.)
Agrippa was the same age as Octavius Caesar, was with him at school when the news of the assassination of Julius Caesar had arrived, and went with him to Italy. He did not play much of a part in the war against the conspirators, for he was still young. After the Battle of Philippi, however, Agrippa began to shine. It was he, for instance, who led the armies that penned up Fulvia and Lucius Antonius in Perusia and then defeated them.
... time to wrangle ...
Softly and eagerly, Lepidus draws the two men together. Stiffly, they sit and confront each other. Each raises the matter of his grievances. Octavius Caesar has the better of this, for he can bring up the war fought against him by Fulvia and Lucius, claiming Antony set them on. Antony objects that the war was against his own policy, and ungallantly places full blame upon his dead wife, saying, in terms that must have raised a wry smile from many a husband in the audience:
As for my wife,
I would you had her spirit in such another.
The third o'the world is yours, which with a snaffle
You may pace easy, but not such a wife.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 65-68
Nevertheless, argumentation continues till Enobarbus roughly points out the necessity of a compromise, however insincere:
... if you borrow one another's love
for the instant, you may, when you hear
no more words of Pompey, return it again:
you shall have time to wrangle in when
you have nothing else to do.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 107-10
It doesn't make pleasant listening, but it is a fair appraisal of the situation. A practical means of accommodation must be sought.
Admired Octavia...
Agrippa comes up with a suggestion at once. He says to Octavius Caesar:
Thou hast a sister by the mother's side,
Admired Octavia: great Mark Antony
Is now a widower.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 123-25
This sounds as though Agrippa is referring to a half sister, but he isn't. Octavia is a daughter of the same mother as Octavius Caesar as well as of the same father.
Octavius Caesar had two sisters, both older than he. The older one, Octavia Major, was a half sister, by his father's first wife. The second, Octavia Minor, was a full sister and the one to whom Agrippa refers.
She was by no means a young virgin, but was in her mid-twenties by this time (not much younger than Cleopatra) and had been married since her early teens, bearing two daughters and a son. Her husband, Gaius Marcellus, had died the year before, so what was being proposed was the marriage of a widow and a widower.
Mark Antony agrees to the marriage and thus is produced what is hoped will be a permanent bond between the two triumvirs, someone who will be a common love and who will labor to smooth over all irritations. There is a precedent for this, in connection with the First Triumvirate, when Pompey and Julius Caesar were much in the position that Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar are now.
In 58 b.c., when Julius Caesar was leaving for Gaul, he arranged to have Pompey marry Julia, his daughter, who was in her mid-twenties at the time. It turned out to be a love match. Pompey doted on her and while the marriage lasted, peace was maintained between the two men. In 54 b.c., however, Julia died at the age of only thirty. The strongest link between the two men snapped. The civil war that followed might have been prevented had Julia lived.
It was this precedent which was now being followed. If only Mark Antony could love Octavia as Pompey had loved Julia, all might be well (and better, too, for Octavia was destined to live for thirty years more and was not to die young as Julia had done).
... my sword 'gainst Pompey
The agreement among the triumvirs was aimed particularly against Sextus Pompeius, and this was rather embarrassing to Mark Antony, who says:
I did not think to draw my sword 'gainst Pompey,
For he hath laid strange courtesies and great
Of late upon me.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 159-61
It was more than that, in fact. The two were making definite overtures toward an alliance. When Antony's mother fled Italy after the Perusine War, Sextus was ostentatiously kind to her. In fact, in a later scene, Sextus reminds Antony of this, saying:
When Caesar and your brother were at blows,
Your mother came to Sicily and did find
Her welcome friendly.
- Act II, scene vi, lines 44-46
Sextus was not doing this, of course, out of sheer goodness of heart. He expected the Perusine War would lead to a greater civil war and he was prepared to choose sides for his own greater benefit. Since Octavius Caesar was closer to himself and the more immediate enemy, he was ready to ally himself with Antony, and this kindness to Antony's mother was a move in that direction.
Indeed, Antony would have welcomed such an alliance, and in 41 b.c. the first steps toward such an understanding had been taken. Undoubtedly, if it had not been for the terrible Parthian menace, the Sextus-Antony combination would have become reality. As it was, though, Antony had to have peace with Octavius Caesar, and to get that the alliance with Sextus had to be abandoned and even war on Sextus had to be considered.
... Mount Mesena
If the triumvirs were now to turn against Sextus Pompeius, it was none too soon. Sextus had even established strong bases on the shores of Italy itself. Antony asks where he is, and Octavius Caesar answers:
About the Mount Mesena.
- Act II, scene ii, line 166
Mount Mesena is a promontory that encloses a harbor about which the ancient town of Misenum was located. That town, now long gone, was fifteen miles west of Naples. In later years, Agrippa was to construct a strong naval base there, but now it belonged to Sextus.
... the river of Cydnus
The triumvirs leave, so that Mark Antony might meet Octavia and perform whatever perfunctory rites of courtship might seem advisable. Maecenas and Agrippa remain behind with Enobarbus for a little light conversation.
