was to be applied to the scalp, “rubbed until it sprouts.” Plutarch holds that she concocted “all sorts of deadly poisons,” with which she experimented on prisoners. “When she saw that the speedy poisons enhanced the sharpness of death by the pain they caused,” she moved on to a survey of venomous animals. These she studied systematically, daily “watching with her own eyes as they were set one upon another.” The Talmud hails her for her “great scientific curiosity” and as “very interested in the experiments of doctors and surgeons.” Given the preponderance of medical professionals at court, the progress in the field, and the lively interest demonstrated in the natural sciences by other Eastern kings—many of whom performed experiments and wrote on biology and botany—this was likely true. The rest of the Talmudic passage may be less so. It attributes to Cleopatra a set of experiments on female prisoners, “in order to determine at what point the fetus became an actual embryo.” Similarly, the medieval
Much of Cleopatra’s supposed scholarship derives from the Arab world, where Roman propaganda did not penetrate. There she established herself as a philosopher, physician, scientist, scholar. Her name was powerfully resonant, the more so for her association with the pharmacologically inclined, miracle-working Isis. As credible as were some of the imputations, it is difficult to determine how many of the accomplishments were genuine; how many the flattering fallout of Plutarch’s account of an intellectually inclined woman, comfortable in the company of philosophers and physicians, living in enlightened times; and how much they constitute the usual assault on the composed, capable woman, suspect for being too good at her craft, whose talents can be attributed only to “magic arts and charms.” Dissected or not, the bodies must be buried somewhere, the cauldrons and the books of spells nearby. Cleopatra’s abilities were great, but the fertile male fancy incontestably greater.
Her competence would be put to the test in the years following the return, when disaster followed upon disaster. The Nile did not stir over the spring of 43, and that summer failed to rise at all. It proved equally uncooperative the following year. Crops failed to a degree that defied the historical record. Throughout Egypt the misery was acute. Cleopatra eventlessly steered her kingdom through the sustained crisis, doubtless careful about tripping over familiar stones; the previous famine had been a fiasco for her. She may again have declared a state of emergency. Her people were starving. She had little choice but to open the royal granaries and distribute free wheat.* Inflation raged; Cleopatra further devalued the currency. Petitioners from two districts appeared before her for relief from venal tax collectors. Given the “general malaise” and “inspired by a hatred of evil,” she granted them exemptions. She posted notices of the amnesty widely. In the midst of the agricultural crisis came reports of odd glandular swellings and nasty black pustules; an epidemic raged either in Egypt or just beyond its borders. The prolific Dioscorides, an expert on medicinal plants, had ample material on which to base a pioneering treatise on bubonic plague.
The timing was particularly inauspicious as the Roman civil war returned violently in 43 to Egypt’s shores. The Italian peninsula could hardly contain that conflict, a brutal, fitful demonstration that, in Plutarch’s words, “No wild beast is more savage than man when his passion is supplemented by power.” For Cleopatra the infighting took the form of a sort of perverse fairy tale: She knew that all parties would come calling. (The number of appeals attests to her sustained wealth.) She also knew that to back the wrong party was to invite disaster. While she remained answerable to Rome, it was difficult to do so when she did not know who, precisely, Rome was. And no matter whom she endorsed, the cost was likely to be exorbitant. Already she was well acquainted with the wisdom offered to her father, bluntly apprised in the midst of his negotiations as to “what humiliations and troubles he would run himself into; what bribery he must resort to; and what cupidity he would have to satisfy when he came to the leading men at Rome, whom all Egypt turned into silver would scarcely content.”
Cleopatra’s best option would have been to do nothing, an option she quickly exhausted. She went finally with her natural sympathies, and at her price. Dolabella had been high in Caesar’s favor, his precocious fleet commander, his first choice for consul in 44. He was dissolute and hot-headed, also robust, a fine speaker, and a popular favorite. Still in his twenties, he may have struck Cleopatra as Caesar’s natural political heir. When Dolabella applied for assistance, Cleopatra sent him the four legions Caesar had left her, along with a fleet. In exchange she secured a promise that Caesarion would be recognized as king of Egypt, a confirmation crucial to her. Unfortunately, her fleet was intercepted on the high seas. Without a struggle it defected to Cassius, Dolabella’s rival and a leader among the assassins. In turn Cassius prevailed upon Cleopatra for assistance. She sent her excuses. Famine and plague ravaged her country. She was utterly without resources. Simultaneously she prepared a second expedition for Dolabella. Foul winds confined that fleet to the harbor. And she met with rebellious subordinates. Her military commander in Cyprus countermanded her order, supplying Cassius with Egyptian ships. Cleopatra would be called upon to answer for his defiance later.
