Cleopatra: From History to Myth

Cleopatra ... 'the most illustrious and wise of women', an unexpected endorsement from John, Bishop of Nikiu in Upper Egypt in the 7th century AD. In similar vein, the Arab historian Al-Masúdí, writing three centuries later, describes Cleopatra as 'the last of the wise ones of Greece.' How have we come to see Cleopatra as the embodiment of unfettered passion and intrigue, even in death clasping the asp in ardent embrace?

A special exhibition at the British Museum brings together for the first time a group of Egyptian-style statues that may be recognised as Cleopatra. They form the core of a substantial display of objects gathered from museums across Europe, North Africa and North America to survey Cleopatra's place in history and the transformation of this remarkable individual from a seventeen-year-old princess to a living icon whose capacity to enthral has not dimmed in the two millennia that have passed since her death.

Our image of Cleopatra is ultimately drawn from sources close to her enemy, Julius Caesar's great-nephew and heir Octavian, later Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Living another forty-four years after Cleopatra's suicide in 30 BC, Octavian had plenty of time to re-cast recent history to his liking. Cleopatra was represented in literature of the day as the whore of the Canopus, the foreign queen who had unmanned Antony, and made him un-Roman. In the first century AD, when Antony's descendants Caligula, Claudius and Nero had made the Roman imperial court the setting of licentious and unseemly behaviour, negative images recalling Cleopatra's alleged wantonness appeared in various art forms. The focus throughout was on Cleopatra's sexual appetite as expressed in her relationship with Antony: Cleopatra's earlier liaison with Caesar, who had secured her throne, was necessarily passed over, and their son Ptolemy XV Caesarion was assassinated by Octavian's men.

In contrast, the bishop and the historian were writing from the perspective of Egypt, whose inhabitants had a much higher regard for the last of the Ptolemaic monarchs. Here Cleopatra was long remembered as a great ruler of divine status, and we hear of an image of her being reverently gilded as late as AD 373, when the empire was nominally Christian. We are also informed by Plutarch, at the close of his Life of Antony, that a certain Archibios, a high-ranking confidant of the queen, bribed Octavian with 2,000 talents (sufficient funds to maintain his army for a year) to save the statues of Cleopatra in Egypt. Indeed, the Egyptian-style images of the queen displayed in the exhibition may be some of the survivors of Archibios's brave intervention.

Already dependent on Rome for endorsement of their power, by Cleopatra's day the Ptolemaic monarchs had lost their empire, which had once encompassed much of the lands surrounding the eastern Mediterranean. Cleopatra followed her predecessors in securing her hold on the Egyptian population by winning the allegiance of the priests, completing and initiating temple-building projects and observing, even rescuing, religious festivals. Her liaisons with distinguished foreigners, equally, represented no departure from tradition, but recalled the exploits of her ruthless forebear Cleopatra Thea, who had married three kings of Syria, and who died from drinking poison she had prepared for an understandably suspicious son: far from decrying the excesses of her great-great aunt, Cleopatra styled herself 'Thea Neotera' (the younger goddess) in her honour.

From Caesar, Cleopatra recovered the island of Cyprus, and from Antony, Cyrenaica to the west and coastal Syria and Gaza to the north. Indeed, Antony created a new system of Roman provincial government, in which provinces directly governed by Rome encircled enclaves of loyal monarchs.

Cleopatra's position within this system was boosted in 34 BC by an event known as the Donations of Alexandria, in which Cleopatra's children by Antony were given Armenia and overlordship of the territories to the south-east, overlordship of Asia Minor, and control of Cyrenaica. Cleopatra herself would continue to rule Egypt with Caesarion, the pair respectively titled 'Queen of Kings' and 'King of Kings'. Though still dependent on Rome in the shape of Antony, Cleopatra had recovered much of her ancestral empire. No wonder she was well remembered in Egypt, and her style of government with Antony - a socially if not fiscally relaxed regime much given to feasting and festivity - increased her popularity.

Not so in Rome, where great offence was taken at the grant of authority to Cleopatra and her children, as at Antony's desertion for Cleopatra of his Roman wife Octavia, sister of Octavian. The 'foreign queen' was declared Rome's enemy, and all Italy vowed with Octavian to defeat her.

But not quite all. The two consuls of 31 BC, Sosius and Ahenobarbus, fought on Antony's side, and there is some evidence to suggest greater support for and interest in Cleopatra than we have been led to believe. As Caesar's guest, she stayed in Rome for two years from 46 until his assassination in 44 BC. With her was the infant Caesarion, her co-ruler and younger brother Ptolemy XIV and a substantial retinue, whose high-handedness offended the republican Cicero. Egyptian art and culture, long admired in the Greek cities of the Bay of Naples but regarded with some suspicion at Rome, became the rage. Cleopatra's influence on Rome has been underrated, and the exhibition seeks to redress the balance. A gifted linguist, Cleopatra was the first of the Ptolemies to learn Egyptian. According to Plutarch, her voice was musical and compelling, and the charm of her company could not be forgotten. As for her beauty, an issue addressed in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, the famously hooked nose reflected the force of her character, but modern standards of feminine beauty require altogether less imposing features. Like her contemporaries on the world stage, Cleopatra changed her image to suit her political ambitions. Her coin portraits vary (and not according to her age) from sweet princess through Hellenistic Greek queen to dominant ruler, the last recalling the butch images of her predecessors and, most notably, her father, to whom she was by all accounts close and with whose image Antony's portrait was also conflated. Personally unrecognisable in stylised Egyptian portraits, Cleopatra used the triple uraeus (royal cobra worn at the front of the headdress) as her unique sign.

Renaissance writers picked up the Roman sources, most notably Plutarch, who alone among Roman authors showed some sympathy for the queen and her love for Antony. The tragic story of the passionate lovers' fatal bid for power against the calculating Octavian became the subject of plays, notably Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, written in 1608 but not performed until some fifty years later, and Dryden's All for Love, written in 1674. Cleopatra was portrayed in media as diverse as gentlemen's watches, sumptuously painted porcelain vases and hearth-tiles. Women enjoyed dressing up as the great queen. The moment of her death was the most popular subject, followed by her extravagance, as reported by the Roman encyclopaedist the elder Pliny, who described a competitive banquet in which Cleopatra outdid Antony by tearing off her pearl earring, dropping it in vinegar, and drinking it. Whether prisoner or player, Cleopatra captures us still.

'The whole World knows that Cleopatra was the most magnificent queen that ever lived' (Gautier de Costes de La Caprenade, Cleopatra (1658).

Article by Susan Walker.

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