Cleopatra was the conscious heir to millennia of pharaoh rule. And she was the mother of a crown prince of brilliant heritage: Caesar’s bloodline, mixed with Alexander’s! She had already associated Caesarion publicly to the throne, as shown on the walls of her Dendera temple. She could have followed the tradition of famous pharaohs of old, who in the face of an invading enemy had withdrawn up the Nile valley so that their heirs could reconquer Egypt in the future.
Evidently Cleopatra believed that, in spite of this option provided by pharaonic history, this time it could not be done. And she was better placed than anyone before –or after– her, to understand Rome, with her razor-sharp mind and her access to the best of all information sources: Julius Caesar himself.
In his last, most powerful period, Julius had asked her in July 46 BC to come and live with him in Rome. She already shared his most secret ambitions and his unrivalled knowledge. Now she also breathed Roman politics for the space of nearly two years. With the added benefit of Caesar’s intimate insight in Augustus’ character, and that of other Roman leaders.
Their opposition to her presence, as a politically active queen at Caesar’s side, must have reminded her of the attitude of Alexander’s Makedonian generals, rabidly against his vision of shared rule in Persia. They did not want an ‘integrated’ empire – much less, one where oriental women could be admitted to positions of power.
And Cleopatra VII was oriental, no doubt, in spite of her Ptolemaic/Greek provenance: half-Persian through her mother, a daughter of Mithridates the Great, and educated by Egyptian priests. She was fluent in at least seven oriental languages (Egyptian, Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Mede and Persian) besides Greek and later Latin. Curiously, the classical historians had commented on the same linguistic gift in her grandfather Mithridates, who was said to speak no less than 22 tongues.
There is a notable parallel between Stateira’s intended role as the oriental queen at Alexander’s side, and Cleopatra’s ambitions as the ruler of Egypt and mother of Caesar’s only son. Just like professor Carney remarked about the offspring of Alexander and Stateira, Julius had made Caesarion the future – a destiny to unite East and West, men and women, as equals.
Cleopatra had continued governing Egypt by herself, even from Caesar’s villa on the outskirts of Rome. In regional disputes she often sided with the women: a well documented case was her defense of Alexandra in Judea against king Herod, who enjoyed Roman support. (No wonder that Zenobia of Palmyra, another famous queen who went to war for her independence from Rome, would later claim descent from Cleopatra VII.)
The right of women to be equal to men certainly formed part of the heritage she meant to pass on to Caesarion. She had fought desperately for it as a young princess. And she did so again after Julius’ death, when she tried –through Mark Anthony– to salvage at least the eastern part of the world empire she and Caesar had been shaping. Mark Anthony indeed increased her Egyptian realm with several neighbouring territories, and was preparing the added conquest of Mesopotamia. But her initial success had given way to a fatal rout at the battle of Actium, when Augustus turned the full wrath of Rome against them.
Cleopatra, the shrewd queen who knew Augustus’ plodding mind, would foresee he was sure to put an end to her line of succession. Egypt, downgraded to a mere Roman province! Did Cleopatra the pharaoh, whose rule was god-given and godlike, come to the conclusion that heaven refused to permit her –and Caesarion’s– dreamed destiny?
Her last, tragic gesture was more than a suicide to avoid being taken by Rome. She decided to return the pharaoh’s power to the gods. And for instrument she chose a snake’s poison. The same snakebite that had given the goddess Isis her definitive magic powers, wielded for over 3,000 years to protect kingship in the valley of the Nile — the snakepower of the Great Goddess.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Few people will ever be so lucky with their teachers as Alexander, who had Homer for passion, Philip for war, and Aristotle for peace. But mine gave me nearly as much reason for gratitude. From my college and university years I retain specially fond memories of my first teacher of Greek, Dr Corrie Scholten, who made me fall in love with the Ancient World. In recent years I delved more deeply into the era of Alexander the Great. And as I went discovering more –but also, more scattered–scraps of knowledge about his women than I had expected, I ran up another debt of gratitude.
