ET TU Part Four Gemma Nili

 

I tell you the Roman historian Plutarch always told a good story. His tale of the death of Pompey the Great is a perfect example. According to Plutarch, after losing at Pharsalus, Pompey sought refuge in Egypt, seeking out the son of an old debtor of his,  fourteen year old Theos Philopator, Pharaoh of Egypt, also known as Ptolemy 13. Interesting number, don't you think? 

You see, Ptolemy 13 was in Pelusium (above), the silt plagued port and fortress at the eastern edge of the Nile delta, because he was avoiding his two sisters, both of whom were trying to kill him. It was a great confused mess, and a very bad time to arrive in Egypt seeking help. But then Pompey's timing had never been very good.

Pompey's arrival on 29 September, 48 B.C.E., had presented Ptolemy 13's advisors with a bit of a conundrum. If they helped Pompey they would anger Julius Caesar, who had just defeated Pompey's army at Pharsalus. It they sent Pompey packing and he later won his civil war with Caesar, Pompey would make sure bad things happened to Ptolemy 13 and his advisers. There was a simple solution to this problem, and I am surprised it never occurred to Pompey. It did occur to Ptolemy 13's (above) advisers.

They sent a boat out to Pompey's ships, which were anchored just outside the harbor of Pelesium.

A Roman centurion named Septimius, who had been sent to Egypt by Pompey to reinstate Ptolemy 12, Ptolemy 13's father. Septimus stood up in the boat and assured his old commander that it was safe to come ashore. Then one of Ptolemy's generals, Achillas  called out that the Pharaoh was very busy but could give Pompey a few minutes of his time, right now, if he would just accompany them ashore at once. 

It smelled fishy, but Pompey really had very little choice. Pompey could see Ptolemy 13 waiting on his litter on the beach. Pompey needed water, and food, and somebody who knew the coastline down to Tunisia, where he had more legions and allies...So the old fool got in the boat.

He never made it to shore alive. According to Plutarch, as the boat passed the breakwater, Pompey was rehearsing his Greek greetings for the Ptolemy 13, when Septimius stabbed him in the back.

They dragged the boat ashore and then dragged Pompey up on the sand and chopped off his head  It was a cold and heartless thing to do, particularly since Pompey's wife was watching from the galley off shore. But it wasn't anything Pompey hadn't done to countless others. 

And that was the death of Pompey the Great, one of the most overrated generals in history, a man whose greatest sin was in believing his own press releases, which he had written.

That was one problem solved, leaving Ptolemy 13's advisers with the original problem, his elder sister and her hired army. She was hovering out in the Sinai desert.  It  looked as if she was about to be easily be crushed by Ptolemy 13's army when, just two days later- 1 October, 48 B.C. - yet another Roman annoyance arrived off shore. 

This time it was Julius Caesar (above), with a single Roman legion. Dutifully, the advisers of Ptolemy 13 sent a boat out to Caesar, carrying the head of Pompey.  But if Ptolemy 13's advisers expected Caesar to thank them for eliminating his enemy and sail off back to Rome, leaving them free to finish off their business without further distraction, they were sadly mistaken. Oh, Caesar did sail off from Pelusium. He just didn't didn't sail for Rome.

A few days later Caesar landed in Alexandria and took over the royal palace.

I honestly don't know if Caesar really cried when he saw Pompey's head. He said he did. But Caesar must have known the instant he looked into those foggy dead eyes that he had won his civil war. There was more fighting to be done, of course. He would have to move on to Tunisia, to finish off Pompey's troops there. But there was no longer any need to rush. 

With Pompey dead the Senate aristocrats had lost their champion and rallying point. Caesar could allow their army in Tunisia to wither on the vine a little, while he took advantage of an opportunity right here in Egypt. Ptolemy's army at Pelusium might be blocking his sister's army from entering Egypt, but Caesar's 5,500 man force in Alexandria was sitting on the Egyptian treasury, the gold used to pay Ptolemy 13's army. 

To paraphrase an American Vietnam War era general, grab them by their ingots and their hearts and minds will follow. Caesar now summed both Ptolemy 13 and both his sisters to Alexandria to settle their civil war. And to be honest with you, I don't think Caesar particularly cared if any of them showed up.

