Cleopatra

by Joyce Tyldesley

  Ephesus was not Antony’s first brush with divinity. He came from an impoverished junior branch of the Antonius family, and Plutarch tells us that his father, Antonius Creticus, was ‘a man of no great repute in public life, nor illustrious, but kindly and honest and generous’. Both his father and his stepfather were careless with money and when Creticus died he left such steep debts that his son refused to inherit his estate. Perhaps to compensate for this undistinguished background, Antony claimed descent from Anton, one of the sons of Heracles. This gave him a distant kinship with the Ptolemies, who also claimed Heracles as an ancestor through Arsinoë, mother of Ptolemy I, and who were occasionally depicted wearing his trademark lion-skin headdress. Antony did not don a skin, but he did, or so Plutarch claims, emulate his hero in public by wearing a tunic hitched up to his thigh, a heavy cloak and a large sword: ‘a shapely beard, a broad forehead, and an aquiline nose were thought to show the virile qualities peculiar to the portraits and statues of Heracles’. In citing Heracles as an ancestor, Antony was clearly thinking of his hero’s bravery and exceptional strength, and maybe even of his multiple fruitful relationships with women. Later, under the influence of Octavian’s propaganda, others would draw a crueller comparison. At one stage in his colourful career Heracles had been sold into slavery. He became the property of Omphale, the forceful queen of Lydia, who dressed him in women’s clothing and forced him to spin and weave at her command. When Omphale donned his discarded lion-skin garment, Heracles’s humiliation was complete. Yet Heracles the slave and Omphale the mistress were known to be lovers, and Omphale bore Heracles’s children. The parallels between the weak Antony and the unnaturally forceful Cleopatra were obvious.

  The tryphe of the Hellenistic courts was far more to Antony’s taste than the puritanism of Rome, and he found much to appreciate in the cult of Dionysos, with its ecstatic rituals, and its heavy consumption of wine. Antony had enjoyed a well-documented dissolute youth when, heavily influenced by his friends, he indulged in binge drinking, promiscuous sex and immoderate expenditure that left him heavily in debt. A distinguished military career and a growing reputation as a politician and orator followed, but the tendency to overindulge was never quite suppressed. Military life brought out the best in him: Antony was a brave and able soldier, a generous man well regarded by his troops. But the dull routine of civilian life brought out the worst. Plutarch gives a report of his behaviour when, with Julius Caesar busy in Egypt, he was left unsupervised to maintain order and promote Caesar’s cause in Rome:

  [Men of worth and uprightness] loathed his ill-timed drunkenness, his heavy expenditures, his debauches with women, his spending the days in sleep or in wandering about with crazed and aching head, the nights in revelry or at shows, or in attendance at the nuptial feasts of mimes and jesters. We are told, at any rate, that he once feasted at the nuptials of Hippias the mime, drank all night, and then, early in the morning, when the people summoned him to the forum, came before them still surfeited with food and vomited into his toga, which one of his friends held at his service. Sergius the mime also was one of those who had the greatest influence with him, and Cytheris, a woman from the same school of acting, a great favourite, whom he took about with him in a litter on his visits to the cities, and her litter was followed by as many attendants as that of his mother.7

  Plutarch is, of course, deliberately painting a portrait of a weak man made weaker by over-indulgence; he is preparing us for Antony’s first encounter with Cleopatra. The consistent emphasis on Antony’s drinking links him firmly in the Roman reader’s mind with disreputable Dionysiac rituals, while repeated references to his sex life invite the manly reader to imagine not a stud, but a man who is somehow softened by his constant association with women. Plutarch was by no means the only classical writer to consider eros, or sexual desire, a form of madness. Heterosexual sex was, in theory at least, an unclean act forced on men by women and nature: an activity to be endured in the dark rather than enjoyed in the daylight.8

