When Gabinius and Antony left Egypt, plenty of Romans stayed behind. Many were soldiers, for the proconsul left a strong force ‘with King Ptolemy as a garrison’. Known as the Gabinians, these troops would remain for six years, beginning a Roman military presence that would last almost without break until the seventh century AD. Many were Roman citizens, although some of these soldiers were foreign auxiliaries — we hear later of 500 Gaulish and German cavalry. Overall numbers are unclear, but a strength equivalent to one or even two legions seems quite likely.1
Ptolemy Auletes had paid for Roman military force to regain his throne, and only this same force would guarantee that he kept it. Gabinius had no legal authority to invade Egypt, although he would later claim that Archelaus had encouraged piracy in the eastern Mediterranean and so needed to be defeated. Equally, he had no authority to station Roman troops in Egypt to protect Auletes. The king seems from the beginning to have paid and supplied these soldiers — Gabinius also claimed that the only money he had ever accepted from Ptolemy was to pay for the costs of his army. A few years later another proconsul of Syria clearly considered the Gabinians to be still part of the Roman army, and he does not seem to have been alone in this view.2
Yet their status was ambiguous. No mention is made of an overall commander, but senior officers seem to have been Roman. Many of the men in Gabinius’ army had served in Pompey’s eastern campaigns, but presumably their enlistments had not expired by the time the latter returned to Rome. Our sources mention one man who had served as a centurion under Pompey and was later a tribune in Egypt. It is not clear whether he was one of the Gabinians or was recruited independently. Auletes hired as many mercenaries as he could, even enlisting runaway slaves. He may also have sought out experienced Roman officers in need of employment, and men with Italian names appear in the armies of many client kingdoms during this period. These supplemented the Gabinians and in practice all of them acted in every significant respect like a royal army.3
Before long the Gabinians were called upon to suppress disorder within the kingdom, which they seem to have done with ease. However, a good deal of their time was spent in garrison in Alexandria. It was a comfortable posting, with the luxuries of one of the greatest cities in the world readily available. Legionary pay was not high in this period — at some point in these years Julius Caesar would double the salary of his legionaries — and Auletes may well have been more generous. Caesar himself later claimed that the Gabinians ‘got used to a life and licence in Alexandria and forgot the name and discipline of the Roman people, wed local women, with whom many had children’.4
Roman soldiers restored Ptolemy Auletes and kept him in power; other Romans stayed with them to collect the price for this assistance. The king had borrowed vast sums to buy his restoration, since his friends in Rome proved reluctant to assist him purely on the basis of promises. Much of this was owed to a consortium of Roman financiers led by a certain Caius Rabirius Postumus. There were unpaid debts from 59 BC as well as the sum owed to Gabinius, although it is not clear if all of this was paid straight away. Rabirius had gone out to Cilicia with the staff of Lentulus Spinther, in the hope that the latter would restore the king. Disappointed when Lentulus gave up on the idea, the banker joined Gabinius and either accompanied the expedition to Egypt or arrived soon afterwards.
Auletes made Rabirius his senior finance minister (dioecetes), so that the Roman would oversee taxation and other royal revenue and take his money directly. The sums involved were staggering, and the king also needed to pay for his own court and continue lavish programmes of spending to secure support. The Ptolemies had from the beginning treated their territory much like a private estate. Scholars may argue over the efficiency of the bureaucracy that governed Egypt, but none doubt that its most important function was generating revenue. Rabirius was now part of this system, and he and his associates dressed accordingly, wearing the Hellenic costume of royal officials rather than the tunic and toga of proper Romans.5
With the king’s approval, Rabirius enthusiastically set about raising money, involving himself not simply with taxation and the produce of royal land, but royal monopolies and trade tariffs. Egypt was squeezed very tightly at a time when harvests were bad because the inundation of the Nile was low for several years in succession. Probably the irrigation system had been neglected in the years of disruption when the king was driven out. Auletes had also come to power after many decades of serious internal problems and power struggles within the dynasty. Institutions and central authority had decayed, becoming far more corrupt and much less efficient.
It was hard for many of the king’s subjects to pay what was demanded of them. Desperation was probably the root cause of the unrest crushed by the Gabinians. The ruthless approach to raising revenue was not in itself enough. For centuries the currency of the Ptolemies had been very stable. Now the silver content of each coin was drastically reduced as the king sought to make his income go further. Having a Roman finance minister helped to deflect the blame away from Auletes himself. Rabirius was intensely unpopular.
