The Woman of Andros / the Ides of March by Thornton Wilder
XXVII
Caesar in Rome to Cleopatra in Carthage.
[The following letter, in the Dictator’s hand, accompanied a formal greeting on the Queen’s approach to Rome.]
[September 3.]
August Queen, it gives me no pleasure to add to this most sincere message of welcome the following injunctions: I must remind you that I place much importance on the conditions you agreed to when this visit to Rome was planned. I refer to the number of persons in your retinue, the regulations concerning the arboring of royal insignia, and to the requirement that there shall be no child under five years of age in your company. Should you fail to observe this agreement I shall be obliged to distress myself and to distress you by taking action derogatory to your dignity and inconsonant with the esteem I bear you. Should there be any children now in your company you will either leave them at Carthage or return them to Egypt.
Do not allow the severity of my words, however, to mislead you as to the great satisfaction with which I look forward to your stay in Rome. Rome gains heightened interest for me when I think that I shall be soon showing it to the Queen of Egypt, the Rome that is here now and the Rome that I am planning. The world holds but a few rulers, and among them but a small number who have any inkling of what it is to direct the fortunes of nations. The Queen of Egypt is great in genius as she is great in position.
The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows. In looking forward to the Queen’s visit I promise myself a mitigation of the solitude in which I live and work.
I have this morning made a visit to the palace which is being prepared for the Queen. Nothing is being left undone which would minister to her comfort.
XXVII-A
First Reply to the Above Letter. Cleopatra to Caesar.
[In hieroglyphs, preceded by the Queen’s titles, descent, etc., on an enormous sheet of papyrus, followed by the Latin translation; sent through the Roman administration’s messenger service in advance of the royal progress.]
[September 2.]
The Queen of Egypt has directed me, her unworthy chamberlain, to acknowledge the reception of the Dictator’s letter and presents.
The Queen of Egypt thanks the Dictator for the presents she has received.
XXVII-B
Second Reply. Cleopatra to Caesar.
[Sent from the royal ship on its arrival at Ostia, October 1.]
The Dictator has sent the Queen of Egypt a letter on the difficulties of being a monarch.
There are others.
A Queen, great Caesar, may be a mother. Her royal position renders her more, not less, subject to those loving anxieties which all mothers feel, particularly if their children are of delicate health and affectionate disposition. You have told me that you were, in your time, a loving parent. I believed you. You defended yourself to me against the charge that you permitted reasons of state to force you to deal unfeelingly with your daughter. [Apparently at the instigation of her father, Julia broke her engagement to one man in order to marry pompey. She died before the Civil War arose between Caesar and pompey, but the marriage was a completely happy one.]
Unfeelingly you have dealt with me, and not only with me but with a child who is no ordinary child, being the son of the greatest man in the world. He has returned to Egypt.
You have described to me the solitude of a ruler. A ruler has reason to feel that most of the approaches made to him are coloured with self-interest. Is it not the danger of rulers to increase this solitude by ascribing to others that motivation alone? I can imagine a ruler turned to stone by such a view of his fellow men and turning to stone all those who approach him.
As I approach the city I wish to say to its master that I am the Queen and the servant of Egypt and that my country’s fortunes are never absent from my mind, but that I would feel myself less than royal did I not recognise also that I am a mother and a woman.
To return to you your own words: Do not allow the severity of my tone, in the words I have just written, to mislead you as to the satisfaction with which I look forward to my stay in Rome.
I ascribe the ungentleness of your conduct to the fact that you have, indeed, created for yourself a solitude that is excessive even for the ruler of a world. You have said that it may be possible that I might lighten that burden.
XXVIII
Catullus to Clodia, in Rome.
[The following two letters, probably written on Sept. 11 or 12, were never sent. They are the drafts for the letter already given as Document XIII. Catullus did not destroy them at once, for two weeks later they were discovered in the poet’s rooms by Caesar’s secret police and copies of them were forwarded to the Dictator.]
Kill me outright – since that is what you desire – I cannot kill myself – it is as though my eyes were bound on some play, as though I were watching breathlessly – to see what new horror you would devise. I cannot kill myself until I have seen the last terrifying exposure of what you are – what are you? – murderess – torturer – mountain of lies – laughter – mask – traitor – traitor of our whole human race.
Must I hang on this cross and not die – watching you for eternities?
To whom can I turn? To whom can I cry? Do the Gods exist? Have you shrieked them from the skies?
Immortal Gods, did you then send this monster to the earth to teach us something? That beauty of form is but a sack of evils? That love is a hatred in disguise?
