Cleopatra
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Cleopatra VII Philopator ( January 69 B.C.E. – August 12 30 B.C.E.) was queen of ancient Egypt, the last member of the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty and hence the last Greek ruler of Egypt. Although many other Egyptian Queens shared the name, she is usually known as simply Cleopatra, all of her similarly named predecessors having been largely forgotten.
As co-ruler of Egypt with her father (Ptolemy XII Auletes), her brother/husband Ptolemy XIV, and later her son Caesarion, Cleopatra survived a coup engineered by her brother's courtiers, consummated a liaison with Julius Caesar that solidified her grip on the throne, and, after Caesar's assassination, aligned with Mark Antony, with whom she produced twins.
After Antony's rival and Caesar's legal heir, Octavian, brought the might of Rome against Egypt, Cleopatra took her own life on August 12, 30 B.C.E. Her legacy survives in the form of numerous dramatizations of her story, including William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and several modern films.
Early life and name
"Cleopatra" is Greek for "father's glory," and her full name, "Cleopatra Thea Philopator" means "the Goddess Cleopatra, Beloved of Her Father." She was the third daughter of Ptolemy XII Auletes, a Greek born in Alexandria, Egypt. She was first briefly co-ruler with her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes and on his death became co-ruler with her brother Ptolemy XIII in the spring of 51 B.C.E. She was at the time the oldest child of Auletes, since two older sisters had died. She also had one younger sister whose name was Arsinoe IV. She was subsequently co-ruler with her brother, Ptolemy XIV. Since the Ptolemaic throne was transmitted in matrilinear fashion, the Kings had to marry their sisters in order to be qualified to rule. Following the deaths of her brothers she named her eldest son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion (44–30 B.C.E.).
At the age of 18, she was left the throne on the death of her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, in spring 51 B.C.E., to rule jointly with her 12 year old brother, Ptolemy XIII. However, by August she was dropping his name from official documents, which flew in the face of Ptolemaic tradition that female rulers be subordinate to male co-rulers. Furthermore, it was Cleopatra's face alone that appeared on coins. Perhaps because of her independent streak a cabal of courtiers led by the eunuch Pothinus, removed Cleopatra from power — possibly in 48 B.C.E., possibly earlier — a decree exists with Ptolemy's name alone from 51 B.C.E. She tried to raise a rebellion around Pelusium but she was soon forced to flee Egypt. Her sister Arsinoë accompanied her. [1]
In the autumn of 48, however, Ptolemy imperiled his own power by injudiciously meddling in the affairs of Rome. When Pompey, fleeing the victorious Julius Caesar, arrived in Alexandria seeking sanctuary, Ptolemy had him murdered in order to ingratiate himself with Caesar. Caesar was so repelled by this treachery that he seized the Egyptian capital and imposed himself as arbiter between the rival claims of Ptolemy and Cleopatra. (It should be noted that Pompey had been married to Caesar's daughter, who died giving birth to their son). After a short war, Ptolemy XIII was killed and Caesar restored Cleopatra to her throne, with Ptolemy XIV as new co-ruler.
Caesar wintered in Egypt in 48 B.C.E.–47 B.C.E., and Cleopatra shored up her political advantage by becoming his lover. Egypt remained independent, but three Roman legions were left to protect it. Cleopatra's winter liaison with Caesar produced a son whom they named Ptolemy Caesar (nicknamed Caesarion, little Caesar). However, Caesar refused to make the boy his heir, naming his grand-nephew Octavian instead.
Cleopatra and Caesarion visited Rome between 46 B.C.E. and 44 B.C.E. and were present when Caesar was assassinated. Before or just after she returned to Egypt, Ptolemy XIV died mysteriously. Cleopatra then made Caesarion her co-regent. She may have poisoned her brother.
In 42 B.C.E., Mark Antony, one of the triumvirs who ruled Rome in the power vacuum following Caesar's death, summoned Cleopatra to meet him in Tarsus to answer questions about her loyalty. Cleopatra arrived in great state, and so charmed Antony that he chose to spend the winter of 42 B.C.E.–41 B.C.E. with her in Alexandria. During the winter, she became pregnant with twins, who were named Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios.
Four years later, in 37 B.C.E., Antony visited Alexandria again while on route to make war with the Parthians. He renewed his relationship with Cleopatra, and from this point on Alexandria would be his home. He may have married Cleopatra according to the Egyptian rite (a letter quoted in Suetonius suggests this), although he was at the time married to Octavia, sister of his fellow triumvir Octavian. He and Cleopatra had another child, Ptolemy Philadelphus. At the Donations of Alexandria in late 34 B.C.E., following Antony's conquest of Armenia, Cleopatra and Caesarion were crowned co-rulers of Egypt and Cyprus; Alexander Helios was crowned ruler of Armenia, Media, and Parthia; Cleopatra Selene was crowned ruler of Cyrenaica and Libya; and Ptolemy Philadelphus was crowned ruler of Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Cleopatra also took the title of Queen of Kings.
