by Pat Brown
During my documentary work with Atlantic Productions, I was to scuba dive down to the bottom of the harbor, where there can be seen a variety of pieces of columns, a giant obelisk, a number of sphinxes and statues, ruins from the palace of Cleopatra discovered by underwater archeologist Franck Goddio.3 The videographer and I went to make a practice dive the day before we were to film, to make sure I was comfortable with my scuba maneuvers (which I was not since I had failed the mask test). We sank into the water, and after a few moments, I came up and waved at him and asked if he was filming anything.
“Film? I can’t see my hand in front of my face in this polluted water.”
Apparently, we had hit a bad day, so we gave up and went off for dinner. I spent the rest of the night on the floor of my hotel bathroom, the only time in my travels I ever got horribly ill from either food or water or whatever was in the Mediterranean Sea that day. The next morning, the videographer was late arriving to join the team, and he came practically crawling down the stairs. Whatever I caught, he obviously did as well.
When it came to shooting the scuba segment, there was no way it was safe for me to go underwater in my nauseated state. So I donned the wetsuit, climbed down the ladder, threw water over myself, and came up and excitedly spoke of the wonders I had seen. I felt a bit guilty over the charade, but movie crews take a bit of license with the setup of certain aspects of their programs. The British producer ended up being my body double, and she got the pleasure of viewing the underwater ruins.
Later, when my friends watched the documentary and they commented on my scuba-diving venture in Alexandria, I wryly commented that the backside of the woman they saw in the wetsuit hardly resembled my own.
As I sat in a café on the Corniche drinking my tea, with the vision of Cleopatra’s Alexandria in my head, if nowhere in my sight, I could still feel just from my view of the harbor and the buildings lining the semicircular curve of the shore and the colorful fishing boats dotting the waters, that the city she was born into was a fitting place for the last pharaoh of Egypt. It was clear that from the time Alexander the Great envisioned the city he was laying out in 332 BCE to Cleopatra VII’s birth in 69 BCE, a dozen and a half Ptolemies before her built the city up to near its zenith before she entered onto the scene. She was born into wealth and power and a world of greatness, and she made herself a star within it.
But exactly who was this Cleopatra, resident of the great city of Alexandria, who has fascinated so many through the years? Was she the emotionally fragile, beautiful siren who selfishly and impulsively lured men to their deaths as so many stories about her portray? Or was she an attractive, brilliant, and clever leader who methodically made political choices to continue her rule and save her kingdom? Was she a pure Egyptian or a pure Macedonian or a mix of the two physically and culturally? Did she resemble the image of the relief of Cleopatra on the backside of the Temple of Hathor in the Dendera temple complex (on the West Bank of the Nile, an hour’s drive northeast from Luxor in Upper Egypt), which makes her look like a beautiful, statuesque Egyptian Isis—or did she look more like the hooked-nosed, quite-unattractive profile we see of her on the coins she herself released? Who was she really? What was she capable of? And what line of action would she be most likely to pursue? Understanding the real Cleopatra makes a difference in understanding what behavior she would exhibit over her adult years as queen of Egypt and in the decisions she would make as the months, weeks, and days ticked away toward the end of the Ptolemaic Dynasty.
I placed my Egyptian coins on the table and walked toward the Bibleotheca Alexandrina, a stunning (to my relief) piece of architecture that shines with modernity, a slanted discus of a glass roof on top of eleven floors, the outside wall with the letters of 120 languages, restoring in a sense the ancient library of Alexandria, which some ancient and present historians claim was burned to the ground when Julius Caesar set fire to the fleet in the harbor during the Alexandrian War; however, there is not credible evidence to back such a charge since the distance of the library from the docks and its solid construction would have allowed only its collection of books to burn if half of Alexandria had burned with it, and that never happened. The destruction of the library no doubt occurred over many years, but exactly what happened to it, we will never know.4
Now, however, a great library has been resurrected in Alexandria. Some $3.5 million and seventeen years went into building the modern library, which houses an incredible eight million books from many nations, including English-language books on the histories of Egypt and Rome, in which I could review the facts of history that set up Cleopatra’s birth, her reign, and her death. I paid my entrance fee and set out in search of Cleopatra’s past.
