The Murder of Cleopatra

by Pat Brown

  He turned with rage toward the Romans.

  “How could you?” he bellowed at them with contempt. “She is the pharaoh, the great goddess Isis, the Mother of Egypt!” His eyes were tormented with the vision of his fallen Cleopatra.

  “Bastards! Enough! I will tell you what you want to know.”

  He covered his eyes to block out the sight of the ravaged queen, and then cupped his hands over his ears when he heard her cry out as he hobbled away, “No! No! You fool! You mustn’t tell him!”

  Cleopatra moaned as the door slammed shut. What a pathetic, gutless man! How could he give in just at the sight of her, as if she hadn’t borne all the pain for a purpose? Now the weakling, the only other being in Alexandria who knew the locations of the treasure, had given away her kingdom, her one last bit of power.

  She sat silently in her empty cell, waiting for the arrival of her death. She knew when the door opened, Octavian would not be standing there. He would come neither to ask her for her last wishes nor to gloat. He was not the type of man either to feel the need to do the right thing or to waste time rejoicing over the extermination of an annoying insect. She knew she would be dispatched without ceremony, she and her country, into the footnotes of Roman history.

  She heard their steps and she saw two soldiers enter through the door of her cell. She rose unsteadily to her feet, nodded, and turned silently away from them, clasping her hands behind her back. A shadow, an arm, a bit of pressure to her neck, and the pharaonic era was over.

  It has been quite a journey since my first visit to Egypt in 2003 for the filming of The Mysterious Death of Cleopatra. I have traveled through the ancient world of the pharaohs and visited their cities, their temples, and their tombs. Today I board a small local bus, filled entirely with men, to my final destination, an archeological site called Tapasoris Magna, thirty miles west of Alexandria. I have in my hand a note from Dr. Zahi Hawass, to show to the archeologist managing the dig for Dr. Hawaas and the Dominican archeologist Kathleen Martinez, who believe Cleopatra may have been buried in a tomb in the desert, away from the prying eyes of the Alexandrian mob.

  While on the bus, I read the final words of Plutarch on the days following the deaths of Cleopatra and Antony.

  As for the children of Antony, Antyllus, his son by Fulvia, was betrayed by Theodorus his tutor and put to death; and after the soldiers had cut off his head, his tutor took away the exceeding precious stone which the boy wore about his neck and sewed it into his own girdle; and though he denied the deed, he was convicted of it and crucified. Cleopatra’s children, together with their attendants, were kept under guard and had generous treatment. But Caesarion, who was said to be Cleopatra’s son by Julius Caesar, was sent by his mother, with much treasure, into India, by way of Ethiopia. There Rhodon, another tutor like Theodorus, persuaded him to go back, on the ground that [Octavian] invited him to take the kingdom. But while [Octavian] was deliberating on the matter, we are told that Areius said:—

  “Not a good thing were a Caesar too many.”

  As for Caesarion, then, he was afterwards put to death by [Octavian], —after the death of Cleopatra; but as for Antony, though many generals and kings asked for his body that they might give it burial, [Octavian] would not take it away from Cleopatra, and it was buried by her hands in sumptuous and royal fashion.

  But [Octavian], although vexed at the death of the woman, admired her lofty spirit; and he gave orders that her body should be buried with that of Antony in splendid and regal fashion. Her women also received honourable interment by his orders. When Cleopatra died she was forty years of age save one, and had shared her power with Antony more than fourteen. Antony was fifty-six years of age, according to some, according to others, fifty-three. Now, the statues of Antony were torn down, but those of Cleopatra were left standing, because Archibius, one of her friends, gave [Octavian] two thousand talents, in order that they might not suffer the same fate as Antony’s.

