The Memoirs of Cleopatra Read online

  “I hope you never have to entertain them again, so this is my only chance,” I pointed out to him. “And if they do ever come here again, it won’t be under pleasant circumstances. No lavish banquets then.”

  He looked at me oddly. Now I know it was because it was a strange way for a seven-year-old to speak, but then I was just afraid he was displeased with me and was going to refuse me permission.

  “Very well,” he finally said. “But I expect you to do more than just stare. You must be on your best behavior; we have to convince him that both Egypt and Rome are well served by our remaining on the throne.”

  “We?” Surely he did not mean…or did he? I was only the third child, although at that point I had no brothers.

  “We Ptolemies,” he clarified. But he had seen the hope that had briefly flared up in me.

  My First Banquet: Every royal child should be required to write a rhetorical exercise with that title. For banquets play such an inordinately large part in our lives; they are the stage where we act out our reigns. You start out dazzled by them, as I was then, only to find that after a few years they all run together. But this one will remain forever engraved in my mind.

  There was the (soon to become dully routine) act of dressing, the first stage in the ritual. Each princess had her own wardrobe mistress, but mine was actually my old nurse, who knew little about clothes. She outfitted me in the first dress from the stack; her main concern was that it be freshly laundered and ironed, which it was.

  “Now you must sit still, so it won’t wrinkle,” she said, smoothing out the skirt. I remember that it was blue, and rather stiff. “Linen is so easy to wrinkle! None of that romping, none of that acting like a boy that you sometimes do, not tonight! Tonight you must behave like a princess.”

  “And how is that?” I felt as encased as a mummy in its wrappings, which were also usually of linen. Perhaps going to the banquet was not such a good idea after all.

  “With dignity. When someone speaks to you, you turn your head around, slowly. Like this.” She gave a demonstration, letting her head swivel smoothly around, then lowering her eyelids. “And you look down, modestly.” She paused. “And you answer in a sweet, low voice. Do not say, ‘What?’ Only barbarians do that. The Romans might well do it,” she said grimly. “But you must not follow their example!”

  She fussed with my collar a little, straightening it. “And should anyone be so rude as to mention an unpleasant subject—like taxes or plague or vermin—you must not reply. It is unfit to discuss such things at a banquet.”

  “What if I see a scorpion about to sting someone? Suppose, right on Pompey’s shoulder, there’s a bright red scorpion, its stinger raised—can I tell him?” I must learn all the rules. “Wouldn’t it be rude not to? Even though it’s an unpleasant subject?”

  She looked confused. “Well, I suppose—” She snorted. “There won’t be a scorpion on Pompey’s shoulder! Honestly—you are an exasperating child, always thinking of something like that.” But she said it affectionately. “At least we should hope there isn’t a scorpion to bother Pompey, or anything else to ruin his good mood.”

  “Shouldn’t I wear a diadem?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “Where did you get that idea? You aren’t a queen.”

  “Aren’t there any for princesses? We should be able to wear something on our heads. Romans have those laurel wreaths, don’t they? And so do athletes.”

  She cocked her head, as she did when she was thinking hard. “I think the best ornament for a young girl is her hair. And you have such pretty hair. Why spoil it with anything else?”

  She was always very attentive to my hair, rinsing it in scented rainwater and combing it with ivory combs. She taught me to be proud of it. But I longed to wear something special tonight. “But there should be something to mark us out as the royal family. My sisters—”

  “Your sisters are older, and it is appropriate for them. When you are seventeen, or even fifteen like Berenice, you can wear such things.”

  “I suppose you are right.” I pretended to agree. I let her comb my hair and pull it back with a clasp. Then I said, “Now that my forehead is so bare—not even a fillet?” A small, discreet one, a narrow band—yes, that would be fine with me.

  She laughed. “Child, child, child! Why are you not content to let things rest?” But I could see that she was going to relent. “Perhaps a very small gold one. But I want you to use it as a reminder, the whole evening, that you are a princess.”

