by Michael Foss
In Alexandria, the news that the king was returning pleased no one. To block the return the citizens quickly searched for some prince to marry the young queen Berenice. A youth of respectable Seleucid parentage was discovered but he proved to be so hopelessly vulgar that the city wits called him Kybiosaktes, the Salt Fishmonger, and Berenice found that the only remedy for him was to take him out and have him strangled. Then another young man with better manners was tried. At the end of 56 BC Archelaus, who claimed to be the illegitimate son of the great Pontic king Mithridates, married Berenice and slipped uneasily onto the Ptolemaic throne.
Archelaus had acted without Roman permission and could expect no mercy for this boldness. In the spring of 55 BC Gabinius marched into Egypt along the desert corridor between Palestine and Pehisium on the Nile delta. He had in his train Ptolemy Auletes, and the commander of his cavalry was a burly confident fellow named Mark Antony already experienced and proven in the field though he was only 26 years old. Archelaus made a stand against the Roman army and was killed in battle. Auletes was brought in triumph to Alexandria and began at once to settle old scores. The usurper Archelaus was dead and given honourable burial, against Auletes’ wishes, on the insistence of Mark Antony. But Berenice was too implicated in opposition to expect any fatherly tenderness. With the usual Ptolemaic ruthlessness, Auletes ordered her execution.
Auletes now had four children left. Eldest was Cleopatra, a girl of 14. Her sister Arsinoe was a little younger, and her two brothers, both bearing the dynastic name Ptolemy, were only six and four. Nothing is known of Cleopatra in the years of her father’s exile, but she had survived and now could expect the succession to the throne, very likely as co-ruler with her little brother. But her inheritance looked insecure and full of dangers. She could not have helped but notice the misery of her country, in civil war and under a faltering economy, to which was added the crushing burden of the debt owed to Rabirius. In the turmoil of mutual hatreds she saw the insolence of the Romans, for only Gabinius and his army, now garrisoned in Alexandria, stood between the king and the resentment of the people. To an intelligent girl it was clear enough that, though Auletes sat on the throne in Alexandria, the spoils of Egypt had fallen to Rome.
Rome had brought the king back and now Romans wanted payment. Rabirius, the chief creditor, was given the post of dioiketes, or minister of finance for all of Egypt. In no time he had begun an expert and wholesale plunder of state resources, so much so that he barely avoided lynching by the outraged mob and was forced to flee back to Rome. He was joined there by Gabinius who also had dipped his hand deep in the Egyptian pocket. In Rome, both men were put on trial for financial irregularity and for defrauding the Roman people. With the connivance of Julius Caesar, and defended by the orator Cicero (who had formerly called Gabinius a thieving dancing-boy in paint and hair-curlers), the two men were let off lightly. Caesar undertook to recover the Egyptian debt owed to Rabirius – money borrowed by Auletes largely to bribe Caesar himself – and in this way gained a powerful future interest in Egyptian affairs.
Ptolemy XII Auletes, the New Dionysus, died in the early summer of 51 BC, within four years of his restoration and aged about fifty-five. The contempt that he received from the Romans was well-earned, and the anger shown to him by the people of Alexandria was so constant that he had to see out his reign under the protection of Gabinius’ troops, who had stayed on in Egypt after the departure of their general. He was resigned to his position, merely a puppet-king of a Roman client-state. He made his will and sent it to be lodged with the Vestal Virgins in Rome, who were the guardians of the state archives. He left his kingdom, under Roman supervision, to his children, his son Ptolemy XIII aged ten, and his daughter Cleopatra VII aged eighteen.
3
THE SHADOW OF ROME
IN THE FOURTH CENTURY BC Aristotle, that universal intelligence of the ancient world, thought that Rome was a Greek city. The town on the hills halfway up the leg of Italy was too dim a place to be noticed in the starry firmament of Greek civilization. In those days, the flow of ideas and influence went only one way, so it seemed no more than a course of nature that the Romans imported wholesale the pantheon of Greece to become their own gods under other names. How ironic, then, was the development presided over by those joint gods, but with such unequal favour. A Greek historian at the beginning of the Christian era would have looked back to see with surprise that all the lands of the eastern Mediterranean world conquered and fostered by Greeks, almost to the gates of India, were now in the possession of the unbending, unimaginative rustics from Rome.
