Cleopatra: A Life

83. “The gall of the man!”: Cicero to Atticus, 373 (XIV.18), May 9, 44.

84. “the systematic organization”: Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (New York: Library of America, 1990), 13. Adams was speaking of Massachusetts politics.

85. A’s carousing wake: Suetonius, “On Rhetoricians,” V (29).

86. “He was a spendthrift”: VP on Curio the Younger, II.xlviii.4. Translation is from Cicero to Atticus, 14 (I.14), February 13, 61, editor’s note.

87. “All over the city” to “their legacy?”: Appian, III.28.

88. “to set them at odds”: Dio, XLVI.xli.

89. provided that Octavian did: Ibid., 29.

90. wildly shouting oath after oath: Appian, III.39; Seneca on Octavian’s temper, De Clementia, I.xi.1.

91. “On the other hand”: Cicero to Atticus, 425.1 (XVI.14), c. November 44.

92. “The man who crushes”: Cicero to Plancus, 393 (X.19), c. May 43.

93. “In truth, we ought not to think”: Cicero, “Philippic,” VI.III.7.

94. “the fume of debauch”: Cicero, “Philippic,” II.xii.30; “the belching,” Cicero to Cornificius, 373 (XII.25), c. March 20, 43; “spewing,” Cicero to Cassius, 344 (XII.2), c. late September 44.

95. “It is easy to inveigh”: Cicero, “Pro Caelio,” xii.29.

96. “And so, if by chance”: Ibid., xvii.42.

97. “an air of high”: Cicero to Quintus, 21.5 (III.1), September 54.

98. “would prefer to answer”: Cicero, “Philippic,” VI.ii.4. Why would A do so? Because, volunteered Cicero, “he so enjoys lecheries at home and murders in the forum.”

99. “to exchange enmity”: Appian, IV.2.

100. “Lepidus was actuated”: Florus, II.xvi.6.

101. “their staunchest friends”: Dio, XLVII.vi.1.

102. “Extra names”: Appian, IV.5.

103. “The whole city filled”: Dio, XLVII.iii.1. The heads were delivered for fixed rewards, the rest of the body left to rot in the street. You could tell that the wrong person had been killed if the corpse retained its head. Appian, IV.15. On the ingenious wife, Appian, IV.40.

104. “his face wasted with anxiety”: Plutarch, “Cicero,” XLVII.3.

105. On Cicero’s death: Appian, IV.19–20; Plutarch, “Cicero,” XLVII; Dio, XLVII.viii; Eusebius, Chronicles, 184–3; Livy, “Fragments,” CXX.

106. On Brutus’s death: Florus, II.xvii.14–15; VP, II.lxx; Appian, IV.135; DA, XIII; Plutarch, “Brutus,” LII– LIII.

107. “but its results”: Dio, XLIV.ii.1.

108. a reputation for invincibility: Appian, V.58.

CHAPTER VI: WE MUST OFTEN SHIFT THE SAILS WHEN WE WISH TO ARRIVE IN PORT

On A, his women, and his marriages, Eleanor Goltz Huzar’s very fine “Mark Antony: Marriages vs. Careers,” Classical Journal 81, no. 2 (1985/6): 97–111; the indispensable Pelling, 1999, as well as Pelling, Plutarch and History: Eighteen Studies (London: Duckworth, 2002). For C’s arrival in Tarsus, Plutarch, with a little help from Athenaeus. Appian completes the picture, but without detail; Strabo and Xenophon (Anabasis, I.2.23) describe the city. Francoise Perpillou-Thomas gives a vivid idea of Egyptian entertaining, “Fetes d’Egypte ptolemaique et romaine d’apres la documentation papyrologique grecque,” Studia Hellenistica 31 (1993). For this and the subsequent chapter, the portrait of Herod is drawn primarily from Josephus, JA and JW. For modern biographies: Michael Grant, Herod the Great (London: Weidenfeld, 1971); A. H. M. Jones’s excellent The Herods of Judaea (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967); Samuel Sandmel, Herod: Profile of a Tyrant (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1967).