  “Of course,” I promised. “I won’t do anything rude, and even if a Roman belches or spills or steals a gold spoon by hiding it in his napkin, I’ll pretend I don’t see.”

  “You may well see some spoon-stealing,” she admitted. “They are so hungry for gold, they drool at its sight. It’s a good thing the artworks in the palace are too big to be tucked into the fold of a toga, or some of them would be missing come morning.”

  I had been in the banqueting hall before, but only when it was empty. The enormous chamber, which stretched from one side to the other of a palace building (for there were many palace buildings on the royal grounds) and opened onto steps overlooking the inner harbor, had always seemed like a shiny cavern to me. Its polished floors reflected my image when I ran across it, and the rows of pillars showed me passing. High above, the ceiling was lost in shadow.

  But tonight…the cavern was ablaze with light, so much so that for the first time I could see, far above, the cedar beams overlaid with gold that ran the length of the ceiling. And the noise! The sound of a crowd—which was to become so familiar to me—assaulted my ears like a blow. The whole chamber was packed with people, so many people that I could only stop and stare at them.

  We—the royal family—were standing at the top of a small set of steps before entering the room, and I wanted to take my father’s hand and ask him if all the thousand guests were here. But he was standing in front of me, the place beside him occupied by my stepmother, and there was no opportunity.

  We waited for the trumpets to sound, announcing our entrance. I watched intently, trying to see what Romans looked like. Which ones were the Romans? About half the people were wearing the common sort of loose-flowing garments, and some of those men had beards. But the others…they were clean-shaven, with short hair, and they were wearing either a voluminous sort of draped cape (which looked like a bedsheet to me), or else military uniforms, made up of breastplates and little skirts of leather strips. Obviously those were Romans. The others must be Egyptians and Greeks from Alexandria.

  The trumpets blasted, but from the other end of the hall. Father did not stir, and soon I saw why: The trumpets were heralding the entrance of Pompey and his aides. As they filed toward the center of the chamber, I beheld the full regalia of a Roman general of the highest order, in which the plain breastplate of the soldier was replaced by one of pure gold, decorated with artwork. His cloak, too, was purple, not red, and he wore some sort of special enclosed boots. It was altogether splendid to look upon.

  Pompey himself? I was disappointed to see that he was just a man, with a rather bland face. There was nothing about him as dazzling as his uniform. On each side of him were other officers, their faces harder and more set than his, and they served as a frame to set him apart.

  Now a second set of trumpets sounded, and it was our turn to descend, so that Father could greet his guests and welcome them officially. All eyes were upon him as he carefully stepped down, his royal robe trailing behind him. I made sure not to trip on it.

  The two men stood face-to-face; Father was so much shorter and smaller! Next to the husky Pompey, he looked almost frail.

  “You are most welcome to Alexandria, most noble Imperator Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. We greet you, and salute your victories, and declare that you honor us by your presence here this evening,” said Father. He had a pleasant voice, and normally it carried well, but tonight it lacked power. He must be terribly, terribly nervous—and of course that made me nervous, too, and nervous
for him as well.

  Pompey gave some reply, but his Greek was so accented I could hardly understand him. Perhaps Father did; at least he pretended to. More exchanges followed, many introductions on both sides. I was presented—or was Pompey presented to me? Which was the proper order?—and I smiled and nodded to him. I knew that princesses—let alone kings and queens!—never bowed to anyone else, but I hoped it would not offend him. He probably did not know all these things, being from Rome, where they had no kings.

  Instead of his previous response—a tepid smile—he suddenly bent down and stared right into my face, his round blue eyes just level with mine.

  “What an enchanting child!” he said, in that odd Greek. “Do the children of kings attend these things from the cradle?” He turned to Father, who looked embarrassed. I could tell he regretted allowing me to come; he did not wish to do anything that might call unflattering attention to us.

