Cleopatra the Great

by Joann Fletcher

  288 ‘native sistrum ... all kinds of monstrous gods and barking Anubis’. Virgil, Aeneid VIII.698-700 in Maehler 2003, p.208.

  288 ‘lecherous Canopus’ prostitute queen dared to oppose her yapping Anubis against our Jupiter’. Propertius III.11, trans., Shepherd 1985 m Maehler 2003, pp.209-10.

  288 ‘this pestilence of a woman’. Cassius Dio 50.24, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.53.

  288 ‘let nobody consider him a Roman, but rather an Egyptian; let us not call him Antony but rather Serapis’. Cassius Dio, 50.27, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.54.

  288 ‘rabble . . . worship reptiles and beasts as gods, they embalm their bodies to make them appear immortal, they are most forward in effrontery, but most backward in corage. Worst of all, they are not ruled by a man, but are the slaves of a woman’. Cassius Dio, 50.24, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.53.

  289 ‘Imperator’. Southern 1998, p.139.

  290 ‘rich in gaudy robes’. Virgil, Aeneid VIII, Dryden trans., p.223.

  290 ‘from the fifth to the seventh hour it raged with terrific losses on both sides’. Paulus Orosius, in Lovric 2001, p.84. 290 ‘Roman corpses floating in the sea’. Propertius II.15, in Griffin 1977, p.26.

  290 ‘as a woman and as an Egyptian’. Cassius Dio 50.33, in Scott-Kilvert trans., p.59.

  290 ‘like another Paris, left the battle to fly to her arms; or rather, to say the truth, Paris fled when he was already beaten; Antony fled first, and, following Cleopatra, abandoned his victory’. Plutarch, Antony and Demtrius Compared, Dryden trans., p.780.

  290 ‘hardly one’. Horace, Ode 1.37, in Davis 1969, p.92; ‘scarce a single galley’ in Bennet trans., p.99.

  291 ‘out of proportion with the actual events’. Southern 1998, p.137.

  Chapter 11

  296 ‘divine protectress of the country’. Brooklyn 1988, pp.51-2.

  296 ‘as soon as she reached safety, she slew many of the foremost men, since they had always been displeased with her and were now elated over her disaster’. Cassius Dio 51.5 in Grant 1972, p.217; also Scott-Kilvert trans., p.67.

  297 ‘as soon as they heard what happened they started for Egypt to help their rulers’. Cassius Dio 51.7, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.68.

  297 ‘plundered her country’s gods and her ancestors’ sepulchres’. Contra Apion 2.58, in Chugg 2004, p.110.

  297 ‘did not exempt even the most holy shrines’. Cassius Dio 51.5.3-5, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.67, stockpiling repeated in Cassius Dio 51.17,

  Scott-Kilvert trans., p.78.

  297 ‘year 22 which is equivalent of year 7, first month of akhet, day 22 of the female pharaoh, the bodily daughter of kings who were on their part kings born of kings, Cleopatra, the beneficent father-loving goddess and of pharaoh Ptolemy called Caesar, the father and mother loving god’. BM.EA.1325 in Walker and Higgs (eds.,) 2001, p.175.

  298 Harpokrates figurine from Punjab in Wheeler 1954, frontispiece and p.158.

  298 ‘a most bold and wonderful enterprise’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.773.

  298 ‘over the small space of land which divides the Red Sea from the sea near Egypt. . . the narrowest place is not much above 300 furlongs across’ . . . ‘over this neck of land Cleopatra had formed a project of dragging her fleet and setting it afloat in the Arabian Gulf. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.773; for Corinth system see Goudchaux 2003, p.lll.

  298 ‘the Arabians of Petra’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.773.

  299 ‘here I am laid, my life of misery done, ask not my name, I curse you every one’. Plutarch Antony, Dryden trans., p.774.

  300 ‘there was no reasonable favour which she might not expect, if she put Antonius to death or expelled him from Egypt’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  300 ‘busy impertinent ways had provoked him’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  300 ‘was received by Cleopatra in the palace and set the whole city into a course of feasting, drinking and presents’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.774.

  300 ‘that many of the guests who sat down in want went home wealthy men’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  300 ‘The Suicide Club’. Forster 1982, p.29; poisoned chaplets in Pliny Natural History XXI.12, trans., pp.169-71.

