Cleopatra: A Life

CHAPTER VII: AN OBJECT OF GOSSIP FOR THE WHOLE WORLD

For the best guide to the baroque composition of the East and its colorful parade of dynasts, see Sullivan, 1990. On A’s eastern politics, Albert Zwaenepoel, “La politique orientale d’Antoine,” Etudes Classiques 18:1 (1950): 3–15; Lucile Craven, Antony’s Oriental Policy Until the Defeat of the Parthian Expedition (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1920); Neal, 1975; A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Foreign Policy in the East (London: Duckworth, 1984). As in the previous chapter, the portrait of Herod is drawn from Josephus’s colorful account. On Antioch, A. F. Norman, ed., Antioch as a Centre of Hellenic Culture as Observed by Libanius (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000); Libanius, and Cicero. On C’s titles and heritage, “Cléopâtre VII Philopatris,” Chronique d’Egypte 74 (1999): 118–23. For the Donations, K. W. Meiklejohn, “Alexander Helios and Caesarion,” Journal of Roman Studies 24 (1934): 191–5.

On Octavian, G. W. Bowersock, Augustus and the Greek World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965); Everitt, 2006; Kurt A. Raaflaub and Mark Toher, eds., Between Republic and Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

1. “The greatest achievement”: Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, II.xlv. Translation from David Markson, The Last Novel (Berkeley: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2007), 107. Markson notes that Thucydides does women the great favor of mentioning none.

2. “slinked into”: Strabo, 16.2.46.

3. The inexhaustible Herod: JW, I.238–40, 429–30; the miraculous escape: JW, I.282–4, 331–4, 340–1, among others; astonishing talent: JA, XV.5; Senate confirmation: JW, I.282–85; AJ, XIV.386–7.

4. “noble families were extended”: MA, XXXVI.

5. “into his predecessor’s bedroom slippers”: Everitt, 2006, 148.

6. “realms and islands”: Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, V.2.111–13.

7. “The greatness of the Roman empire”: MA, XXXVI.

8. “an army more conspicuous”: Ibid., XLIII.

9. “made all Asia quiver”: Ibid., XXXVII.

10. “the nobility of his family”: Ibid., XLIII (ML translation).

11. no one in the Mediterranean world: Interview with Casson, June 11, 2009. Strabo writes the gift down to cedar, 14.5.3.

12. The disapproving Plutarch: MA, XXXVI.

13. Sixteenth regnal year: By our count it would be fifteen; the ancients had no zero.

14. “It seems to me”: Bingen, 1999, 120.

15. Even Plutarch could not call it a mistake: Plutarch, “Demetrius and Antony,” I.2. He recoiled from A’s marriage to C, “although she was a woman who surpassed in power and splendour all the royalties of her time” excepting only—as Plutarch saw it—the Parthian king.

16. A’s attachment to women: Appian, V.76. Dio, XLVIII.xxiv.2–3 has A falling head over heels for C.

17. On Jericho: Strabo, 16.1.15; Justin, 36.iii.1–7; Florus, I.xl.29–30; JW, I.138–9; JW, IV.451–75; HN, XII.111–24; Diodorus, II.xlviii; JW, I.138–9. For incense, balsam, bitumen, and their uses, A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries (London: Edward Arnold, 1962).

18. “King of a wilderness”: JA, XIV.484; similarly JW, I.355.

19. “it would be unsafe”: JA, XV.107. Josephus further credits C with the death of Malchus, as with a Syrian king, JW, I.440.

20. “In this way, he said”: Ibid., XV.99–100.

21. “laid a treacherous snare”: Ibid., XV.98 (Whiston translation).

22. “for she was by nature” to “a slave to her lusts”: Ibid., XV.97.

23. “his love would flame up”: Ibid., XV.101.

24. “being against such a woman”: Ibid., XV.101 (Whiston translation).

25. “one night even forced”: JW, I.498. In accusing ND of having recast history, Josephus cites his “false charges of licentiousness” against Mariamme, concocted to justify her unjustifiable murder ( JA, XVI.185).

