Cleopatra the Great

by Joann Fletcher

  13-14 Relationship between Greece and Egypt in Philips 1996, Wachsmann 1987 and Vasunia 2001; ‘Peoples of the Sea’ in Sandars 1985; First millennium BC in Kitchen 1996 and Myliwiec 2000.

  14 ‘the Sea of the Greeks’. Fourth-century BC stela, Lichtheim 1980, p.88.

  14 ‘where the houses are furnished in the most sumptuous fashion’. Homer, Odyssey IV. 120-37, Bdeu trans., p.66-7, also Homer, Iliad IX.381, Bdeu trans., p.171.

  16 ‘fond of his joke and his glass, and never inclined to serious pursuits’, Herodotus 11.174, de Selincourt trans., p.198.

  17 Origins of ‘Nile’ in Smith 1979, pp.163-4; Egypt as ‘gift of the river’ in Griffiths 1966.

  17 ‘the Egyptians themselves in their manners and customs seem to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind’. Herodotus, 11.33, de Selincourt trans., p. 142.

  17 ‘are employed in trade while the men stay at home and do the weaving’. Herodotus, 11.33, de Selincourt trans., p.142.

  17 ‘women pass water standing up, men sitting down’. Herodotus 11.33, de Selincourt trans., p.142; Greeks’ descriptions in Wyke 2002, p.210, Vasunia 2001, Harrison 2003, p.148.

  18 ‘the corpse had been embalmed and would not fall to pieces under the blows, Cambyses ordered it to be burnt’. Histories III.16, de Selincourt trans., p.210.

  18 ‘Do you call that a god, you poor creatures?’ Herodotus III.28-30, de Selincourt trans., p.215.

  18 For camels see Bovil 1956 and Rowley-Conwy 1988.

  18 Homeric style battle epics such as Story Cycle of Pedubastis in Lichtheim 1980, p.151-6.

  19 ‘hereditary princess, held in high esteem, favoured with sweet love, the mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt, of gracious countenance, beautiful with the double feather, great royal consort, Lady of the Two Lands’. Kuhlmann 1981, pp.267-79.

  19 ‘a magic defence’. Arnold 1999, p.124.

  20 ‘renowned in her ancestry’. Whitehorne 2001, p.l.

  22 ‘terrified the male spectators as they raised their heads from the wreaths of ivy ... or twined themselves around the wands and garlands of the women’. Plutarch, Alexander 2, trans. 1973, p.254.

  22 ‘fair-skinned, with a ruddy tinge’. Plutarch, Alexander 4, trans. 1973, p.255.

  22 ‘ever to be best and stand far above all others’. Homer, Iliad VI, in Lane Fox 1973, p.66, alternatively ‘Let your motto be I lead. Strive to be the best’, Homer, Iliad VI, Bdeu trans., p.122.

  22 ‘talked freely with them and quite won them over, not only by the friendliness ofhis manner but also because he did not trouble them with any childish or trivial inquiries, but questioned them about the distances they had travelled by road, the nature of the journey into the interior of Persia, the character of the king, his experience in war, and the military strength and prowess of the Persians’. Plutarch, Alexander 5, trans. 1973, p.256.

  23 ‘a wise man should fall in love, take part in politics and live with a king’. Diogenes, Laertius 5.31, in Lane Fox, 1973, p.53.

  23 ‘great souled man’. Aristotle, Ethics IV.3, in Howland 2002, p.27.

  23 ‘as if friends and relatives, and to deal with the barbarians as with beasts or plants’, Aristotle, in Green 1970, p.40; women’s high voices in Aristotle in Physiognomies 807a, in Llewellyn-Jones 2003, p.267.

  23 ‘animated tools’. Aristotle, Politics I.iv.l253b23, trans. Sinclair, pp.63-4.

  23 ‘courtesans we keep for pleasure, concubines for attending day-by-day to the body and wives for producing heirs, and for standing trusty guard on our household property’. Apollodorus, in Davidson 1997, p.77.

