Cleopatra: Myth, History, and the Politics of Legacy

History, Myth, and the Making of Historical Figures

Figures of legend in history often take on proportions that may be less a reflection of the actual characteristics of these storied individuals than a reflection of the purposes of history's authors. The icons who ruled over their people and the groundbreakers who stand out as nexus points in human evolution are remembered by more than just their factual legacies. Beyond that, they are recalled with pointed romanticism or intentional vilification — subjects of debate, adoration, art, literature, and popular culture, their images shaped by the needs of the venue, the interests of the historian, or the desires of liberal artistry. Such is to say that history is a sort of self-reflexive mythology, and that its figures, rather than serving as eminent examples of quality personage, "are better suited to inform, and give us juster Notions of Ourselves, as they are Originals, and present the Eye with the prospect of Human Nature, taken from Life, and not extended beyond the Limits of Credibility and Truth" (Gadeken, 2). Thus, in our legends there is rarely one biographical perspective that can be assessed as truly factual. Even the most familiar characters in our collective history are more amalgams of image, superficial detail, and speculation — much like the celebrities of the present day whom we profess to know.

When one considers the history of a prominent woman, an even greater alertness to an opportunistic subjectivity in historiographical perspective must be employed. Multiple histories on one subject are usually the result of cultural, political, and ideological perspective. The stories that survive the obscuring of passing time are most often those told by the victor and, moreover, these stories are reshaped as they age according to the evolving purposes of their maintenance. With regard to the treatment of women in historiographical review, it is often synonymous with the actual treatment of women throughout history. More often than not, prominent feminine historical icons have been those who exist in our annals in spite of prevailing sociological trends toward a patriarchal order. This standard may either play a substantial role in the notoriety of the figure — with her exploits against the conventional view of women drawn explicitly in her story — or it may exist in subtextual premises that have come to define her legend. The latter of these two cases is that which divides historians on the characterization of Cleopatra.

While she is perhaps the first and most famous female celebrity in history, already a legend of literature by the start of the Common Era, her status as a historical person is hardly a matter of recorded fact. Hers is an image drawn for us by Elizabeth Taylor in celluloid, William Shakespeare in theatricality, and stoic ancient sculptures — inanimate features housed in the British Museum. In each of these venues, a bias accompanies the perspective expressed, with the gaps in Cleopatra's known history filled in by the pretenses of the auteur. There is, as a result, a sprawling dichotomy in the figure of Cleopatra. A strong female ruler driven to the expansion of power and the reclamation of her birthright, her behavior, demeanor, and purpose have been depicted in contradictory modes: on one hand, an exemplar of the earliest feminist potential of powerful women, and on the other, a deceitful temptress who used her womanly charms to exploit the weaknesses of men. These two versions of Cleopatra are the products of two decidedly divergent purposes. Due to inbuilt societal impulses that favored perpetuation of the latter depiction, it is that version which has been most actively preserved. Though there are surviving views of Cleopatra — especially in Egyptian history and feminist scholarship — as an important and effective leader, with certain aspects of global history affirming such ideas, they are often pushed to the periphery of a characterization more consistent with arguably misogynistic depictions in literature.

The positive views of Cleopatra, as a pharaoh of greatness in Egypt, are the product of her actual popularity during her own time. The surfacing of ancient artifacts connected to her illustrates that she was well regarded, powerful, and — to the view of her domestic artistic biographers — responsible for a certain degree of success for her people. She was a key figure in a time of geopolitical transition, with many of her actions having significant bearing on events around her. Her rise began rather circumstantially, when she was just seventeen years old:

Cleopatra's Rise and the Egyptian Perspective

"When Alexander died, male Argeads were in scarce supply: there was only a mentally deficient half-brother, and Alexander's wife Roxane was pregnant with a son, later known as Alexander IV. After considerable strife a Macedonian noble was chosen as regent for these two joint kings, and the rest of Alexander's generals moved to seize parts of the empire he had conquered. Female members of the royal family were more plentiful in this period than males." (Pomeroy, 155)

