Cleopatra and Antony by Diana Preston

covering them with their hands to protect their faces.” They soon fled, followed swiftly by the rest of Pompey’s forces, whose positions the cavalry men exposed by their flight. When Caesar’s victorious legionaries reached the enemy camp they found many signs of fatal complacency—tents crowned with shiny green myrtle leaves ready to celebrate an anticipated victory, silver platters laid out for the 62 victory feast. As so often reported in the history of victorious commanders,
    Caesar is said to have eaten the meal prepared for Pompey. The latter fled, discarding his insignia of rank and disguising himself as he went.
    Caesar was determined to draw the conflict to a speedy conclusion. As he had done throughout the civil war, he ordered clemency to be shown to his captured enemies and, as he had done throughout his military career, the immediate close pursuit of those who were retreating—a task that on this occasion he entrusted to Antony. Walking through the bodies on the battlefield that night (Caesar’s estimate was 15,000 Pompeian dead against only 230 of his own men, but later historians put the figures at 6,000 and 1,200 respectively), Caesar is said to have soliloquized in self-justification, “It was all their own doing. Despite all my achievements I, Gaius Caesar, would have been condemned had I not appealed to my army for help.”
    In reality it had been nothing like as simple. Caesar, Crassus and even Pompey had at times felt themselves sufficiently above the traditions of the elders and indeed Rome’s laws to disregard them. Intransigent republicans such as Cato, who was absent from Pharsalus, had resisted any compromises or adaptations to changed circumstances. The strife between the republican and popular parties would not end for some years and even this civil war would continue. The republicans had strong forces still in the east and Africa, and Pompey determined to join them. Stopping only for a tearful reunion with his young wife, Cornelia, he took ship with her and his younger son, Sextus, then in his early teens, for Egypt via Cyprus, accompanied by a small fleet. Some fifty days after Pharsalus, his vessel anchored off the sandbanks and mudflats of the Nile delta.

CHAPTER 7
    The Alexandrian War
    W HEN PTOLEMY LEARNED THE NEXT DAY that his rival had stolen undetected into Alexandria and had spent the night with Caesar, he rushed out into the streets, ripping his royal diadem from his brow and calling on the people to rise against Cleopatra and her Roman paramour. His histrionics had the desired effect on an already restive and indignant population, and mobs swept toward the palace, carrying Ptolemy with them. Only with the greatest difficulty did Caesar’s well-disciplined legionaries hold their nerve, force their way into the crowds, collar the struggling, protesting adolescent and drag him back inside the palace.
    Caesar moved quickly, reminding the mob of the late king’s will, assuring them with his customary eloquence of his good intentions and declaring that Cleopatra and Ptolemy would rule together. He also decreed that, as stipulated in their father’s will, the two should undergo the traditional brother-sister nuptials for form’s sake. As a further sweetener to the Egyptians, Caesar restored Cyprus—annexed ten years earlier by Rome—to the dynasty, decreeing that it should be an independent kingdom under the joint rule of Cleopatra’s younger half sister, Arsinoe, and her eleven-year-old half brother, yet another Ptolemy.
    The rapprochement was marked by a lavish banquet. Lucan bemoaned how “Cleopatra amid great tumult displayed her luxuries, not as yet transferred to the Roman race. The place itself was equal to a Temple, which hardly a more corrupt age could build; and the roofs adorned with fretted ceilings displayed riches, and solid gold concealed the rafters . . . Ivory covers the halls, and backs of Indian tortoises, fastened by the hand, are placed upon the doors,