Cleopatra the Great (34 page)

For Cleopatra was about to revive the plans she had made with Caesar, once again turning to the ambiguous words of the Sibylline Oracle which stated that an Immortal King would join with a widowed Queen to subdue Rome. Then ‘the whole wide world under a woman's hand ruled and obeying everywhere shall stand . . . the Widow shall be queen of the whole wide world' in a new golden age of East-West unity. Having manufactured her visit to Tarsus as the tangible arrival of this new golden age, Cleopatra offered Antonius a glittering future with all the resources he would need to take on Parthia and assume sole command of the Roman world. In return, he would remove her remaining enemies.

Following reports of ‘Queen' Arsinoe claiming to be the true ruler of Egypt from her base at Ephesus, Cleopatra's revelation that it had been Arsinoe who had persuaded Egypt's Cypriot governor, Serapion, to help Cassius meant that Antonius agreed to her immediate execution. And ‘whatever Cleopatra ordered was done, regardless of laws, human or divine. While her sister Arsinoe was a suppliant in the temple of Artemis, Antony sent assassins thither and put her to death' in the temple which had long been the slaughterhouse for all the city's meat and now for a former queen of Egypt.

Although Cleopatra asked for clemency for the temple clergy who had hailed Arsinoe queen, Antonius also ordered the execution of Serapion and a young pretender claiming to be the resurrected Ptolemy XIII risen from the Nile. With all potential rivals to the Egyptian throne eliminated and Cleopatra's position secured by the stamp of approval from Rome, Antonius now matched Caesar's grant of Cyprus with the gift of Roman Cilicia. Having achieved all she had wanted and more, a jubilant Cleopatra announced her decision to return home, and invited Antonius to join her there.

After quelling a rebellion in Syria toward the end of 41
BC
, he arrived in Alexandria, a city he had last seen during Auletes' bloody restoration fourteen years before. The citizens were delighted to have him back, as was Cleopatra, who ‘gave him a magnificent reception . . . He went out only to the temples, the schools, and the discussions of the learned, and spent his time with Greeks, out of deference to Cleopatra, to whom his sojourn in Alexandria was wholly devoted'.

During the winter, when the rough seas were effectively closed to traffic and military campaigns were suspended, Antonius spent his time in Alexandria much as he had in Athens, as a private citizen and wearing Greek attire. He also maintained his physical prowess and when he ‘exercised in arms, she was there to see'. He took her hunting, a popular royal pastime, using Indian hunting dogs, and even went sea fishing, Antonius giving ‘secret orders to the fishermen to dive under water and put fishes that had been already taken upon his hooks; and these he drew so fast that the Egyptian perceived it. But feigning great admiration she told everybody how dextrous Antony was and invited them next day to come and see him again. So when a number of them had come on board the fishing boats, as soon as he had let down his hook one of her servants was before hand with his divers and fixed upon his hook a salted fish from Pontus. Antony, feeling his line give, drew up the prey, and when, as may be imagined, great laughter ensued. Said Cleopatra “Leave the fishing rod, general, to us poor sovereigns of Pharos and Canopus; your game is cities, provinces and kingdoms” ', encouraging him to follow in the footsteps of Alexander and regain as much of the former Ptolemaic empire as possible.

Yet despite the fact that the seas were too rough to sail on from October to March, Cleopatra was blamed for Antonius' prolonged stay in Egypt. It was claimed that he ‘was over and over again disarmed by Cleopatra, and beguiled away, while great actions and enterprises of the first necessity fell, as it were, from his hands, to go with her to the seashore at Canopus and Taphosiris, and play about'.

Canopus was regarded by the Romans as a rather ‘fast' watering-place, a kind of St Tropez-meets-Lourdes. It was a cult centre of Isis and Osiris, where huge crowds of the faithful came to celebrate Osiris' resurrection. His cult image was regularly taken out in his golden boat between Canopus and his other centre at Taposiris, and, following his Ptolemaic makeover as Serapis, the temple at Canopus had been transformed into a magnificent Serapeum: ‘people of the highest renown had faith and slept within it' to receive miracle cures at the hands of the magician-like clergy of all-powerful Isis. Cleopatra herself regularly visited the place dressed as Living Isis. Canopus also housed a shrine of Herakles where Antonius, dressed in the attire of his divine ancestor, looked like ‘Herakles in the picture where Omphale is seen removing his club and stripping him of his lion skin' to wear herself before presenting him with items of female dress.