As I perused the shelves of the library, it was abundantly clear that the history of Cleopatra VII, a queen whose name is known the world over, hardly garners more than a fraction of space among the tomes written of the Egyptian past. Many hundreds of years preceded the queen’s few decades in time, and the story of man in Egypt before her arrival is extensive. Who Cleopatra is didn’t start with her birth or what she experienced in her childhood. Understanding anyone begins with the person’s family history and the culture he or she is part of. Cleopatra was the last ruler in the long line of pharaohs descended from the Macedonian region of Greece and the recipient of generations of Ptolemaic experience and wisdom. Her “modern world” began with Alexander the Great’s conquering of Egypt and the placement of her direct relative and Alexander’s right-hand man, Ptolemy I, on the throne of Egypt as the first of the Ptolemaic pharaohs. Alexander, the highly aggressive, successful, and gregarious general, gave his name to the great future city of Alexandria, waved his sword above the still-untouched acreage, and envisioned a grand capital, one brought to life by Ptolemy. Sadly, Alexander never again set foot in the future spectacular city that bore his name; only his stolen body was carried back by Ptolemy I to rest temporarily in a marble tomb in Egypt before vanishing forever into oblivion. Alexander, who saw himself as the physical embodiment of the great warrior Achilles, the hero of his beloved Iliad, Homer’s grand epic poem of the Trojan War, set for himself high standards of bravery, honor, and achievement. These were grandiose aims for a mere mortal, but Alexander can certainly be admired for the level of attainment he achieved as a “good king and a mighty warrior.”1
A basic understanding of the history of Macedonia is useful since it is out of this milieu that the Ptolemaic Dynasty emerged, along with its history, both cultural and military, that instructed the line of pharaohs down to the very last one. The history of earlier Egypt certainly affected the choices the Ptolemies made to control their vast domain as conquerors. While invaders may be adept at making use of certain aspects of the conquered culture and religion to their advantage (to retain control and to build their wealth), it is quite evident in history that the winner makes the rules and the losers go along with the program if they want to survive.
At the time of the birth of Alexander’s father, Philip II, in 382 BCE, the Macedonians were considered backward and uncultured by the elite Greeks of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. This kingdom to the south of Greece spoke a dialect of Greek considered low and unintelligible by their northern neighbors. They gave little credit to the region or recognized its strength until Philip took the Macedonian throne in 359 BCE. He was a king who had it all. He was brilliant, charming, and aggressive; and he could be both diplomatic and brutal. And he was the ultimate warrior. When such a man rises to the top, it is easy to understand why he was able to conquer his neighbors and seize complete control over vast amounts of land and build himself an empire.
Philip II, however, had one great fault, which was to be his undoing. After he conquered nearly all the Greek kingdoms by 336 BCE and was heading off to take on the Persians, the greatest empire of the time, he managed to get himself assassinated by his own Macedonian enemies (which may have included his wife, Olympias, and their son, Alexander), having neglected to keep himself on their good s
ide. Narcissism has been many a great man’s undoing. When he reaches a point where he believes himself to be the epitome of perfection, he often fails to see growing resentment among those he treats as lesser beings. We will later see that this self-centeredness was the undoing of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony as well.
Just as Philip entered the theatre for a grand October celebration of Macedonian might and his own great achievements, one of his seven bodyguards suddenly stabbed the king in the chest. The other bodyguards killed the assassin quickly as he attempted to flee, so it is difficult to judge whether this was one disgruntled underling or if he was the sacrificial lamb for a bigger plot. However, since Alexander simply moved into his father’s position, there doesn’t seem to be any political incentive to assassinate Philip unless Alexander was becoming impatient to be in charge. There were rumors that his mother, Olympias, instigated the murder, but no one was going to push the issue since Alexander was already on the throne and no good would come of angering the new king. Since Alexander was present at the time of the assassination as well and was a witness the murder, the other possibility was that he was supposed to have been taken down with his father. That would have dramatically changed history. However, it seems a bit odd (to me at least) that the plot would be only half-enacted, unless the assassins were quite pitiful in the execution of the plan. But since father and son were supposed to be seated together and were not, maybe the plan went awry.
One thing is for sure: the young Alexander learned from this incident (even if he was involved in his father’s death). Being king was a dangerous job, and he would have to be vigilant over the possibility that he could be next. His father wasn’t the only Macedonian leader to be eliminated by domestic rivals, hence the seven bodyguards Philip employed to protect him. But since, as quite often happens, it is one’s own men who do one in, Alexander learned that no one was to be entirely trusted—even one’s own child. Many a king and queen have been dispatched by their progeny in order for them to assume the throne. Such royal parents, whose own lusting for power brought them to the throne and kept them in power for any time at all, surely are role models for their sons and daughters, and their ruthlessness and narcissism is passed on to the next generation. Some great monarchs even refused to have children to avoid creating equally ambitious versions of themselves. Whether or not Alexander had any part in the demise of his father, the Macedonians were fortunate that this young man was as brilliant and militarily adept as his father when he became king at the age of twenty. In spite of his youth, he was far advanced for his years in wisdom and diplomacy, and he had been trained since childhood for the battlefield. He was just sixteen when he led troops into battle, and within a couple of years, he was the best general in Macedonia. He would develop a devastating Macedonian war strategy: a phalanx equipped with huge wooden spikes that the infantry used to mow down their opponents, which led to many a success on the battlefield.