  “Not until the age of seven,” he improvised quickly. I wasn’t quite seven yet, but Pompey would never know. “We believe that that age is the portal to understanding….” Tactfully he indicated that the banquet tables were waiting, in the adjoining, almost equally large, chamber, and steered the Roman commander in that direction.

  Beside me, my older sisters were smirking; they seemed to find my discomfiture amusing.

  “ ‘What an enchanting child,’ ” Berenice mimicked.

  “Look, there’s another one,” the elder Cleopatra said, indicating a boy who was watching us pass. “The banquet is turning into a children’s party!”

  I was surprised to see him, and I wondered why he was there. He looked completely out of place. Would Pompey stop and single him out, too? But luckily he seemed more interested in getting to the food in the next room. Everyone said Romans were most fond of eating.

  The boy, who was dressed as a Greek and holding the hand of a bearded, Greek-looking man, must be an Alexandrian. He was studying us the way I had studied the Romans. Perhaps we were a curiosity to him. Our family did not make many public appearances in the streets of Alexandria, for fear of riots.

  We walked slowly, and—I hoped—majestically past him, and entered the transformed room where we would dine. Some late afternoon rays of sun were stabbing almost horizontally across the chamber, just at the level of the tables, where a forest of gold goblets and dishes was waiting. It seemed like magic to me, lighted up like that, and it must have to the Romans, too, because they were all laughing with delight, and pointing.

  Pointing! How rude! But then…I had been warned to expect it.

  Pompey was not pointing, nor were his companions. He did not even look particularly interested; or if he was, he hid it well.

  We took our places; all the adults were to recline, while only the lesser folk would sit on stools—and there were very few lesser folk present. My nurse had told me that in Rome both women and children were relegated to the stools, but neither the Queen nor the older princesses would ever tolerate that here. I tried to figure out how many couches were needed for a thousand people to recline, and knew it was over three hundred—and yet they fitted into this enormous room, with ample room left over for the servers to pass between them easily with their trays and dishes.

  Father was motioning me to a stool, while Pompey and his companions spread themselves on the couches clustered for the highest of the high. Was I to be the only one on a stool? I might as well have worn a huge sign calling attention to myself. I watched while my sisters and stepmother settled themselves, daintily twitching their gowns and tucking one foot under the other. How I wished I were only a little older, and could be on a couch!

  I felt myself to be so conspicuous that I wondered how I would ever get through the meal. Just then Father ordered the bearded man with the boy to join us; I saw him sending for them. I knew he was doing it to alleviate my embarrassment; he was always very solicitous of others, seeming to sense their distress even if they did not voice it.

  “Ah! My dear Meleagros,” Father addressed the man. “Why not seat yourself where you can learn what you wish?”

  The man nodded, seemingly unperturbed at being assigned to our exalted midst. He must be a philosopher; they were supposed to take all things with equanimity. And of course the beard confirmed it. He propelled his son forward, pushing him before him, and a stool was quickly brought for him. Now there were two of us. I suppose Father thought that would make it easier. Actually, it just drew more attention.

  “Meleagros is one of our scholars,” explained Father. “He is at—”

  “Yes, the Museion,” said a square-faced Roman. “That’s where you keep the tame scholars and scientists, right?” Without waiting for an answer, he poked his companion in the ribs. “They live there, but then they have to work for the King. Whenever he wants to know something—oh, say, how deep the Nile is near Memphis—he can just summon someone to tell him, even in the middle of the night! Right?”

  Meleagros stiffened; he looked as though he wanted to smack the Roman. “Not exactly,” he said. “It is true that we are supported by the generosity of the Crown, but our King would never be so thoughtless as to make such outrageous demands on us.”

  “In fact,” said Father, “I have brought him here in order that he might question you, Varro. Meleagros is most interested in unusual plants and animals, and I understand that several of you have been observing and collecting near the Caspian Sea—after you ran Mithridates off, that is.”

