Cleopatra the Great (46 page)

After his distinctly un-Roman behaviour hastened his assassination Caligula was succeeded by Antonius' grandson Claudius, who continued to support the Isis cult by commissioning the elaborate altar known as ‘the mensa Isiaca', decorated with images of Isis and the sacred bulls. Claudius' military tribune Gaius Stertimius Xenophon was also a priest of Isis and Serapis, and though Octavian and his immediate family had all been cremated according to Roman custom and their ashes placed within the family mausoleum, their urns gave way to sarcophagi when at least one member of the imperial family chose to be embalmed Egyptian-style.

As Egypt's influence continued to spread through Rome, helped by such courtiers as Chaeremon, a former librarian at Alexandria and expert on Egyptian civilisation, the writing of ‘Aigyptiaka', books about Egypt, became a popular literary pastime. As a noted historian and author of works on Etruscan and Carthaginian history, Claudius himself began a modern history of Rome beginning with Caesar's murder in 44
BC,
until his grandmother Livia strongly advised him to leave out events before 30
BC
and any mention of Cleopatra, for even he as emperor ‘would not be allowed to publish a free and unvarnished report on the intervening period'. With the censorship supported by Claudius' mother Antonia, Antonius' daughter by Octavia, Antonius' daughter by Cleopatra conversely did all she could to keep her parents' legacy very much alive, for Cleopatra Selene was ‘totally her mother's daughter'.

Although many historians like to believe that all three of the couple's children had been spared, based on the claim that Octavian ‘brought them up no less tenderly than if they had been members of his own family, and gave them the education their rank deserved', seven-year-old Ptolemy Philadelphos was not mentioned as part of the Triumph of 29
BC
and may well have succumbed to his first cold winter in Rome. The Triumph was also, ominously, the last official sighting of Alexander Helios, who died ‘before military and marriageable age'. His bride-to-be, Iotape, now surplus to requirements, was sent back to her father Artavasdes, who was pardoned by Octavian and made client king of Armenia. Iotape herself was married off to a fellow client king in Commagene.

As the only surviving child of Cleopatra, eleven-year-old Cleopatra Selene was sent to live with the saintly Octavia whose household consisted of her own teenage sons by her first marriage, her two daughters by Antonius, the two Antonias, aged nine and six, and thirteen-year-old Iullus, Antonius and Fulvia's remaining son after Octavian had beheaded his older brother Antyllus. The children were raised and educated to become the means of creating political alliances, and Selene was part of Octavian's plan for North Africa. She was now betrothed to Prince Juba, who had lived in Rome ever since Caesar had brought him back from North Africa as a four-year-old, been granted Roman citizenship, taken the name Gaius Julius Juba and remained with Caesar, presumably meeting Cleopatra VII during her time in Rome. Then, taking up residence in Octavia's household, the bookish prince was made client king of Mauritania and Numidia in 25
BC
and married to Selene.

Although officially only queen of Mauritania and Numidia, Selene had been awarded Cyrene by her parents in the Donations ceremony, while her status as sole remaining child of Cleopatra VII meant she must surely have regarded herself as ruler of Egypt by birth. As heirs to the whole of North Africa, in theory if not in practice, Juba and Selene ruled their kingdom from their coastal capital, Iol. They renamed it Caesarea (modern Cherchel), which may have applied as much to Julius Caesar as to Octavian, and re-created Cleopatra's court within a luxurious palace complex embellished with superb mosaics, marble walls and swathes of rich purple fabrics produced at Juba's dye factories at Mogador. The palace was filled with relief carvings of sphinxes, bronze figures of Dionysos and lamps of Alexandrian design, and large quantities of statuary were imported from Egypt. There were 1500-year-old statues of the pharaohs Tuthmosis I, and Tuthmosis III, a giant uraeus snake and a head of Amun, perhaps sourced from Thebes to perpetuate the dynastic link with Alexander and his divine father.

Within a veritable ‘gallery of ancestors', stunning marble busts of the very handsome, curly-haired Juba stood alongside images of the equally attractive Selene, whose sculpted portraits carried all ‘the marks of her devotion and love for her mother country'. Inheriting her mother's love of pearls and lush fabrics, she honoured her memory by adopting her trademark melon hairstyle, albeit adorned with more defined snaillike curls to frame her somewhat fuller face.