  Antony left seven children by his three wives, of whom Antyllus, the eldest, was the only one who was put to death by [Octavian]; the rest were taken up by Octavia and reared with her own children.1

  So the brutalized Cleopatra is strangled and quietly removed to a sealed tomb to spend eternity with her Roman consort. With all-out war averted with the surrender of Cleopatra and Antony’s forces and the cleverly concocted story of Cleopatra’s iconic suicide released to the public, the country passes quietly into the hands of the Roman conqueror. There is no citizen revolt. Once the Lagide treasure is safely in hand and the last Ptolemy, Caesarion, the alleged son of Julius Caesar, is located down in Berenice and eliminated, Octavian’s major problems are solved. He is the undisputed ruler of the Mediterranean world; he had money to pay his troops and make his country wealthy; and he would never have a Ptolemy challenge him again. This was Octavian’s Great Triumph.

  I arrived at the site of Tapasoris Magna and was greeted by the archeologist and given a tour of the ruins. I asked if there had been any proof yet that this was the burial site of Cleopatra and Antony, and he told me that, in spite of many interesting artifacts indicating this was clearly a temple of importance, including a number of coins bearing Cleopatra’s head that had been found and a necropolis that had been uncovered behind the temple, there was not yet proof that this was Cleopatra’s and Antony’s final resting place. So the mystery of where they are buried continues.

  One week before the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, I walked across Tahrir Square, the site of the massive protest, eating an ice cream, totally unaware of the unrest about to explode. Cairo is a bustling city, but it suffers from years of oppression, unemployment, and the suppression of women, albeit to a lesser degree than some of the neighboring countries. It had been over two thousand years since Cleopatra, a woman, ruled Egypt; and rarely have women held such lofty positions of power since her day. I wondered just how much the people here in modern Egypt and elsewhere actually know about Cleopatra VII, the tough and amazing woman who ruled successfully for nearly twenty years under conditions that would have been trying for any ruler, let alone a female, which was quite an amazing feat. Understanding just how brilliant and determined the last pharaoh was should be an inspiration to girls and women everywhere. Since females have been noticeably absent from power positions in the history of humankind, a clearer portrayal of a woman of Cleopatra’s caliber should be a great addition to our knowledge of world politics and sociology.

  No longer seen as merely a seductive, overly emotional woman who made poor choices and ended up cowering in her tomb, Cleopatra can now take her rightful place as a political figure with brains and brawn, equal to any man of her time or in any century thereafter.

  Aegyptus Antiqua Mandato Serenissimi Delphini Publici Juris Facta. J. B. B. D’Anville, Complete Body of Ancient Geography (London: Laurie and Whittle, 1795).

  The Nile at sunset in Cairo. Photo by Pat Brown.

  Cairo from the Citadel. Photo by Jennifer Walker.

  Ancient Egypt, created by George Long and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1831 and published in Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowl-edge, vol. 1 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1844). Image courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Collection, www.davidrumsey.com.

  A cobra of the sort that Cleopatra supposedly smuggled into her tomb. © Atlantic Productions Ltd.

  The immense desert across which Cleopatra would attempt to drag her ships on rollers. Photo by Pat Brown.

  Pat at the Step Pyramid. Photo by Jennifer Walker.

  Unknown author, Ancient Alexandria (1888), from Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA), http://hdl.handle.net/1911/9433.

  The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. Photo by Jennifer Walker.

  The Great Pyramid through the window of the nearby Pizza Hut. Photo by Jennifer Walker.

  The Bent Pyramid of Sneferu at Dashur. Photo by Jennifer Walker.

  The Red Pyramid at Dashur. Photo by Jennifer Walker.

  At the Red Pyramid, the G
reat Pyramid, and many tombs in the Valley of the Kings, one often walks up to the tomb and then down into the tomb via a long passageway. There are no windows and there is no roof one can ascend to and stand on. Photo by Pat Brown.

  Descending into a tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Photo by Pat Brown.

  More than two thousand years later, the architecture of the Temple of Isis at Dendera shows solid construction, which I found to be consistent in all the temple structures and tombs I visited; there are no gaps in the walls or where the floors meet the walls that would permit a snake to slither its way out of any sealed room. Photo by Jennifer Walker.

  Even this passageway down into a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, which is far older than the temples and tombs of Cleopatra’s time, shows how solid the construction was and how there are no holes or gaps anywhere for asps to escape from the interior of a burial vault. Photo by Pat Brown.

