40–4. Generally on the functioning of the economy, Rostovtzeff, 1998; Preaux, 1939; Tarn and Griffin, 1959; Thompson, 1988; Dominic Rathbone, “Ptolemaic to Roman Egypt: The Death of the Dirigiste State?,” Cambridge Philological Society 26 (2000): 44–54.
23. “nobody is allowed”: Cited in M. M. Austin, The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest: A Selection of Source Materials in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 561.
24. “knew each day”: William Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization (London: Edward Arnold, 1959), 195.
25. “cheer everybody up”: Select Papyri, 1995, II.204.
26. “We may conclude”: Dorothy Crawford’s illuminating “The Good Official of Ptolemaic Egypt,” in Das Ptolemaische Agypten: Akten des internationalen Symposions 1976 (Mainz, Germany: von Zabern, 1978), 202.
27. “stolen donkeys”: John Bauschatz, “Policing the Chora: Law Enforcement in Ptolemaic Egypt,” Ph.D. dissertation (Duke University, 2005), 68.
28. They preyed equally: Bingen, “Les tensions structurelles de la societe ptolemaique,” Atti del XVII Conresso Internazionale di Papirologia III (Naples, 1984): 921–937; Rathbone, 2000.
29. On the grievances: Bagnall and Derow, 2004; Bevan, 1968; Maehler, 1983; Rostovtzeff, 1998. And on the benevolence: William Linn Westermann, “The Ptolemies and the Welfare of Their Subjects,” American Historical Review 43, no. 2 (1938): 270–87.
30. The infirm father: Select Papyri, II, 233. The girl had run away with her layabout of a boyfriend and—claimed her father—would no longer provide him with the necessities of life, despite having signed a contract to do so.
31. “come early in the morning”: Select Papyri, II.266. Translation from M. Rostovtzeff, “A Large Estate in Egypt in the Third Century BC: A Study in Economic History,” University of Wisconsin Studies 6, 1922, 120.
32. Taxation cases forbidden: Rostovtzeff, 1998, II, 1094.
33. “scalded my belly”: Cited in Bagnall and Derow, 1981, 195.
34. “When we inherited”: Cicero, The Republic, V.I.2. The translation is from Everitt, 2003, 180.
35. On Auletes and the family fortune: T. Robert S. Broughton, “Cleopatra and ‘The Treasure of the Ptolemies,’ ” American Journal of Philology 63, no. 3 (1942): 328–32. Here too opinions differ: Maehler, 1983, subscribes to “undisturbed prosperity.” Bowman, Casson, Ricketts, and Tarn agree. Rostovtzeff, 1998, is certain of C’s personal treasure but less sanguine about the economy under her reign, III, 1548. Thompson, Broughton, and Will see an economy in decline if not disarray. Athenaeus accuses C’s father of having dissipated the fortune of Egypt, V.206d. In 63 Cicero found Egypt still a flourishing kingdom, De Lege Agraria, II.XVI.44.
36. On the devaluation and C’s coins, see Guy Weill Goudchaux, “Was Cleopatra Beautiful? The Conflicting Answers of Numismatics,” in Walker and Higgs, 2001, 210–14. Chauveau, 2000, 86, succinctly terms devaluation “the ancient equivalent of printing money.”
37. “the equivalent of all of the hedge fund”: Interview with Roger Bagnall, November 21, 2008.
38. palace drinking contest: Athenaeus, X.415. Athenaeus (XII.522) also mentions that a philosopher earned twelve talents a year, which sounds high. The bail is from Casson, 2001, 35; he equates fifteen talents with millions of modern dollars. For the impressive monuments, Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 414. Marrinan, 1998, asserts that you could hire an army of 10,000 men for a year with 1,000 talents, 16. Diodorus reports that for a lowly Roman craftsman a talent was the equivalent of seventeen years’ wages, Josephus ( JW, I.483) that a prince with a private income of 100 talents was a man to be reckoned with. During the honeymoon of Egypto-Roman relations, a visiting Roman dignitary was offered gifts worth eighty talents—so immodest a sum he did not accept (Plutarch, “Lucullus,” 2). On a more prosaic level, a talent bought enough wheat to feed a man for seventy-five years. See also Tarn and Griffin, 1959, 112–16.
