Rome

We need to stop here and catch up with the struggles of Rome in which Egypt became entangled. General Julius Caesar, in his own battle with General Pompey for power and control of Rome, was conducting a bloody civil war that raged on and on. Pompey arrived in Pelusium, hoping to get money, food, men, and ships because he was running low on what he needed to defeat Caesar. He went to Egypt to get these needs met, from Ptolemy XIII, who he figured owed him. Until that point in time, Ptolemy XIII, jus thirteen years of age, had been on the receiving end of much support from Rome due to the relationship established between Cleopatra’s father and Pompey before Caesar rose up to challenge the Roman general. And now Pompey had just lost badly to Caesai in Pharsalos, he needed Egypt’s help.

Meanwhile, Caesar was in pursuit and also looking for aid for his military needs; he arrived in Alexandria with what wasn’t a huge contingent. However, it seemed to Ptolemy and his advisors that Caesar was going to be the eventual victor; they had to pick one side or the other because, well, what else could they do? Ptolemy XIII was forced into a bad situation. If he continued supplying Pompey and giving him enough strength to continue the battles against Caesar on Egyptian soil, the campaigns could devastate Egypt; and if Pompey lost after helping him, Ptolemy Xlll’s support for Pompey would infuriate Caesar. Ptolemy and his advisors evaluated whom the winner of a civil war would be and how quickly that winner would finish the job and vacate Egypt; they concluded that it would be Caesar. Not wanting to bet with the odds against him, Ptolemy switched sides.

Positioned between a rock and a hard place, as soon as Pompey landed with his troops at Pelusium, Ptolemy XIII had Pompey ambushed and killed. He delivered Pompey’s head to Caesar. However, Ptolemy XIII miscalculated how happy Caesar would be to see his enemy’s head presented to him by the Egyptian king. Pompey may have been his rival, but it was up to Caesar to decide Pompey’s fate, not have the upstart Egyptian king usurp the right. Caesar was galled. Maybe Ptolemy XIII should have simply done away with Pompey quietly and not forced Caesar to confront the head of his dead adversary and the embarrassment that came with it.

Ptolemy XIII did not make a new friend with such a brash move Meanwhile, Cleopatra knew she would be unlikely to beat her brother militarily, so she worked out a more subtle plan by outwitting him. She slipped past Ptolemy’s general Achillas, who was blocking Pelusium, and sailed along the coastline to Alexandria (or by way of the Nile). Then she went to see Caesar at the palace.

Here we have one of Plutarch’s most fanciful stories that certainly has been depicted in film after film of Cleopatra’s life. Cassias Dio wrote of the episode in simple terms in his Roman History.

Therefore, she requested permission to go before Caesar and, when she received it, she put on her finery so as to appear to him stately and pitiable at the same time. Once she had devised the perfect look, she entered the city (for she had been outside it) and approached the palace at night, keeping her arrival a secret fTom Ptolemy. i

Plutarch, always one to embellish and add a grand entrance, writes of this scene:

She took a small boat and one only of her confidants, Apollodurus, the Sicilian, along with her, and in the dusk of the evening landed near the palace. She was at a loss how to get in undiscovered, till she thought of putting herself in a coverlet of a bed and lying at length, whilst Apollodorus tied up the bedding and carried it on his back through the gates to Caesar’s apartment. Caesar was first captivated by Cleopatra’s bold wit, and was afterwards so overcome by the charm of her society that he made a reconciliation between her and her brother.2

Ah, such a terribly “cute” and utterly degrading way for a queen to meet a renowned Roman general, demeaning to the utmost, to be rolled out of a carpet as is oft repeated, or in a bit of a better container, a bedroll, onto the floor groveling at his feet, sweaty, hair a mess, clothing askew, a true rug rat to an experienced, very mature man.

Cleopatra was no longer a teenager at that moment. She was twenty-one years old, a very mature twenty-one if you count her upbringing and what she had experienced during her royal childhood. She had observed years of political wrangling, experienced the murder of her sister, the death of her father, war, expulsion, being a fugitive, and most important of all, the young woman had ruled alone as pharaoh for almost two years. She was not a naive waif, chuckling over her “cool” style of arrival in a carpet, thinking she was going to so amuse the lauded general Caesar of Rome. She was a queen, temporarily separated from her kingdom, who desired to meet and impress the general, not with her coquetry, but with her ability to govern better than her brother, to manage Egypt in an intelligent manner, which would be to Caesar’s benefit. Caesar was not overly impressed with Ptolemy, so she already had an advantage.

