by Michael Foss
Coin depicting a crocodile and the words ‘Egypt captured’, issued in 28 BC.
The battle of Actium had all the appearance of the last contest. Old Egypt, the 4000-year-old conservative mystery that belonged to the pharaohs, peopled by a docile peasantry in awe of changeable gods with heads of cow or dog or falcon, had fallen to the vigorous new gods of the Capitol, more rational beings who expressed the simple aspirations of an expanding, confident, warlike state. Apollo, in particular, had let in the light, and Augustus was his faithful servant.
Yours, my Roman, is the gift of government [wrote Virgil, chief cheerleader of the new polity] that is your task: to impose upon the nations the code of peace; to be merciful to the conquered, and utterly to crush the stubborn.
But the retrospect of history reveals stranger patterns and anomalies. Not only had old Egypt survived through its economic strength, becoming the indispensable breadbasket of the Roman world, but also the long continuous Egyptian tradition, shading almost imperceptibly from pharaonic into Hellenistic, infiltrated Roman thought, even in the boasted realm of government. Augustus owed more to Cleopatra than he could ever have admitted. She was the last great systematizer and enforcer of Ptolemaic policy. In this she was the true inheritor to Ptolemy Soter, and through him to his master Alexander the Great. Augustus ardently desired a time of universal goodwill, a peaceful community of mankind under the law. But this, almost exactly, was the Hellenistic concept of homonoia – community of outlook and interest – that Cleopatra strove to make general within her territories. One of the best scholars of this period set out the ideal of the Hellenistic states in this way:
They strove, often unsuccessfully to restore homonoia, concord, in the city. Taken in bulk, the surviving decrees are a paean in praise of homonoia. Every form of authority – kings, envoys, governors, generals – was perpetually urging the people to live in concord; the most praised women of the time, a Phila or an Apollonis, were those who tried to promote it. Homonoia herself was worshipped as a goddess at lasos and Priene, and in Ptolemaic Thera, Artemidoros set up an altar to her ‘for the city’. She was one of the great conceptions of the Hellenistic age, but she remained a pious aspiration only. Not until Rome had crushed all internal feuds was concord achieved; then, in the Imperial period, cities freely celebrated Homonoia on their coinage, and she was frequently worshipped when all meaning in her worship had for Greeks passed away.
This was a gift from old thought to raw power. And Augustus brought about his imperial concord first by the exercise of raw power, a universal subjugation under the Roman sword, but then by a wholesale borrowing from his last and most dangerous adversary, Cleopatra. For Augustus slowly built up a bureaucracy that owed far more to the rigorously centralized Ptolemaic model than to the free play of the old democratic Roman institutions. He also established for himself a form of kingship (in all but name) that was every bit as regal, peremptory and authoritarian as the Ptolemaic rule of Cleopatra. It was no wonder that Egypt so easily assimilated Augustus into the line of the pharaohs, for he was a pharaoh, not only in Egypt but under another designation in the empire as well. He, like the pharaohs and the Ptolemies, was a god-king; and though Augustus himself was too wise to be seduced by divinity, his unbalanced successors were thoroughly deluded by the aroma of incense. Emperor Gaius, known as Caligula, thought he could make a Ptolemaic marriage with his sister, and Nero wished to create like a god and annihilate like one too.
Was this the triumph of Asia over Rome, which more than two centuries of Sibylline oracular verse had prophesied? Was Cleopatra the hidden instrument for that great work? No one can know for sure what Cleopatra herself thought. History, which judges from her acts, has found this to say of her:
We only know the great prophecy of that nameless Greek, who foretold that after she had cast Rome down from heaven to earth she would then raise her up again from earth to heaven, and inaugurate a golden age in which Asia and Europe should alike share, when war and every other evil thing should quit the earth, and the long feud of East and West should end forever in their reconciliation and in the reign of justice and love. It was surely no unworthy cause that could give birth to such a vision, or make men, even one man, see in Cleopatra the ruler who should carry out Alexander’s dream of human brotherhood. We know what Augustus was to do; but if Antony was to be Roman Emperor, and Cleopatra was to be the instrument of Alexander’s idea of the reconciliation of East and West, can we say that the ultimate ideals of the two sides were so very far apart after all?