The attractions for Rome in the East were not difficult to see. The republic had an instinctive purpose, particularly after the defeat of Carthage, to push dominion as far as arms and armies could reach. For this hardy people, safety lay in aggression. But war required money, and nowhere was there such a profusion of riches than in the lands under the superior culture of the Greeks, especially in Ptolemaic Egypt. The picture that the orator Dio of Prusa gave of Alexandria, which was a true portrait for most of the age of the Ptolemies, was a cause of greed and envy in a money-minded people:
Not only do you have a monopoly [wrote Dio to his favourite city] of the entire Mediterranean shipping because of the beauty of your harbours, the vast size of your fleet, and the abundance of the products of every land that you handle, but also you have in your grasp the outer waters that lie beyond, in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean ... The trade of almost the whole world is yours. For Alexandria is placed, as it were, at the crossroads of the world, a market bringing together all men into one place.
This world was a matter of amazement to less prosperous peoples. The mosaic that some anonymous hand, around 100 BC, laid in a villa at Palestrina in Italy (see Plates 4 and 5) showed a wistful Egyptian topography for Romans to dream on. In this representation the great Nile flowed broad and calm and alive with curious boats, drifting through stately jungles, past temples and palaces where the rituals were leisurely and exotic but powerfully redolent of the sweet smell of money From an early time, perhaps by the start of the third century BC, many Roman feet itched to take the road to that happy land.
At first, the policy of the Ptolemies was to be cordial but uncommitted towards Rome. Soon after 275 BC, when a Roman army had forced Egypt to take notice with an attack on the king of Epirus, Ptolemy II sent an embassy to Rome with a cautious offer of friendship. The patrician Quirttus Ogulnius made the return journey with the acknowledgement amicittia that Ptolemy had sought. Ten years later, when the first great contest between Rome and Carthage began, Carthage asked her rich North African neighbour for a loan. Ptolemy refused. He said both sides were his friends, but he would be glad to act as mediator between them.
Neutrality and ‘friendship’ to Rome were carefully maintained by successive Ptolemies. But the stance became more precarious after the decisive struggle between Hannibal and Scipio Africanus led to the victory of Rome in the second Punic War. At that time, in 217 BC, Agelaus of Aetolia clearly warned his fellow Greek powers that unless they combined they would be swept away by either Carthage or Rome. It was in the character of the Ptolemies, and part of their policy, to do nothing. The moment passed. Envoys came to Alexandria from Rome looking for grain, since the fields of Italy were laid waste by war. There was nothing in the doctrine of neutrality that precluded the making of profits, and so grain was provided. Romans in their bulky robes, so ungainly compared to the smart, short tunics of the Greeks, became familiar enough in the streets of Alexandria. Roman-trained soldiers, many from the confederate Italian tribes, took service in Egyptian armies. There were many of these soldiers about, for the Roman legions were on the march again in the East, contesting the power of the Macedonian Philip and the Seleucid Antiochus.
Once more, Egypt stood aside. Sympathy for fellow Greeks suggested aid for Philip and Antiochus (though both these ambitious rulers had it in mind to dismember the outlying parts of the Egyptian realms), but for the Ptolemies fear of Rome,
or at least the wish not to offend, was stronger than Greek fellow-feeling. In return for this neutrality, Rome did warn Antiochus that Egypt lay under the protection of her amicitia but made no move to force the Seleucid king to hand back the Ptolemaic territory he had seized. And when Antiochus the Great was defeated and broken, Egypt received nothing from the distribution of his lands to the friends of Rome, though the Ptolemies dearly wanted the strategic coast-land of Coele-Syria (Palestine)., It had come to this: Rome could afford to take Egypt for granted.