The king finally gave in to the demands of the Alexandrians and had the Roman banker imprisoned. Rabirius quickly ‘escaped’ and fled back to Rome. A good number of merchant ships had already been despatched carrying goods and there were rumours that one had a cargo far more valuable than the mundane contents of the others. Gabinius had already gone into exile and a prosecution was now brought against Rabirius in the hope of seizing the bribe allegedly paid to the proconsul to restore Auletes. Cicero defended the banker, but the trial was probably never completed because of a serious backlog of cases and the political disruptions at Rome. Rabirius survived, although how much he had lost on his dealings with Ptolemy XII Auletes is impossible to know. Julius Caesar took on much of the outstanding debt, in addition to the money still owed to him for his assistance to the king in 59 BC.6
Auletes not only survived, but also, with the backing of the Gabinians, his grip on power was more secure than it had ever been in the past. For all the devaluation of the coinage and the hardships of many of his subjects, he was wealthy and had got away without paying anything like all of his huge debts to the Romans who had assisted him. In his last years his court remained splendid and there was money to spend on grand building projects.
ALEXANDRIA
The remains of much of the Alexandria known to Auletes and Cleopatra now lies under the sea and archaeologists are only beginning to unravel some of its mysteries. In some ways this is appropriate. Alexander the Great chose the site because it was on the coast. The old capitals at Memphis and Thebes had good access to the Nile, but were far from the sea, reflecting the priorities of the pharaohs. Alexander was more interested in securing good communications to his newly won territory. The Ptolemies also wanted their power to be centred on the Mediterranean. In better days their territories had stretched far across the sea. Culturally and ideologically they always looked back to Greece and Macedonia. Economically, they grew rich from trade, as the great surpluses from Egypt’s harvest were sold abroad and luxury goods from Arabia, India and beyond were sent further west. Alexandria was a port and, with Lake Mareotis to the south of the city, almost surrounded by water.
It was no coincidence that the greatest monument of the Ptolemies looked out to sea. On an island called Pharos, which lay offshore and sheltered the anchorage, stood the great lighthouse. It was at least 328 feet high and built of white stone in three levels. Commissioned by Ptolemy I Soter and completed under his son, the tower was topped by a colossal statue of Zeus Soter. It was visible a long way out to sea and at night a beacon was kept burning – there is even talk of mirrors to increase the light – ensuring that it still served as a landmark. Not as high as the great pyramids, it was still the tallest structure built by the Greeks or Romans. In the late eighth century the highest storey collapsed, but much of the rest survived until the fourteenth century.7
Alexandria
There were two great harbours, separated by a mole almost a mile long connecting the shore with Pharos Island. To the east was the main harbour, sections of which were divided into smaller quays. To the west was the second harbour of‘Happy Return’(Eunostos in Greek), which had an inner section known as ‘the Box’ (Kitotos), linking with a canal leading eventually to a branch of the Nile. Shipping, warehouses and commerce provided occupations for far more Alexandrians than the royal bureaucracy. There were plenty of very rich families in the city, whose grand houses occupied street after street near the harbour.8
A separate quarter, walled off from the houses of the wealthy and probably further subdivided, contained the royal palaces. Quite a few of the Ptolemies had chosen to build their own grand houses, although Strabo’s claim that every king constructed a new palace may well be an exaggeration. Other buildings – a theatre is mentioned and was probably dedicated to Dionysus – may have been associated with them to perform a role in ceremonies. Colonnaded courtyards linked the individual palaces and the whole complex was grand in scale and lavish in materials. The Museum complex was also in this area, as was the Sema, the grand tomb containing Alexander’s mummified remains and the corpses of the Ptolemies. Originally, Alexander the Great’s corpse had been housed in a golden coffin – possibly in the familiar style of an Egyptian sarcophagus, although we cannot be sure. However, Ptolemy XI in his desperate need for funds had melted this down and replaced it with one of glass or crystal.9
Alexandria was a consciously Greek city, but its large population was always mixed. It included the biggest Jewish community outside Judaea. There were also many Egyptians, since from the start there were never enough Greek settlers to meet all the demands for labour. Laid out on a grid pattern of streets, the city was divided into five regions named after the first five letters of the alphabet, and the various nationalities seem to have lived separately – the Jews, for example, lived mostly in the region called Delta. On a day-to-day basis there was doubtless much more interaction. In later periods we read of periodic friction between the communities, especially between Jew and Gentile, but this is less clearly attested under the Ptolemies.10
Strabo tells us that all the roads in Alexandria were wide enough for ‘horse-riding and chariot driving’. There were two main streets at right angles to each other, each far wider and fringed with colonnades. The more famous of the two was the Canopic Street. Altogether, the houses of the wealthy and the royal palaces made up between a quarter and a third of the entire city. There were plenty of other grand buildings, especially temples. A complex system of canals and underwater channels brought the water needed by the city’s vast population.