  Antony was a much-married man. His first wife, Fadia, was the daughter of a freedman. We know little about this most unsuitable union, but it seems that Fadia’s father, Quintus Fadius Gallus, had been able to provide a dowry large enough to tempt a chronically impoverished young aristocrat. Fadia soon disappeared, and it is assumed that she and her children, with their embarrassing origins, died young. Antony’s next and far more suitable wife was his first cousin Antonia. She bore him a daughter, also named Antonia, and then was divorced in 47 on the grounds of adultery with the notorious rake Dolabella. Antony undoubtedly allowed himself a great deal of sexual licence while expecting his long-suffering wife to remain chaste, but the speed with which he subsequently remarried suggests that Antonia, like Fadia before her, was simply discarded when the chance of a better wife came along. In 47/6 Antony married Fulvia, widow of the murdered popular hero Publius Clodius. This was an extremely advantageous match. Fulvia was beautiful, intelligent and capable, and her role as the mother of Clodius’s young children gave her great political standing.9 Furthermore, she was immensely wealthy and Antony was in desperate need of funds, as Caesar was now forcing him to pay for Pompey’s estate, which he had ‘bought’ and squandered. Fulvia bore Antony two sons, Marcus Antonius (Antyllus) and Julius Antonius, and did much to protect his interests while he was campaigning away from Rome:

  She was a woman who took no thought for spinning wool or housekeeping, nor would she deign to bear sway over a man of private station, but she wished to rule a ruler and command a commander. Therefore Cleopatra was indebted to Fulvia for teaching Antony to endure a woman’s sway, since she took him over quite tamed, and schooled at the outset to obey women.10

  Now, with Fulvia fully occupied in Rome, Antony was travelling with the well-known courtesan Volumnia Cytheris. This did not prevent him from casting his eye over other women. In the summer of 41 he was rumoured to have had an affair with the beautiful Glaphyra, the daughter-in-law of Archelaos, the twice-married husband of Berenice IV, and to have fathered her son Archelaos.

  Antony, now stationed in the Cilician city of Tarsus (in the south of modern Turkey), was busy raising funds, rewarding those who had been loyal to the triumvirate and punishing those who had not by demanding ten years’ back-tax to be paid within two years. Cleopatra can hardly have been surprised when first a series of letters, then an emissary, Quintus Dellius, arrived in Alexandria to summon her to Tarsus. She was to answer the charge that she and her strategos Serapion had aided the traitor Cassius. Whatever the truth of the matter, this would be a hard charge to disprove and Antony, his eyes firmly fixed on Egypt’s wealth, would need to be persuaded of her innocence. As always, Cleopatra hesitated, considering her options. It would be surprising if she had not already met Antony during her visit(s) to Rome. She may even have met him much earlier: Appian, for one, believed that Antony had fallen in love with the teenage Cleopatra while campaigning in Egypt with Gabinius.11 Her personal knowledge of Antony the man allowed Cleopatra to settle on a tactic that would give her genius for showmanship full rein. If Antony was Dionysos, she would greet him as Isis, consort of Dionysos-Osiris. Cleopatra sailed along the Cydnus River to enter Tarsus in a gilded ship fitted with silver oars and a splendid purple silk sail. Flutes, pipes and lutes played on deck, and powerful incense perfumed the air. Cleopatra herself reclined beneath a gold-spangled canopy dressed in the robes of Isis (a colourful dress covered by a black mantle, we must assume), attended by beautiful small boys dressed as Cupids. The people of Tarsus flocked to the harbour to watch this spectacular arrival, leaving Antony alone and disconcerted in the marketplace. When he sent the queen an invitation to dine that night she declined, declaring that she would rather he ate as her guest. She entertained him with a banquet so splendid that the usually verbose Plutarch simply refuses to attempt a description, and they sat together that evening on the deck of her boat amidst a multitude of twinkling artificial lights.