Thirty years later, when another Antiochus – Epiphanes – made repeated attacks on Egypt, and in 168 BC had gone so far as to take Memphis and lay siege to Alexandria, the brothers Ptolemy VI and VIII owed the preservation of their kingdom to Roman contempt for the wretched squabbles of orientals. The story was told by the historian Polybius. In 168 BC, after the crushing victory of the legions over Macedonia at Pydna, the Roman envoy Popilius Laenas confronted King Antiochus in the Alexandrian suburb of Eleusis and informed him of the decision of the Roman senate, that the Seleucid king should break off his campaign and leave Egypt.
When the king read this communication he said he wished to consult his counsellors, but Popilius stopped him and did something that seemed overbearing and utterly arrogant. Having in his hand a staff made from a vine-shoot, he drew a circle around Antiochus with this cane and told him that he would not leave the circle until he had given his reply. The king was astonished by this action, and without words for a short time. Then he said he would do what the Romans wished. At that, Popilius embraced him warmly as a friend.
With this simple act the hand of Rome began to draw the final curtain on the experiment with Hellenism that Alexander the Great had so triumphantly initiated nearly two centuries before. The Greek-speaking peoples knew then the new rulers of their eastern world.
The act was done, but the implications and the full understanding of it only came to view slowly Immediately what became abundantly clear was the insolent power of Rome and the abject capitulation of the house of Ptolemy to that authority. After Antiochus was expelled by the word of the senate, the two Ptolemies who contested the kingship and the Alexandrian mob continued their triple dance of intrigue, agitation and revolt. In 164 BC the better of the kings, Ptolemy VI Philometor, fled to Rome seeking help. He cut a sad figure for the monarch of the richest of all Mediterranean lands. Diodorus pictured his miserable arrival in Rome:
Ptolemy king of Egypt, having been thrown from his kingdom by his own brother, arrived in Rome in the pitiful guise of a simple citizen, with one eunuch and three slaves. He lodged with a certain Demetrius who lived, because of the high city rents, in a little garret at the top of a mean house. Who would then put his trust in the blessings of the world, or call happy those whose prosperity exceeds measure?
The determination of the senate regarding the rival kings, reached after the usual evasions and bribery, seems to have been accepted, and perhaps prevented further strife and bloodshed in Alexandria. But at what cost to the sovereignty, dignity and reputation of once-mighty Egypt? But reality teaches lessons. Fawning inscriptions began to appear in Greek lands applauding Romans as ‘the common benefactors of all Greeks’. And there was a certain dismal truth to this for the ordinary Greek populace, given the ineptitude of their own rulers. Even the Greek historian Polybius, a judicious and fair-minded man who lived through these times, found himself leaning towards Rome with enthusiasm. The increasing dominance of Rome in the East, he wrote, was ‘the fairest and most widely advantageous stroke of fortune’ for all. There was safety, at least, under the Roman cloak.
This new reality in the East, though still disputed by some independently-minded Greeks such as the islanders of Rhodes, was grudgingly acknowledged by most. But there was no joy in the acknowledgement, and Alexandrians, more than most, felt their helplessness in the new polity. A high Egyptian official, who had taken part in negotiations with Romans, wrote with sullen resignation of those outsiders ‘who are turning their forces against every place’ and becoming ‘stewards of the wealth of others’. But much of the fault, the writer went on, lay with the native inhabitants, ‘for indolence is unable to preserve freedom for any length of time’. The march of Rome was relentless, as the bold empires of Carthage and Macedonia had discovered to their cost. In the Egyptian view, rather than face the waste of war against such grim opponents, it was better to be respectful, flexible and accommodating, for who knew where the legions might go next?
There was constant fear, leading from time to time to panic, that Rome desired Egypt. Good economic and political reasons suggested that this might be so, and the Ptolemies and their advisers were men of subtle imagination who could read the maximum into each sign. Roman intentions seemed to be revealed by such events as the visit made by Scipio Aemilianus to Egypt towards the end of 140 BC. Here was a great man, a representative of the patrician family that had done famous service to the republic. He was a Hellenist who spoke Greek well, a man of culture who knew the literature and philosophy of Greece. But why was he in Egypt? When the citizens of Alexandria looked on his distinguished person they saw in the background, in their minds’ eye, the burning walls of Carthage and the death of old empire.
