Cleopatra: A Life

2. “For talk is evil”: Hesiod, Works and Days, 760. See also Achilles Tatius, VI.10: Virgil’s Aeneid, IV.240–265: “Slander is sharper than any sword, stronger than fire, more persuasive than a siren; rumor is more slippery than water, runs faster than the wind, flies quicker than any winged bird.”

3. “the abundance that flowed”: Theocritus, Idyll 17 (translation modified).

4. “galleries, libraries”: Philo, “On the Embassy to Gaius,” 151. The translation is from Forster, 2004, 133.

5. “if ever that kingdom”: Diodorus, XXXIII.28b.3.

6. the kind of man you could rely on: JA, XVII.99–100. Also on ND, Plutarch, Table Talk, VIII.iv.723.

7. sea nymph imitation: VP, II.lxxxiii.

8. “All of this I bestow”: MA, XXVIII.

9. The basalt inscription: See P. M. Fraser, “Mark Antony in Alexandria—A Note,” Journal of Roman Studies 47:1–2 (1957): 71–3.

10. The Roman bodyguards: Dio, L.v.1.

11. The tax exemptions: See Peter van Minnen, “An Official Act of Cleopatra,” Ancient Society 30 (2000): 29–34; van Minnen, “Further Thoughts on the Cleopatra Papyrus,” Archiv fur Papyrusforschung 47 (2001): 74–80; van Minnen, “A Royal Ordinance of Cleopatra and Related Documents,” Walker and Ashton, 2003, 35–42.

12. “only made them come back”: Ibid., 79.

13. “joined him in the management”: Dio, L.v.1–2.

14. The young Canidius: Plutarch, “Brutus,” III.

15. “disturb the auspicious respect”: Appian, V.144. For Sextus Pompey generally, Appian, V.133–45.

16. A’s numerous misdeeds: Dio, XLVI.x.3.

17. “good fellowship”: MA, XXXII.

18. “a veritable weakling”: Dio, L.xviii.3.

19. According to Suetonius: DA, LXIX. Sejanus was much later said to do the same, “for by maintaining illicit relations with the wives of nearly all the distinguished men, he learned what their husbands were saying and doing,” Dio, LVIII.3.

20. “invidious wealth” to “solid glory”: Cicero, “Philippic,” V, xviii.50.

21. “screwing the queen” to “get it up?”: DA, LXIX. I have borrowed Andrew Meadows’s earthy translation, Walker and Higgs, 2001, 29.

22. “amorous adventures”: Dio, LI.viii.2.

23. On Ephesus: Hopkins, A World Full of Gods (New York: Plume, 2001), 200–205. Strabo, 14.1.24; NH, V.xxxi.15. Craven, 1920, 22, points out that Ephesus was the seat of the Roman proconsul in Asia; the public records and treasury were there. It was a logical business address for A.

24. “By certain documents”: Dio, L.ii.6.

25. “to sail to Egypt”: MA, LVI.

26. Acquiring an empire with money: Plutarch, “Aemilius Paulus,” XII.9.

27. “was inferior in intelligence” to “large affairs”: MA, LVI.

28. “a rabble of Asiatic performers”: MA, XXIV.

29. “And while almost all the world” to “entertainments and gifts”: Ibid., LVI.

30. A as Dionysus: On the power of the mythologies, see H. Jeanmarie, “La politique religieuse d’Antoine et de Cleopatre,” Revue Archeologique 19 (1924): 241–61.

31. Athenian statue-erecting: Nepos, XXV Atticus, III.2.

32. The Ptolemaic statuary: Pausanias, 1.8.9; Habicht, 1992, 85. NH, 34, 37.

33. “by many splendid gifts”: MA, LVII.

34. The Pergamum library: See Casson, 2001, 48–50. Casson has suggested this was a shrewd way of shrugging off a financial burden. There was no real need for the Pergamum library, in Roman hands already for a century.

35. “Many times, while he was seated”: MA, LVIII.

36. “wanton bits”: Plutarch, “Brutus,” V; “Cato the Younger,” XXIV.

37. “sprang up from his tribunal”: MA, LVIII.

38. kissing his wife in public: Plutarch, “Marcus Cato,” XVII.7.

39. “in compliance with some agreement”: MA, LVIII.

40. what eunuchs did: Dio, L.xxv.2; Horace, Epodes, IX.

41. The divorce: Neal is especially lucid on the subject, 1975, 110.

42. “which had hitherto veiled”: Plutarch, “Pompey,” LIII.

43. “required a sober head” to “scurrilities”: MA, LIX. For Geminius’s heartache, see Plutarch, “Pompey,” II.

44. “Treachery,” it would be said: VP, II.lxxxiii. For the desertions see also Dio, L.iii.2–3; for Dellius’s weakness of heart, Appian, V.50, 55, 144.

45. A’s will: Either Dio has his chronology wrong or we all do: He seems to imply (L.xx.7) that Octavian hunted down the will at least a year earlier, before the Donations, which would entirely change the complexion of that ceremony.

46. “should be borne in state”: MA, LVIII.

47. “honeyballs of phrases”: Petronius, Satyricon, I.

48. the Orient and sex: On the “almost uniform association between the Orient and sex,” its “sexual promise (and threat), untiring sensuality, unlimited desire, deep generative energies,” see Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1994), 188; and Flatterer, 56e. For Flaubert in the mid- nineteenth century, the courtesan of old was “the embracing, strangling viper of the Nile.”

49. “In his hand was a golden scepter”: Florus, II.xxi.11.

50. “bewitched by that accursed woman”: Dio, L.xxvi.5.

51. “Then as his love for Cleopatra”: VP, II.lxxxii.

52. “melts and unmans”: MA, LIII (ML translation).

53. “a slave to his love”: Florus, II.xxi.11; “he gave not a thought”: Dio, XLVIII.xxiii.2; “he was not even a master of himself”: MA, LX. Plutarch on Omphale, “Demetrius and Antony,” III.3.

54. “The Egyptian woman demanded”: Florus, II.xxi.11.

55. “For she so charmed”: Dio, L.v.4.

56. Reports circulated: Strabo accuses A of pillaging the best art he could find for C, from the temples of Samos and elsewhere, 13.1.30, 14.1.14; also NH, XXXIV 8.19.58.

57. “longed with womanly desire”: Eutropius, VII.7.

58. “that the greatest wars”: Athenaeus, XIII.560b. He adds that Egyptian women were known to be “far more amorous than other women.”

59. “I don’t much like”: Plautus, “The Pot of Gold,” 167–9. The translation is from Skinner, 2005, 201.

60. “Would a woman”: Lucan, X.67.

61. A just declaration of war: Livy, 1.32.5–14. On the traditional procedure, Meyer Reinhold, “The Declaration of War against Cleopatra,” Classical Journal 77, no. 2 (1981–2): 97–103; also R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 127–8; and Thomas Wiedemann, “The Fetiales: A Reconsideration,” Classical Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1986): 478–90. It is Wiedemann who speculates that Octavian invented the rite.

62. “had voluntarily taken up”: Dio, L.vi.1.

63. “What in the world does he mean”: Ibid., L.xxi.3.

64. “is at war with me”: Ibid., L.xxi.1.

65. “For I adjudged” to “passed against her”: Ibid., L.xxvi.3.

66. “as a whole far surpassed”: Ibid., L.vi.2–3.

67. “he sought a reputation”: Florus, I.xlv.19.

68. “spying upon and annoying”: Dio, L.xi.1.

69. The Acropolis statues: Ibid., L.viii.1–5, L.xv.3.