Cleopatra: A Life (53 page)

59.
“because she was angry with Antony”
: Ibid., V.59.

60.
“his passion for Cleopatra”
: Dio, XLVIII.xxviii.3.

61.
“at least an infinitely loyal”
: Balsdon, 1962, 49.

62.
“now rid of an interfering woman”
: Appian, V.59. Similarly, Dio, XLVIII.xxviii.3–4.

63.
“a great and mighty shout”
to “necks as they dived”: Dio, XLVIII.xxxvii.2.

64.
“their ships were moored”
: Appian, V.73.

65.
“A wonder of a woman”
to “complete salvation”: MA, XXXI. Tacitus suggests that A’s marriage to Octavia was a trap from the start, Annals, I.X.

66.
an object of gossip
: Boccaccio,
Concerning Famous Women
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 192.

67.
“immediately praised to the skies”
to “savior gods”: Appian, V.74.

68.
A’s rescue of Octavian
: Appian, V.67–8.

69.
“rash boy”
: Ibid., III.43 (Loeb translation).

70.
“behaved with excessive sportsmanship”
: DA, LXXI. Translation from Everitt, 2003, 265.

71.
“guardian genius”
to “that young man”: MA, XXXIII. Similarly Flatterer, “The Fortune of the Romans,” 319–320. C is absent from the
Moralia
account, in which Plutarch makes the soothsayer A’s friend, “often wont to speak freely to him and admonish him.” Surveying A’s greater age, experience, renown, and army, the amateur astrologer offers A the same advice concerning Octavian: “Avoid him!” To Neal, 1975, the warning was a veiled one against breaking openly with Octavian. C preferred that A make his name in the east, which would obviate the need for a showdown, 102.

72.
“lay inside with his friends”
to “the ceilings”: Athenaeus, IV.148c.

73.
“Nearly everything”
to “against the Parthians”: Dio, XLVIII.liv.7.

74.
“lulled to rest”
: MA, XXXVI. Writing a morality tale, Plutarch had set out to demonstrate “that great natures exhibit great vices also, as well as great virtues,” “Demetrius,” I.

75. On the coins: Walker and Higgs, 2001, 237; Jonathan Williams, “Imperial Style and the Coins of Cleopatra and Mark Antony,” in Walker and Ashton, 2003, 88; Agnes Baldwin Brett, “A New Cleopatra Tetradrachm of Ascalon,”
American Journal of Archaeology
41, no. 3 (1937): 461. As Theodore V. Buttrey notes (“
Thea Neotera:
On Coins of Antony and Cleopatra,”
American Numismatic Society Notes
6, [1954], 95–109), Ptolemaic couples never appear pictured on opposite faces of a coin.

For the best guide to the baroque composition of the East and its colorful parade of dynasts, see Sullivan, 1990. On A’s eastern politics, Albert Zwaenepoel, “La politique orientale d’Antoine,”
Etudes Classiques
18:1 (1950): 3–15; Lucile Craven,
Antony’s Oriental Policy Until the Defeat of the Parthian Expedition
(Columbia: University of Missouri, 1920); Neal, 1975; A. N. Sherwin-White,
Roman Foreign Policy in the East
(London: Duckworth, 1984). As in the previous chapter, the portrait of Herod is
drawn from Josephus’s colorful account. On Antioch, A. F. Norman, ed.,
Antioch as a Centre of Hellenic Culture as Observed by Libanius
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000); Libanius, and Cicero. On C’s titles and heritage, “Cléopâtre VII Philopatris,”
Chronique d’Egypte
74 (1999): 118–23. For the Donations, K. W. Meiklejohn, “Alexander Helios and Caesarion,”
Journal of Roman Studies
24 (1934): 191–5.

On Octavian, G. W. Bowersock,
Augustus and the Greek World
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965); Everitt, 2006; Kurt A. Raaflaub and Mark Toher, eds.,
Between Republic and Empire
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

1.
“The greatest achievement”
: Thucydides,
History of the Peloponnesian War
, II.xlv. Translation from David Markson,
The Last Novel
(Berkeley: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2007), 107. Markson notes that Thucydides does women the great favor of mentioning none.

2.
“slinked into”
: Strabo, 16.2.46.

3.
The inexhaustible Herod
: JW, I.238–40, 429–30; the miraculous escape: JW, I.282–4, 331–4, 340–1, among others; astonishing talent: JA, XV.5; Senate confirmation: JW, I.282–85; AJ, XIV.386–7.

4.
“noble families were extended”
: MA, XXXVI.

5.
“into his predecessor’s bedroom slippers”
: Everitt, 2006, 148.

6.
“realms and islands”
: Shakespeare,
Antony and Cleopatra,
V.2.111–13.

7.
“The greatness of the Roman empire”
: MA, XXXVI.

8.
“an army more conspicuous”
: Ibid., XLIII.

9.
“made all Asia quiver”
: Ibid., XXXVII.

10.
“the nobility of his family”
: Ibid., XLIII (ML translation).

11.
no one in the Mediterranean world
: Interview with Casson, June 11, 2009. Strabo writes the gift down to cedar, 14.5.3.

12.
The disapproving Plutarch
: MA, XXXVI.

13.
Sixteenth regnal year
: By our count it would be fifteen; the ancients had no zero.

14.
“It seems to me”
: Bingen, 1999, 120.

15.
Even Plutarch could not call it a mistake
: Plutarch, “Demetrius and Antony,” I.2. He recoiled from A’s marriage to C, “although she was a woman who surpassed in power and splendour all the royalties of her time” excepting only—as Plutarch saw it—the Parthian king.