There is evidence in the literature, and this can be backed up by logic, that she did not need to go to quite so covert lengths to get an audience with Caesar in Alexandria. She had been communicating with him from her post over the border at Pelusium. Surely, before sneaking past Achillas and heading toward Alexandria, she had sent word to Caesar that she was coming or he had sent word to her telling her to come; either way, it likely was no surprise that Cleopatra was arriving in the harbor that night.

While Cleopatra was taking a risk, she had to be concerned that some of her brother’s supporters might get wind that she was coming, see her arrival, and take violent action against her. She also had to worry about those volatile Alexandrians who might not wish her well. However, Caesar was installed in Alexandria with two legions, which was not necessarily a lot for going into a huge battle, but those legions numbered over three thousand men and they reported to Caesar. He also had eight hundred cavalry that served as his bodyguard. Now, the palace is on the harbor, a relatively short walk from the docks. She would not even actually need to get from the bigger ship to a smaller boat (as written) because the large ships could pull right up to the wall since the harbor was so deep. However, she might have taken a small boat to the dock and been brought to the palace. Regardless of how she exactly came on shore, I find it hard to believe that Caesar would not have made arrangements for her to arrive in one piece. No doubt she was met and escorted, possibly with a solid flanking of men about her and a shawl over her head, but, when she entered the palace and stood before Caesar, I am quite confident she was ravishing to look at and she looked him directly in the eye, proud and defiant and strong. This would be the queen the general had heard of and this would be the queen Cleopatra would want him to meet and choose to support.

Cassius Dio, ever more sensible and less dramatic than Plutarch in examining history, elaborates on the event and Cleopatra’s reasoning:

It seems that Cleopatra was pleading her case against her brother with Caesar through intermediaries, but as soon as she learned of his nature (for he had a propensity for affairs and had been with many women every time the opportunity presented itself) she sent word to him saying that her friends were betraying her and requesting that he let her speak for herself. She was a particularly beautiful woman and, at the time, being in her prime, she knew how to use her charms to be attractive to everyone. Thus, she thought it appropriate for her to meet with Caesar and she rested all her hopes of a successful outcome on her beauty. It worked, and Caesar gave her the throne back.3

Naturally, when Ptolemy XIII arrived in Alexandria to find Cleopatra in the palace reinstalled as coregent, he was not at all pleased and he threw a royal fit. As impressed as Caesar was with the queen, he wisely took into consideration the support Ptolemy XIII had among many of the upper-crust Alexandrians and handled the delicate situation quite astutely. Caesar wisely read to Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII the will of the Ptolemaic sibling; father, which stated that he wanted them to rule together. Never mind that Cleopatra had blithely ignored her father’s wishes and pushed her brother off the throne. Never mind, water under the bridge. Well, perhaps for Cleopatra. Ptolemy Xlllwas not so willing to forgive and forget, because clearly Caesar was leaning toward Cleopatra as his long-term associate; he promised to return Cyprus. Now, some think that Caesar was simply smitten with Cleopatra, that they had spent a hot night together, and he made a poor choice of Cleopatra over Ptolemy XIII considering the male ruler had more military might and Alexandrian support. I see his choice to be far more rational in the scheme of long-term thinking. Ptolemy XIII may have had more Egyptians in his corner at the time, but he was emotionally unstable and easily swayed. Cleopatra would provide the tenacity, vigor, and continued support for his goals of being sole leader of Rome and for stabilizing Egypt. He also knew that she needed him as well. A petulant, annoying boy or a confident, attractive, available goddess; whom would you choose? Caesar was known to be a womanizer, and he liked smart, ambitious women. Cleopatra fit his type perfectly.

Julius Caesar may have rid himself of Pompey, but the Egyptian army was still out at Pelusium, and General Achillas and the minister Pothinos felt this would be a good time to attack Caesar since he was low on forces. They conducted a siege of Alexandria (the Alexandrian War) against him, but Caesar held up surprisingly well in spite of Achillas’s and then Ganymede’s tactics. Ganymede, Cleopatra’s younger sister Arsinoe’s tutor, assassinated Achillas during the battle; Arsinoe had joined up with her brother Ptolemy XIII, but had a falling out with Achillas. She had Ganymede kil

General Achillas, and then she promoted Ganymede to lead the Egyptian army. He did his job well and came up with the clever idea of rerouting seawater into the drinking water and trying to dehydrate Caesar’s men. Caesar struck back by setting fire to the Egyptian fleet in the harbor.

