Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (34 page)

The cultural historian Mary Hamer speaks for many when she tells of her confusion when first faced with a Cleopatra who was not Shakespeare’s: ‘I learned to stop using Shakespeare as a norm and to ask what Cleopatra had meant before he wrote.’
¹³
It is more disconcerting to realise that several ‘academic’ publications have been unable to cast aside Shakespeare’s vision and have been seduced into quoting Shakespeare as if he were a primary historical source.
¹⁴
To understand that this has happened due to a shortage of contemporary descriptions of Cleopatra is only partially to excuse the offence.

That modern representations of Cleopatra distort history to reflect the prejudices and assumptions of their creators perhaps goes without saying. Some of these distortions are obvious and naïve. Medieval and Renaissance artists, for example, were happy to abandon any attempt at realism and depict Cleopatra as a pale blonde because the pale blonde was their ideal of beauty. Others are more subtle or manipulative. Nineteenth-century artists gave Cleopatra a vaguely Egyptian-oriental appearance, and used her as a metaphor for the penetration and ownership of the (feminine) East by the (masculine) West. In many instances their aggressively seductive Cleopatras appear to invite their own destruction. Twentieth-century film-makers spoke grandly of historical accuracy and serious drama, yet produced a succession of Cleopatras designed to appeal to the audiences whose repeated visits to the cinema would make their films a success.
¹⁵
Theda Bara’s 1917 vampish Cleopatra, much admired in its day, quickly became laughable. The cinematic Cleopatra had to evolve into a woman who would
appeal both to the men who had enjoyed Miss Bara’s barely-there costumes and to the newly educated, newly enfranchised working women who were now able to pay for their own cinema tickets. Claudette Colbert made a smart, amusing and very modern Cleopatra for the pre-war audience. Elizabeth Taylor, a sultry temptress on screen and off, brought glamour to an austere world and became for many the ‘real’ Cleopatra. Doubtless, soon the studios will present us with an updated Cleopatra – an action woman for the twenty-first century. Underlying all these films, hidden beneath the glitter and the wigs, lie issues of censorship and political correctness and disturbing messages about colonialism, racism, motherhood and the rights of women to control their own sexuality. Just how much sex, violence and plain, dull history can be shown in a film that has to earn its way at the box office? How much can history be rewritten to lend more immediate dramatic impact to the story? Is there anything wrong with distorting characters and changing locations in the name of art and entertainment? Those, and there are many, who learn their ancient history solely from
Troy
(Petersen, 2004),
Alexander
(Stone, 2004) and
Cleopatra
(Mankiewicz, 1963) are not necessarily aware of these issues but are heavily affected by them.

Joseph Mankiewicz based his
Cleopatra
on Carlo Maria Franzero’s
The Life and Times of Cleopatra
, a book in which the author relied upon his ‘Latin instinct’ rather than simple scholarship to interpret Cleopatra’s life. A brief excerpt is enough to give the flavour of the book:

Was she, as a young girl, taken to the Temple of Thebes and deflowered, in the old custom, on the altar of Amon-Re. Did she, in the corrupt atmosphere of the Palace and of her city, allow herself a few amorous adventures? And most important of all – was she a sensual woman, as Josephus calls her, ‘a slave to her senses’? The answer is perhaps simple and eternal: there is no beautiful and intelligent and gifted woman who is not also a woman of the senses.
¹⁶

A better choice would have been the
Life and Times of Cleopatra Queen of Egypt
by Arthur Weigall. Weigall’s 1914 book, written for a popular audience, was the first to attempt to break away from Shakespeare and set the queen in her own context. Cleopatra was to be viewed as an Egyptian politician rather than a Roman mistress. Indeed, the introduction to the book specifically warns against seeing Cleopatra through purely Roman, or purely modern eyes, and Weigall advises his readers, as they pace the courts of the Ptolemies, against succumbing to ‘the anachronism of criticising our surroundings from the standard of twenty centuries after Christ’.
¹⁷
He takes great pains to explain and excuse Cleopatra’s unconventional eastern lifestyle to his conventional middle-class western readers, who, he assumes, will be shocked by the queen’s antics, yet he cannot resist dedicating his first chapter to a consideration of the queen’s character and looks. As a quotation from Weigall started this book, it is perhaps appropriate that he should have the last word:

