Cleopatra (3 page)

Given these limitations of evidence it is clearly never going to be possible to write a conventional biography of Cleopatra; there are simply too many important details missing. But it is possible, with goodwill, patience and determination, and without venturing too far into the enticing but ultimately sterile realm of historical romance, to draw some conclusions and, perhaps, to begin to understand something of her motivation. Whether we can also begin to understand something of her personality, the reader must decide. It is certainly unwise and unprofitable to attempt to psychoanalyse the long-dead. But one aspect of Cleopatra’s personality is immediately apparent. She is an exceptionally strong individual; a survivor with the power to dominate and diminish those who surround her. Ptolemy XII Auletes, her father, is able to hold his own, as are her Roman contemporaries Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian. But Flavia, Octavia and Livia, three remarkably capable Roman women, appear as bit parts in
her story, while Cleopatra’s family, her predecessor Cleopatra V, her two headstrong sisters Berenice IV and Arsinoë IV and her two husband-brothers Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, become little more than ciphers. This is compounded by the difficulties inherent in working out precisely which of the identically named Ptolemies (XII, XIII, XIV or XV) is associated with Cleopatra on any particular monument, or which is featured on the many coins marked simply ‘of King Ptolemy’. This relegation to the background is unfair, particularly to her spirited sisters, but unavoidable. It means that Cleopatra lacks the detailed family background that would, perhaps, have helped us to understand some of her choices. Had any of her siblings managed to cling on to their thrones Cleopatra herself would have become a footnote in their history. Her more remote ancestors, in contrast, have all the character that her immediate relations seem to lack. Their stories are summarised in the ‘Who Was Who’ section at the end of this book. They make fascinating reading.

One character does stand out. Alexandria-next-to-Egypt, a Greek enclave in an Egyptian landscape, simultaneously home to a library full of dreaming scholars, a marketplace full of astute merchants, a court of almost unimaginable luxury and an aggressive king-making mob, played a vital role in Cleopatra’s story. I make no apology for dedicating an entire chapter to this sparkling, vital city.

Every good story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. But Cleopatra’s story has continued to grow with the years, and still lacks a definite ending. My final chapter is therefore a metabiography – an exploration of the development of a cultural afterlife that, over 2,000 years since Cleopatra’s own death, shows no sign of dying. Although this chapter briefly considers the many versions of Cleopatra preserved in ancient histories and modern fiction, it is an introduction to, rather than the definitive treatment of, a fascinating topic which is a subject, and one or more books, in its own right.
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The intention here is to equip the reader with an understanding of the
sources which historians have used to piece together Cleopatra’s life and, of course, of the biases lurking within those sources.

That the world is still fascinated by Cleopatra – the achingly beautiful Cleopatra of popular culture rather than the real queen – is easily demonstrated. As I finished writing the paragraph above I switched on my radio. On Wednesday 14 February 2007 – appropriately enough St Valentine’s Day – Cleopatra was in the news. A silver coin had been ‘discovered’ in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries at Newcastle. The coin showed a face that would have been instantly recognisable to anyone who had made even the most cursory study of Cleopatra’s relatively plentiful currency. It was by no stretch of the imagination an exciting archaeological find. But the discovery made the newspapers, and then the radio and television, and the reporters, steeped in Cleopatra mythology, were all discussing Cleopatra’s beauty (or rather her shocking lack of beauty) as if she were a modern celebrity. More than 2,000 years after her death, Cleopatra was still effortlessly making the headlines, even if most of the ‘facts’ being reported were wrong.
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I
n 81 the death of Ptolemy IX, king of Egypt, plunged the Ptolemaic dynasty into crisis. Years of vicious family feuds had caused a shortage of legitimate male Ptolemies. With no more obvious heir to the throne, Berenice III, daughter of Ptolemy IX and widow of his brother Ptolemy X, inherited her father’s crown and restyled herself Cleopatra Berenice. Soon after, to comply with Ptolemaic tradition, she agreed to marry her young stepson-nephew, Ptolemy XI.

The Romans watched the unfolding royal saga with a proprietorial interest. They believed that they had a valid legal claim to Egypt, which had been gifted to them seven years earlier in a vexatious will drawn up by Ptolemy X. As yet, they had resisted the temptation to annex Egypt, but many believed that it could only be a question of time. Meanwhile, the Roman dictator Sulla gave his gracious approval to the marriage of Berenice and Ptolemy, but the pair were ill-suited and Ptolemy, as the natural son of Ptolemy X, believed that he should rule in his own right. Within three weeks of the wedding the over-eager Ptolemy had murdered his bride and seized her throne. The next day he was snatched by an angry Alexandrian mob, dragged off to the gymnasium, and killed. Egypt was once again in need of a king or queen.