Meanwhile, over these four months, Cleopatra was cooped up with her brother, Ptolemy XIII, in the palace. She could watch the battle from the roof, but her new lover was gone all day long. I bring this up to make a point about the paternity of Cleopatra’s son, Caesarion.

There is much argument over whether the son Cleopatra named Caesarion was truly the son of Julius Caesar. Some think it is silly to question the paternity of Caesarion; after all Caesar did have at least four months to connect with Cleopatra while the Alexandrian war raged on. Cleopatra was in the palace the whole time, and why wouldn’t Caesar enjoy a bit of sexual healing at the end of a long day of battle? Whether Caesar actually took that long Nile boat ride with Cleopatra when the war ended is fairly irrelevant; she supposedly had gotten pregnant with the child within the approximate time frame of the Alexandrian War when Caesar was available to provide the DNA. So why wouldn’t he be the father of Caesarion? Wouldn’t word get out if Cleopatra was having trysts with soldiers, or the help, or some other important person? One would think—but then again, if the pharaoh told you never to mention the moment, it would be terribly foolish to spread that information around. For that matter, even if she didn’t tell you to keep your mouth shut, it still might mean your death to say that you slept with the queen. So I wouldn’t discount the possibility that Cleopatra slept with someone besides Julius Caesar, someone who could also have impregnated her.

Clearly no DNA tests existed in those days to prove or disprove paternity. And I think it matters little that some Greek writers claim that the boy looked like Caesar and even walked like Caesar. It is true that sometimes children look incredibly like their parents and have mannerisms that mimic them, but little Caesarion never grew up around his supposed father, so I doubt his gait would in any way resemble Julius Caesar’s, except by luck.

There is also an interesting human trait of making public statements about how much a boy looks like his father. Oddly, one hears much less often how much a child looks like his mother. This is especially true with babies, who, for the most part, look like any other baby. Why does this happen? This peculiar human behavior may harken back to the days when there were no paternity tests, when questions of whom the father of that baby might be were unable to be proven and were very questionable, especially if papa was a traveling man or there was any rumor that the mother ordered far more milk from the milkman than her family could drink. Saying the baby looked like the father was a way of making him feel more comfortable, to give him a slap on the back and assure him that his wife hadn’t cheated on him. We have no way to compare the looks of Caesarion to Caesar, so we really don’t know much about whether they looked alike. And if Cleopatra wanted to pass off a child as the son of Caesar, she needed only to not get pregnant by a man who looked terribly different from him, like a Nubian.

So we can’t know if the child was Caesar’s through physical appearance. Is there any reason to believe, since it is hardly believable that Caesar and Cleopatra did not sleep together, that he could have a problem fathering her child? Let’s see. Caesar was fifty-two years old at the time Cleopatra got pregnant. This is certainly not too old to be able to sire a child, as long as he was capable of doing so, which is something quite frankly not known. Caesar may be “every woman’s man and every man’s woman,” 4 as one of his detractors (Curio) publicly stated, but we don’t know how and when he might have been these things. He could have slowed down in the years before Cleopatra, or he could have resorted to other methods of sexual pleasure than intercourse. He may have had prostate problems and been unable to perform. Or he may have been a stallion in bed. We have no idea. The only bit of evidence that raises eyebrows is that he was only ever known to have fathered one child, Julia, some thirty-six years earlier, with his first wife. He had no children with his second or third wives, nor were any known to have been issued by way of his countless adulterous affairs. Since he never had a son, it would be odd for a man not to want to advertise the ones he did have (even if they were illegitimate, since this was not such a huge matter for the Romans as it was for the Macedonians); and in nearly four decades, Caesar does not link himself to one male heir.

But when Cleopatra has “his” child, he “allows” her to use the name Caesarion but does not brag about “his” son, nor does he put the child in his will. One would think he would be quite thrilled to admit the child was his. It would seem that his lack of acknowledgment speaks volumes, although some might say he didn’t want to admit he had a son with some foreign queen, especially an Egyptian one. But, since Caesar was known to have numerous affairs and he openly spent time with Cleopatra and had her stay in Rome with the child, I hardly think that argument is very strong.

