He’d long looked forward to paying his respects at his hero’s burial place, nearby as it was to Alexandria. It was the heroic thing to do, after all, a scene that might be written about by the poets of Rome, the young emperor standing beside the tomb of his predecessor, inheriting his power. Augustus the Great, he’d thought secretly, tasting the name on his tongue. The simpleton slaves and keepers of the necropolis insisted that he see the endless Ptolemaic tombs as well, and he was forced to descend an unpleasant stone staircase into a black pit, but he immediately turned and ran back up into the light, fearful of more creatures like Cleopatra, dead and yet not dead. “I came to see a king,” he snapped, “not a pile of dead bodies.” This was to have been a reward for Cleopatra’s death after all, a final triumphant act in her city before departing for other places, other kingdoms, but what he’d seen in Cleopatra’s chamber had drastically changed the tone of the visit.
