‘But Philopator built only two ships, and the ocean-going one rotted a hundred years ago. If I am to awe Antonius, I must arrive in Tarsus in a kind of state that no Roman has ever witnessed, not even Caesar.’
To Quintus Dellius, Alexandria was the most wondrous city in the world. The days when Caesar had almost destroyed it were seven years in the past, and Cleopatra had raised it in greater glory than ever. All the mansions down Royal Avenue had been restored, the Hill of Pan towered lushly green over the flat city, the hallowed precinct of Serapis had been rebuilt in the Corinthian mode, and where once siege towers had groaned and lumbered up and down Canopic Avenue, stunning temples and public institutions gave the lie to plague and famine. Indeed, thought Dellius, gazing at Alexandria from the top of Pan’s hill, for once in his life great Caesar had exaggerated the degree of destruction he had wrought.
As yet he hadn’t seen the Queen, who was, a lordly man named Apollodorus had informed him loftily, on a visit to the Delta to see her paper manufactories. So he had been shown his quarters – very sumptuous they were, too – and left largely to his own devices. To Dellius, that didn’t mean simple sightseeing; with him he took a scribe, who jotted down notes using a broad stylus on wax tablets.
At the Sema, Dellius chuckled with glee. ‘Write, Lasthenes! “The tomb of Alexander the Great, plus thirty-odd Ptolemies in a precinct dry-paved with collector’s-quality marble in blue with dark green swirls … Twenty-eight gold statues, man-sized … An Apollo by Praxiteles, painted marble … Four painted marble works by some unidentified master, man-sized … A painting by Zeuxis of Alexander the Great at Issus … A painting of Ptolemy Soter by Nicias …” Cease writing. The rest are not so fine.’
At the Serapeum, Dellius whinnied with delight. ‘Write, Lasthenes! “A statue of Serapis approximately thirty feet tall, by Bryaxis and painted by Nicias … An ivory group of the nine Muses by Phidias … Forty-two gold statues, man-sized …”’ He paused to scrape a gold Aphrodite, grimaced. ‘“Some, if not all, skinned rather than – ah – solid … A charioteer and horses in bronze by Myron …” Cease writing! No, simply add, “et cetera, et cetera …” There are too many more mediocre works to catalogue.’
In the agora, Dellius paused before an enormous sculpture of four rearing horses drawing a racing chariot whose driver was a woman – and what a woman! ‘Write, Lasthenes! “Quadriga in bronze purported to be of a female charioteer named Bilistiche …” Cease! There’s nothing else here but modern stuff, excellent of its kind but having no appeal for collectors. Oh, Lasthenes, on!’
And so it went as he cruised through the city, his scribe leaving rolls of wax behind like a moth its droppings. Splendid, splendid! Egypt is rich beyond telling, if what I see in Alexandria is anything to go by. But how do I persuade Marcus Antonius that we’ll get more from selling them as works of art than from melting them down? Think of the tomb of Alexander the Great! he mused, a single block of rock crystal almost as clear as water; how fine it would look inside the Temple of Diana in Rome! What a funny little fellow Alexander was! Hands and feet no bigger than a child’s, and what looked like yellow wool atop his head. A wax figure, surely, not the real thing – but you would think that, as he’s a god, they would have made the effigy at least as big as Antonius! There must be enough paving in the Sema to cover the floor of a magnate’s domus in Rome – a hundred talents’ worth, maybe more. The ivory by Phidias – a thousand talents, easily.
The Royal Enclosure was such a maze of palaces that he gave up trying to distinguish one from another, and the gardens seemed to go on forever. Exquisite little coves pocked the shore beyond the harbor, and in the far distance the white marble causeway of the Heptastadion linked Pharos Isle to the mainland. And oh, the lighthouse! The tallest building in the world, taller by far than the Colossus at Rhodes had been. I thought Rome was lovely, burbled Dellius to himself; then I saw Pergamum and deemed it lovelier; but now that I have seen Alexandria, I am stunned, just stunned. Antonius was here about twenty years ago, but I’ve never heard him speak of the place. Too busy womanising to remember it, I suppose.
The summons to see Queen Cleopatra came the next day, which was just as well; he had concluded his assessment of the city’s value, and Lasthenes had written it out on good paper, two copies.
The first thing he was conscious of was the perfumed air, thick with heady incenses of a kind he had never smelled before; then his visual apparatus took over from his olfactory, and he gaped at walls of gold, a floor of gold, statues of gold, chairs and tables of gold. A second glance informed him that the gold was a tissue-thin overlay, but the room blazed like the sun. Two walls were covered in paintings of peculiar two-dimensional people and plants, rich in colors of every description. Except Tyrian purple. Of that, not a trace.
‘All hail the two Pharaohs, Lords of the Two Ladies Upper and Lower Egypt, Lords of the Sedge and Bee, Children of Amun-Ra, Isis and Ptah!’ roared the lord high chamberlain, drumming his golden staff on the floor, a dull sound that had Dellius revising his opinion about thin tissue. The floor sounded solid.
They sat on two elaborate thrones, the woman on top of the golden dais and the boy one step beneath her. Each was clad in a strange raiment made of finely pleated white linen, and each wore a huge headdress of red enamel around a tubular cone of white enamel. About their necks were wide collars of magnificent jewels set in gold, on their arms bracelets, around their waists broad girdles of gems, on their feet golden sandals. Their faces were thick with paint, hers white, the boy’s a rusty red, and their eyes were so hedged in by black lines and colored shapes that they slid, sinister as fanged fish, as no human eyes were surely intended to.
‘Quintus Dellius,’ said the Queen (Dellius had no idea what the epithet ‘Pharaoh’ meant), ‘we bid you welcome to Egypt.’
‘I come as Imperator Marcus Antonius’s official ambassador,’ said Dellius, getting into the swing of things, ‘with greetings and salutations to the twin thrones of Egypt.’
‘How impressive,’ said the Queen, eyes sliding eerily.
‘Is that all?’ asked the boy, whose eyes sparkled more.
‘Er – unfortunately not, Your Majesty. The Triumvir Marcus Antonius requires your presence in Tarsus to answer charges.’
‘Charges?’ asked the boy.
‘It is alleged that Egypt aided Gaius Cassius, thereby breaking its status of Friend and Ally of the Roman People.’
‘And that is a charge?’ Cleopatra asked.
‘A very serious one, Your Majesty.’
‘Then we will go to Tarsus to answer it in person. You may leave our presence, Quintus Dellius. When we are ready to set out, you will be notified.’
And that was that! No dinner invitations, no reception to introduce him to the court – there must surely be a court! No Eastern monarch could function without several hundred sycophants to tell him (or her) how wonderful he (or she) was. But here was Apollodorus firmly ushering him from the room, apparently to be left to his own devices!
‘Pharaoh will sail to Tarsus,’ Apollodorus said, ‘therefore you have two choices, Quintus Dellius. You may send your people home overland and travel with them, or you may send your people home overland and sail aboard one of the royal ships.’
Ah! thought Dellius. Someone warned them I was coming. There is a spy in Tarsus. This audience was a sham designed to put me – and Antonius – in our places.
‘I will sail,’ he said haughtily.
‘A wise decision.’ Apollodorus bowed and walked away, leaving Dellius to storm off at a hasty walk to cool his temper, sorely tried. How dared they? The audience had given him no opportunity to gauge the Queen’s feminine charms or even discover for himself if the boy was really Caesar’s son. They were a pair of painted dolls, stranger than the wooden thing his daughter dragged about the house as if it were human.
The sun was hot; perhaps, thought Dellius, it would do me good to paddle in the wavelets of that delicious cove outside my palace.