Post by PeterB on Aug 29, 2007 3:39:22 GMT -4
As mentioned in earlier threads, I have a monthly spot on radio in which I discuss various historical topics. I prepare a 2-3 page document for the talk, and I've posted these to Apollohoax to provide something different to discuss. This time, I decided to use the anniversary of the death of Cleopatra (a bit late, admittedly) to discuss her life and legacy.
= = = =
It’s one of the most expensive movies ever made (taking into account inflation). And behind the scenes, the actors playing two of history’s most famous lovers were involved in their own sizzling love affair. The actors were, of course, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the lovers whose parts they were playing were Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and her Roman paramour, Marcus Antonius, better known to us as Mark Antony.
The 12th of August marked the anniversary of the end of Cleopatra’s life, a little over 2000 years ago. It’s a life worth knowing more about, not just because the myths which have built up over the years have disguised the real person behind them, but because she was a remarkable person in her own right.
The two main myths about Cleopatra are that she was Egyptian, and that she was incredibly beautiful. In reality, although she was Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt, she wasn’t Egyptian – she was Greek. And although she successfully seduced two of the most powerful men in Rome, she certainly wasn’t renowned for her attractiveness.
So how does a plain looking Greek woman come to rule Egypt and get important Romans into bed?
To answer these questions, we need to look at some Egyptian, Greek and Roman history. And hopefully at the end you’ll have a new insight into these cultures, cultures which still fascinate us today.
The Egypt of Pharaoh Ramses the Great, in the 13th century BC, was already an ancient culture. But it was also nearing the end of its greatness. In the 11th century BC, Egypt fragmented into competing principalities. From the 10th to the 7th century BC, Egypt was ruled by a succession of foreign Pharaohs and kingdoms – Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians. In the mid-7th century BC, the Assyrian king, in need of a loyal ally, proclaimed a native Egyptian prince as Pharaoh, and his descendents ruled Egypt for over a century. Egypt was then conquered by Persia in the late 6th century BC, although it successfully revolted a couple of times. Then, in the late 4th century BC, the Persian Empire, including Egypt, was conquered by the army Alexander the Great, King of Macedon.
After Alexander’s death in 323BC, his generals fought over his empire, eventually splitting it into three successor kingdoms – Macedon and Greece, Syria and the East, and Egypt. Egypt was ruled by Ptolemy, one of the older and shrewder of Alexander’s companions. Ptolemy and his descendents then ruled Egypt for the next 300 years.
Ptolemy had a conservative strategic outlook. He was satisfied to rule only Egypt, given its considerable wealth. He only looked to control land beyond Egypt in order to secure Egypt’s borders. He secured his rule over Egypt by encouraging Greek immigration to Alexandria, Ptolemy’s capital city, and founded by Alexander the Great as he passed through Egypt. He also had himself portrayed as a traditional Pharaoh to the native population, in statues which are essentially identical to those produced centuries earlier. The kingdom’s prestige was also increased by Ptolemy’s creation of the Library of Alexandria, which would for centuries attract many of the brightest teachers and thinkers in the Greek-speaking world.
But Ptolemy’s descendents squandered his legacy. The kingdom remained secure for a century after Ptolemy’s death, but after that, ever more frequent squabbles within the ruling family caused civil strife. The strife was worsened by the dynasty’s gradual adoption of a practice previously used by native Egyptian Pharaonic families – institutional incest: brothers and sisters would marry, producing offspring who did the same.
Egypt’s decline occurred as the Roman Republic began throwing its weight around the Mediterranean world. From a strategic point of view, Egypt and Rome had good reasons to be allies: Rome was willing to pay good money for Egyptian wheat, to feed its urban poor and maintain domestic peace, and Rome had fought and defeated the other Successor kingdoms of Macedon and Syria, which were Egypt’s rivals. But the Romans had rarely been able to resist sticking their noses into the internal affairs of their neighbours, and the more Egypt suffered from civil war, the more likely that Rome would intervene to protect what it saw as its own interests.
