balance me on one hand, can you imagine that? And throw the discus half a furlong!’
‘I am not surprised,’ she said dryly.
‘Tomorrow we’re going to the hippodrome. I’m going to ride with him in his chariot – four horses abreast, the hardest!’
‘Chariot racing is not a seemly pastime.’
‘I know, but it’s such fun!’
And what did one say to that?
Her son had grown in leaps and bounds during the past two months; Sosigenes had been right. The company of men had freed him from that touch of preciousness she hadn’t noticed until he lost it. Now he swaggered about the palace trying to roar like Antony, gave very funny imitations of the Accountant in his cups, and looked forward to every day with a sparkle and a zest he had never before displayed. And he was strong, lithe, naturally good at warlike sports – cast a spear with deadly accuracy, shot arrows straight into the center of the target, used his gladius with the verve of a veteran legionary. Like his father, he could ride a horse bareback at full gallop with his hands behind his back.
For herself, Cleopatra wondered how much longer she could tolerate Antony in revel mode; she was tired all the time, had bouts of nausea, and couldn’t be far from a chamber pot. All signs of pregnancy, albeit too early to be wearisome or noticeable. If Antony didn’t cease his gyrations soon, she would have to tell him that he must gyrate on his own. Strong she might be for a small woman, but pregnancy took a toll.
Her dilemma solved itself early in February when the King of the Parthians invaded Syria.
Orodes was an old man, long past war in person, and the intrigues natural to a succession of such magnitude taxed him. One of his ways of dealing with ambitious sons and factions was to find a war for the most aggressive among them, and what better war than against the Romans in Syria? The strongest of his sons was Pacorus, therefore to Pacorus must this war be given. And for once King Orodes had a loaded set of dice to throw; with Pacorus came Quintus Labienus who gave himself the nickname of Parthicus. He was the son of Caesar’s greatest marshal, Titus Labienus, and had chosen to flee to the court of Orodes rather than yield to his father’s conqueror. Internal strife at Seleuceia-on-Tigris had also brought forth a difference of opinion as to how the Romans could be defeated. In previous clashes, including the one that had resulted in the annihilation of Marcus Crassus’s army at Carrhae, the Parthians had relied heavily upon the horse archer, an unarmored peasant trained to retreat at the gallop and let fly a murderous rain of arrows over his horse’s rump as he twisted backward – the famous ‘Parthian shot’. When Crassus fell at Carrhae, the General in command of the Parthian army had been an effeminate, painted prince named the Surenas, who devised a way to ensure that his horse archers did not run out of arrows: he loaded trains of camels with spare arrows and got them to his men. Unfortunately his success was so marked that King Orodes suspected the Surenas would aim next for the throne, and had him executed.
Since that day over ten years in the past, a controversy had raged as to whether it had been the horse archers who won Carrhae, or the cataphracts. Men clad in chain mail from head to foot, the cataphracts bestrode big horses also clad in chain mail. The source of the argument was social; horse archers were peasants, whereas cataphracts were noblemen.
So when Pacorus and Labienus led their army into Syria at the beginning of February in the year of the consulship of Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus and Gnaeus Asinius Pollio, its Parthian content consisted solely of cataphracts. The nobles had won the struggle.
Pacorus and Labienus crossed the Euphrates River at Zeugma and there separated. While Labienus and his mercenaries drove west across the Amanus into Cilicia Pedia, Pacorus and the cataphracts turned south for Syria. They swept all before them on both fronts, though Cleopatra’s agents in the north of Syria concentrated on Pacorus, not Labienus. Word flew to Alexandria.
The moment Antony heard, he was gone. No fond farewells, no protestations of love.
‘Does he know?’ asked Tach’a of Cleopatra.
No need for clarification; Cleopatra knew what she meant. ‘No. I didn’t have a chance – all he did was bellow for his armor and apply the goad to men like Dellius.’ She sighed. ‘His ships are to sail to Berytus, but he wasn’t sure enough of the winds to risk a sea voyage. He hopes to reach Antioch ahead of his fleet.’
‘What doesn’t Antonius know?’ Caesarion demanded, most put out at the sudden departure of his hero.
‘That in Sextilis you’ll have a baby brother or sister.’
The child’s face lit up, he leaped about joyfully. ‘A brother or a sister! Mama, Mama, that’s terrific!’
‘Well, at least that’s taken his mind off Antonius,’ said Iras to Charmian.
‘It won’t take her mind off Antonius,’ Charmian answered.
Antony rode for Antioch at a grueling pace, sending for this or that local potentate in southern Syria as he passed through, at times issuing his orders to them from horseback.
Alarming to find out from Herod that among the Jews opinion was divided; a large group of Judaic dissenters actually seemed avid to be ruled by the Parthians. The leader of the pro-Parthian party was the Hasmonaean Prince Antigonus, Hyrcanus’s nephew but no lover of Hyrcanus or the Romans. Herod neglected to inform Mark Antony that Antigonus was already dickering with Parthian envoys for the things he coveted – the Jewish throne and the high priesthood. As Herod was not very interested in these furtive dealings or the Sanhedrin mood, Antony continued northward ignorant of how serious the Jewish situation was. For once Herod had been caught napping, too busy trying to cut his brother Phasael out for the hand of the Princess Mariamne to notice anything else.
Tyre was impossible to take except from within. Its stinking isthmus, fouled by hills of rotting shellfish carcasses, gave the center of the purple-dye industry the protection due an island, and no one would betray it from within; no Tyrian wanted to have to send purple dye to the King of the Parthians for a price fixed by the King of the Parthians.
In Antioch, Antony found Lucius Decidius Saxa striding up and down nervously, the watchtowers atop the massive city walls lined with men straining to see into the north; Pacorus would follow the Orontes River, and he wasn’t far away. Saxa’s brother had come from Ephesus to join him, and refugees were streaming in. Ejected from the Amanus, the brigand king Tarcondimotus told Antony that Labienus was doing brilliantly. By now he was supposed to have reached Tarsus and Cappadocia. Antiochus of Commagene, ruler of a client-kingdom that bordered the Amanus ranges on the north, was wavering in his Roman allegiance, said Tarcondimotus. Liking the man, Antony listened; a brigand, maybe, but clever and capable.
After inspecting Saxa’s two legions, Antony relaxed a little. Once Gaius Cassius’s men, these legionaries were fit and very experienced in combat.
More upsetting by far was the news from Italia. His brother Lucius was immured inside Perusia and under siege, while Pollio had retreated to the swamps at the mouth of the Padus River! It made no sense … Pollio and Ventidius vastly outnumbered Octavian! Why weren’t they helping Lucius? Antony asked himself, entirely forgetting that he hadn’t answered their pleas for guidance – was Lucius’s war a part of Antony’s policy, or was it not?
Well, no matter how grave the situation in the East was, Italia was more important. Antony sailed for Ephesus, intending to go on to Athens as soon as possible. He had to find out more.
* * *
The