This was the circumstance that saw Alexander the Great's sister Cleopatra wage battle against her then husband-and-brother Ptolemy IX for control of Egypt. Both she and her brother were heirs to the Ptolemaic Dynasty which, under the diminishing autonomy of Egypt and the greater international influence of the burgeoning Roman Empire, had gradually ceded the bulk of its authority to Italian power. Naturally, the strengthening of Roman authority was only aided by the divisive power struggles within the Ptolemaic ruling family, centered in the capital of Alexandria on the Nile. This is where the history of Cleopatra takes a path subject to multiple interpretations. In 48 BC, when Cleopatra was 22 years old, she is said to have been famously delivered to the visiting Julius Caesar rolled up in an ornate Persian rug, thus inducing an alliance between Cleopatra and the central power in Rome. With Caesar's aid, she was able to easily defeat her brother and assume full control of Egypt (Ashmawy, 1). By this point, her ingenuity and ruthlessness had elevated her to a certain status among the Egyptians, among whom "Cleopatra was long remembered as a great ruler of divine status, and we hear of an image of her being reverently gilded as late as AD 373, when the empire was nominally Christian" (Walker, 1).

The visible political motives of such an alliance as Cleopatra's and Caesar's illustrate the admirable tenacity with which Cleopatra is said to have pursued the glory of Egypt. Though Egyptian influence had declined under 200 years of Ptolemaic subservience to Rome, Cleopatra was the first of Egypt's rulers since the inception of that relationship to have increased the sphere of its influence. She did so, as this story illustrates, by aligning with the very force that had previously been an entity of lordship over her kingdom.

The story of the Persian rug does suggest a great deal more about Cleopatra's character — or at least its use in history — than simply her diplomatic prowess. The explicit element of seduction is a self-inflicted objectification suggesting that her power was derived from her virtues of womanhood as much as from her competence as a leader. Her relationship with Caesar would originate a hefty piece of ammunition in the salvo against Cleopatra's character. The opportunistic series of relationships that aided her in augmenting her influence help to constitute the image of a bewitching temptress blinding the senses of her male counterparts to achieve her own devices. Certainly, this was the view Romans held of her when she came into Julius Caesar's favor:

"In 45 BC, Cleopatra and Caesarion left Alexandria for Rome, where they stayed in a palace built by Caesar in their honor. Caesar's acts were anything but overlooked by the Romans. In 44 BC, he was killed in a conspiracy by his Senators. With his death, Rome split between supporters of Mark Antony and Octavian. Cleopatra was watching in silence, and when Mark Antony seemed to prevail, she supported him and, shortly after, they too became lovers." (Ashmawy, 1)

Roman Ambitions and the Alliance with Caesar

At this point in her biography, it would appear that the powerful men with whom she entered into romantic relationships had a defining effect on Cleopatra's path. Indeed, "her liaisons with distinguished foreigners, equally, represented no departure from tradition, but recalled the exploits of her ruthless forebear Cleopatra Thea, who had married three kings of Syria" (Walker, 2). She differed fundamentally from this precedent, however. In both positive and negative accounts of her, it seems that it may be, contrarily, that she was the force which had a defining effect on the men with whom she involved herself — and by extension, a real bearing on the subordinate nations those men represented.

Cleopatra's actual intentions, whether motivated by love, lust, greed, or politics, remain unknown. Much of the haziness surrounding her actual nature is derived from the primary source-point for her biographical details. Conventional literature would come to see Cleopatra as an exploitative figure, responsible for the downfall of virtuous men such as the Ptolemies, Julius Caesar, and, inevitably, Marc Antony as well. So is this reported by historical accounts such as that of Cassius Dio, who reflected that "Indeed she so enchanted and enthralled not only Antony but all others who counted for anything with him that she came to entertain the hope that she would rule the Romans as well, and whenever she took an oath, the most potent phrase she used were the words, 'So surely as I shall one day give judgement on the Capitol'" (Cassius Dio, 39). The argument given here in defining her persona rests on the clear understanding of her imperialist intent — the suggestion that it had always been her ambition to extend Egyptian influence to new heights. The Roman perspective thus draws our attention to a correlation between the two distinct personas which depicted Cleopatra as both a powerful ruler and a seductive, 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, Rome had long kept a wary eye on affairs in Egypt, recognizing it both as a rival 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). When Cleopatra had become Queen of Egypt, the Romans would perceive the events unfolding there with both caution and a sense of entitlement. Insofar as Cleopatra VII seemed to dismiss that entitlement based on her own vision of Ptolemaic expansion, her ambitions would represent the final threat from the Eastern conqueror.

Cleopatra's 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: one needed only to look at the events of her rulership to verify that 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 far-reaching influence before her ambitions caused it to unravel. In her time, however, "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 Africa 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 — an extension of the same Greek ethnicity that produced the city of Alexandria and the lineage to which Cleopatra's birth can be attributed — came at a time of Roman decline (Grant, 4–6).