The double murder threw Egypt into crisis. The Alexandrians had dared to kill the king that the Romans had chosen for them; would this provoke the Romans into claiming their property? A new Ptolemy was needed, and quickly. But this was no easy matter. Berenice had been the only surviving child of Ptolemy IX and his consort Cleopatra IV, and she had died childless. Just one legitimate Ptolemy remained. Berenice’s aunt, Cleopatra Selene, was the daughter of Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III and the ex-wife of Ptolemy IX, but she was also the widow of three kings of Syria
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and, as the mother of ambitious Syrian sons, she made an unsuitable guardian of Egypt’s interests. Bypassing Cleopatra Selene, the crown was offered to the two illegitimate sons of Ptolemy IX: sons born to an unrecorded mother and currently living in Syria. The elder son returned to Egypt and took the throne as Ptolemy Theos Philopator Philadelphos (the Father-Loving, Brother/Sister-Loving God). From 64/3 he was to add Neos Dionysos (the New Dionysos) to his name. In 76 Ptolemy XII was crowned by Pasherenptah III, the newly appointed high priest of the god Ptah, in a traditional Egyptian ceremony held at Memphis. His regnal years were to be counted from the death of his father, Ptolemy IX, a move
which stressed continuity in the immediate royal family, but which effectively erased the reign of the ill-fated Berenice III from the official record. As a consolation prize the younger son, also named Ptolemy, was offered the crown of Cyprus. The Romans, irritated by this rapid turn of events, refused to recognise the new kings.

The identification of Ptolemy XII with Dionysos was an astute political move. ‘Twice born’, once when ripped from his stricken mortal mother, Semele, and again when delivered from the thigh of his divine father, Zeus, the mystical Greek god Dionysos had long been associated with the resurrected Egyptian fertility god-king Osiris. But while the bandaged Osiris promised a calm and ordered afterlife to anyone living a correct earthly existence, Dionysos offered his most enthusiastic followers a lifetime of secret rituals and ecstatic experiences, culminating in the twin promises of union with the god and eternal salvation beyond death. As the austere cult of Osiris retained its popularity with the native Egyptians, the more flamboyant cult of Dionysos flourished both within Egypt and without. In Alexandria, a city where the Greek concept of
tryphe
(endless undisciplined luxury and ostentatious display) underpinned many aspects of official life, Dionysos was considered both a protective deity and a royal ancestor: genealogists had helpfully determined that Arsinoë, mother of Ptolemy I, was a descendant of Heracles and Deianeira, the daughter of Dionysos. So, by identifying himself with Dionysos, Ptolemy was effectively allying himself both with his legitimate Ptolemaic ancestors and with Alexander the Great, who had revered Dionysos as the conqueror of much of the eastern world. At the same time he was distancing himself from the more restrained and conservative Romans who favoured the Olympian gods, and who tended to look upon Ptolemaic excess – indeed, any form of excess – with horror. The stoic philosopher, geographer and historian Strabo, writing some sixty years after Ptolemy’s death, was not at all impressed with the Dionysiac royal lifestyle:

Devotees of Dionysos came from all walks of life; they were male and female, rich and poor, free and enslaved, old and young. They drank copious amounts of wine and, in defiance of the taboo against transvestism, challenged the natural order of things by donning diaphanous womanly clothing to perform their mysterious, sex-based rituals. Lucian preserves the story of the staid philosopher Demetrios, who angered Ptolemy XII by drinking only water and refusing to cross-dress during the Dionysiac revels; as punishment he was forced to don a gown, dance and play the cymbals.
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They also serenaded their god on the
aulos
, or double flute, and from this last association came Ptolemy’s irreverent nickname Auletes or ‘Flute Player’. Whether this less than flattering sobriquet referred to the king’s musical ability, or to his plump cheeks, permanently puffed out like the cheeks of a flautist, or whether it was a snide reference to the well-understood link between male and female
aulos
players and prostitution, is not now clear. More straightforward was Ptolemy’s alternative nickname, Nothos or ‘Bastard’.

Auletes had inherited the most densely populated land in the Mediterranean world. It is impossible to give precise statistics, but historians have estimated a population of somewhere between two and a half and seven million, while Diodorus Siculus, visiting Egypt in 60, when Cleopatra was about ten years old, suggests a total Egyptian population of about three million. It was a tenuously unified and
culturally segregated land. The vast majority of Auletes’s subjects were indigenous Egyptians, but over 10 per cent of the population were of Greek extraction, and there was also a sizeable and vociferous Jewish minority. Traditionally, the Egyptians had always made a firm distinction between those who lived in Upper, or southern, Egypt (the Nile Valley) and those who lived in Lower Egypt (the Delta). The southern Egyptians tended to regard themselves as the true guardians of Egypt’s heritage, while the northerners tended to regard themselves as superior to the unsophisticated valley dwellers. To further complicate matters, the people of Alexandria, a temperamental, cosmopolitan and racially well-mixed bunch, considered themselves a distinct cultural group, superior in every way to those unfortunate enough to live outside the city.

Tensions between the various factions could run high, and any group was liable to turn against their king at any time. The reigns of Ptolemies III, IV and V had been blighted by southern uprisings, while the reigns of the later Ptolemies had been heavily influenced by the Alexandrians, who considered that they had the right to chose and depose their own king. Ptolemy XII was to suffer rebellions, politically inspired strikes and blatant interference by the Alexandrians. But open warfare was the exception rather than the rule. For most of the time the various cultural groups coexisted in an uneasy truce, leading parallel lives, speaking their own languages, worshipping their own gods and making use of their own, entirely separate, legal systems whereby contracts written in the demotic script used by Egypt’s scribes were classified as Egyptian, contracts in Aramaic were considered Jewish and contracts written in Greek fell under the stricter Greek law.
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Two things unified the various groups: they were all prepared (albeit temporarily) to acknowledge Auletes as king, accepting his edicts as superior to all laws, and they all bitterly resented any form of Roman interference in their land.