  23 ‘the Macedonians consider Ptolemy to be the son of Philip, though putatively the son of Lagus, asserting that his mother was with child when she was married to Lagus by Philip’. Pausanias 1.6.2 in Chugg 2004, p.52.

  23 ‘Ptolemy was a blood relative of Alexander and some believe he was Philip’s son’. Curtius 9.8.22 in Chugg 2004, p.52. ‘Olympias, too, had made it clear that Ptolemy had been fathered by Philip’. Alexander Romance, in Chugg, 2004 p.52; Bingen 2007 p. 18 suggests Ptolemy started the rumour himself.

  24 ‘Wreathed is the bull. All is done. The sacrificer awaits’. Pausanias 8.7.6 in Green 1970, p.65.

  25 ‘was neither hereditary nor was it produced by natural causes. On the contrary, it was said that as a boy he had shown an attractive disposition and displayed much promise, but Olympias was believed to have given him drugs which impaired the functions of his body and irreparably injured his brain’. Plutarch, Alexander 77, trans. 1973, p.334.

  26 ‘You are invincible my son!’. Plutarch Alexander 14, trans., 1973, p.266.

  26 ‘Alexander, the son of Philip, and all the Greeks with the exception of the Spartans won these spoils of war from the barbarians who dwell in Asia’. Plutarch, Alexander 16, trans. 1973, p.270.

  27 ‘in military matters the feeblest and most incompetent of men’. Arrian III. 22, de Selincourt trans., p.185.

  27 ‘led the race for safety’. Arrian 11.11, in de Selincourt trans., p.120. 27 Persian casualties ‘remained unequalled until the first day of the Somme’. Levi 1980, p.179.

  27 ‘full of many treasures, luxurious furniture and lavishly dressed servants’ and ‘the whole room marvellously fragrant with spices and perfumes’. Plutarch, Alexander 20, trans. 1973, p.274.

  29 ‘to match the greatest of the pyramids of Egypt’. Hypomnemata in Andronkos 1988, p.229.

  29 ‘in Egypt, it is not possible for a king to rule without the help of the priests’. Plato, Politics 290.d Vasunia 2001, p.266.

  30 ‘in the Throne Chamber of the Temple of Ptah’. Pseudo-Kallisthenes, Witt 1971, p.290, note 5.

  31 ‘By order of Peukestas: no-one is to pass. The chamber is that of a priest’. Bowman 1986, p.57.

  31 ‘there is an island called Pharos in the rolling seas off the mouth of the Nile, a day’s sail out for a well-found vessel with a roaring wind astern. In this island is a sheltered cove where sailors come to draw their water from a well and can launch their boats on an even keel into the deep sea’. Homer, Odyssey IV, 354-60, Bdeu trans., p.73.

  32 ‘the top of a bull’s head with two straight peninsular horns jutting out into the open sea just beyond the two ends of the island’. MacLeod, (ed.) 2002, p.36

  32 ‘at once struck by the excellence of the site, and convinced that if a city were built upon it, it would prosper. Such was his enthusiasm that he could not wait to begin the work; he himself designed the general layout of the new town, indicating the position of the market square, the number of temples to be built and which gods they should serve — the gods of Greece and the Egyptian Isis — and the precise limits of its outer defences’. Arrian III.2, de Selincourt trans., p.149.

  32 ‘generally sunny, but sometimes rather cold and rainy in winter, and not intolerably hot in summer, there being an almost continuous northern breeze from the sea’. Weigall 1928, pp.123-4.

  34 ‘Oh, son of god’. Plutarch, Alexander 27, trans. 1973, pp.283-4.

  34 ‘phallic-looking mummy . . . draped in cloths and jewels’. Levi 1980, p.178.

  34 ‘the answer which his heart desired’. Arrian 4, de Selincourt trans., p.153.

  34 ‘the high priest commanded him to speak more guardedly, since his father was not a mortal’. Plutarch, Alexander 27, trans. 1973, p.283.

