Duane W. Roller

and she blamed Antonius for everything. She provided an accounting
of her wealth and off ered gift s to Octavia and Livia in the hope that
they would intercede on her behalf. She may also have shown Octavian
some of her letters and memorabilia from Caesar, perhaps an attempt to
enhance her status by stressing her relationship with him, as Octavian
himself had done. And she explicitly told Octavian, “I will not be led in
a triumph,” a rare case where her actual spoken words survive. 83 Despite
her physical state, her rhetorical abilities were unaff ected, and Octavian
was totally seduced, eventually unable to look her in the eye. He promised
that she would survive, but he said nothing about her kingdom.
Yet she soon began to suspect that she was being kept alive only for the
triumph, something that would be a total humiliation, for she would
not have forgotten the fate of her sister Arsinoë and had no intention of
being the second daughter of Ptolemy XII to appear in a Roman triumph.
If she had witnessed her sister in Caesar’s triumph of 46 b.c.—by no
means certain—this would only have hardened her position. When she
learned from a spy that in three days she and the children would be sent
to Rome, she moved quickly.
She asked permission to visit Antonius’s grave and made suitable
libations. Plutarch’s lament by the queen at this point owes more to
tragedy than history and does not appear in any other source. It is not
obvious whether she returned to the palace or whether the following
events occurred at the tomb. 84 She bathed and had an elaborate meal,
including especially fi ne fi gs that a countryman had just brought in a
basket, which Cleopatra’s guards had been encouraged to help themselves
to. Aft er the meal she sent a message to Octavian and locked herself
away with Eiras and Charmion. When Octavian received the message,
in which she requested to be buried with Antonius, he realized what
was happening and quickly sent messengers to the queen, who broke
open the door and found her dead, her body carefully laid out, with
full royal regalia, and Eiras and Charmion near death. Shortly thereaft
er Octavian himself arrived, and although exceedingly angry at the
turn of events, ordered that she be buried in royal fashion in her tomb
next to Antonius. Eiras and Charmion also received proper interment.
A bizarre tale reported by Th eophilos, Antonius’s agent in Corinth, that
Octavia wanted Cleopatra’s body sent to Rome, is highly improbable
and may be an error for Antonius’s body, but suggests that unknown
alternatives were considered. 85 Although the negative tradition about
Cleopatra came to dominate the literature of the Augustan period, some
Downfall 147