  Face-to-face with a marble head of a Ptolemaic queen from the first century BCE at the Musei Capitolini, Rome. © Atlantic Productions Ltd.

  Underwater archeologist Jean-Yves Empereur helps prepare Pat to dive in Alexandria Harbor to see the ruins of the alleged Cleopatra’s palace. © Atlantic Productions Ltd.

  The amphitheater in Ephesus where Cleopatra and Antony sojourned with their fleet while making their way to the Battle of Actium. Ephesus, once a Greek and Roman city, is six miles from the Aegean Sea in present-day Turkey. Photo by Pat Brown.

  Ruins of ancient temples mix in with the modern buildings of today’s Rome. Photo by Pat Brown.

  Pharoah Cheops’s funerary boat at the Solar Boat Museum in Giza. Photo by Pat Brown.

  Depiction of the making of Cheops’s boat in the Solar Boat Museum. Artist unknown.

  The Temple of Karnak gives us an idea of the height of the windows and the roof in an ancient Egyptian temple. Plutarch claims Cleopatra and her handmaidens hauled the dying Antony up by a rope into a window or onto the roof of the building into which she had locked herself. Photo by Jennifer Walker.

  The hypostyle hall at Luxor (without its roof). Photo by Pat Brown.

  The magnificent columns of the hypostyle hall in the Temple of Isis at Dendera. Photo by Pat Brown.

  Egyptologist Dr. Said Gohary explains to Pat the meanings of the reliefs on the walls of the Temple of Isis at Dendera. © Atlantic Productions Ltd.

  Reliefs of Cleopatra (as Isis) with her son Caesarion. © Atlantic Productions Ltd.

  Approximation of Lower Egypt and the Canal of the Pharaohs.

  CHAPTER 2: THE PHANTOM COBRA

  1. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Sudan: Its History and Monuments, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1907), p. 211.

  2. Cleopatra VII’s mother was Cleopatra V, and her sister, Cleopatra VI. Joyce Tyldesley, Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. 27.

  3. Rosalie David, The Ancient Egyptians: Beliefs and Practices (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press 1998), p. 148.

  4. Plutarch, Lives, vol. 9, Demetrius and Antony, Pyrrhus and Gaius, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (Suffolk, UK: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1920), p. 307.

  5. Ibid., p. 325.

  6. Ibid., p. 329.

  7. Cassius Dio, Roman History, trans. Earnest Cary and Herbert B. Foster, Loeb Classical Library (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1917), p. 39.

  8. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1957), p. 51.

  CHAPTER 3: THE STAGE

  1. Strabo, The Geography of Strabo, vol. 3, trans. Hans Claude Hamilton and William Falconer (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1889), pp. 228–31.

  2. Jean-Yves Empereur, Alexandria Rediscovered, trans. Margaret Maehler (New York: George Braziller, 1998), p. 112.

  3. Franck Goddio started his explorations underwater in Alexandria in 1992. After nearly three thousand dives in 1996, he had found enough archeological evidence to declare that he had found Cleopatra’s palace under the Mediterranean waters off the shore of the city. Laura Foreman, Cleopatra’s Palace (New York: Discovery Books, 1990), pp. 168–70.

  4. There are a number of discussions as to what happened to the library of ancient Alexandria, but I find Parenti’s argument the most sound. Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome (New York: New Press, 2003), pp. 155–57.

  CHAPTER 4: THE MAKING OF THE QUEEN: PART ONE

  1. N. G. L. Hammond, The Genius of Alexander the Great (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 40.

  2. J. G. Manning, The Last Pharaohs (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 1.

  CHAPTER 5: THE MAKING OF THE QUEEN: PART TWO

  1. Plutarch, Lives, vol. 9, Demetrius and Antony, Pyrrhus and Gaius, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (Suffolk, UK: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1920), p. 197.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid., p. 193.

  4. Cassius Dio, Roman History, trans. Earnest Cary and Herbert B. Foster, Loeb Classical Library (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1917), p. 169.

