Cleopatra: A Life

31. a slave to his love: See for example Florus, II.XXI.11.

32. “an ill name for familiarity”: MA, VI.5 (ML translation).

33. On the Temple of Artemis: NH, XXXVI.xxi; Livy, History of Rome, I.XLIV. Pliny provides a fine description of the temple construction. So difficult has it been to settle the main lintel into place that the architect contemplated suicide.

34. “Now Cleopatra had put to death”: JW, I.360 (Whiston translation). Similarly JA, XV.89. Josephus continues: Having killed off her own family, one after another, until no relative remained, C “was now thirsting for the blood of foreigners.”

35. Arsinoe had conspired: See P. J. Bicknell, “Caesar, Antony, Cleopatra and Cyprus,” Latomus 36 (1977): 325–42, for an elaborate case that Arsinoe had been rehabilitated and set up as a secondary Ptolemaic ruler, a foil to her sister, after the triumph of 46. Green, 1990, subscribes to the theory as well, 669. Strabo indeed has A giving Cyprus to both sisters, 14.6.6.

36. “So straight away”: Appian, V.9.

37. “distributing rewards”: AW, 65.

38. A’s neglect of affairs: Appian, V.10.

39. “He suffered her to hurry”: MA, XXVIII.

40. “not ruled by himself” to “ordinary person”: Appian, V.11.

41. “the sports and diversions”: MA, XXVII.1.

42. “The members”: Ibid., XXVIII (ML translation).

43. The kitchen chaos: Athenaeus, X.420e.

44. “The guests are not many”: Plutarch, MA, XXVIII (ML translation).

45. “It is no easy matter to create harmony”: Cicero to Quintus, 1.36 (I.1), c. 60–59.

46. On C as horsewoman: Pomeroy, 1990, 20–3; interview with Branko van Oppen, February 27, 2010. Arsinoe III helped to rally the Ptolemaic army, presumably on horseback, Polybius, V. 79–80.

47. “some fresh delight” to “serving maiden”: MA, XXIX. There is an alternate explanation for the masquerade. Herod was known to stroll disguised at night among his people so as to gauge the political climate. He was not alone in the practice.

48. “You are forever being frivolous”: Dio Chrysostom, “The 32nd Discourse,” I.

49. “coarse wit” to “comic mask with them”: MA, XXIX.

50. “to whom his sojourn”: Appian, V.I.11.

51. “was often disarmed by Cleopatra”: Plutarch, “Demetrius and Antony,” III.3.

52. “Leave the fishing rod” to “kingdoms, and continents”: MA, XXIX (translation modified).

53. “For such a rebuke”: Flatterer, 61b. Shakespeare packaged the same formula differently: “Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.”

54. “Although I have made enquiries”: Appian, V.21.

55. “so under the sway”: Dio, XLVIII.xxvii.1.

56. “for teaching Antony”: MA, X.

57. “that he would rather die”: Appian, V.55.

58. “that if Italy remained at peace”: Ibid., V.19.

59. “because she was angry with Antony”: Ibid., V.59.

60. “his passion for Cleopatra”: Dio, XLVIII.xxviii.3.

61. “at least an infinitely loyal”: Balsdon, 1962, 49.

62. “now rid of an interfering woman”: Appian, V.59. Similarly, Dio, XLVIII.xxviii.3–4.

63. “a great and mighty shout” to “necks as they dived”: Dio, XLVIII.xxxvii.2.

64. “their ships were moored”: Appian, V.73.

65. “A wonder of a woman” to “complete salvation”: MA, XXXI. Tacitus suggests that A’s marriage to Octavia was a trap from the start, Annals, I.X.

66. an object of gossip: Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 192.

67. “immediately praised to the skies” to “savior gods”: Appian, V.74.

68. A’s rescue of Octavian: Appian, V.67–8.

69. “rash boy”: Ibid., III.43 (Loeb translation).

