The Murder of Cleopatra (8 page)

Throughout most of these power struggles, Egypt survived as a great nation managed by the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Rule was passed down through the Ptolemies. However, over time, Egypt become weaker and weaker, until it passed to Cleopatra VII, who would find herself fighting to hang onto power with Rome nipping at her country's heels. Since her father rather sold the nation down the river with his excessive bribery of the Roman power brokers, her county would remain dependent on Rome for its survival, as Cleopatra would herself. But, at the time that Alexander died, Egypt was still very powerful, and Ptolemy I saw his opportunity to be a great and autonomous leader. When the fight to divide the Alexandrian-won empire came to an end, Ptolemy had managed to secure for himself the wealthiest and most easily defended land of the sections parceled out.

When Alexander had conquered Egypt (which consisted only of a two-day marginal resistance at the border in Pelusium), he was pretty much welcomed by the Egyptians as the lesser of two evils considering their hatred of being under the Persian thumb, whose domination had gone on for the better part of two centuries. Alexander was feted as pharaoh at Memphis, where he did sacrifice to the gods and was considered a hero to the people for freeing them from their oppressors. During his short four months in Egypt, Alexander set up his plan for moving the capital to his new choice of location at Alexandria. He also took a trip into the desert to Siwa, where he met with priests and went into the temple to worship Amun (the Egyptian form of Zeus, whom he was to be considered the son of), thereby further fulfilling his religious role as a leader of the Egyptian people. It is said that he had an ulterior motive in wanting to consult with the oracle on personal issues and to foretell of his future. For Alexander,
who already felt a strong sense of being descended from the gods, it wasn't that big a leap to make. Then he left Egypt, putting a couple of governors in charge, and continued on with his efforts at world domination.

The governor of Egyptian ancestry soon resigned, leaving just the Persian Doloaspis to manage the civil part of the country along with a Greek named Kleomenes, who handled Egyptian finances. But then Doloaspis was pushed aside by Kleomenes, and so the latter ended up as the satrap, the lone governor, which meant he ran the country for the next eight years and pretty much succeeded in moving the country back toward a dictatorship in spite of Alexander's efforts to leave a more democratic government in place.

After Ptolemy I was given the go-ahead to move in and take over as satrap in Egypt, he first made a deal with Kleomenes, then swiftly dispatched him, taking total leadership of Egypt for himself in 323 BCE. Meanwhile, one of Alexander's generals ignored the king's last wish to be buried in Siwa in Egypt, where he had talked to the oracle of Amun, and was instead taking the body back to Macedonia. Ptolemy I stole Alexander's body and had it interred in Memphis (not quite what Alexander wanted). Having brought the great Alexander cum almost Egyptian pharaoh with him, and cleverly appeasing the high priesthood of Egypt, Ptolemy I's transition from satrap to pharaoh was accomplished without much objection from the Egyptians. He became the first true Macedonian-Greek pharaoh and, with a country of his own, he settled in at age forty-four and ruled until his death forty years later.

One could say the Egyptians were fortunate at that time in history to have Ptolemy I and his sons, Ptolemy II and Ptolemy III, as their pharaohs. All of these men were educated, forward thinking, and relatively tolerant of Egyptians handling a good portion of the country's day-to-day business. As J. G. Manning points out in his book
The Last Pharaohs
, “the Ptolemies governed their core territory by exercising power not over society, but rather
through
it.”
2
In other words, the Ptolemies hybridized their rule, combining suitable features of both the
Egyptian style of monarchy and priesthoods; allowing for the people to retain their own religion, customs, agricultural systems, and local political structures throughout the country; and having Egyptian law and Egyptian judges rule over their daily lives. The Macedonian-Greeks took over the financial end of things, handling taxation, policing, managing large construction projects, overseeing expansion, and commanding the military, essentially controlling the resources of the country while letting the citizens continue on in their normal fashion.

Ptolemy I put his experience as a Macedonian general to use, but not in the same manner as Alexander. It was not his wish to obtain a huge empire but to secure Egypt and make it a self-sufficient and wealthy kingdom in the eastern Mediterranean. In 313 BCE, he took over Cyprus, then strategic locations in Anatolia and the Aegean and Cyrenaica. He expanded into Palestine and Lower Nubia. In this way, he created a buffer for Egypt on all sides and protected land and sea trade routes. Since Egypt was not involved in fighting wars at home, this allowed for much domestic progress to be made in agriculture and trade.

Vast changes came with the first three Ptolemaic rulers. Ptolemy I developed a coinage that he then required to be the only one used for trade in his region. Road networks throughout Egypt, pursued aggressively by Ptolemy II, allowed for rapid development of trade, especially in gold and ivory. The introduction of wheat made Egypt the breadbasket of the entire region. And, it is said by some early historians, Ptolemy II reopened the canal of the Persian emperor Darius I, which stretched thirty-five miles from present-day Bubastis (a city on the Nile that is thirty-nine miles northeast of Cairo) until it reached the then more southerly Bitter Lakes that led to the Red Sea. This added trade route no doubt greatly helped increase the wealth of Egypt. Sadly, from the fourth Ptolemy on down to Cleopatra's father, Egypt declined due to incompetence and domestic revolts until it had to depend on Roman assistance for survival. The canal that so enhanced the country's economy fell into disrepair, silted over, and could no longer be used by the time of Cleopatra's reign.

