Cleopatra: A Life

by Stacy Schiff

  65. said to be busy: Dio, XLIX.xli.6.

  66. “theatrical and arrogant”: MA, LIV.3.

  67. “a Dionysiac revel”: Huzar, 1985/6, 108.

  CHAPTER VIII: ILLICIT AFFAIRS AND BASTARD CHILDREN

  On the war of propaganda: Dio, Plutarch, Suetonius. Among modern studies of the surviving evidence, M. P. Charlesworth, “Some Fragments of the Propaganda of Mark Antony,” Classical Quarterly 27, no. 3/4 (1933): 172–7; Joseph Geiger, “An Overlooked Item of the War of Propaganda between Octavian and Antony,” Historia 29 (1980): 112–4; and Kenneth Scott, “The Political Propaganda of 44–30 BC,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome XI (1933): 7–49. No one makes sense of the battle of Actium, but John Carter and William Murray come closest. See Murray’s painstaking and ingenious reconstruction of the events in “Octavian’s Campsite Memorial for the Actium War,” in William M. Murray and Photios M. Petsas, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 79, no. 4 (1989): 1–172; and Carter, 1970; as well as in Carter’s notes on the engagement in Cassius Dio: The Roman History (New York: Penguin, 1987), 266. On the battle, the winds, the site, interviews with William Murray, October 14, 2009, and March 3, 2010. See also W. W. Tarn, “The Battle of Actium,” Journal of Roman Studies 21 (1931): 173–99; Casson, 1991. On ND, Plutarch, Table Talk, VIII.iv.723; Bowersock, 1965, 124–5, 134–8; and Mark Toher, “The Terminal Date of Nicolaus’s Universal History,” Ancient History Bulletin 1.6 (1987): 135–8. Angelos Chaniotis is very good on women and warfare, War in the Hellenistic World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 110ff.

  For the Greek stay, the work of Christian Habicht, especially “Athens and the Ptolemies,” Classical Antiquity 11, no. 1 (April 1992): 68–90. Seneca, Suasoriae, 1.7, mentions lampoons against A in Athens.

  1. “illicit affairs”: Lucan, X.76. The translation is from Jones, 2006, 66.

  2. “For talk is evil”: Hesiod, Works and Days, 760. See also Achilles Tatius, VI.10: Virgil’s Aeneid, IV.240–265: “Slander is sharper than any sword, stronger than fire, more persuasive than a siren; rumor is more slippery than water, runs faster than the wind, flies quicker than any winged bird.”

  3. “the abundance that flowed”: Theocritus, Idyll 17 (translation modified).

  4. “galleries, libraries”: Philo, “On the Embassy to Gaius,” 151. The translation is from Forster, 2004, 133.

  5. “if ever that kingdom”: Diodorus, XXXIII.28b.3.

  6. the kind of man you could rely on: JA, XVII.99–100. Also on ND, Plutarch, Table Talk, VIII.iv.723.

  7. sea nymph imitation: VP, II.lxxxiii.

  8. “All of this I bestow”: MA, XXVIII.

  9. The basalt inscription: See P. M. Fraser, “Mark Antony in Alexandria—A Note,” Journal of Roman Studies 47:1–2 (1957): 71–3.

  10. The Roman bodyguards: Dio, L.v.1.

  11. The tax exemptions: See Peter van Minnen, “An Official Act of Cleopatra,” Ancient Society 30 (2000): 29–34; van Minnen, “Further Thoughts on the Cleopatra Papyrus,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 47 (2001): 74–80; van Minnen, “A Royal Ordinance of Cleopatra and Related Documents,” Walker and Ashton, 2003, 35–42.

  12. “only made them come back”: Ibid., 79.

  13. “joined him in the management”: Dio, L.v.1–2.

  14. The young Canidius: Plutarch, “Brutus,” III.

  15. “disturb the auspicious respect”: Appian, V.144. For Sextus Pompey generally, Appian, V.133–45.