  Plutarch is quite clear that Cleopatra del
iberately set out to seduce Antony and that he, more naïve than Caesar, almost immediately succumbed to her practised charms:

  … Caesar and Pompey [Gnaius Pompeius] had known her when she was still a girl and inexperienced in affairs, but she was going to visit Antony at the very time when women have the most brilliant beauty and are at the acme of intellectual power. Therefore she provided herself with many gifts, much money, and such ornaments as high position and prosperous kingdom made it natural for her to take; but she went putting her greatest confidence in herself, and in the charms and sorceries of her own person.12

  Again, he sets the scene for what is to come by telling us that, while Cleopatra deliberately schemed to captivate the simple Antony, Antony’s decision to ally himself with Cleopatra was a decision taken with the heart, not the head. Dio agrees that the weak Antony is easily corrupted by power, by Cleopatra and by the luxury with which she surrounds herself:

  It is indeed true that he had earnestly devoted himself to his duties so long as he had been in a subordinate station and had been aiming at the highest prizes, but now that he had got into power, he no longer paid strict attention to any of these things, but joined Cleopatra and the Egyptians in general in their life of luxurious ease until he was entirely demoralized.13

  It is important to see through this propaganda and to remember that Antony was not only a bluff, naïve, simple fellow; he was also an extremely ambitious and capable man.

  Athenaeus tells the story of that first evening together.14 In a room decorated with purple and gold wall hangings Cleopatra served delicious food on golden plates inlaid with precious stones; she ended the banquet by presenting all her golden plates to Antony. The next night’s banquet was even more splendid and Antony went home with yet more golden tableware, while his invited guests were allowed to keep their couches and their goblets. Banquets were times when luxury could come dangerously close to debauchery. The connection between eating, drinking and sex was an obvious one, and the dynastic Egyptians had chosen to decorate their tombs, places of rebirth, with images of perpetual banquets where men and women sat before tables groaning with produce. Cleopatra, it is suggested, habitually used the banquet as a means of seduction. She feasted with Caesar, a man so remarkably abstemious that he legislated against personal luxury, lavish food, extravagant clothing and pearls. And now she feasted with Antony, a notoriously weak and lazy man. Indeed, if we take the accounts of the classical writers at face value, it seems that Cleopatra and Antony did nothing other than eat, drink and fornicate. The sheer amount of food consumed, and wasted, at Cleopatra’s court is enough to make a restrained man, in this case Plutarch, shudder:

  Philotas, the physician of Amphissa, used to tell my grandfather, Lamprias, that he was in Alexandria at the time, studying his profession, and that having got well acquainted with one of the royal cooks, he was easily persuaded by him (young man that he was) to take a view of the extravagant preparations for a royal supper. Accordingly, he was introduced into the kitchen, and when he saw all the other provisions in great abundance, and eight wild boars a-roasting, he expressed his amazement at what must be the number of guests. But the cook burst out laughing and said: ‘The guests are not many, only about twelve; but everything that is set before them must be at perfection, and this an instant of time reduces. For it might happen that Antony would ask for supper immediately, and after a little while, perhaps, would postpone it and call for a cup of wine, or engage in conversation with someone. Wherefore, he said, ‘not one, but many suppers are arranged; for the precise time is hard to hit.’15

  Octavian, a moral, upright man who famously wore homespun clothes made (or so he fondly imagined) by his wife and daughter, could not be seduced either by Cleopatra or by her food. In his one interview with her he refused to meet the queen’s eye and, after her death, he melted down all the gold plates in the Alexandria palace.

  Pliny the Elder tells the story of Cleopatra’s earrings, inherited from ‘oriental kings’ and made from the largest pearls ever discovered.16 One day, bored and irritated by the quality of the food served at Antony’s table, Cleopatra wagered that she could serve him a banquet worth ten million sesterces (this at a time when the annual pay for a legionary soldier was a mere 900 sesterces). The next evening she offered Antony the choicest of foods. Then, as dessert, she called for a cup of sour wine, removed a pearl earring, dropped the pearl in the wine and, as it dissolved, drank. With a few swallows she had consumed her banquet. This is of course, as many observers have pointed out, an unlikely if not totally impossible tale. Pearls, being almost 90 per cent calcium carbonate, will dissolve in an acid solution; they will dissolve much faster if ground to a powder by a pestle and mortar first. Egyptian vinegar was famed for its strength. If Cleopatra’s sour wine (vinum acer, or vinegar) was strong enough, and if she allowed enough time – experiment would suggest more than twenty hours for a large whole pearl in cold vinegar – the pearl would indeed dissolve, neutralising the acid. Cleopatra, who acquired a considerable posthumous reputation as an alchemist, may well have known this. Whether the resulting mixture would have been palatable, or indeed drinkable, is another matter. Some historians have suggested that Cleopatra’s pearl-wine mixture may have been considered an aphrodisiac. More prosaically, Ullman’s experiments indicate that the pearl-wine mixture, correctly made, may have acted as an antacid. However, to assume that Cleopatra was actually manufacturing her own post-banquet pick-me-up is probably an assumption too far.17

