There is some suggestion that regional officials were given considerable freedom in these years, probably continuing the policy of Auletes. Inscriptions celebrate the achievements of Callimachus, a strategos in the Thebiad, and make only the briefest mention of the king and queen. Cleopatra’s government may also have introduced a new style of decree, the decision given royal approval by a simple ‘let it be so’ (ginestho in Greek). These were sent to senior officials, whose task it then was to copy them and send them round to all the relevant officials.12
Money was short, but just like her father Cleopatra continued to be generous to the temple cults of the kingdom, cultivating the most important part of the native population. She completed work on the great temple of the goddess Hathor and her son Ihy at Dendera. Its southern, rear wall was covered in reliefs depicting Cleopatra and Caesarion in traditional regalia making an offering to the two deities of the temple and other important gods. ‘Ptolemy Caesar’stands tall and in front of his mother, holding out a gift of incense, while she shakes the sistrum, the sacred rattle used in the rites of the goddess Isis. Artistically at least, traditions are maintained, the pharaoh and his female counterpart fulfil their roles as the representatives of the gods on earth, the direct link with heaven, ensuring that order prevails over chaos and Maat is preserved.
Temple building gave work to the construction force, honour and status to the cult involved and its priesthood, and provided grand monuments celebrating the regime. Soon after Cleopatra returned from Rome, work seems to have begun on a grand ‘birth-temple’ for Caesarion at Hermonthis. Such structures had a tradition stretching back into the distant past. This one was considerably larger than was normal, and was also unusual in that it does not seem to have been closely associated with an existing temple. Sadly, the structure no longer survives, having been demolished and replaced with a sugar processing plant in the middle of the nineteenth century, but fortunately a few photographs and more extensive drawings were made before this occurred.
One relief showed multiple scenes of childbirth, and some or all may represent Cleopatra herself. She is described in hieroglyphs as ‘The female Horus, the great one, the mistress of perfection, brilliant in counsel, the mistress of the Two Lands, Cleopatra, the goddess who loves her father’. Elsewhere, she is also named ‘the image of her father’, although on this section the cartouche was left blank and not filled in with her name. Being known as the female Horus was a clear indication of rule – for kings were the representatives of Horus on earth – and yet Cleopatra never receives all the titles of a pharaoh.13
At face value, tradition seems very much alive in the temple cults supported by Cleopatra. If anything, there seems to have been more revivals of very ancient practices, imagery and titles during her reign. It is also possible to see echoes of the ancient cults in the queen’s own life. Just as her father had been the ‘New Dionysus’, Cleopatra styled herself the ‘New Isis’; just as Dionysus had grown from a god of wine into a much more powerful and all-encompassing great god of victory and prosperity, so too the Egyptian goddess Isis had changed into an international cult. There was a temple to her at Athens in the fourth century BC and during Cleopatra’s lifetime there were determined, but unsuccessful attempts made to suppress her cult in Rome itself.