Another piece of family statuary set up by the couple was an image of Ptolemy I, together with a basalt statue of the last high priest of Memphis, Petubastis III, a half-cousin who appears to have been close to the royal family. The statue was inscribed with the sixteen-year-old Petubastis' death date, 31 July 30
BC
, when, just like Selene's half-brothers Caesarion and Antyllus, he had been killed on Octavian's orders.

Yet the most spectacular piece the couple set up was a large marble statue of Cleopatra VII herself. A world away from the somewhat soft-focus, unthreatening portraits of Cleopatra made during her stay in Rome as a young woman, ‘the veiled head shows perhaps a different portrait type of Cleopatra VII'. This veritable tour de force captures the essence of this vital, spirited woman whose subsequent achievements were celebrated by the daughter who presumably commissioned it. The head was partly covered by her mantle, and both ears were pierced to take earrings which were likely to be new versions of her famous pearls; the way the curling hair was carved over the brow strongly resembles that of a Roman period head of Alexander the Great also from North Africa, quite possibly Selene's way of reinforcing her mother's connections with their dynasty's renowned ancestor. Indeed, this face of Cleopatra with its ‘prominent but beautiful nose' is so very strong that some have even claimed it represents a man; given its strong similarities to Cleopatra's masculine-style coin images and the tremendous achievements influencing its creation, such confusion seems unsurprising.

The new court also seems to have inspired silverware of equally astonishing quality: a stunning silver dish featuring a central female figure is quite likely to be Selene herself. Her tousled curls above the brow are ‘arranged in no recognisable coiffure', just as on the marble head she created of her mother, and the same type of pierced ears are visible beneath the elephant-skin cap of Alexander, surrounded by all the emblems of Ptolemaic Egypt from the sistrum and cobra to the cornucopia. Selene's own crescent moon emblem was coupled with the image of Helios in memory of her brother Alexander Helios, while images of the lyre, grapes and pine cones of Dionysos together with the club and quiver of Herakles paid tribute to her father Antonius.

Like Antonius and Cleopatra, Selene and Juba used their coinage to put across a political message: Rex Juba appeared on one side and Basilissa Cleopatra on the other. Her portraits suggest that she ‘inherited her mother's strong prominent nose but leave us with the impression that she was probably prettier than Cleopatra VII' — or at least less threatening-looking. Often representing Isis by means of the crescent moon emblem, Selene's coins also featured the Egyptian sistrum, crown of double plumes and sun disc and the image of a crocodile as a characteristic emblem of Egypt. The couple certainly kept live crocodiles within the capital's great Isis temple, adorned with statuary of the goddess, and the cult was sufficiently popular to inspire Apuleius, a Romanised North African (from modern Algeria) whose famous second-century
AD
work
Metamorphoses
is the only complete Roman ‘novel' to have survived, complete with superb details of the workings of the Isis cult.

The strong continuity with Selene's homeland of Egypt was also reflected in the architects, painters, writers and scholars who flocked to her court, while Juba's personal physician Euphorbus was the brother of Antonius' Greek freedman Antonius Musa. Both were leading practitioners in hydrotherapy treatments, presumably carried out in Caesar-ea's luxurious bath complex which was supplied by a colossal aqueduct. The couple also built a grand theatre and hippodrome alongside a great library which developed as a centre of learning.

Juba himself was described as being ‘even more distinguished for his renown as a student than for his royal sovereignty', and his passion for philology, history and geography was reflected by the expeditions the couple sent out across their sphere of influence. These travelled as far west as the Atlantic islands dubbed ‘Canaria' (from Latin
cants)
after the large dogs to be found there and brought back a pair of hounds for Juba himself; the Canary Islands' date palms and papyrus evoked Selene's homeland while sophisticated forms of mummification also developed.

In trying to forge ever stronger connections with Egypt, they also sent out an expedition to find the mysterious source of the Nile. Herodotus had claimed that Egypt's great river ran horizontally west to east across North Africa, Alexander's tutor Aristotle had suggested that its source might indeed lie to the west, and it had been a problem that Juba's protector Caesar had once wrestled with himself. Obviously keen to find out for themselves, the couple despatched their explorers who believed they had discovered the source of the Nile in the mountains of their kingdom of Mauretania, ‘so far as King Juba was able to ascertain'.