It was into this world that Cleopatra was born in 69BC. Her father, Ptolemy XII, was an illegitimate son of Ptolemy IX, chosen to be king because all other descendents had been killed. Ptolemy XII had consciously pursued a pro-Roman foreign policy, but this didn’t stop Rome from annexing the island of Cyprus in 58BC, until then ruled by Egypt. When Ptolemy didn’t protest, the citizens of Alexandria rebelled and overthrew him, installing his daughter Berenice as queen. Ptolemy regained his throne three years later with the assistance of Roman legionaries, having Berenice executed. When he died, in 51BC, he specified that Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy XIII should be joint monarchs. Cleopatra was 18, and had reportedly already survived at least one murder attempt, from within her own family. Ptolemy XIII was 12.
At this point it’s worth considering the sort of education that Cleopatra would have received. Traditionally, Greek women weren’t educated. They were second class citizens who, like slaves and resident aliens, didn’t have the vote – politics was strictly for the chaps. But despite this lack of political power, there wasn’t an intrinsic prohibition against education; one of the pupils at Plato’s Academy in the early 4th century BC was a woman. The main practical problem was that few women had the independent wealth to afford such an education. Obviously, in the case of Cleopatra, belonging to the ruling family of Egypt made cost a non-issue. Likewise, she would have had access to the best Greek teachers at the Library of Alexandria.
Cleopatra took the trouble to learn Egyptian, and it’s said that she was the first member of her family to do this. That she took the trouble to do so endeared her to the native population. But the fact that she felt the need to do so suggests that the native population was a force to be reckoned with, something which had become increasingly apparent with more frequent native rebellions in the preceding century.
Within months of Cleopatra and Ptolemy ascending to the throne, joint rule broke down. Cleopatra tried to kick Ptolemy off the throne, but was herself unseated. She made an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, but then in 48BC, external matters spectacularly intervened.
At this time, the Roman Republic had been embroiled in a civil war of its own for a year. The Republican army, led by Pompey, had been defeated in Greece by the army of the rebel Julius Caesar. Pompey fled to Egypt in search of sanctuary. Ptolemy XIII, presumably seeking Caesar’s favour, ordered Pompey to be murdered. Two days later, he presented Pompey’s head to Caesar. It was a dramatic miscalculation. Caesar ordered his troops to seize Alexandria and declared that he’d arbitrate the dispute between Ptolemy and Cleopatra.
Cleopatra took her chance, and had herself smuggled into Caesar’s presence, hidden in a rolled up carpet. It may have been typical of Cleopatra, but she must also have known her gesture would appeal to Caesar’s own sense of the dramatic. From that point on, Caesar was Cleopatra’s man, despite an age difference of thirty years between them, although it took several months of fighting before Caesar’s legionaries were able to overcome Ptolemy’s forces. Ptolemy was killed, and Cleopatra confirmed as queen, sharing the throne with another younger brother, Ptolemy XIV. Nine months after first meeting Caesar, Cleopatra gave birth to a son, officially also named Ptolemy, but generally known as Caesarion.
Within a couple of years, Caesar had won the civil war, had himself proclaimed dictator for life, and been assassinated. Shortly after, Ptolemy XIV also died, probably poisoned by Cleopatra to make way for Caesarion. Caesar’s death prompted another Roman civil war, this time between Caesar’s lieutenants and his assassins. His lieutenants, his heir Octavian and his chief general Mark Antony, quickly won, and divided Roman territory between themselves. Antony took the eastern provinces, and headed for Egypt.
Antony had grown up with a wild reputation, and throughout his service to Caesar he continued to display boorish behaviour in Roman company. But he quickly became besotted by Cleopatra (fourteen years his junior), and their relationship produced three children. He used Egypt’s wealth to fund an unsuccessful invasion of Parthia, and Cleopatra seems to have been willing to indulge his financial excesses. There is a story told, possibly apocryphal, that Cleopatra bet Antony she could spend a fortune on a feast. He scoffed when she had a plain meal served, at which point Cleopatra is supposed to have dissolved a pearl ear-ring in vinegar and drunk it.
