Cleopatra the Great

by Joann Fletcher

  226 ‘in honour of Julius Caesar’. Ashton 2003, p.143.

  227 ‘Serapion, not waiting to consult Cleopatra, sent Cassius what ships they had’. Appian, Roman History IV.61, White trans., p.243.

  227 ‘for the Red and Indian Seas’. Tarn in Goudchaux 2003 p.109.

  228 ‘with a powerful fleet to assist them, in defiance of Cassius’. Appian Roman History V.8, in White trans., p.389.

  229 ‘his conduct so disgusting to the remainder of the prisoners they courteously saluted Antony as their conqueror, but abused [Octavian] to his face with the most obscene epithets’. Suetonius, Augustus 13, Graves trans, p.57.

  229 ‘though in ill-health at the time’. Suetonius, Augustus 56 Graves trans., p.56.

  229 ‘columns entrusting the city entirely to the goddess’ guardianship as its Queen and Saviour’. Witt 1970, p.327.

  229 ‘the unusual arrangement of hair or head-ornament may reflect the subject’s involvement in a religious cult or suggest that she should be compared to a goddess’. Walker and Higgs (eds.,) 2001, No.212, Rome Museo Capitolini 3356, p.231.

  230 ‘erected a scaffold in plain sight above the theatre, and roofed with green boughs, like the ‘caves’ built for Bacchic revels; on this he hung tambourines, fawnskins and other Dionysiac trinkets of all sorts, where he reclined in company with his friends and drank from early morning, being entertained by artists summoned from Italy, while Greeks from all parts assembled to see the spectacle ... he even shifted the place of his revels to the top of the Acropolis, while the entire city of Athens was illuminated with torches hung from the roofs. And he gave orders that he should be recognised as Dionysus throughout all the cities’. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV. 148, Gulick trans., pp.176-7.

  231 ‘a woman of restless spirit and very bold’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.758.

  231 ‘dressed up like bacchantes and the men and boys like satyrs and fauns, and throughout the town nothing was to be seen but spears wreathed about with ivy, harps, flutes and psalteries, while Antony in their songs was Dionysus the Giver of Joy’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.756.

  Chapter 9

  235 ‘set himself at once to pay his court to the Egyptian . . . advising her to go to Cilicia in her best attire’. Plutarch, Antony 25, Dryden trans., p.756.

  235 ‘adroitness and subtlety in speech’. Plutarch, Antony 25, Dryden trans., p.756.

  235 ‘many letters of invitation from him and his friends’. Plutarch, Antony 26-21 in Rowlandson (ed.) 1998, p.39.

  235 ‘she made great preparations for her journey, of money, gifts, and ornaments of value, such as so wealthy a kingdom might afford’. Plutarch, Antony 25, Dryden trans., p.756.

  236 ‘was to meet Antony in the time of life when women’s beauty is most splendid’. Plutarch Antony 25, Dryden trans., p.756.

  236 ‘painted up beyond all measure’. Lucan, Civil War 10.137-141 Duff trans., p.601

  236 ‘a careful toilet will make you attractive, but without such attention, the loveliest faces lose their charm, even were they comparable to those of the Idalian goddess herself. Ovid, Art of Love III. 105-106, Lewis May trans., p.89.

  236 ‘oesyspum’ in Allason-Jones 1990, p.130; lead toxicity in Vitruvius, De Architectura VIII in Jackson 1988, p.45; non-toxic cream in Evershed et al. 2004; orchil in Parker 2002, pp.41-42.

  236 Female stare like death blow or ‘loosening the knees’ in Llewellyn-Jones 2003, p.263.

  237 ‘The Royal’. Pliny Natural History XIII. 18, Loeb trans., p.109.

  237 ‘that your oiled tresses may not injure your splendid silk dress, let this pin fix your twisted hair, and keep it up’. Martial, Epigrams XIV.24 in 1871 trans., p.608.

  237 ‘with ivory combs in their hands . . . combing the goddess’s royal hair’. Apuleius XI.9, Graves trans., p.275.

  237 ‘I love to see it fall in floating tresses about your shoulders’. Ovid Art of Love III.235-8, in Lewis May trans., p.91.

  238 ‘long thick hair fell in tapering ringlets on her lovely neck’. Apuleius, Graves trans., p.270.

  238 ‘leave uncovered the top of your shoulder and the upper part of your left arm. That is especially becoming to women who have a white skin. At the mere sight of it, I should be mad to cover all I could touch with kisses’. Ovid, Art of Love III.307-310, Lewis May trans., p.93; Aphrodite’s chiton revealing left shoulder in Walker and Higgs (eds.,) 2001, p.312.