There was work in Alexandria and a good deal of wealth. Successful merchants lived in great houses, as did many landlords whose estates were worked by tenant farmers. For the well-off, life was comfortable, with luxuries and entertainments readily available. It is hard to tell how much or little interest these took in the cultural and intellectual pursuits encouraged by the Museum and Library. For the very poor, life may well have been grim and squalid, as it was for the poor anywhere else in the ancient world. The population of Alexandria was large and volatile, dependent on a constant supply of food and water from outside. We do not know precisely who or how many of its inhabitants took part in the rioting and protests that at times drove out or killed the kingdom’s rulers. Ptolemy Auletes could not rely solely on force in Alexandria, and maintaining an adequate food supply was essential. Other parts of Egypt could suffer from shortages without posing anything like so severe a threat.11
Memphis was the second largest city of Egypt and remained the centre for a number of important traditional cults. Unlike Thebes, it had never been involved in a rebellion against the Ptolemies and so had not suffered accordingly. In 76 BC Auletes had been crowned there in a traditional ceremony by the fourteen-year-old priest of the cult of Ptah. These priests were important figures, but their status reflected the dominance of the monarchy. The post of high priest was effectively hereditary, but the actual appointment had to be made by the king. Similarly, the cults and priests were supported by great estates, but did not actually own the land. Instead, the king allocated the revenue from specific properties to them, but the levies passed through the hands of the royal bureaucracy first. In this way, the Ptolemies gained the loyalty of important Egyptians, who in turn helped to keep the wider population content.12
For all their patronage of the native cults, Ptolemy XII, like his predecessors, showed far more personal enthusiasm for Hellenic deities. The self-styled ‘New Dionysus’ had particular reverence for his namesake. Music and dance were ways of worshipping Dionysus, and this as well as taste and pride in his own skill help to explain his staging of musical competitions and his own performances. Luxury, drinking and feasting were central to his version of the cult. The extravagant indulgence of the king and his court mixed religious devotion with symbols of wealth and plenty for the whole kingdom. They were also opportunities for Ptolemy to enjoy himself. One inscription survives in which several Egyptian men claim to have been Auletes’ catamites. Each gave himself a suggestive pseudonym and even if they were really erotic dancers rather than actual lovers – the Greek could mean either – then it still gives a flavour of Ptolemy XII’s court. Auletes does not appear to have been a very active ruler, except when it came to regaining his throne. He was a survivor, but there is little sign of energy in government, especially after his restoration. The king feasted, performed and indulged himself in pleasure and opulence. Even if this all had an aspect of worship, it was indulgence none the less.13
HEIRS
Cleopatra grew from a child into a young woman in these years. We know nothing of her life at this time or how closely she was involved in the daily life and banquets of her father’s court. The Greeks and Macedonians as a rule did not grant as much licence to women as to men. Her education may well have continued, but whether her experience of Alexandria in these years had more the flavour of her father’s court or of the sober education of the Museum and Library, or indeed more innocent indulgences of the young and rich, is simply impossible to know.
At some point Auletes made a will, one copy of which was sent to Rome. This may have been during the disruptions of 53 and 52 BC, for we are told that it was not forwarded to the Senate’s keeping and remained with Pompey The Romans were asked to guarantee the implementation of the king’s wishes ‘in the name of all the gods and the treaties which he had made at Rome’. Strikingly he did not leave his kingdom to them, and instead Cleopatra, his oldest remaining daughter, and his oldest son Ptolemy were to become joint rulers. The boy was some seven or eight years her junior and too young to be made sole ruler. He would also need a consort and for the Ptolemies a sister was always a likely choice.14
It would not have been safe for Auletes to ignore his oldest surviving child, since this would have invited a challenge to the succession. Nothing is known about the relationship between Cleopatra and her father, and whether or not he sensed promise in her. Perhaps there was genuine affection, especially if she had accompanied him during his exile, but we simply do not know. Similarly, there is no way of knowing if efforts were made to prepare her for the task of ruling. Auletes does seem to have publicly promoted all of his children, who were referred to as ‘the new sibling-loving gods’ in an inscription from 52 BC. The experience of the past never stopped the Ptolemies from proclaiming family harmony.15
By this time, Auletes’ health may have been failing. On a frieze from the temple at Dendera, Cleopatra is depicted behind the figure of her father, both making offerings to the Egyptian gods. Some scholars see this as an indication that he had already made her co-ruler with him. If true, then Auletes may have wanted assistance in the task of ruling and perhaps to smooth the succession after his death. On the other hand, Cleopatra was now the most senior female member of the royal family and it may simply be in this capacity that she was shown supporting the king. No source actually claims that she ruled jointly with her father. Some official documents list them both, but these may have come from the early months of her reign and maintained a fiction that her father was still alive – something not uncommon at the beginning of a new reign.16
By 51 BC Cleopatra was about eighteen, but it should already be clear that we know very little indeed about her life up until this point or what she was like. Beyond her extensive education and clear intelligence, almost everything else about her character remains conjecture. Declared a goddess and the daughter of a self-declared god, her family had been royal and divine for centuries. The self-confidence of someone born to rule was mixed with the uncertainty and fear of her own family as potentially deadly rivals.
