Cleopatra: A Life

Marcel Launey, Recherches sur les armees hellenistiques, 2 vols. (Paris: Boccard, 1949); Raphael Marrinan, “The Ptolemaic Army: Its Organisation, Development and Settlement,” (PhD dissertation, University College, London, 1998). Marrinan places a barracks of elite guards on or near the palace grounds.

42. “to think of his ancestral” to “tears of joy”: AW, 24.

43. “The entire population”: AW, 32.

44. “a prodigy of activity”: Gaston Boissier, Cicero and His Friends (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1970), 185.

45. CR acquitted himself: Volkmann, 1958, 75.

46. “which blew absolutely”: CW, III.107.

47. “had remained loyal”: AW, 33.

48. “out of voluptuousness”: Dio, XLIV.46.2. See also Cicero to Atticus, 226 (XI.15), May 14, 47, and 230 (XI.18), June 19, 47. In the fourth century AD Eusebius returned to the theme, charging that CR returned C to the throne “in return for sexual favors” (Eusebius, 183.2).

49. the gratuitous apology: The point is El-Abbadi’s; he is firmly convinced that the library was a casualty of the war, 1990, 151.

50. “As to the war in Egypt”: JC, XLVIII (ML translation).

51. “for whose sake” to “in Caesar’s company”: Dio, XLII. 44.

52. in C’s bed every night: Pelling, 1999, 140.

53. every visitor to Hellenistic Egypt: As Braund (1984, 79) notes: “The wise king was a lavish host when Romans came to visit.”

54. “in view of Caesar’s favor”: Dio, XLII.xxxiv.3.

55. “For the ruler labors”: Ibid., LV.xv.5–6.

56. “the first city of the civilized”: Diodorus, XVII.52.4. Even Cicero conceded as much, De Lege Agraria, II, XVI, 44.

57. “Looking at the city”: Achilles Tatius, V.i.6. He was a native son.

58. “It is not easy”: Dio Chrysostom, “The 32nd Discourse, To the People of Alexandria, 20,” in Alexandria: The Site and the History. Cited in Gareth L. Steen, ed. (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 58.

59. “The general rule”: Athenaeus, V.196d.

60. three hundred tons of dinner vessels: Ibid., 453.

61. “ordinary ware”: The point is Thompson’s, from “Athenaeus’s Egyptian Background,” in David Braund and John Wilkins, eds., Athenaeus and His World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 83–4. See Athenaeus, VI.229d.

62. “a silver platter”: Athenaeus, IV.129b.

63. On C’s wardrobe: Interview with Larissa Bonfante, February 2, 2009; interview with Norma Goldman, October 19, 2009; Casson, 2001, 24–5; Rowlandson, 1998, 313–34; Stanwick, 2002, 36–7, Dorothy Burr Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai and Portraits in Faience (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 29–30; Susan Walker and Morris Bierbrier, Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt (London: British Museum Press, 1997), 177–80; Walker and Higgs, 2001, 65.

64. “prolonged parties until dawn”: DJ, LII (translation modified). Similarly Frontinus, Stratagems, I.i.5. Plutarch has CR drinking until dawn in order to ward off assassination attempts, JC, XLVIII.

65. Dionysian procession: For the best dissection of Athenaeus, V.197–203, see E. E. Rice, The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). Thompson, “Philadelphus’s Procession: Dynastic Power in a Mediterranean Context,” in Mooren, 2000, 365–88. Thompson emphasizes that such a procession was meant to unite the populace and promote a sense of civic identity. Arrian, XXVIII, notes the triumph’s Dionysian roots.

66. “the shrewdest amasser”: Appian, preface, 10. The translation is Macurdy’s, 1932, 108.

67. Had Auletes married C to CR: Ptolemy VIII had tried unsuccessfully to woo a (rich) Roman woman, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, I.

68. “Cleopatra has been able” to “gain Rome”: Lucan, X, 359–60.

69. “surrendered to Alexander”: Justin: Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, J. C. Yardley, tr.

70. “she had a thousand”: Plutarch, MA, XXIX (ML translation).

71. Such an unsociable: Plutarch, “Demetrius,” III. By its very definition, empire made a mockery of family relations, inviting “ill-will and distrust.”

72. “everything that lifts people”: Dio, XXXVIII.xxxix.2.

73. “There is nothing”: Lucan, X.189–90. Egypt exerted no less of a spell on the Greeks, before and after C; it was the ultimate land of mystery. See E. Marion Smith, “The Egypt of the Greek Romances,” Classical Journal 23, no. 7 (April 1928): 531–7.

74. “the father of yellow journalism”: Robert Graves, introduction to Lucan, Pharsalia: Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars (New York: Penguin, 1956), 13.

75. “received with the utmost”: Letter of 112 BC, Select Papyri, II, 416 (George Milligan translation).

76. The Nile cruise: The dates remain in dispute. Lord, 1930, doubts the cruise altogether.

77. One modern historian goes so far: Heinen, 2009, 127. “It seems as if the author [of The Alexandrian War] knowingly sought to deceive his readers, and attempted not only to conceal the Nile journey, but to represent the chronological sequence of events in such a way that this episode could never have taken place.”

78. “I gulped down color”: Gustave Flaubert to his mother, November 17, 1849. The translation is from Empereur, 2002, 136.

79. The barge: Athenaeus, V.204e–206d. See also Nowicka, 1969.

80. hide supplies: Foertmeyer, 1989, 235.

81. “Once is enough”: Cicero to Atticus, 353 (XIII.52), December 19, 45.

82. “floating palace”: Nielsen, 1999, 136.

83. The misconceptions: Herodotus for the skull; Diodorus for the primordial half-mice; Strabo for the twins, turtle shells, grass serpents, and astonishing fecundity, XV.I.22–3. Similarly NH, from which come mice walking on two feet and the abbreviated pregnancies, VII.iiiff. Much of this descends from Aristotle (History of Animals, vii.4); Aulus Gellius picked up the theme, Attic Nights, X.ii. Dio Chrysostom has mythical man-eating mermaids in the desert, half snake, half siren, Discourse, 5.24–7. Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History, XXII.15.14ff would marvel over dolphinlike creatures in the Nile, hippopotami that were “sagacious beyond all unreasoning beasts,” and the Egyptian ibis, a bird that laid eggs through its beak.

84. “I saw, and I was amazed”: Casson, Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 142.

85. The Macedonian parallel: Nepos, Eumenes, III.4.

86. “and enjoyed himself”: Appian, II.89.

87. “She would have”: Dio, XLII.45.1.

88. “was neither creditable”: Dio, XLII.47.2.

CHAPTER IV: THE GOLDEN AGE NEVER WAS THE PRESENT AGE

Cicero, Pliny, and Plutarch are the invaluable guides to Rome and the Romans. For the trips there I have relied on the wisdoms of Lionel Casson, and especially on Travel in the Ancient World; see also Michel Redde and Jean-Claude Golvin’s lavishly illustrated Voyages sur la mediterranee romaine (Paris: Actes Sud, 2005). On C in Rome, Erich Gruen’s debunking “Cleopatra in Rome: Facts and Fantasies,” in Myth, History and Culture in Republican Rome, David Braund and Christopher Gill, eds. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2003); Edmond Van ’t Dack, “La Date de C. Ord. Ptol. 80–83 = BGU VI 1212 et le sejour de Cleopatre VII a Rome,” Ancient Society 1 (1970): 53–67. Eusebius attests to the inevitable retinue, 183.30, as does Horace, in a different way; he regretted the