The Memoirs of Cleopatra (148 page)

When I set out to write a biographical novel of Cleopatra, I kept encountering two contradictory reactions, both based on misconceptions.

The first was: Why a book about Cleopatra? Everyone already knows everything about her, don’t they?—her perfumes, her snakes, her wiles, her lovers.

Indeed, no. Much of what the general public “knows” about Cleopatra comes directly from the invective of her enemies. The fact that some of her enemies were writers and poets of the caliber of Cicero, Vergil, and Horace assured that their version of events would survive and become widely known, whereas her side of the story would be officially suppressed.

The second, opposite idea: So little is known about Cleopatra and those times that it would be impossible to write meaningfully about her. Again, not so. A great deal is known about her, from the list of languages she spoke, to the names of her servants, to the timbre of her voice, to her preference for colored pottery from Rhosus in Syria. Other aspects can be deduced; for example, she must have been small and slim to have fitted undetected inside the rug. And yes, she was smuggled into Caesar’s quarters inside a carpet or bedroll.

After any battle, one of the prerogatives of the winners has always been to preserve an official account of their doings and to destroy or suppress other versions. Prior to the final battle recounted in this book, both sides had their vocal partisans; after Octavian’s victory, those of Antony and Cleopatra were silenced.

Nevertheless, enough unofficial material survives through secondhand sources for Cleopatra’s side of the story to be pieced together. And in telling Octavian’s tale, three ancient historians writing 150 to 250 years afterward—Suetonius, Plutarch, and Dio Cassius—inadvertently preserved much of the other side’s as well. Plutarch is especially helpful, as he relies on the memoirs of Cleopatra’s physician, Olympos, for the famous story of her final days and death. At this point Plutarch’s account switches from being hostile (Octavian’s version) to showing some sympathy toward Cleopatra, an abrupt change that is preserved in Shakespeare. (That is why the Cleopatra of Act V is markedly different from the one in the rest of the play.)

As with all characters who belong as much to legend as to history—and here we have four: Cleopatra, Caesar, Octavian, and Antony—it is important to know what is real and what is not.

Many things I have described here could pass for dramatic inventions but are in fact well documented. After hiding in the rug, Cleopatra did meet Caesar, and they did become lovers the same night; her brother and his councillors did find them together the next morning. She did bear him a son whom he allowed to carry his name.

Caesarion was said to bear a striking resemblance to his father, especially in his movements and walk. And Caesar is known to have had epilepsy in his last years.

Cicero did meet Cleopatra in Rome and, judging from his comments about her in letters, had a personal grudge against her.

Antony’s famous speech at Caesar’s funeral (“Friends, Romans, countrymen…”) is Shakespeare’s creation; the historical one, taken from Dio Cassius, is reproduced here.

The battlefield scenes are likewise historical, as are Octavian’s juicy personal attacks against Antony and Cleopatra, and vice versa. It is one of the ironies of history that the only letter of Antony’s to survive (because it was quoted by Suetonius) is the angry one he dashed off to Octavian accusing him of having multiple affairs. And yes, Octavian was an active adulterer and did wear “elevator” sandals.

Mardian, Olympos, Iras, and Charmian are all historical figures, but their appearances and personalities have been imagined by me. Epaphroditus is fictional, but we must assume that Cleopatra had an astute minister of finances. Most of the other characters are real; I have not needed to invent many, and only minor ones.

The famous scene where Cleopatra met Antony costumed as Venus actually took place—although she was not on a barge, as popular mythology has it. Barges were not seaworthy and did not leave the Nile, hence she must have used a regular ship, specially equipped. Cleopatra really did give a dinner for Antony with rose petals a foot deep for the carpet, did make a wager with him on the cost, and did pretend to drink a dissolved pearl. On another night Antony really did invite her to a rough “soldiers’ dinner.”

The meetings and relationship I have described between Cleopatra and Herod are all historical.

Antony’s personal servant really was named Eros, and he did kill himself rather than kill Antony. Octavian did have Caesarion and Antyllus killed, and it is true that one of the only things he removed from the palace in Alexandria was an agate cup that belonged to the Ptolemies.