No – no – that lesson I will not take from you – the opposite is true – I shall never know love; but by you I know that love exists.
You came into the world – a monster and an assassin – to kill the Loving – you laid a treacherous ambush and with laughter and a howl you raised the ax to kill the part in me that lives and loves – the Immortal Gods will aid me to recover from my horror – that you in the disguise of the Lovable are moving about among men, waiting for occasion to inspire love and to slay it – it was me you selected for this assassination – me who have one life to live and one love to love and who shall never love again.
But know – exhalation of Hell – that though you have killed the one love I have to give, you have not killed my belief in love. By that belief I know you for what you are.
There is no need for me to curse you – the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was himself that he longed to be rid of. Hatred is self-hatred. Clodia is locked with Clodia in eternal loathing.
XXVIII-A
Catullus to Clodia.
I know, I know that you never promised to be constant.
How often – with the ostentatious honesty of the dishonest – you broke a kiss to affirm your independence of all engagement. You swore you loved me, and laughed and warned me that you would not love me forever.
I did not hear you. You were speaking in a language I did not understand. Never, never, can I conceive of a love which is able to foresee its own termination. Love is its own eternity. Love is in every moment of its being: all time. It is the only glimpse we are permitted of what eternity is. So I did not hear you. The words were nonsense. You laughed and I laughed too. We were pretending that we were not to love forever. We were laughing at all those millions in the world who are Pretenders to Love, who know well that their love will have a termination.
Before I put you forever out of my mind I think of you once more:
What will become of you?
What woman in the world walked in such love as I gave to you?
Insane one, do you know what you have thrown away?
While the God of Love gazed at you through my eyes age could not touch your beauty. While we spoke to you, your ears could not hear the tongues of the world, envy and detraction and all the gusts that are blown about in the malignant air of our human state; while we loved you you could not know the solitude of the soul – does tha
But that is not all. Your state is a thousand times worse. Now you are revealed; your secret is out. Since I know it, you can no longer hide it from yourself: you are the eternal assassin of life and love. But how terrifying to you must be the knowledge of your failure, for you have made clear the greatness and the majesty of your enemy, love.
All, all that Plato said was true.
It was not I, I in myself, who loved you. When I looked at you the God Eros descended upon me. I was more than myself. The God lived in me, looked through my eyes and spoke through my lips. I was more than myself and when your soul was aware that the God was in me, gazing at you, for a time you too were filled with the God. Have you not told me so? In what hours, in what whispers have you not told me so.
But you could not long endure this presence, for you came into the world, a monster and an assassin, to kill all that lives and loves. You wear the disguise of the Lovable and you live only to prepare one treacherous ambush after another; you live only for the moment when with laughter and a shriek you may lift the ax and slay the promise of life and the promise of love.
I am no longer breathless with horror. I have ceased trembling. I can muse with wonder, asking myself where you obtained the passionate hatred of life and why the Gods permit this enemy of the world to move about among us. I will never feel pity for you, this horror has no room for pity. Some great intention for the world’s enlightenment stirred in you and was poisoned at the source.
I loved you and I shall never be the same again, but what is my state compared to yours?
XXVIII-B
Catullus.
O dei, si vestrum est misereri, aut si quibus unquam
Extremam iam ipsa in morte tulisti opem,
Me miserum aspicite et, si vitam puriter egi
Eripite hanc pestem perniciemque mihi,
Quae mihi subrupens imos ut torpor in artus
Expulit ex omni pectore laetitias.
Non iam illud quaero, contra ut me diligut illa,
Aut, quod non potis est, esse pudica velit;
Ipse valere opto et taetrum hunc deponere morbem.
O dei, reddite mi hoc pro pietate mea.
‘Oh, immortal Gods, if pity be among your attributes,
Or if ever you have brought supreme aid to one already at the point of death,
Turn your eyes upon me, a most wretched man, and if I have lived a pure life,
Tear out from my heart this plague, this pestilence
Which, stealing like a lethargy throughout my deepest fibers
Has driven all joy from my breast.
I no longer ask that this woman return my love
Nor – for that is impossible – that she be chaste;
All I aspire to is that I be healed and that this black malady be removed.
Oh, immortal Gods – grant this in return for my devotion.’
XXIX
Caesar to Cornelius Nepos.
[September 23.]
This letter is confidential.
I have been informed that you are a friend of the poet Gaius Valerius Catullus.
Word has reached me in a very indirect way that the poet has been ill or at least in extreme distress of mind.
