by Stacy Schiff
* His sister would not be happy until she had wrought vengeance as well on Herod and Mariamme’s sons, whom Herod later murdered. They were buried alongside Aristobulus.
* There was some irony in Canidius’s good fortune. As a young man, he had been charged with transporting to Rome the treasure of Cleopatra’s deposed uncle, the king of Cyprus. There had been some concern over whether Canidius could be trusted to acquit himself honestly of that lucrative task.
* Sextus Pompey complicated the picture from many angles. He enjoyed warm relations with several monarchs considered to be deadly enemies of Rome and Cleopatra was well disposed toward him, given their fathers’ relationship. (He in fact made overtures to Cleopatra, which Antony discouraged. He was wise enough to see he should not be in league both with a foreign queen and a swaggering compatriot who—despite popular support at home—behaved like a pirate. Antony’s instincts were correct; ever the adventurer, Sextus had simultaneously offered up his services to the Parthians, behind Antony’s back.) According to Appian, Antony refused to sign the order for Sextus’s execution. He was ashamed to do so personally, as he knew the death would displease Cleopatra and did not want her to hold him responsible. Appian likewise suggests that sentence was desirable; better to eliminate Sextus, lest that talented naval commander and Cleopatra league together to “disturb the auspicious respect which Antony and Octavian had for each other.”
* Antony named names, five in all. Elsewhere he noted that Octavian had divorced his previous wife on the grounds of “moral perversity”; she had been a poor sport about his mistress.
* No one saw the will other than Octavian, who may have fabricated it himself. Plancus may equally well have forged it; in urgent cases, he had authority to sign Antony’s name and affix his seal. The document evidently included a confirmation of the gifts Antony had bestowed on Cleopatra’s children, as well as of Caesarion’s paternity. So far as we know, Antony never refuted the terms. Nor, for that matter, did Octavian refute the claim regarding Caesarion, which at this point he was wiser to ignore. It is all the same difficult to imagine any circumstances under which Antony might actually have committed to paper the provisions Octavian read aloud.
* That was an acknowledged weakness. As Plautus, Rome’s most popular playwright, had growled: “I don’t much like these highly connected women, their airs, their huge dowries, their loud demands, their arrogance, their ivory carriages, their dresses, their purple, who reduce their husbands to slavery with their expenses.”
* Stripped of his powers, Antony was now formally without the right to call upon assistance from client states or to distribute Roman territories. By some contorted logic it could be argued that Cleopatra therefore abetted a private citizen hostile to Rome, and that she stood in possession of lands that should not have been hers. To do so was, however, to include Antony in the indictment, in which he nowhere figured.
* Nicolaus of Damascus was quick to assert that even as a teenager, even at the age when youth “are most wanton,” Octavian had abstained from sexual gratification for an entire year. And in the face of all evidence to the contrary, it was inevitably asserted that he lived simply and austerely. In truth Octavian was as fond of costly furniture and Corinthian bronzes as the next man, more fond yet of the gaming table.
* As the poet Propertius asked later: What does our history mean if it leads to the rule of a woman?
* In this realm alone ostentation met with Roman approval. As Plutarch explains: “For extravagance in other objects of display induces luxury and implants effeminacy in those who use them, since something like a pricking and tickling of the senses breaks down serious purpose; but when it is seen in the trappings of war it strengthens and exalts the spirit.”
* Nor was Cleopatra the first savvy Easterner to team up with a Roman general. Sertorius had joined forces with Mithradates, the Pontic king who in 69 so eloquently warned of Rome’s rise. Mithradates too had envisioned precisely the sort of amalgamated empire Cleopatra and Antony represented. He put decades toward its realization, to be vanquished by Pompey. Pompey ultimately defeated Sertorius as well, after a vicious four-year campaign.
* In the normal course of events he would have been preparing to depose his mother about now.
* Caligula descended from both Mark Antony (his paternal great-grandfather) and Octavian (his maternal great-grandfather). He posed alternately as a descendant of each, depending on his agenda. It was easy to trip up under his reign, when sacrifices to celebrate Antony’s overthrow might be objectionable one day, the reluctance to offer sacrifices to Augustus’s victory the next.
* As ever, a capable woman was suspect. It would be whispered that Livia killed him. Curiously, she was said to have done so with poisoned figs.
* The practice of renaming months ended with Tiberius, who—urged to appropriate November—scoffed that all would become highly problematic if there turned out to be thirteen Caesars.
* She may well have known Aesop’s fable: As the lion said to the Man, “There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.”
* Dante at least places her seven circles above her brother in hell. Her sin (lust) was against herself. Her younger brother’s (betrayal) was against another.
CLEOPATRA
A Life
STACY SCHIFF
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
New York Boston London
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2010 Stacy Schiff
All rights reserved.
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