The historian Diodorus recorded the visit:
Scipio and his colleagues arrived in Egypt intending to look at all the kingdom. Ptolemy received them with great ceremony and careful forethought, preparing sumptuous banquets. He took them around the palace and showed them the royal quarters and the treasury. But the Roman envoys were men of sobriety and virtue, who ate only such little amounts of food as was good for their health, and despised luxurious living as corrupting to both body and soul.
So passing over the wonders shown them by the king as things not worth examination, they showed a keen interest in things of real importance, such as the disposition of the city, the arrangements of its wealth, and the particular construction of the Pharos lighthouse. Then they sailed up the river and noted carefully the richness of the land and the role of the Nile in this prosperity. They saw the numerous cities throughout Egypt, the vast number of the people, the defensive advantages of the country, and the outstanding quality of the land as a whole. They saw how well-planned it was for safe and powerful government. Marvelling at all these advantages, they understood how a mighty state could be maintained there, if only the rulers were up to the mark.
Clearly, this visit was more spying than diplomacy But in the report that Rome received, as Diodorus outlined it, there was a quandary for Romans to ponder. The incompetence and the luxurious corruption of the rulers invited an invasion, but the natural strength of Egypt,. its wealth, its stable society and its military advantages recommended caution. And caution was a Roman watchword. One of their more recent heroes, Quintus Fabius, owed success and everlasting fame to a stratagem that won him the admired title of Cunctator, the Delayer. Rome did not like to move without long consideration and a careful weighing of opposites. At what point did the chaos of foolish leadership tip the balance against natural strengths given by history and geography? Until that decision was ready to be made Rome kept a watching brief, while the court and the mob in Alexandria, nervous and conspiracy-minded at the best of times, found no shortage of bitter tastes to feed their paranoia.
So Romans in Egypt received careful consideration. Officials, even unimportant functionaries, were looked after with exaggerated respect. The way was swept smooth for them, as was indicated by a letter from the Fayum in 112 BC:
To Asclepiades. Be informed that Lucius Memmius, a Roman senator, a person of position and dignity, is sailing from Alexandria to the district of Arsinoe to see the sights. Let him be received with special ceremony. Take care that in all the proper places the guest-rooms are prepared and the landing-places are ready, and present him there with the gifts listed below. Make sure there is furniture in the guest-rooms. Provide tit-bits for him to give Petesouchos the crocodile-god and the crocodiles, and arrange for the viewing of the Labyrinth
, with all the offering and sacrifices that will be needed. In short, do your very best and take the greatest pains to see that this visitor is well-satisfied.
In time, the spirit of appeasement became more a disease than a policy – a melancholy way of life. There is evidence of this afflicted spirit in the attempts to please (and not only in Egypt) in which a ruler would bequeath his kingdom to Rome under certain circumstances. Ptolemy VIII Physkon, desperate for Roman support, wrote in his will:
A selection of coins from the Ptolemaic period
TOP LEFT: This coin dates from the reign of Ptolemy I, the first Ptolemaic pharaoh who was one of Alexander the Great’s generals, and depicts Alexander the Great in a carriage drawn by elephants.
TOP RIGHT: Coin depicting Ptolemy I.
CENTRE LEFT: Ptolemy II and his wife, Arsinoe II.
CENTRE RIGHT: Ptolemy III.
BELOW: Bronze coin of Cleopatra VII. Coin portraits of Cleopatra are some of the few contemporary representations of the queen.
ABOVE: Wall painting showing threshing corn in Ancient Egypt. From the Tomb of Menena at Thebes, 18th Dynasty (1567-1320 BC). Roman travellers noted the rich land bordering the Nile as they sailed tip the great river.
BELOW: The Nile Valley still benefits from the all-important flood waters to irrigate the land and make it rich and fertile, as it did thousands of years ago in Ancient Egypt.
This watercolour by Harold Oakley illustrates the famous late 19th-century reconstruction of the Pharos of Alexandria which was built in the reign of Ptolemy II to help seafarers locate the entrance to Alexandria’s harbour along the flat Egyptian coastline. The tower was built on the island of Pharos and it was soon acknowledged as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The lighthouse has now been destroyed and this reconstruction was based on the best scholarly evidence available at the time.