Cleopatra: A Life (54 page)

65.
said to be busy
: Dio, XLIX.xli.6.

66.
“theatrical and arrogant”
: MA, LIV.3.

67.
“a Dionysiac revel”
: Huzar, 1985/6, 108.

On the war of propaganda: Dio, Plutarch, Suetonius. Among modern studies of the surviving evidence, M. P. Charlesworth, “Some Fragments of the Propaganda of Mark Antony,”
Classical Quarterly
27, no. 3/4 (1933): 172–7; Joseph Geiger, “An Overlooked Item of the War of Propaganda between Octavian and Antony,”
Historia
29 (1980): 112–4; and Kenneth Scott, “The Political Propaganda of 44–30 BC,”
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
XI (1933): 7–49. No one makes sense of the battle of Actium, but John Carter and William Murray come closest. See Murray’s painstaking and ingenious reconstruction of the events in “Octavian’s Campsite Memorial for the Actium War,” in William M. Murray and Photios M. Petsas,
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
79, no. 4 (1989): 1–172; and Carter, 1970; as well as in Carter’s notes on the engagement in
Cassius Dio: The Roman History
(New York: Penguin, 1987), 266. On the battle, the winds, the site, interviews with William Murray, October 14, 2009, and March 3, 2010. See also W. W. Tarn, “The Battle of Actium,”
Journal of Roman Studies
21 (1931): 173–99; Casson, 1991. On ND, Plutarch,
Table Talk,
VIII.iv.723; Bowersock, 1965, 124–5, 134–8; and
Mark Toher, “The Terminal Date of Nicolaus’s Universal History,”
Ancient History Bulletin
1.6 (1987): 135–8. Angelos Chaniotis is very good on women and warfare,
War in the Hellenistic World
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 110ff.

For the Greek stay, the work of Christian Habicht, especially “Athens and the Ptolemies,”
Classical Antiquity
11, no. 1 (April 1992): 68–90. Seneca,
Suasoriae,
1.7, mentions lampoons against A in Athens.

1.
“illicit affairs”
: Lucan, X.76. The translation is from Jones, 2006, 66.

2.
“For talk is evil”
: Hesiod,
Works and Days,
760. See also Achilles Tatius, VI.10: Virgil’s
Aeneid,
IV.240–265: “Slander is sharper than any sword, stronger than fire, more persuasive than a siren; rumor is more slippery than water, runs faster than the wind, flies quicker than any winged bird.”

3.
“the abundance that flowed”
: Theocritus, Idyll 17 (translation modified).

4.
“galleries, libraries”
: Philo, “On the Embassy to Gaius,” 151. The translation is from Forster, 2004, 133.

5.
“if ever that kingdom”
: Diodorus, XXXIII.28b.3.

6.
the kind of man you could rely on
: JA, XVII.99–100. Also on ND, Plutarch,
Table Talk,
VIII.iv.723.

7.
sea nymph imitation
: VP, II.lxxxiii.

8.
“All of this I bestow”
: MA, XXVIII.

9.
The basalt inscription
: See P. M. Fraser, “Mark Antony in Alexandria—A Note,”
Journal of Roman Studies
47:1–2 (1957): 71–3.

10.
The Roman bodyguards
: Dio, L.v.1.

11.
The tax exemptions
: See Peter van Minnen, “An Official Act of Cleopatra,”
Ancient Society
30 (2000): 29–34; van Minnen, “Further Thoughts on the Cleopatra Papyrus,”
Archiv für Papyrusforschung
47 (2001): 74–80; van Minnen, “A Royal Ordinance of Cleopatra and Related Documents,” Walker and Ashton, 2003, 35–42.

12.
“only made them come back”
: Ibid., 79.

13.
“joined him in the management”
: Dio, L.v.1–2.

14.
The young Canidius
: Plutarch, “Brutus,” III.

15.
“disturb the auspicious respect”
: Appian, V.144. For Sextus Pompey generally, Appian, V.133–45.

16. A’s numerous misdeeds: Dio, XLVI.x.3.

17.
“good fellowship”
: MA, XXXII.

18.
“a veritable weakling”
: Dio, L.xviii.3.

19.
According to Suetonius
: DA, LXIX. Sejanus was much later said to do the same, “for by maintaining illicit relations with the wives of nearly all the distinguished men, he learned what their husbands were saying and doing,” Dio, LVIII.3.

20.
“invidious wealth”
to “solid glory”: Cicero, “Philippic,” V, xviii.50.

21.
“screwing the queen”
to “get it up?”: DA, LXIX. I have borrowed Andrew Meadows’s earthy translation, Walker and Higgs, 2001, 29.

22.
“amorous adventures”
: Dio, LI.viii.2.

23. On Ephesus: Hopkins,
A World Full of Gods
(New York: Plume, 2001), 200–205. Strabo, 14.1.24; NH, V.xxxi.15. Craven, 1920, 22, points out that Ephesus was the seat
of the Roman proconsul in Asia; the public records and treasury were there. It was a logical business address for A.

24.
“By certain documents”
: Dio, L.ii.6.