  “Yes,” the man called Varro admitted. “We were hoping to learn more about a reputed trade route to India by way of the Caspian Sea. But Mithridates was not the only one to be run off—so were we, by deadly snakes. I never saw so many—all different sorts, too. Of course, what can you expect, at the edge of the known world like that—”

  “The geography there is puzzling,” one of the other men said, a Greekspeaker. Someone addressed him as Theophanes. “It is difficult to map—”

  “You have maps?” Meleagros looked interested.

  “Newly drawn. But perhaps you would like to see them?”

  And so on. The polite conversation continued. The boy by my side was silent, just looking. What was he doing here?

  The wine flowed, and the talking grew louder, more animated. The Romans forgot to speak Greek and lapsed back into Latin. What an odd, monotonous sound it had if you did not understand it. And I had not studied it. There was little to recommend it; nothing important was written in it, and there were no famous speeches in it. Other languages, such as Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic, were much more useful. And lately I had even decided to try to learn Egyptian, so that I could go anywhere in my country and understand the people. But Latin? That could wait.

  I watched my sisters, who were hardly bothering to hide their disdain for the Romans; when the conversation fell back into Latin, Berenice and Cleopatra just rolled their eyes. I was worried about it; what if the Romans saw them? I thought we were supposed to be careful about giving offense.

  Suddenly trumpets sounded and an array of servers appeared, as if from out of the walls, and snatched the gold vessels away, replacing them with more gold vessels, even more heavily engraved and jeweled than the first set. The Romans just stared—as I supposed they were meant to.

  But what was the point? Why was Father so anxious to show off our wealth? Would it not make them want to appropriate it? This confused me. I saw Pompey looking dreamily at the enormous cup before him, as if he were visualizing melting it down.

  And then I heard the word Caesar, and it was linked with something to do with greed and needing money. I thought Pompey was saying to Father—I strained very hard to overhear—that Caesar (whoever he was) had wanted to take Egypt and make it into a Roman province, since it had been willed to Rome….

  “But the will was false,” Father was saying, and his voice sounded as high as a eunuch’s. “Ptolemy Alexander had no right even to make such a bequest—”

  “Ha, ha, ha!” Pompey was saying. “That depends on who is interpretin
g—”

  “So you are intending to be a scientist, too?” Theophanes was speaking to the boy next to me, politely. “Is that why you came with your father?”

  Curses! Now I could not hear what Father and Pompey were saying, and it was terribly important. I tried to blank out the voice right beside me, but it was hopeless.

  “No,” the boy said, his voice drowning out the ones farther away. “Although I am interested in botany and in animals, I am more interested in the most complex animal of all: man. I wish to study him, therefore I will be a physician.”

  “And what is your name?” asked Theophanes as if he were really interested. “And your age?”

  “Olympos,” he said, “and I am nine. Ten next summer!”

  Oh, be quiet! I ordered him in my mind.

  But Theophanes kept asking him questions. Did he live at the Museion, too? Was he interested in any special sort of medicine? What about pharmakon, drugs? That was a way to combine knowledge of plants and medicine.

  “Well, yes,” Olympos was saying. “I was hoping I could ask some of you about the ‘mad honey.’ That’s really why I came tonight. Or persuaded my father to bring me, I should say.”

  Theophanes lost his smile. “The mad honey—meli maenomenon—don’t ask Pompey about it. It grieves him still. You see, the area around the Black Sea where Mithridates held sway—it’s known for its poisonous honey. Some of his allies put out combs of it near our route—our soldiers helped themselves, and we lost many. Many.” He shook his head.

  “But why did you eat it, if you knew it was poisonous?”

  “We didn’t know; we only found out afterward. It seems the bees feed on azaleas there, and there is something in the nectar that poisons the honey. The plant itself is poisonous; people in the area call it ‘goat-bane,’ ‘lamb-kill,’ and ‘cattle-destroyer.’ That’s a clue we shouldn’t have missed.”

  “But what about the bees? Does it kill them, too?” Olympos asked.

  “And Caesar tried to get a measure passed in the Senate,” Pompey was saying, “so that Egypt—”