Cleopatra: A Life stands out among the
many books and biographies I’ve read for its style. Stacy Schiff includes
beautiful descriptions of palaces, feasts, halls, ships, and regal clothing to
the point where you can really see, feel, smell, and touch these things that
are now long gone, buried under earth or sea, or in a museum. For example,
Schiff writes, “From a distance Alexandria blinded, a sumptuous suffusion of
gleaming marble, over which presided a towering lighthouse. Its celebrated
skyline was reproduced on lamps, mosaics, tiles. The city’s architecture
announced its magpie ethos, forged of a frantic accretion of cultures. In this
greatest of Mediterranean ports, papyrus fronds topped Ionic columns. Oversize
sphinxes and falcons lined the paths to Greek temples. Crocodile gods in Roman
dress decorated Doric tombs.” Since there is actually extremely little reliable
information in the historical record about Cleopatra, there is a lot of
beautiful filler like that, stealing the show.
Was Cleopatra an effective and clever ruler, or did she fall
due to her own failings?
I came
to the conclusion that she was extremely intelligent and played her situation
as well as she could have possibly done. She ended up picking the wrong horse
in Marcus Antonius (Marc Anthony) but the same quality that made him lose to
Octavian made him a useful ally to Cleopatra. He was malleable- a better
follower than a leader- and he was in charge of the East, giving him access to great
wealth and Asiatic armies, but not to the hearts of the Roman people. Cleopatra
was very smart in how she got Caesar onto her side and she chose correctly in Antonius,
but he failed her. He was clever tactically but not strategically and got stuck
at Actium where Octavian was able to defeat him. Cleopatra never had a choice
in allying with Antonius as he was given the East in a deal made with Octavian,
giving him jurisdiction over her. In addition, only he would be moldable for
Cleopatra. Octavian was famously controlling of others and himself and likely
would not have been so generous to her.
In sum,
Cleopatra seems to have played everything right but lost anyway. She really
needed her ally and military leader, Antony, to come through, but he was
crushed in Parthia, won a meaningless victory in Armenia, and was beaten badly
by Octavian at Actium. He did not fulfill his end of the bargain.
Cleopatra
had been especially effective in making an entrance and being in control of her
image. When she offered Antony dinner at Tarsus, she astounded him and his
entourage with lights hanging in tree branches, “thirty-six couches with rich
textiles,” a table full of gems and gold, beautiful flowers, and aromatic perfumes.
At the end of several feasts, she gave all these things as gifts to Antony and
his friends, certainly making a strong case to ally themselves with her, as
perhaps more gifts would come.
Was Cleopatra a good ruler for the average Egyptian?
It is
hard to tell with regards to this. Cleopatra was the last Ptolemaic pharaoh (the
rulers who came from Macedonia descended from Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s
top generals) and she was the only “Ptolemy” to actually learn to speak Egyptian.
I think that shows some level of connection with the people. Inscriptions boast
that there was no famine during her reign, but that usually had no basis in
fact and all rulers aimed to portray their reign so nicely. All of our reliable
sources on Cleopatra came from Romans, so it’s really hard to get a read on the
Egyptian perspective. I think the verdict is still out though it’s likely that
her intrigues affected mainly those living in the capital, Alexandrians, by
bringing in great wealth during her reign and great violence at the beginning
when she and Caesar sheltered together in her palace.
The way
that the Ptolemaic Egyptian economy worked is astounding. Schiff, the author,
mentions that it has been compared to the USSR in the sense that it was a
complete command economy. Schiff writes, “Most land was royal land… Only with
government permission could you fell a tree, breed pigs, turn your barley field
into an olive garden.” When you’re here, you’re family.
How did Cleopatra affect the Roman civil war at the time?
Cleopatra
begins as someone who was affected by
Roman civil war. It happens when some of her brother’s courtiers killed Pompey,
Caesar’s rival, thinking it would endear them to Caesar. It did not. Either
because Caesar was aggrieved at the loss of his frenemy or because he had wanted
to appear magnanimous in showing mercy or because he felt like only a Roman
should kill a Roman, he was furious. Maybe it was a combination of all three.
Anyway, it resulted in him and Cleopatra with some of Caesar’s men holed up in
the palace while the Alexandrians attacked them. Finally reinforcements came
and Caesar won, deciding in the process to make Cleopatra queen. He would bring
her back to Rome for a time, but she returned to Egypt when he was
assassinated.
Cleopatra
really started to figure into the civil wars of Rome as an influencer when she
began her relationship with Marc Antony. She became his consort and helped him
to gather a large coalition to fight against Octavian. After all, Marc Antony
only spoke Latin and a little bit of Greek while Cleopatra spoke nine
languages. She handled the diplomacy and he handled the military. However,
Cleopatra was a problem for Antony’s PR because it made him look unfaithful to
Rome that he was so faithful to a foreign queen. She was critical to Antony’s
military power, though Antony squandered it at Actium.
What was Cleopatra’s personality like?
By the
time she was a woman she was certainly pompous. She had already carried on an
affair with the most powerful man in the known world and was the ruler of the
richest land known, and the oldest. She was very much in control of her
emotions. This is not to say she wasn’t emotional- like many eastern women of
the time, in grief she wailed and clawed at her breasts. It is to say that she
knew when to exercise emotion. She had no fear of death. She methodically
tested poisons on prisoners to identify one that would kill her quickly and
painlessly. This is partially why it is very strange to thing she killed herself
with an asp, as was propagated by Octavian after her death. She would have
never entrusted her own death to a wild animal that would cause great pain. She
almost certainly used a poison and Octavian was likely very frustrated that he
would not get to march her in a triumph through Rome.
Conclusion
I came
away with the feeling that Cleopatra was a really smart woman who did almost
everything right and lost anyway in the face of Rome, but what a ride it was.
In a short life (I don’t think she hit forty years old) she became incredibly
rich and powerful and made all the right moves. She lived an exciting life and
saw all the greatest sites of the Mediterranean and the book is very entertaining.
It’s a really accessible book too, so I think it’s especially good for someone
who’s not necessarily as obsessed with history as I am and just wants a good,
true story.
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