The Roman perspective turns our attention to some correlation
between the two distinct personas which depicted Cleopatra as a powerful
ruler and a seductive and sexually driven woman.
Of course, in rhetoric and political action, the Romans had their own
imperial aims, making the union between Antony and Cleopatra an
inevitability gone awry. As the prevailing power in its context, the
Romans had longed kept a wary eye on affairs in Egypt, recognizing it both
as a power and as a resource. Thus, "the Romans watched the unfolding
royal saga with a proprietorial interest. They believed that they had a
valid legal claim to Egypt, which had been gifted to them seven years
earlier in the vexatious will drawn up by Ptolemy X." (Tyldesley, 11) It
was thus that with the eventuality by which Cleopatra had become Queen of
Egypt, the Romans would perceive both with caution and entitlement the
events unfolding there. Especially insofar as Cleopatra VII seemed to
dismiss this latter entitlement based on her own vision of Ptolemic
expansion, her ambitions would represent the final threat from the Eastern
conqueror.
To the point, her ambition would be realized to a geographical range
unseen for many centuries in the fertile crescent. The threat felt by the
Romans was very real, for quite to the point, one only needed the events of
her rulership to verify that this expansion of absolute imperial majesty
was her intent. It would, in fact, be the last gasp for the once great
Egyptian kingdom, with Cleopatra seeing it to its most tautly stretched
influence before these ambitions would cause it to unravel. In her time
though, "the dramatic reign of Cleopatra VII closed one of the most
brilliant periods in ancient Egyptian history. For almost three centuries
her ancestors ruled Egypt and extended Egyptian influence throughout the
Aegean and western Asia and deep into African and Arabia. Not for over a
thousand years had Egyptian power and influence been felt over so wide an
area." (Burstein, 1) Not coincidentally, this expansion which was an
extension of the same Greek ethnicity that produced the city of Alexandria
and the lineage to which we can attribute Cleopatra's birth, came at a time
of Roman decline. (Grant, 4-6)
To this exact point, it is important to note that the author of the
image of Cleopatra which would have us believe she was a sex-hungry
mastermind of deception who conquered men for power was also her nemesis:
Our image of Cleopatra is ultimately drawn from sources close to
her enemy, Julius Caesar's great-nephew and heir Octavian, later
Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Living another forty-four years
after Cleopatra's suicide in 30 BC, Octavian had plenty of time to re-
cast recent history to his liking. Cleopatra was represented in
literature of the day as the whore of the Canopus, the foreign queen
who had unmanned Antony, and made him un-Roman." (Walker, 1)
Certainly, this is the image of Cleopatra that has persisted in our
most popular depictions like Shakespeare's play, which is perhaps the best
known literary treatment of her fabled love affair with Antony and the
division that it incited within the Roman Empire. Herein, Shakespeare
reinforces an image of Cleopatra as seducing Antony and then dominating
over him in such a way as to explicitly emasculate him.
But even beyond the dominating use of deception and sexuality which saw her
to the exploitation and death of every man with whom she came into romantic
contact, there are so many nuances of her character which, in their
description of her vanity and excess, blur irrevocably the line between
history and legend. In a notorious anecdote, an alleged representation
of her ostentatious tactics in mystifying Marc Antony to subservience of
her desires and political aspirations, Cleopatra is said to have expressed
the extravagance of her love and devotion to Antony by dissolving a
priceless pearl in her wine and ingesting it for his amusement. She told
him that this was an indication of her willingness to pay any price for
just a second of his 'diversion.' Ultimately, as her supposed devices
become more evident, this gesture takes on a more sinister implication, an
example of the extravagance which she devoted not to love but to illusion.
"When the exotic Egyptian queen takes into her body the pearl worth "Six
Million Sesterces," she becomes herself a part of the luxurious treasure of
empire. This treasure, so frivolous and yet so powerful, seduces the manly
Anthony and confounds the Roman Empire." (Gadeken, 2).
This anecdote provides the seed for the ultimate rift in Rome, with
Octavian, direct lineage of Julius Caesar, driven to declare war on
Cleopatra. Sensing her influence over Antony, and recognizing the
opportunities that this represented to divide and undermine the pervasion
of Roman authority in exchange for the priorities of Egypt, Octavian
launched an attack on Alexandria, against the prodigal lovers. Antony is
famously...
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