26. “to make one feel”: Aristeas, The Letter of Aristeas, 99. See also JW, V.231; Philo, “On the Migration of Abraham,” 102–5 for the high priest’s attire.

27. “the offspring of some god” to “she might ask”: JA, XV.26–27.

28. “to use him for erotic purposes”: Ibid., XV.29.

29. “in slavery and fear” to “she possibly could”: Ibid., XV.45–6.

30. “it is right for women”: From “Helen,” in Euripides II, 1969, 325.

31. “hatred of him was as great”: JW, I.437.

32. palace pool: Nielsen, 1999, on Herod’s palaces. Also JA, XV.54–5.

33. “that Herod, who had been appointed”: JA, XV.63.

34. “it was improper” to “charges against him”: Ibid., XV.76–77.

35. “wicked woman”: Ibid., XV.91.

36. “There seems to be some pleasure”: From “The Phoenician Women,” in Euripides V: Electra, The Phoenician Women, The Bacchae, David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds; Elizabeth Wyckoff, tr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 200.

37. The fortified Masada: JW, VII.300–1.

38. “a ready ear only for slander”: Ibid., I.534.

39. “struck him like a thunderbolt” to “of his life”: Ibid., I.440.

40. C’s intelligence: According to Cicero, a letter took forty-seven days to travel from Cappadocia to Rome.

41. preparing the silver denarii: Andrew Meadows to author, May 24, 2010.

42. “there is no other medicine”: From “The Bacchae,” in Euripides V, 282–3.

43. “an abundance of clothing”: MA, LI. The disgruntled rumor appears both in Plutarch and in Dio, XLIX.xxxi.1.

44. “a yawning and abysmal desert”: Plutarch, “Crassus,” XXII.4. On the pitiful state of A’s men, Florus, II.xx.

45. “For so eager was he”: MA, XXXVII; Livy, “Summaries,” 130.

46. “sharing in the toils”: MA, XLIII.

47. “neither reproached him with his treachery”: Ibid., L.

48. “called for a dark robe”: Ibid., XLIV.

49. “by an extraordinary perversion”: Florus, II.xx. See also VP, II.lxxxii, and Dio, XLIX.32.

50. “Neither in youthfulness nor beauty”: MA, LVII.

51. “her pleasurable society” to “live with him”: Ibid., LIII.

52. “wearing her life away”: Flatterer, 61b.

53. “as long as she could see him”: MA, LIII. For C’s effect even on A’s associates, Dio, L.v.3.

54. a happy subordinate: Dio, XLVIII.xxvii.2.

55. “failed to see”: Flatterer, 61b.

56. “it was an infamous thing”: MA, LIV.

57. “the passion and witchery”: Dio, XLIX.xxxiv.1. For “certain drugs,” MA, XXXVII.

58. “In his endeavor to take vengeance”: Dio, XLIX.xxxix.2.

59. On Artavasdes: Dio, XLIX.xxxx.1–3; VP, II.82.4; MA, L.6; Plutarch, “Crassus,” XXXIII; Livy, “Summaries,” 131. On the triumph that was not a triumph, see Beard, 2007, 266–9.

60. C in her Isis regalia: Ashton, 2008, 138–9; Baudoin Van de Walle, “La Cléopâtre de Mariemont,” Chronique d’Egypte, 24, 1949, 28–9; interview with Branko van Oppen, February 28, 2010.

61. A dressed as Dionysus: VP, II.lxxxii.4.

62. coins minted for the occasion: Buttrey, 1954, 95–109.

63. “the two most magnificent people”: Macurdy, 1932, 205. Bevan, 1968, best describes C’s golden age: For a second time in a decade, she “saw herself within measurable distance of becoming Empress of the world,” 377.

64. The Jews and C’s rule: See W. W. Tarn, “Alexander Helios and the Golden Age,” Journal of Roman Studies 22, II (1932): 142. On the Jews generally in C’s time, Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999).

65. said to be busy: Dio, XLIX.xli.6.

66. “theatrical and arrogant”: MA, LIV.3.

67. “a Dionysiac revel”: Huzar, 1985/6, 108.