What were far apart were the actual possibilities. Past history had shown that if such ideals were ever to be realized, however imperfectly, it could only be done from the West, by a Roman through Romans; no one, Roman or Macedonian, could have done it from or through the East, for he could never have carried Rome with him. In that sense, but perhaps in that sense alone, the common verdict is just, that it was well for the world that Octavian conquered.
The most brilliant of all Cleopatra’s deep political perceptions was the clear understanding that Egypt could never be saved from Rome except by a Roman. Where she faltered was in her failure to go further and see that no Roman, not even Julius Caesar or Antony, could do this for her country so long as she herself was in his train. And always it was her country, or rather her Ptolemaic dynasty which she equated with her country, that she had foremost in mind. She had many chances to become a subservient pander to Roman plans, chances that would have preserved her life and living, but to her Egypt was unthinkable if it were not Ptolemaic Egypt, and she served her dynasty to the bitter end.
Rome never feared Egypt, whose soldiers raised hardly a sneer on the lips of the legionaries. But Romans did fear Cleopatra. And since history is generally written from the point of view of the victors, it is very difficult to arrive at a just estimate of her. Looking back after a century on the events of this time, Tacitus, greatest of Roman historians, wrote truly:
Augustus, princeps senatus, took under his command a commonwealth exhausted by civil dissensions. There was no lack of authors competent to write the history of his times, but they were deterred by the prevailing atmosphere of flattery.
Avoiding the shoals of prejudice and malice we can make an assessment, from inscriptions, public records and the documents of her administration, of what Cleopatra hoped to achieve and how she went about it. Better, perhaps, we can find her embedded in the lasting memory of mankind. In Egypt, for many years after her death, she was simply ‘the queen’ who needed no other indication. It was said that many hated her, which was no doubt true at various times in her 21-year reign in mutable and violent Alexandria. But in her last extremity, with Romans at the gate, her Egyptian subjects offered to rise up against Rome on her behalf, though she forbade them, and as soon as she was gone Upper Egypt did revolt against Octavian. Her subject Archibius, an Alexandrian, ransomed her statues for 2000 talents, so that they would survive in her city as Antony’s had not. Two centuries later she was still a legend in Alexandria, where the writer Apion saluted her memory. Indeed, many wonders of the past were wrongly attributed to her, so strong was the aura of her memory. It was said that she had built the Brucheion palace, and the Heptastadion dividing the two harbours, and even the Pharos lighthouse, the grandest practical construction of the ancient world, worthy of the land that made the pyramids. It was said, too, that she could transmute base metals into gold, though it was Egypt and the Nile that poured gold drop by drop into her Alexandrian treasury. Six hundred years after her death she was still not forgotten. A Coptic bishop, John of Nikiu, called her ‘the most illustrious and wise among women’, praising her for deeds beyond any accomplished by her forebears, or she was ‘in courage and strength great in herself, and in her achievement’. Even in most hostile Rome the statue raised to her by Julius Caesar in the temple of Venus Genetrix was still in place three hundred years later.
Of those who came before her, only Alexander the Great outshone her, but in her breadth of vision and capa
city to rule she borrowed some of his radiance. Even her notorious sexuality was worthy of a queen, beguiling men according to her will, an instrument loaned by her femininity to her statecraft, on a par with her intelligence, her regality, her determination and ruthlessness, and her occasional cruelty.
Since such a person exists in the imagination as much as she lived in the world of men and women, it is fitting that the last words should come from poets. Horace, Roman enough to damn her ambition and her meddling, could not but help acknowledge her greatness. At her death, he wrote:
Yet in this Female Portent there remains
– O great of soul – no horror of the sword.
She scorns to live unqueenly; and she deigns
No citizen life, ruled by an alien lord.
Calmly she regards her palace funeral pyre
And bids the asp perform her last desire,
Unmoved, too proud to bear a Roman’s chains.
And Shakespeare, putting into words the wonder not of a contemporary Roman but of all time, wrote simply and without any rhetorical flourish:
She shall be buried by her Antony.
