The last queen of Egypt

CLEOPATRA: A LIFE By Stacy Schiff

Little Brown and Company, 368 pages

In a recent BBC news clip, an Egyptian man caught on camera stood among a group of protestors calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. He spoke for an instant but captured the significance of the moment: “We are fighting for a democracy — perhaps for the first time in 5,000 years.” Of all the kings, queens and strongmen that ruled Egypt, there is one who remains most vivid in the imagination and whose legend endures. Cleopatra, the subject of a biography by Pulitzer-prize winning author Stacy Schiff, hails from a long line of autocratic rulers — heiress to traditions of Egypt’s Pharaohs, and a link to the time of Alexander the Great. We know her largely from the Hollywood adaptation of her life. In Schiff’s sweeping tale, Cleopatra rises as a multi-dimensional woman — first, a queen who presided over a time of grandeur and greatness in a land where there was an abundance of both. She was known variously as a seductress, an erudite scholar, the wealthiest woman of her day, a master at stagecraft and statecraft. To the Egyptians, she was both a goddess and a queen who guided their kingdom through periods of prosperity as well as adversity. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean she was seen as a shrewd politician, and a woman of loose morals who was regarded with suspicion. For the Romans, she was a notorious foreign queen who captured the hearts of two of its leading generals, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. So enduring is the fascination with Cleopatra we are told that a video game, a slot machine, an asteroid and a strip club bear her name. Schiff sums up her legacy thus: “A goddess as a child, a queen at 18, a celebrity thereafter, she was an object of speculation and veneration, gossip and legend, even in her own time. At the height of her power she controlled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler.”

Despite her fame, Schiff points out, much of Cleopatra’s life remains hazy. The first accounts of her life were written by the Romans — most of them officials of the empire who rarely named sources and relied largely on memory. For all that is said about the scholarship in Hellenistic Egypt, no fine historian emerged. Further still, there is no consensus on the details of Cleopatra’s life among the sources that do exist. “To restore Cleopatra,” writes Schiff, “is as much to salvage the few facts as to peel away the encrusted myth and hoary propaganda.” What brings perspective to the subject, the author recounts, is a body of research on women in antiquity and on Hellenistic Egypt. Given these limitations, Schiff reconstructs a lost world (no vestiges of ancient Alexandria remain today) and the life of a queen who at various junctures in history was not given her proper due. Of all the myths and stories handed down to us, what is certain is that Cleopatra was a competent leader and a steadfast ally of Rome.

Cleopatra lived in the first century B.C. or in the Hellenistic Age (which opens with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. and closes with the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C). Her story essentially begins in 48 B.C. when she is banished from the Kingdom by her brother and co-ruler, Ptolemy XIII. She is smuggled from exile in a sack and turns up in the royal palace to hold the attention of Caesar. Caesar comes to Alexandria to urge brother and sister rule side by side and to ensure a stable Egypt. Not long after the encounter, she secures her place on the throne and marginalizes her brother. From then on she gains the advantage and her brother would rule only in name. Cleopatra hails from the Ptolemic dynasty that ruled Egypt for 10 generations. They were the descendants of the Macedonian Greek General Ptolemy, one of the closest aides of Alexander the Great — and one who would lay claim to Egypt after Alexander’s death. The Ptolemies built a grand city in Alexandria but “over the generations,” Schiff points out, “the family indulged in what has been termed an orgy of pillage and murder, lurid by even colorful Macedonian standards.” Despite the dark side, Cleopatra grew up amidst fabulous wealth. She had a superb education much like the kings before her and the noble families of her day — all mastered the classical literature of Greece, the art of debating, philosophy, logic, astronomy and astrology. Their capital was the shining city of Alexandria, where a 90-foot wide main avenue known as the Canopic Way stunned visitors with its “delicately–carved columns, silk awnings and richly painted facades.” Alexandria’s streets bustled with commerce and offered diversions of every kind, and its people were passionate about life and the advancement of knowledge. The nobles surrounded themselves with opulence and luxury of every conceivable sort. Cleopatra’s capital was without rival in the ancient world. Schiff’s account of Alexandria in its prime, its penchant for excess, its magnificent palaces and lavish amusements are among the high points of the book.