It turned out they all did - Ptolemy 13 and his two sisters, Asinoe 4, and Cleopatra 7. Ptolemy 13 had the easier time getting to the Alexandria, but even Cleo made it, even though she had to first slip around her brother's army and be smuggled into the palace in a rolled up carpet - if you believe Plutarch. But once she was there, Caesar was required to protect her since he had summoned her. And as Caesar was a heterosexual (mostly), he quickly fell under the spell of this extraordinary young woman.

She was 21, and he was 52. He came from a world where women were not allowed to compete with men. The only thing that had kept her head on her shoulders to this point was her brains. A modern Egyptologist described the lady this way, “Cleopatra was a mistress of disguise and costume. She could reinvent herself to suit the occasion, and I think that's a mark of the consummate politician.” 

Was she a great beauty? Plutarch, who was born a half-century after she died, wrote that she was not. But he also consulted every word written about her by people who had known her, and the consensus was that “her presence...was irresistible.... (Her) character...was something bewitching.” Wrote another Roman historian, she was “...brilliant to look upon and to listen to, with the power to subjugate every one, even a love-sated man already past his prime.” By all indications, the love-sated old man succumbed the very first night.

The advisers of Ptolemy 13 saw which way the perfumed wind was blowing, and they did not like it.

They formed a secret alliance with Cleopatra's younger sister, Asinoe 4. She slipped out of Alexandria and hurried to join Ptolemy 13's army at Pelusium. 

But, once there she started calling herself Pharaoh, and when the commander of the Army, General Achillas, the man who had helped trick Pompey to his death, protested her use of the title, she had him killed. Well, turn about is fair play, isn't it? The army did not approve of the lady's ego trip, and offered her in trade for Ptolemy 13. For some reason Caesar accepted the deal, probably because Ptolemy 13 swore he would surrender his army to Caesar. But once back with his army, Ptolemy 13 and his advisers chose to lay siege to Caesar in Alexandria in December of 48 B.C.

Caesar was trapped in the city, with just one legion, and that was not enough. But he had already called for reinforcements, and when they arrived in early January of 47 B.C. they smashed Ptolemy 13's army. 

On January 13, the fifteen year old Ptolemy 13 was drowned in the Nile, maybe by accident and maybe by a bribed Egyptian. But however the boy died, Cleopatra 7 was now the Pharaoh in Egypt. Caesar had Asinoe 4 placed under arrest, probably to protect her from Cleopatra – the lady had an understandably heightened sense of self preservation.

Just 8 months after Cleopatra 7 first rolled out of a carpet at the feet of Julius Caesar, on 23 June, 47 BC, she gave birth to a son. It was observed that as the boy, who Cleo 7 named Caesarian, grew, he greatly resembled Caesar. He was one of two males who may have been Caesar's sons. The other was the child of Caesar's widowed girlfriend, Servilla. That boy, whom Caesar never officially adopted, was Marcus Junius Brutus.  Yea. Him too.

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ET TU Part One Velum surgit

 

I believe the murder was set in motion far from the scene of the crime, in modern day Turkey, in a patch of desert ten miles or so north of the border with Syria. In 53 B.C.E., this emptiness was called Carrhae (above), and in Roman history that name is synonymous with shame. 

It was on the plain at Carrhae that 20,000 Legionaries died (above), and worse, 10,000 more were captured, and even worse, it was here that the aristocrat’s aristocrat, the greedy bloodthirsty Marcus Licinius Crassus, was sacrificed. 

Few who did not depend on Crassus for their financial security had reason to mourn his demise. But within ten years of his death, what was left of the Roman Republic would collapse, and the cause of democracy would be set back two thousand years – and all that occurred because Crassus got what he deserved. I would label all that the horrible unintended consequences of a good thing.

Marcus Licinius Crassus (above), the richest man in Rome, who also saw himself as a hero. He led the right wing at the battle of Coline Gate, which made Sulla dictator of Rome. He had defeated the slave armies of Spartacus, and lined the Appian Way with 6,000 crucified slaves. Then he had turned to running the finances of Sulla' s brutal regime. But now, at 60, he wanted to be a hero again. 

His plan to achieve this was to invade Parthia, an empire centered upon present day Iran. But age had not made Crassus more intellectually flexible or humble in spirit. When offered assistance from the King of Armenia, Crassus chose to keep all the possible plunder for himself.