…Having shut out from his memory the stinging words of Propertius, and the fierce lines of Horace … the reader will be in a position to judge whether the interpretation of Cleopatra’s character and actions, which I have laid before him, is to be considered as unduly lenient, and whether I have made unfair use of the merciful prerogative of the historian, in [sic] behalf of an often lonely and sorely tried woman, who fought all her life for the fulfilment of a patriotic and splendid ambition, and who died in a manner ‘befitting the descendant of so many kings’
¹⁸

Who Was Who

The Ptolemaic Royal Family:
from Alexander the Great to Ptolemy of Mauretania

It is thought that the genes we inherit may have more to do with the make-up of our personalities than our environment … We have some knowledge of Cleopatra’s forebears – not at all a promising start!

Julia Samson,
Nefertiti and Cleopatra
¹

B
y 69, the year of Cleopatra’s birth, her increasingly dysfunctional family had ruled Egypt for two and a half centuries. They had created and lost an empire whose influence was felt throughout the Mediterranean world and far beyond, ruling from a purpose-built city widely acknowledged as the world’s most advanced seat of learning and culture. And, in marked contrast to Egypt’s native kings, whose private affairs went unrecorded, they had lived recorded lives of extraordinary complexity and violence. Reviewing the personal histories of Cleopatra’s immediate forebears, a confusing mixture of Ptolemies, Arsinoës, Berenices and Cleopatras, it becomes increasingly difficult to regard the Ptolemies as real people with anything approaching real feelings. To be born a Ptolemy was to be born into a family
where survival of the ruthless was the cardinal rule and self-preservation a matter of overwhelming importance. Those Ptolemies who did survive had strong, larger-than-life personalities and, their deeds suggest, extremely thick skins. But repeated tales of murder, adultery, rebellion, lynchings, incest and uncontrollable ambition are the stuff of third-rate crime fiction and television soap operas; they fascinate and repel in equal measure, but do not necessarily inspire the sympathy that they should. Reading of so many untimely and unnatural deaths in so short a period somehow blunts our appreciation of the reality – one is tempted to say the horror – of Ptolemaic family life. Yet read these stories we must, albeit in abbreviated form, as they form the immediate background to Cleopatra’s own story. And, as the Ptolemies owed their throne to Alexander the Great, it seems appropriate to start with his brief reign as king of Egypt.
²

Alexander III the Great, King of Egypt 332–323

Son of Philip II of Macedon and Olympias of Epiros

In the winter of 332/1 Egypt surrendered to Alexander the Great without a struggle, ending almost two centuries of intermittent Persian rule. History tells us that the Egyptians welcomed Alexander as a liberator and cheered him on his way to Memphis. This history, written by Greeks and therefore heavily pro-Greek, is hardly unbiased, but the number of recorded rebellions and harsh reprisals during the Persian periods does suggest that the Egyptians, who hated any form of foreign domination, had a particular dislike of the Persians.

Alexander had ambitious plans for his new land. Already Alexandria had been established, and there had been some bureaucratic reorganisation. But there was no need to hurry. Time was on Alexander’s side, and there were other battles yet to fight, other Persian territories to conquer. In May 331 Alexander marched northwards from Memphis to confront his old enemy, Darius III. He died in Babylon on 10 June
323, his unexpected death variously attributed to fever, to excessive drinking and to poison.