  16. A’s numerous misdeeds: Dio, XLVI.x.3.

  17. “good fellowship”: MA, XXXII.

  18. “a veritable weakling”: Dio, L.xviii.3.

  19. According to Suetonius: DA, LXIX. Sejanus was much later said to do the same, “for by maintaining illicit relations with the wives of nearly all the distinguished men, he learned what their husbands were saying and doing,” Dio, LVIII.3.

  20. “invidious wealth” to “solid glory”: Cicero, “Philippic,” V, xviii.50.

  21. “screwing the queen” to “get it up?”: DA, LXIX. I have borrowed Andrew Meadows’s earthy translation, Walker and Higgs, 2001, 29.

  22. “amorous adventures”: Dio, LI.viii.2.

  23. On Ephesus: Hopkins, A World Full of Gods (New York: Plume, 2001), 200–205. Strabo, 14.1.24; NH, V.xxxi.15. Craven, 1920, 22, points out that Ephesus was the seat of the Roman proconsul in Asia; the public records and treasury were there. It was a logical business address for A.

  24. “By certain documents”: Dio, L.ii.6.

  25. “to sail to Egypt”: MA, LVI.

  26. Acquiring an empire with money: Plutarch, “Aemilius Paulus,” XII.9.

  27. “was inferior in intelligence” to “large affairs”: MA, LVI.

  28. “a rabble of Asiatic performers”: MA, XXIV.

  29. “And while almost all the world” to “entertainments and gifts”: Ibid., LVI.

  30. A as Dionysus: On the power of the mythologies, see H. Jeanmarie, “La politique religieuse d’Antoine et de Cléopâtre,” Revue Archéologique 19 (1924): 241–61.

  31. Athenian statue-erecting: Nepos, XXV Atticus, III.2.

  32. The Ptolemaic statuary: Pausanias, 1.8.9; Habicht, 1992, 85. NH, 34, 37.

  33. “by many splendid gifts”: MA, LVII.

  34. The Pergamum library: See Casson, 2001, 48–50. Casson has suggested this was a shrewd way of shrugging off a financial burden. There was no real need for the Pergamum library, in Roman hands already for a century.

  35. “Many times, while he was seated”: MA, LVIII.

  36. “wanton bits”: Plutarch, “Brutus,” V; “Cato the Younger,” XXIV.

  37. “sprang up from his tribunal”: MA, LVIII.

  38. kissing his wife in public: Plutarch, “Marcus Cato,” XVII.7.

  39. “in compliance with some agreement”: MA, LVIII.

  40. what eunuchs did: Dio, L.xxv.2; Horace, Epodes, IX.

  41. The divorce: Neal is especially lucid on the subject, 1975, 110.

  42. “which had hitherto veiled”: Plutarch, “Pompey,” LIII.

  43. “required a sober head” to “scurrilities”: MA, LIX. For Geminius’s heartache, see Plutarch, “Pompey,” II.

  44. “Treachery,” it would be said: VP, II.lxxxiii. For the desertions see also Dio, L.iii.2–3; for Dellius’s weakness of heart, Appian, V.50, 55, 144.

  45. A’s will: Either Dio has his chronology wrong or we all do: He seems to imply (L.xx.7) that Octavian hunted down the will at least a year earlier, before the Donations, which would entirely change the complexion of that ceremony.

  46. “should be borne in state”: MA, LVIII.

  47. “honeyballs of phrases”: Petronius, Satyricon, I.

  48. the Orient and sex: On the “almost uniform association between the Orient and sex,” its “sexual promise (and threat), untiring sensuality, unlimited desire, deep generative energies,” see Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1994), 188; and Flatterer, 56e. For Flaubert in the mid-nineteenth century, the courtesan of old was “the embracing, strangling viper of the Nile.”

  49. “In his hand was a golden scepter”: Florus, II.xxi.11.

  50. “bewitched by that accursed woman”: Dio, L.xxvi.5.