16. A’s attachment to women: Appian, V.76. Dio, XLVIII.xxiv.2–3 has A falling head over heels for C.

17.
On Jericho
: Strabo, 16.1.15; Justin, 36.iii.1–7; Florus, I.xl.29–30; JW, I.138–9; JW, IV.451–75; HN, XII.111–24; Diodorus, II.xlviii; JW, I.138–9. For incense, balsam, bitumen, and their uses, A. Lucas,
Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries
(London: Edward Arnold, 1962).

18.
“King of a wilderness”
: JA, XIV.484; similarly JW, I.355.

19.
“it would be unsafe”
: JA, XV.107. Josephus further credits C with the death of Malchus, as with a Syrian king, JW, I.440.

20.
“In this way, he said”
: Ibid., XV.99–100.

21.
“laid a treacherous snare”
: Ibid., XV.98 (Whiston translation).

22.
“for she was by nature”
to “a slave to her lusts”: Ibid., XV.97.

23.
“his love would flame up”
: Ibid., XV.101.

24.
“being against such a woman”
: Ibid., XV.101 (Whiston translation).

25.
“one night even forced”
: JW, I.498. In accusing ND of having recast history, Josephus cites his “false charges of licentiousness” against Mariamme, concocted to justify her unjustifiable murder ( JA, XVI.185).

26.
“to make one feel”
: Aristeas,
The Letter of Aristeas,
99. See also JW, V.231; Philo, “On the Migration of Abraham,” 102–5 for the high priest’s attire.

27.
“the offspring of some god”
to “she might ask”: JA, XV.26–27.

28.
“to use him for erotic purposes”
: Ibid., XV.29.

29.
“in slavery and fear”
to “she possibly could”: Ibid., XV.45–6.

30.
“it is right for women”
: From “Helen,” in
Euripides II,
1969, 325.

31.
“hatred of him was as great”
: JW, I.437.

32.
palace pool
: Nielsen, 1999, on Herod’s palaces. Also JA, XV.54–5.

33.
“that Herod, who had been appointed”
: JA, XV.63.

34.
“it was improper”
to “charges against him”: Ibid., XV.76–77.

35.
“wicked woman”
: Ibid., XV.91.

36.
“There seems to be some pleasure”
: From “The Phoenician Women,” in
Euripides V: Electra, The Phoenician Women, The Bacchae
, David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds; Elizabeth Wyckoff, tr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 200.

37.
The fortified Masada
: JW, VII.300–1.

38.
“a ready ear only for slander”
: Ibid., I.534.

39.
“struck him like a thunderbolt”
to “of his life”: Ibid., I.440.

40.
C’s intelligence
: According to Cicero, a letter took forty-seven days to travel from Cappadocia to Rome.

41.
preparing the silver denarii
: Andrew Meadows to author, May 24, 2010.

42.
“there is no other medicine”
: From “The Bacchae,” in
Euripides V,
282–3.

43.
“an abundance of clothing”
: MA, LI. The disgruntled rumor appears both in Plutarch and in Dio, XLIX.xxxi.1.

44.
“a yawning and abysmal desert”
: Plutarch, “Crassus,” XXII.4. On the pitiful state of A’s men, Florus, II.xx.

45.
“For so eager was he”
: MA, XXXVII; Livy, “Summaries,” 130.

46.
“sharing in the toils”
: MA, XLIII.

47.
“neither reproached him with his treachery”
: Ibid., L.

48.
“called for a dark robe”
: Ibid., XLIV.

49.
“by an extraordinary perversion”
: Florus, II.xx. See also VP, II.lxxxii, and Dio, XLIX.32.

50.
“Neither in youthfulness nor beauty”
: MA, LVII.

51.
“her pleasurable society”
to “live with him”: Ibid., LIII.

52.
“wearing her life away”
: Flatterer, 61b.

53.
“as long as she could see him”
: MA, LIII. For C’s effect even on A’s associates, Dio, L.v.3.

54.
a happy subordinate
: Dio, XLVIII.xxvii.2.

55.
“failed to see”
: Flatterer, 61b.

56.
“it was an infamous thing”
: MA, LIV.

57.
“the passion and witchery”
: Dio, XLIX.xxxiv.1. For “certain drugs,” MA, XXXVII.

58.
“In his endeavor to take vengeance”
: Dio, XLIX.xxxix.2.

59.
On Artavasdes
: Dio, XLIX.xxxx.1–3; VP, II.82.4; MA, L.6; Plutarch, “Crassus,” XXXIII; Livy, “Summaries,” 131. On the triumph that was not a triumph, see Beard, 2007, 266–9.

60.
C in her Isis regalia
: Ashton, 2008, 138–9; Baudoin Van de Walle, “La Cléopâtre de Mariemont,”
Chronique d’Egypte,
24, 1949, 28–9; interview with Branko van Oppen, February 28, 2010.

61.
A dressed as Dionysus
: VP, II.lxxxii.4.

62.
coins minted for the occasion
: Buttrey, 1954, 95–109.

63.
“the two most magnificent people”
: Macurdy, 1932, 205. Bevan, 1968, best describes C’s golden age: For a second time in a decade, she “saw herself within measurable distance of becoming Empress of the world,” 377.

64.
The Jews and C’s rule
: See W. W. Tarn, “Alexander Helios and the Golden Age,”
Journal of Roman Studies
22, II (1932): 142. On the Jews generally in C’s time, Victor Tcherikover,
Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999).