Let’s assume Julius Caesar knew full well or at least had a pretty good clue that he couldn’t get a woman pregnant or at least suspected he couldn’t. I don’t know of any man who was told that he absolutely could not father a child and yet is not willing to believe he actually could, even if it was just once in fifty years. This might well be the best argument for why Caesar could possibly have known a child might not be his but might not openly deny it. He would quietly allow Cleopatra to make her claims as to paternity. Impregnating the young Cleopatra makes him look virile, and that in itself is quite an ego boost. He can brag, at least privately, about how he got her pregnant and how he finally has a son. He can also tell friends that he has to keep it to a dull roar due to politics. Not claiming the child in his will, though, is rather a big clue to the likelihood of the child not being his.

“Fathering a son” with Cleopatra has some benefits for Caesar. Along with male bragging rights, having a son born to Cleopatra means that the child will one day become pharaoh. This also means Cleopatra doesn’t have to marry and start another contentious and possibly lethal Ptolemaic battle for the throne. Having a son as coruler with Cleopatra, especially a very young son, allows a better possibility for peace in Egypt and a controlled handling of the country by Cleopatra for a long time. Having a son in name as pharaoh in Egypt connects Egypt to Rome in a familial way, ensuring Eg;ypt and its rulers continue to support Rome.

What of Cleopatra? What is in it for her? Well, certainly the protection of Rome would be secured, at least in a relative way. Also, as I stated earlier, Cleopatra wouldn’t have to find a husband if she didn’t want one (especially another Ptolemy with whom a “till death do us part” marriage usually came sooner than later). She would follow in her father’s footsteps in a strong relationship with Rome, and what better way than to be a consort to Caesar and the mother of his child as well as being the best pharaoh for the job? Cleopatra proved over and over she did not leave things to chance, and she always had a Plan B and C just in case the first one wasn’t panning out. She stacked the deck in her favor as often as she could.

If you were Cleopatra and you had only a short time with a man who had fathered a child only once in his four decades of sexual escapades, what would you do? What would you do if you wanted to ensure you were pregnant before he left, that you would have a baby by him, if you had no way of knowing whether or not he was sterile? The only way to make sure you became pregnant would be to add another male to the mix, one who was virile and close enough in looks to either Caesar or oneself for any potential child to not have his or her paternity in question.

There is clearly a top candidate a female Ptolemy would choose under those circumstances: one’s brother. Ptolemy XIII must have been a hormone-infested young teen at the time, so what better man or boy to seduce than him? Her brother was available at the palace, and incest wasn’t looked down upon by the Ptolemies, so even if Cleopatra changed her mind on naming Caesar as father, the real father was more than acceptable. Ptolemy XIII would lool like Cleopatra and was available while Caesar was off being general. In fact, her brother was likely stir crazy from staying in the palace and, in spite of the enmity between Cleopatra and the older of her two brothers, I am sure Cleopatra could easily find a way to entice him into a little sex. And it didn’t hurt that Ptolemy XIII then disappeared in the river during the final battle of the Alexandrian War! He certainly couldn’t claim paternity from beyond the grave.

The elder Ptolemy brother decided to join his troops when Caesar’s backups from Asia (under the leadership of Mithraidates, along with reinforcements from the Nabataeans and the Jews) arrived in Eg;ypt. They came up behind Ptolemy’s forces on the Nile, and he supposedly drowned. His body was never found, just his armor, which for some reason didn’t have his body in it, so excuse me for being a bit skeptical. One wonders if Cleopatra had any hand in his death. She eliminated a rival and, possibly, the real father of her son, which left a much more manageable situation for the future.

Since Cleopatra never liked leaving anything to chance if she had any method of controlling or influencing the turn of events, I would bet she added a male Ptolemy to the trysting to be very sure she was pregnant before Caesar went on his way. We will see again and again that she could have simply let events play out, but she did not leave anything to the Fates; she took specific action in an attempt to determine the desired outcome. The Ptolemies married their own siblings to limit any outside influences and incursions on their families; they killed anyone, even their own, if they were a threat. Cleopatra tossed her coregent brother aside as soon as she reached the throne. She ruled with him temporarily again only because Caesar had to appease the Alexandrians. Then by luck or “made” luck, Ptolemy XIII was out of the picture again when he “drowned” in the Nile. Caesar immediately appointed the younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, to rule with Cleopatra (as her second husband). Ptolemy XIV, what a surprise, died (of disease—or was he poisoned?) just two years later, while “she was away on business.” This left Cleopatra and Caesarion as corulers until the end.