Since the death of Ptolemy VI (145) Egypt had rapidly decayed. Her kings were no longer able to maintain social order or national freedom; the Roman Senate increasingly dictated their policy, and garrisoned Alexandria with Roman troops. By the will of Ptolemy XI, whom Pompey and Gabinius had established on the throne, the government had descended to his son Ptolemy XII and his daughter Cleopatra, who were to marry each other and reign together.
Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek by origin, and more probably blonde than brunette.45 She was not particularly beautiful; but the grace of her carriage, the vivacity of her body and her mind, the variety of her accomplishments, the suavity of her manners, the very melody of her voice, combined with her royal position to make her a heady wine even for a Roman general. She was acquainted with Greek history, literature, and philosophy; she spoke Greek, Egyptian, Syrian, and allegedly other languages, well; she added the intellectual fascination of an Aspasia to the seductive abandon of a completely uninhibited woman. Tradition credits her with a treatise on cosmetics and another on the alluring subject of Egyptian measures, weights, and coins.46 She was an able ruler and administrator, effectively promoted Egyptian commerce and industry, and was a competent financier even when making love. With these qualities went an Oriental sensuality, an impetuous brutality that dealt out suffering and death, and a political ambition that dreamed of empire and honored no code but success. If she had not borne the intemperate blood of the later Ptolemies in her veins she might have achieved her purpose of being the queen of a unified Mediterranean realm. She saw that Egypt could no longer be independent of Rome and knew no reason why she should not dominate their union.
Caesar was not pleased to learn that Pothinus had banished Cleopatra and now ruled as regent for young Ptolemy. Secretly he sent for her, and secretly she came. To reach him she had herself concealed in some bedding which her attendant Apollodorus carried into Caesar’s apartment. The amazed Roman, who never let his victories in the field outnumber his conquests in love, was captivated by her courage and wit. He reconciled her with Ptolemy, and re-established her with her brother on the throne of Egypt. Learning from his barber that Pothinus and the Egyptian general Achillas were plotting to kill him and slaughter the small force that he had brought with him, he delicately arranged the assassination of Pothinus. Achillas escaped to the Egyptian army and roused it to insurrection; soon all Alexandria was alive with soldiers vowing death to Caesar. The Roman garrison which had been stationed in the city by the Senate was inspired by its officers to join in rising against this treasonable interloper who presumed to settle the succession to the throne of the Ptolemies, and even to beget an heir for its future.
In this emergency Caesar acted with his customary resourcefulness. He turned the royal palace and the near-by theater into fortresses for himself and his men, and sent for reinforcements from Asia Minor, Syria, and Rhodes. When he saw that his defenseless fleet would soon fall into the hands of his enemies, he ordered it burned; in the fire an uncertain portion of the Alexandrian library was consumed. By desperate sallies he captured, lost, and recaptured the island of Pharos, as being essential to the entry of the relief he awaited; in one of these engagements he swam for his life, amid a storm of arrows, when the Egyptians drove him and 400 of his men off the connecting mole into the sea. Thinking the rebels victorious, Ptolemy XII left the royal palace, joined them, and disappeared from history. When reinforcements arrived, Caesar routed the Egyptians and the Senatorial garrison in the Battle of the Nile. He rewarded Cleopatra for her fidelity to him in this crisis by making her younger brother Ptolemy XIII coregent with her, which left her in effect the supreme ruler of Egypt.
It is hard to understand why Caesar remained nine months in Alexandria while hostile armies were being organized against him near Utica, and while Rome, stirred to radical revolt by Caelius and Milo, longed for his fine administrative hand. Perhaps he felt that he deserved a little rest and play after ten years of war. He “often feasted with Cleopatra till daybreak,” says Suetonius, “and would have gone through Egypt with her in her royal barge almost to Ethiopia, had not his soldiers threatened mutiny”; 47 they had not all found queans. Perhaps he gallantly waited to share the pains of her confinement. A child was born to her in 47 and was named Caesarion; according to Mark Antony, Caesar acknowledged the boy as his son.48 It is not impossible that she whispered to him the pleasant thought of making himself king, marrying her, and uniting the Mediterranean world under one bed.
