IN THE CLOSING SCENE of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian orders a fitting burial for the man and woman he refers to as “this pair so famous.” Amidst all the confusions and contradictions, propaganda and prejudice that have clouded the story of Cleopatra and Antony for over two millennia, this, at least, is unarguable. They are one of the most enduringly famous couples of history. It is also undoubtedly true that their lives were turbulent and eventful, played out against a backdrop of bitter power struggles, complex conspiracies and bloody battles at a defining time in Rome’s history.
In analyzing the relationship between Cleopatra and Antony, certain elements always come through, whatever the source and however favorable or unfavorable the author. Their names are always linked—even in the earliest sources—as lovers. There was an undoubted chemistry between them that endured over a decade and produced three children. In many ways they were very similar: charismatic, with an ability to charm; risk takers, sometimes thrill seekers; ambitious and disposed to scheme on a grand scale; passionate lovers of life and relishers of excess. They were also loyal to one another.
Cleopatra was not the “bitch in heat” nymphomaniac so often portrayed. She had two men in her life, Caesar and then Antony. Neither—moving to the other end of the spectrum—was she the cold-blooded schemer and manipulator of men as she is equally frequently depicted to be. Certainly, she took her first lover, Caesar, because she feared for her throne, indeed her life, and there was an element of calculation. But she developed feelings for the man who fathered her beloved Caesarion and who was, in many ways, her own father figure. When she joined Caesar in Rome, so great was their empathy that he discussed with her his plans for remodeling Rome and for introducing a new calendar. Her influence with Caesar was one of the reasons she was so feared and disliked in Rome. Later, during the civil war that followed her lover’s murder, Cleopatra did not accede to the requests of his assassins for aid, despite the proximity of their armies to Egypt and the consequent risks to herself and her throne. Instead, she attempted to lead her navy to support Antony and Octavian.
Cleopatra’s relationship with Antony was very different. Though again it began with an element of calculation and self-interest, it developed and transmuted into deep and passionate love. With Caesar, Cleopatra had been the junior and very much younger partner. With Antony, she came to enjoy a relationship of equals unique for the time—a true partnership sexually, emotionally, intellectually, politically, in which each came to depend on the other. She was his daily companion. Unlike his Roman wives, Cleopatra usually accompanied Antony on his campaigns.
Something of Antony’s attachment to Cleopatra also penetrates the fog of Octavian’s misogynistic propaganda and the centuries of myth building. His feelings for her developed over time. Antony was clearly susceptible to attractive women and would not have been hard to seduce. He also admired and was accustomed to being guided by strong-minded, patrician women. Cleopatra fitted a mold he was used to, with the additional allure that she was a queen and the living incarnation of a goddess. It is not surprising that he fell heavily for her in Tarsus and followed her back to Alexandria for a period of sexual abandon. But his feelings at this early stage, though strong, did not, of course, prevent him from returning to Rome and settling down with Octavia.
Yet Antony could not forget Cleopatra, to whom, of all the many women in his life, he would make the greatest commitment. That was why he took the politically dangerous step of sending Octavia away and binding himself totally to the Egyptian queen, to whom thereafter he remained uniquely faithful. Sexual passion turned into a bond so strong that together they formulated a novel concept under which Egypt would become almost an equal partner with Rome in the East. Unlike Octavian, Antony had always been comfortable working in a team and sharing ideas—he had been a loyal second in command to Caesar—and had no difficulty regarding Cleopatra, though a woman, as his partner. She guided and reassured him, kept him focused and mitigated the mood swings of his mercurial, seemingly somewhat manic-depressive temperament. That was one reason—though of course there were others—why, when told Cleopatra was dead, he fell on his sword. The thought of life without the lover and friend with whom he had shared everything seemed unendurable.
There is, of course, much that we can never know and only guess at. That is part of our fascination with this couple whose lives still radiate such sensual, sexual glamour that we sometimes forget the bigger picture. Cleopatra and Antony were not romantic victims being swept to an inevitable doom in some epic tragedy. Almost uniquely in the ancient world, Cleopatra was a female ruler in her own right of a major economic power. Many centuries would pass—perhaps until the time of Elizabeth I—before another woman would show such political shrewdness and staying power. Antony was for a time the most powerful man in the Western world. The motivations and ambitions, decisions and actions of these lovers shaped one of the great power struggles of history—a struggle that, had Cleopatra and Antony succeeded, might have produced a world somewhat different from the one we know today.
Typical of the mass of myth and propaganda that surrounds Cleopatra, one of the most remembered historical conundrums centers on her and is itself based on a historical inaccuracy. In his Pensées, Pascal asked, what if Cleopatra had had a smaller nose? Would the course of history have been different? Would Antony still have fallen in love with her, or would he have stayed in Rome and overcome Octavian? The question spawned the “Cleopatra’s nose theory of history,” highlighting both how great events depend on small details and the personal relationships behind history, and launching a deluge of modern discussion of historical what-ifs. However, the conundrum ignores evidence from coins showing that Cleopatra had a prominent, long, hooked nose, a reduction in the size of which might have been beneficial, as well as Plutarch’s comment that it was Cleopatra’s personality and voice—not her middling looks—that gave her such charisma.
Pascal’s question misunderstands the nature of romantic love and physical attraction if not of the symmetry that underlies so much of our appreciation of beauty. It also prompts delightful if idle speculation about the role of personal chemistry, itself as impossible to dissect as love between political leaders. For example, what made Churchill and Roosevelt kindred spirits and, even more, what gave Margaret Thatcher such influence with Reagan and Gorbachev? However, it is perhaps more profitable to speculate what would have happened had Antony been victorious with Cleopatra’s assistance over Octavian.