The coinage issues are as I described them, and they were all meant to make important political statements.

The Kandake of Meroe did raid Philae, and a bronze head of Octavian was taken away to Meroe and buried to designate desecration.

And it is true that Cleopatra ended her life by the bite of the Egyptian cobra, which, according to ancient Egyptian belief, conferred a symbolic meaning to death. She probably selected it as much for this reason as for its quick, painless action.

But this is a novel, and there are also fictional creations in these pages. One of the most important is Cleopatra’s mother, and her death. Surprisingly, given Cleopatra’s fame, the identity of her mother is unknown. It is assumed that she was a half sister of Ptolemy XII and that she died when Cleopatra was quite young. More than that we do not know. It is also assumed that the younger children had a different mother, but again, we do not know.

Cleopatra’s visit to the Kandake is fictional, although such a visit would certainly have been in character for both of them.

I have not followed the convention that Cleopatra sent false word of her death to Antony, and that Antony felt she had betrayed him. These come from hostile traditions and seem, to modern historians, unlikely. I also omitted the traditional old man with his basket of figs being the bearer of the snakes. Exactly how she arranged for the snakes is a mystery, but we know the basket of figs—minus the snakes—was found inside the mausoleum.

Since the correspondence of Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra to one another does not survive, I have had to re-create it.

What did Cleopatra look like? The modern idea that she was actually unattractive is not borne out by the ancient historians. Dio Cassius says, “For she was a woman of surpassing beauty, and at that time, when she was in the prime of her youth, she was most striking; she also possessed a most charming voice and a knowledge of how to make herself agreeable to everyone. Being brilliant to look upon and to listen to, with the power to subjugate everyone, even a love-sated man already past his prime, she thought that it would be in keeping with her role to meet Caesar, and she reposed in her beauty all her claims to the throne.”

Florus (
A.D.
75–140) says that when she threw herself at Caesar’s feet, “He was moved by the beauty of the damsel, which was enhanced by the fact that, being so fair, she seemed to have been wronged” he also says later that she appealed to Octavian “in vain, for her beauty was unable to prevail over his self-control.”

According to Appian (
A.D.
90–165), “Antony was amazed at her wit as well as her good looks,” and that “it is said…that he had fallen in love with her at first sight long ago when she was still a girl and he was serving as master of the horse under Gabinius at Alexandria.”

Plutarch’s familiar comment that “her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her,” does not imply (as some would have it) that she was plain. All these observations seem to affirm that she was quite attractive, if not a conventional beauty. No known statues of Cleopatra survive, though some are identified as such based on the resemblance to her portrait on coins. These coins are of two types, puzzlingly unalike in looks: an attractive one in the Hellenistic style, and an idol-like one on coins she shares with Antony. The carving of her on the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, which I describe her visiting, is not an individualized portrait but a generalized representation of a queen.

What was her coloring likely to have been? The Ptolemies were Macedonian Greeks and these people exhibit a range of hair and eye shades from light (blond, blue-eyed) to dark (black hair, brown eyes). Skin tone, too, can vary from quite light to the Mediterranean “olive-skinned.” I have given her dark hair because her grandmother (her one non-Ptolemaic ancestor) was half-Syrian, half-Greek. There is no evidence for Egyptian ancestry; however, she did find a spiritual affinity with her Egyptian subjects, speaking their language and honoring their ancient religion.

What became of the surviving children? All were brought up in Octavian’s household. Cleopatra Selene was later married to Juba II of Mauretania, the little boy who had marched in Caesar’s African Triumph; she reigned as his Queen of Mauretania from 20
B.C.
to
A.D.
17, and had two children, Ptolemy of Mauretania and Drusilla. One source says that Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphos went to Mauretania with them.

Ptolemy of Mauretania reigned as King from
A.D.
23 to
A.D.
40 but made the mistake of going to Rome to visit his cousin Caligula, who had him murdered. Some sources say Drusilla was the first wife of Marcus Antonius Felix, the Roman procurator of Judaea (he is mentioned in Acts 24:1–23), but after that she vanishes. So there are no known descendants of Cleopatra beyond the second generation.