1. “We must often shift”: Cicero to Lentulus Spinther, 20 (I.9), December 54. The (loose) translation is from Boissier, 1970, 223. “Unchanging consistency of standpoint has never been considered a virtue in great statesmen,” explained Cicero, justifying his change of horses.

2. “Yet what difference”: Aristotle, The Politics, II.vi.4–7.

3. seemed uncannily: Appian, IV.129.

4. “had known her” to “intellectual power”: MA, XXV.

5. “puts the height of beauty”: Pelling, 1999, 186.

6. “the greatest confidence” to “as if in mockery”: MA, XXV.4–XXVI.1. The latter from the ML translation, where the Loeb has “she so despised and laughed the man to scorn as to sail up the river.” The point is that C was neither cowed nor impressed by A. There is a less strategic explanation for the delay as well: The high priest of Egypt died on July 14. C may have been detained by clerical responsibilities.

7. The trip across the Mediterranean: Again reconstructed with the assistance of Lionel Casson, interview, January 26, 2009. As Casson put it: “The only possible conclusion is that Cleopatra dolled up a local river boat,” letter to author, March 22, 2009.

8. “She herself reclined” to “good of Asia”: MA, XXVI (translation modified).

9. “Affecting the same pursuits”: Flatterer, 51e (translation modified). France Le Corsu argues, not altogether convincingly, that C posed in Tarsus as Isis rather than Aphrodite, “Cleopatre-Isis,” in Bulletin de la Societe Francaise d‘Egyptologie, Paris, 1978, no.82, 22–33.

10. “At once, then, wishing”: MA, XXVI.4.

11. “a spectacle that has seldom”: Ibid., XXVI.4 (ML translation).

12. On the jewelry: Thompson, 1973, 29; O. E. Kaper to author, March 6, 2010.

13. “that all these objects”: Athenaeus, IV.147f.

14. “litters and bearers”: Athenaeus, 148b.

15. “beggared description”: Plutarch, MA, XXVI.4.

16. “Kings would come”: Ibid., XXIV.

17. “irresistible charm” to “her discourse”: Ibid., XXVII.

18. Proudly she catalogued: “She did not excuse herself so much as present a list of what she had done for him and Octavian,” Appian, V.8.

19. “was ambitious to surpass” to “rusticity”: MA, XXVII.

20. “Perceiving that his raillery”: Ibid., XXVII (ML translation).

21. “she wished to rule”: Ibid., X.

22. “so that neither the senate”: Dio, XLVIII.iv.1.

23. “no mean city”: Paul the Apostle, in Acts of the Apostles, 21:39.

24. On the mess made of Tarsus: Cassius Parmensis to Cicero, 419 (XII.13), June 13, 43; Appian, IV.1xiv and V.vii. Dio claims the Tarsans were so devoted to CR that they had changed the name of their city to Juliopolis, XLVII.xxvi.2. See also Dio Chrysostom, “The 33rd Discourse.”

25. “bold coquette”: Plutarch, JC, XLIX.2.

26. “The moment he saw her”: Appian, V.8.

27. “succumbed with good will”: Syme, 2002, 214. For Syme’s doubts, 274–5. This too is conjecture, though the opposite assertions have been made with equal certainty, concerning both A and CR. See Anatole France’s C, in On Life and Letters (London: Bodley Head, 1924): “It is certain that Caesar loved Cleopatra” (114) vs. Froude, 1879: “Nor is it likely that, in a situation of so much danger and difficulty as that in which he [CR] found himself, he would have added to his embarrassments by indulging in an intrigue at all” (456). Froude equally doubts C’s visit to CR in Rome. Gruen scrubs that stay of all romance.

28. “and yet it was thought”: Plutarch, “Alexander the Great,” XLVII. He was writing of Alexander’s useful marriage to a Bactrian princess.

29. “brought him to fall in love”: JA, XIV.324 (in William Whiston’s translation [Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1998]).

30. “not only because of his intimacy”: JA, XV.93.