First, to the authors of specialized studies whose books and articles opened up new perspectives on the Old World (see my list of Reference Works). And then, to several academic authorities who were so kind as to answer my many questions. For either or both reasons, I want to thank professors Amélie Kuhrt, Maria Brosius, Wouter Henkelman, Jan Tavernier and Elizabeth Carney; the latter also for her kind permission to reproduce her quotes on queen Olympias.
Of course, any mistakes about historical events or characters in this work are exclusively due to my shortcomings. Anyway, I have had a great time gathering the material for this book, and I hope it will result in some degree of reading pleasure for you who now have it in your hands.
Finally, I want to thank my friend José Peralta, a genius of the illustration arts – I wish I could compensate him for his generosity. And also, my friend Eduardo Aznar, in whose house this idea was born and who reviewed my drafts with saintly patience; in fact, he is a layman saint: noblesse oblige. Their help was priceless.
NOTES ON SPELLING, AND MONEY
As for the eternally contentious matter of spelling ancient names, I am conscious of my unforgivable sins to the eyes of the purists. I was unable to find a single orthographical system that would correctly represent the name-words from all the different tongues spoken in Greece, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Egypt, etc.
Also, I cannot agree to the tradition of using Latin equivalents for these names. It feels like imposing Roman military discipline on the unruly brilliance of great cultures that had civilised humankind before Rome even existed. I want to carry my readers into the sounds and smells of the Hellenistic world that Alexander created – not the crude copy of Athens that the Roman Empire fancied later.
That is why I have followed Arrian’s Greek renderings in nearly all cases. (Sometimes, also the Old-Persian spelling/variant is given.) This means that Greek names beginning with F or K are not, as is often done, rendered in the Romanised form beginning with Ph or C – but for the following exceptions:
1) to distinguish between Alexander’s sister Kleopatra and her namesake the pharaoh/queen of Egypt, the latter is written as Cleopatra, which is how Caesar made her world famous.
2) Alexander’s half-sister Cynnane is mentioned with this Romanised version of her name, because it is better known to the public than her –real– Illyrian name Kunnanè.
3) For similar reasons, Alexandros is rendered as ‘Alexander’; Filippos as ‘Philip’; and Ptolemaios as ‘Ptolemy’.
MEASURES AND MONEY
To measure distance in Alexander’s time, the basic unit was the Greek “stadion” which covers 185 meters.
As for money, the only monetary unit that could cause some confusion in this book is the ‘talent’, for this word has taken on a different meaning in our days. I have used this term with the meaning it had for Alexander: 26,2 kilos of silver. That was the maximum weight a man was able to carry on his shoulders, tradition said, during a full day’s march.
Such a lump of precious metal was worth 6,000 drachma coins, or 60 minas accounting units. One drachma was the normal day pay for the common footsoldier. 30 drachma would be a monthly minimum wage. So, one talent equalled 200 months of basic salary: the pay of over 16 years!
Moreover, its purchasing power was higher than the figure you would find if you consulted today’s market price of silver. In Alexander’s times it was more scarce, and therefore more precious. I see that professor Green registers a clever formula to measure the value of a talent both then and now: it is what three specialist doctors get pai
d, between the three of them, in a year.
In the Persian empire, the basic monetary unit since Darius the Great was the ‘darik’, a coin made of 8,4 grams of gold. The money changers of those days would give you 25 drachma coins for it. In other words, one silver talent equalled 240 golden dariks.
PERSIA’S ASTOUNDING WEALTH
The vast wealth which Alexander found and put to use after his conquest of the empire, was the key to his lasting impact on the ancient world. He had set out poor and indebted, with an inheritance of less than 60 talents and debts of more than 1500. “And marching out from a country too poor to maintain you decently,” as he reminded the Makedonians in his speech at Opis, “now all the wealth of Egypt flows into your hands; you are the masters of the gold of Lydia, the treasures of Persia, the riches of India…”
These dazzling riches were a product of Achaemenid rule. Darius the Great (521-486 BC) had revolutionized mankind’s economic activity by establishing a common coinage for the whole empire, the darik. Coined money was an invention of the kingdom of Croesus which, conquered by Cyrus the Great in 547 BC, provided the example for Persia. But Darius’ decision marked the first time in history that guaranteed money was introduced on such a massive scale.