She was playing a dangerous game that only became more so. In July 43 Cassius’s army encircled and crushed Dolabella, who committed suicide. If she had not already done so, Cleopatra heard next from Cassius’s enemies, Octavian and Antony. The two were in league at the end of 43, intent on revenge against the assassins, primarily led by Brutus and Cassius. For Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son and his former counsel, Cleopatra readied a powerful fleet, loaded down with materiel. She intended to deliver it personally to Greece. Meanwhile the assassin Cassius menaced her. She refused to rise to the bait. He threatened again. He had asked only for her cooperation; Cleopatra had instead assisted his enemy. She was by no means proving the obedient female Caesar had advertised. Enraged, Cassius prepared a full-scale Egyptian invasion. The timing was right; Egypt was weak with famine, Cleopatra vulnerable in the absence of her Roman legions. She later insisted that “she had not been terrified of Cassius,” but she would have been foolish not to have been. He was a noxious character, composed of equal parts cruelty and greed. Known as “the most aggressive of men,” he had been a prime mover among the assassins. He had twelve first-rate legions at his command, as well as an expert force of mounted bowmen. He had been pitiless with those cities into which he had already marched. A skilled general and a former Pompeian admiral, he had fought in the East before. And he was already close at hand, across the Egyptian border, where he had seized control of Syria.
Yet again Cleopatra was spared in the nick of time by competing Roman interests. As he began his march toward Egypt, Cassius was diverted by an urgent summons. Antony and Octavian had crossed the Adriatic. They traveled east to challenge him. Cassius hesitated. Egypt was a rich prize, within easy reach. Sternly, Brutus reminded him that he was not meant to win power for himself, but liberty for his country. The disappointed Cassius reversed direction, to join Brutus in Greece. For Cleopatra the reprieve coincided with unhappy events. She had headed out with her fleet, to join Antony and Octavian. She herself commanded the flagship. Yet again foul weather intervened. In its face a high, square-rigged warship was useless, quickly swamped, easily overturned. She returned to Alexandria with a battered remnant of a navy. As she explained later, the storm “not only ruined everything but also caused her to fall ill, for which reason she had not put to sea even afterwards.” Some have questioned her sincerity, giving Cleopatra’s story a suspect I-didn’t-want-to-get-my-heels-wet spin. (It is notable that when she is not condemned for being too bold and masculine, Cleopatra is taken to task for being unduly frail and feminine.) She appears to have been true to her word, however. She knew she could not deny assistance to those actively avenging her lover’s death. And a Cassius ally who lay in wait to ambush Cleopatra’s fleet—with a fleet of sixty decked ships, a legion of Cassius’s men, and a stockpile of flaming arrows—both heard of the disaster and came across Egyptian wreckage floating off the coast of southern Greece. Cleopatra limped home in ill health. For her careful and costly efforts she had secured the allegiance of no one.
Having offered the victors no effective assistance, Cleopatra knew she would be held to account soon enough. An emissary arrived in Alexandria more or less on cue, probably early in 41. He was a suave and tart- tongued negotiator, also a man of acrobatic loyalties. Already Quintus Dellius had changed sides three times in the course of the civil war, having leapt from Dolabella’s camp to Cassius’s, to touch down, temporarily, in Mark Antony’s. He had come to Alexandria to exact some answers from the oddly uncooperative queen of Egypt. Why had she collaborated with Cassius? How to explain her tepid support of the Caesarians? Where precisely were her loyalties? Presumably Dellius had been briefed on the wonders of Alexandria and its jewel-encrusted palace. Whatever he had heard failed to prepare him adequately for Cleopatra. He “had no sooner seen her face, and remarked her adroitness and subtlety in speech” than he realized he would need to reassess his approach. On Cleopatra’s disarming effect all sources unanimously, even actively, agree. Plutarch so much falls under her