So, in the spring of 53 B.C., at the head of seven veteran legions and 8,000 cavalry commanded by his son, Publius, Crassus crossed the Euphrates river at Zeugma, and almost immediately started making mistakes. 

He hired a guide who led him deep into a treeless desert near Carrhea (above), and then vanished. And once the legions were ankle deep in sand and desperately short of water, only then did the Parthian army appear - 10,000 cavalry armed with powerful bows.

Arrows showered down upon the massed legions, wounding men and sapping moral. The Roman tactical response was to form the infantry into turtles (testudos) (above), closing ranks tightly, with the center ranks marching beneath their shields, and the soldiers on the edges presenting the enemy with a moving wall. 

But so strong were the Parthian bows that some arrows even penetrated the turtle's shell. It went on for hours. The turtles could only march in a straight line, and not very quickly under a baking desert sun. Eventually, reasoned Crassus, the Parthian bowmen would run out of arrows. But then he spotted large camel trains approaching, each dromedary carrying a fresh supply of arrows.

In desperation Publius's cavalry charged the camels, but the Parthian's proved adept at shooting while retreating - the famous Parthian shot (above), the sting in the scorpion's tail. 

Publius was killed and his cavalry scattered. The Parthians closed in again on the turtles and the arrows continued to shower down,  as did the merciless heat. Eventually Crassus was forced to retreat into the village of Carrhea.  After a night without water his officers forced Crassus to parlay with the Parthian commander. The meeting was a disaster. 

The deaf Crassus perceived an insult in some Parthian translation, and moved to remount his horse. A Parthian officer grabbed the horses' bridle. A proud Roman officer pulled his gladius to defend his commander's honor, and the Parthian generals slaughtered the Roman officers, including Marcus Licinius Crassus. After that, the Parthians fell upon the leaderless legions, and effectively wiped them out.

The legend is that after the slaughter, the Parthians poured molten gold into the severed head of the greedy Crassus. It sounds like a terrible waste of a precious metal, but then the war had been a terrible waste of seven irreplaceable Roman legions. But the two men in all the world who understood intuitively what a disaster Crassus' death really was for Rome, were his two greatest competitors.

The sardonic Sulla had nicknamed Gnaeus Pompeius, as Pompey the Great (above). But Sulla had meant it as a joke - whatever else he was, Sulla was a ruthless judge of character. Sent by Sulla to secure the Roman grain supplies in Sicily, the young Pompey had earned another nickname, 'the adolescent butcher'. 

When the citizens of one small Sicilian village argued his attack upon them was illegal, Pompey responded bluntly, “Stop quoting laws. We carry weapons!” Returning home, Pompey demanded a triumphal parade, usually reserved for military victories. After Sulla's death, the Senate dispatched Pompey to crush a rebellious general. Pompey bribed one of the rebel officers to kill the general, and then eliminated the traitor. His justification was typically blunt. “A dead man cannot bite”. And he claimed another triumph. Sent to crush pirates who were raiding Roman grain fleets, Pompey bought them off, and again, claimed a triumph - Pompey Maximus, indeed.

As the two richest and most ambitious men in Rome, Pompey and Crassus had initially cooperated to strengthen the tribuni plebis.

This was not out of some faith in the Senate, but to use the tribunes as a buffer between them. For four hundred years these 'Tribunes of the Plebs' had been a counter-balance to the aristocrats in the Senate. Elected by the whole male population, tribunes could not make laws, but they could veto any law passed by the Senate (above).  Sulla had reduced the tribunes to a ceremonial post. But Pompey and Crassus, increasingly driven apart by suspicion, paranoia and envy, used the tribunes to prevent their opponent from enacting policies they did not like. And one of the men supported by Crassus for tribune of the people had been Gaius Julius Caesar.

Sulla had taken one look at the smart, ambitious young Caesar (above), and marked him down for elimination. Julius avoided Sulla's assassins by joining the army. Once Sulla died, Julius returned to Rome, where Crassus backed his election as a Tribune and then sent him to Spain. While there Caesar had defeated two small tribes. This earned him the right to a triumph. Instead, Caesar asked Crassus for help, meaning money, to run for Tribune of the people.

Romans were so afraid of someone wanting to rule over them as a  king, that the Tribune term of office was just one year long, and there were two equal Tribunes  elected each year. Each had the power of veto over any action by the other or the Senate. This was a system designed to ensure deadlock.  As a result of the election in  60 B.C., Caesar (Crassus' man) was elected. 

