Cleopatra, on the other hand, was prepared for all eventualities; and, while she hoped somehow to be able to win her way out of her dilemma, she did not fail to make ready for the death which she might have to face. The news of Octavian’s return to Asia Minor was presently received in Alexandria, and she must have felt that her chances of successfully circumventing her difficulties were remote. She therefore busied herself in making a collection of all manner of poisonous drugs, and she often went down to the dungeons to make eager experiments upon the persons of condemned criminals. Anxiously she watched the death-struggles of the prisoners to whom the different poisons had been administered, discarding those drugs which produced pain and convulsions, and continuing her tests and trials with those which appeared to offer an easy liberation from life. She also experimented with venomous snakes, subjecting animals and human beings to their poisonous bites; and Plutarch tells us that “she pretty well satisfied herself that nothing was comparable to the bite of the asp, which, without causing convulsion or groaning, brought on a heavy drowsiness and coma, with a gentle perspiration on the face, the senses being stupefied by degrees, and the victim being apparently sensible of no pain, but only annoyed when disturbed or awakened, like one who is in a profound natural sleep.”[131] If the worst came to the worst, she decided that she would take her life in this manner; and this question being settled, she turned her undivided attention once more to the problems which beset her.
By May Octavian had marched into Syria, where all the garrisons surrendered to him. He sent Cornelius Gallus to take command of the legions which had surrendered to him in North Africa, and this army had now taken possession of Parætonium, where Antony had stayed after his flight from Actium. The news that this frontier fortress had passed into the hands of the enemy had not yet reached Alexandria, but that of Octavian’s advance through Syria was already known in the city, and must have caused the greatest anxiety. Cleopatra thereupon decided upon a bold and dignified course of action. Towards the end of May she sent her son Cæsarion, with his tutor Rhodon, up the Nile to Koptos,[132] and thence across the desert to the port of Berenice, where as many ships as she could collect were ordered to be in waiting for him. The young Cæsar travelled, it would seem, in considerable state, and carried with him a huge sum of money. He was expected to arrive at Berenice by about the end of June; and when, towards the middle of July,[133] the merchants journeying to India began to set out upon their long voyage, it was arranged that he should also set sail for those distant lands, there to make friends with the Kings of Hindustan, and perhaps to organise the great amalgamation of eastern nations of which Cleopatra had so often dreamed. She herself decided to remain at Alexandria, first to negotiate with Octavian for the retention of her throne, and in the event of this proving unsuccessful, to fight him to the death. No thought of flight entered her mind;[134] and though, with a mother’s solicitous care, she made these adventurous arrangements for the safety of her beloved son, it does not seem to have occurred to her to accompany him to the East, where she might have expected at any rate to find a temporary harbour of refuge. Her parting with him must have been one of the most unhappy events of her unfortunate life. For his safety and for his rights she had struggled for seventeen years; and now it was necessary to send him with the Indian merchants across perilous seas to strange lands in order to save him from the clutches of his successful rival Octavian, while she herself remained to face their enemies and to fight for their joint throne. Her thoughts in these days of distress were turning once more to the memory of the boy’s father, the great Julius Cæsar, for often, it would seem, she gazed at his pictures or read over again the letters which he had written to her; and now as she despatched the young Cæsar upon his distant voyage to those lands which had always so keenly interested his father, she must have invoked the aid of that deified spirit which all the Roman world worshipped as Divus Julius, and, in an agony of supplication, must have implored him to come to the assistance of his only earthly son and heir.