Cleopatra

by Stacy Schiff

Cleopatra stood at one of the most dangerous intersections in history: that of women and power.

We have, perhaps and at most, one written word of Cleopatra’s. (In 33 BC either she or a scribe signed off on a royal decree with the Greek word ginesthoi, meaning, “Let it be done.”)

in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.

The sources may be flawed, but they are the only sources we have.

there were no plain, unvarnished stories in antiquity. The point was to dazzle.

Amid the Macedonian aristocracy there was ample precedent for murdering your sibling, none for marrying her. Nor was there a Greek word for “incest.” The Ptolemies carried the practice to an extreme. Of the fifteen or so family marriages, at least ten were full brother-sister unions.

Arguably she had more powerful female role models than any other queen in history.

“The ears of a youth are on his back; he listens when he is beaten,” reads an early papyrus.

She was allegedly the first and only Ptolemy to bother to learn the language of the 7 million people over whom she ruled.

If all the wisdoms of the ancient world could be said to have been collected in one place, that place was Alexandria.

At eighteen she stepped briskly and vigorously into the role of queen.

the singular markings—a white body and a black face—of a sacred animal.

No Hellenistic monarchs did opulence better than the Ptolemies,

The best that can be said of the Alexandrian War is that Caesar acquitted himself brilliantly in a situation in which he stupidly found himself.

Cleopatra was in many respects similar to her country: a shame to lose, a risk to conquer, a headache to govern.

it was a mood-altering city of extreme sensuality and high intellectualism, the Paris of the ancient world:

Affluence, power, and legitimacy were inextricably bound together.

it was difficult for anyone to come into contact with Ptolemaic Egypt and not contract a case of extravagance.

“No one dances while he is sober,” offered Cicero, the greatest of Roman killjoys, “unless he happens to be a lunatic.”

Gulping down his envy with a bracing chaser of contempt, a Roman in Egypt found himself less awed than offended.

luxury is more easily denounced than denied;

(A proper Roman woman considered her children her jewels.)

History belongs to the eloquent.

A curious cure for baldness would be credited to Cleopatra; she was said to counsel a paste of equal parts burnt mice, burnt rag, burnt horses’ teeth, bear’s grease, deer marrow, and reed bark. Mixed with honey, the salve was to be applied to the scalp, “rubbed until it sprouts.”

when she is not condemned for being too bold and masculine, Cleopatra is taken to task for being unduly frail and feminine.)

Politics have long been defined as “the systematic organization of hatreds.”

it is easier to find a single excellent man than many of them.”

The florist’s bill alone was a talent, or what six doctors earned in a year.

it is difficult to trudge soberly through that rustling sea of roses, to strain truth—especially political truth—from the lush, adjectival overload.

Given the way she was stockpiling successors, Cleopatra was arguably doing more to unite East and West than had anyone since Alexander the Great.

What a difference an address—or a change of consort—makes:

As of 37 Cleopatra ruled over nearly the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, from what is today eastern Libya, in Africa, north through Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, to southern Turkey, excepting only slivers of Judaea.

She was henceforth “Queen Cleopatra, the Goddess, the Younger, Father-Loving and Fatherland-Loving.”

Euripides—“it is right for women to stand by a woman’s cause”—Cleopatra

No talk is ever entirely gotten rid of, once many people talk it up: It too is some god.” —HESIOD

It would be difficult to say to whom Cleopatra was more vital in 32: the man to whom she was the partner, or the man to whom she was the pretext. Antony could not win a war without her. Octavian could not wage one.

The word “formidable” sooner or later attaches itself to Cleopatra and here it comes: she was formidable—spirited, disciplined, resourceful—in her retreat. There were no hints of despair. Two thousand years after the fact, you can still hear the fertile mind pulsing with ideas.

if you wanted an excellent poison, you procured it in Egypt, from an Alexandrian doctor.

panegyrists;

For any number of reasons Cleopatra was unlikely to have recruited an asp, or an Egyptian cobra, for the job.

Even the most reliable of cobras cannot kill three women in quick succession, and the asp is a famously sluggish snake.

Assuming she died of the same cause as Charmion, assuming she died in the state in which she was discovered, Cleopatra suffered little.

when a woman teams up with a snake, a moral storm threatens somewhere.

it was Cleopatra’s curse to inspire its great poets, happy to expound on her shame, in a language inhospitable to her and all she represented.

To the end she was mistress of herself, astute, spirited, inconceivably rich, pampered yet ambitious.

On one contemporary list Cleopatra appears as the twenty-second richest person in history, well behind John D. Rockefeller and Tsar Nicholas II, but ahead of Napoleon and J. P. Morgan. She is assigned a net worth of $95.8 billion, or more than three Queen Elizabeth IIs. It is of course impossible accurately to convert currencies across eras.