1
LET ME SAY AT THE OUTSET THAT CLEOpatra was not beautiful. People of deficient wit fancy that only a woman of the most extravagant beauty could have bagged both Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius, the most powerful Romans of their day. It is true that both men had a taste for beauty, but men of great power and wealth have their pick of beautiful women and it took far more than mere beauty for the queen of Egypt to enthrall that pair of jaded old warriors, each of them a long-service veteran of the campaigns of Venus as well as those of Mars.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was heiress to the most fabulously wealthy nation in the world. For the riches of Egypt even the most discriminating connoisseur of lovely women might overlook an extra half inch of nose, eyes a little too close set, a receding chin, or protruding front teeth, or, for that matter, a hunched back, bowed legs, and lion-faced leprosy.
Not that Cleopatra was ugly. Far from it. She was quite attractive. It was just that the qualities for which great men loved her were not entirely those of the flesh nor even those of her great wealth. The simple fact was that any normal man who stood in her presence for a few minutes loved her desperately if she wanted him to. No woman ever had greater control over men’s feelings toward herself. Whether it was grand passion, fatherly fondness, doglike loyalty, or fear and trembling, if Cleopatra wanted it from you, she got it.
And love for Cleopatra was not the infatuation of a youth for some shapely, empty-headed girl. When Cleopatra wished a man to love her, he loved her as Paris loved Helen, without limits and forsaking all judgment, all sense of proportion or decency. It was a serious illness from which even the gods could not deliver him.
But I get ahead of myself. That was years later. When I first encountered Princess Cleopatra she was just a child, although a remarkable one. That was back during the consulship of Metellus Celer and Lucius Afranius, when I was an envoy to the court of Ptolemy Auletes at Alexandria.
The second time was a few years afterward on Cyprus.
“WHY,” I ASKED, “CAN I NOT STAND FOR praetor immediately? I’ve served as aedile for two full years, which is unprecedented, and for which the people of Rome owe me not just a praetorship but the best propraetorian province on the map. Everybody loved my Games, I got the sewers scoured out, I fixed the streets, rooted out corruption in the building trades—”
“You are not going to stand for praetor just yet,” Father said, “because we are already supporting our candidates for the next elections, as we agreed before we knew your aedileship would be prolonged for an extra year. Besides, the people prefer their praetorian candidates to have put in more time with the legions than you can boast.”
“You’re just trying to put off returning to Gaul,” Creticus said. He was perfectly correct.
“And why not?” I answered. “Nobody is getting any glory out of that war except Caesar. You’d think he was fighting all alone up there to read his dispatches to the Senate.”
“The people don’t require glory,” Father said. “They require service. They’re not going to hand imperium to a man who has no more than five or six years with the eagles to his credit.”
“They elected Cicero,” I muttered.
“Cicero is a New Man,” said my kinsman Nepos. “He reached the highest offices on his reputation as a lawyer because he’s a novelty. From a Metellus the people expect what we’ve given them for centuries: leadership in the Senate and on the battlefield.”
It was, as you might have guessed, a family conference. We Metelli got together from time to time to plot strategy. We fancied ourselves the greatest power bloc in the Senate and the Popular Assemblies and we did control quite a few votes, although Metellan power had declined from its peak of a generation previously, just after the dictatorship of Sulla.
Creticus laced his fingers over his substantial paunch and studied a flight of birds overhead, as if searching for omens. “As it happens,” he said, “we’ve really nothing to gain by sending you back to Caesar.”
My political antennae stood up and quivered. “A shift in family policy, I take it?”
“Everyone feels that Caesar already has too much power and prestige,” Nepos asserted. He was a longtime supporter of Pompey and detested Caesar. His “everyone” meant most people of good birth. Caesar, despite his patrician birth, was overwhelmingly popular with the commons, whereas we Metelli, though plebeian, were of the aristocratic party.
“Still,” Father said, “there is important military work to be done that doesn’t involve fighting the Gauls. Work that can be proclaimed to your credit when you stand for praetor and, in time, consul.”