Such stories didn’t go down well in Rome, where Octavian was able to assemble both legal and moral arguments to justify war against Antony and Cleopatra, although the real reason for his attack was purely expedient – there is little doubt he wanted to rule the entire Roman world. In 31BC Octavian’s fleet defeated that of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in Greece, with Antony and Cleopatra both escaping to Egypt. The following year, as Octavian’s armies closed in on Alexandria, Antony committed suicide. A week later, suspecting that she’d be put on display as a trophy of war by Octavian, Cleopatra likewise committed suicide. Octavian then had Caesarion murdered, although Cleopatra’s children by Antony were spared, living out their lives in obscurity in Rome.
What was it about Cleopatra that so entranced Caesar and Antony? One thing we know for sure is that it wasn’t her physical beauty. In that respect, having her played in movies by famous beauties as Elizabeth Taylor and Salma Hayek is way off the mark. Contemporary historians describe her in rather unremarkable terms. But lest anyone think this is just Roman libel, Egyptian coins also show an unflattering portrait, with a bulbous nose and often a scrawny neck.
Instead, two factors come to mind. Firstly, there was the fact that she was the intellectual equal of Caesar and Antony, despite being female and considerably younger than them. Roman women, like most Greek women, had no education or political power. They were expected to remain silent in the presence of men, unless spoken to, and to bear any hardship with stoic resignation. Adhering to these standards brought honour upon the family. Cleopatra would have been a heady contrast to stuffy, honourable Roman matrons, proof that a woman could relate to a man on an intellectual basis as well as a physical.
Secondly, she was a ruling queen, someone who wielded as much power as Caesar or Antony ever did. Many women find power an aphrodisiac, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that men might find it so as well, especially when they hadn’t experienced it before.
And this is probably the most important legacy Cleopatra leaves to us – that women can aspire to the same heights of power as men, without needing to rely on physical beauty to achieve or wield it.
= = = =
It’s one of the most expensive movies ever made (taking into account inflation). And behind the scenes, the actors playing two of history’s most famous lovers were involved in their own sizzling love affair. The actors were, of course, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the lovers whose parts they were playing were Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and her Roman paramour, Marcus Antonius, better known to us as Mark Antony.
The 12th of August marked the anniversary of the end of Cleopatra’s life, a little over 2000 years ago. It’s a life worth knowing more about, not just because the myths which have built up over the years have disguised the real person behind them, but because she was a remarkable person in her own right.
The two main myths about Cleopatra are that she was Egyptian, and that she was incredibly beautiful. In reality, although she was Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt, she wasn’t Egyptian – she was Greek. And although she successfully seduced two of the most powerful men in Rome, she certainly wasn’t renowned for her attractiveness.
So how does a plain looking Greek woman come to rule Egypt and get important Romans into bed?
To answer these questions, we need to look at some Egyptian, Greek and Roman history. And hopefully at the end you’ll have a new insight into these cultures, cultures which still fascinate us today.
The Egypt of Pharaoh Ramses the Great, in the 13th century BC, was already an ancient culture. But it was also nearing the end of its greatness. In the 11th century BC, Egypt fragmented into competing principalities. From the 10th to the 7th century BC, Egypt was ruled by a succession of foreign Pharaohs and kingdoms – Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians. In the mid-7th century BC, the Assyrian king, in need of a loyal ally, proclaimed a native Egyptian prince as Pharaoh, and his descendents ruled Egypt for over a century. Egypt was then conquered by Persia in the late 6th century BC, although it successfully revolted a couple of times. Then, in the late 4th century BC, the Persian Empire, including Egypt, was conquered by the army Alexander the Great, King of Macedon.
