Cleopatra and Antony

by Diana Preston

  A victory for Antony’s forces around Actium in 31, with the assumed death of Octavian by his own or another’s hand, poses a completely different set of questions. Crucially, Antony’s supporters were, in addition to Cleopatra, a mixed bag of eastern client kings and the remnants of the Roman republicans. If the Actium campaign had gone well, there would have been no republican defections from Antony, and it is hard to envisage that after his victory such elements would not have agitated for a resurrection of at least some of the senatorial powers.

  Antony’s views on how Rome should have been governed are not clear. He offered Caesar the crown. However, nearly all the staunch republicans flocked to him as a better hope for the preservation of the republic than Octavian, perhaps indicating that his approach was more evolutionary than the revolution of his rival. Perhaps like Pompey, Antony would have been uncertain what to do with supreme power when he acquired it, relishing the respect and status his position afforded more than anything else. Unlike Octavian, Antony’s views were influenced by a succession of close associates: first his mother, Julia, then Curio, Julius Caesar, Fulvia and finally Cleopatra. Since she would have been his dominant influence after Actium, she would have pushed him toward autocracy and probably monarchy, a pressure that could have been reinforced by the practicalities of the new empire, which would have demanded a strong and stable administration and a clear, swift and decisive command structure. Rome would have found, just as it did with Octavian, that the republic’s lingering death had become inevitable—at least after the Senate’s supine approval of the Second Triumvirate. The republicans had been fractious, small-minded and far too inclined to focus on detail and petty jealousies to see the big picture and the consequences of their incessant squabblings on it. By refusing to pool some of their prerogatives and to sacrifice some of their privileges and even some minor liberties, they had rendered autocracy inevitable.

  Given that Octavian’s propaganda against Cleopatra had built on deeply held xenophobic and misogynistic prejudices that would not easily have been dispelled, and given Antony’s preferences for the East, it is quite likely that after some time in Rome, he with Cleopatra’s strong backing would have chosen to make their capital in Alexandria, with that city becoming at least Rome’s equal, as Constantinople later became in reality. Bearing in mind the monarchical dynastic tradition of Cleopatra, it is highly likely that the two would have become hereditary rulers, indeed just as Octavian did, with Antyllus perhaps succeeding in Rome while Caesarion ruled in Alexandria.

  Antony with Cleopatra at his side would have governed through a combination of direct rule and a hierarchy of client kingdoms as foreshadowed by Pompey and basically continued in practice by Octavian. However, their rule would have been founded more on a partnership between Greeks, Hellenes and Romans. It would have drawn on the Hellenic concept of harmonia—a community of outlook and interest—and would have shown a greater tolerance of difference and of local customs. Greeks and the other peoples of the region would have had more political power, avoiding much of the resentment that built up against the imperialist, cold and alien rule of Rome. Alexandria would have flourished as a center of learning and culture. Distinctions and prejudices between East and West, as apparent in those times as now, might have become blurred, to the benefit of all. As a consequence of Cleopatra’s longer rule, even women’s position in society might have changed.

  One interesting sidelight is that Cleopatra might well have in the end succeeded in deposing Herod in Judaea. She had the wealth, power and determination. If she had, the area certainly would have developed in a less militaristic and antagonistic way. Jesus of Nazareth would then have been born into a more tolerant environment and, just perhaps, his reception might have been different.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wrote this book with my husband, Michael.

  In the United Kingdom I would like to thank the staff of the London Library, the British Library, the Bodleian Library and the British Museum for their kind, patient help. I would also like to thank Dr. Martin Weaver for applying his expertise in archaeological facial reconstruction to the creation of an image of Cleopatra that suggests she may not have looked quite as we had imagined.