  Chapter 2

  38 Alexander ‘had probably entered a deep, terminal coma due to the onset of cerebral malaria’. Chugg 2004, p.34.

  38 ‘made of hammered gold, and the space about the body they filled with spices such as could make the body sweet-smelling and incorruptible’. Diodorus XVIII.26, Geer trans., p.89.

  38 ‘was appointed to govern Egypt and Libya and those lands of the Arabs that were contiguous to Egypt; and Kleomenes who had been made governor by Alexander, was subordinated to Ptolemy’. Arrian, History of Events after Alexander 156.Fl,5, in Walbank 1981, p.100.

  39 ‘Alexander’s real body was sent ahead without fuss and formality by a secret and little used rout
e. Perdikass found the imitation corpse with the elaborate carriage and halted his advance, thinking he had laid hands on the prize. Too late he realized he had been deceived’. Aelian, Varia Historia, in Chugg 2004, p.43.

  39 ‘proceeded to bury with Macedonian rites in Memphis’. Pausanias 1.6.3, in Saunders 2006, p.40; ‘Alexander was interred in Memphis’. FGrH.239 in Saunders 2006, p.40; philosophers’ statues in Ridgway 1990, pp.132-3; Nectanebo II sarcophagus in Chugg 2004, pp.55-65.

  40 ‘this great governor searched for the best thing to do for the gods of Upper and Lower Egypt’. ‘Stela of the Satrap’, Cairo CG.22181 in Dunand and Zivie-Coche 2004, p.200.

  41 ‘girdlewearers’. Romer and Romer 1995, p.75.

  42 ‘was the most powerful of Ptolemy I’s wives and the one with the most virtues and intelligence’. Plutarch, Pyrrhus 4.4 in Rowlandson (ed.) 1998, p.26; Dryden trans., p.315.

  42 ‘brought down from Memphis the corpse of Alexander’. Pausanias in Chugg 200, p.76; for alabaster tomb see Empereur 1998, p.144-53.

  43 Ptolemaic royal women ‘played the same role as kings’ and ‘eliminated gender hierarchy for a brief period in Classical antiquity’. Pomeroy 1984, pp.xviii-xix; they ‘much more closely resembled their pharaonic predecessors than they did Greek women of any class’. Springborg 1990, p.198.

  43 Reaction to marriage in Athenaeus XIV.621, Gulick trans., p.345; Cimon of Athens married his half-sister, see Pomeroy 1975, p.241; the ‘Egyptians also made a law. . . contrary to the general custom of mankind, permitting men to marry their sisters, this being due to the success attained by Isis in this respect’. Diodorus 1.27.1-2 in Oldfather trans., p.85.

  43 ‘Daughter of Ra’. Troy 1986, p.178.

  43 Cameo (Vienna Kunsthistoriches Museum) in Holbl 2001, fig.2.1; blond hair in Theocritus XVII. 103 in Grant 1972, p.5; features in Thompson 1973, p.82; goitre in Hinks 1928, p.242.

  44 Myrtle wreath as slang for genitals in Whitehorne 2001, p.l.

  44 ‘rising from the flashing sea and laughing, striking lightning from her lovely face’. Collecteana Alexandrina, after Thompson 1973, p.84.

  44 ‘that must be a very dirty get-together. For the assembly can only be that of a miscellaneous mob who have themselves served with a stale and utterly unseemly feast’. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, in Wilkins and Hill 2006, p.104.

  44 Ptolemy II ‘probably owed a good deal of his efficiency in war and in administrative ideas to his sister-wife Arsinoe IF. Thompson 1973, p.3.

  45 ‘myrrh and calamus for the temple of the gods of Egypt’. Simpson (ed.) 2002, p.91.

  45 ‘not heaped up to lie useless, as if the wealth of ever-industrious ants; much is lavished on the shrines of the gods’. Theocritus, Idyll 17, in Dunand and Zivie-Coche 2004, p.204; 100 talents for sacred cow burial in P.Zen.Pestman 50, in Rowlandson (ed.) 1998, p.49.