Apparently separating North Africa from Ethiopia, since ‘the Nile above the 3rd cataract, together with its tributary, the Atbara, can indeed be envisaged as dividing Ethiopia from Egypt', this apparent discovery was referred to by the poet Crinagoras of Mytilene. In his epigram to celebrate Juba and Selene's marriage, he announced, ‘Great neighbour regions of the world, which the full stream of Nile separates from the black Aethiopians, you have made common kings for both by marriage, making a single race of Egyptians and Libyans. May the king's children hold from their fathers in their turn firm dominion over both mainlands.'

When Selene and Juba had their first child some time between 13 and 9
BC
they named him Ptolemy. Although few personal details have survived, Selene clearly exerted a powerful influence given the overtly Egyptian style of her court and ‘the unusually elevated status of women at Caesaraea in the centuries following her death', when educated women such as the grammarian Volusia Tertulfina were part of a prominent female elite. When Selene died aged around thirty-five, perhaps in childbirth, her passing was linked to a lunar eclipse. Once more inspired, the poet Crinagoras claimed that ‘when she rose the moon herself grew dark, veiling her grief in night, for she saw her lovely namesake Selene bereft of life and going down to gloomy Hades. With her she had shared her light's beauty, and with her death she mingled her own darkness.'

Presumably mummified in the manner of her dynasty, Cleopatra Selene was buried in the royal necropolis some 20 miles east of the capital Iol Caesarea within ‘the public memorial of the royal family'. This was most likely the huge circular tomb which Juba II is believed to have built, measuring over 200 feet in diameter. Its exterior facade set with sixty Ionic columns featured at each of the cardinal points an elegantly carved ‘false door', recalling a traditional Egyptian feature favoured by Cleopatra VII herself and above which a series of stone steps of diminishing diameter rose 75 feet towards the summit.

By combining the Eastern circular mausoleum with ancient Egyptian funerary architecture, Juba and Selene had created a step pyramid with a twist. The tomb's concealed entrance, located below the false door on the eastern side to face the rising sun, opened onto a vaulted passage which led through to a rectangular ante-chamber, from which seven steps gave access to a circular, vaulted gallery running anti-clockwise for some 500 feet. At the end of the gallery as it spiralled back towards the centre of the tomb, an Egyptian-style sliding limestone portcullis mechanism sealed the burial chamber ‘which could have held only two or three inhumation burials'; although ransacked at some time in antiquity, the chamber entered in 1885 still contained traces of the original contents, from carnelian beads and an Egyptian pendant to a few scattered pearls, so beloved of Selene's famous mother.

Juba long outlived his wife, travelling around the East and briefly remarrying before returning to Mauretania in
AD
5. In
AD
21 he took as his co-regent his son Ptolemy, who following Juba's death in
AD
23, became king of Mauretania in his own right. His titles were confirmed by Tiberius and the Senate, who declared him a ‘friend and ally of the Roman people', while a senatorial delegation presented him with an ivory sceptre and the triumphal purple toga known as the ‘toga picta', embroidered with stars.

A superb marble head from the royal capital reveals Ptolemy to have been as handsome as his father Juba, his lightly bearded face and neat hairstyle clearly influenced by his Roman contemporaries. Although little is known about Ptolemy's personal life, with no official records of a wife or children, mention of ‘Regina Urania', assumed to be a court lady with royal pretensions, may perhaps refer to a royal relative who chose to follow her illustrious Ptolemaic predecessors by taking the name ‘Ourania' by which Aphrodite herself was known.

Having apparently amassed great wealth, Ptolemy felt sufficiently independent of Rome by his eighteenth regnal year to issue gold coins featuring his triumphal regalia and ivory sceptre, perhaps reflecting his success in dealing with intermittent rebellions within his kingdom. He also spent time abroad, travelling to Greece and being honoured at Athens with a statue inscribed ‘son of King Juba and descendent of king Ptolemy', which was set up in the Gymnasion of the early Ptolemies.