My kingdom for a nose.

• Author: Pagden, Anthony
• Position: Antony and Cleopatra - Book review

Adrian Goldsworthy, Antony and Cleopatra (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 480 pp., $35.00.

Cleopatra VII--"the Female Horus," the Great One," "the Mistress of Perfection," "the New Isis," Father-Loving Goddess" (to give her at least some of her proper titles)--was Egypt's queen. Cleopatra was not, however, an Egyptian, and she had no direct historical association with the Egypt of the pharaohs. In fact, she lived far closer in time to us than she did to the builders of the great pyramids. She was Greek, the last--as it turned out--of a line of monarchs descended from one of Alexander the Great's most trusted generals, Ptolemy I, who after Alexander's death moved to Babylon, invaded Egypt and appointed himself pharaoh in 305 BCE. The Ptolemies venerated Egyptian gods (many of whom, however, also existed in Greek mythology) and performed the religious rituals of the pharaohs who came before them. They also assumed pharaonic titles. But Cleopatra was the first of her dynasty to be able to speak Egyptian (and if Plutarch, the Greco-Roman biographer whose Life of Antony is almost the only source we have for the story of the two lovers, is to be believed, Mede, Ethiopian, Hebrew, Arabic, Parthian and "Troglodyte"--the language of the peoples of southern Egypt and northern Sudan--were part of her vast lexicon as well).

Still, as Adrian Goldsworthy tartly remarks in his latest offering on the fate of the Roman Empire, Cleopatra was "no more Egyptian culturally or ethnically than most residents of modern-day Arizona are Apaches." But this is a woman who made her tantalizing way through Caesar and then Antony--all for the sake of a little female ambition to preserve her Egyptian empire. In the span of the eighteen years in which she consumed these lovers, she may well have turned herself into the source of Rome's collapse centuries later.

It all started with Caesar's arrival in Alexandria sometime in 48 BCE in search of financial support--and with an eye toward putting an end to the struggle for succession between Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII (to Caesar's advantage one way or another). Cleopatra, so legend and Plutarch have it, was smuggled into Caesar's palace in Alexandria wrapped in a carpet. The story is probably apocryphal and the carpet more likely to have been a laundry bag. But no matter how she succeeded in gaining access to Caesar, she seems to have immediately persuaded him both to become her lover (Goldsworthy speculates, on what evidence he does not say, that "it is more than likely that Cleopatra was a virgin" at the time) and which may have required rather more effort--to support her cause. Within the year, Ptolemy had been drowned in the Nile, his army had been destroyed and Cleopatra had been confirmed as queen.

For months after her triumph, she dallied with Caesar very much as she would later dally with Antony. The now-weary fifty-two-year-old, who had been campaigning almost without interruption for a decade, could finally relax, explains Goldsworthy in a rare moment of romantic whimsy, in "the company of his clever, exciting and beautiful young lover, helping him to forget his age and his cares."

Caesar, however, was more determined politically, less forgetful of his cares and perhaps less entranced than Antony was to be. In any case, in 47 BCE he left Egypt never to return. Later that year, Cleopatra gave birth to a son whom she called Ptolemy but whom the Alexandrians referred to as Caesarion, "Little Caesar." Behind these rococo sexual maneuvers, Goldsworthy speculates that "passion seems certain and genuine love most likely developed." What emerges most clearly, however, is what Goldsworthy is best at describing, not passion and love--with which he gives the impression of feeling slightly uncomfortable--but Cleopatra's overarching ambition to hold on to power as the ruler of a prosperous and politically acquiescent Egypt at whatever cost. She may indeed have developed "genuine love" for Caesar and Antony, but both were vital to her political survival. And with the passing of one came the adoption of the other.

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In the wake of the civil wars which erupted after Julius Caesar's assassination on March 15--the Ides of March--44 BCE, Mark Antony, Octavian and M. Aemilius Lepidus were appointed the three "triumvirs" by the Roman Senate to restore order (the Second Triumvirate). Lepidus, the governor of Spain and parts of Gaul, was soon forced into exile by Caesar's nephew and designated heir, Octavian, who took charge of Rome itself and most of the empire in Europe. Antony (Caesar's second in command until his death) was given the east; and the richest, most important part of the east was that Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt. Antony was quickly and summarily entranced by Cleopatra and her lands.

The seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal (inventor of the syringe and a forerunner to the digital computer) once famously remarked: "the face of the earth would have been different if Cleopatra's nose had been a little shorter." Perhaps then Mark Antony, consul of the Roman Republic, might not have spent so much time with her in Alexandria, dallying in gilded barges on the Nile, hunting and fishing, feasting off golden and bejeweled tableware amid clouds of rose petals. If Cleopatra had been less captivating...