Cleopatra: A Life

CHAPTER II: DEAD MEN DON’T BITE

On the “strange madness” (Cicero to Tiro, 146 [XVI.12], January 27, 49) of the Roman civil wars: Appian, JC, Dio, Florus, Plutarch. Suetonius provides the portrait of CR. For a different view of C’s removal from power, Cecilia M. Peek, “The Expulsion of Cleopatra VII,” Ancient Society 38 (2008): 103–35. Peek argues that C was removed only in the spring of 48.

Among the classical sources on Alexandria, I have leaned most heavily on Achilles Tatius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Arrian, Diodorus, Pliny, Plutarch, Polybius, Strabo, Theocritus, and Philo, especially “On the Contemplative Life,” “On Dreams, Book 2,” “On the Embassy to Gaius.” Josephus provides descriptions of Herod’s temple and palace in JW, V.173–225; C’s could only have been more opulent. Athenaeus, V. 195–7 offers details on the fittings. I have taken Lucan and Aristeas’s palatial descriptions with a grain of salt. Among modern reconstructions: Inge Nielsen, Hellenistic Palaces: Tradition and Renewal (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1999); and Maria Nowicka, La maison privée dans l’Egypte ptolémaïque (Wroclaw, Poland: Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1969).

For modern accounts of Alexandria: Pascale Ballet’s very good La vie quotidienne à Alexandrie (Paris: Hachette, 1999); Diana Delia, “The Population of Roman Alexandria,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 118 (1988): 275–292; Jean-Yves Empereur, Alexandria: Jewel of Egypt (New York: Abrams, 2002); E. M. Forster, Alexandria: A History and a Guide (London: André Deutsch, 2004); Franck Goddio, Alexandria: The Submerged Royal Quarters (London: Periplus, 1998); William LaRiche, Alexandria: The Sunken City (London: Weidenfeld, 1996); John Marlowe’s exquisite The Golden Age of Alexandria (London: Gollancz, 1971); Alexandria and Alexandrianism, papers delivered at J. Paul Getty, April 22–5, 1993, Symposium (Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996); Justin Pollard and Howard Reid, The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern Mind (New York: Viking, 2006); J. Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Paul Edmund Stanwick, Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek Kings as Egyptian Pharaohs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Theodore Vrettos, Alexandria: City of the Western Mind (New York: Free Press, 2001). On the city plan itself, W. A. Daszweski, “Notes on Topography of Ptolemaic Alexandria,” Mieczysław Rodziewicz, “Ptolemaic Street Directions in Basilea (Alexandria),” and Richard Tomlinson, “The Town Plan of Hellenistic Alexandria,” in Alessandria e il Mondo Ellenistico-Romano (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1995); and Barbara Tkaczow’s illuminating The Topography of Ancient Alexandria (Warsaw: Travaux du Centre d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne, 1993).

On education, to Aristotle “an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity”: Cicero, in particular Brutus and On the Orator; Seneca, Epistulae Morales, II; Suetonius, “On Grammarians” and “On Rhetoricians”; Quintilian, “Exercises”; Lucian, “Salaried Posts in Great Houses.” On the subjects for composition, Quintilian, III.8.48–70 and Seneca, Epistulae Morales, LXXXVIII.6–9. Among modern sources: Stanley F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Alan K. Bowman and Greg Woolf, eds., Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); M. L. Clarke, who is especially good on the rhetorical assignments, Higher Education in the Ancient World (London: Routledge, 1971); Raffaella Cribiore’s excellent work, in particular Gymnastics of the Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Bernard Legras, “L’enseignement de l’histoire dans les écoles grecques d’Egypte,” in Akten des 21. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, Berlin 1995 (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1997), 586–600; H. I. Marrou’s superb A History of Education in Antiquity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956); Teresa Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Rawson, 1985.

