Cleopatra the Great

by Joann Fletcher

  Far more than decorative, garden statuary was also placed near trees considered holy in the same way that Egyptian sycamores and tamarisks were sacred to Hathor, and it seems no coincidence that the most important deity in any Roman garden was Hathor’s Roman equivalent Venus, whose comely image was often placed beside water to re-create the goddess’ birth from the sea. Her maritime links were ultimately absorbed by Isis, similarly honoured in Roman garden shrines where devotees underwent initiation. The goddess’ ability to resurrect them at death in the same way that she revived Osiris’ phallus to conceive their son was echoed by the phallic imagery which suffused Roman life. As the male-dominated culture’s ultimate talisman, phallic mobiles dangled in the breeze to protect against evil spirits while well-endowed figures of the gnome-like Priapus waved their attributes to attract all-round fertility.

  Caesar’s wealthy father-in-law Lucius Calpurnius Piso had been accused of looting antique statues from Greece to embellish his Italian gardens and Caesar’s own extensive grounds were no doubt adorned with a whole range of such figures. He had certainly acquired a taste for luxurious living early in his career, when a country mansion that he had had built at Nervi so disappointed him he had it demolished. So his villa on the Janiculum Hill must have met his demanding specifications and been sufficiently grand to house a monarch and her impressive entourage.

  Its multiple-roomed interior may have been specially decorated for Cleopatra’s visit with the same trompe-l’oeil fantasy architecture of cityscapes and mythical creatures believed to have adorned her own palace in Alexandria. Egyptian imagery of sun discs, crowns and serpents gradually appeared in neighbouring villas, inspired by the oriental monarch in their midst. There must certainly have been mosaic flooring, since Caesar was such a fan that ‘he carried tessellated and mosaic pavements with him on his campaigns’. No doubt his marble floors and veneers resembled those in the villas of his military colleagues, perhaps overlaid with the same richly patterned Persian carpets that adorned the palace at Alexandria or even the more exotic ‘tossae Britannicae’, rug-like floor coverings known from Roman homes in various parts of Europe and which Caesar may have picked up on his visits to the far north.

  Greatly appreciated at the onset of winter temperatures sufficiently chilly to freeze the Tiber, raised floors allowed heat from a furnace to circulate in a system of underfloor heating known by the Greek name of hypokaust. Lighting was provided by tallow candles or exquisite oil lamps of bronze or gold, decorated with lotus leaves, dolphins’ heads and sea shells and placed in elaborate candelabra or on wall-mounted lamp brackets. Those in the form of ships’ prows, alluding to the nocturnal Festival of Isis in which the waterborne goddess appeared surrounded by lights, would have been a most suitable choice for the fittings in Cleopatra’s new home.

  Although a Roman villa was not cluttered with furniture, couches, first introduced from second-century BC Greece, were ubiquitous, and well upholstered in fabrics dyed a range of scarlets, greens, yellows and the gleaming purples imported from Tyre on the Phoenician coast. They were very similar in appearance to first-century BC Roman beds which had curved legs and sometimes horse-head terminals, inlaid Egyptian-style with ebony, ivory and gold; Caesar was alleged to have slept with a previous royal lover, the king of Bithynia, on a golden bed. The Egyptian influence only extended so far, however, since the Romans much preferred pillows to the traditional wooden headrests of the Egyptians, which were still used by the priests of Isis.

  As ‘a keen collector of gems, carvings, statues and Old Masters’, Caesar displayed his objets d’art in specially made cabinets, while images of the gods and family members, which in his case could be one and the same, adorned the traditional household shrine with its small bronze altar for burning incense. Another of the city’s villas, owned by one of Sulla’s staff, was ‘crammed with gold and silver vessels from Delos and Corinth, an “automatic cooker” which he had bought at an auction, embossed silver, coverlets, pictures, statues and marbles’. Sulla himself had lived in a villa on the Palatine Hill close to the immense mansion of Caesar’s former deputy Antonius, while Caesar as Pontifex Maximus also ‘used the official residence on the Sacred Way’, where his Roman wife Calpurnia also lived.

