She then began an undertaking which Plutarch describes as “a most bold and wonderful enterprise.” The northernmost inlet of the Red Sea, the modern Gulf of Suez, was separated from the waters of the Mediterranean by a belt of low-lying desert not more than thirty-five miles in breadth. Across the northern side of this isthmus the Pelusian branch of the Nile passed from the Delta down to the Mediterranean. Somewhat further south lay the Lakes of Balah and Timsah, and between these and the Gulf of Suez lay the so-called Bitter Lakes. These pieces of water had been linked together by a canal opened nearly five hundred years previously by the great Persian conqueror Darius I., who had thus sent his ships through from one sea to the other by a route not far divergent from that of the modern Suez Canal. King Ptolemy Philadelphus, three hundred years later, had reopened the waterway, and had built a great system of locks at its southern end, near the fortress of Clysma;[122] but now a large part of the canal had become blocked up once more by the encroaching sand, and any vessel which had to be transported from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea would have to be dragged for several miles over the desert. In spite of the enormous labour involved, however, Cleopatra determined to transfer immediately all her battleships which had survived Actium to the Red Sea, where they would be safe from the clutches of Octavian, and would be in a position to sail to India or to Southern Persia whenever she might require them to do so. She also began with startling energy to build other vessels at Suez, in the hope of there fitting out an imposing fleet. Plutarch states simply that her object was to go “with her soldiers and her treasure to secure herself a home where she might live in peace, far away from war and slavery”; but, viewing the enterprise in connection with the embassy to Media, it appears to me that she had determined to put into partial execution the schemes of which she seems to have talked with Julius Cæsar while he was staying with her in Alexandria,[123] in regard to the conquest of the East.
Media, Parthia, and India were all outside the influence of Rome. Of these countries Media was now bound to Egypt by the closest ties of blood, while India was engaged in a thriving trade with Cleopatra’s kingdom. Parthia, now the enemy of Media, lay somewhere between these vast lands; and if the Egyptian fleet could sail round the coasts of Arabia and effect a junction with the Median armies in the Persian Gulf, some sort of support might be given to the allies by the Indian States, and Parthia could be conquered or frightened into joining the confederacy. Syria and Armenia could then be controlled, and once more the fight with the West might be undertaken. In the meantime these far countries offered a safe hiding-place for herself and her family; and having, as I suppose, despatched her son Alexander to his future kingdom of Media, she now began to consider the sending of her beloved Cæsarion to India,[124] there to prepare the way for the approach of her fleet.