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER 7
p. 170 ‘The God Abandons Antony’: poem by C. P. Cavafy, trans. by George Valassopoulos.
p. 183 W. W. Tarn and J. G. Griffith, Hellenistic Civilization (1952), p. 9of.
pp. 184–5 W. W. Tarn, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 10, pp. 82–3.
The publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce photographs:
COLOUR PLATES
AKG Photo: Plates 9, 13 (Vatican Museums, Rome), 14 above (Ket-taneh College, New York), 14 below (Louvre, Paris ); The Ancient Art and Architecture Collection Ltd: Plates 1 top left and right, centre left and right, 2 above, 12 above; The Bridgeman Art Library/ Christie’s London: Plates 6, 8 (Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capo-dimonte, Naples); Christie’s Images: Plates 7 above, 15; Mary Evans Picture Library: Plate 7 below, Sonia Halliday Photographs: Plate 10 below, Robert Harding Picture Library (Photo Gavin Hellier): Plate 2 below, Michael Holford: Plates 4 and 5; Jonathan Lewis: Plate 11; Peter Sanders Photography: Plate 1 below, Geoff Thompson: Plate 10 above; National Museum of Wales: Plate 16; Bruce Wills: Plate 12 below.
BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
The Bridgeman Art Library: page 39; Mansell/Time Inc.: pages 10, 29.
INDEX
Page numbers in italics indicate textual illustrations
Achillas 72, 75, 76, 83–5, 92, 103
Actium, battle of 156–63, 159, 177, 182
Aegae 11
Aeneid (Virgil) 179 Africa 181 see also North Africa
Agelaus of Aetolia 58
Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius 134, 143, 148, 155, 156, 160, 161, 165
Ahenobarbus 154, 157
Alba 149
Alban, Mount, Rome 53
Albania 74, 154
Alexander the Great 10–12, 10, 18, 21, 25, 35, 60–1, 70, 82, 98, 129, 138, 182
tomb 11, 36
Alexander Helios (son of Cleopatra VII) 125, 127, 128, 130, 138, 177
Alexandria 11, 12, 22, 23, 25, 26–7, 28, 34–40, 39, 44, 45, 47 49–51, 52–3, 64, 121
Antony’s triumph in 136–8
besieged by Antiochus 60–1
Dio on 57
foundation 11–12
philosophers of 66 plan 57
religion in 25, 26–7
Roman envoys in 58
siege of 84–9, 94
view (from Liber Cbronicarum) 39
Alexandrine War (Caesar) 86, 87, 90
Ambracia, Gulf of 156
Amon 10, 24, 25, 104, 105
Amon Zeus 29
Amon-Ra 71, 91, 101, 175
Amyntas of Galatia 157
Antioch 127
Antiochus III, the Great, King of Syria 58–60
Antiochus IV Epiphanes, King of Syria 60–1
Antiochus, King of Syria 32
Antipater 87
Antiphon 120
Antonias (ship) 149
Antonius, Marcus (Mark Antony) 54, 95, 97, 108–16
in Alexandria 120–3, 164–70
at battle of Actium 156–63, 177
challenge to Octavian 152–6
character and appearance 111–13, 132–3, 151
and Cleopatra 95, 115–16, 117–49, 150–4, 163–71, 179
coin 147
death 171–2, 173–4
drunkenness 112, 113, 146, 150–1
identified with Dionysus 114, 118, 126, 129, 135, 137, 146, 149, 165, 169
in Italy 124–6
Parthian campaign 126–34
triumph in Alexandria 136–8
twins by Cleopatra see Alexander Helios; Cleopatra Selene
warships of 154–5 see also Octavian, and Antony
Antonius Felix 177
Antyllus 166, 167, 176
Apamea 131
Aphrodite 52, 91, 118, 165