  300 ‘I will not be shown in a Triumph’. Livy CXXXIII.54, trans., Schlesinger 1959, p.223.

  301 ‘her daily practice’ ... a collection of all varieties of poisonous drugs and in order to see which of them were the least painful in the operation, she had them tried upon prisoners condemned.) But finding that the quick poisons always worked with sharp pains and that the less painful were slow, she next tried venomous animals, and watched with her own eyes whilst they were applied, one creature to the body of another’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.774; also De Bello Aegyptiaco in Volkman 1953, p.193 and Pliny Natural History XXI.12, trans., p.171.

  301 ‘she pretty well satisfied herself that nothing was comparable to the bite of the asp, which without convulsion or groaning brought on a heavy drowsiness and lethargy with a gentle sweat on the face, the sense being stupefied by degrees; the patient, in appearance, being sensible of no pain, but rather troubled to be disturbed or awakened like those that are in a profound natural sleep’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.774.

  301 ‘other reptiles to end her life’. Cassius Dio 51.11, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.72.

  301 ‘several tombs and monuments . . . joining the temple of Isis’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  301 ‘large edifice’. Ashton 2003(b.) p.28; also Ashton 2003, pp. 120-2.

  301 ‘the tomb which she was building in the grounds of the palace’. Cassius Dio 51.8, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.69. 301 ‘wonderful height. . . very remarkable for their workmanship’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  301 ‘luxuriant decoration represented an excellent example of the baroque style of [Ptolemaic] architecture. The daring roof construction of the entrance kiosk, the play of light and shadows at the capitals, and the effect of the huge, window-like openings that created beautiful connections between interior and exterior spaces must have been stunning’. Arnold 1999, p.224.

  302 ‘ingenious double system of trapdoor and sliding portcullis’. Habachi 1957, p.54; tomb structure in Grimm 2003, p.48.

  302 ‘Egyptian fashion’. PSI XII.1263.7-8 in Montserrat 1997, p.33.

  302 ‘placed in the West and all the rites for my august mummy were carried out’. Harris Stela BM.EA.886 in Reymond 1981 pp.136-50.

  303 Removal of bodies in first-century BC Alexandria by ‘archiatros’. Amundsen and Ferngren 1978, p.341; Athenagoras ‘presided over an elaborate organisation for preserving mummies’. Grant 1972, p.181; First-century BC embalmers archive in Reymond 1973.

  303 ‘made beautiful with unguent, myrrh and incense’. BM.EA.188, in Reymond 1981, p.221.

  303 ‘for if this material is not mixed into the other substances the cadaver will not last long’. Diodorus 19.98-99 in Rimon et al. 1997, p.56; Koller et al. 2005, p.610; Geer trans., p.103.

  303 ‘the teeth of the deceased if fastened with gold’. Cicero De Legibus 11.24, after Jackson 1988, p.120. 303 ‘made of funerary raiment, gold and silver ornaments with protective amulets of all sorts of genuine precious stones’. Stela BM.EA.188 in Reymond 1981, pp.218, 221.

  303 Snake bracelets with emeralds and pearls Boston Museum of Fine Arts No. 1981.287.288 in D’Auna et al. p.198; broad collars in Riggs 2001, p.63.

  304 ‘best burial’. Mond and Myers 1934 I, p.173.

  304 ‘the most highly valued glass is colourless and transparent, as closely as possible resembling rock crystal’. Pliny, Natural History XXXVI.198, trans., p.157.

  304 ‘were taken to see the coffins . . . said to be made of crystal, and the method the Ethiopians follow is first to dry the corpse, either by the Egyptian process or some other . . . they then enclose it in a shaft of crystal which has been hollowed out, like a cylinder, to receive it. The stuff is easily worked, and is mined in large q
uantities. The corpse is plainly visible inside the cylinder; there is no disagreeable smell, or any other cause of annoyance, and every detail can be distinctly seen as if there were nothing between one’s eyes and the body’. Herodotus III.24, de Selincourt trans., p.213.

  304 ‘is to be found also on an island called Necron, or Island of the Dead, in the Red Sea facing Arabia’. Juba II in Pliny Natural History XXXVII.23-29, trans., p.181.