Philip III Arrhidaeos, King of Egypt 323–316

Son of Philip II of Macedon

With Alexander dead, his half-brother assumed nominal control of an empire stretching from Macedon to India, becoming uncrowned king of Egypt by default. Philip Arrhidaeos was the son of a Thessalian woman of humble birth; unkind rumour held that she was little better than a dancing girl, and everyone agreed that her son was, at best, half-witted. Half-witted or not, Arrhidaeos had managed to survive the violent family struggle which followed the assassination of his father, Philip, and which saw the elimination of all other potential rivals to the throne. Supported by his forceful wife, Adea, Arrhidaeos ruled his empire for just six years, his reign ending with an invasion of Macedon led by the dowager Olympias of Epiros. With Olympias triumphant, Arrhidaeos was executed and Adea, offered the choice of a dagger, a noose or poison, hanged herself.

Alexander IV, King of Egypt 316–304

Posthumous son of Alexander III the Great and Roxanne

Alexander the Great was just thirty-three years old and childless when he died. However, his Sogdian (Iranian) wife, Roxanne, was pregnant with a child who, if a boy, was destined to share the throne with Alexander’s half-brother, Philip Arrhidaeos. The child was indeed a boy, and at Arrhidaeos’s untimely death the throne passed unchallenged to his nephew, Alexander IV. The younger Alexander would never see Egypt; both he and Roxanne were murdered in Macedon in 310. The remains of a ‘young prince’, discovered in a silver funerary urn in the Macedonian royal cemetery of Vergina, may well be those of
Alexander IV. For the last six years of Alexander’s ‘reign’, as recorded in Egypt’s official lists, Ptolemy son of Lagos acted as uncrowned king.

Ptolemy I Soter I (Saviour), King of Egypt 304–284

Son of Lagos of Eordaea and Arsinoë

Ptolemy I was born in Macedon in 367. His father, Lagos, was a man of respectable but unexceptional Macedonian descent who had made a good marriage; his mother, Arsinoë, was second cousin to Philip II. Like many of Egypt’s commoner-born kings, Ptolemy was not overproud of his humble origins. Soon after the death of Alexander III he would spread the rumour that his mother had been one of Philip’s many mistresses and that he himself was half-brother to the late, great king.

As a Macedonian general, Ptolemy witnessed Alexander defeat Darius III of Persia at the battle of Issus in November 333. A year later he was present when Alexander took Egypt, and he was almost certainly present when Alexander marched to the Siwa Oasis. Other military successes followed. In 329 he captured Bessus, satrap of Bactria and assassin of Darius III, and in 327 he campaigned in India, commanding a third of Alexander’s army.

In 323 Ptolemy took control of Egypt, governing first on behalf of Philip Arrhidaeos, then on behalf of Alexander IV. It was Ptolemy who, in Philip’s name, supervised the temple improvements at Karnak and Hermopolis Magna, and in Alexander’s name built at the Elephantine temple of Khnum. He extended Egypt’s territories to create a buffer zone around his land and masterminded the kidnapping and subsequent display of Alexander’s body in Alexandria. In 304 the situation was regularised. In a coronation ceremony held at Alexandria, General Ptolemy was transformed into King Ptolemy I Soter I. As Ptolemy’s Greek profile – hook-nosed, sharp-chinned, sunken-eyed
and topped with a mop of unruly curls – started to appear on her coins, Egypt became an independent realm with Alexandria as her capital.

Alexander’s enormous empire was by now irretrievably fragmented and his own dynastic line had ended. The Wars of the Successors (321–285) left the Mediterranean world dominated by three rival Macedonian-based kingdoms: the Antigonid empire of Macedon and mainland Greece, ruled by the descendants of Antigonos ‘the One-Eyed’; the Seleucid empire of Syria and Mesopotamia, ruled by Seleucos I; and the Lagid or Ptolemaic empire of Egypt and Libya, whose territories included Cyprus and much of Palestine (including much of the modern states of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and southern Syria; a region known as Coele-Syria, or ‘Hollow Syria’). There would be frequent small-scale skirmishes – borders would expand and contract, alliances form and break, loyalties wax and wane – but the situation would remain more or less constant until a new superpower emerged to challenge the status quo.