Cleopatra: A Life

CHAPTER VI: WE MUST OFTEN SHIFT THE SAILS WHEN WE WISH TO ARRIVE IN PORT

On A, his women, and his marriages, Eleanor Goltz Huzar’s very fine “Mark Antony: Marriages vs. Careers,” Classical Journal 81, no. 2 (1985/6): 97–111; the indispensable Pelling, 1999, as well as Pelling, Plutarch and History: Eighteen Studies (London: Duckworth, 2002). For C’s arrival in Tarsus, Plutarch, with a little help from Athenaeus. Appian completes the picture, but without detail; Strabo and Xenophon (Anabasis, I.2.23) describe the city. Françoise Perpillou-Thomas gives a vivid idea of Egyptian entertaining, “Fêtes d’Egypte ptolémaique et romaine d’après la documentation papyrologique grecque,” Studia Hellenistica 31 (1993). For this and the subsequent chapter, the portrait of Herod is drawn primarily from Josephus, JA and JW. For modern biographies: Michael Grant, Herod the Great (London: Weidenfeld, 1971); A. H. M. Jones’s excellent The Herods of Judaea (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967); Samuel Sandmel, Herod: Profile of a Tyrant (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1967).

1. “We must often shift”: Cicero to Lentulus Spinther, 20 (I.9), December 54. The (loose) translation is from Boissier, 1970, 223. “Unchanging consistency of standpoint has never been considered a virtue in great statesmen,” explained Cicero, justifying his change of horses.

2. “Yet what difference”: Aristotle, The Politics, II.vi.4–7.

3. seemed uncannily: Appian, IV.129.

4. “had known her” to “intellectual power”: MA, XXV.

5. “puts the height of beauty”: Pelling, 1999, 186.

6. “the greatest confidence” to “as if in mockery”: MA, XXV.4–XXVI.1. The latter from the ML translation, where the Loeb has “she so despised and laughed the man to scorn as to sail up the river.” The point is that C was neither cowed nor impressed by A. There is a less strategic explanation for the delay as well: The high priest of Egypt died on July 14. C may have been detained by clerical responsibilities.

7. The trip across the Mediterranean: Again reconstructed with the assistance of Lionel Casson, interview, January 26, 2009. As Casson put it: “The only possible conclusion is that Cleopatra dolled up a local river boat,” letter to author, March 22, 2009.

8. “She herself reclined” to “good of Asia”: MA, XXVI (translation modified).

9. “Affecting the same pursuits”: Flatterer, 51e (translation modified). France Le Corsu argues, not altogether convincingly, that C posed in Tarsus as Isis rather than Aphrodite, “Cléopâtre-Isis,” in Bulletin de la Société Francaise d‘Egyptologie, Paris, 1978, no.82, 22–33.

10. “At once, then, wishing”: MA, XXVI.4.

11. “a spectacle that has seldom”: Ibid., XXVI.4 (ML translation).

12. On the jewelry: Thompson, 1973, 29; O. E. Kaper to author, March 6, 2010.

13. “that all these objects”: Athenaeus, IV.147f.

14. “litters and bearers”: Athenaeus, 148b.

15. “beggared description”: Plutarch, MA, XXVI.4.

16. “Kings would come”: Ibid., XXIV.

17. “irresistible charm” to “her discourse”: Ibid., XXVII.

18. Proudly she catalogued: “She did not excuse herself so much as present a list of what she had done for him and Octavian,” Appian, V.8.

19. “was ambitious to surpass” to “rusticity”: MA, XXVII.

20. “Perceiving that his raillery”: Ibid., XXVII (ML translation).

21. “she wished to rule”: Ibid., X.

22. “so that neither the senate”: Dio, XLVIII.iv.1.

23. “no mean city”: Paul the Apostle, in Acts of the Apostles, 21:39.

24. On the mess made of Tarsus: Cassius Parmensis to Cicero, 419 (XII.13), June 13, 43; Appian, IV.1xiv and V.vii. Dio claims the Tarsans were so devoted to CR that they had changed the name of their city to Juliopolis, XLVII.xxvi.2. See also Dio Chrysostom, “The 33rd Discourse.”

25. “bold coquette”: Plutarch, JC, XLIX.2.

26. “The moment he saw her”: Appian, V.8.

27. “succumbed with good will”: Syme, 2002, 214. For Syme’s doubts, 274–5. This too is conjecture, though the opposite assertions have been made with equal certainty, concerning both A and CR. See Anatole France’s C, in On Life and Letters (London: Bodley Head, 1924): “It is certain that Caesar loved Cleopatra” (114) vs. Froude, 1879: “Nor is it likely that, in a situation of so much danger and difficulty as that in which he [CR] found himself, he would have added to his embarrassments by indulging in an intrigue at all” (456). Froude equally doubts C’s visit to CR in Rome. Gruen scrubs that stay of all romance.

28. “and yet it was thought”: Plutarch, “Alexander the Great,” XLVII. He was writing of Alexander’s useful marriage to a Bactrian princess.

29. “brought him to fall in love”: JA, XIV.324 (in William Whiston’s translation [Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1998]).

30. “not only because of his intimacy”: JA, XV.93.

31. a slave to his love: See for example Florus, II.XXI.11.

32. “an ill name for familiarity”: MA, VI.5 (ML translation).