The existence of a universal means of exchange, the standardization of weights and measures and the codification of commercial laws, plus a secure road system, stimulated world trade even beyond his dominions. It elevated the Achaemenid empire to unrivalled prosperity.
Besides roads, Darius built ports, banking houses, and elaborate underground irrigation systems. He ‘exported technology’ to increase agricultural development in poorer zones of the empire. In the Western Desert, a Persian-style qanat system was discovered in 1992 at Ayn Manâwîr, near the Khargeh Oasis. A similar system was found to the North, in Khorasan.
This confirms the information given by Polybios (History X.28): “At the time when the Persians were the rulers of Asia, they gave to those who conveyed a supply of water to places previously unirrigated, the right of cultivating the land for five generations. People incurred great expense and trouble making long underground channels …”
So, in exchange for their investment of money and labour, local communities obtained usufruct of the land brought under cultivation for five generations, about a century and a half. Polybios explicitly credits the Achaemenid kings with this policy. Besides broadening their tax base, it also underlined their desire to control the main transport routes like the Great Khorasan road and the Western oasis route.
Moreover, Darius reopened the link from the Nile to the Red Sea, via the Bitter Lakes: a canal of 140 kms dating to pharaohs Senusset III, Hatshepsut and Ramses II. It was wide enough that two triremes could cross each other. Preparing the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps found Darius’ stele of 500 BC in Kabret, commemorating the (re)opening of the canal: “I commanded to dig this canal from a river by name of Nile which flows in Egypt....After this canal was dug, ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, thus as was my desire.” In Alexander’s days it was still usable, so the Arabian Fleet could reach the Mediterranean. Ptolemy II widened it in 250 BC, and the Roman emperors Trajan and Hadrian had it cleaned out again.
Darius also extended road networks across the empire, to enable both troops and information to move with startling speed. The most vital was the Royal Road that connected Susa to Sardès, a distance of 3200 km. An official message could travel its full distance in ten days. This road, first used only by royal messengers but later also for personal and business information (including price quotes for tradable goods), developed into the main communication nerve of the empire.
Major trade routes were connected to the Royal Road, with a similar one going down through Syria to the Mediterranean coast and Egypt; and another leading east to India. In the end this system comprised over 10,000 km of secure all-weather roads.
Alexander accepted the fiscal system of the empire as he found it. During his campaigns –that is, until his return from India–, the tax revenues of the provinces were not vital to him. Empire-wide, they yielded an enormous sum: some 30,000 talents per year. He allowed the satraps to use these taxes for their standing armies in case local rebellions cropped up.
But this policy changed with his administrative overhaul in 325/324 BC, with ‘nation-wide’ policies taking priority. For example, an equivalent of more than $ 200 million was deposited at the treasury of Kilikia in Asia Minor, to finance a westward expansion of the empire.
Persian taxation, tailored to each satrapy, demanded contributions from subject peoples –Persians and Medes paid no tax– that give a vivid picture of their economic potential. Babylon had to pay each year 1000 silver talents, a four-month supply of food for the army, and 500 eunuchs. India, clearly, was already fabled for its gold: the province was required to supply gold dust equal to 4680 silver talents. Egypt, then already known for the wealth of its crops, had to provide 120,000 measures of grain in addition to 700 talents of silver. Herodotos concludes (Histories, book III) that Darius the Great received yearly tributes to a total of 380,800 kilos of silver.
The wealth of the Persian Empire is attested by the fact that Alexander concentrated at the Ekbatana treasury 180,000 talents, about 5 million kilos of silver. A truly colossal amount, representing the accumulated Persian bullion-reserves discovered at Sardès, Damascus, Babylon, Susa and Persepolis. Today its value would be over 5,200 million dollar – but remember that silver had more purchasing power then.
