Cleopatra

by Stacy Schiff

As it happened, glamorous guests were as problematic as glamorous prisoners. It is difficult to say which Ptolemy ultimately caused the Romans the greater discomfort: the royal prisoner whom Caesar degraded in the streets, or the foreign queen with whom he consorted at his villa. Soon enough Arsinoe would be banished, dispatched across the Aegean to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, a gleaming, white marble wonder of the world. Her older sister spent the winter on the less fashionable side of the Tiber. She was without word from Alexandria, as the sailing season was over, to reopen only in March. She would be for some time too without Caesar, who left Rome abruptly, early in November. He was off to Spain, for a final campaign against the Pompeians. Cleopatra had known difficult postings before—the desert of the western Sinai comes most readily to mind—but for all the beauty of the Janiculum villa and its panoramic view, this one was less than comfortable. Her welcome was not universally cordial. Rome was chilly, and wet. Latin did not come easily to a Greek speaker; Cleopatra was at a linguistic disadvantage. And in a city where women enjoyed the same legal rights as infants or chickens, the posting called upon a whole new set of skills. For good reason 46 may have felt to Cleopatra like the longest year in history, as—on account of the attenuated calendar—indeed it was.