We know much more about Isis as a goddess worshipped by Greeks and other foreigners than in her Egyptian form. Plutarch, whose biography of Antony is such an important source for Cleopatra’s life as well as his own, elsewhere provided the longest account of the Isis story. Sister and wife of Osiris, they were children of the Sky goddess. Osiris and Isis ruled Egypt as king and queen, teaching the people how to grow crops and prosper, to follow laws and worship the gods. However, their jealous brother Seth murdered Osiris. After considerable adventures, Isis found her husband’s body in a distant land, but as she brought him back to Egypt, Seth stole it away, chopped the corpse into pieces and flung them to the winds. Helped by Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead, Isis found all the fragments – apart from the penis, which had fallen into the Nile and been consumed by fish. She sewed the pieces together, fabricated a new penis and breathed life back into her husband’s body. They made love and in due course she gave birth to their son Horus. Osiris then left the land of the living to rule the world of the dead. Isis protected the boy until he grew old enough and was able to overthrow his wicked uncle. Mother and son then ruled Egypt.14
It is hard to know how far Egyptians would have recognised Plutarch’s version of the story or, indeed, even be sure that most Greek worshippers of Isis believed the same myth. Few ancient religions had clearly developed and universally accepted theology or even traditions. Cults varied from region to region, and the same deity was often perceived and presented in very different ways although given the same name. Greek settlers in Egypt had equated the local divinities with familiar gods and goddesses, worshipping them in their own way, while the native population persisted in their traditional beliefs. In Egypt and elsewhere, for the Greeks Isis expanded to take on attributes of Athena, Demeter and Aphrodite –wisdom, fertility, law, as mother and as wife, as source of rebirth and resurrection with the promise of an afterlife. Finding Osiris a little too alien, the Ptolemies devised a new consort for her, in the god Serapis. Egyptians never seem to have adopted the new god, but his worship was common amongst the Greeks in Egypt and spread abroad through association with the popular Isis. The Isis cult seemed exotic to Greeks and Romans alike, with its shaven-headed priests, sistrum rattles, dramatic rituals and deeply emotional experiences. It had the appeal of ancient and faraway wisdom, even if it may well have borne little resemblance to the traditional cult of Egypt.
We cannot say whether Cleopatra chose to associate herself with Isis because it made practical sense to become the personification of such a powerful and popular deity or for more personal, emotional reasons. Perhaps it was a mixture of the two. To be born a Ptolemy set someone apart from the rest of humanity, for they were divine and successors to Alexander the Great. If she did genuinely feel herself to be Isis, it would surely have been in some variant of the Greek perception of the goddess. The traditional imagery at Dendera, Hermonthis and other shrines was conventional, changing little over the centuries. It did not mean an active participation in the cults by the monarch – something especially unlikely for the infant Caesarion. Temples were not churches regularly attended by great congregations, but sacred houses for the gods, entered only by the priests as part of the perpetual cycle of rites. If some very old formulae and images were revived under Cleopatra, the initiative is most likely to have come from the priestly cults, given money and royal favour and permitted to oversee the rituals as they saw fit.
The Isis story of a murdered husband and the infant son who needed protection until he matured and could face the killer had a parallel in Cleopatra’s own life. As she was Isis, Caesar could be the dead Osiris or Serapis, and Caesarion would be Horus. Yet apart from the name Ptolemy Caesar, there is no allusion to Cleopatra’s murdered lover in any of the monuments and iconography aimed at an Egyptian audience. These were far more concerned with stressing her own and her son’s legitimacy as rulers and their roles as divine representatives on earth. Horus, the good ruler of Egypt, is shown over the head of Caesarion in the form of a bird on the Dendera relief. The blessing of the gods who protect Egypt and ensure prosperity was the important thing. There is no place for a dead father or the need to avenge his death.
Perhaps there was a hint of this in the monument called the Caesareum, which Cleopatra devoted to Caesar in Alexandria, although it is not clear when work began on this, and it may well have been later in her reign. It is all too easy to forget that the monuments in the overtly Hellenic city have almost all been lost and focus only on the great and very Egyptian temples that survive. In Greek, Caesarion was titled ‘the father-loving and mother-loving god’ (Theos Philopator Philometor) and ‘Ptolemy called Caesar’. After the death of Ptolemy XIV, Cleopatra herself ha
d dispensed with the title of’sibling-loving’, perhaps aware of the irony, but remained the ‘father-loving goddess’ (Thea Philopator).
