Ancient history

Caesar, besieged with Cleopatra in Alexandria, had his ships burned to prevent retreat

If we talk about the sieges that Julius Caesar experienced, Alesia will immediately come to mind, where he defeated the Gallic leader Vercingetorix after a month and a half of fighting and after having himself been besieged, when an enemy army unexpectedly appeared in the rear. He precisely he would go through this last experience five years later, when he was forced to entrench himself in Alexandria in support of Cleopatra against the Egyptian troops of Arsinoe IV and Ptolemy XIII.

The context in this case was the civil war that was being waged in Egypt between the aforementioned characters and that was intermingled with the one within Rome itself. Caesar and Pompey, once friends, had been at odds since 48 BC, when the former refused to abide by the Senate's decision not to renew his consulship, which the latter supported. The senators distrusted Caesar's ambition because he no longer had companions to serve as a counterweight when the triumvirate he formed with Crassus (who had died fighting the Parthians) and Pompey (who, apart from that, had made him ugly by marrying a Scipio instead of with his niece).

Thus, the senate deposed Caesar and he responded by marching on Rome with his stalwart Legio XIII Gemina , starting what was the Second Civil War of the Republic, markedly marked by the polarization of its protagonists. Since Pompey had his main force in Hispania, Caesar marched there to defeat him in situ , which he achieved in Ilerda. The next battle was that of Dirraquio, where he lost but without Pompey knowing how to take advantage of his victory, so that the final stage of that duel was in Greece.

The battle of Farsalia supposed the definitive victory of Caesar; Appointed dictator, he persecuted his adversary to Egypt. There he got an unpleasant surprise:Pompey, who had taken refuge first in Aphipolis and then in Pelusium, had died at the hands of one of his men, Lucius Septimius; the assassin was accompanied by Aquilas, an Egyptian commander, but both had been instigated to the crime by the powerful court eunuch, Pothinus, and the Pharaoh's adviser, Theodotus of Chios, hoping to win Caesar's esteem.

They achieved the opposite effect, because the brand new Roman dictator was willing to forgive his old friend, whose death affected him deeply, especially in the way he was notified (presenting his head in a basket). This surely decided him to adopt a measure that he probably already had in mind:to intervene in the political affairs of Egypt in favor of Rome in order to directly control its enormous agricultural wealth. He took advantage of the fact that this kingdom owed Rome an enormous sum and that the situation was unstable due to the confrontation between the supporters of Ptolemy XIII and those of his sister Cleopatra.

Offering himself as a mediator in the dispute on the grounds that his father of these, Ptolemy XII, had left Rome as the guardian of his offspring, in reality Caesar took the side of Cleopatra, co-regent with Ptolemy XIII, whom they overthrew; and this, despite the fact that both the one and the other had helped Pompey militarily. The reason for this choice seems obvious:according to Lucan, Pompey had confirmed Ptolemy as sole ruler, putting off Cleopatra, who retired to Thebes first and Syria later, organizing an army together with her younger sister, Arsinoe. Therefore, a good alliance opportunity was presented for both.

Caesar found himself in that tense situation when he arrived in Alexandria in October 48 B.C. Regardless of the legend of his presentation wrapped in a rug and the alluring effect it may have had on him, it is ironic that it was Cleopatra who managed to extract concessions from him rather than the other way around, to the point that Cassius Dio wrote sarcastically referring to the handover of Cyprus that «Caesar lives in such a panic that he not only renounces annexing any territory, but cedes part of his own to Egypt» . But the truth is that the Mediterranean island was given to Arsinoe and her little brother, the boy Ptolemy XIV, although at the same time they were forbidden to leave Egypt, with which nothing changed in the background.

The cunning Roman dictator was sowing for future harvest. But the picture was far from clear and it got worse. First, because Ptolemy XIII was not going to sit idly by and watch his sister and a foreigner take his throne from him, so he put Aquilas in command of twenty thousand foot soldiers and two thousand horsemen who besieged the royal palace, where only four were available. thousand troops to defend it:the Legio VI Ferrata and some Italic militias that had been established in Egypt for some time.

And second, because Arsinoe, frustrated, escaped from Alexandria together with her trusted eunuch, Ganymede, and joined the army of Aquilas, becoming leader of the resistance against the Roman invaders, since Cleopatra was on their side and Ptolemy XIV only had twelve years. The situation was dire and Caesar ordered the ships in the port to be burned to avoid temptations to retreat, a process during which the flames spread to the famous Alexandrian library, destroying it; It wouldn't be the last time he suffered such a disaster. He also tried to negotiate, but the messengers were killed in an unmistakable message.

Aquilas took control of the city except for the last pocket of resistance, whose fall seemed imminent... and then a stroke of luck cleared things up a bit. Ganymede had a serious confrontation with Aquila, and Arsinoe ordered the latter to be executed, putting the other as general. As such, he applied some ingenious tactics, such as closing the river channels, which deprived the defenders of drinking water. Luckily, they were led by a military genius who knew that the composition of the soil was porous limestone and, consequently, susceptible to pocketed water; Caesar had wells dug and saved the day once again.

The queen was in her early twenties inexperienced, both in the world of warfare and in politics, and such a radical decision worked against her because both she and Ganymede soon alienated many officials. A group of them contacted the besieged offering peace in exchange for Ptolemy XIII being set free. Caesar, informed that reinforcements were arriving, dragged out the negotiations as long as he could to buy time and finally accepted the deal, convinced that the delivery of the ousted pharaoh would only bring discord to the enemy camp.

That's how it went. The two brothers did not agree on anything and although they broke their word by continuing the siege, they lost two precious days that played in favor of their adversaries, since at the beginning of 47 B.C. The long-awaited relief forces appeared marching from Asia Minor:the ex-Pompeian Legio XXXVII , commanded by the faithful Gnaeus Domitius Calvin, plus other troops provided by Mithridates I of Pergamon and those who arrived from Idumea sent by King Antipater I (rewarded for this with Roman citizenship, which was later inherited by his son Herod the Great ).

With this the tables were turned and on March 27, 47 B.C. the Egyptians were defeated, caught between two fronts. Ptolemy XIII drowned in the Nile when his boat capsized as he fled, and Ganymede suffered a similar fate. Arsinoe fell prisoner, but her life was spared, according to a false rumor because she had been Caesar's lover and they had a son together, although in reality it was because her youth took pity on the Romans who saw her displayed in chains in the obligatory triumphal parade for the streets of Rome; otherwise, she would surely have ended up strangled at the end of the event, like Vercingetorix.

However, she could not escape the fateful fate. Who Arsinoe feared most was her own sister and, indeed, years after her, Cleopatra would convince Marco Antonio to execute her. Her famous suicide by having herself bitten by an asp was as much out of desperation at her defeat by Octavian and the death of her lover as it was out of horror at the thought of also being exposed before the Roman mob in chains.

And it is that Cleopatra, who was only two years older than Arsinoe, was the main beneficiary of what is known as the Alexandrian Wars. Caesar enthroned her along with little Ptolemy XIV as her co-regents, for which he had them marry, according to that old Egyptian custom of filial marriage. However, the queen continued to live with the Roman, to whom she gave birth to a son, the future Ptolemy XV, better known as Caesarion. Her interest in favoring his succession led her five years later to murder her brother as well. It was not her scruples that she had left over.