Such behaviour, perhaps hinting at the way Cleopatra and Antonius may have swapped roles for amusement or as part of some dramatic performance, would inevitably be criticised back in Rome, with Antonius ‘forgetting his nation, his name, his toga' to become Cleopatra's ‘cymbal player from Canopus'. Yet he was actually taking part in traditional Egyptian rites and honouring his Greek ancestry, a role Cleopatra acknowledged by commissioning a highly refined portrait bust in darkest green Egyptian basalt, set up at Canopus' cult centre to celebrate Antonius' identification as Dionysos-Osiris personified.

In nearby Alexandria where they spent most of the winter, a shared love of drama would have seen them visit the city's grandest theatre, connected to the palace by a covered gallery which ran between water gardens and the wrestling arena. The theatre was the place where ‘the Artists of Dionysos' wrote and performed plays. Dionysos' counterpart, Osiris, had long been honoured by drama performed in temples, while Egyptian tales, rather like Greek comedies, were also performed in secular surroundings by masked actors who wore a tie-on phallus and were popular among Alexandrians for their ‘over-ready tongue and impudent wit'.

The Egyptian royals themselves had even been known to take part in dramatic performances, from the Seleucid Antiochos IV who was known to fling off his robes and dance around naked to Auletes' love of costume dramas. Cleopatra and Antonius employed performers such as Chelidon, dubbed a ‘performer of improper dances' by the Romans, who were even more shocked to hear that Antonius' friend Lucius Munatius Plancus, Rome's governor of Syria, dressed as a sea god, ‘performing a dance in which his naked body was painted blue and his head encircled with reeds, whilst he wore a fish's tail and crawled upon his knees'.

Clearly enjoying life within the self-contained world of the innermost palace quarter, the couple would probably also have spent time at the palace on the island of Antirrhodos, so named because of its similarity in shape to the larger Greek island of Rhodes where Antonius had been educated. It was the perfect hideaway, with a private quayside giving access to a palace built by the early Ptolemies but later remodelled, quite possibly by Cleopatra herself. Some sixty thousand square feet of white limestone esplanade supported a palace of red granite, quartzite and basalt, its colonnades interspersed with statues of monarchs and gods, from marble figures of Thoth-Hermes, naked except for a himation cloak slung over his shoulder, to 15-foot-high granite figures of Cleopatra and Caesarion and granite and diorite sphinxes bearing the face of Auletes.

Within such magnificent surroundings Cleopatra and Antonius are said to have been inseparable, enjoying the gaming table where ‘she played at dice with him', together with chess, backgammon, knucklebones and a new game created in Alexandria which used ivory counters decorated with city landmarks and royal portraits for a reality version of snakes and ladders. Yet the highlight of each day was the sumptuous banquet attended by a small elite group of friends including Plancus, who flattered Cleopatra outrageously, and another who spent so much time in Antonius' company that he called himself ‘the Parasite'. They formed their own exclusive club called the Amimetobioi, the ‘In-imitables', whose ‘members entertained one another daily in turn, with an extravagance of expenditure beyond measure or belief. This was far more than simply having a few friends round to dinner, for the cost of such extravagant banquets followed by all-night drinking symposia could be astronomical.

Because they were a means of displaying status, Cleopatra used her legendary banquets to demonstrate her regard for Antonius, a man who so appreciated good food that he once rewarded his cook with a splendid house after a particularly fine meal in Athens. With the whole of the known world scoured for exotic produce in her attempt to better each banquet and retain her ability to amaze, peacocks and cranes were brought from Samos and Melos, tuna and sturgeon from Chalcedon and Rhodes, preserved fish from Pontus, scallops from Tarentum and shellfish from the Red Sea and maybe even Britain, whose oysters were popular in Rome. Alexandria's own seafood was also available in abundance, the mussels, clams and cockles found in the waters right outside the palace sweet and succulent in contrast to the acornlike flavour of those found in deeper waters beyond the harbours.

The Ptolemies certainly enjoyed locally caught fish and imported smoked varieties, along with a wide range of meat from wild game to domestic fowl. An acquaintance of one of Cleopatra's chefs was taken into the royal kitchens where he ‘admired the prodigious variety of all things; but particularly, seeing eight wild boars roasting whole, says he, “surely you have a great number of guests”. The cook laughed at his simplicity, and told him that there were not above 12 to sup, but that every dish was to be served up just roasted to a turn, and if anything was but one minute ill-timed, it was spoiled. “And” he said “maybe Antony will sup just now, maybe not this hour, maybe he will call for wine, or begin to talk, and will put it off. So that” he continued “it is not one but many suppers must be had in readiness, as it is impossible to guess at his hour”.