After Alexander’s death in 323BC, his generals fought over his empire, eventually splitting it into three successor kingdoms – Macedon and Greece, Syria and the East, and Egypt. Egypt was ruled by Ptolemy, one of the older and shrewder of Alexander’s companions. Ptolemy and his descendents then ruled Egypt for the next 300 years.
Ptolemy had a conservative strategic outlook. He was satisfied to rule only Egypt, given its considerable wealth. He only looked to control land beyond Egypt in order to secure Egypt’s borders. He secured his rule over Egypt by encouraging Greek immigration to Alexandria, Ptolemy’s capital city, and founded by Alexander the Great as he passed through Egypt. He also had himself portrayed as a traditional Pharaoh to the native population, in statues which are essentially identical to those produced centuries earlier. The kingdom’s prestige was also increased by Ptolemy’s creation of the Library of Alexandria, which would for centuries attract many of the brightest teachers and thinkers in the Greek-speaking world.
But Ptolemy’s descendents squandered his legacy. The kingdom remained secure for a century after Ptolemy’s death, but after that, ever more frequent squabbles within the ruling family caused civil strife. The strife was worsened by the dynasty’s gradual adoption of a practice previously used by native Egyptian Pharaonic families – institutional incest: brothers and sisters would marry, producing offspring who did the same.
Egypt’s decline occurred as the Roman Republic began throwing its weight around the Mediterranean world. From a strategic point of view, Egypt and Rome had good reasons to be allies: Rome was willing to pay good money for Egyptian wheat, to feed its urban poor and maintain domestic peace, and Rome had fought and defeated the other Successor kingdoms of Macedon and Syria, which were Egypt’s rivals. But the Romans had rarely been able to resist sticking their noses into the internal affairs of their neighbours, and the more Egypt suffered from civil war, the more likely that Rome would intervene to protect what it saw as its own interests.
It was into this world that Cleopatra was born in 69BC. Her father, Ptolemy XII, was an illegitimate son of Ptolemy IX, chosen to be king because all other descendents had been killed. Ptolemy XII had consciously pursued a pro-Roman foreign policy, but this didn’t stop Rome from annexing the island of Cyprus in 58BC, until then ruled by Egypt. When Ptolemy didn’t protest, the citizens of Alexandria rebelled and overthrew him, installing his daughter Berenice as queen. Ptolemy regained his throne three years later with the assistance of Roman legionaries, having Berenice executed. When he died, in 51BC, he specified that Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy XIII should be joint monarchs. Cleopatra was 18, and had reportedly already survived at least one murder attempt, from within her own family. Ptolemy XIII was 12.
At this point it’s worth considering the sort of education that Cleopatra would have received. Traditionally, Greek women weren’t educated. They were second class citizens who, like slaves and resident aliens, didn’t have the vote – politics was strictly for the chaps. But despite this lack of political power, there wasn’t an intrinsic prohibition against education; one of the pupils at Plato’s Academy in the early 4th century BC was a woman. The main practical problem was that few women had the independent wealth to afford such an education. Obviously, in the case of Cleopatra, belonging to the ruling family of Egypt made cost a non-issue. Likewise, she would have had access to the best Greek teachers at the Library of Alexandria.
Cleopatra took the trouble to learn Egyptian, and it’s said that she was the first member of her family to do this. That she took the trouble to do so endeared her to the native population. But the fact that she felt the need to do so suggests that the native population was a force to be reckoned with, something which had become increasingly apparent with more frequent native rebellions in the preceding century.
Within months of Cleopatra and Ptolemy ascending to the throne, joint rule broke down. Cleopatra tried to kick Ptolemy off the throne, but was herself unseated. She made an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, but then in 48BC, external matters spectacularly intervened.