  In contrast to the majority of Romans, who lived in slum housing and high-rise apartment blocks in the overcrowded city centre, the rich avoided the summer heat by relocating to their country homes; many of them also owned one of the new ‘villa marittimae’ springing up along the Campania Riviera south of Rome. It was a place where Cleopatra may well have spent some time, since Caesar and many of his associates had homes in the region. Cicero particularly loved his house at Pompeii, while one of Caesar’s officers had a fine villa known as the ‘House of the Faun’, which was ‘more imposing than any known palace or villa of contemporary Hellenistic kings’. Rightly famous for its superb mosaic floor created c. 100 BC, its portrayal of a wide-eyed Alexander at the battle of Issus so closely resembled the early Ptolemies it is thought to have been modelled on an Alexandrian original. Equally recognizable to Cleopatra would have been Nile-side landscapes and images of Isis and Horus, favourite themes for both villas and temples including the rich red walls inside Isis’ temple at Herculaneum. Portraying lively images of her priests and priestesses, dancing masked figures and Osiris’ mummy upright in his open coffin, similar red walls in the Pompeiian villa known as the ‘House of the Mysteries’ featured the festivities accompanying religious initiation before Dionysos and a giant phallus hidden beneath a veil.

  One of the region’s most lavish homes belonged to Caesar’s father-in-law. Its 800-foot-wide marble frontage, with a high tower affording superb sea views, boasted a columned portico containing his collection of antique bronze portraits including at least one of Cleopatra’s relatives, together with a superb library of almost two thousand works. A slightly later villa built over a promontory at Laurentum similarly exploited its coastal location with huge windows, flecked by the waves on stormy days; folding doors between the windows could be drawn back to take advantage of milder weather.

  Although every Roman home of quality also housed the type of elaborate bathing facilities first developed in the East, limestone-lined bathrooms with drains had been available to the Egyptian elite for several thousand years. Also part of palace life in Bronze Age Greece, the piped water which was a key feature in the palaces of Macedonia and Alexandria had spread to Rome by 312 BC, when the first aqueduct bringing fresh water to the city was circulated via a system of earthenware and lead piping. Certainly a plentiful water supply was required for Rome’s public baths, whose popularity rose dramatically during the first century BC in response to a growing population living closer together.

  Water was known to have therapeutic qualities, and various forms of hydrotherapy included a new cold-water treatment developed by one of Antonius’ Greek slaves, Antonius Musa. So beneficial did it prove that Musa’s statue was eventually set up beside Asklepios and his fellow health-bestowing deities Hygieia and Fortuna. And since Isis-Fortuna was also patron goddess of baths in the West and Aphrodite was the deity most associated with bathing in the East, it is no surprise that Cleopatra, as the Living Isis-Aphrodite, would become so intimately linked with the process and immortalised in the place name ‘Cleopatra’s Baths’ found commonly throughout the ancient world.

  Cleopatra would certainly have felt at home in the luxurious surroundings of most Roman bathing facilities, for it was said that ‘people regard baths fit only for moths if they haven’t been arranged so that they receive the sun all day long through the widest of windows, if men cannot bath and get a tan at the same time and if they cannot look out from their bath tubs over stretches of land and sea’.

  The villa at Laurentum featured baths ‘surrounded by glass windows overlooking the sea’, made from the translucent selenite stone known as ‘petra specularis’. Roman descriptions of glass ceilings, large mirrors, mosaic and marble surfaces, multiple statues and silver taps
with ‘masses of water that fall crashing down from level to level’ are borne out by the silver basins with lion-head taps known from Egypt and the first-century BC seaside palace at Caesarea Maritima in Palestine. The palace’s marble-lined bathrooms with a hypokaust system featured a caldarium hot room which cleansed the skin, while the invigorating plunge pool of the frigidarium cold room closed the pores and refreshed the body.

  In her own daily regime, presumably wearing the standard wooden-soled bathing shoes to prevent slipping on the wet marble floors, Cleopatra would have been attended by a small army of servants bringing supplies of fluffy towels with absorbent looped threads, natural sea sponges and pumice stones with a bronze handle to provide a good grip. And although the Romans had no soap, a form of hard soda detergent had long been known in Egypt and was certainly available to the Alexandrians, who also used a preparation of soapwort root known as ‘oeno’.