There would certainly have been a considerable amount of wine consumed within the palace that winter, as Cleopatra, proud of the quality of the wines served at her table, ensured a continuous supply in honour of Antonius as Living Dionysos. As the ultimate wine connoisseur, Dionysos was said to have a clear preference for Greek wines, although Italian wines had also been greatly improved by Greek expertise. Falernian and Caecuban vintages were exported in cork-stoppered pottery amphorae whose porous interiors sealed with pine resin resulted in a retsina-like product.

Wines were also produced in Gaul's Rhone valley, in Spain, Cyprus, Syria, Phoenicia and Egypt itself, where the Ptolemies had expanded a millennia-old industry to meet the demands of a Greek population and lucrative foreign markets. Although the vineyards closest to the palaces were among the very best, those around Lake Mareotis were ‘so good that Maroitic wine is racked off with a view to ageing it'. High-quality wines were also produced in the central Delta, Thebes and the western oases of Bahariya, Khargeh and Farafra.

As regions associated with Alexander, the Egyptian wine-producing areas had particular significance for Cleopatra's dynasty whose Ptolemaia festival celebrating the divinity of their royal house invoked Dionysos in an alcohol-fuelled extravaganza. Great floats featured a giant wine press in which grapes were trod to produce wine as the procession moved along. Another supported 30,000 gallons of wine in a huge wine skin made from the pelts of hundreds of leopards, Dionysos' sacred creatures. They were followed by a massive silver mixing bowl holding a further 6000 gallons, flanked by sixteen hundred boys wearing ivy and pine cone wreaths and carrying gold and silver wine jugs.

Although wine-drinking formed a key part of the royal lifestyle, the monarchy's fondness for it was a charge often laid against them. The teetotal orator Demosthenes had railed against Philip IFs drinking habits and Cicero had claimed the same of Antonius, whose ‘house rang with the din of drunkards, the pavements swam with wine, the walls dripped with it'. He told him, ‘you are a drink-sodden, sex-ridden wreck!', even claiming that he had tried to crown Caesar king when ‘soaked in wine'. Antonius had been forced to publish a written defence called
On His own Drunkenness.

Yet the damage had been done and, although he was remembered as ‘a great man of notable ability', Antonius was apparently ‘turned to alien ways and unroman vices by his love of drink and his equal passion for Cleopatra'. Later Roman sources would also claim that ‘the Egyptian woman demanded the Roman Empire from the drunken general as the price of her favours', and was herself accused of excessive drinking, her mind ‘swimming in Mareotic wine' and her speech slurred by ‘a tongue submerged by incessant wine'.

Given that alcohol consumption by Roman women was restricted by law, Cleopatra's drinking habits were far more subtle than the limited understanding of her critics might suggest. Temple liturgy encouraged Egypt's monarchs, as part of the royal and ritual identity, to ‘take to yourself the wine from Khargeh, from Farafra, the wine from Khargeh and Bahariya, and may your mouth be opened by it', and with Philae's ritual texts promissing ‘drunkenness upon drunkenness without end', inebriation allowed direct communion with the gods.

Ptolemaic priestesses described as ‘braided, beauteous, tressed, high bosomed, richly adorned, all drunk with wine' reiterated the theme of thousand-year-old hymns claiming, ‘How happy is the temple of Amun, even she that spends her days in festivity with the king of the gods within her . . . she is like a drunken woman, who sits outside the chamber with braided hair and beauteous breasts.' And despite translations of ‘loosened' rather than ‘braided' hair to suggest dishevel-ment and nudity, the combination of carefully dressed hair, an attractive cleavage and drunken demeanour were all characteristics of the goddess Hathor. Similar misinterpretations surround the Ptolemaic statue of a woman seated on the ground with a wine jug and generally known as
The Old Drunken Woman;
she is usually dismissed as an elderly destitute. Yet her costume and jewellery suggest a woman of means, most likely one of the thousands of Alexandrian women attending the festivals of Dionysos, even ‘perhaps a famous drinker whose statue could be properly placed within a precinct of the god of wine'.