Philip II also made sure that the son who someday might assume power (Alexander’s brothers all died, except for one who was mentally challenged) received the finest education from the best tutors, including the great Aristotle. Alexander’s superior intelligence and years of exceptional tutelage led to a grandiosity similar to his father’s: he saw himself ruling in the image of Heracles and Achilles, great warriors whom he regarded as his ancestors; in his own mind, they were real—more than mythological half-human, half-Grecian gods. And he made sure many others viewed him the same way, by erecting statutes of himself and visually extolling himself as a handsome warrior descended from the gods. His mother, Olympias, told him from early childhood that she was impregnated by the gods via a thunderbolt on her wedding night (well, it was a dream that her husband hardly found pleasing), and she told Alexander that he was of the lineage of Achilles, which certainly would have made the young Alexander feel quite special. It is, therefore, not too hard to see why it was perfectly comfortable for the Ptolemies to carry on the concept of the earlier pharaohs of ancient Egypt who claimed themselves to be not merely human rulers, but divine ones to be worshipped along with the other gods in the pantheon.
The upside of such narcissistic idealism of one’s own character and status is that one has to take on the role of a beneficent god and lift up humankind by devoting oneself to the greater glory of the people, both as a warrior and as a patron of high culture. To this end, Alexander brought along with him in his travels those of the intellectual elite—historians and poets—and encouraged the development and dispersion of knowledge.
The other example Alexander set for future Egyptian Macedonian rulers was that to maintain his image as a supernatural godlike being, he bowed to local traditions and religious practices and deities in the same manner that his father had done during his rule. This practice led to a tolerance in the Hellenistic world to come that the conquerors would allow the conquered to retain some sense of their past and culture, easing the transition to the new rulers and lessening the backlash from the new subjects. Along with a level of peace and unity within conquered territories, Alexander also used the spoils of war to improve the lands he took over, providing them with roads, waterways, and new cities, and expanding trade and bolstering economies. When the Ptolemies took over the governance of Egypt, they followed this concept, which allowed for the citizens to be more accepting of their Macedonian overlords than the ones who had come before or who would come after the Ptolemaic Dynasty.
Alexander fulfilled his father’s dream of conquering Persia. He united the ruling classes of Macedonia and Persia, effectively controlling an enormous empire. The very popular Macedonian general was certainly on his way to his next goal of conquering India and Arabia since he had already conquered western Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Babylonia, and since cutting a swath through Persia secured a huge fortune (especially from the royal coffers of Babylonia) along the way. He marched his way into India, whereupon his troops finally told him they had had enough and it was time to go home. After a grueling trek back to his new capital, Babylon, he enjoyed only two more years of life. His death at the age of thirty-three is reported to have been due to either malaria, typhoid, West Nile fever, or cirrhosis of the liver from drinking far too much. There are those, like his mother, who believe he was poisoned, but there is no strong proof of that, and it would have to have been a very slow-acting poison since he lay sick and dying for a period of ten days.
The military might, political prowess, and diplomacy of Alexander and his father, Philip II, were not the only influences coming down to Cleopatra from the Macedonian general. Both Alexander and his father amassed tremendous wealth during the expansion of their territory and were lavish in the spending of it. Certainly, we know from Cleopatra’s reign that she, too, had a love of extravagance and made use of the Ptolemaic treasury and taxes to live on a grand scale, so she could easily bedazzle both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony with her lifestyle.
One might point out, of course, that Cleopatra was not from the direct line of Philip and Alexander. She was a Ptolemy descending from Ptolemy I, the first governor of Egypt. This is true, but the Ptolemies still came out of the Macedonian culture. Also, Ptolemy I was Alexander the Great’s top general who was always at his side. His lifetime friend, having known him since his birth and being eleven years older than the young ruler, Ptolemy became a big brother and a trusted member of Alexander’s inner circle. But, even more than this, it is believed that Philip II was also Ptolemy’s father, so Ptolemy and Alexander might actually have been half brothers, even though Ptolemy was considered a member of a lesser branch of Macedonian royalty. Ptolemy also appeared to be highly intelligent, perhaps partly due to the genes of his rumored father (if he were Philip II), but also due to immersion in the environment of Philip and Alexander in which he could take great advantage of what such fortune had to offer.
When Alexander died, the cohesiveness of the various territories of his Greek-Hellenistic empire faltered without his charismatic, autocratic control. Married
only four years prior to his death, his wife was carrying his son, but because of his infancy, he would be of no use as a ruler at that point in time. The massive empire simply fell apart. Rome would rise next, with the rule of the First Triumvirate of Julius Caesar, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Gnaeus Pompey. After the murder of Julius Caesar, the Second Triumvirate of Mark Antony, Octavian, and Marcus Lepidus assumed imperial power. With the deaths of Antony and Lepidus, Octavian would emerge as the great Augustus Caesar, who would reign over the Roman Empire.
Throughout most of these power struggles, Egypt survived as a great nation managed by the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Rule was passed down through the Ptolemies. However, over time, Egypt become weaker and weaker, until it passed to Cleopatra VII, who would find herself fighting to hang onto power with Rome nipping at her country’s heels. Since her father rather sold the nation down the river with his excessive bribery of the Roman power brokers, her county would remain dependent on Rome for its survival, as Cleopatra would herself. But, at the time that Alexander died, Egypt was still very powerful, and Ptolemy I saw his opportunity to be a great and autonomous leader. When the fight to divide the Alexandrian-won empire came to an end, Ptolemy had managed to secure for himself the wealthiest and most easily defended land of the sections parceled out.
