Cleopatra: A Life

by Stacy Schiff

  60. “You have to be a very rich”: Juvenal, Satire 3, 236. The flying pots are also his, Ibid., 270ff.

  61. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be so good”: Plutarch citing Antisthenes, “Pericles,” I.5.

  62. “not a real man”: Athenaeus, V.206d.

  63. “superficially civilized”: Lucan, in P. F. Widdows’s translation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 544.

  64. “the last word”: Casson, 1998, 104.

  65. “idle and foolish”: NH, XXXVI.xvi.75. In the Loeb, “They rank as a superfluous and foolish display of wealth.”

  66. Greek and Latin: Quintilian acknowledges that the world sounded harsher in Latin, shorn as it was of the sweetest Greek letters, with which “the language at once seems to brighten us up and smile” (12.10).

  67. word… for “not possessing”: Seneca, Epistle LXXXVII.40.

  68. “gold-inlay utensils”: Dalby, 2000, 123. Dalby notes that a Greek accent alone carried with it a whiff of luxury, 122. Similarly Dio, LVII.xv.3; Valerius, Book IX, 1, “Of Luxury and Lust.” It seemed impossible to describe excess without recourse to Greek. It is Dalby who observes that “the classic practical manual of sexual behavior was in Greek, 123.

  69. On the rise of luxury: Livy, 39.6; NH, XXXVI; Plutarch, “Caius Marius,” 34; Athenaeus, XII; Horace, Odes II, xv; Dalby, 2000; Wiseman, 1985, 102ff.

  70. The stolen napkins: Catullus, Poems, 12 and 25; NH, 19.2.

  71. the beautiful vase of poisonous snakes: Saint Jerome, cited in Jasper Griffin, “Virgil Lives!,” New York Review of Books ( June 26, 2008): 24.

  72. Women in Rome: Richard A. Bauman, Women and Politics in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 1992); Diana E. E. Kleiner and Susan B. Matheson, eds., I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1996); Barbara S. Lesko, “Women’s Monumental Mark on Ancient Egypt,” Biblical Archeologist 54, no. 1 (1991), 4–15; Rawson, 1985; Marilyn B. Skinner’s fine Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005); Wyke, The Roman Mistress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Interview with Larissa Bonfante, February 2, 2009.

  73. “Hard work”: Juvenal, Satire 6, 289ff.

  74. “teasing, scolding”: Samuel Butler, The Humour of Homer, and Other Essays (London: A. C. Fifield, 1913), 60. Edith Hamilton remarks on the absence of deceived husbands in The Roman Way (New York: Norton, 1993), 35.

  75. “There’s nothing a woman”: Juvenal, Satire 6, 460–1.

  76. even C’s eunuchs were rich: Seneca, Epistle LXXXVII.16.

  77. The much-discussed pearls: Suetonius, “Caligula,” XXXVII; Horace, Satire 2.iii.239; Pausanias, 8.18.6; NH, IX.lviii. C’s two pearls—“the largest in the whole of history”—are from Pliny, IX.119–121. Lucan too ropes a fortune in pearls around C’s neck and through her hair, X.139–40. See also Macrobius, The Saturnalia, 3.17.14. In that much later account C and MA arrive at a wager over the pearl in the course of their extravagant feasting. They are well matched; “It was as the slave of this gluttony that he [MA] wished to make an Egyptian kingdom of the empire of Rome.” Plancus good-naturedly umpires the contest. For centuries C’s name remained a synonym for extravagance. In the fifth century AD Sidonius (Letter VIII.xii.8) described the most lavish of dinners as akin to “a feast of Cleopatra’s.”

  78. “When I boiled a pearl”: B. L. Ullman, “Cleopatra’s Pearls,” Classical Journal 52, no. 5 (1957): 196. See also Prudence J. Jones, “The Cleopatra Cocktail,” 1999, http://www.apaclassics.org/AnnualMeeting/99mtg/abstracts/jonesp.html. She finds the pearls do dissolve. Keats included the melted pearls in “Modern Love.”