Whether or not she had actually travelled outside Egypt and visited Rome, the young Cleopatra was aware of the overwhelming power of the Roman Republic. She may also have had some understanding of the unpredictability of the new world power and the dominance of individuals like Pompey Cleopatra’s later career suggest ambition and ruthlessness. It is hard to believe that she did not know from a young age that there would always be people eager to use her to gain power themselves. She was the king’s daughter, accepted by him as legitimate, whatever the precise details of her birth. The choices were between being controlled by others or trying to be in control herself. In either case there was a considerable risk of a sudden and violent death.17
We can do little more than guess at Cleopatra’s character at this stage of her life, but what of her appearance? The question inevitably arises in a way that it simply does not for male figures from the ancient world, or indeed for many women. In part, this is because images are plentiful for most famous names such as Alexander the Great and Caesar. The attitude to Cleopatra is always different, for it is more than simple curiosity. Imagined and reimagined so often over the ages, people have a far more emotional desire to picture the real Cleopatra. Quickly, the question becomes not what she looked like, but whether or not she was beautiful. Even this tends to be almost a simple binary decision, making her either beautiful or ugly — a standard that few people would care to have applied to themselves.18 The literary sources are of limited help. According to Plutarch,
in itself her beauty was not absolutely without parallel, not the kind to astonish those who saw her; but her presence exerted an inevitable fascination, and her physical attractions, combined with the persuasive charm of her conversation and the aura she somehow projected around herself in company, did have a certain ability to stimulate others.
Dio wrote more than a century after Plutarch and claimed that Cleopatra ‘was a woman of surpassing beauty, and at that time, when she was in the prime of her youth, she was most striking; she also possessed a most charming voice and a knowledge of how to make herself agreeable to every one’.19
The passages are less different than tends to be claimed. It is important to note that Plutarch does not say that Cleopatra was not beautiful, simply that she was not the most beautiful woman in the world and that her looks were one part of her considerable attractiveness. Dio does not claim that her beauty surpassed all other women, but that she was very beautiful and also charismatic.
Ideals of beauty change from age to age and culture to culture, and are anyway subject to individual taste. Artistic representations are subject to conventions and vary in their purpose as well as the talents of the artist. The reliefs carved on Egyptian temples were part of a truly ancient tradition and individuals are recognisable only because they are named in the inscription. A young Cleopatra appeared on coins minted in Ascalon. The face on these does not seem especially attractive to modern eyes, but we need to remember that coins were not pin-ups or equivalent to the cover of modern fashion magazines. They were statements of power, and in this case carried a message of the legitimacy of a young queen faced with a serious challenge to her throne and life. The aim was to show power and legitimacy, emphasising that Cleopatra was the rightful heir to the throne of the Ptolemies. The head on coins did not have to be strictly accurate. The Ascalon coins show a prominent, slightly hooked nose and large eyes, both features strongly associated with the Ptolemies.
Later busts of a more mature Cleopatra present even more problems. Identification is almost never secure, and some might easily represent other members of her family, including one of her daughters. Even if they are intended to be Cleopatra herself, they may also have been made long after her death. Most suggest a face that was pleasant, if not exceptionally striking. Many ancient sculptures were originally painted, which would have brought them much more to life. Even so there were limits to the medium and it would be hard to convey vivacity in such a portrait even if this was thought desirable. Both Dio and Plutarch emphasised Cleopatra’s voice and charm. Charisma is not readily conveyed in marble or bronze.