  In Egypt I am indebted to Ibrahim Ahmed Metwalli of the National Maritime Museum for so generously giving his time to explain about recent marine excavations in the harbor of Alexandria and how this has been clarifying knowledge of the royal quarter of Alexandria in Cleopatra’s day. I am also most grateful to the staff of the Library of Alexandria, in particular Badrya Serry, director of the library’s Antiquities Museum, and Darin Hassan for information on the original Library of Alexandria and its location. The staff of the Alexandria National Museum showed us artifacts recovered from the harbor of Alexandria. Our research in Egypt would not have been half so enjoyable without the expert advice of our guide, Mohamed Younis, and the assistance of Voyages Jules Verne in allowing us, like Cleopatra and Caesar, to sail down the Nile and visit Alexandria and the temples of Upper Egypt.

  Friends have, as always, been extremely kind and supportive, not least in reading the text at a formative stage, and I would like to express my appreciation to Kim Lewison, Neil Munro, Edmund Griffiths, St. John and Krystyna Brown and Robin Binks in particular.

  Lastly, my warm thanks to George Gibson and his colleagues at Walker &Company and Bloomsbury USA, to Marianne Velmans, Michèle David and all the team at Transworld Publishers and to my agents, Bill Hamilton of A. M. Heath and Co. in London and Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management in New York.

  APPENDIX: PUTTING A FACE TO A FAMOUS NAME

  Though she died more than two thousand years ago, Cleopatra’s appearance still fascinates us. The ancient sources—even those hostile to her—acknowledge her charisma, intelligence and powers of attraction. During my research, I began to build up a mental picture of Cleopatra and to feel that I understood at least a little of her psyche. This made me all the more curious about her physical appearance. How did this woman whose gilded statue was erected by Julius Caesar in Rome’s main temple to Venus and who captivated Mark Antony actually look?

  I was fortunate to meet an archaeologist—Dr. Martin Weaver—as intrigued as I was by Cleopatra and ready to apply his scientific expertise to creating the first three-dimensional model of her. Dr. Weaver, an archaeologist for thirty years, is a specialist in archaeosteology—reconstructions based on evidence from human bones.

  Of course, the usual starting point for an archaeological facial reconstruction would be the individual’s skull but Cleopatra’s vanished long ago. Dr. Weaver therefore decided to “reverse-engineer” her. The most reliable sources of information about how Cleopatra looked are the numerous coin depictions throughout her twenty-year reign. These vary in appearance depending on her age at the time and whether she is depicted in Hellenistic or Egyptian pose. But they all suggest she had high cheekbones, a pronounced nose and chin and a slight underhang beneath the jaw.

  As well as analyzing these coin images, Dr, Weaver also examined the many sculptures of other members of Cleopatra’s dynasty—the ultra-inbred Ptolemies—that have survived. The evidence from these suggests—just like the coins—that Cleopatra was a woman of strong facial features and very probably—at least in later years—quite plump. In addition, Dr. Weaver looked at the surviving sculptures generally considered to be of Cleopatra—some in Egyptian and some in Greco-Roman style—but these are few in number and less helpful than the other evidence.

  Dr. Weaver concluded that Cleopatra was broadly of the “dolichocephalic” type—that is, with a long, high-cheekboned face with protrusive features. Since this type is highly characteristic of people of Macedonian stock and Cleopatra was, of course, of mainly Macedonian descent, he selected a cast of a female Macedonian skull with these traits as the basic structure on which to “hang” Cleopatra’s face.

  To adapt the skull to his observations from the surviving evidence, Dr. Weaver made the chin and jaw more pronounced and the
cheekbones even more prominent. Next, he applied known facial skin depth measurements to the model, selecting those most appropriate to a woman of Cleopatra’s known appearance and genealogy. Fixing “skin pegs” to the model, he smoothed plastic clay over them to create the basic external structure of Cleopatra’s face.

  His next step was to model the soft tissue of Cleopatra’s nose, basing the shape on her profile on coins and on the very strong Ptolemaic family traits he had observed.