On the Ptolemaic marriages and intermarriages: Chris Bennett, “Cleopatra V Tryphaena and the Genealogy of the Later Ptolemies,” Ancient Society 28 (1997): 39–66; Elizabeth Carney, “The Reappearance of Royal Sibling Marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt,” La Parola del Passato XLII (1987): 420–39; Keith Hopkins’s fine “Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, no. 3 (1980): 303–354; Daniel Ogden, Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death: The Hellenistic Dynasties (London: Duckworth, 1999); Brent D. Shaw, “Explaining Incest: Brother-Sister Marriage in Graeco-Roman Egypt, Man 27, no. 2 (1992): 267–99.

Relatedly, on women in Ptolemaic Egypt: Roger S. Bagnall, “Women’s Petitions in Late Antique Egypt,” in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt: Sources and Approaches (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006); Bagnall and Cribiore, 2006; J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Roman Women: Their History and Habits (London: Bodley Head, 1962); Joan B. Burton, Theocritus’s Urban Mimes: Mobility, Gender, and Patronage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 147–55. Elaine Fantham and others, Women in the Classical World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, Women’s Life in Greece and Rome (London: Duckworth, 1992); Nori-Lyn Estelle Moffat, The Institutionalization of Power for Royal Ptolemaic Women (MA thesis, Clemson University, 2005); Kyra L. Nourse, Women and the Early Development of Royal Power in the Hellenistic East (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2002); Pomeroy, 1990; Claire Préaux, “Le statut de la femme à l’époque hellénistique, principalement en Egypte,” Receuils de la Société Jean Bodin III (1959): 127–75; Rowlandson, 1998. On marrying later, Donald Herring, “The Age of Egyptian Women at Marriage in the Ptolemaic Period,” American Philological Association Abstracts (1988): 85.

1. Dead men don’t bite: Pompey, LXXVII; Plutarch, “Brutus,” XXXIII. (Here and elsewhere I have opted for the Dryden translation, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough [New York: Modern Library, 1992]; henceforth “ML translation.”)

2. “It’s a godsend”: Menander, “The Doorkeeper,” Menander: The Plays and Fragments (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 264.

3. “wretched little boat”: Appian, II.84. On Pompey’s end, Appian, II.83–6; Dio, LXII.iii–iv; CW, 103; Plutarch, “Pompey,” LXXVII.

4. The plague, flood, fire comparison: Florus, II.xiii.5.

5. CR’s arrival in Egypt: Appian, II.89; Dio, XLII.vi–viii; CW, 106; AW, 1; JC, XLVIII; Plutarch, “Pompey,” LXXX.5–6.

6. “to put an end to”: CW, III.10.

7. “she was at a loss”: JC, XLIX (ML translation); Plutarch, JC, XLIX. For the best discussion of C’s arrival, John Whitehorne, “Cleopatra’s Carpet,” Atti del XXII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia II (1998): 1287–93. On the coastal road geography, Alan H. Gardiner, “The Ancient Military Road between Egypt and Palestine,” Journal of Egyptian Archeology 6, no. 2 (April 1920): 99–116. Achilles Tatius describes the trip from Pelusium to Alexandria via the Nile, III.9; see also Polybius, V.80.3. Interviews with Lionel Casson, April 18, 2009; John Swanson, September 10, 2008; Dorothy Thompson, April 22, 2008. Roger Bagnall points out that C might also have crossed the delta below the coastal area, where she would have had the advantage of a road, Bagnall to author, june 8, 2010.

8. “malevolent cunning”: Diodorus, I.30.7. Similarly MA, III.

9. “majestic”: Dio, XLII.xxxiv. 6.

10. “knowledge of how to make”: Dio, XLII.xxxiv.5.

11. impossible to converse with her: MA, XXVII; Dio, XLII.xxxiv.5.

12. “by his rapidity”: Dio, XLII.lvi.1.

13. “love-sated man”: Ibid., XLII.xxxiv.5.

14. “every woman’s man”: Suetonius, citing Curio, DJ, LII.3.

15. “a mere boy”: Dio, XLII.iii.3.