Cleopatra clearly had a strong, somewhat hooked nose. Given the tendencies of her family and her lifestyle, she may well have been a little inclined to plumpness, especially in her teenage years. Excessive thinness as an ideal of feminine beauty is a very recent phenomenon, in spite of its fervent promotion by the fashion industry and media. No evidence suggests that she was as obese as some of the other Ptolemies. She was certainly pretty and probably, by most standards, beautiful. A full figure readily becomes voluptuous, and a hooked nose could be hawk-like if we search for more flattering words. She was not necessarily more beautiful than other women, but her real beauty was combined with wit, sophistication, charm and a lively personality. All of this was reinforced by the simple fact that she was a princess and then a queen. Glamour surrounded Cleopatra, magnifying the force of her real beauty and personality. Given our own age’s obsession with celebrity, we should have no difficulty in understanding this.
The poet Lucan is the only ancient author to make any reference at all to the queen’s complexion. It comes in a scene emphasising the ambition of the queen, the decadent luxury of her court and overpowering ambition of Julius Caesar. He depicts Cleopatra wearing a dress of silk, the material brought originally from China having been rewoven to make it finer and semi-translucent. Such a filmy garment is reminiscent of Ptolemy Physcon. In this case Lucan talks of it revealing much of Cleopatra’s ‘white breasts’(candida pectora). Lucan wrote in Rome some ninety years after the queen’s death and it is hard to know whether or not he had seen accurate images of her appearance, let alone her colouring. Much of his poem is highly fanciful. In addition, candidanormally means white or fair – and in the case of hair can mean blonde – and this begs the question of white or light in comparison to what? Earlier in the same passage he talks of the variety of slaves attending to the guests, contrasting blondes with ruddy complexions (or just possibly red hair) from northern Europe, with dark slaves with curly hair from Africa. This could perhaps imply that Cleopatra was not like either of these in her own appearance, but that is surely pushing the evidence too far. The whole passage is a slender reed on which to rest confident assertions about Cleopatra’s appearance.20
Apart from this, there is not a shred of evidence about Cleopatra’s complexion or the colour of her eyes or hair. This is worth stating bluntly, because so many people keep trying to deduce these or claim to have discovered evidence. At the time of writing two separate TV documentaries have presented reconstructions presenting her as relatively dark-skinned and with brown eyes and black hair. This is all conjecture. As we have seen, there is uncertainty about the identity of Cleopatra’s mother and grandmother (or indeed grandmothers if her parents were not siblings).21
The Ptolemies were Macedonians, with an admixture of a little Greek and via marriage with the Seleucids a small element of Syrian blood. (There is no evidence to make us question the paternity of any of the line and suggest that they were the product of an illicit liaison between the queen and a man other than her husband. This remains possible, if not very likely, but an uncertain basis for any argument.) The Macedonians were not an homogenous people and seem to have varied considerably in appearance and colouring. Alexander the Great was fair-haired, although it is always difficult to know precisely what this meant. A Roman copy of an earlier mosaic shows him with medium-brown hair. Fair might simply mean not black or very dark brown. On the other hand, several of the early Ptolemies were blond and comparisons of their hair to gold suggest this was more than simply not black-haired.
For most of the Ptolemies, including Auletes, there is no mention of the shade of their hair or the colour of their eyes. It is unclear how common blond hair was in the family. (If Cleopatra’s mother was a mistress then we know nothing at all about her appearance or ethnic background, although the probability would always be that she was from the Greek or Macedonian aristocracy.) A painting from Herculaneum in the Bay of Naples, which shows a woman wearing the headband of a Hellenistic queen, has sometimes been identified as Cleopatra. She has dark, distinctly red hair. This is not impossible, but there is actually no very strong reason to believe that the image is supposed to be Cleopatra.22
Absolutely nothing is certain. Cleopatra may have had black, brown, blonde, or even red hair, and her eyes could have been brown, grey, green or blue. Almost any combination of these is possible. Similarly, she may have been very light skinned or had a darker more Mediterranean complexion. Fairer skin is probably marginally more likely given her ancestry. Greek art traditionally represented women and goddesses as very pale, and a fair skin seems to have been part of the ideal of beauty. Roman propaganda never suggested that Cleopatra was dark-skinned, although this may simply mean that she was not exceptionally dark or simply that the colour of her skin was not important to her critics.
At no point will we need to consider Antony’s appearance at similar length and this should remind us that the obsession with Cleopatra’s looks is unusual, and not entirely healthy. Not only is there no good evidence, but also there is something disturbing about the desire to base our understanding of her first and foremost on her appearance. Cleopatra was not another Helen of Troy, a mythical figure about whom the most important thing was her beauty. She was no mere passive object of desire, but a very active political player in her own kingdom and beyond.
Cleopatra was born and raised in the real and very dangerous world of the Ptolemaic court in the first century BC. When her father died early in 51 BC, she became a queen. Auletes had planned for his son and daughter to rule jointly. Cleopatra had other ideas.