Caesar was honoured, but there was never any attempt to present him either to Greeks or Egyptians as Cleopatra’s husband or consort, still less as king or pharaoh. He was a distinguished father to Caesarion, but the boy was first and foremost a Ptolemy, and it was through and with his mother that he rightfully ruled. Even if Cleopatra had a strong desire to avenge her lover’s death, she lacked the capacity to achieve this. She could aid the triumvirs, and it is striking that she attempted to do so in person, but it was beyond her capacity to do more than assist one side in Rome’s civil war. At this stage there is absolutely no trace of friction between Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son, and the real, if illegitimate, son Caesarion. The latter had no status at Rome. On top of that he was still a small boy, ruling nominally in Egypt only through his mother’s need for a consort. The Romans took adoption very seriously, viewing the bond as effectively as close as a blood relationship. While it might be mildly embarrassing to have a foreign, bastard son of the dictator as a visible reminder of the human Caesar’s indiscretions, there was nothing to make Caesarion more of a concern to Octavian. In no meaningful way could he be a rival and assuming that anyone could have considered this at so early a stage is misguided.15
Cleopatra had regained her throne through Caesar’s intervention. Her priority after his death was to survive and remain in power. This she did, disposing of her brother, fending off her sister and keeping control of Egypt, if not of Cyprus, against ambitious officials and any other rival. At the same time she managed to avoid having her kingdom seized or plundered by a Roman leader eager to exploit its resources and tried to help those she hoped or guessed would win. She managed to avoid direct collaboration with any of Caesar’s murderers, although had this become unavoidable it is doubtful that she would have refused this at the cost of losing her kingdom for the sake of personal hatred. Cleopatra was a pragmatic politician and she managed to survive a difficult few years. She was queen and her son was king. Together they promised long-term stability, which in itself helped to deter any challenges to their rule. Cleopatra had done all that she could to achieve this and done it well. Yet in the truly long term, everything depended, as it always did, on Rome and its leaders.
[XIX]
VENGEANCE
On 1 January 42 BC Lepidus began a second consulship with Lucius Munatius Plancus as colleague. Being consul was prestigious, but he shared far greater power with Antony and Octavian as triumvirs. Together they made all important decisions, and neither magistrates nor the Popular Assemblies could contest them. The formalised murder of the proscription lists continued, a blatant warning of the cost of opposing the triumvirate.
Cicero’s killers took his head directly to Antony, who was said to have been at dinner when they arrived. In a story echoing the ones told about Marius and Marcus Antonius, he is supposed to have gleefully held the severed head in his hands. According to Dio, Fulvia was even more exultant, grabbing the grisly trophy and mocking the orator. She took pins from her hair – like every aristocratic Roman woman she affected a fashionably elaborate hairstyle – and jabbed them into the orator’s tongue.1
The story may be an invention, although it should be remembered that Cicero had been one of the bitterest opponents of her first husband, publicly accusing him of revolution and incest and later praising the man who ordered his murder. More recently, his Philippics had lambasted Antony, savaging his character and edging the Senate steadily towards declaring him a public enemy. Fulvia had lived in Rome during those months and had found herself under attack in the courts, as Antony’s enemies and plenty of opportunists sensed a chance to take her property. There were debts she and her husband had taken out and purchases they had made, which she now struggled to pay. Cicero’s long-time correspondent Atticus had helped the beleaguered Fulvia, appearing in court with her and loaning her funds to prevent bankruptcy.2
There is no evidence that Cicero had taken a personal role in the attacks on Fulvia, but more than anyone else he had shaped the climate in which they occurred. Antony and his wife had plenty of reasons to loathe the orator. Whether or not they actually toyed with his severed head over dinner, they certainly did carry out a very public form of revenge. Antony had ordered the officer in charge of the soldiers sent to kill Cicero to cut off the orator’s right hand as well as his head. Both head and the hand were then nailed to the Rostra at the heart of the Forum. The head that had uttered and the hand that had written the Philippics paid the price and served as an appalling warning of the cost of opposing Antony and the other triumvirs.3