THE SOURCES FOR ALEXANDER: ARRIAN AND OTHERS
Alexander’s life has been used for centuries by all sorts of writers, each with their own interpretation. They created their own Alexander as a good (or bad) example for learning, or simply to entertain. In the East, that produced a thick book of legends known as the Sikandar Nama, e Bara. In the West, there were ‘Alexander Romances’ in many versions, and fiery disputes for and against Alexander.
The most biased sources were the Athens academics, bitterly anti-Alexander in the tradition of Demosthenes. Also they resented the fact that their fellow historian Kallisthenes, married to a niece of Aristoteles, had died a prisoner. He was held to be an accomplice, to some degree, in a plot of several pages to murder Alexander in 327 BC.
Four centuries after Alexander’s death there already was more legend and lie, than true history being told about him. That must have annoyed Arrian, and he decided to compose his own, much more factual, biography. Lucius Flavius Arrianus (85-162 AD) was quite a character. A Romanised Greek philosopher and general, and good at both.
He had studied under the famous philosopher Epiktetos, and one of his classroom companions was the future emperor Hadrian, who became Arrian’s lifelong friend. Hadrian made him a Roman senator, consul, and governor of Cappadocia, where he put two Roman legions at his orders. There Arrian fought battles against invading tribes – descendants of peoples that Alexander had routed before. He knew what he was talking about, when he explained Alexander’s activities as a military leader ánd as a statesman.
Arrian had the added advantage that in the libraries of his days (he was archon, mayor, of Athens in 145/6), he could still find books that are now lost. Like the first works published on Alexander’s campaigns: the Deeds of Alexander, a hilariously praising biography covering the years 356-330 BC, written by Kallisthenes before he fell out with his king. Also, the ‘Diaries’ that Alexander’s secretary Eumenes kept, but falsified in part to use them as propaganda weapons against Antipater and Antigonos; like the so-called ‘Correspondence of Alexander’, now considered to be mostly fake.
Then there was a book by Diogenes’ pupil Onesikritos, a helmsman of Alexander’s flagship, who boasted that in 326 BC he had been the interpreter at Alexander’s meeting with the Indian sages in Taxila. That was published in 319 BC, and shortly afterwards appeared a book by Alexander’s chamberlain Chares about life at court. Also Alexander’s friend and admiral, Nearchos, brought out his own account of the (sea) voyages of
that campaign. Nearchos wrote this in part to dispute the exaggerated claims by Onesikritos about the role he had played in India.
Another of those early sources was a History of the Successor Wars written by Hieronymos of Kardia. He was a close friend or relative of Eumenes, and may have worked for him in Alexander’s secretariat. It is certain that Hieronymos was a high-ranking official by the time of the Successor Wars. In 319 BC he acted as negotiator between Eumenes and Antigonos. After Eumenes’ death he was employed by the governments of Antigonos, his son and his grandson.
Hieronymos lived to the grand old age of 104, and literary critics said that his books were ‘too lengthy too’. But nobody disputed his firsthand knowledge of the political and military events he wrote about. His History had the merit of including political analyses lacking elsewhere.
For example, Hieronymos was the only one who explained that Alexander had reinstated the Persian office of grand vizier solely for Hefaistion. But he did not use the Persian title for it, so Hefaistion acted as a prime minister but simply carried a military rank with the name of chiliarch (he was supreme commander of cavalry). In the wake of Hefaistion’s demise, his military commands were divided between Perdikkas and Seleukos. Only after Alexander’s death did Perdikkas gain his short-lived supremacy.
Arrian could also still buy the [Stories]About Alexander, which had been so popular in its own time that it might be called the bestseller of the year 310 BC. It had been written by Kleitarchos, son of the historian Deinon who had published a book about the Persian empire. The experts consider that Kleitarchos mainly copied and embellished the works of Kallisthenes and Onesikritos. Also, as Kleitarchos lived in Alexandria, he surely obtained information by interviewing veterans of the army there. Some of his most vivid stories are told from the point of view of the common soldier.
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