Cleopatra the Great

by Joann Fletcher

  Yet he was still a married man, his interests back in Rome represented by his formidable wife Fulvia, ‘a woman of restless spirit and very bold’ and said to be female only in body. Antonius acknowledged his wife’s admirable contribution to his government by issuing coins in Gaul and Phoenicia with their joint profiles, and in some cases with Fulvia’s portrait alone, the first Roman woman to be so portrayed. She worked closely alongside Antonius’ remaining brother, Lucius, then consul, and the pair began to formulate plans to oust Octavian, currently facing the tricky problem of settling one hundred thousand veteran troops demanding land in Italy.

  At the other side of the empire Antonius moved on to Ephesus, home of the great goddess Artemis, where the citizens who had hailed Caesar as divine and managed to keep hold of their temple treasury had also heard of Antonius’ desire to be hailed as Dionysos. They sent out women ‘dressed up like bacchantes and the men andboys 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’. Such recognition provided an all-important link to Alexander, most useful propaganda if Antonius was to follow in his footsteps and take on Parthia. Like his old master Auletes, he was proclaimed ‘New Dionysus’, a title repeated throughout the Near East as a useful counter to Octavian’s own claims to deity in the West.

  Paying his respects to Artemis in the city’s vast temple, Antonius must also have met its most illustrious priestess, Auletes’ youngest daughter, Arsinoe, now in her mid-twenties. Following her banishment to Ephesus by Caesar, the Ephesian clergy had begun to address her by her former title, ‘queen’, and she may well have used the opportunity of Antonius’ visit to put forward her case for restoration.

  Having met Cleopatra’s one remaining sibling, Antonius must have considered the various merits of the two women and the differences between them as he began to work out his strategy for approaching Cleopatra herself. He needed her assistance in his plans for the East, but would not travel to Egypt and appear as a supplicant; instead, he sent an envoy to invite her to meet him in Cilicia (modern Turkey). Exploiting her desire to keep hold of Egypt at any cost, he claimed he wanted her to explain rumours, no doubt embellished by Arsinoe, that she had secretly supported Cassius and Brutus — a claim which was patently untrue but which he felt should help gain her vital support in return for keeping her throne.

  Yet he should have known that Cleopatra would prove more than his match in any such negotiations.

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 9

  The Inimitable Life: Antonius and Conspicuous Consumption

  In 41 BC Marcus Antonius, Triumvir, Imperator and victor of Philippi, requested the presence of the Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra Thea Philopator in the ancient city of Tarsus. His envoy, the effete Quintus Dellius, was ushered into the royal presence in Alexandria and, after formally greeting the twenty-eight-year-old ruler enthroned before him, ‘set himself at once to pay his court to the Egyptian . . . advising her to go to Cilicia in her best attire’.

  Although responding with her usual ‘adroitness and subtlety in speech’, Cleopatra as an independent monarch was in no hurry to respond to Antonius’ request despite ‘many letters of invitation from him and his friends’. Yet she also recognised a real possibility of forming a new alliance with Rome in the person of Antonius, Caesar’s closest supporter. He was a man she had known for some fourteen years, and his desire to emulate both Caesar and Alexander, combined with his well-known love of Greek culture, good living and forthright women, augured well for the future. So, regardless of her delaying tactics, Cleopatra decided she would visit Antonius in Tarsus — but in her own time, on her own terms and in her own inimitable style.

  As ‘she made great preparations for her journey, of money, gifts, and ornaments of value, such as so wealthy a kingdom might afford’, she would use the Ptolemies’ legendary love of show to transform a mundane summit meeting into a spectacular showcase of political intent. Yet the most potent weapon in Cleopatra’s political armoury remained her understanding of the male ego. Fully aware of Antonius’ recent declaration that he was to be addressed as Dionysos, a god identified with the Egyptian Osiris, Cleopatra would take him at his word, nattering his divine identity by appearing as his consort Isis-Aphrodite. Although she had already established her public image as the Living Isis, she would use her appearance to issue a subtle invitation to a union on both the divine and human level.

  Having previously worked her magic on Caesar, Cleopatra ‘was to meet Antony in the time of life when women’s beauty is most splendid’, a beauty enhanced by a veritable army of dress designers, cosmeticians, perfumiers and hairstylists. Capable of transforming the woman into the goddess of beauty personified, the mysterious art of female adornment was traditionally regarded with some suspicion by men. It could certainly have a devastating effect when employed upon the political stage, and while some Republicans claimed that Cleopatra’s face ‘was painted up beyond all measure’, Roman poets admitted that ‘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, Aphrodite.

  In her preparations for her meeting with Antonius Cleopatra could have drawn on all manner of cosmetic products, ranging from ‘oesy-spum’, an oily lanolin preparation extracted from sheep’s wool, to face powder made from lupin seeds or iris root. The popular white lead foundation ‘cerussa’ was also available in a non-toxic version made of tin oxide, sheep fat and starch, while the desired rosy hue for cheeks was obtained with powdered red ochre or the imported Indian rouge ‘orchil’, the colour also mixed with an oily base to create a strong reddish lipstick.