  79. “the leaves at the top”: Hesiod, Works and Days, 680–1.

  80. “did not let” to “name to the child”: DJ, LII.2.

  81. “was her best card”: Aly, 1989, 51.

  82. needed to press her case: Interview with Roger Bagnall, November 11, 2008.

  83. passionate, admiring letters: Dio, LI.xii.3.

  84. “A more raffish assemblage”: Cicero to Atticus, 16 (I.16.), early July 61. On broadening C’s base of support, Andrew Meadows to author, March 5, 2010.

  85. On C’s concern with the reorganization of the East: Gruen, 2003, 271.

  CHAPTER V: MAN IS BY NATURE A POLITICAL CREATURE

  Generally on Rome’s political climate, Appian, Dio, Florus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Plutarch, Suetonius, and most eloquently, as always, Cicero. On Cicero, Plutarch, and Suetonius: for modern portraits, Everitt, 2003; and Elizabeth Rawson, Cicero: A Portrait (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2001). On the rain of honors, Appian, Cicero, Dio. For the geography of unlit Rome, the Janiculum Hill, etc.: Homo, 1951; Aly, 1989. On C and science, Monica Green, “The Transmission of Ancient Theories of Female Physiology and Disease through the Early Middle Ages” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1985), 156–61, 185–9; Albert Neuberger, The Technical Arts and Sciences of the Ancients (London: Kegan Paul, 2003); Margaret Ott, “Cleopatra VII: Stateswoman or Strumpet?” (MA thesis, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, 1976); Okasha El Daly, “ ‘The Virtuous Scholar’: Queen Cleopatra in Medieval Muslim Arab Writings,” in Walker and Ashton, 2003, 51–6.

  For the traditional Ides: Ovid, Fasti, iii, 523; Martial, Epigrams, IV.64. For the Ides of 44: Appian, II.111–119; Dio, XLIV; Florus, II.xiii.95; ND, 25.92, Fr. 130.19ff; JC, LXVI–LXVII; Plutarch, “Brutus,” XIV–XVIII; MA, XIII–XIV; DJ, LXXXII; VP, LVI. Cicero provides the earliest details, De Divinatione, II.ix.23. See also Balsdon, “The Ides of March,” Historia 7 (1958): 80–94; Nicholas Horsfall, “The Ides of March: Some New Problems,” Greece & Rome 21, no. 2 (1974): 191–99.

  1. “Man is by nature”: Aristotle, Politics, I.1253a.

  2. “O would that the female sex”: Euripides, “Cyclops,” in Euripides: Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea, David Kovacs, ed., tr. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 185.

  3. “I don’t know how a man”: Cicero to M. Curius, 200 (XII.28), c. August 46.

  4. “general perturbation”: Cicero to Rufus, 203 (IV.4), c. October 46.

  5. “endless armed conflict”: Cicero to A. Torquatus, 245 (VI.2), April 45.

  6. C’s fashion: On the hairstyle, Peter Higgs, “Searching for Cleopatra’s Image: Classical Portraits in Stone,” in Walker and Higgs, 2001, 203. On contemporary Egyptomania, Carla Alfano, “Egyptian Influences in Italy,” Ibid., 276–91. See also Kleiner, 2005, 277–8.

  7. “neither a chatterbox”: Aulus Gellius, citing Varro, in The Attic Nights, XIII.xi.2–5. The translation is from Balsdon, 1969, 46.

  8. chicken or the egg: For the dinner discussions, Plutarch, Table Talk (Quaestiones Convivales), II.3 (635)–V.9 (684).

  9. “He was not at all concerned”: Dio, XLIII.xxviii.1.

  10. “a great deal of barking”: Ibid., XLVI.xxvi.2.

  11. “I knew no security” to “treachery of old ones”: Cicero to Cn. Plancius, 240 (IV.14), c. late 46.

  12. “of a literary kind”: Cicero to Atticus, 393.2 (XV.15), c. June 44.

  13. “blood nor spirit”: Cicero, De Lege Agraria, II.42.xvii (traslation modified).

