Cleopatra: A Life

Girl with writing tablet: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY

Ptolemy Auletes: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Ivory game piece depicting Ptolemy XIV: Bibliotheque nationale de France

Likely Caesarion, in granite: Araldo de Luca

Granite Cleopatra as Isis: © Musee royal de Mariemont

Bust of Ptolemy Philadelphus: Jack A. Josephson

Basalt statue of Cleopatra: Image courtesy of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, San Jose, California

Likely Alexander Helios: Photo © The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Cleopatra stela: Louvre, Paris, France / Lauros / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library

Bust of Caesar: Scala / Art Resource, NY

Buchis bull stela: Cairo, Egyptian Museum

Chalcedony intaglio of Caesar: Bibliotheque nationale de France

Bust of Mark Antony: akg-images

Red jasper intaglio of Mark Antony: © The Trustees of the British Museum

Bronze Cyprus coin: © The Trustees of the British Museum

Bronze Alexandria coin: Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow

Silver Antioch tetradrachm: Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society

Silver Ascalon tetradrachm: By courtesy of The Fan Museum, Greenwich, London

Gold ring with Ptolemaic queen: V&A Images, Victoria and Albert Museum

Blue glass intaglio: © The Trustees of the British Museum

Temple of Hathor at Dendera: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY

Bust of Cicero: Galleria degli Uffizi, Alinari / The Bridgeman Art Library

Statue of Octavian: National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Bust of Octavia: The Granger Collection / GetStock.com

Hellenistic mosaic: © Bibliotheca Alexandria Antiquities Museum, photo by Mohamed Nafea

Gold, stone, and glass earrings: Art Resource, NY

Crocodile denarius: TopFoto / GetStock.com

Notes

THE DEAD ENDS and missing pieces in Cleopatra’s story have worked a paradoxical effect; they have kept us relentlessly coming back for more. To centuries of literature on the last queen of Egypt add a recent surge in fine Hellenistic scholarship; a catalogue of the secondary sources would easily amount to a fat volume of its own. I have opted not to write it. Where much material has been distilled into little, chapter headnotes indicate central texts. Volumes that have shaped the narrative as a whole—the ones I have pulled most frequently from the shelf—appear in the selected bibliography. Those texts are cited here by author’s last name and publication date. Primary sources and periodicals appear exclusively below. Footnotes offer an occasional elaboration on a theme.

Translations of the Greek or Latin are from the Loeb Classical Library unless noted and with three general exceptions: For Appian and for Caesar’s Civil War I have used John Carter’s fluid translations (Penguin, 1996, and Oxford, 1998, respectively). For Lucan I have drawn from Susan H. Braund’s 2008 Oxford University Press edition. Where translations differ markedly from published texts I am grateful to Inger Kuin, who untangled awkward phrasings and reconciled contradictory ones. Cleopatra VII, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony are abbreviated as C, CR, and A. Names of principal sources are rendered as follows:

Appian

Appian,

The Civil Wars

Athenaeus

Athenaeus,

The Learned Banqueters

AA

Augustus,

Res Gestae Divi Augustus (The Acts of Augustus)

AW

Caesar,

Alexandrian War

CW

Caesar,

The Civil War

Cicero

Cicero’s letters

Dio

Dio Cassius,

Roman History

Diodorus

Diodorus of Sicily,

Library of History

Florus

Florus,

Epitome of Roman History

JA

Josephus,

Jewish Antiquities

JW

Josephus,

The Jewish War

Lucan

Lucan,

Civil War

ND

Nicolaus of Damascus,

Life of Augustus

Pausanias

Pausanias,

Description of Greece

NH

Pliny,

Natural History

Flatterer

Plutarch, “How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend,”

Moralia

MA

Plutarch,

Lives,

“Antony”

JC