  5. Plutarch, Lives, p. 197.

  CHAPTER 7: CLEOPATRA VII BECOMES QUEEN

  1. Prudence J. Jones, Cleopatra: A Sourcebook, Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture, vol. 31 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), p. 56.

  2. Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives, ed. Arthur Hugh Clough and trans. John Dryden, Modern Library Classics (New York: Modern Library/Random House, 2001), p. 231.

  3. Jones, Cleopatra, p. 56.

  4. Gaius Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1957), p. 17.

  CHAPTER 8: JULIUS CAESAR

  1. Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives, ed. Arthur Hugh Clough and trans. John Dryden, Modern Library Classics (New York: Modern Library/Random House, 2001), pp. 165–67.

  CHAPTER 9: MARK ANTONY

  1. Plutarch, The Makers of Rome: Nine Lives, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (New York: Penguin Classics, 1965), p. 291.

  2. Ibid., p. 285.

  3. Ibid., p. 282.

  4. Quoted in Prudence J. Jones, Cleopatra (London: Haus Publishing, 2006), p. 84.

  5. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 10: OCTAVIAN

  1. Gaius Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1957), pp. 81–82.

  2. Ibid., p. 86.

  3. Gaius Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, trans. Catherine Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 85.

  4. Ibid., p. 78.

  5. Suetonius, Twelve Caesars, p. 26.

  6. Ibid., p. 68.

  CHAPTER 12: THE ROAD TO ACTIUM: PART TWO

  1. Anthony Everett, Augustus (New York: Random House, 2006), p. 96.

  CHAPTER 13: THE ROAD TO ACTIUM: PART THREE

  1. Plutarch, Lives, vol. 9, Demetrius and Antony, Pyrrhus and Gaius, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (Suffolk, UK: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1920), p. 195.

  2. Cassius Dio, Roman History, trans. Earnest Cary and Herbert B. Foster, Loeb Classical Library (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1917), pp. 25–27.

  3. Plutarch, Lives, p. 263.

  CHAPTER 14: ACTIUM

  1. Plutarch, Lives, vol. 9, Demetrius and Antony, Pyrrhus and Gaius, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (Suffolk, UK: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1920), pp. 267.

  2. Ibid., p. 270.

  3. Ibid., p. 272.

  4. Ibid., p. 275.

  5. Ibid., p. 277.

  6. Ibid., p. 279.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid., p. 281.

  9. Ibid., p. 282.

  10. Ibid., p. 283.

  11. Ibid., p. 284.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid., p. 285.

  14. Ibid., p. 287.

  15. Ibid., p. 288.

  16. Ibid., p. 289.

  17. Ibid., p. 291.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Ibid., p. 292.

  20. Ibid., p. 294.

  CHAPTER 15: PLAN B

  1. Plutarch, Lives, vol. 9, Demetrius and A
ntony, Pyrrhus and Gaius, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (Suffolk, UK: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1920), p. 297.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid., p. 303.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid., p. 305.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid., p. 307.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Strabo, The Geography of Strabo, vol. 3, trans. Hans Claude Hamilton and William Falconer (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1889), pp. 228–31.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Michael Pitassi, The Navies of Rome (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 48–49.

  13. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 16: PLAN C

  1. Vincent Scheil, “Inscription de Darius à Suez,” BIFAO 30 (1931): 297, cited in “Ancient Egypt: An Introduction to the History and Culture of Pharaonic Egypt,” last modified May 2009, http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/canals.htm (accessed November 20, 2012).

  2. Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, vol. 1, chap. 33, trans. Julius Friedrich Wurm, quoted in “Ancient Egypt: An Introduction to the History and Culture of Pharaonic Egypt,” last modified May 2009, http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/canals.htm (accessed November 20, 2012).

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 17: A MOTIVE FOR THE MURDER OF CLEOPATRA

  1. Plutarch, Lives, vol. 9, Demetrius and Antony, Pyrrhus and Gaius, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (Suffolk, UK: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1920), p. 307.

  2. William Smith, ed., Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (Boston: Little, 1880).

  3. Plutarch, Lives, p. 311.

  4. Ibid., p. 310.

  5. Ibid., p. 307.

  6. Donald W. Engles, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 60.