  14. whiff of dishonor: Cicero to Atticus, 25 (II.5), c. April 59.

  15. “The arrogance of the Queen”: Cicero to Atticus, 393 (XV.15), c. June 13, 44.

  16. “a certain foolish vanity”: Ibid., 38 (II.17), c. June 59.

  17. Plutarch was more explicit: Plutarch, “Demosthenes and Cicero,” II.1.

  18. “He was the greatest boaster”: Dio, XXXVIII.xii.7.

  19. governed a vast kingdom: MA, LVI.

  20. It bothered Cicero: As he put it in a summer 50 letter to Atticus, 117 (VI.3): “I have never put up with rudeness from the most powerful personages.”

  21. “rescue almost from the brink”: Attributed to Sallust, “Letter to Caesar,” XIII.5.

  22. “was impossible to terrify”: Appian, II.150.

  23. “encouraged him and puffed him up”: Dio, XLIV.iii.1–2.

  24. “from one to another”: Appian, II.117.r />
  25. “bloodstained and cut”: Ibid., III.35.

  26. “Run!”: Dio, XLIV.xx.3.

  27. “the city looked as if”: ND, 25.

  28. The Helen of Troy comparison: Cicero, “Philippic” 2.XII.55. Nor does C figure on Florus’s list of CR’s misdeeds, Book II.

  29. “because they wished” to “as he pleased”: Dio, XLIV.vii.3–4.

  30. “for the purpose of begetting”: Suetonius, citing an anonymous source, DJ, LII.

  31. “taking with him the resources”: Ibid., LXXIX.

  32. founder of the Roman Empire: Collins, 1959, 132.

  33. “silly folk”: DJ, LVI.

  34. “And so, every kind of man”: ND, 19.

  35. “proud and thunderous” to “dirge-like”: Appian, II.144–6.

  36. “almost the whole city”: Dio, XLV.xxiii.4–5.

  37. bloodthirsty barbarians: For the Roman view of the “facile, fickle” (Dio, LI.xvii.1) Alexandrians, Reinhold, 1988, 227–8. Dio Chrysostom, “The 32nd Discourse”; Polybius, The Histories, XV.33; Philo (himself an Alexandrian), “Flaccus,” V.32–35. Philo thought his countrymen unmatched in their insubordination, “being constantly in the habit of exciting great seditions from very small sparks” (Flaccus, IV.16). The emperor Hadrian wrote off the Alexandrians as “a rebellious, good-for-nothing, slanderous people,” single-mindedly devoted to lucre. To Florence Nightingale, disembarking in 1849 and not at her enlightened best in Egypt, the Alexandrians were “the busiest and the noisiest people in the world,” November 19, 1849, cited in Gerard Valleé, ed., Florence Nightingale on Mysticism and Eastern Religions (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2003), 144. For the Rome/Alexandria encounter, see also M. P. Charlesworth, “The Fear of the Orient in the Roman Empire,” Cambridge Historical Journal 2, no. 1 (1926): 9–16; and Jasper Griffin, Latin Poets and Roman Life (London: Duckworth, 1985).

  38. “for they stood in awe”: Dio, XLIV.xv.2.

  39. “I detest” to “have a spleen”: Cicero to Atticus, 393 (XV.15), c. June 13, 44 (translation modified).

  40. “regulations, favours, and gifts”: Appian, II.133.

  41. “an orgy of loot”: Hirtius to Cicero, cited in Cicero to Atticus, 386 (XV.6), c. June 44.

  42. “There is a very large element”: Dio, XLV.viii.4.

  43. “never showing its ordinary radiance”: JC, LXIX (ML translation).

  44. “Who can adequately express”: VP, II.lxxv.

  45. Visit of a sovereign: Plutarch, “Lucullus,” II.5. Herod too is escorted by the authorities to Alexandria, JW, I.279.

  46. “Alexandria is home”: Cited in Siani-Davies, 2001, 105 (“Pro Rabirio Postumo,” 13.35). Regarding Alexandria, Cicero continues: “It is from its inhabitants that writers of farces draw all their plots.”