39. one contemporary list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richest_man_in_history.
40. The trip to Rome: This is based on the best educated guess in the business, that of Casson. Interviews, January 26, 2009, and June 18, 2009. See also Casson, 1971; Casson, The Ancient Mariners (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Casson, 1994. He describes the entire arduous system in “The Feeding of the Trireme Crews and an Entry in IG ii2 1631,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 125 (1995): 261–9; and in “The Isis and Her Voyage,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 81 (1950): 43–56. Casson to author, December 9, 2008. For comparisons see Philo, “Against Flaccus,” V.25ff, “On the Embassy to Gaius,” 250–3; JW, 1.280; Horace, Satires, I.5; Germanicus’s travels in Tacitus, Annals, II.50; Casson on Cicero and Pliny, 1994, 149–53. C may well have docked at Ostia, which Bagnall and Thompson think more likely; Casson preferred Puzzuoli, as there were at the time no docking facilities of any size at Ostia (Casson, 1991, 199). It is not impossible that C embarked or disembarked at Brundisium as would Horace (heading west) and as had Cicero, heading east. From there she would have made the long trek overland through hill country and along the Appian Way. That trip could be done in about seven days (Casson, 1994, 194–6).
41. The risks at sea: Achilles Tatius gives a fine (fictional) account of shipwreck, III.2–6. He washes up at Pelusium.
42. arrival in Rome: Eusebius, 183.3.
43. “like a camel”: Dio, XLIII. 23.2–3. See also Strabo, 16.4.16.
44. The advice regarding royal travel: Letter of Aristeas, 249, cited in T. A. Sinclair, A History of Greek Political Thought (London: Routledge, 1959), 292.
45. “two chariots”: An appalled Cicero to Atticus, 115 (V.1), February 20, 50, translation from Boissier, 1970, 120. Similarly Foertmeyer, 224; Plutarch, “Crassus,” XXI.6; Preaux, 1939, 561.
46. On the Rome of foul air and poor hygiene, and on the idyllic Janiculum: Leon Homo, Rome imperiale et l’urbanisme dans l’antiquite (Paris: Albin Michel, 1951); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, III.xlv; Horace, Odes, II.29, 9–12; Martial, Epigrams, IV.64. Otherwise Cicero remains the best guide to Rome. The stray hand and ox: Suetonius, “Vespasian,” 5.4.
47. “Only the priests”: JC, LIX (ML translation).
48. “the only intelligent calendar”: O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), 71. For the Egyptian calendar (twelve months of thirty days, to which were added five days, and at the end of every fourth year six days), see Strabo, 17.1.29.
49. “to make them more desirous”: DJ, XLII.
50. “Easier for two philosophers”: Seneca, Apocolocyntosis, 2.2.
51. On the Roman triumph: Appian, Dio, Florus, Suetonius, and Mary Beard’s superb The Roman Triumph (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).
52. “the most fortunate captive”: JC, LV.2.
53. “a woman and once considered”: Dio, XLIII.xix.3–4.
54. infants or chickens: On the political and legal rights of women, Mary Beard and Michael Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic (London: Duckworth, 2005), 41.
55. hundred swordsmen: Cicero to Quintus, 12.2 (II.9), June 56.
56. “Even if his slaves” to “carvers”: Juvenal, Satire 9, 100ff.
57. “absolutely devoted” to “bloom of youth”: Dio, XLIII.xliii.4.
58. “among the friends and allies”: Dio, XLIII.xxviii.1. Gruen, 1984, 259, challenges the date of the statue’s installation. He moves it forward by some fifteen years, to make it a tribute not to C but to her defeat.
59. “No one dances”: Cicero, Pro Murena, 13; translation from Otto Kiefer, Sexual Life in Ancient Rome (New York: Dorset Press, 1993), 166. As Athenaeus points out by contrast, “No other people are recorded as being more musical than the Alexandrians” (IV.176e).
60. “You have to be a very rich”: Juvenal, Satire 3, 236. The flying pots are also his, Ibid., 270ff.