  51. “Then as his love for Cleopatra”: VP, II.lxxxii.

  52. “melts and unmans”: MA, LIII (ML translation).

  53. “a slave to his love”: Florus, II.xxi.11; “he gave not a thought”: Dio, XLVIII.xxiii.2; “he was not even a master of himself”: MA, LX. Plutarch on Omphale, “Demetrius and Antony,” III.3.

  54. “The Egyptian woman demanded”: Florus, II.xxi.11.

  55. “For she so charmed”: Dio, L.v.4.

  56. Reports circulated: Strabo accuses A of pillaging the best art he could find for C, from the temples of Samos and elsewhere, 13.1.30, 14.1.14; also NH, XXXIV 8.19.58.

  57. “longed with womanly desire”: Eutropius, VII.7.

  58. “that the greatest wars”: Athenaeus, XIII.560b. He adds that Egyptian women were known to be “far more amorous than other women.
”

  59. “I don’t much like”: Plautus, “The Pot of Gold,” 167–9. The translation is from Skinner, 2005, 201.

  60. “Would a woman”: Lucan, X.67.

  61. A just declaration of war: Livy, 1.32.5–14. On the traditional procedure, Meyer Reinhold, “The Declaration of War against Cleopatra,” Classical Journal 77, no. 2 (1981–2): 97–103; also R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 127–8; and Thomas Wiedemann, “The Fetiales: A Reconsideration,” Classical Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1986): 478–90. It is Wiedemann who speculates that Octavian invented the rite.

  62. “had voluntarily taken up”: Dio, L.vi.1.

  63. “What in the world does he mean”: Ibid., L.xxi.3.

  64. “is at war with me”: Ibid., L.xxi.1.

  65. “For I adjudged” to “passed against her”: Ibid., L.xxvi.3.

  66. “as a whole far surpassed”: Ibid., L.vi.2–3.

  67. “he sought a reputation”: Florus, I.xlv.19.

  68. “spying upon and annoying”: Dio, L.xi.1.

  69. The Acropolis statues: Ibid., L.viii.1–5, L.xv.3.

  70. “Hail Caesar”: Macrobius, Saturnalia, 2.4.29.

  71. “desired to be the ruler”: Nepos, “Atticus,” XX.4.

  72. A’s status in Egypt: Generally categories were more fluid in Egypt, where Alexander the Great could become a pharaoh, a female ruler could reign as a king, and the divinities tended to run together. Rome preferred clearer distinctions. Not coincidentally, Latin is “much less hospitable than Greek to compound words and neologisms,” Rawson, 2001, 232.

  73. One of the greatest twentieth-century classicists: Tarn (and Charlesworth), 1965, 96–7.

  74. “we who are Romans”: Dio, L.xxiv.3.

  75. “for it is impossible”: Ibid., L.xxvii.4. He could have been quoting Cicero, who railed against a man “debauched, immodest, effeminate, even when in fear never sober,” “Philippic,” III.v.12.

  76. “are most wanton”: ND, Fr. 129. On the costly furniture, DA, LXX.

  77. in such a contest: Dio, L.xxviii.6.

  78. “this pestilence of a woman”: Dio, L.xxiv.5 (Penguin translation).

  79. “to conquer and rule” to “equal to a man”: Ibid., L.xxviii.3–4.

  80. “What is there dreadful in Caesar’s”: MA, LXII.

  81. What does our history mean: Propertius, Elegies, 3.11.47–68. On C as a paltry triumph, Elegies 4.6.64–6. Nourse, 2002, 128, notes that the Greeks perceived “woman as dangerously emotional and destructively petty when allowed access to power.” The magistrate who faces off against Lysistrata in Aristophanes makes a different point. “But men must never, ever be worsted by women!” he cries, handing the baton directly to Lucan and Propertius.

  82. infinitely more suitable as a battle site: Dio, L.xii.8.