Octavian’s triumph marked the ascendance of occidental Rome over the Greeks and the eastern states that had absorbed Greek culture. It allowed Vergil, following Octavian’s imperialistic and chauvinistic party line, first to admit condescendingly that the East might supply better artists, sculptors, rhetoricians and even astronomers but that:
. . . yours my Roman is the gift of government,
That is your bent—to impose upon the nations
The code of peace; to be clement to the conquered,
But utterly to crush the intransigent.
More than three hundred years would pass before the East would, with the rise of Constantinople and the subsequent establishment of the Byzantine empire, once more take a share of political power in the Mediterranean.
Scholars, as well as defining the battle of Actium as one of the major tipping points of history, have argued about what would have happened had Antony been victorious, either at Actium or earlier. Part of the answer depends on at what stage and how he would have won, with its consequences for the balance of power between the two lovers and leaders. If Antony had routed the Parthians and opened up Rome’s path to India and beyond, he could have returned to Rome. His triumph would have easily eclipsed Octavian’s victory over Sextus Pompey and the inhabitants of Illyricum. He would have had much less political need for Cleopatra than if together they had defeated Octavian in a close-fought series of naval and land engagements around Actium.
In the event of a complete victory over Parthia and the establishment of a Roman hegemony reaching as far as India, both contemporary and ancient history show that one of the most difficult feats would have been to retain order and control over such a vast dominion after the initial military victory. If Antony had done so, it is possible that he would have come to an agreement with Octavian establishing a duumvirate whereby Octavian ruled his existing western possessions from Rome and Antony an eastern empire consisting of a combination of Roman provinces and client kingdoms from Alexandria. While Antony still would have needed Cleopatra emotionally, he would have been unlikely to have needed politically to move so quickly to please her with such an ostentatious and elaborate ceremony as the Donations of Alexandria—such anathema to Roman society. Their ideas for a partnership between Rome and Egypt could have been developed more slowly and privately. In these circumstances, Antony and Octavian might have coexisted uneasily until Antony’s death—the latter would have been around fifty at the time of his Triumph and had lived a dissipated life. Depending on how long Antony in fact lived, the two halves of the empire might have become so distinct in culture and administration that Octavian would not have felt able to confront Antony’s successor, leading to a much earlier development of separate empires in the east and west.
A victory for Antony’s forces around Actium in 31, with the assumed death of Octavian by his own or another’s hand, poses a completely different set of questions. Crucially, Antony’s supporters were, in addition to Cleopatra, a mixed bag of eastern client kings and the remnants of the Roman republicans. If the Actium campaign had gone well, there would have been no republican defections from Antony, and it is hard to envisage that after his victory such elements would not have agitated for a resurrection of at least some of the senatorial powers.
Antony’s views on how Rome should have been governed are not clear. He offered Caesar the crown. However, nearly all the staunch republicans flocked to him as a better hope for the preservation of the republic than Octavian, perhaps indicating that his approach was more evolutionary than the revolution of his rival. Perhaps like Pompey, Antony would have been uncertain what to do with supreme power when he acquired it, relishing the respect and status his position afforded more than anything else. Unlike Octavian, Antony’s views were influenced by a succession of close associates: first his mother, Julia, then Curio, Julius Caesar, Fulvia and finally Cleopatra. Since she would have been his dominant influence after Actium, she would have pushed him toward autocracy and probably monarchy, a pressure that could have been reinforced by the practicalities of the new empire, which would have demanded a strong and stable administration and a clear, swift and decisive command structure. Rome would have found, just as it did with Octavian, that the republic’s lingering death had become inevitable—at least after the Senate’s supine approval of the Second Triumvirate. The republicans had been fractious, small-minded and far too inclined to focus on detail and petty jealousies to see the big picture and the consequences of their incessant squabblings on it. By refusing to pool some of their prerogatives and to sacrifice some of their privileges and even some minor liberties, they had rendered autocracy inevitable.
Given that Octavian’s propaganda against Cleopatra had built on deeply held xenophobic and misogynistic prejudices that would not easily have been dispelled, and given Antony’s preferences for the East, it is quite likely that after some time in Rome, he with Cleopatra’s strong backing would have chosen to make their capital in Alexandria, with that city becoming at least Rome’s equal, as Constantinople later became in reality. Bearing in mind the monarchical dynastic tradition of Cleopatra, it is highly likely that the two would have become hereditary rulers, indeed just as Octavian did, with Antyllus perhaps succeeding in Rome while Caesarion ruled in Alexandria.
Antony with Cleopatra at his side would have governed through a combination of direct rule and a hierarchy of client kingdoms as foreshadowed by Pompey and basically continued in practice by Octavian. However, their rule would have been founded more on a partnership between Greeks, Hellenes and Romans. It would have drawn on the Hellenic concept of harmonia—a community of outlook and interest—and would have shown a greater tolerance of difference and of local customs. Greeks and the other peoples of the region would have had more political power, avoiding much of the resentment that built up against the imperialist, cold and alien rule of Rome. Alexandria would have flourished as a center of learning and culture. Distinctions and prejudices between East and West, as apparent in those times as now, might have become blurred, to the benefit of all. As a consequence of Cleopatra’s longer rule, even women’s position in society might have changed.
One interesting sidelight is that Cleopatra might well have in the end succeeded in deposing Herod in Judaea. She had the wealth, power and determination. If she had, the area certainly would have developed in a less militaristic and antagonistic way. Jesus of Nazareth would then have been born into a more tolerant environment and, just perhaps, his reception might have been different.