Naturally, this means there is a chance for a little leering in connection with Cleopatra. Maecenas and Agrippa want all the inside information from Enobarbus. Enobarbus is only too glad to comply:
When she first met Mark Antony,
she pursed up his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 192-93
That takes us back to the previous year, 41 b.c., when Antony, in the aftermath of Philippi, had taken over the East and was traveling through Asia Minor, gouging money out of the miserable population for the war against Parthia he was planning. Unfortunately for him, there wasn't much money to be had, squeeze he ever so tightly. Brutus and Cassius had been there the year before (see page I-303) and they had scoured the land clean.
Antony made his headquarters in Tarsus, a city on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor, at the mouth of the Cydnus River. (In Tarsus, a generation later, St. Paul was to be born.) It seemed to Antony that the logical solution to his dilemma was to squeeze Egypt. That land, nominally independent, but actually a Roman puppet, had the greatest concentration of wealth in the Mediterranean world-wealth wrung out of an endlessly fertile river valley and an endlessly patient and hard-working peasant population.
There had been reports that Egypt had helped Brutus and Cassius, and this was very likely, for Egypt was in no position to refuse help to any Roman general who was in her vicinity with an army. Mark Antony understood that well, but what interested him was that this help could be used as an excuse to demand money. He planned to demand a great deal, and for that reason he summoned the Queen of Egypt to come to him in Tarsus and explain her actions. He had briefly seen the Queen in Alexandria in the days when Julius Caesar was there, seven years before, but not since.
Cleopatra, perfectly aware of what Mark Antony intended, and also perfectly aware of his reputation as a woman chaser and of herself as a supreme quarry, decided to come to him in conditions of the greatest possible luxury, with herself beautified to the extreme of art. Plutarch describes the scene well, but Shakespeare improves on it and places it, for greater effect, in the mouth of Enobarbus, the rough soldier, to show that even the least poetic man had to be affected by Cleopatra's unparalleled stage setting of herself.
Enobarbus, in an unbelievable outburst of sheer lyricism, says:
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 197-21 la
Agrippa, listening, can only mutter in envy:
O, rare for Antony.
- Act II, scene ii, line 21 1b
Cleopatra's strategy worked to perfection. Antony found himself sitting at the pier on a throne in Roman state-but utterly alone. He was completely upstaged as everyone crowded to watch the approaching barge. He himself was overcome. When Cleopatra invited him on board the barge, he went in what was almost a hypnotic trance, and was her slave from that moment. The Parthians were forgotten until they charged into the Eastern provinces and forced themselves upon Antony's unwilling notice.
Age cannot wither ...
Agrippa and Maecenas grow uneasy at the description. The entire accommodation of the triumvirs rests upon the stability of the marriage of Antony and Octavia. Maecenas points out that now Antony must leave her, but Enobarbus answers in an immediate and positive negative; composing in the process the most effective description of complete feminine charm the world of literature has to offer. He says of the possibility of Antony's leaving Cleopatra:
Never; he will not;
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 240-46
And what can the others offer in place of this? Maecenas can only say, rather lamely:
// beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle
The heart of Antony, Octavia is
A blessed lottery to him.
- Act II, scene ii, lines 247-49
Thy daemon ...
Antony pledges himself to Octavia, but on leaving her and Octavius Caesar, he encounters the soothsayer, who has apparently accompanied his train to Italy. Antony asks whose fortune will rise higher, his own or Octavius Caesar's. The soothsayer answers:
Caesar's.
Therefore,
O Antony, stay not by his side.
Thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee, is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
Where Caesar's is not. But near him thy angel
Becomes afeared, as being o'erpow'red: therefore
Make space enough between you.
- Act II, scene iii, lines 18-24
The Greeks came to believe that with each individual was associated a divine spirit through which the influence of the gods could make itself felt. It was when this influence was most strongly felt that a man could attain heights otherwise impossible to him. Where a particular spirit was most continually effective, the man himself would be of unusual power and ability. In some cases, this belief was elaborated to the point where each individual was thought to have two such spirits, one for good and one for evil, the two continually fighting for mastery.
To the Greeks, such a spirit was a "daimon" (meaning "divinity") and in the Latin spelling this became "daemon." To the later Christians these daemons, being of pagan origin, could only be evil, and therefore we get our present "demon," meaning an evil spirit However, the Greek notion lives on with but a change of name, and. we still speak of guardian angels and we sometimes even envisage an individual as being influenced by his better or worse nature.
The soothsayer is saying that though Octavius Caesar's daemon is inferior to Antony's it can nevertheless win over the latter. In present parlance, we might say that Octavius Caesar plays in luck whenever he encounters Mark Antony. And yet this is hard to accept. It wasn't luck that kept Octavius Caesar on top through all a long life, but ability.
The Latin equivalent, by the way, of the Greek daimon was "genius" (see page I-118).
I'th'East...
The soothsayer, in warning Antony to stay far away from Octavius Caesar, is but telling Antony what he wants to hear. (This is the supreme art of the soothsayer in all ages and places.) Antony therefore says, after the soothsayer leaves:
I will to Egypt:
And though I make this marriage for my peace,
I'th'East my pleasure lies.
- Act II, scene iii, lines 39-4la
Eventually
451