  46 ‘the Romans, pleased that one [sic] so far away should have thought so highly of them’. Cassius Dio 10.41 in Walker and Higgs 2001, p.14 and trans., Cary, pp.367-9.

  46 Alexandria as ‘New York of the ancient world’ in Ray in Walker and Higgs (eds.,) 2001 p.36; inventors’ role to ‘beautify cities, serve the army and mystify worshippers’. Hodges 1973, pp.182-3.

  47 Ptolemy II ‘caused the philosophy of the Egyptians (before alone peculiar to the priests) to be divulged in Greeke for the benefit of students’. Sandys 1615, p.lll.

  47 ‘they cut open criminals received out of the kings’ prisons, and they studied whilst the breath of life remained in them’. Celsus, De Medidna I in MacLeod, (ed.) 2002, p.lll.

  47 ‘the most august of all princes and devoted, if any one ever was, to culture and learning’. Athenaeus Deipnosophists XII.536, Gulick trans., p.425.

  47 ‘and concerning the number of books, the establishing of libraries, and the collection in the Hall of the Muses, why need I even speak, since they are in all men’s memories’. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists V.203, Gulick trans., pp.420-1.

  48 ‘marble figures, a hundred in all, the work of foremost artists . . . and paintings by artists of the Sicyonian school alternating with a great variety of selected portraits’. Athenaeus Deipnosophists V.196, Gulick trans., p.391.

  48 ‘Come on! Get your cloak. Let’s go to the house of the king, rich Ptolemy. I hear the queen has done a beautiful job of decorating it . . . And when you’ve seen it, what won’t you be able to say to someone who hasn’t!’. Theocritus, Idyll 15, exc. G. in Thompson 1964, p.157.

  48 ‘everything in Egypt was play-acting and painted scenery’. Plutarch, Aratus, 15.2 in Walbank 1979, p.182.

  48 ‘the form of the Egyptian Bes the dancer, who trumpets forth a shrill note when the spout is opened for the flowing wine’. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists XI.497, Gulick trans., p.219.

  49 ‘that her statue be set up in all the temples. This pleased their priests for they were aware of her noble attitude toward the gods and of her excellent deeds to the benefit of all people . . . Beloved of the Ram’. Mendes Stela Cairo CG.22181 in Brooklyn 1988, p.43.

  49 ‘where bitch-mounting goats go mating with the women’. Strabo, in Lindsay 1963, p.6.

  49 ‘a goat tupped a woman, in full view of everyone — a most surprising event’. Herodotus, 11.46, de Selincourt trans., p.148.

  49 ‘I will make you a god [sic] at the head of the gods on earth’. Brooklyn 1988, p.43.

  49 ‘a man of wit and taste, partial to the ladies’. Theocritus, Idylls 14.58-68, in Lewis 1986, p.11.

  50 ‘Unlucky devil that I am! To think I cannot even be one of those fellows’. Athenaeus Deipnosophists XII.536, Gulick trans., p.425.

  50 Berenike IFs exploits in Callimachus’ ‘Victory of Berenike’ in Ashton 2003, p.59; Egyptian epithet describing her bravery, strength and courage m Troy 1986, p.179.

  50 ‘deep-set long eyes, a nose wide at the nostrils, a ball-chin — a face slightly reminiscent of Nefertiti... it looks as though the Hellenistic Greeks, like the moderns, admired the Nefertiti profile’. Thompson 1973, p.86, p.105, note 5.

  50 Berenike IFs hair in Brooklyn 1988, p.182, Thompson 1973, p.86 and Nachtergael 1980, 1981; crown in Empereur 2002, p.12; perfumes in Athenaeus, Deipnosophists XV.689.a, Griffin 1976, p.93.

  50 ‘ta per-aat Bereniga . . . the pharaoh Berenike’. Holbl 2001, p.85.

  50 ‘perceived as the equivalent of an Egyptian king. There could be nothing clearer than the idea of a female Horus’. Tait 2003, p.7; her role in Aelian VH. 14.43, in Thompson 1973, p.87, and female vizier in Troy 1986, p.179.