Atticus went into hiding when the triumvirate occupied Rome, for as well as assisting Fulvia he had aided the families of Brutus and Cassius and been closely associated with Cicero and other opponents of the triumvirs. However, when Antony learned ‘where Atticus was, he wrote to him in his own hand, telling him not to be afraid but to come to him at once; that he had erased his name… from the list of the proscribed’. A friend who was hiding with him was also pardoned as a further gesture of goodwill. Antony sent a detachment of soldiers to escort the two fugitives, since it was night and it would take time for the news of their reprieve to circulate. Until then, they were at risk from anyone hoping to claim the bounty on their heads.4
On another occasion, Antony is supposed to have pardoned a certain Coponius, who was probably a former praetor. His wife had gone to the triumvir, sacrificing her honour for her husband’s life. Antony slept with her and in payment removed her husband’s name from the proscription lists. Dio claims that Antony and Fulvia were willing to accept money to remove a man’s name from the list, but that he always substituted another name to fill the gap. Otherwise there are no stories of Fulvia seeking pardon for anyone, and she was accused of getting one man proscribed so that she could buy up property he owned next to some of her own. Octavian was forced to pardon another man when the latter’s wife concealed him in a chest and had this brought into the triumvir’s presence at a performance in the theatre. The crowd was so obviously in favour of a pardon that the young Caesar was compelled to issue one.5
The massacre inaugurated by the proscriptions was a stain on the record of all three triumvirs. At the time, Octavian may have been hated more than the others, since such viciousness was even less becoming in a youth. Apart from that, it was felt that at his age he really ought not to have made too many political enemies. In later years, when he was the Emperor Augustus, there was a concerted effort to disassociate himself from the bloodstained triumvir and blame the cruelty on his two colleagues. This no doubt heightened the attention given in our sources to Fulvia as the angry harridan urging Antony on to ever greater savagery.
We need to be cautious about accepting all the stories told of these years, since many no doubt grew in the telling, and the roles of Antony, Fulvia and Lepidus were all emphasised to cover the guilt of Octavian. Yet the truth was savage enough and clearly scarred the Romans’ collective memory. Large numbers of books were written recounting tales of the proscribed and how they were saved or betrayed. These have not survived, but the traces in Appian and other later sources give a good idea of their flavour, focusing on the courage of some of the men who died and the loyalty and treachery of those who protected or betrayed them. Sextus Pompey was widely praised because he not only gave refuge to the proscribed, but also sent ships out looking for them along the coast of Italy.6
The proscriptions were meant to intimidate and succeeded in this – the exemplary punishment of Cicero made clear that no one was safe, no matter how distinguished. The triumvirs were hated, but also feared, and no voices spoke out against them in the Senate. They had also hoped to raise money and in this respect they were somewhat less successful. People were afraid to bid at the auctions of the property of the proscribed, worried that a display of wealth could be dangerous and lead to their own names being added to the lists. As import
antly, some of the men who had profited from Sulla’s proscriptions had been publicly shamed in subsequent decades and in some cases forced to give up their purchases. Some of the confiscated property went as bounty to the killers and informants, and the revenue raised by the rest proved disappointing.7
Desperate for money, most of all to pay an army that now numbered more than forty legions, the triumvirate looked for other sources of revenue. One of the most unorthodox announcements was that 1,400 of the most prominent women in Rome would have their property publicly assessed and pay a levy based upon this. Women had never before been called upon to pay tax to the Republic, although during the worst crisis of the Punic Wars they had voluntarily donated their jewellery to the state.
The decree was deeply unpopular with the women affected. In a properly Roman way, they went first to the female relatives of the triumvirs, asking for them to bring their influence to bear. Fulvia is supposed to have turned them away. Once again, this may be mere propaganda, although it is worth remembering that she may have wondered why such solidarity had not been shown to her when she was being dragged through the courts and war waged against her husband. Led by the daughter of Hortensius – the man whom Cicero had supplanted as the greatest orator of the day – the women gathered in the Forum and appealed both to the crowd and the triumvirs. The former were sympathetic and, sensing this, the latter made no attempt to have their lictors and other attendants clear the demonstrators away by force.8
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