  Further emphasising her expression with neatly plucked brows, Cleopatra’s eyes would certainly have received detailed attention, since it was well known that the glance from a woman’s eyes could fell a man as effectively as a fatal blow in battle. Although chaste Greek ladies were expected to look modestly at the floor and never directly at men, the Egyptians had always had a very different outlook, dramatically transforming their eyes with black kohl made of the finely ground lead ore galena mixed with palm oil or filtered salt solution. Decanted into practical tube containers and applied with sticks of ivory, bronze, silver or gold, kohl was an important ingredient in Greco-Roman love magic and, like all fashionable Alexandrian women of the time, Cleopatra would have emphasised and elongated her eyes, perhaps even shading her eyelids with powdered green malachite, blue lapis lazuli or yellow saffron to replicate Aphrodite’s golden allure each time she blinked.

  Watching in wall-mounted mirrors as her servants worked their magic, Cleopatra might also have used a hand-held version, adorned with the reef-like ‘Knot of Herakles’ or a handle in the form of Herakles’ club wrapped in his signature lionskin. This use of Herakles’ emblems on cosmetic equipment alluded to the mythical Queen Omphale of Lydia, who seduced and literally disarmed Herakles by taking his club and lionskin for herself. Since Antonius claimed to be Herakles’ descendant, Cleopatra may have sought the same result as she scrutinised her own transformation.

  Her choice of perfume would form another element of her multi-sensory strategy, and she had all the products of the ancient world to choose from. Cyprus, recently restored to her by Caesar, was a longstanding centre of perfume production and her royal city of Alexandria was the heart of the international perfume industry, importing exotic ingredients from Arabia, India and the Far East and blending them with Egyptian materials in the perfume factories of the Delta. Cleopatra may well have had her own signature fragrance in the manner of other ancient monarchs. The Parthian kings’ perfume ‘The Royal’, for instance, was made from a huge number of exotic ingredients sourced from across their vast empire to emphasise the extent of their power.

  The Egyptians had long used perfumes for ritual and political purposes, but Cleopatra was also fully aware that perf
umes were most closely associated with love and sex, the domain of Hathor-Aphrodite, whose sacred flowers were myrtle and rose. This made it likely she would have selected Myrtinum, myrtle oil, or Rhodinon, rose oil. These substances were applied liberally to both skin and hair, and it was recommended so ‘that your oiled tresses may not injure your splendid silk dresses, let this pin fix your twisted hair and keep it up.’

  Hair care was yet another area of ritual importance and was regarded as an act of worship in which devotees ‘with ivory combs in their hands . . . combing the goddess’s royal hair’ offered combs and hairpins to Isis-Aphrodite. The goddess’ hair was usually shown pinned up in the same no-nonsense bun as Cleopatra’s, fixed firmly in place with gold and silver hairpins. Although women’s hair was generally secured in public, some men admitted that in private ‘I love to see it fall in floating tresses about your shoulders’. So for her meeting with Antonius, Cleopatra may have left sections of her hair to fall loosely about her shoulders in the manner of Isis-Aphrodite whose ‘long thick hair fell in tapering ringlets on her lovely neck’.

  Such ringlets were generally created with heated metal tongs, then set with a resin or wax-based styling mixture, although hairpieces could also provide extra length, detail and colour. The red hair of the Germanic tribes conquered by Caesar was particularly prized for this purpose. It was a shade favoured by fashionable Alexandrian women, including some in the royal household. Presumably Cleopatra’s own auburn hair had set the trend, maybe enhanced with a vegetable colorant such as henna (Lawsonia inermis). Long used in Egypt throughout society, even by the pharaohs, the shrub was common around Canopus near Alexandria, although the best-quality henna came from Askalon, Cleopatra’s former refuge in Judaea.

  Yet for her actual choice of costume Cleopatra almost certainly chose a Greek-style chiton. Aphrodite’s chiton was usually portrayed slipping down to reveal one shoulder, so women were advised to ‘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’, since ‘to kindle in us the fires of love, dress is more potent than the dread arts of the magician’.

  Cleopatra’s chiton on this occasion was perhaps made from the same gauzy linen which had revealed her ‘white breasts’ before Caesar, or from the silk imported from the Greek island of Cos, or even from the finest-quality silk sourced from as far afield as China. Fashion-conscious Alexandrian redheads displayed a clear preference for blues and greens. From ‘azure blue like a clear sky’ to ‘water-green from the colour that it imitates, I could easily imagine that the Nymphs were clothed in such apparel’. Cleopatra dressed her most beautiful female attendants in the robes of Nereids and Graces to accompany her to Tarsus.