  To calculate the space between her eyes, Dr. Weaver drew notional lines upward from where her canine incisors would have been since in humans these lines pass through the center of the pupil. To determine the shape of Cleopatra’s eyes, Dr. Weaver applied to his deductions from his observations some additional information from studies of generic ratios in human skulls from which the distance from cheek to brow in humans is known to be an indicator of the degree of protuberance of the eyes.

  To re-create Cleopatra’s ears, Dr. Weaver calculated the angle by following the jaw line—a standard technique in archaeological facial reconstruction. He then took standard “ear frames” (developed by the FBI to help in the identification process of criminals), attached these to the model at the correct angle and built up the ears by smoothing layers of clay over the frames.

  The dimensions of a human being’s lips can be calculated according to the length of their teeth. As this was not possible in Cleopatra’s case, Dr. Weaver based his reconstruction of Cleopatra’s mouth on coin evidence, making it quite wide.

  Dr. Weaver chose as Cleopatra’s hairstyle the so-called melon style she often wore in coin depictions and which has tight braids segmenting her hair into sections like the markings on a melon, hence the name, and with the ends of her hair gathered into a bun on the nape of the neck. This style requires so much hair that—unless Cleopatra habitually wore wigs, which the ancient sources suggest she probably did not—her hair must have been abundant, reaching almost to her waist. To create the melon hairstyle, Cleopatra’s maids probably oiled her hair to make it easier to work with. These oils would have further darkened her already dark hair to black.

  In accordance with Cleopatra’s probable genealogy, Dr. Weaver gave Cleopatra olive skin and brown eyes. Her makeup was applied by an expert in cosmetics of the time. The model was completed with a gold filet around the head, long blue and gold earrings and a heavy gold necklace.

  Is she beautiful? From certain angles, yes. She certainly has a compelling, even commanding presence, and shrewdness and intelligence look out from those dark brown eyes. At present she sits on a windowsill in Dr. Weaver’s office. As he works he finds it hard to forget she is there—probably exactly what the real Cleopatra would have expected.

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  I have used the Loeb Classics Series for the text of the classical sources. In these notes the references relate to the classical author, the relevant work, then the book and chapter/section references, as appropriate. I have used the following abbreviations: Plu.Ant for Plutarch’s Life of Antony, Plu.Ca for Plutarch’s Life of Cato the Younger, Plu.Pomp for Plutarch’s Life of Pompey and Plu.JC for his Life of Julius Caesar; in the case of Suetonius, Suet.JC for his Life of Julius Caesar and Suet.A for his Life of Augustus/Octavian. App is Appian’s Civil Wars from his Roman History. DioCass.RH is Dio Cassius’ Roman History. Cic.LA is Cicero’s Letters to Atti-cus; Cic.LF his Letters to Friends; Cic.Phil his Philippics. Luc.Phar is Lucan’s Pharsalia.

  As well as the Loeb translations, I have drawn on those of myself, my husband, Michael, and kind friends and advisers. I have also found the following works invaluable: the translation of Plutarch’s Lives by Robin Waterfield in Oxford World Classics; Robert Graves’ translation of Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars in Penguin Classics; Ian Scott-Kilvert’s translation of Dio Cassius’ Roman History—The Reign of Augustus, also in Penguin Classics; and P. Jones, Cleopatra: A Source Book, University of Oklahoma Press. I have also found the older Bohn series of translations very helpful in several cases.

  PROLOGUE

  “They opened . . . kings”: Plu.Ant, 85.

  “royal progress”: Suet.JC, 32.

  In early Christian times: Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s excellent book Cleopatra—Histories, Dreams and Distortions reviews the way reviews the way Cleopatra’s image has developed over the centuries.

  “licentious”: Dante, Inferno, Canto V, line 63.