 If Alexandria was a spellbinding city, superior in every way, then the kingdoms that flourished along the banks of the Nile stood for the greatness of Egypt. As tradition dictated, Cleopatra led Caesar on the trip down the Nile where he would see firsthand “one of the most productive agricultural lands in the Mediterranean.” Schiff tells us that, “Even in Cleopatra’s day there was such a thing as ancient history. At her side, Caesar would have marveled at 28 centuries of architecture. Already visitors had burgled and scrawled graffiti over the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Already by the spring of 48 B.C. one of the seven wonder of the world lay in ruins. Cleopatra’s country had been in the hospitality business long before the rest of the world so much as suspected gracious living existed,” writes Schiff. Well aware of the potency of such symbols, Cleopatra played these to her advantage to enhance her majesty and legitimacy.

 The politics of Rome and its players figured prominently in Cleopatra’s life and reign. Schiff brings to life all the posturing and the drama of an unwieldy Roman Senate — quick to glorify its leaders and, just as easily, to plot their downfall. Schiff draws sharp contrasts between Alexandria and Rome. Alexandria may have been the client- kingdom of Rome, but it was the more advanced, the more sophisticated, and wealthier of the two. While Rome was mired in wars of conquest and domestic instability, the Egyptians lived in a land of plenty — where agriculture was bountiful, where Alexandria stood as the center of learning in the ancient world, and Cleopatra had the last word.

 For Julius Caesar and Mark Antony — the greatest generals of the day — the relationship with Egypt and Cleopatra was political and deeply personal. Rome may have been superpower of the ancient world but its coffers were drained by constant warfare and Egypt had the resources to finance Rome’s military ambitions. Cleopatra dazzled both Caesar and Antony with her fabulous wealth and seductive charms. The well-born women of Rome paled in comparison to Cleopatra who was adept at assaulting all the senses all at once. She bore a child to Caesar and three more to Anthony — the children of East and West that she someday hoped would unite the empire and the kingdom in a one-world alliance that had been the vision of Alexander the Great. It was the kind of mindset that put Rome on edge. Rome was all for extending the reaches of the Empire, but not for one-man rule. It was much less tolerant of a foreign queen with designs on an Empire. Caesar’s ambition to take on the mantle of Emperor of Rome cost him his life. Mark Antony and Octavian would succeed Caesar as joint rulers of the Roman Empire. At best, theirs was an uneasy alliance. Both were caught in drawn-out power struggle yet only one would emerge victorious. Octavian, the younger and less experienced statesman, gained the upper hand. He deftly managed to turn the senate against Antony. Antony was portrayed as disloyal to Rome — blinded by his love of Cleopatra that seriously impaired his ability to lead an empire. Whatever the reality, the senate subscribed to Octavian’s position. Rome was soon at war with Egypt and the lofty ambitions of Antony and Cleopatra unraveled before they could turn the tide. Autocrats or absolute rulers — however brilliant and savvy — never learn to temper their ambition, whether in our time or in the ancient world.

Cleopatra’s story as told by Stacy Schiff is absorbing, elegantly written and scrupulously researched, drawing us into an age of unsurpassed glory, when towering figures meet a tragic end and the victors are left to write history. Schiff lays out all the theories, assumptions, arguments and counter-arguments that lend perspective to Cleopatra’s life and the downfall of Antony and Cleopatra both as rulers and partners. As Octavian and his troops marched into Egypt after the battle of Actuim, Cleopatra seems to have lost it all — her kingdom, Antony who took his life, the future of her children uncertain, the dream of an empire gone. But there is a postscript here. She died on the terms of her own choosing, thus preventing her final humiliation as a captive of war. Her children were taken to Rome and raised by Octavian. With Cleopatra’s death, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire. Octavian carried Egypt’s treasury back to Rome thus ensuring the empire’s prosperity. With the new prosperity came a passion for the arts and icons of Egypt. It appeared just as well that this Egyptian queen had inspired Roman women to take on a visible role in public life — in the arts and in society. Stacy Schiff holds up a portrait of a formidable woman — incomparable in life as in death. And so it seems Cleopatra did have the last word after all.

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