  304 ‘an island in the Red Sea 60 miles from the city of Berenike . . . known as “iris” in token of its appearance, for when it is struck by the sunlight in a room it casts the appearance and colours of a rainbow on the walls near by, continually altering its tints and ever causing more and more astonishment because of its extremely changeable effects . . . and in full sunlight it scatters the beams that shine upon it, and yet at the same time lights up adjacent objects by projecting a kind of gleam in front of itself. Pliny, Natural History XXXVII.136, trans., pp.275-6.

  305 ‘Roman counterpart of Hathor’. Springborg 1990, p.204.

  305 ‘thither she removed her treasure, her gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory [and] cinnamon’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  305 ‘a great quantity of torchwood and tow’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  305 ‘began to fear lest she should in a desperate fit set all these riches on fire’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  305 ‘in honour of which the citizens of Alexandria did nothing but feast and revel for many days’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.774.

  305 ‘mallokouria’. Montserrat 1991.

  306 ‘my son Theon had his long hair cut off in honour of the city on the 15th Tybi in the Great Serapeum in the presence of the priests and officials’. Pap. Oxy.XLIX.3463, based on Montserrat 1996, p.40.

  306 ‘registered among the youths’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.774.

  306 ‘at the eve of a favourable monsoon’. Goudchaux 2003, p.109.

  306 ‘for the Red and Indian Seas’. Tarn in Goudchaux 2003 p.109.

  307 ‘armed as he was, he kissed her, and commending to her favour one of his men who had most signalised himself in the fight’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.775.

  308 Petubastis’ death on statue Cherchell Museum S.75 in Roller 2002 p.143; see also Reymond and Barns 1977, p.14.

  309 ‘gathered the fragments of his chaplet into his cup’. Pliny Natural History XXI.12, trans., pp.169-71.

  308 ‘the sound of all sorts of instruments, and voices singing in tune, and the cry of a crowd of people shouting and dancing, like a troop of bacchanals on its way’. Plutarch, Antony Dryden trans., p.775; ethereal music in Cassius Dio 51.17, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.78.

  309 ‘Why delay any longer? Fate has snatched away the only thing for which I still wanted to live. Fm not so troubled, Cleopatra, that you have gone, for I shall soon be with you. But it distresses me that so great a general should be found to be less courageous than a woman’. After Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.776.

  309 ‘Well done, Eros, well done, you’ve shown your master how to do what you hadn’t the heart to do yourself. After Plutarch, Antony Dryden trans., p.776.

  309 ‘it was no easy task for the women; and Cleopatra, with all her force, clinging to the rope, and straining with her head to the ground, with difficulty pulled him up, while those below encouraged her with their cries, and joined in all her efforts and anxiety’. Plutarch, Antony Dryden trans., p.776.

  310 ‘still holding up his hands to her, and lifting up his body with the little force he had left’, eyewitnesses claiming ‘nothing was ever more sad than this spectacle’. Plutarch, Antony Dryden trans., p.776.

  310 ‘beating her breast with her hands, lacerating herself, and disfiguring her own face with the blood from his wounds, she called him her lord, her husband, her emperor, and seemed to have pretty nearly forgotten all her own evils, she was so intent upon his misfortunes’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.776.

  310 ‘shook her dress to see if there were any poisons hid in it’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.776.

  310 ‘had of his own accord delivered himself up to the serpents at the time when Cleopatra had been seized . . . , and after being bitten by them had leaped into a coffin prepared for him’. Cassius Dio 51.14, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.75.

  311 ‘holding him by the hand and talking with him’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.776.

  311 ‘had the sarcophagus containing Alexander the Great’s mummy removed from the mausoleum at Alexandria and, after a long look at its features, showed his veneration by crowning the head with a golden diadem and strewing flowers on the trunk’. Suetonius, Augustus 18, Graves trans., pp.59-60.

  311 ‘actually touched it, with the result that a piece of the nose was broken off, so the story goes. Yet he was unwilling to look at the remains of the Ptolemies, although the Alexandrians were very anxious to show them; Octavian commented, “I wished to see a king, not corpses” ‘– Cassius Dio, 51.16, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.77.

  311 ‘dragged from the image of the godjulius, to which he had fled with vain pleas for mercy’. Suetonius, Augustus 17, Graves trans., p.59.

  312 ‘sent cavalry in pursuit’. Suetonius, Augustus 17, Graves trans., p.59.

  312 ‘many kings and great commanders made petition to [Octavian] for the body of Antonius to give him his funeral rites, but he would not take the corpse away from Cleopatra by whose hands he was buried with royal splendour and magnificence, it being granted to her to employ what she pleased on his funeral’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.777.

