Mother and child were in Rome, scandalizing the likes of Cicero (the authentic voice of Roman misogyny and xenophobia) by their mere presence, when Caesar’s killers struck. Soon she was back home, skilfully deflecting the demands of the assassins for troops and money, and even leading her fleet out against them. After Antony and Octavian defeated the republicans, and Antony had assumed power in the east, he called her to Tarsus in what is now Turkey, the future birthplace of St. Paul.
Her arrival there in her royal barge with its golden stern was one of the great spectacles of the ancient world: purple sails billowed, pipes and lutes played, while Cleopatra reclined on a couch dressed as Aphrodite and clouds of incense from numerous burners floated ashore. Star-struck, Antony asked her to dine with him, but she requested he and his officers come aboard ship—subtly inviting Antony to Egypt. Thus began the series of lavish banquets, including the one with the pearl quaffing, that won over Antony—dazzled partly by Cleopatra and partly by the evidence of wealth he could use for eastern conquests. Antony, in turn, could and did give Cleopatra what she wanted: the execution of her last sister (in exile on a Roman-held island), expansion of the family kingdom, protection from other Roman client kings, and heirs of suitably noble blood.
For a doting mother who took her second lover only after her first was murdered, Cleopatra has had a lot of salacious press over the centuries. Yet her sexual morality approaches that of a vestal virgin in comparison with the men in her life: Roman aristocrats with life-and-death power over millions, a sense of entitlement dwarfing that of Tiger Woods, and a pre-Christian lack of guilt over sex.
When Octavian later put out propaganda on how Antony was shaming his Roman wife (Octavian’s sister, Octavia) by lolling about with an Oriental temptress, Antony replied in a letter written with what seems, to modern eyes, genuine puzzlement: “What does it matter to you where I stuff my erection?”
Both of Cleopatra’s love affairs had serious political—even personal—survival underpinnings, and in regards to the first one, it is difficult to tell, 2,000 years later, what love may have had to do with it, though she and Caesar remained close until his assassination four years later. But the intense relationship between Cleopatra and Antony—which produced three children, a Ptolemaic kingdom larger and more powerful than it had been in centuries, and lasted 11 years until renewed Roman civil war claimed their lives—was far more than a political alliance. Octavian propaganda cleverly played to Roman prejudice by claiming Cleopatra flattered Antony’s ego, matched him in decisiveness and decision-making, and was an equal companion in the fun, games and feasting he so enjoyed. “It was,” biographer Roller dryly comments, “also largely true.”
After the couple lost the naval battle of Actium to Octavian, Antony became depressed and suicidal, but Cleopatra kept looking to the future. Antony stabbed himself when he wrongly heard that Cleopatra had committed suicide. Roller thinks she put that rumour about to induce his suicide, thereby freeing her to bargain with Octavian. But most scholars disagree, citing ancient accounts of her behaviour at the time: after Antony died in her arms, she tore her clothes, clawed at her breast with her nails, and smeared her face with his blood, while calling him “master, husband, commander.” But even in her grief, she did not move to kill herself for more than a week, time spent desperately trying to save, if not her own life, Caesarion’s throne.
But when she realized Octavian planned to march her in triumph through the streets of Rome, Cleopatra was determined to avoid the humiliation. Somehow acquiring poison—the mystery of how she did so under close Roman guard eventually gave rise to the asp in a basket of figs story—she and two loyal attendants killed themselves. However much the ancient sources disparaged Cleopatra’s morals or political machinations, or the mere idea of an Eastern woman ruling Roman men, they are united in their respect for her courage and queenly nature. Plutarch records, admiringly, the response her dying maid Charmion gave when a Roman officer burst in and spat out, “A fine deed this!” Yes, Charmion agreed, “Nothing could be finer for this lady, the descendent of so many kings.”
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