But the other consul elected that year, Marcus Calpurnius Bilbus , was Pompey's man, meaning every law Crassus backed, Bibulus vetoed, and every law Pompey pushed, Caesar vetoed. And it was Caesar’s political genius that he saw the way to use this deadlock to increase his own power.

In 59 B.C., Pompey pushed for a land reform act that would give farms to veterans of his legions . Bibulus tried to veto the bill, but thugs hired by Caesar dragged Bilbulus out of the forum, threatened him and dumped a dung bucket on his head. The shaken man withdrew from public life.  Then quickly, Caesar moved to grant Pompey's veteran's equal lands. And that quickly power in Rome was changed, from a deadlocked confrontation between two men, into a more balanced government ruled by three - The First Triumvirate. As a reward for bringing peace between Crassus and Pompey, Caesar was appointed Governor of Trans-alpine Gaul, what today is France, for ten years.

Thus Caesar went to seek his future in conquering and plundering Gaul with four legions. Pompey, who left his legions in Spain,  stayed in Rome to plunder the Republic. And the financier Crassus had turned eastward, to conquer and plunder Parthia with seven legions. 

But in 53 B.C.E. Crassus (above) had gotten himself killed, and the Roman Republic, was abruptly reduced to a direct confrontation between two men. It was a contest which must result in the death of one of them, and the Republic.

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ET TU Part Four Gemma Nili

 

I tell you the Roman historian Plutarch always told a good story. His tale of the death of Pompey the Great is a perfect example. According to Plutarch, after losing at Pharsalus, Pompey sought refuge in Egypt, seeking out the son of an old debtor of his,  fourteen year old Theos Philopator, Pharaoh of Egypt, also known as Ptolemy 13. Interesting number, don't you think? 

You see, Ptolemy 13 was in Pelusium (above), the silt plagued port and fortress at the eastern edge of the Nile delta, because he was avoiding his two sisters, both of whom were trying to kill him. It was a great confused mess, and a very bad time to arrive in Egypt seeking help. But then Pompey's timing had never been very good.

Pompey's arrival on 29 September, 48 B.C.E., had presented Ptolemy 13's advisors with a bit of a conundrum. If they helped Pompey they would anger Julius Caesar, who had just defeated Pompey's army at Pharsalus. It they sent Pompey packing and he later won his civil war with Caesar, Pompey would make sure bad things happened to Ptolemy 13 and his advisers. There was a simple solution to this problem, and I am surprised it never occurred to Pompey. It did occur to Ptolemy 13's (above) advisers.

They sent a boat out to Pompey's ships, which were anchored just outside the harbor of Pelesium.

A Roman centurion named Septimius, who had been sent to Egypt by Pompey to reinstate Ptolemy 12, Ptolemy 13's father. Septimus stood up in the boat and assured his old commander that it was safe to come ashore. Then one of Ptolemy's generals, Achillas  called out that the Pharaoh was very busy but could give Pompey a few minutes of his time, right now, if he would just accompany them ashore at once. 

It smelled fishy, but Pompey really had very little choice. Pompey could see Ptolemy 13 waiting on his litter on the beach. Pompey needed water, and food, and somebody who knew the coastline down to Tunisia, where he had more legions and allies...So the old fool got in the boat.

He never made it to shore alive. According to Plutarch, as the boat passed the breakwater, Pompey was rehearsing his Greek greetings for the Ptolemy 13, when Septimius stabbed him in the back.

They dragged the boat ashore and then dragged Pompey up on the sand and chopped off his head  It was a cold and heartless thing to do, particularly since Pompey's wife was watching from the galley off shore. But it wasn't anything Pompey hadn't done to countless others. 

And that was the death of Pompey the Great, one of the most overrated generals in history, a man whose greatest sin was in believing his own press releases, which he had written.

That was one problem solved, leaving Ptolemy 13's advisers with the original problem, his elder sister and her hired army. She was hovering out in the Sinai desert.  It  looked as if she was about to be easily be crushed by Ptolemy 13's army when, just two days later- 1 October, 48 B.C. - yet another Roman annoyance arrived off shore. 