16. The depraved and wanton C: C is far from alone in having developed a retroactive sexual history. As Margaret Atwood notes of Jezebel, “The amount of sexual baggage that has accumulated around this figure is astounding, since she doesn’t do anything remotely sexual in the original story, except put on makeup.” “Spotty-Handed Villainesses: Problems of Female Bad Behavior in the Creation of Literature,” http://gos.sbc.edu/a/atwood.html.

17. “all men work more”: Dio, XXXVII.lv.2.

18. As one chronicler pointed out: “To the king I could have given back what he deserves, and in return for such a present to your brother, Cleopatra, could have sent your head.” Lucan puts words in CR’s mouth, 1069–71.

19. “Nothing was dearer”: AW, 70.

20. On Alexander the Great’s resting place: For an artful reconstruction of the tomb and its location, see Andrew Chugg, “The Tomb of Alexander the Great in Alexandria,” American Journal of Ancient History 1.2 (2002): 75–108.

21. household statues of Alexander: Robert Wyman Hartle, “The Search for Alexander’s Portrait,” in W. Lindsay Adams and Eugene N. Borza, eds., Philip II, Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Heritage (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982), 164.

22. Ptolemaic history: On the troublesome Ptolemaic genealogy, Bennett, 1997. Strabo is also eloquent on the subject. For the shaky argument that C was the daughter of a priestly Egyptian family, see Werner Huss, “Die Herkunft der Kleopatra Philopater,” Aegyptus 70 (1990): 191–203. And on the wobbly Ptolemaic grasp of power, Brian C. McGing, “Revolt Egyptian Style: Internal Opposition to Ptolemaic Rule,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 43.2 (1997): 273–314; Leon Mooren, “The Ptolemaic Court System, Chronique d’Egypte LX (1985): 214–22. Anna Swiderek offers a nearly humorous overview of the family violence in “Le rôle politique d’Alexandrie au temps des Ptolémées,” Prace Historyczne 63 (1980): 105–15.

23. “an orgy of pillage”: François Chamoux, Hellenistic Civilization (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 135.

24. On Auletes the piper: The name may as well have been fitted to Ptolemy XII on account of his Dionysian devotion, Bianchi, 1988, 156.

25. house of her choice: Cited in Hopkins, 1980, 337.

26. On women and business: See especially Pomeroy, 1990, 125–73. The one-third estimate is Bowman’s, 1986, 98, and in part the result of inheritance and dowries.

27. “the women urinate” to “defy description”: Herodotus, The Histories, George Rawlinson, tr. (New York: Knopf, 1997), II.xxxv. On paradoxical Egypt, Diodorus, I.27.1–2; Strabo, 1.2.22, 17.2.5; the upside-down conviction dates back to Sophocles. Generally for the Greek view of Egypt, Phiroze Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

28. “Built in the finest”: Philo, “On the Embassy to Gaius,” XLIII.338. C. D. Yonge translation, The Works of Philo (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993).

29. the contested kingship: In some interpretations the petitioner, Cleopatra Selene, was in fact Auletes’ own mother. Either way, a Ptolemaic woman did not hesitate to make her opinion known—and was willing to cross an ocean to do so.

30. C’s mother: In Chris Bennett’s reconstruction, Cleopatra VI Tryphaena was Auletes’ cousin rather than his sister, 1997, 39–66.

31. giraffes, rhinoceroses, bears: Athenaeus, cited in Tarn and Griffith, 1959, 307.

32. death has been said: The point is Thompson’s, 1988, 78.

33. She did not have to venture far: The point is E. M. Forster’s, Forster, 2004, 34.

34. “The ears of a youth” to “be educated”: Cited in Cribiore, 2001, 69.

35. “prince of literature”: NH, II.iv.13.

36. “nursed in their learning”: Heraclitus, Homeric Problems, 1.5.

37. “for… as reason is the glory”: Cicero, Brutus, XV.59. As Elizabeth Rawson put it, “The end of rhetoric tended to be persuasion rather than truth, while the extravagant subjects set for the budding orator to prove his skill on often stimulated ingenuity rather than serious thought about important problems” (Cicero: A Portrait [London: Bristol Classical Press, 2001], 9).