25.
“to sail to Egypt”
: MA, LVI.

26.
Acquiring an empire with money
: Plutarch, “Aemilius Paulus,” XII.9.

27.
“was inferior in intelligence”
to “large affairs”: MA, LVI.

28.
“a rabble of Asiatic performers”
: MA, XXIV.

29.
“And while almost all the world”
to “entertainments and gifts”: Ibid., LVI.

30.
A as Dionysus
: On the power of the mythologies, see H. Jeanmarie, “La politique religieuse d’Antoine et de Cléopâtre,”
Revue Archéologique
19 (1924): 241–61.

31.
Athenian statue-erecting
: Nepos, XXV Atticus, III.2.

32.
The Ptolemaic statuary
: Pausanias, 1.8.9; Habicht, 1992, 85. NH, 34, 37.

33.
“by many splendid gifts”
: MA, LVII.

34.
The Pergamum library
: See Casson, 2001, 48–50. Casson has suggested this was a shrewd way of shrugging off a financial burden. There was no real need for the Pergamum library, in Roman hands already for a century.

35.
“Many times, while he was seated”
: MA, LVIII.

36.
“wanton bits”
: Plutarch, “Brutus,” V; “Cato the Younger,” XXIV.

37.
“sprang up from his tribunal”
: MA, LVIII.

38.
kissing his wife in public
: Plutarch, “Marcus Cato,” XVII.7.

39.
“in compliance with some agreement”
: MA, LVIII.

40.
what eunuchs did
: Dio, L.xxv.2; Horace, Epodes, IX.

41.
The divorce
: Neal is especially lucid on the subject, 1975, 110.

42.
“which had hitherto veiled”
: Plutarch, “Pompey,” LIII.

43.
“required a sober head”
to “scurrilities”: MA, LIX. For Geminius’s heartache, see Plutarch, “Pompey,” II.

44.
“Treachery,” it would be said
: VP, II.lxxxiii. For the desertions see also Dio, L.iii.2–3; for Dellius’s weakness of heart, Appian, V.50, 55, 144.

45.
A’s will
: Either Dio has his chronology wrong or we all do: He seems to imply (L.xx.7) that Octavian hunted down the will at least a year earlier, before the Donations, which would entirely change the complexion of that ceremony.

46.
“should be borne in state”
: MA, LVIII.

47.
“honeyballs of phrases”
: Petronius,
Satyricon,
I.

48.
the Orient and sex
: On the “almost uniform association between the Orient and sex,” its “sexual promise (and threat), untiring sensuality, unlimited desire, deep generative energies,” see Edward W. Said,
Orientalism
(New York: Vintage, 1994), 188; and Flatterer, 56e. For Flaubert in the mid-nineteenth century, the courtesan of old was “the embracing, strangling viper of the Nile.”

49.
“In his hand was a golden scepter”
: Florus, II.xxi.11.

50.
“bewitched by that accursed woman”
: Dio, L.xxvi.5.

51.
“Then as his love for Cleopatra”
: VP, II.lxxxii.

52.
“melts and unmans”
: MA, LIII (ML translation).

53.
“a slave to his love”
: Florus, II.xxi.11; “he gave not a thought”: Dio, XLVIII.xxiii.2;
“he was not even a master of himself”: MA, LX. Plutarch on Omphale, “Demetrius and Antony,” III.3.

54.
“The Egyptian woman demanded”
: Florus, II.xxi.11.

55.
“For she so charmed”
: Dio, L.v.4.

56.
Reports circulated
: Strabo accuses A of pillaging the best art he could find for C, from the temples of Samos and elsewhere, 13.1.30, 14.1.14; also NH, XXXIV 8.19.58.

57.
“longed with womanly desire”
: Eutropius, VII.7.

58.
“that the greatest wars”
: Athenaeus, XIII.560b. He adds that Egyptian women were known to be “far more amorous than other women.”

59.
“I don’t much like”
: Plautus, “The Pot of Gold,” 167–9. The translation is from Skinner, 2005, 201.

60.
“Would a woman”
: Lucan, X.67.

61.
A just declaration of war
: Livy, 1.32.5–14. On the traditional procedure, Meyer Reinhold, “The Declaration of War against Cleopatra,”
Classical Journal
77, no. 2 (1981–2): 97–103; also R. M. Ogilvie,
A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 127–8; and Thomas Wiedemann, “The Fetiales: A Reconsideration,”
Classical Quarterly
36, no. 2 (1986): 478–90. It is Wiedemann who speculates that Octavian invented the rite.

62.
“had voluntarily taken up”
: Dio, L.vi.1.

63.
“What in the world does he mean”
: Ibid., L.xxi.3.

64.
“is at war with me”
: Ibid., L.xxi.1.

65.
“For I adjudged”
to “passed against her”: Ibid., L.xxvi.3.

66.
“as a whole far surpassed”
: Ibid., L.vi.2–3.

67.
“he sought a reputation”
: Florus, I.xlv.19.

68.
“spying upon and annoying”
: Dio, L.xi.1.

69.
The Acropolis statues
: Ibid., L.viii.1–5, L.xv.3.

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.