Cleopatra: A Life

70. “Hail Caesar”: Macrobius, Saturnalia, 2.4.29.

71. “desired to be the ruler”: Nepos, “Atticus,” XX.4.

72. A’s status in Egypt: Generally categories were more fluid in Egypt, where Alexander the Great could become a pharaoh, a female ruler could reign as a king, and the divinities tended to run together. Rome preferred clearer distinctions. Not coincidentally, Latin is “much less hospitable than Greek to compound words and neologisms,” Rawson, 2001, 232.

73. One of the greatest twentieth-century classicists: Tarn (and Charlesworth), 1965, 96–7.

74. “we who are Romans”: Dio, L.xxiv.3.

75. “for it is impossible”: Ibid., L.xxvii.4. He could have been quoting Cicero, who railed against a man “debauched, immodest, effeminate, even when in fear never sober,” “Philippic,” III.v.12.

76. “are most wanton”: ND, Fr. 129. On the costly furniture, DA, LXX.

77. in such a contest: Dio, L.xxviii.6.

78. “this pestilence of a woman”: Dio, L.xxiv.5 (Penguin translation).

79. “to conquer and rule” to “equal to a man”: Ibid., L.xxviii.3–4.

80. “What is there dreadful in Caesar’s”: MA, LXII.

81. What does our history mean: Propertius, Elegies, 3.11.47–68. On C as a paltry triumph, Elegies 4.6.64–6. Nourse, 2002, 128, notes that the Greeks perceived “woman as dangerously emotional and destructively petty when allowed access to power.” The magistrate who faces off against Lysistrata in Aristophanes makes a different point. “But men must never, ever be worsted by women!” he cries, handing the baton directly to Lucan and Propertius.

82. infinitely more suitable as a battle site: Dio, L.xii.8.

83. The color of the Actium camp: For the Median vests, Plutarch, “Paulus,” XVIII and XXX–XXXII; the Ptolemaic military cloak comes from Athenaeus, V.196f. According to Sallust, the Armenian army was famed for its gorgeous armor. The decorated arms, Mayor, 2010, 11–12, 206; Walker and Higgs, 2001, 264. Plutarch supplies some description of a military camp in his life of Brutus; Josephus vividly evokes its precision in JW, III.77–102. There is some debate about the Antonia’s purple sails, despite NH, XIX.V, and Casson’s conviction about them, interview of January 26, 2009. William Murray believes they may constitute a literary flourish; interview of March 3, 2010. In any event the ship would have been magnificently carved.

84. “For extravagance in other objects”: Plutarch, “Philopoemen,” IX.3.7.

85. some familiar advice: JW, I.389–90.

86. “May your Lordship”: Cited in Antonia Fraser, The Warrior Queens (New York: Knopf, 1989), 190.

87. A’s officers on C: Suetonius, “Nero,” III; Appian, IV.38.

88. Ahenobarbus and A in Parthia: MA, XL.

89. eating stale bread: Plutarch, “Caius Marius,” VII. He was meant as well to sleep on a simple pallet, which A surely did not do with C in camp.

90. “his ears, it seems”: JW, I.390.

91. “abused by Cleopatra”: MA, LVIII.

92. “The chief task of a good general”: Plutarch, “Agesilaus and Pompey,” IV.

93. A’s distrust of C: NH, 21.12.

94. Dellius’s desertion: VP, II.lxxxiv; Dio, L.xiii.8.

95. blundered grievously: Plutarch, “Pompey,” LXXVI; Appian, II.71. The results were pitiful, JC, XLV.

96. “I have chosen to begin”: Dio, L.xix.5.

97. “For in general”: Ibid., L.iii.2–3.

98. “in miserable logs” to “conquer our enemies or die”: MA, LXIV.

99. “better endowed”: Ibid., XL.

100. “Since, then, they admit”: Dio, L.xxx.3–4.