Aphrodite Bilistiche 81
Apion 186
Apis 20, 26–7
Apollo 135, 179–80, 182
Apollodorus of Sicily 78–9
Apollonia 107
Apollonis 183
Apollonius (applicant for military post) 42
Apollonius of Rhodes 38
Arabia 22, 127, 128
Arabs 131
Aradus 122
Archelaus 54, 115
Archibius 186
Archimedes 39
Aristarchus 39
Aristophanes 89
Aristotle 56
Armenia 47, 67, 130, 132, 133, 136, 138
Arsinoe (district) 64
Arsinoe II 19, 30, 44, 50, 70, 103
Arsinoe (sister of Cleopatra VII) 54, 84–5, 86, 91, 92, 103, 109–10, 122
Artasvades, King of Armenia 136, 137
Artemidoros 183
Artemis 53, no Artemisia 27
Asclepiades 64
Asia Minor 116, 123, 144, 166
Athens 125, 126, 136, 146, 152, 165, 167
Attalus 149
Attalus of Pergamon 65
Atticus 100
Augustus see Octavian
Babylon 10, 11
Bellona 148
Berenice II 30
Berenice IV 53–4
Berenice (queen of Ptolemy III) 26
Berenice (town) 22
Berytos 152
Bibulus, Marcus 72–3
Bilistiche 81
Bogud, King of Mauretania 92
Bononia 109
Bosphorus 154
Brucheion, Alexandria 36, 38, 51, 72, 84, 166, 186
Brundusium 146, 165
treaty of 124, 126, 178
Brutus 108, 109, no, 112, 173
Bucheum, Hermonthis 71, 106
Buchis, bull of 71, 75
bureaucracy 20–1
Caesar, Gaius Julius 51–2, 53, 55, 66, 68, 72, 74, 77, 103
in Alexandria 76–8, 107
and Arsinoe 137
character and appearance 49, 51, 79–80
and Cleopatra 78–98, 99–100, 137–8, 185
coin depicting 79
death 98, 109, 113–14
defeat of Pompey 75–7
deified by Romans 106
and Octavian 107–8
reading of will 99
reform of calendar 94
refusal of crown 97
return to Rome 92, 97
sexual morality 80, 141–2
siege of Alexandria 84–9
Caesarion (Ptolemy Caesar) 91, 94, 99, 103–6, 108, 110, 137, 166, 176
calendar reform 94
Caligula 177, 184
Callimachus 38, 101
Calpurnia 93
Canidius 157, 162–3, 166
Canopus 26, 35, 141
Carrhae, battle of 68, 74, 123
Carthage 56, 58, 62, 63, 67
Casius, Mount 76
Cass
ius 108, 109–10, 115, 122
Cato, Marcus 52, 66, 173
Cavafy, Constantine 169–70
Chalcis 128
Charmian 148, 175
Cicero 55, 76, 95–6, 98–100, 108, 113, 141
Cilicia 127, 138
Cinna 97
The Civil War (Caesar) 72, 77
Claudius 177
Claudius Ptolemy 39
Cleopatra (sister of Alexandra the Great) 71
Cleopatra II 33–4, 33, 42, 50
Cleopatra III 55, 34, 50
Cleopatra IV 75
Cleopatra V 45, 47–8
Cleopatra VI 52–3
Cleopatra VII 14, 35
accession to throne 66, 69, 71
and alcohol 151
ancestry 47–8, 81–2
and Antony 95, 115–16, 117–49, 150–4, 163–71, 179, 185
and Antony’s death 171–2, 173–4
birth 47
and Caesar 78–98
cartouche 101 character and appearance 80–2, 139–40, 186–7
coins 147, 165
conflict with brother 71, 75
death 174–6
education and early years 49–51, 54–5
as Egyptian goddess 2, 75
flight from Actium 161–2
identified with Isis 91, 104–6, 146, 165, 175–6
and inauguration of bull of Buchis 71, 75
joins Antony in Syria 127
mausoleum 168
possible marriage to Antony 129, 139
return to Alexandria 100
and Rome 184–7
sexual morality 141–2
statue in Rome 93, 186
twins fathered by Antony see Alexander Helios; Cleopatra Selene
visit to Rome 92–8
see also Octavian, and Cleopatra
Cleopatra Selene (daughter of Cleopatra VEI) 125, 127, 128, 130, 177