  What happened to the other earring? Tradition holds that Antony’s friend Lucius Munatius Plancus prevented Cleopatra from dissolving it and, after the queen’s death, it was cut in two and placed in the ears of the statue of Venus in the Pantheon at Rome. As both Venus and the pearl came from the sea, and both symbolised love, this was an entirely appropriate donation.

  Two other Roman pearl-drinking stories exist. Both Horace and Pliny tell the tale of the spendthrift son of the actor Aesopus who drank a pearl taken from the ear of the wealthy lady Metella. Metella’s pearl was, however, smaller than Cleopatra’s, and was valued at just a million sesterces. Suetonius tells us that Caligula, a notorious eccentric, drank pearls dissolved in vinegar; he also, apparently, bathed in perfume and fed his guests on bread and meat made of gold. These multiple tales do not, of course, mean that Cleopatra’s story must be immediately dismissed as an urban myth. Cleopatra may have inspired, or been inspired by, the son of Aesopus, while Caligula may have been inspired by Cleopatra. Nor does the need to boil, crush or steep the pearl in acid necessarily render the story invalid. Cleopatra, acknowledged mistress of the public spectacle, could have stage-managed her act and Antony, flushed with wine and love, is unlikely to have noticed. It is quite obvious that Cleopatra could simply have swallowed the pearl whole, although swallowing, and presumably retrieving the pearl later, would have turned the grandest of gestures into a cheap trick. We know that Cleopatra did wear pearls, as her later coins show her wearing either a lengthy rope of pearls wrapped twice around her neck or, less likely, a shorter pearl necklace and a pearl-embroidered dress. Pearls had no place in traditional Egyptian jewellery, which employed brightly coloured semiprecious stones set in gold, but a Roman fashion for ostentatious pearl-wearing had started in 61, when, following his victory over Mithridates, Pompey commissioned his own portrait to be rendered in pearls. Suetonius tells us that Julius Caesar invaded Britain to collect freshwater pearls, and that back in Rome, as part of an enforced austerity drive, he attempted to restrict the wearing of pearls to those ‘of a designated position and age’.18 Pliny, who clearly disapproved of pearls and all they stood for, records the tale of Lollia Paulina who wore pearl and emerald jewellery worth forty million sesterces and carried the receipts at all times to impress strangers!

  On balance, it seems unlikely that the world’s most expensive banquet was consumed in quite the way that Pliny describes. This does not matter overmuch; it is what we have come to expect from Cleopatra tales. What does matter
is that Pliny apparently believed the tale and used it to spread the propaganda of a Cleopatra who was cunning, recklessly extravagant, and selfish (she alone consumes the ‘banquet’): unnatural and worrying traits for a Roman man to encounter in any woman. At the same time, her easy outwitting of Antony does not bode well for his future. A subsequent story, also told by Pliny, sees Cleopatra poisoning the flowers in her crown before challenging Antony, who is refusing to eat or drink anything that has not been tasted by a slave, to drink a flower-wine mixture. This story has a more sinister ending: Cleopatra stops the trusting Antony from drinking her poisoned flowers and ‘she ordered a prisoner who had been led in to drink it and he promptly died’.19 Again, Cleopatra has outwitted the innocent Antony with consummate ease.