Queen of Egypt Cleopatra - Cleopatra: a biography

CLEOPATRA

Series Editors: Ronnie Ancona and Sarah B. Pomeroy

This book series provides compact and accessible introductions to the life and historical times of women from the ancient world. Approaching ancient history and culture broadly, the series selects figures from the earliest of times to late antiquity.

Cleopatra
A Biography
Duane W. Roller

A BIOGRAPHY

Duane W. Roller

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roller, Duane W.
Cleopatra : a biography / Duane W. Roller.
p. cm. (Women in antiquity)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-536553-5
1. Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, d. 30 B.C.
2. QueensEgyptBiography.
3. EgyptKings and rulersBiography.
4. EgyptHistory33230 B.C. I. Title.
DT92.7.r65 2010
932.021092dc22 [B] 2009024061

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

Maps

Illustrations

History, sir, will tell lies as usual.
GENERAL BURGOYNE IN
GEORGE BERNARD SHAWS The Devils Disciple (1897)

She was not a humiliated woman.
HORACE, Ode 1.37.32 (20s B.C.)

IN 34 B.C. A REMARKABLE CEREMONY took place in the Gymnasium of Alexandria. Cleopatra VII, 35 years of age, ruler of Egypt for the past 17 years and a Roman citizen, legally confirmed that her Ptolemaic kingdomestablished 270 years previously by Ptolemy I, her ancestor and a companion of Alexander the Greathad been restored to its former territorial glory. It now extended from Cyrene in North Africa through Egypt proper, well up the Nile, and around the eastern perimeter of the Mediterranean, including Cyprus and parts of Crete, to the edge of the Aegean. Cleopatras four children participated in the ceremony, as they were to continue the kingdom and to create a network of allied monarchies that would extend as far as Armenia and Parthia (the modern Iranian plateau). Because Cleopatra was allied with the Roman Republic, these arrangements were by necessity approved by the senior Roman official in the region, the triumvir Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), also present at the ceremony. If all had gone to plan, most of the eastern Mediterranean would have been under Ptolemaic rule, with Rome and a few small kingdoms reduced to scattered territories.

Yet in four years Cleopatra was dead and her possessions annexed by Rome and other monarchs. Things had gone badly wrong. Simply put, her vision of the future was actually one of the past. She was the last of the true Hellenistic rulers, and her dream of creating a new order and a new concept of monarchy fell victim to the overwhelming power of Rome. Technically a failure in her ambitions, ironically she was instrumental in creating the Roman Empire, although she never was to know this.

Today Cleopatra is best known through her extensive afterlife, especially of the last 500 years, pervasive in drama, visual and performing arts, and film. It is hard to escape any view of the queen that is not dominated by these popular conceptions. Yet it is the purpose of this book to create a portrait of Cleopatra based solely on information from the ancient world. To produce as complete an account as possible, one must draw upon everything available, not only Greek and Latin literature, but Egyptian art, architecture, and official documents, and Greco-Roman art and coin portraits. The picture remains frustrating because of the sheer lack of evidence. The information that is available can be badly tainted by the victors point of view, which pervades the relevant classical literature. There are several gaps in the record, most notably the three years from late 40 to late 37 B.C., when there is simply nothing. Yet it is nonetheless possible to put together a fascinating picture of this most dynamic of women, who in her 39 years became one of the most remarkable people in world history. What follows is an attempt to use all the evidence and to learn as much as possible about the queen and her world.

The writing of this book draws on the authors previous experience with the environment of the last century B.C. and the phenomenon of the friendly or allied king (in this case a queen), the monarch who ruled an independent kingdom but was closely tied to Rome. Cleopatra is not usually considered in this category because she predated the Roman Empire (Herod the Great and Juba II of Mauretania, both previously treated, are often considered better examples), but nevertheless she fits all the criteria of an allied monarcheven receiving official Roman recognition as suchand is a transitional figure between the Roman Republic and the empire.

The author first and foremost would like to thank Ronnie Ancona and Sarah Pomeroy for their original commission to write this biography and to include it in their series Women in Antiquity, as well as for the faith in the authors abilities that such an offer represented, and their many helpful comments. Although most of the writing was done in the authors study in Santa Fe with its inspiring views, the library research was largely performed in the Harvard College Library, the Ohio State University Library (with the special assistance of its interlibrary loan staff), and the Institut fr Archologie, Karl-Franzens Universitt, Graz, Austria. The author would like to thank those institutions and their staff for their support. Further thanks go to Sally-Ann Ashton, Malcolm Chisholm, Erich S. Gruen, Kathryn Gutzwiller, Pietro Giovanni Guzzo and Domenico Esposito of the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei, George L. Irby-Massie, Diana E. E. Kleiner, Christa Landwehr, William M. Murray, Nancy Leonard and the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, Josephine Crawley Quinn, Letitia K. Roller, John Scarborough, Elena Stolyarik and the American Numismatic Society, Stefan Vranka and many others at Oxford University Press, Susan Walker, and Wendy Watkins and the Center for Epigraphical and Paleographical Studies at the Ohio State University.

CLEOPATRA

FEW PERSONALITIES FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY are more familiar yet more poorly grasped than Cleopatra VII (6930 B.C.), queen of Egypt. The subject of a vast repertory of post-antique popular culture and also a significant figure in literature, art, and music, Cleopatra herself is surprisingly little known and generally misunderstood. Even in the years immediately after her death her memory was condemned by those who had defeated her, thus tainting the ancient sources.