  No doubt to complement her own choice of sea-green silky robes as the goddess born from the ocean spray Cleopatra would have worn numerous pearls from her fabulous collection. These items would also have conveyed a political message as the ultimate symbols of Eastern wealth, which might soon be made available to Antonius. Portrayed on coins with pearl-tipped hairpins to lend gleaming lustre to her hair, Cleopatra also wore a long pearl necklace wound twice, flapper-style, around her neck. Yet her most famous jewels were her enormous earrings made from the two largest pearls ‘in the whole of history’. Having ‘come down to her through the hands of the Kings of the East’, presumably a reference to Mithridates’ seizure of the Ptolemies’ treasury which Caesar is likely to have returned to her, they were worth a staggering 10 million sesterces each. She wore them to great effect during her time in Rome: women who copied her were said to be discontented unless the value of several estates hung from each lobe.

  She may also have combined her huge creamy pearls with vivid green Egyptian emeralds, whose intense colour, so loved by her Ptolemaic predecessors, was intimately linked with the green-faced fertility god Osiris and his Greek equivalent Dionysos. Pearls and gems were even added to footwear of the time. Cleopatra’s adoption of Aphrodite’s trademark gilded sandals may even have had the cork platform soles worn by fashion-conscious Alexandrian women — certainly an asset in a world where physical stature was all-important for a head of state.

  Suitably bejewelled from perfumed head to gilded foot, then, Cleopatra could finally take her place aboard her golden ship to begin her voyage north past Cyprus, then east to the Cilician coast. Her arrival from the direction of the legendary island birthplace of golden Aphrodite would confirm her identity before she herself had even come into view.

  As ‘word went round that Aphrodite was coming to revel with Dionysos for the good of Asia’, exactly as she had planned, the incredible ship reached the mouth of the river Kydnos where crowds began to mass along its crocus-filled banks to witness one of the most dramatic entrances in history. For Cleopatra ‘sailed up the river Kydnos in a gold-pro wed barge, with purple sails spread, and rowed along by silver oars to the sound of the flute mingled with pipes. 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. The most beautiful of her serving maids, wearing the robes of Nereids and of Graces, stood by the rudders and by the bulwarks. Wonderful scents from many types of incense permeated the river-banks. 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.’

  While he waited in increasingly solitary splendour in the empty forum, his royal guest had no intention of setting foot on his territory and remained within her canopy as a goddess veiled within her shrine. For this was a battle of wills which she fully intended to win, refusing Antonius’ invitation to dinner but inviting him and his officers to dine with her on her ship. Left with little choice, Antonius agreed, and from that moment, she had him.

  As his torch-lit escort arrived on the riverbank where her golden ship continued to glow long after sunset, hundreds of carefully arranged lights twinkled like stars among the rigging in ‘a spectacle that has seldom been equalled for beauty’. Evoking the well-known light festivals of Isis, Antonius’ formal welcome was illuminated for everyone to see. When finally allowed into her presence he ‘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’.

  In the great state dining room, hung with gold and purple tapestries, Cleopatra had ‘arranged in his honour a royal symposium, in which the service was entirely of gold and jewelled vessels made with exquisite art’. Although he was ‘overwhelmed with the richness of the display’, Cleopatra ‘quietly smiled and said that all these things were a present for him’.

  Following the formality of this all-important meeting at which she robustly defended her actions in the recent conflict, Cleopatra invited Antonius and his party to dine with her again the following evening and ‘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.’

  For their final evening on board ship Cleopatra repeated the performance, this time filling the dining room with rose petals to a depth of several feet. And only when she was satisfied by the cumulative effects of such sensory overload did she finally accept his invitation to dinner, since ‘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’. For, despite his Greek education and love of Greek culture, Antonius was always a rather blunt soldier at heart, and, realising she would have to engage with him on his level, she did so ‘without any sort of reluctance or reserve’ before embarking on her plan to raise his political aspirations in line with her own.

  For Cleopatra was about to revive the plans she had made with Caesar, once again turning to the ambiguous words of the Sibylline Oracle which stated that an Immortal King would join with a widowed Queen to subdue Rome. Then ‘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’ in a new golden age of East-West unity. Having manufactured her visit to Tarsus as the tangible arrival of this new golden age, Cleopatra offered Antonius a glittering future with all the resources he would need to take on Parthia and assume sole command of the Roman world. In return, he would remove her remaining enemies.

  Following reports of ‘Queen’ Arsinoe claiming to be the true ruler of Egypt from her base at Ephesus, Cleopatra’s revelation that it had been Arsinoe who had persuaded Egypt’s Cypriot governor, Serapion, to help Cassius meant that Antonius agreed to her immediate execution. And ‘whatever Cleopatra ordered was done, regardless 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’ in the temple which had long been the slaughterhouse for all the city’s meat and now for a former queen of Egypt.