  83. The color of the Actium camp: For the Median vests, Plutarch, “Paulus,” XVIII and XXX–XXXII; the Ptolemaic military cloak comes from Athenaeus, V.196f. According to Sallust, the Armenian army was famed for its gorgeous armor. The decorated arms, Mayor, 2010, 11–12, 206; Walker and Higgs, 2001, 264. Plutarch supplies some description of a military camp in his life of Brutus; Josephus vividly evokes its precision in JW, III.77–102. There is some debate about the Antonia’s purple sails, despite NH, XIX.V, and Casson’s conviction about them, interview of January 26, 2009. William Murray believes they may constitute a literary flourish; interview of March 3, 2010. In any event the ship would have been magnificently carved.

  84. “For extravagance in other objects”: Plutarch, “Philopoemen,” IX.3.7.

  85. some familiar advice: JW, I.389–90.

  86. “May your Lordship”: Cited in Antonia Fraser, The Warrior Queens (New York: Knopf, 1989), 190.

  87. A’s officers on C: Suetonius, “Nero,” III; Appian, IV.38.

  88. Ahenobarbus and A in Parthia: MA, XL.

  89. eating stale bread: Plutarch, “Caius Marius,” VII. He was meant as well to sleep on a simple pallet, which A surely did not do with C in camp.

  90. “his ears, it seems”: JW, I.390.

  91. “abused by Cleopatra”: MA, LVIII.

  92. “The chief task of a good general”: Plutarch, “Agesilaus and Pompey,” IV.

  93. A’s distrust of C: NH, 21.12.

  94. Dellius’s desertion: VP, II.lxxxiv; Dio, L.xiii.8.

  95. blundered grievously: Plutarch, “Pompey,” LXXVI; Appian, II.71. The results were pitiful, JC, XLV.

  96. “I have chosen to begin”: Dio, L.xix.5.

  97. “For in general”: Ibid., L.iii.2–3.

  98. “in miserable logs” to “conquer our enemies or die”: MA, LXIV.

  99. “better endowed”: Ibid., XL.

  100. “Since, then, they admit”: Dio, L.xxx.3–4.

  101. Dio suggests that A fled: Ibid., L.xxxiii.3–4.

  102. “he went forward alone” to “eat and sleep together”: MA, LXVII. It is entirely possible that Plutarch invented the sulk, or introduced it prematurely. It may equally well have been retrofitted to the story, along with C’s treachery. See also VP, II.lxxxv.

  103. purple and gold spangles: Florus, II.xxi.

  104. The floral decorations: Dio, LI.v.4.

  105. scale of his victory: Murray, 1989, 142, persuasively argues that before and after Actium Octavian captured some 350 ships, including several equally as large as C’s flagship.

  CHAPTER IX: THE WICKEDEST WOMAN IN HISTORY

  For C’s final days we are almost exclusively alone with Dio and Plutarch; Eusebius, Eutropius, Horace, Suetonius, and Velleius make ancillary contributions. On Plutarch’s approach to C’s death, Pelling, 2002, is particularly fine, 106ff. See also J. Gwyn Griffiths, “The Death of Cleopatra VII,” Journal of Egyptian Archeology 47 (Dec. 1961): 113–8; Yolande Grisé, Le suicide dans la Rome antique (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1982); Saul Jarcho, “The Correspondence of Morgagni and Lancisi on the Death of Cleopatra,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 43, no. 4 (1969): 299–325; W. R. Johnson, “A Quean, A Great Queen? Cleopatra and the Politics of Misrepresentation,” Arion VI, no. 3 (1967): 387–402; Gabriele Marasco, “Cleopatra e gli esperimenti su cavie umane,” Historia 44 (1995): 317–25. Francesco Sbordone, “La morte di Cleopatra nei medici greci,” Rivista Indo-Greco-Italica 14 (1930): 1–20; T. C. Skeat’s ingenious chronology of C’s end, “The Last Days of Cleopatra,” Journal of Roman Studies 13 (1953): 98–100; Tarn, 1931. On the fates of C’s children, Meiklejohn, 1934.