Antony fared better. Through his oldest daughter, Antonia, who married Pythodorus of Tralles, he became the ancestor of kings and queens of Lesser Armenia, parts of Arabia, Pontus, and East Thrace. And through his two daughters by Octavia, he became the ancestor of the emperors Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.

By that time, Rome was embracing the very customs it had found so abhorrent in Antony and Cleopatra—divine monarchy and eastern extravagance. So, in spite of Octavian, their way triumphed in the end.

I must confess a fascination and commitment to Cleopatra that goes back to my own childhood; in many ways I have waited forty years to write this book. I made the first of my trips to Egypt in 1952, wrote my first school-project version of her story in 1956, and since actively working on this book I have returned to Egypt four times, have traveled to Rome, Israel, and Jordan, and have haunted the British Museum on a regular basis. It has been my privilege to spend the last four years almost exclusively in Cleopatra’s presence, and I leave her side reluctantly.

For those interested in some of my sources, I include them here.

Ancient sources: Caesar’s
Civil Wars, Book III; The Alexandrian War
(Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, numbers 39, 402); Vergil,
The Aeneid
, Book VIII; Horace, Ninth Epode, Book I, Ode 37; Lucan,
Civil War
, Book Ten—a florid, lascivious, and imaginative account of Caesar and Cleopatra’s time in Alexandria. Lucan fills in all the blanks the discreet Caesar left in his account of the same events.

Appian of Alexandria, in
Roman History: The Civil Wars
, Books II–V, written around
A.D.
140, gives a relatively fair account of Antony’s story, although he lays the blame for his ruin on Cleopatra, as does Velleius Paterculus, writing around
A.D.
30, in
History of Rome
, Book II, which is anti-Antony as well as anti-Cleopatra. Cicero provides much contemporary material in his letters to Atticus, and in his Philippics against Antony.

The three main sources for a personal feeling about the characters, though, are Suetonius’s
The Twelve Caesars
, written about
A.D.
110 (he has a life of Caesar and a life of Augustus); Plutarch’s
Lives
, written about
A.D.
120 (he has lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony, and is our most important single source on Cleopatra, drawing on material from Olympos as well as family knowledge), and Dio Cassius,
Roman History
, written around
A.D.
220. Dio provides a helpful chronological framework for the episodes in Suetonius and Plutarch.

Shakespeare, of course, must be included for his
Julius Caesar
and
Antony and Cleopatra
, both inspired by Plutarch.

A basic modern work is
Cambridge Ancient History
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1934, volumes IX and X; second edition of volume IX, 1994).

Modern biographies of Cleopatra include Michael Grant,
Cleopatra
(New York: Dorset Press, 1992 [reprint of 1972 edition]), a balanced, thorough, and readable life; Ernle Bradford,
Cleopatra
(London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1971), a beautifully illustrated and well-written popular history of the queen; Arthur Weigall,
The Life and Times of Cleopatra
(London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1914), an early but engaging recounting by the Inspector General of Antiquities in Egypt; Jack Lindsay,
Cleopatra
(London: Cox & Wyman Ltd., 1971), especially good with the prophecies and symbolism; Hans Volkmann,
Cleopatra: A Study in Politics and Propaganda
(New York: Sagamore Press, 1958), one of the first to examine her legend from this viewpoint, paying particular attention to Octavian’s propaganda machine; Lucy Hughes-Hallett,
Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions
(New York: Harper & Row, 1990), a fascinating look at all the ways Cleopatra has been seen through the ages, which reveals as much about us as about her.

As for the other main characters, there are many biographies about Caesar. I can recommend Michael Grant’s
Julius Caesar
(New York: M. Evans & Co., 1992 [reprint of 1969 edition]); Ernle Bradford,
Julius Caesar: The Pursuit of Power
(London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd., 1984); Matthias Gelzer,
Caesar: Politician and Statesman
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968); Christian Meier,
Caesar
(London: HarperCollins, 1995 [original German edition, 1982]); J. A. Froude,
Caesar, A Sketch
(New York: Scribner’s, 1914), an early “psychobiography.”