Antony and Cleopatra. Colleen McCullough
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she knew about Antony’s merry little winter in Alexandria; Barbatius had tattled far and wide. But that was a man’s thing, and none of her business. Did he philander with a Roman woman of high estate, it would be different. Her claws would be out in a moment. But when a man was away for months, sometimes years on end, no sensible wife stuck in Rome would think the worse of him for getting rid of his dirty water. And darling Antonius had a penchant for queens, princesses, women of the high foreign nobility. To bed one of them made him feel as much like a king as any republican Roman could tolerate. Having met Cleopatra when she stayed in Rome before Caesar’s assassination, Fulvia understood that it was her title and her power that had attracted Antony. Physically she was far from the lusty, strapping women he preferred. Also, she was enormously wealthy, and Fulvia knew her husband; he would have been after her money.
So when Atticus’s steward appeared to tell her that Marcus Antonius was in the atrium, Fulvia gave a shudder to settle her draperies and flew down the long, austere corridor from her rooms to where Antony was waiting.
‘Antonius! Oh, meum mel, how wonderful to see you!’ she cried from the doorway.
He had been studying a magnificent painting of Achilles sulking by his ships, and turned at the sound of her voice.
After that, Fulvia didn’t know what exactly happened, his movements were so fast. What she felt was a crashing slap to the side of her face that knocked her sprawling. Then he was looming over her, his fingers locked in her hair, and dragging her to her feet. The open-handed blows rained on her face, no less huge and hurtful than another man’s fist; teeth loosened, her nose broke.
‘You stupid cunnus!’ he roared, still striking her. ‘You stupid, stupid cunnus! Who do you think you are, Gaius Caesar?’
Blood was gushing from her mouth and nose, and she, who had met every challenge of an eventful life with fierce fire, was helpless, shattered. Someone was screaming, and it must have been her, for servants came running from all directions, took one look, and fled.
‘Idiot! Strumpet! What do you mean, going to war against Octavianus in my name? Frittering away what money I had left in Rome, Bononia, Mutina? Buying legions for the likes of Plancus to lose? Living in a war camp? Who do you think you are, to assume that men like Pollio would take orders from you? A woman? Bullying and bluffing my brother in my name? He’s a moron! He always was a moron! If I needed any further proof of that, his throwing in with a woman is it! You’re beneath contempt!’
Spitting with rage, he pushed her roughly to the floor; still screaming, she scrambled away like a crippled beast, tears flowing now faster than the blood.
‘Antonius, Antonius! I thought to please you! Manius said it would please you!’ she cried thickly. ‘I was continuing your fight in Italia while you were busy with the East! Manius said!’
It came out in mumbled snatches; hearing ‘Manius’, suddenly his temper died. Her Greek freedman, a serpent. In truth, he hadn’t known until he saw her how angry he was, how the fury had festered in him throughout his voyage from Ephesus. Perhaps had he done as he had originally planned and sailed straight from Antioch to Athens, he might not have been so enraged.
More men than Barbatius were talking in Ephesus, and not all about his winter with Cleopatra. Some joked that, in his family, he wore the dresses while Fulvia wore the armor. Others sniggered that at least one Antonian had waged a war, even if a female. He had had to pretend he didn’t overhear any of these remarks, but his temper built. Learning the full story from Plancus had not helped, nor the grief that had consumed him until he found out that Lucius was safe and well. Their brother, Gaius, had been murdered in Macedonia, and only the execution of his killer had assuaged the pain. He, their big brother, loved them.
Love for Fulvia, he thought, looking down at her scornfully, was gone forever. Stupid, stupid cunnus! Wearing the armor and publicly emasculating him.
‘I want you gone from this house by tomorrow,’ he said, her right wrist in his hold, dragging her into a sitting position under Achilles. ‘Let Atticus keep his charity for the deserving. I’ll be writing to him today to tell him that, and he can’t afford to offend me, no matter how much money he has. You’re a disgrace as a wife and a woman, Fulvia! I want nothing more to do with you. I will send you notice of divorce immediately.’
‘But,’ she said, sobbing, ‘I fled without money or property, Marcus! I need money to live!’
‘Apply to your bankers. You’re a rich woman and sui iuris.’ He began yelling for the servants. ‘Clean her up and then kick her out!’ he said to the steward, who was almost fainting in fear. He turned on his heel and was gone.
Fulvia sat against the wall for a long time, hardly conscious of the terrified girls who bathed her face, tried to staunch the bleeding and the tears. Once she had laughed at hearing of this or that woman and her broken heart, believing that no heart could break. Now she knew differently. Marcus Antonius had broken her heart beyond mending.
Word flew around Athens of how Antony had treated his wife, but few who heard had much sympathy for Fulvia, who had done the unforgivable: usurped men’s prerogatives. The tales of her exploits in the Forum when married to Publius Clodius came out for an airing, together with the scenes she created outside the Senate House doors, and her possible collaboration with Clodius when he had profaned the rites of the Bona Dea.
Not that Antony cared what Athens said. He, a Roman man, knew that the city’s Roman men would think no worse of him.
Besides, he was busy writing letters, an arduous task. His first was curt and short, to Titus Pomponius Atticus, informing him that Imperator Marcus Antonius, Triumvir, would thank him if he kept his nose out of Marcus Antonius’s affairs, and have nothing to do with Fulvia. His second was to Fulvia, informing her that she was hereby divorced for unwomanly conduct, and that she was forbidden to see her two sons by him. His third was to Gnaeus Asinius Pollio, asking him what on earth was going on in Italia, and would he kindly keep his legions ready to march south in case he, Marcus Antonius, was denied entry to the country by the Octavianus-loving populace of Brundisium? His fourth was to the ethnarch of Athens, thanking that worthy for his city’s kindness and loyalty to (implied) the right Romans; therefore it pleased Imperator Marcus Antonius, Triumvir, to gift Athens with the island of Aegina and some other minor isles associated with it. That ought to make the Athenians happy, he thought.
He might have written more letters, were it not for the arrival of Tiberius Claudius Nero, who paid him a formal call the moment he had installed his wife and toddling son in good lodgings nearby.
‘Faugh!’ Nero exclaimed, nostrils flaring. ‘Sextus Pompeius is a barbarian! Though what else could one expect from a member of an upstart clan from Picenum? You can have no idea what kind of headquarters he keeps – rats, mice, rotting garbage. I didn’t dare expose my family to the filth and disease, though they weren’t the worst Pompeius had to offer. We hadn’t unpacked our belongings before some of his dandified “admiral” freedmen were sniffing around my wife – I had to chop a slice out of some low fellow’s arm! And would you believe it, Pompeius actually sided with the cur? I told him what I thought, then I put Livia Drusilla and my son on the next ship for Athens.’
Antony listened to this with dreamy memories in his head of how Caesar felt about Nero – ‘inepte’ was the kindest word Caesar could find to describe him. Gaining more from what Nero didn’t say, Antony decided that Nero had arrived at Sextus Pompeius’s lair, strutted around it like a cockerel, carped and criticized, and finally made himself so intolerable that Sextus had thrown him out. A more insufferable snob than Nero would be hard to find, and the Pompeii were very sensitive about their Picentine origins.
‘So what do you intend to do now, Nero?’ he asked.
‘Live within my means, which are not limitless,’ Nero said stiffly, his dark, saturnine countenance growing even prouder.
‘And your wife?’ Antony asked slyly.
‘Livia Drusilla is a good wife. She does as she’s told, which is more than you