There are a number of unverifiable but famous stories about Cleopatra, of which one of the best known is that, at one of the lavish dinners she shared with Antony, she playfully bet him that she could spend ten million sesterces on a dinner. He accepted the bet. The next night, she had a conventional, unspectacular meal served; he was ridiculing this, when she ordered the second course — only a cup of strong vinegar. She then removed one of her priceless pearl earrings, dropped it into the vinegar, allowed it to dissolve, and drank the mixture.
Antony's behavior was considered outrageous by the Romans, and Octavian convinced the Senate to levy war against Egypt. In 31 B.C.E. Antony's forces faced the Romans in a naval action off the coast of Actium. Cleopatra was present with a fleet of her own, but when she saw that Antony's poorly equipped and manned ships were losing to the Romans' superior vessels, she took flight. Antony abandoned the battle to follow her.
Following the Battle of Actium, Octavian invaded Egypt. As he approached Alexandria, Antony's armies deserted to Octavian. Cleopatra and Antony both committed suicide, Cleopatra by using a snake to poison herself on August 12 30 B.C.E. Cleopatra's son by Caesar, Caesarion, was executed by Octavian. The three children of Cleopatra with Antony were spared and taken back to Rome where they were reared by Antony's wife, Octavia.
It is often said that Cleopatra used an asp to kill herself. "Asp" technically refers to a variety of venomous snakes, but here, it refers to the Egyptian cobra, which was sometimes used to execute criminals. There is also a story that Cleopatra asked several of her servants to test out various forms of suicide, before choosing the method which she believed to be most effective.
A Graeco-Macedonian by language and culture, Cleopatra is reputed to have been the first member of her family in their 300-year reign in Egypt to have learnt the Egyptian language.
The race debate
There is often a debate between Egyptologists and Afrocentric historians as to what race Cleopatra belonged to. Egyptologists say that Cleopatra was descended from the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Macedonian family, whose patriach Ptolemy I Soter was once a general for Alexander the Great. Ptolemy I was the son of Arsinoe of Macedonia by either her husband Lagus, a Macedonian nobleman, or her lover Philip II of Macedon.
Egyptologists say the Ptolemaic family tree indicates that there was a great deal of interbreeding in the family, and that because Cleopatra was the first monarch to learn Egyptian, that Cleopatra was white. Ancient busts and coins of Cleopatra also appear to point to her Caucasian ancestry. Contemporary descriptions of Cleopatra describe her as being short, slightly overweight, with a hawk-nose and red-brown hair.
Afrocentric historians, however, claim that ancient Egypt was a predominately black civilization and that most ancient Egyptians were black people, considering that Egypt is an African country. Even though they acknowledge Ptolemy was white, they believe there must have been sexual liaisons between the monarchs and the people of Egypt. Since Cleopatra's mother is not known (not identified on the Ptolemaic family tree), many believe she was a black concubine.
However, a version that her mother was Auletes's sister, Cleopatra V Tryphaena (it was commonplace for members of the Ptolemaic dynasty to marry their siblings) exists. Significantly, the charge of illegitimacy was never made against Cleopatra, which is surprising considering the wealth of Roman propaganda against her, which adds credence to the latter theory regarding her mother. In light of the matrilinear nature of Egyptian succession, it is unlikely that her father would have named her as his heir had she been the offspring of a concubine considering she had a legitimate sister Arsinoe IV of Egypt. Finally, no Roman historian ever describes Cleopatra as black, another odd omission from the propaganda against her if it was true.
Cleopatra in art, film, TV, and literature
Cleopatra's story has fascinated scores of writers and artists through the centuries. No doubt, much of her appeal lay in her legend as a great seductress who was able to ally herself with two of the most powerful men (Caesar and Antony) of her time.
Among the more famous works on her:
- Cléopâtre by Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet
- Incipit Legenda Cleopatrie Martiris, Egipti Regine from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women
- Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
- All for Love by John Dryden
- Cléopatre by Victorien Sardou
- Cleopatra (1889) by H. Rider Haggard
- Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw
- The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George
Films about Cleopatra
The earliest Cleopatra-related motion picture was Antony and Cleopatra (1908) with Florence Lawrence as Cleopatra. The earliest film on Cleopatra as the main subject was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, starring Helen Gardner (1912).
Among the film/TV works inspired by the Queen of the Nile:
- (1917): Cleopatra: Theda Bara (Cleopatra), Fritz Leiber (Caesar), Thurston Hall (Antony). Directed by J. Gordon Edwards. Based on Émile Moreau's play Cléopatre, Sardou's play Cléopatre, and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
- (1934): Cleopatra: Claudette Colbert (Cleopatra), Warren William (Caesar), Henry Wilcoxon (Antony). Oscar-winning Cecil B. DeMille epic.