38. On Pompey’s murder as exercise: Quintilian, 7.2.6 and 3.8.55–8.

39. “The art of speaking”: Ibid., 2.13.16. The lunatic ravings, Ibid., 2.10.8.

40. “Some women are younger”: George Bernard Shaw, “Notes to Caesar and Cleopatra,” in Three Plays for Puritans (New York: Penguin, 2000), 249.

41. “sparkling eyes”: Boccaccio, Famous Women (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 363. Boccaccio gives C the best of both worlds: As she “could captivate almost anyone she wished with her sparkling eyes and her powers of conversation, C had little trouble bringing the lusty prince [CR] to her bed.”

42. On hieroglyphs: John Baines, “Literacy and Ancient Egyptian Society,” Man 18, no. 3 (1983): 572–99.

43. On the population: Estimates range from 3 million (Thompson, 1988) to 6 million (Walter Schiedel, Death on the Nile [Leiden: Brill, 2001]) to 10 million (Grant, 2004); the Loeb editors (Diodorus, I) and Fraser (1972, II, 171–2) prefer 7 million. In the first century AD Josephus estimated the population of Egypt excluding Alexandria to be 7.5 million. Diodorus gives Alexandria a population of some 500,000, which seems plausible; Fraser prefers 1 million. See Roger S. Bagnall and Bruce W. Frier, The Demography of Roman Egypt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

44. seven nationalities: Mostafa El-Abbadi, The Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria (Paris: Unesco, 1990), 45.

45. “unlike that of”: Herodotus, 1997, IV.clxxxii.

46. “It was a pleasure”: MA, XXVII (ML translation).

47. a very similar Greek: On the koine of C and CR, interview with Dorothy Thompson, April 22, 2008; Geoffrey C. Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers (New York: Longman, 1997), 33–108.

48. “The better one gets”: Cicero, quoting his grandfather, On the Orator, 2:17–18, translation from Gruen, 1984, I, 262.

49. sex manuals: Andrew Dalby, Empire of Pleasures: Luxury and Indulgence in the Roman World (London: Routledge, 2000), 123.

50. “with fingers of its own”: Juvenal, Satire 6, 200.

51. “including some I should not care”: Quintilian, 1.8.6. He was referring in particular to Horace.

52. “extremely learned”: Cited in Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 78.

53. “She loved her husband”: Cited in M. I. Finley, Aspects of Antiquity (London: Chatto, 1968), 142.

54. “highly educated”: Pompey, LV.1–2 (ML translation).

55. “she was a woman”: Sallust, War with Catiline, XXV. Notes Cicero approvingly of a good Roman matron: “There was never a topic she thought she knew well enough.” Clement of Alexandria inventories female intellectuals in The Stromata, 4.19, citing especially the cake bakers among them.

56. On the library and museum: Roger S. Bagnall, “Alexandria: Library of Dreams,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146, no. 4 (December 2002): 348–62; Casson, 2001; El-Abbadi, 1990; Andrew Erskine, “Culture and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Museum and Library of Alexandria,” Greece & Rome 42, no. 1 (April 1995): 38–48. Fraser I, 1972, 452; Roy MacLeod, The Library of Alexandria (London: Tauris, 2000). Frederic C. Kenyon offers a fine guide to the scrolls themselves, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932). A volume of Plato’s Symposium, notes Kenyon, might be twenty-three feet long.

57. “he’s either dead”: Cited in Marrou, 1956, 145.

58. CR’s fondness for pearls: DJ, XLVII.

59. “braver than all the men”: Manetho, The History of Egypt, Fr. 21b (Armenian version of Eusebius).

60. only one Latin poet: Lucan, X.60–1.

61. “was not in itself” to “bewitching”: MA, XXVII.2–3 (ML translation).

62. “striking,” exquisite: Dio, XLII.xxxiv.4. The sixth-century AD Byzantine writer John Malalas also extols her beauty.

63. “famous for nothing”: Boccaccio, cited in Walker and Higgs, 2001, 147.