I have been a friend of his father for many years and although I have had few occasions of meeting the poet himself I follow his work with much interest and admiration. I wish that you would call upon him and send me word as to his condition. In addition, I should feel very indebted to you if you would report to me, at any time and at any hour, that you find him ill or in any kind of distress.
The esteem in which I hold you and your work leads me to add that I should feel it to be an unkindness did you or your family not keep me informed of any ill-fortune (which the immortal Gods avert) that might befall you or yours. At a very early age I was convinced that the true poets and historians are the highest ornaments of a country; this conviction has only increased with time.
XXIX-A
Cornelius Nepos to Caesar.
It is a satisfaction to know that the great leader of the Roman people feels concern for the health of my friend and fellow countryman Catullus and has expressed himself in friendly terms toward me and my household.
It is true that some ten days ago a member of the Aemilian Draughts and Swimming Club, where the poet resides, called on me in the middle of the night saying that Catullus’s condition was causing alarm to his friends. I hurried to his rooms and found him in pain and in delirium. A doctor Sosthenes, the Greek, was administering emetics and then calmatives. My friend did not recognise me. We sat with him through the night. In the morning he was much improved. Gathering himself together with resolution he thanked us for our attentions and assured us that his illness was at an end and requested us to leave him. I returned later in the afternoon and found him in untroubled sleep. He was awakened soon after by a clumsy messenger bringing a letter from that woman who plays no small part in the troubles we had been witnessing – as his delirium had attested. In my presence he read the letter and remained a long time silent in deep thought. He made no reference to what he had read but against all persuasion dressed in formal attire and left the Club.
I have given the Dictator these details in order that he may make his own observations.
XXX
Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.
991. [On Cleopatra and her visit to Rome.]
The Queen of Egypt is approaching. Missy Crocodile is being fanned across the straits.
My correspondence with Majesty has been as spirited as could be expected. Her Latin is broken, but I notice that she manages to achieve precision when an occasion requires it.
I do not expect a literal obedience to the regulations that I have laid down governing her visit here. The Queen is incapable of complying precisely with any direction that may be given her. Even when she believes herself to be obeying implicitly, she manages to admit a deviation or two. I must expect this. I confess that I am charmed by this invariable variation, though I have been obliged before now to show her a stern face on it. It is prompted by her unfathomable pride and by the independence of a woman who is herself accustomed to punish any slightest disobedience by death.
Her letters – even in one conjuncture, her silence – have delighted me. She is indeed a woman now and a most queenly one. At moments I find myself dreaming that she is more woman than queen and must arrest my thoughts.
Cleopatra is Egypt. No word she lets fall and no caress she dispenses is without a political implication. Each conversation is a treaty and every kiss a pact. I could wish that association with her did not require so constant a vigilance and that her favours had more abandon and less art.
It is many years, many years, however, since I have known a disinterested friendship on the part of anyone except yourself, my aunt, and my soldiers. Even in my home I seem to be playing a perpetual game of draughts. I lose a ‘man’; I am menaced from the flank; I rally to a sortie; I capture a ‘horseman.’ My good wife seems to derive some pleasure from this skirmishing, though it is not conducted without tears.
Nay more, it is many years since I have felt directed toward me a disinterested hatred. Day by day I scan my enemies looking with eager hope for the man who hates me ‘for myself ’ or even ‘for Rome.’ I am much condemned for surrounding myself with unscrupulous adventurers who enrich themselves from the appointments I accord them. Yes, I sometimes think that it is the candor of their greed that pleases me; they do not pretend to love me for myself. I shall go so far as to say that I have occasionally been moved to pleasure when one or other of them lets fall an expression of his contempt for me – in that ocean of flattery in which I live and move.
It is difficult, my dear Lucius, to escape becoming the person which others believe one to be. A slave is twice enslaved, once by his chains and once again by the glances that fall upon him and say ‘thou sla
XXXI
Cicero, in Rome, to Atticus in Greece.
[This letter aroused much merriment and derision in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. It is perhaps apocryphal. We know that Cicero wrote Atticus a letter concerning marriage and that in the two succeeding letters he implored his friend to destroy it – which Atticus would certainly have done. On the other hand, there have come down to us over a dozen versions of what might well have been the letter in question. All these differ widely among themselves and all are larded with obviously burlesque interpolations. We here select the passages which the majority of the versions have in common, our theory being that a secretary of Atticus probably made a copy of the original letter before its destruction and that this copy began circulating surreptitiously throughout the Roman world.