  Among various forms of cleansing cream, ‘brechu’ was made of ground up lupin seeds soaked in water; its Roman equivalent, ‘lomentum’, made of broad-bean flour and applied before entering the bath, was ‘not without use to a wrinkled body’. The same ground beans and lupin seeds also formed the basis of a ‘certain cure for spots and pimples’ enhanced by ‘the glutinous matter wherewith the Halcyon cements its nest’, a poetical description for kingfisher droppings whose enzyme guanine, an amino acid which heals the skin and was recommended in the first-century BC Roman beauty manual Medicamina Faciei Femineae (‘The Art of Beauty’), is currently used in facials for sun-damaged skin offered by the upmarket beauty salons of London’s Knightsbridge.

  Along with mineral-based skin treatments such as the clay-based ‘creta fullonica’, ‘nitrum’ made from ash, and concoctions of chalk and vinegar, Cleopatra is famously said to have bathed in asses’ milk. It was a practice followed by many a wealthy Roman woman who ‘freshens her complexion with asses’ milk to smooth wrinkles and soften the skin. The fatty emulsion of milk protein improved the texture of dry complexions, while the lactic acid provided an ‘ancient form of chemical peel, the cosmetic procedure used to straighten out wrinkles or even out pigmentation’ in much the same way that acidic bulls’ bile was used to treat blotchy complexions.

  Upper-class Roman teeth were kept clean with a mixture of soda and bicarbonate and pistacia gum and perfumed pastilles were chewed as popular breath fresheners. They also employed toothpicks, and kept their nails manicured with pumice and bronze nail cleaners. Often part of a standard ‘pocket set’ resembling a Swiss army knife, there were also fine bronze spoon-type implements to clean the ears and, for the wealthiest individuals, tweezers of silver and gold. Caesar, however, is said to have employed an ‘alipilus’ or ‘hair-plucker’ along with his everpresent barber who kept ‘his head carefully trimmed and shaved’, no doubt using a thin iron razor.

  Yet in contrast to the ancient Egyptian practice of complete body depilation for both sexes, the classical world regarded male depilation as effeminate. Only women were expected to be hair-free, and told to ‘see that your legs are not rough with bristles’. Hairs were softened with red-hot walnut shells or removed with depilatory mixtures of pitch, resin or wax to which were added various caustic substances.

  In addition to such products designed to remove unwanted body hair, various substances to encourage a luxurious head of hair were often credited to Egypt’s royal women. They ranged from an oily preparation dating back to the Pyramid Age to several hair restorers credited to Cleopatra herself and quoted by the second-century AD Greek doctor Galen, who states that ‘medicines for hair loss are recorded in her own words, more or less as follows. “Against hair loss: make a paste of realgar [arsenic monosulphide] and blend it into oak gum, apply it to a cloth and place it where you have already cleaned as thoroughly as possible with natron [salts]”, adding that ‘I myself have added foam to natron to the above recipe, and it worked nicely.’

  Even though it was Caesar rather than Cleopatra who needed such help, he preferred to disguise his receding hair with a wreath. Wigs and hairpieces were also used to conceal hair loss or augment what remained. Drawing on the expertise of the Egyptians’ three-thousand-year-old wigmaking industry, the Romans imported black hair from India and blond and red from northern Europe, either to add detail to existing styles or to create complete wigs such as that made for one Roman follower of Isis, set in a ready-made bun coiffure for an instant ‘Cleopatra look’. Yet in contrast to the Egyptians’ blatant use of very obvious and often highly stylised wigs, amusement and even a sense of stigma accompanied their use in the Roman world. One young woman was so surprised at the unexpected arrival of her suitor that ‘she put her wig on back-to-front in her confusion’.

  For despite the social pressures to attain the beauty demanded of them, Roman women were expected to pretend that their beauty was entirely natural and ‘on no account let your lover find you with a lot of ‘aids to beauty’ boxes about you. The art that adorns you should be unsuspected . . . Let your servants tell us you are still asleep, if we arrive before your toilet’s finished. You will appear all the more lovely when you’ve put on the finishing touch. Why should I know what it is that makes your skin so white? Keep your door shut, and don’t let me see the work before it’s finished. There are a whole host of things we men should know nothing about!’