70. “behaved with excessive sportsmanship”: DA, LXXI. Translation from Everitt, 2003, 265.

71. “guardian genius” to “that young man”: MA, XXXIII. Similarly Flatterer, “The Fortune of the Romans,” 319–320. C is absent from the Moralia account, in which Plutarch makes the soothsayer A’s friend, “often wont to speak freely to him and admonish him.” Surveying A’s greater age, experience, renown, and army, the amateur astrologer offers A the same advice concerning Octavian: “Avoid him!” To Neal, 1975, the warning was a veiled one against breaking openly with Octavian. C preferred that A make his name in the east, which would obviate the need for a showdown, 102.

72. “lay inside with his friends” to “the ceilings”: Athenaeus, IV.148c.

73. “Nearly everything” to “against the Parthians”: Dio, XLVIII.liv.7.

74. “lulled to rest”: MA, XXXVI. Writing a morality tale, Plutarch had set out to demonstrate “that great natures exhibit great vices also, as well as great virtues,” “Demetrius,” I.

75. On the coins: Walker and Higgs, 2001, 237; Jonathan Williams, “Imperial Style and the Coins of Cleopatra and Mark Antony,” in Walker and Ashton, 2003, 88; Agnes Baldwin Brett, “A New Cleopatra Tetradrachm of Ascalon,” American Journal of Archaeology 41, no. 3 (1937): 461. As Theodore V. Buttrey notes (“Thea Neotera: On Coins of Antony and Cleopatra,” American Numismatic Society Notes 6, [1954], 95–109), Ptolemaic couples never appear pictured on opposite faces of a coin.

CHAPTER VII: AN OBJECT OF GOSSIP FOR THE WHOLE WORLD

For the best guide to the baroque composition of the East and its colorful parade of dynasts, see Sullivan, 1990. On A’s eastern politics, Albert Zwaenepoel, “La politique orientale d’Antoine,” Etudes Classiques 18:1 (1950): 3–15; Lucile Craven, Antony’s Oriental Policy Until the Defeat of the Parthian Expedition (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1920); Neal, 1975; A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Foreign Policy in the East (London: Duckworth, 1984). As in the previous chapter, the portrait of Herod is drawn from Josephus’s colorful account. On Antioch, A. F. Norman, ed., Antioch as a Centre of Hellenic Culture as Observed by Libanius (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000); Libanius, and Cicero. On C’s titles and heritage, “Cleopatre VII Philopatris,” Chronique d’Egypte 74 (1999): 118–23. For the Donations, K. W. Meiklejohn, “Alexander Helios and Caesarion,” Journal of Roman Studies 24 (1934): 191–5.

On Octavian, G. W. Bowersock, Augustus and the Greek World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965); Everitt, 2006; Kurt A. Raaflaub and Mark Toher, eds., Between Republic and Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

1. “The greatest achievement”: Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, II.xlv. Translation from David Markson, The Last Novel (Berkeley: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2007), 107. Markson notes that Thucydides does women the great favor of mentioning none.

2. “slinked into”: Strabo, 16.2.46.

3. The inexhaustible Herod: JW, I.238–40, 429–30; the miraculous escape: JW, I.282–4, 331–4, 340–1, among others; astonishing talent: JA, XV.5; Senate confirmation: JW, I.282–85; AJ, XIV.386–7.

4. “noble families were extended”: MA, XXXVI.

5. “into his predecessor’s bedroom slippers”: Everitt, 2006, 148.

6. “realms and islands”: Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, V.2.111–13.

7. “The greatness of the Roman empire”: MA, XXXVI.

8. “an army more conspicuous”: Ibid., XLIII.

9. “made all Asia quiver”: Ibid., XXXVII.

10. “the nobility of his family”: Ibid., XLIII (ML translation).

11. no one in the Mediterranean world: Interview with Casson, June 11, 2009. Strabo writes the gift down to