At this time, the Roman Republic had been embroiled in a civil war of its own for a year. The Republican army, led by Pompey, had been defeated in Greece by the army of the rebel Julius Caesar. Pompey fled to Egypt in search of sanctuary. Ptolemy XIII, presumably seeking Caesar’s favour, ordered Pompey to be murdered. Two days later, he presented Pompey’s head to Caesar. It was a dramatic miscalculation. Caesar ordered his troops to seize Alexandria and declared that he’d arbitrate the dispute between Ptolemy and Cleopatra.
Cleopatra took her chance, and had herself smuggled into Caesar’s presence, hidden in a rolled up carpet. It may have been typical of Cleopatra, but she must also have known her gesture would appeal to Caesar’s own sense of the dramatic. From that point on, Caesar was Cleopatra’s man, despite an age difference of thirty years between them, although it took several months of fighting before Caesar’s legionaries were able to overcome Ptolemy’s forces. Ptolemy was killed, and Cleopatra confirmed as queen, sharing the throne with another younger brother, Ptolemy XIV. Nine months after first meeting Caesar, Cleopatra gave birth to a son, officially also named Ptolemy, but generally known as Caesarion.
Within a couple of years, Caesar had won the civil war, had himself proclaimed dictator for life, and been assassinated. Shortly after, Ptolemy XIV also died, probably poisoned by Cleopatra to make way for Caesarion. Caesar’s death prompted another Roman civil war, this time between Caesar’s lieutenants and his assassins. His lieutenants, his heir Octavian and his chief general Mark Antony, quickly won, and divided Roman territory between themselves. Antony took the eastern provinces, and headed for Egypt.
Antony had grown up with a wild reputation, and throughout his service to Caesar he continued to display boorish behaviour in Roman company. But he quickly became besotted by Cleopatra (fourteen years his junior), and their relationship produced three children. He used Egypt’s wealth to fund an unsuccessful invasion of Parthia, and Cleopatra seems to have been willing to indulge his financial excesses. There is a story told, possibly apocryphal, that Cleopatra bet Antony she could spend a fortune on a feast. He scoffed when she had a plain meal served, at which point Cleopatra is supposed to have dissolved a pearl ear-ring in vinegar and drunk it.
Such stories didn’t go down well in Rome, where Octavian was able to assemble both legal and moral arguments to justify war against Antony and Cleopatra, although the real reason for his attack was purely expedient – there is little doubt he wanted to rule the entire Roman world. In 31BC Octavian’s fleet defeated that of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in Greece, with Antony and Cleopatra both escaping to Egypt. The following year, as Octavian’s armies closed in on Alexandria, Antony committed suicide. A week later, suspecting that she’d be put on display as a trophy of war by Octavian, Cleopatra likewise committed suicide. Octavian then had Caesarion murdered, although Cleopatra’s children by Antony were spared, living out their lives in obscurity in Rome.
What was it about Cleopatra that so entranced Caesar and Antony? One thing we know for sure is that it wasn’t her physical beauty. In that respect, having her played in movies by famous beauties as Elizabeth Taylor and Salma Hayek is way off the mark. Contemporary historians describe her in rather unremarkable terms. But lest anyone think this is just Roman libel, Egyptian coins also show an unflattering portrait, with a bulbous nose and often a scrawny neck.
Instead, two factors come to mind. Firstly, there was the fact that she was the intellectual equal of Caesar and Antony, despite being female and considerably younger than them. Roman women, like most Greek women, had no education or political power. They were expected to remain silent in the presence of men, unless spoken to, and to bear any hardship with stoic resignation. Adhering to these standards brought honour upon the family. Cleopatra would have been a heady contrast to stuffy, honourable Roman matrons, proof that a woman could relate to a man on an intellectual basis as well as a physical.
Secondly, she was a ruling queen, someone who wielded as much power as Caesar or Antony ever did. Many women find power an aphrodisiac, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that men might find it so as well, especially when they hadn’t experienced it before.
And this is probably the most important legacy Cleopatra leaves to us – that women can aspire to the same heights of power as men, without needing to rely on physical beauty to achieve or wield it.