  238 ‘to kindle in us the fires of love, dress is more potent than the dread arts of the magician’. Ovid, Art of Beauty 35-36, Lewis May trans., p.114. 238 ‘white breasts’. Lucan, Civil War 10.141, Duff trans., p.601.

  238 ‘azure blue like a clear sky . . . water-green from the colour that it imitates, I could easily imagine that the Nymphs were clothed in such apparel’. Ovid, Art of Love III, 173-178, Lewis May trans., p.90; also Empereur 2002, p.29.

  239 ‘in the whole of history . . . come down to her through the hands of the Kings of the East’. Pliny, IX.121-122, Loeb trans., p.243; references to ‘her gold, silver, emeralds, pearls’ in Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  239 ‘word went round that Aphrodite was coming to revel with Dionysos for the good of Asia’. Plutarch, Antony 26-27, in Rowlandson (ed.) 1998, p.39.

  239 ‘sailed up the river Kydnos in a gold-prowed barge, with purple sails spread, and rowed along by silver oars to the sound of the flute mingled with pipes and flutes. She lay beneath a gold-spangled canopy, adorned like Aphrodite in a picture, and young boys, like Cupids in pictures, stood on either side and fanned her. So too the most beautiful of her serving maids, wearing the robes of Nereids and of Graces, some stood by the rudders and some by the bulwarks. Wonderful scents from many types of incense permeated the riverbanks. Some of the populace escorted her on either side from the river mouth, and others came down from the city for the spectacle. The crowd in the market place poured out, until Antony himself, seated on his tribunal [seat], was left alone’. Plutarch, Antony 26-27, in Rowlandson (ed.) 1998, p.39.

  240 ‘a spectacle that has seldom been equalled for beauty’. Plutarch, Antony 27, Dryden trans., p.757.

  240 ‘was amazed at her wit as well as her good looks, and became her captive as though he were a young man, although he was forty years of age’. Appian, Roman History V.8, White, trans., p.389.

  240 ‘arranged in his honour a royal symposium, in which the service was entirely of gold and jewelled vessels made with exquisite art . . . overwhelmed with the richness of the display . . . quietly smiled and said that all these things were a present for him’. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV.147, Gulick trans., pp.174-5.

  240 Cleopatra’s defence of her actions in Appian, Roman History V.8, White, trans., p.389.

  240 ‘on this occasion she provided an even more sumptuous symposium by far, so that she caused the vessels which had been used on that first occasion to appear paltry; and once used she presented him with these also. As for the officers, each was allowed to take the couch on which he had reclined; even the sideboards, as well as the spreads for the couches, were divided among them. And when they departed, she furnished litters for the guests of high rank, with bearers, while for the greater number she provided horses gaily caparisoned with silver-plate harness, and for all she sent along Ethiopian slaves to carry the torches’. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV.147-148, Gulick trans., pp.174-7.

  241 ‘he was very desirous to outdo her as well in magnificence as contrivance; but he found he was altogether beaten in both, and was so well convinced of it that he was himself the first to jest and mock at his poverty of wit and his rustic awkwardness’. Plutarch, Antony XXVI, Dryden trans., p.757.

  241 ‘without any sort of reluctance or reserve’. Plutarch, Antony XXVI, Dryden trans., p.757.

  241 ‘the whole wide world under a woman’s hand ruled and obeying everywhere shall stand . . . the Widow shall be queen of the whole wide world’. Oracula Sibyllina III.79 in Grant 1972, p.173.

  241 ‘whatever Cleopatra ordered was done, regardles
s of laws, human or divine. While her sister Arsinoe was a suppliant in the temple of Artemis . . . Antony sent assassins thither and put her to death’. Appian, Roman History V, White trans., p.389.

  242 ‘she gave him a magnificent reception . . . He went out only to the temples, the schools, and the discussions of the learned, and spent his time with Greeks, out of deference to Cleopatra, to whom his sojourn in Alexandria was wholly devoted’. Appian Roman History V.ll White trans., pp.393-5.

  242 ‘exercised in arms, she was there to see’. Plutarch, Antony in Dryden trans., p.758.

  242 ‘secret orders to the fishermen to dive under water and put fishes that had been already taken upon his hooks; and these he drew so fast that the Egyptian perceived it. But feigning great admiration she told everybody how dextrous Antony was and invited them next day to come and see him again. So when a number of them had come on board the fishing boats, as soon as he had let down his hook one of her servants was before hand with his divers and fixed upon his hook a salted fish from Pontus. Antony, feeling his line give, drew up the prey, when, as may be imagined, great laughter ensu(ed.) Said Cleopatra ‘Leave the fishing rod, general, to us poor sovereigns of Pharos and Canopus; your game is cities, provinces and kingdoms’. Plutarch, Antony Dryden trans., p.758.