101. Dio suggests that A fled: Ibid., L.xxxiii.3–4.

102. “he went forward alone” to “eat and sleep together”: MA, LXVII. It is entirely possible that Plutarch invented the sulk, or introduced it prematurely. It may equally well have been retrofitted to the story, along with C’s treachery. See also VP, II.lxxxv.

103. purple and gold spangles: Florus, II.xxi.

104. The floral decorations: Dio, LI.v.4.

105. scale of his victory: Murray, 1989, 142, persuasively argues that before and after Actium Octavian captured some 350 ships, including several equally as large as C’s flagship.

CHAPTER IX: THE WICKEDEST WOMAN IN HISTORY

For C’s final days we are almost exclusively alone with Dio and Plutarch; Eusebius, Eutropius, Horace, Suetonius, and Velleius make ancillary contributions. On Plutarch’s approach to C’s death, Pelling, 2002, is particularly fine, 106ff. See also J. Gwyn Griffiths, “The Death of Cleopatra VII,” Journal of Egyptian Archeology 47 (Dec. 1961): 113–8; Yolande Grise, Le suicide dans la Rome antique (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1982); Saul Jarcho, “The Correspondence of Morgagni and Lancisi on the Death of Cleopatra,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 43, no. 4 (1969): 299–325; W. R. Johnson, “A Quean, A Great Queen? Cleopatra and the Politics of Misrepresentation,” Arion VI, no. 3 (1967): 387–402; Gabriele Marasco, “Cleopatra e gli esperimenti su cavie umane,” Historia 44 (1995): 317–25. Francesco Sbordone, “La morte di Cleopatra nei medici greci,” Rivista Indo-Greco-Italica 14 (1930): 1–20; T. C. Skeat’s ingenious chronology of C’s end, “The Last Days of Cleopatra,” Journal of Roman Studies 13 (1953): 98–100; Tarn, 1931. On the fates of C’s children, Meiklejohn, 1934.

For a nuanced account of the triumph and the fallout from Actium, see Robert Alan Gurval, Actium and Augustus: The Politics and Emotions of Civil War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).

For C’s enduring, evolving image, or how she entered into modern mythology: Mary Hamer, Signs of Cleopatra (London: Routledge, 1993); Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions (New York: Harper & Row, 1990); Richardine G. Woodall, “Not Know Me Yet? The Metamorphosis of Cleopatra” (PhD dissertation, York University, 2004); Wyke, 2002, 195–320.

1. “The wickedest woman”: Cecil B. DeMille, cited in Michelle Lovric, Cleopatra’s Face (London: British Museum Press, 2001), 83.

2. “I was equal to gods”: Euripides, “Hekabe,” in Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides, Anne Carson, tr. (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006), 371–2.

3. Misfortune, went the saying: Euripides, “Heracles,” in Euripides II, 560.

4. She did not care to watch them: Dio, LI.v.5.

5. “a most bold and wonderful” to “war and slavery”: Plutarch, LXIX (ML translation). For an intriguing take on A and C’s post-Actium plans, see Claude Nicolet’s “Ou Antoine et Cleopatre voulaient-ils aller?,” Semitica 39 (1990): 63–6.

6. the monstrosity of a vessel: Athenaeus, V.203e–204d.

7. The Nabateans: Strabo extends their territory from southern Jordan to the head of the Gulf of Eilat, 16.4.21–6.

8. “every bit of his soul”: JA, XV.190. Similarly if less dramatically, JW, I.388–94. Herod’s cozying up to Octavian looked nobler in retrospect: “And when war had been declared by the Romans on all the monarchs in the world, our kings alone, by reason of their fidelity, remained their allies and friends,” explains Josephus, Against Apion, II, 134.

9. “the new Hannibal”: On Sertorius, Plutarch, “Pompey,” XVII–XIX; Plutarch, “Cato the Younger,” LIX; Dio, LI.viii.6.

10. “without having accomplished anything”: Dio, LI.v.6.

11. Octavian’s assassination: Ibid., LI.vi.4.

12. A’s modest hut: Strabo, 17.1.9.

13. “for he himself also had been wronged”: MA, LXIX.