- (1946): Caesar and Cleopatra: Vivien Leigh (Cleopatra), Claude Rains (Caesar), Stewart Granger, Flora Robson — Oscar-nominated version of George Bernard Shaw's play. Leigh also played Cleopatra opposite then-husband's Laurence Olivier's Caesar in a later London stage version.
- (1953): Serpent of the Nile: Rhonda Fleming (Cleopatra), Raymond Burr (Mark Antony), Michael Fox (Octavian).
- (1963): Cleopatra: Elizabeth Taylor (Cleopatra), Rex Harrison (Caesar), Richard Burton (Antony). Oscar-winning block-buster most (in)famously remembered for the off-screen affair between Taylor and Burton.
- (1964): Carry On Cleo, a spoof of the 1963 film, with Amanda Barrie as Cleopatra, Sid James as Mark Antony, and Kenneth Williams as Caesar.
- (1974): Antony & Cleopatra: performed by London's Royal Shakespeare Company. Starred Janet Suzman (Cleopatra), Richard Johnson (Antony), and Patrick Stewart (Enobarbus).
- (1999): Cleopatra (movie): Leonor Varela (Cleopatra), Timothy Dalton (Caesar), Billy Zane (Antony). Based on the book Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George and closer to the facts than the others.
Teresa Pavlinek portrayed Cleopatra in an episode of History Bites set during the Battle of Actium.
A longer discussion of Cleopatra films is at: Cleopatra (movie).
Cleopatra on TV
All seven queens bearing the name Cleopatra were featured in the BBC mini-series The Cleopatras (1983).
The 2005 HBO/BBC mini-series Rome featured the character Cleopatra portrayed by Lyndsey Marshal.
Paintings of Cleopatra
The most famous painting of Cleopatra is one that almost certainly no longer exists now: because the queen died in Egypt well before Augustus' triumph could be put on in Rome, in which she would have walked in chains, he commissioned a large painting of her, which was carried in his triumphal procession, and which may have represented her being poisoned by an asp. The sources for the story are Plut. Ant. 86 and App. Civ. II.102, although the latter may well refer to a statue, and Cass. Dio LI.21.3 reports that the "image" was of gold, and thus not a painting at all. The purported painting was seen and engraved in the early 19th century: it was in a private collection near Sorrento. Since then, this painting is said to have formed part of a collection in Cortona, but there no longer appears to be any trace of it; its quiet disappearance is almost certainly due to its being a fake. For comprehensive details on the entire question, see the external links at the end of this article.
Otherwise, Cleopatra and her death have inspired hundreds of paintings from the Renaissance to our own time, none of them of any historical value of course; the subject appealing in particular to French academic painters. A very partial chronological list follows:
- Suicide of Cleopatra. Oil on canvas. 46 x 36-3/4 in. (116.8 x 93.3 cm) painted by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, also called Guercino. Painted in 1621 and which hangs in the collection in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. It shows Cleopatra and in her hand a snake that she prepares to use in her suicide.
- The Banquet of Cleopatra (1743–5). Oil on Canvas, 248.2 x 357.8cm. Painted by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770), which hangs in the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, depicting the banquet in which Cleopatra dissolves her pearl earring in a glass of vinegar.
- Cleopatra and the Peasant (1838). Oil on canvas. Painted by Eugène Delacroix. Hanging in the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina. The work shows a man providing Cleopatra with the snake she uses to kill herself.
- Cleopatra and Caesar (Cléopâtre et César) (1866). Oil on canvas. Painted by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). The original painting has been lost, and only copies remain. The work depicts Cleopatra standing before a seated Caesar, painted in the Orientalist style.
- The Death of Cleopatra, painted by Jean André Rixens, painted in 1874 and which hangs in the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, France.
See also
- History of Greek and Roman Egypt
Notes
- ^ Alexander to Actium: Peter Green pp661-664
External links
General
- Cleopatra on the Web - Some 470 resources, including ancient and modern pictures.
- Cleopatra VII Philopator ancient sources
- Cleopatra VII (VI) at LacusCurtius — (Chapter XIII of E. R. Bevan's House of Ptolemy, 1923)
- Cleopatra - a Victorian children's book by Jacob Abbott, 1852, Project Gutenberg edition.
- Genealogy of Cleopatra VII
- James Grout: Cleopatra, part of the Encyclopædia Romana
Paintings of Cleopatra
- Sir Thomas Browne: Of the Picture describing the death of Cleopatra (1672)
- John Sartain: On the Antique Portrait of Cleopatra (1818)
| Preceded by: Ptolemy XII |
Ptolemaic Queen of Egypt with Ptolemy XII, Ptolemy XIII, Ptolemy XIV, and Ptolemy XV |
Succeeded by: — |
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