  242 ‘was over and over again disarmed by Cleopatra, and beguiled away, while great actions and enterprises of the first necessity fell, as it were, from his hands, to go with her to the seashore at Canopus and Taphosiris, and play about’. Plutarch, Antony and Demitrius Compared, Dryden trans., p.780.

  242 ‘fast watering-place’. Milne 1916(b), p-78; ‘dizzy combination of Lourdes and St. Tropez’. Montserrat 1996, p. 164.

  243 ‘people of the highest renown had faith and slept within it’. Strabo 17.801 in Milne 1916(b), p.78.

  243 ‘Herakles in the picture where Omphale is seen removing his club and stripping him of his lion skin’. Plutarch, Antony and Demitrius Compared, Dryden trans., p.780.

  243 ‘forgetting his nation, his name, his toga’. Floras II.21.2-3 in Walker 2003, p.197; Maehler 2003, p.213.

  243 ‘cymbal player from Canopus’. Cassius Dio 50.27, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.54; portrait bust in Bankes Collection in Walker and Higgs (eds.,) 2001, p.241.

  243 ‘over-ready tongue and impudent wit’. Statius, Silvae V.5.66-68 in Maehler 2003, p.213, with a ‘taste for the grotesque and sexual that characterises other aspects of Alexandrian art’. MacLeod (ed.) 2002, pp.122-3.

  243 ‘performer of improper dances’. Seneca in Grant 1972, p.179.

  244 ‘performing a dance in which his naked body was painted blue and his head encircled with reeds, whilst he wore a fish’s tail and crawled upon his knees’. Velleius Paterculus, 11.83.2 in Grant 1972, p.178.

  244 ‘she played at dice with him’. Plutarch, Antony Dryden trans., p.758; counter game in Ward-Perkins and Claridge 1976, no. 239 and Walker and Higgs (eds) pp.316-17.

  244 ‘the Parasite’. Fraser 1957, pp.71-3; Walker and Higgs (eds) 2001, p.232.

  244 ‘members entertained one another daily in turn, with an extravagance of expenditure beyond measure or belief. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.757.

  245 ‘admired the prodigious variety of all things; but particularly, seeing eight wild boars roasting whole, says he, “surely you have a great number of guests”. The cook laughed at his simplicity, and told him that there were not above 12 to sup, but that every dish was to be served up just roasted to a turn, and if anything was but one minute ill-timed, it was spoil(ed.) “And” he said “maybe Antony will sup just now, maybe not this hour, maybe he will call for wine, or begin to talk, and will put it off. So that” he continued “it is not one but many suppers must be had in readiness, as it is impossible to guess at his hour”. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.757.

  245 ‘so good that Maroitic wine is racked off with a view to ageing it’. Strabo, Geography 17.1.14, in Empereur 1997, p.217; Oases’ wines in Poo 1995, p.20, 99; Ptolemaia festival in Athenaeus, Deipnosophists V.198, trans., pp.400-1.

  246 ‘house rang with the din of drunkards, the pavements swam with wine, the walls dripped with it’. Cicero, Second Philippic, Graves trans., p.147.

  246 ‘you are a drink-sodden, sex-ridden wreck!’. Cicero, Second Philippic, Graves trans., p.105.

  246 ‘soaked in wine’. Cicero, Thirteenth Philippic, 31, in Heskel 2001, p.137.

  246 ‘a great man of notable ability . . . turned to alien ways and unroman vices by his love of drink and his equal passion for Cleopatra’. Seneca in Lindsay 1970 p.478.

  246 ‘the Egyptian woman demanded the Roman Empire from the drunken general as the price of her favours’. Lucius Annaeus Floras in Lovric, p.72.

  246 ‘swimming in Mareotic wine’. Horace 1.37.14 in Maehler 2003, p.210. 246 ‘a tongue submerged by incessant wine’. Propertius III.ll, trans., Shepherd 1985 in Maehler 2003, p.210.

  246 ‘take to yourself the wine from Khargeh, from Farafra, the wine from Khargeh and Bahariya, and may your mouth be opened by it’. Poo 1995, pp.20, 99.

  246 ‘drunkenness upon drunkenness without end’. Poo 1995, p.143.

  247 ‘braided, beauteous, tressed, high bosomed, richly adorned, all drank with wine’. Cairo JE.29310, based on Lichtheim 1980, p.56.

  247 ‘How happy is the temple of Amun, even she that spends her days in festivity with the king of the gods within her . . . she is like a drunken woman, who sits outside the chamber with braided hair and beauteous breasts’. Fletcher 1995, p.56 (based on Davies and Gardiner).

  247 ‘perhaps a famous drinker whose statue could be properly placed within a precinct of the god of wine’. Ridgway 1990, p.337.