  51 ‘a sacred statue for her, of gold and set with precious stones’. Canopus Decree in Rowlandson (ed.) 1998, p.32; veiled Berenike II statue in

  Ashton 2003, fig. 10, p.82.

  51 ‘adorned with great columned halls and statuary which seems almost alive’. Ammianus Marcelfinus in MacLeod (ed.) 2002, p.71.

  51 ‘constant concern, combined with heavy outlay and expense, for Apis and Mnevis and the other renowned sacred animals in the land’. Canopus Decree in Rowlandson (ed.) 1998, p.31.

  51 ‘the one who has his being before the ancestors’. Ibrahim 1979, pp.170-1; Edfu was ‘the memorial of Egypt’s national King Horus and the country’s archives of religious traditions and beliefs’. Reymond and Barns 1977, p.7.

  51 ‘offerings shall be made in your shrine, O Falcon, O you of the dappled plumage! . . . shespu er shespet ek shenbet sab-shuwt’. Watterson 1979. p.167.

  52 ‘Nekhbet stabs him who violates your inviolable soil . . . shatat her shemy shash shaw ek shata’. Watterson 1979, p.169.

  52 ‘I hold my harpoon! I drive back the hidden ones, I stab their bodies, I cut them up, I deflect their attack against Horus of the dappled plumage’, temple texts based on Wilson’s translation in Quirke (ed.) 1997, p.183.

  52 ‘strong protector of the gods and mighty wall for Egypt’. Holbl 2001, p.80.

  52 ‘a loose, voluptuous, and effeminate prince, under the power of his pleasures and his women and his wine . . . while the great affairs of state were managed by Agathoklea, the kin
g’s mistress, [and] her mother and pimp Oinanthe’. Plutarch, Kleomenes, Dryden trans., p.669.

  52 ‘an eyewitness of the sickness of the realm’. Plutarch, Kleomenes, in Walbank 1979 p.182; three Greek ambassadors all died in Ptolemy IV’s ninth year, in Walker and Higgs (eds.,), 2001, p.117.

  53 Arsinoe III presenting hair lock in Nachtergael 1980; spear-wielding ‘heroine of the battle of Raphia’ in Thompson 1973, p.26.

  53 ‘taking presents to the king and queen to commemorate and renew their friendship’. Livy 27.4.10 in Maehler 2003, p.203; also in Moore trans., p.215.

  53 ‘Neos Dionysos’. Holbl 2001, p. 171.

  53 ‘carrying a timbrel and taking part in the show’. Plutarch, Dryden trans., p.669.

  53 ‘built in the middle of the city a memorial building which is now called the Sema [tomb] and he laid there all his forefathers together with his mother, and also Alexander the Macedonian’. Zenobius, in Chugg 2004, p.80.

  54 ‘the Soma also, as it is called, is part of the royal district. This was the walled enclosure which contained the burial places of the kings and that of Alexander’. Strabo 17.1.8 in Chugg 2004, p.81.

  54 ‘worthy of the glory of Alexander in size and construction’. Diodorus XVIII.28, Geer trans., p.95.

  54 ‘his shameful philanderings and incoherent and continuous bouts of drunkenness, not surprisingly found in a very short space of time both himself and his kingdom to be the object of a number of conspiracies’. Polybius 5.34.4-10 in Walker and Higgs (eds.,) 2001, p.18.

  55 ‘some bit them, some stabbed them, others cut out their eyes. Whenever one of them fell, they ripped their limbs apart, until they had in this way mutilated them all. For a terrible savagery accompanies the angry passions of the people who live in Egypt’. Polybius XV.27, 29, 33 in Rowlandson (ed.) 1998, p.34.

  55 ‘had them slain on the wood’. Rosetta Stone, trans., Simpson in Parkinson 1999, p.199.

  55 ‘god, the son of a god and goddess and being like Horus, son of Isis and Osiris’. Rosetta Stone, trans., Simpson in Parkinson 1999, p.198.