  47. plenty of precedent: For example, Arrian, 6.28.3.

  48. “There’s a common proverb”: Cicero to Plancus, 407 (X.20), May 29, 43.

  49. “so utterly unsociable”: Plutarch, “Demetrius,” III.3.

  50. Isis attire: Interview with Norma Goldman, October 19, 2009. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante, The World of Roman Costume (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001); Dorothy Burr Thompson, 1973, 30; Elizabeth J. Walters, Attic Grave Reliefs that Represent Women in the Dress of Isis (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1988); Apuleius, Metamorphoses, XI.iii–iv.

  51. Dendera: Goudchaux, “Cleopatra’s Subtle Religious Strategy,” 2001, 138–9; Bingen, 2007, 73; Kleiner, 2005, 85–8; Jan Quaegebeur, especially “Cléopâtre VII et le temple de Dendara,” Göttinger Miszellen 120 (1991): 49–73. Nearly 1,900 years later Florence Nightingale visited Dendera. Generally she had little patience for the Ptolemies; she remained unimpressed by the “acres of bas-reliefs” and the miles of sculpture. The complex struck her as vulgar. “The earliest name which you find there is of that vile C,” she huffed, Vallée, 2003, 397. Nightingale certainly could not miss her; C appears no fewer than seventy-three times on the temple and chapel walls.

  52. “I cannot describe”: Cited in Michael D. Calabria, ed., Florence Nightingale in Egypt and Greece (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 31.

  53. On the Caesareum: Philo, “On the Embassy to Gaius,” C. D. Yonge, tr., The Works of Philo (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993), 150–1. See also Ferdinando Castagnoli, “Influenze alessandrine nell’urbanistica della Roma augustea,” Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica 109 (1981): 414–23; Ammianus Marcellinus, XXII.16.12.

  54. intellectual revival: See Gabriele Marasco’s fine “Cléopâtre et les sciences de son temps,” Sciences exactes et sciences appliquées à Alexandrie, Gilbert Argoud and others, eds. (1998): 39–53; Fraser, 1972, I, 87, 311–22, 363, 490.

  55. contradicting himself: Seneca, Epistle LXXXVIII.37. See also Athenaeus, IV.139. For the book-forgetter, Quintilian, 1.8.20–1; Ammianus Marcellinus, XXII.16.16; H. A. Russell, “Old Brass-Guts,” Classical Journal 43:7, 1948, 431–2.

  56. “intellectual stimulus”: Rawson, 1985, 81.

  57. “rubbed until it sprouts”: Galen, cited by Ott, 1976, Appendix A, 33.

  58. “all sorts of deadly” to “set one upon another”: MA, LXXI.

  59. “great scientific curiosity” to “an actual embryo”: Cited in Ott, 1976, Appendix C, 35. Possibly another Queen C was intended. For C the scientist, see also Plant, 2004, 2–5, 135–47.

  60. “that I always used”: Cited in Monica Green, 1985, 186. For C’s involvement with alchemy, see F. Sherwood Taylor, “A Survey of Greek Alchemy,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 50, I (1930): 109–39. The word alchemy—Arabic in origin—postdates C. It did not help that various alchemists published under the pen name Cleopatra. See Plant, 2004, 145.

  61. “magic arts and charms”: Plutarch, MA, XXV.4 (ML translation).

  62. “general malaise” to “hatred of evil”: April 12, 41, cited in Marie-Thérèse Lenger, Corpus des ordonnances des Ptolémées (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1964), 210–5.

  63. “No wild beast”: Plutarch, “Cicero,” XLVI.

  64. “what humiliations”: Plutarch, “Cato the Younger,” XXXV.4 (ML translation).

  65. “she had not been terrified”: Appian, V.8.

  66. “the most aggressive of men”: Ibid., II.88. His violent temper was legendary. Appian adds that the Parthian mounted bowmen joined Cassius of their own volition, attracted by his reputation, IV.59.

  67. Brutus’s stern reminder: Plutarch, “Brutus,” XXVIII.

  68. “not only ruined everything”: Appian, V.8.