  247 ‘nothing less than a symbol of Greek cultural identity’. Davidson 1997, p.40.

  247 ‘no man who is a wine-lover can be of low character’. Alexis, in Davidson 1997, p.52.

  248 ‘entirely of gold . . .jewelled vessels made with exqusite art’. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV.147, Gulick trans., pp.174-5; amethysts in Pliny Natural History XXXVII.124, Loeb trans., p.265 and Parker 2002, p.47.

  248 ‘the latest vaudeville numbers, the slinkiest hits from the Nile!’. Ovid, Art of Love III.316-318, in Montserrat 1996, p.117.

  248 ‘Apollo is here for the dance, I hear his lyre playing and I sense the Cupids, and Aphrodite herself . . . He who madly joins the all-night dancing, staying awake til dawn comes, will receive the prize of honey cakes for playing the kottabos game, and he may kiss whom he will of all the girls and whomever he wants of the boys’. Montserrat 1996, p.179; Thompson 1964, p.163.

  248 ‘she would go rambling with him to disturb and torment people at their doors and windows, dressed like a servant-woman, for Antony also went in servant’s disguise, and from these expeditions he often came home very scurvily answered, and sometimes even beaten severely, though most people guessed who he was. However, the Alexandrians in general liked it all well enough, and joined good-humouredly and kindly in his frolic and play, saying they were much obliged to Antony for acting his tragic parts at Rome and keeping his comedy for them’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.758.

  248 ‘the fourth krater is mine no longer, but belongs to hubris; the fifth to shouting, the sixth to revel, the seventh to black eyes, the eighth to summonses, the ninth to bile and the tenth to madness and people tossing furniture about’. Eubulus, in Davidson 1997, p.44; ‘sea sickness’ in Davidson 1997, p.44.

  249 ‘into the bowl in which their wine was mixed she slipped a drug that had the power of robbing grief and anger of their sting and banishing all painful memories. No one that swallowed this dissolved in wine could shed a single tear that day . . . This powerful anodyne was one of many useful drugs which had been given to the daughter of Zeus [Helen] by an Egyptian lady, Polydamna, the wife of Thon. For the fertile soil of Egypt is most rich in herbs, many of which are wholesome in solution, though many are poisonous. And in medical knowledge the Egyptian leaves the rest of the world behind’. Homer, Odyssey IV, Rieu trans.,
p.58.

  249 ‘used to produce beer, and shepen occurs in medical texts’. Manniche 1989, p.131.

  249 ‘to produce a narcotic-laced wine’. Nunn 1996, p.157.

  249 ‘should drink their chaplets’. Pliny Natural History XXI. 12, in Loeb trans., p.169.

  249 ‘I shall not prepare love charms against you, whether in your beverages or in your food’. PSI.1.64 in Rowlandson (ed.) 1998, p.323.

  250 ‘that remarkable and truly unique work of nature. Antony was full of curiosity to see what in the world she was going to do’. Pliny Natural History IX.59.119-121, Loeb trans., p.245.

  250 ‘knowing that it could be recovered later on’. Rackham in Pliny IX, trans., p.244, note b.

  250 Revised chemical formula based on CaCO3 + CH3COOH > Ca + H2O + C02 given at website http://penelope.uchicago.edu/grout/encyclopaediaromana/miscellanea/cleopatra.html; for pearls dissolving in acidic conditions see Allason-Jones 1990, p.128.

  250 ‘at a great banquet in front of many guests, he had risen up and rubbed her feet, to fulfil some wager or promise’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.769.

  250 ‘what you are doing now to me, rubbing my feet with your lovely soft hands, it is quite magnificent’. Antiphanes in Davidson 1997, p.162.

  251 ‘the Inimitable Lover’. Fraser 1957, p.73.

  251 ‘the erotic charge unleashed even then by lingerie, which helped women look their best for their lovers’. Varone, in Stafford 2005, p.106; Aphrodite removing breast band popular motif, e.g. Staatliche Anti-kensammlungen und Glyptothek Miinchen 8516 in Stafford 2005, fig.9.6, p.107.

  251 ‘all my power resides’. Homer, Iliad 14.214-217, trans., Graves pp.262-3; necklace ‘worn across the chest bandolier-style’ in d’Ambrosio 2001, p.55; harness in Laing 1997, p.80.

  251 ‘in their homes lustful embraces of their gods. People who reckon sexual excess to be piety . . . ornament their bedrooms with small painted pictures, hanging up rather high, like offerings in a temple. While lying in bed in the midst of their sensual pleasure they can feast their eyes on a naked Aphrodite locked in sexual union with Ares’. Clement Protrepticus IV.57-61.4, in Montserrat 1996, p.213.