  The four main classical sources: Each of the classical authors has his own emphasis. For example, Plutarch is keen to draw moral comparisons and to tell a good story; Dio Cassius to create set pieces, whether speeches or battles; and Appian to focus on military matters. Provided one allows for his personal views, Cicero, who was writing as events unfolded, is incomparable in giving insights into characters and into the political ebb and flow leading up to the creation of the Second Triumvirate. His witticisms are as fresh today as they were then. Michael Grant’s Greek and Roman Historians is valuable to any author in its analysis of historians. Anthony Everitt’s Cicero is an excellent biography.

  1: KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY

  Egypt’s final pharaoh: The word pharaoh had come was “palace” or “great house.”

  “the river . . . silt”: Vergil, Georgics, IV.290–4.

  His new subjects’ . . . openly”: Herodotus, History, II.35–6.

  “the most religious men”: ibid, II.58.

  mummified animals: Mummification of humans had become customary in Egypt as early as 3500 BC. The ancient Egyptians believed that, as long as the body remained intact, the soul too would live. Various methods of preservation were used. The process for mummifying humans took seventy days. Priests wearing the masks of the jackal-headed Anubis removed the internal organs, which were placed in four jars to be “entrusted” to the four sons of the god Horus. The body was then dried and purified using natron, a carbonate of sodium. Next, the body was treated with oils and resins and stuffed to preserve its shape. Then came the process of wrapping it in hundreds of yards of fine linen. The word mummy comes from mummiya, the black adhesive resin used to coat the linen. (In medieval times the color brown for use in paints and dyes was extracted from old mummies.) Finally, the body’s face was painted with cosmetics and, if the family was rich enough, further embellished with artificial eyes and a funerary mask and wig. The body was then encased in a double coffin and placed inside a sarcophagus, on the lid of which were painted two eyes to enable the deceased to gaze out on the world.

  Another serapeum: The Serapeum of Alexandria is thought to have stood near the site still occupied by Pompey’s Pillar, erected in the time of the emperor Diocletian. The rectangular serapeum housed a daughter library of the great Library of Alexandria and survived until AD 391, when Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, ordered its destruction as a pagan temple.

  “the growing . . . in return”: DioCass.RH, Book X, fragment 41.

  “in difficult . . . faith”: Livy, History of Rome, XXXI.2.

  “to deprive . . . life . . . If . . . sincerity”: A copy of this will was found at Cyrene.

  “a size . . . around him”: Athenaeus, Banquet of the Learned, XII.549.

  “as though . . . to hide”: Marcus Justinianus Justinus, Epitome of the Philippic Pompeius Trogus, XXXVIII.8.10.

  “the sight . . . a walk”: Quoted M. Grant, Cleopatra, p. 10. The amused commentator was Scipio Africanus the Younger.

  “the number . . . leaders”: Diodorus Sicculus, XXXIII.28b.

  2: SIBLINGS AND SIBYLLINE PROPHECIES

  “the most . . . race”: Cato the Elder, quoted Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 29.14

  six thousand talents: A talent was a Greek coin worth 24,000 Roman sesterces. One sesterce equates to perhaps three to four dollars today.

  to the island of Rhodes: Sailing into the harbor of Rhodes, Auletes would have passed the fragments of the Colossus of Rhodes. Originally over a hundred feet high, it had broken off at the knees during an earthquake in 224, only half a century after its completion, and
still lay where it had fallen. Pliny the Elder described how “its fingers are larger than most statues . . . as for its broken limbs, their insides look like caves.”

  “Libyan princess”: M. Grant, Cleopatra, p. 15.

  “succor . . . multitude”: Cic.LF, I.7.

  “a thieving . . . curlers”: Cicero quoted in M. Foss, The Search for Cleopatra, p. 55.

  “devoid . . . moment”: Sallust, Conspiracy of Catiline, xvii.

  outpost at Pelusium: Pelusium was near the modern town of Tell el-Farana, east of Port Said.

  “It is said . . . Alexandria”: App, V.8.

  “which are . . . nature”: App, IV.16.