  For a nuanced account of the triumph and the fallout from Actium, see Robert Alan Gurval, Actium and Augustus: The Politics and Emotions of Civil War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).

  For C’s enduring, evolving image, or how she entered into modern mythology: Mary Hamer, Signs of Cleopatra (London: Routledge, 1993); Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions (New York: Harper & Row, 1990); Richardine G. Woodall, “Not Know Me Yet? The Metamorphosis of Cleopatra” (PhD dissertation, York University, 2004); Wyke, 2002, 195–320.

  1. “The wickedest woman”: Cecil B. DeMille, cited in Michelle Lovric, Cleopatra’s Face (London: British Museum Press, 2001), 83.

  2. “I was equal to gods”: Euripides, “Hekabe,” in Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides, Anne Carson, tr. (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006), 371–2.

  3. Misfortune, went the saying: Euripides, “Heracles,” in Euripides II, 560.

  4. She did not care to watch them: Dio, LI.v.5.

  5. “a most bold and wonderful” to “war and slavery”: Plutarch, LXIX (ML translation). For an intriguing take on A and C’s post-Actium plans, see Claude Nicolet’s “Où Antoine et Cléopâtre voulaient-ils aller?,” Semitica 39 (1990): 63–6.

  6. the monstrosity of a vessel: Athenaeus, V.203e–204d.

  7. The Nabateans: Strabo extends their territory from southern Jordan to the head of the Gulf of Eilat, 16.4.21–6.

  8. “every bit of his soul”: JA, XV.190. Similarly if less dramatically, JW, I.388�
�94. Herod’s cozying up to Octavian looked nobler in retrospect: “And when war had been declared by the Romans on all the monarchs in the world, our kings alone, by reason of their fidelity, remained their allies and friends,” explains Josephus, Against Apion, II, 134.

  9. “the new Hannibal”: On Sertorius, Plutarch, “Pompey,” XVII–XIX; Plutarch, “Cato the Younger,” LIX; Dio, LI.viii.6.

  10. “without having accomplished anything”: Dio, LI.v.6.

  11. Octavian’s assassination: Ibid., LI.vi.4.

  12. A’s modest hut: Strabo, 17.1.9.

  13. “for he himself also had been wronged”: MA, LXIX.

  14. Dio slips in a bitter note: Dio, LI.vii.2–3.

  15. “at such a time there is no use”: Flatterer, 69a.

  16. “irresistible courage”: Appian, IV.112.

  17. “set the whole city”: MA, LXXI (ML translation).

  18. “to continue the struggle”: Dio, LI.vi.1.

  19. Caesarion was hailed as pharaoh: Walker and Higgs, 2001, 175.

  20. “for she hoped that even if”: Dio, LI.vi.6.

  21. “amorous adventures” to “might be saved”: Ibid., LI.viii.2–3.

  22. rank and file in check: Ibid., LI.iii.4.

  23. “a woman who was haughty”: MA, LXXIII.

  24. “thought it her due”: Dio, LI.viii.7. To C’s list of Roman conquests, Plutarch offhandedly and illogically adds Cn. Pompey, MA, XXV.4.

  25. “to hang him up”: MA, LXXII.

  26. “suited to her fallen fortunes” to “went away rich”: Ibid., LXXIII (ML translation).

  27. “splendor, luxury, and sumptuosity”: Ibid., LXXI (ML translation).

  28. “surpassingly lofty”: Ibid., LXXIV.

  29. “that Antony and Cleopatra learned”: Dio, LI.v.2.

  30. “realm was far too” and the welcome: JW, I.394–6. See also JA, XV.199–202.

  31. “strange, wild life”: Macurdy, 1932, 221.

  32. The account of C’s bribery: MA, LXXIV.

  33. Octavian storming Pelusium: Dio, LI.ix.5.

  34. “she expected to gain”: Ibid., LI.ix.6.