This time it was Julius Caesar (above), with a single Roman legion. Dutifully, the advisers of Ptolemy 13 sent a boat out to Caesar, carrying the head of Pompey.  But if Ptolemy 13's advisers expected Caesar to thank them for eliminating his enemy and sail off back to Rome, leaving them free to finish off their business without further distraction, they were sadly mistaken. Oh, Caesar did sail off from Pelusium. He just didn't didn't sail for Rome.

A few days later Caesar landed in Alexandria and took over the royal palace.

I honestly don't know if Caesar really cried when he saw Pompey's head. He said he did. But Caesar must have known the instant he looked into those foggy dead eyes that he had won his civil war. There was more fighting to be done, of course. He would have to move on to Tunisia, to finish off Pompey's troops there. But there was no longer any need to rush. 

With Pompey dead the Senate aristocrats had lost their champion and rallying point. Caesar could allow their army in Tunisia to wither on the vine a little, while he took advantage of an opportunity right here in Egypt. Ptolemy's army at Pelusium might be blocking his sister's army from entering Egypt, but Caesar's 5,500 man force in Alexandria was sitting on the Egyptian treasury, the gold used to pay Ptolemy 13's army. 

To paraphrase an American Vietnam War era general, grab them by their ingots and their hearts and minds will follow. Caesar now summed both Ptolemy 13 and both his sisters to Alexandria to settle their civil war. And to be honest with you, I don't think Caesar particularly cared if any of them showed up.

It turned out they all did - Ptolemy 13 and his two sisters, Asinoe 4, and Cleopatra 7. Ptolemy 13 had the easier time getting to the Alexandria, but even Cleo made it, even though she had to first slip around her brother's army and be smuggled into the palace in a rolled up carpet - if you believe Plutarch. But once she was there, Caesar was required to protect her since he had summoned her. And as Caesar was a heterosexual (mostly), he quickly fell under the spell of this extraordinary young woman.

She was 21, and he was 52. He came from a world where women were not allowed to compete with men. The only thing that had kept her head on her shoulders to this point was her brains. A modern Egyptologist described the lady this way, “Cleopatra was a mistress of disguise and costume. She could reinvent herself to suit the occasion, and I think that's a mark of the consummate politician.” 

Was she a great beauty? Plutarch, who was born a half-century after she died, wrote that she was not. But he also consulted every word written about her by people who had known her, and the consensus was that “her presence...was irresistible.... (Her) character...was something bewitching.” Wrote another Roman historian, she was “...brilliant to look upon and to listen to, with the power to subjugate every one, even a love-sated man already past his prime.” By all indications, the love-sated old man succumbed the very first night.

The advisers of Ptolemy 13 saw which way the perfumed wind was blowing, and they did not like it.

They formed a secret alliance with Cleopatra's younger sister, Asinoe 4. She slipped out of Alexandria and hurried to join Ptolemy 13's army at Pelusium. 

But, once there she started calling herself Pharaoh, and when the commander of the Army, General Achillas, the man who had helped trick Pompey to his death, protested her use of the title, she had him killed. Well, turn about is fair play, isn't it? The army did not approve of the lady's ego trip, and offered her in trade for Ptolemy 13. For some reason Caesar accepted the deal, probably because Ptolemy 13 swore he would surrender his army to Caesar. But once back with his army, Ptolemy 13 and his advisers chose to lay siege to Caesar in Alexandria in December of 48 B.C.

Caesar was trapped in the city, with just one legion, and that was not enough. But he had already called for reinforcements, and when they arrived in early January of 47 B.C. they smashed Ptolemy 13's army. 

On January 13, the fifteen year old Ptolemy 13 was drowned in the Nile, maybe by accident and maybe by a bribed Egyptian. But however the boy died, Cleopatra 7 was now the Pharaoh in Egypt. Caesar had Asinoe 4 placed under arrest, probably to protect her from Cleopatra – the lady had an understandably heightened sense of self preservation.

Just 8 months after Cleopatra 7 first rolled out of a carpet at the feet of Julius Caesar, on 23 June, 47 BC, she gave birth to a son. It was observed that as the boy, who Cleo 7 named Caesarian, grew, he greatly resembled Caesar. He was one of two males who may have been Caesar's sons. The other was the child of Caesar's widowed girlfriend, Servilla. That boy, whom Caesar never officially adopted, was Marcus Junius Brutus.  Yea. Him too.

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