  So it would generally be behind the privacy of the closed bathroom door that the body would be cleansed, depilated and oiled, after which the combined oil and sweat would be scraped off using a metal implement known as a strigil. Trained masseurs performed massage techniques dating back several millennia in Egypt; their therapeutic effects were enhanced by substances chosen for their specific medicinal qualities, and believed to provide protection from unseen forces. Gods and royalty alike were routinely doused in such costly oils, and courtiers were even portrayed massaging the royal feet at various state ceremonies — Cleopatra herself is known to have had her own feet massaged on at least one such occasion, perhaps with costly Mendesian unguent made up of myrrh, cinnamon and resin which was rubbed into the feet after bathing.

  Equally costly ingredients were used for her hands. Once she spent 400 denarii on a single pound of moisturiser whose honey-and-oil base would have been enhanced by the addition of kyphi, the sweet and spicy blend of cinnamon, honey, wine and resin that was known to have a soporific effect on the body. Its distinctive aroma ‘seductively brings on sleep, so that without getting drunk, the sorrows and tensions of daily anxieties are loosened and untied like tangled knots’ — the perfect way to unwind at the end of a busy day.

  Although several of Cleopatra’s female predecessors had promoted Egyptian perfumes before an ancestor of Caesar’s had banned ‘foreign essences’ as a corrupting influence, they were now the height of fashion. Brand names such as ‘Aphrodite’s Elixir’ or ‘Bloom of Youth’ gave no clue to their ingredients, but great insight into ancient marketing techniques which even then used aspirational images in the age-old quest for beauty. During her time in Rome, Cleopatra may also have worn Rhodinon perfume made from roses, a favourite of her Cyrene-born predecessor Berenike II and the sacred flower of both Venus and Isis the ‘Rose-breasted Lady’. Rose fields north of Neapolis (Naples) supplied the local perfume houses, and the intensive cultivation of olives and flowers around Pompeii’s ‘House of the Perfume Maker’ was borne out in the images of perfume production in local wall paintings, which even showed the end product sniffed on the tester’s wrist.

  Given the battery of cosmetic equipment that Cleopatra would have required to sustain her high-maintenance public image, her private quarters must have been filled with all manner of compartmentalised caskets and chests holding her bottles, pots, phials and mixing dishes. Manufactured in rock crystal, veined agate, silver, gold and coloured glass, cosmetic and perfume vessels ranged from simple test-tube-shaped ‘unguentaria’ of iridescent colour to miniature amphorae, blue glass aryballos flasks with dolphin-head handles, bunches of blue glass grapes and blue
bird ampullae, trademark bottles of the north Italian glassmakers. And although perfume is generally assumed to have been worn only by women, its bottles are so commonly uncovered on former military sites that ‘one cannot escape the conclusion that on some occasions, Roman soldiers were pleasantly sweet-smelling!’

  Roman barracks were also well equipped with bath-houses and toilet facilities; even the public toilets at Ostia featured marble seats, mosaic floors, painted walls and an altar to Isis-Fortuna as ever-present goddess. Saite and Ptolemaic royals used gold chamber pots, whose contents were disposed of via a sophisticated system of underground sewers which took the waste out to sea. Personal hygiene was tackled with a sponge on a stick, while menstruation was generally dealt with using pieces of linen, from the ‘bands of the behinds’ in ancient Egyptian laundry lists to the Greek ‘rhakos’, recycled old cloth that was also used in a form of tampon. The problem of PMT at the onset of menstruation was regarded as a problem best cured by getting pregnant.

  Judging by literary works of the time, including the graffiti on bathhouse walls, this would certainly have happened within the relaxed environment of the bathroom, where mixed bathing for all classes had become normal practice by the later first century BC and was a popular pastime for couples. It was traditionally followed by dinner (‘cena’) which, since breakfast was minimal and lunch a light snack at most, was the main meal of the day, usually enjoyed late in the afternoon or evening.

  With social dining used to express one’s status, the impressive surroundings of the dining room, often painted a strong cinnabar red or dramatic black, might be further adorned with still-life images of food. Even the mosaic floors could have a food-based theme, from the Eastern-inspired colours of glistening fresh seafood to the trompe l’oeil ‘Unswept Hall’ which showed a floor littered with the debris of a banquet in full swing. Then, in contrast, Italian-produced monochrome mosaics of a skeleton carrying wine jugs advised the living to ‘eat, drink and be merry’ in much the same way that, according to Herodotus, small models of the dead were taken around diners at Egyptian banquets to emphasise the transitory nature of life.