  69. On Quintus Dellius: Seneca the Elder, Suasoriae, 1.8; JA, 14.394, 15.25; JW, 1.290; Seneca the Younger, De Clementia, I.x.1.

  70. “had no sooner seen her face” to “kindest of soldiers”: MA, XXV (ML translation).

  71. Hera in the Iliad: It is unclear whether Plutarch or Dellius invokes the Homeric comparison, Ibid.

  72. “accompanied by a remarkable crowd”: Appian, III.12.

  73. “a great halo”: Dio, XLV.iv.4.

  74. “the butchery” to “craftily and patiently”: Appian, III.13–14.

  75. “to stand behind me” to “other finery”: Ibid., III.15–17.

  76. “all the prestige”: Florus, II.xv.2.

  77. “that you in fact possess” to “good enough for me”: Appian, III.18–19.

  78. The hostilities to be encouraged: Appian, III.21, 85; Dio, XLV.xi.3–4, XLVI.xl.4, XLVI.xli.1.

  79. malign, blackmail, slander: Quintus Fufius Calenus, cited in Dio, XLVI.viii.3–4.

  80. “I don’t trust his age”: Cicero to Atticus, 419 (XVI.9), November 4, 44.

  81. “my wonderful Dolabella”: Cicero to Atticus, 369 (XIV.15), May 1, 44.

  82. “No affection was”: Cicero to Dolabella, 371A (XIV.17A), May 3, 44.

  83. “The gall of the man!”: Cicero to Atticus, 373 (XIV.18), May 9, 44.

  84. “the systematic organization”: Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (New York: Library of America, 1990), 13.
Adams was speaking of Massachusetts politics.

  85. A’s carousing wake: Suetonius, “On Rhetoricians,” V (29).

  86. “He was a spendthrift”: VP on Curio the Younger, II.xlviii.4. Translation is from Cicero to Atticus, 14 (I.14), February 13, 61, editor’s note.

  87. “All over the city” to “their legacy?”: Appian, III.28.

  88. “to set them at odds”: Dio, XLVI.xli.

  89. provided that Octavian did: Ibid., 29.

  90. wildly shouting oath after oath: Appian, III.39; Seneca on Octavian’s temper, De Clementia, I.xi.1.

  91. “On the other hand”: Cicero to Atticus, 425.1 (XVI.14), c. November 44.

  92. “The man who crushes”: Cicero to Plancus, 393 (X.19), c. May 43.

  93. “In truth, we ought not to think”: Cicero, “Philippic,” VI.III.7.

  94. “the fume of debauch”: Cicero, “Philippic,” II.xii.30; “the belching,” Cicero to Cornificius, 373 (XII.25), c. March 20, 43; “spewing,” Cicero to Cassius, 344 (XII.2), c. late September 44.

  95. “It is easy to inveigh”: Cicero, “Pro Caelio,” xii.29.

  96. “And so, if by chance”: Ibid., xvii.42.

  97. “an air of high”: Cicero to Quintus, 21.5 (III.1), September 54.

  98. “would prefer to answer”: Cicero, “Philippic,” VI.ii.4. Why would A do so? Because, volunteered Cicero, “he so enjoys lecheries at home and murders in the forum.”

  99. “to exchange enmity”: Appian, IV.2.

  100. “Lepidus was actuated”: Florus, II.xvi.6.

  101. “their staunchest friends”: Dio, XLVII.vi.1.

  102. “Extra names”: Appian, IV.5.

  103. “The whole city filled”: Dio, XLVII.iii.1. The heads were delivered for fixed rewards, the rest of the body left to rot in the street. You could tell that the wrong person had been killed if the corpse retained its head. Appian, IV.15. On the ingenious wife, Appian, IV.40.

  104. “his face wasted with anxiety”: Plutarch, “Cicero,” XLVII.3.

  105. On Cicero’s death: Appian, IV.19–20; Plutarch, “Cicero,” XLVII; Dio, XLVII.viii; Eusebius, Chronicles, 184–3; Livy, “Fragments,” CXX.