However, when Cleopatra was born, in spite of all the country's problems, she grew up in incredible wealth in the most fabulous city in the world. Alexandria was really a separate entity from the rest of Egypt, a polyglot of nationalities that were educated, cultured, and heavily Greek and Jewish. The Ptolemaic pharaoh and the Greek ruling class, the Greek soldiers, and the Greek merchants lived the good life in Alexandria while the native Egyptian peasants tilled the soil like they had done for centuries. Like a gated community, the transplanted Greek-Macedonians lived the high life and used the rest of Egypt as their source of food, wealth, and labor.

I decided to take a break from my examination of the written details of Ptolemaic history and put myself back into the physical world of Alexandria. I left the library and took a long walk over to the hill to where Pompey's Pillar (which Pompey didn't build and really has nothing to do with him) remains intact, an elevated historical site where Alexandria's ancient acropolis used to stand. Entering the site, I stood beside the pillar and looked down over the city. I mentally superimposed the Alexandria of the last century before the Common Era over what I saw in front of me; it must have been an incredible sight. I could only imagine the extraordinary luxury that surrounded Cleopatra, even for royalty. Not only were the palace and its grounds stunning, so was the rest of the city, with amenities far beyond what the world had seen anywhere until that day.

The year was 69 BCE and it was now time for Cleopatra to enter the scene.

Let me quickly address the parentage of Cleopatra VII and put an end to the theory that has been bandied about in the recent decades that Cleopatra was not a full Macedonian-Greek but a half-Greek and half-Nubian-Egyptian, that she was not the daughter of her father, Auletes, and his wife, but of her father and a black handmaiden whose company he enjoyed on some randy Alexandrian evening. Clearly the desire of some to add the brilliant queen to the history of people of color who lived in or descended from Africa is evident. I think this is perfectly understandable; with so much history focused on the achievements of Europeans and Caucasians, it would be inspiring that such an illustrious ruler could be claimed as nonwhite and add a dash of black pride to this time in history. But there is no particular evidence to support the claim that Cleopatra was half-black and not a Mediterranean Greek, in spite of certain arguments that this is what we should believe.

The most often used “evidence” that Cleopatra was at least partially black would be the artistic relief made of her at Dendera, a temple in Upper Egypt. Her profile shows African features, a wider nose than one would see on a Greek, and a generally non-European appearance.
Yet those reliefs were never intended to portray the true appearances of the kings and queens of Egypt but were representations of the history of the ruling pharaohs and their supernatural connection to the gods. The relief of Cleopatra on the Temple of Hathor at Dendera shows her as Isis, which the other Cleopatras, I through VI, also had their “likenesses” sculpted as. No one has questioned the heredity of the other Cleopatras as being any lineage other than Macedonian, so there is no reason to suddenly assign African genes to the last Cleopatra simply because the relief said to represent her displays some African features. Even Plutarch, who wrote of Cleopatra's features, did not attempt to portray her as a member of a black or brown race, nor did he infer that she was not a true Ptolemy and not a fully Macedonian-descended queen. He could have used her mixed race in either a positive or a negative way—to downplay her acceptability to Romans and Greeks or to paint her as an exotic, sexually promiscuous siren, a woman from one of those supposed “races with looser morals.”

For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her.
¹

In fact, we can see from this simple statement of Plutarch's that Cleopatra was quite normal to look at; there was nothing particularly unusual to be noted about her appearance. She was not a great beauty and had no unusual skin color, nothing to make her stand out from other Macedonian women, from the other Ptolemaic queens, and certainly not to men seeking sexually exciting experiences. Cleopatra was just average in appearance to those who met her. It was
how
she enhanced that appearance—her very alluring personality, her exceptional mind and palaver—that raised her above other women of her time, that entranced the men who spent time in her company.

Plutarch goes on to explain what was special about Cleopatra:

For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with
the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased.
²

Some will point out that Plutarch stresses her beauty at another point in his writing of the
Life of Antony
with this quote:

Judging by the proofs which she had had before this of the effect of her beauty upon Caius Caesar and Gnaeus the son of Pompey, she had hopes that she would more easily bring Antony to her feet. For Caesar and Pompey had known her when she was still a girl and inexperienced in affairs, but she was going to visit Antony at the very time when women have the most brilliant beauty and are at the acme of intellectual power.
³

Interestingly, Cassius Dio also speaks of Cleopatra's beauty:

For she was a woman of surpassing beauty, and at that time, when she was in the prime of her youth, she was most striking; she also possessed a most charming voice and a knowledge of how to make herself agreeable to every one. Being brilliant to look upon and to listen to, with the power to subjugate every one, even a love-sated man already past his prime, she thought that it would be in keeping with her rôle to meet Caesar, and she reposed in her beauty all her claims to the throne.
⁴

However, it is important to recognize that young women with incredible access to the most beautiful of gowns and jewels, and endowed with an artistic skill in the use of makeup as Cleopatra was known to possess, could be made to look quite lovely with all those accoutrements. In fact, all one needs to do now to understand this is to watch a makeover show on television; a good wardrobe and a top hair stylist and makeup artist can make a not-so-beautiful woman quite stunning. Cassius Dio points out that Caesar was past his prime at age fifty-four,
and a girl as young as Cleopatra—age twenty-one when she met him—was bound to look pretty ripe and pleasing to the eye. By the time she met Mark Antony, Plutarch points out, Cleopatra would certainly have been mature enough to know how to work her wiles and make herself extremely attractive to her prey. So, likely not a true beauty, but not unattractive either, and with youth, intelligence, charm, and money, there is no doubt that Cleopatra was quite an alluring woman of her time.