33. On the Temple of Artemis: NH, XXXVI.xxi; Livy, History of Rome, I.XLIV. Pliny provides a fine description of the temple construction. So difficult has it been to settle the main lintel into place that the architect contemplated suicide.

34. “Now Cleopatra had put to death”: JW, I.360 (Whiston translation). Similarly JA, XV.89. Josephus continues: Having killed off her own family, one after another, until no relative remained, C “was now thirsting for the blood of foreigners.”

35. Arsinoe had conspired: See P. J. Bicknell, “Caesar, Antony, Cleopatra and Cyprus,” Latomus 36 (1977): 325–42, for an elaborate case that Arsinoe had been rehabilitated and set up as a secondary Ptolemaic ruler, a foil to her sister, after the triumph of 46. Green, 1990, subscribes to the theory as well, 669. Strabo indeed has A giving Cyprus to both sisters, 14.6.6.

36. “So straight away”: Appian, V.9.

37. “distributing rewards”: AW, 65.

38. A’s neglect of affairs: Appian, V.10.

39. “He suffered her to hurry”: MA, XXVIII.

40. “not ruled by himself” to “ordinary person”: Appian, V.11.

41. “the sports and diversions”: MA, XXVII.1.

42. “The members”: Ibid., XXVIII (ML translation).

43. The kitchen chaos: Athenaeus, X.420e.

44. “The guests are not many”: Plutarch, MA, XXVIII (ML translation).

45. “It is no easy matter to create harmony”: Cicero to Quintus, 1.36 (I.1), c. 60–59.

46. On C as horsewoman: Pomeroy, 1990, 20–3; interview with Branko van Oppen, February 27, 2010. Arsinoe III helped to rally the Ptolemaic army, presumably on horseback, Polybius, V. 79–80.

47. “some fresh delight” to “serving maiden”: MA, XXIX. There is an alternate explanation for the masquerade. Herod was known to stroll disguised at night among his people so as to gauge the political climate. He was not alone in the practice.

48. “You are forever being frivolous”: Dio Chrysostom, “The 32nd Discourse,” I.

49. “coarse wit” to “comic mask with them”: MA, XXIX.

50. “to whom his sojourn”: Appian, V.I.11.

51. “was often disarmed by Cleopatra”: Plutarch, “Demetrius and Antony,” III.3.

52. “Leave the fishing rod” to “kingdoms, and continents”: MA, XXIX (translation modified).

53. “For such a rebuke”: Flatterer, 61b. Shakespeare packaged the same formula differently: “Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.”

54. “Although I have made enquiries”: Appian, V.21.

55. “so under the sway”: Dio, XLVIII.xxvii.1.

56. “for teaching Antony”: MA, X.

57. “that he would rather die”: Appian, V.55.

58. “that if Italy remained at peace”: Ibid., V.19.

59. “because she was angry with Antony”: Ibid., V.59.

60. “his passion for Cleopatra”: Dio, XLVIII.xxviii.3.

61. “at least an infinitely loyal”: Balsdon, 1962, 49.

62. “now rid of an interfering woman”: Appian, V.59. Similarly, Dio, XLVIII.xxviii.3–4.

63. “a great and mighty shout” to “necks as they dived”: Dio, XLVIII.xxxvii.2.

64. “their ships were moored”: Appian, V.73.

65. “A wonder of a woman” to “complete salvation”: MA, XXXI. Tacitus suggests that A’s marriage to Octavia was a trap from the start, Annals, I.X.

66. an object of gossip: Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 192.

67. “immediately praised to the skies” to “savior gods”: Appian, V.74.

68. A’s rescue of Octavian: Appian, V.67–8.

69. “rash boy”: Ibid., III.43 (Loeb translation).

70. “behaved with excessive sportsmanship”: DA, LXXI. Translation from Everitt, 2003, 265.

71. “guardian genius” to “that young man”: MA, XXXIII. Similarly Flatterer, “The Fortune of the Romans,” 319–320. C is absent from the Moralia account, in which Plutarch makes the soothsayer A’s friend, “often wont to speak freely to him and admonish him.” Surveying A’s greater age, experience, renown, and army, the amateur astrologer offers A the same advice concerning Octavian: “Avoid him!” To Neal, 1975, the warning was a veiled one against breaking openly with Octavian. C preferred that A make his name in the east, which would obviate the need for a showdown, 102.

72. “lay inside with his friends” to “the ceilings”: Athenaeus, IV.148c.

73. “Nearly everything” to “against the Parthians”: Dio, XLVIII.liv.7.

74. “lulled to rest”: MA, XXXVI. Writing a morality tale, Plutarch had set out to demonstrate “that great natures exhibit great vices also, as well as great virtues,” “Demetrius,” I.

75. On the coins: Walker and Higgs, 2001, 237; Jonathan Williams, “Imperial Style and the Coins of Cleopatra and Mark Antony,” in Walker and Ashton, 2003, 88; Agnes Baldwin Brett, “A New Cleopatra Tetradrachm of Ascalon,” American Journal of Archaeology 41, no. 3 (1937): 461. As Theodore V. Buttrey notes (“Thea Neotera: On Coins of Antony and Cleopatra,” American Numismatic Society Notes 6, [1954], 95–109), Ptolemaic couples never appear pictured on opposite faces of a coin.