This, however, is conjectural as well as scandalous; nothing but circumstantial evidence supports it. Certainly Caesar flew to action when he learned that Pharnaces, son of Mithridates, had recaptured Pontus, Lesser Armenia, and Cappadocia, and was inviting the East to rise once more against divided Rome. His wisdom in “pacifying” Spain and Gaul before meeting Pompey was now apparent; had the West revolted at one time with the East the Empire would probably have broken up, the “barbarians” would have moved southward, and Rome might never have known an Augustan age. Re-forming his three legions, Caesar set out in June of 47, marched with characteristic speed along the coast of Egypt through Syria and Asia Minor into Pontus, defeated Pharnaces at Zela (August 2), and sent to a friend at Rome the laconic report, Veni, vidi, vici—“I came, I saw, I conquered.”49
At Tarentum (September 26) he was met by Cicero, who asked forgiveness for himself and other conservatives. Caesar consented amiably. He was shocked to find that during his twenty months’ absence from Rome the Civil War had become a social revolution: that Cicero’s son-in-law Dolabella had joined forces with Caelius, and had proposed to the Assembly a bill canceling all debts; that Antony had let loose his soldiers upon Dolabella’s armed prolétaires, and 800 Romans had been killed in the Forum. Caelius, as praetor, had recalled Milo; together they had organized an army in southern Italy and had invited the slaves to unite with them in a thoroughgoing revolution. They had met with small success, but their spirit was in the air. At Rome the radicals were celebrating the memory of Catiline and again garlanding his tomb. Meanwhile the Pompeian army in Africa had grown as large as the one that had been beaten at Pharsalus. Pompey’s son Sextus had organized a new army in Spain, and the grain supply of Italy was once more hanging in the balance. Such was the situation in October, 47, when Caesar reached Rome and Calpurnia, bringing with him Cleopatra, her boy husband-brother, and Caesarion.
In the few months permitted him between campaigns he set about restoring order. Having been reappointed dictator, he appeased the radicals for a moment by repealing the last of Sulla’s laws and canceling for a year all rents below 2000 sesterces in Rome; at the same time he tried to comfort the conservatives by making Marcus Brutus governor of Cisalpine Gaul, assuring Cicero and Atticus that he would abet no war against property, and ordering the re-erection of the statues of Sulla, which the prolétaires had knocked down. When he turned his thoughts to the Pompeians he was discouraged to hear that his most trusted legions were in revolt because of long-overdue pay and were refusing to embark for Africa. As the Treasury was nearly empty, he raised funds by confiscating and selling the property of rebel aristocrats; he had learned, he said, that soldiers depend upon money, money upon power, and power upon soldiers.50 He suddenly appeared among the rebellious legions, called them together, and quietly told them that they were released from service and might go to their homes; he added that he would make up all arrears to them when he had triumphed in Africa “with other soldiers.” “At this expression,” says Appian, “shame seized upon them all, that they were abandoning their commander in this moment when enemies surrounded him on every side. . . . They cried out that they repented of their revolt, and besought him to keep them in his service.”51 He yielded with charming reluctance, and sailed with them for Africa.
At Thapsus, on April 6, 46, he met the combined forces of Metellus Scipio, Cato, Labienus, and Juba I, the Numidian king. Again he lost the first encounter; again he re-formed his lines, attacked, and won. His blood-crazed soldiers, blaming his clemency at Pharsalus for having to fight this second battle, slaughtered 10,000 of the 80,000 Pompeians, giving no quarter; they did not propose to meet these men again. Juba committed suicide; Scipio fled and died in an engagement at sea; Cato with a small division escaped to Utica. When the officers wished to defend the city against Caesar, Cato persuaded them that it was impossible. He provided funds for those who planned flight, but advised his son to submit to Caesar. He himself rejected both courses. He spent the evening in philosophical discussion; then he retired to his room and read Plato’s Phaedo. Suspecting that he would kill himself, his friends took his sword from his bedside. When they had relaxed their vigil he compelled his servant to bring back the weapon. For a while he feigned sleep; then suddenly he took the sword and plunged it into his abdomen. His friends rushed in; a physician put back the extruding intestines and sewed and bandaged the wound. As soon as they had left the room Cato removed the bandage, tore open the wound, pulled out his entrails, and died.
When Caesar came he mourned that he had no chance to pardon Cato; he could only pardon the son. The Uticans gave the dead Stoic a magnificent funeral, as if knowing that they were burying a republic almost five centuries old.