  312 ‘in state, clothed in splendid raiment’. Lucian, On Funerals IV, Loeb trans., p.119.

  312 ‘embalmed’. Cassius Dio 51.15, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.75.

  312 ‘is not likely to have been delayed more than one or two days’. Skeat 1953, p.98.

  313 ‘in this extreme of grief and sorrow . . . inflamed and ulcerated her breasts with beating them . . . she fell into a high fever . . . menacing language about her children’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.777

  313 ‘as if she desired nothing more than to prolong her life’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.778.

  313 ‘her hair and face looking wild and disfigured, her voice quivering, and her eyes sunk in her head’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.778.

  313 ‘her old charm and the boldness of her youthful beauty . . . still sparkled from within’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.778.

  314 ‘dressed herself with studied negligence — indeed, her appearance in mourning wonderfully enhanced her beauty’. Cassius Dio, 51.12, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.73.

  314 ‘the chastity of the princeps [Octavian] was too much for her’. Floras 2.21.9-10 in Whitehorne 2001, p.225, note 8.

  314 ‘having had by her a list of her treasure, she gave it into his hands . . . women’s toys . . . but in fact, was himself deceived’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.778

  314 ‘she, seeking to die more nobly, showed no womanish fear of the sword . . . resolved for death, she was brave inde(ed.) She was no docile woman but truly scorned to be taken away in her enemy’s ships, deposed, to an overweening triumph’. Horace, Ode 1.37.21-32, in Maehler 2003, p.207.

  314 ‘pure wine and fragrant oil of spikenard, balsam too, and crimson roses’, based on Ausonius, Epit. XXXI, in Toynbee 1971, p.63.

  314 ‘no further offerings or libations expect from me; these are the last honours that Cleopatra can pay your memory . . . But if the gods below, with whom you now are, either can or will do anything, suffer not your living wife to be abandoned; let me not be led in trumph to your shame, but hide me and bury me here with you, since amongst all my bitter misfortunes nothing has afflicted me like this brief time that I have had to live without you’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.778.

  315 ‘she put on her finest robes’. Cassius Dio, 51.13, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.74.

  315 ‘no one knows for certain by what means she perished’.
Cassius Dio, 51.14, Scott-Kilvert trans., p.74; death discussed by Griffith 1961 and Whitehorne 2001, chapter 15; effigy of Cleopatra as Isis with snakes on arms in Etienne 2003, p.98.

  315 ‘what really took place is known to no-one’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.779.

  315 ‘the pair of asps in wait for her’. Virgil, Aeneid VIII.697 in Grant 1972, p.227; Dryden trans., p.223.

  315 ‘handled fierce snakes, her corporeal frame drank in their venom’. Horace, Odes 1.37.26-28, in Maehler 2003, p.207.

  315 ‘an asp was brought in amongst those figs and covered with the leaves . . . ‘ “So here it is” and held out her bare arm to be bitten’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.779.

  316 ‘asp’ defined in Holbl 2003, p.293.

  316 ‘which without convulsion or groaning brought on a heavy drowsiness and lethargy with a gentle sweat on the face, the sense being stupefied by degrees; the patient, in appearance, being sensible of no pain, but rather troubled to be disturbed or awakened like those that are in a profound natural sleep’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.774.

  317 Cobra suggested by Spiegelberg in 1925 for ‘an end which was not indeed the easiest, but yet the most sacred’. Griffiths 1961 p.113; ‘while the introduction of one snake is perhaps credible, the mind soon begins to boggle at this Medusa-like proliferation of reptiles’. Whitehorne 2001, p.192.

  317 ‘kept in a vase, and that she vexed and pricked it with a golden spindle till it seized her arm’. Plutarch, Antony, Dryden trans., p.779.

  317 ‘two-headed serpent capable of bounding several feet in the air’. El-Masudi in Hughes-Hallet, 1990, p.72.

  317 Poisoned ointment mentioned by Strabo XVII.296 in Grant 1972, p.226.

  317 ‘she had smeared a pin with some poison whose composition rendered it harmless if the contact were external, but which, if even the smallest quantity entered the bloodstream, would quickly prove fatal, although also painless; according to this theory, she had previously worn the pin in her hair as usual’. Cassius Dio, 51.14, Scott-Kilvert trans., pp.74-5.