The Life and Times of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt / A Study in the Origin of the Roman Empire

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

On the fourth night of her visit to Tarsus, Cleopatra entertained the Roman officers at another banquet; and on this occasion she caused the floor of the saloon to be strewn with roses to the depth of nearly two feet, the flowers being held in a solid formation by nets which were tightly spread over them and fastened to the surrounding walls, the guests thus walking to their couches upon a perfumed mattress of blooms, the cost of which, for the one room, was some £250.

In this prodigious manner the next few days were spent. The Queen made every possible effort to display to Antony her wealth and power, in order that she might obtain his consent to some form of alliance between them which should be directed against Octavian. Her one desire now was to effect a break between these two leaders, to set them at one another’s throats, and then, by lending Antony her support, to secure the overthrow of Octavian, Cæsar’s nephew, and the triumph of Cæsarion, Cæsar’s son. For this purpose it was absolutely necessary to reveal the extent of her wealth, and to exhibit the limitless stream of her resources. She therefore seems to have shown a mild disdain for the Roman general’s efforts to entertain her, and at his banquets she seems to have conveyed to him the disquieting impression that she was smiling at his attempted magnificence, and was even puzzled by his inability to give to his feasts that fairy aspect which characterised her own.

Her attitude caused Antony some uneasiness, and at length it seems that he asked the Queen directly what more could be done to add to the splendour of his table. During the course of the conversation which ensued he appears to have told her how much an entertainment of the kind cost him; whereupon she replied that she herself could with ease expend the equivalent of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling upon a single meal. Antony promptly denied it, declaring that such a thing was impossible; and the Queen thereupon offered him a wager that she would do so on the next day. This was accepted, and a certain Plancus was invited to decide it. Antony does not appear to have recollected that in time past Clodius, the son of the comedian Æsop, was wont to mingle melted pearls with his food, that the cost of his meals might be interestingly enormous;[87] for he would then have realised that Cleopatra intended to employ some such device to win her wager, and he would perhaps have restrained her.

To the next day’s banquet the Roman looked forward with some excitement; and he must have been at once elated and disappointed when he found the display to be not much above the ordinary. At the end of the meal he calculated with Plancus the expenses of the various dishes, and estimated the value of the golden plates and goblets. He then turned to the Queen, telling her that the total amount did not nearly reach the figure named in the wager.

“Wait,” said Cleopatra. “This is only a beginning. I shall now try whether I cannot spend the stipulated sum upon myself.”

A signal was given to the attendant slaves, who brought a table to her, upon which a single cup containing a little vinegar was set. She was wearing in her ears at the time two enormous pearls, the value of each of which was more than half the amount named in the wager; and one of these she rapidly detached, throwing it into the vinegar, wherein it soon disintegrated. The vinegar and some seventy-five thousand pounds having then trickled down her royal throat, she prepared to destroy the second pearl in like manner; but Plancus intervened, and declared the wager won, while Antony, no doubt, pondered not without gloom upon the ways of women.

It has generally been thought that the Queen’s extravagance was to be attributed to her vain desire to impress Antony with the fact of her personal wealth. But, as we have seen, there was certainly a strong political reason for her actions; and there is no need to suppose that she was actuated by vanity. Indeed, the display of her wealth does not appear to have been on any occasion as ostentatious as one might gather from the Greek authors, whose writings suggest that they attributed to her a boastful profligacy in financial matters which could only be described as bad form. It would seem rather that the instances of her prodigality recorded here were all characterised in appearance by a subtle show of unaffected simplicity and ingenuousness, a sort of breath-taking audacity, while in quality they were largely political and speculative.

It is very important for the reader to understand the attitude of Cleopatra at this time, and to divest his mind of the views usually accepted in regard to the Queen’s alliance with Antony; and therefore I must repeat that it was Cleopatra’s desire at Tarsus to arouse the interest of Antony in the possibilities of Egypt as the basis of an attempt upon Rome. She wished to lead him, as I have said, to put faith in the limitless wealth that might flow down the Nile to fill the coffers which should be his, were he to lead an army to claim the throne for herself as Cæsar’s wife, and for her son as Cæsar’s flesh and blood. Here was the man who could conquer for her the empire which she had lost by the premature death of the great Dictator. It was necessary to make him understand the advantages of partnership with her, and hence it became needful for her to display to him the untold wealth that she could command. There was no particular vanity in her actions, nor real wastefulness: she was playing a great game, and the stakes were high. A few golden goblets, a melted pearl or two, were not an excessive price to pay for the partisanship of Antony. Her son Cæsarion was too young to fight his own battles, and she herself could not lead an army. Antony’s championship therefore had to be obtained, and there was no way of enlisting his sympathies so sure as that of revealing to him the boundless riches which she could bring to his aid. Let him have practical demonstration of the wealth of hidden Africa and mysterious Asia at her command, and he would surely not shun an enterprise which should make Cæsar’s friend, Cæsar’s wife, and Cæsar’s son the three sovereigns of the world. She would show him the gold of Ethiopia and of Nubia; she would turn his attention to the great trade-routes to India; and she would remind him of the advantageous possibilities which the great Dictator had seen in an alliance with her. In this manner she would again win his support, as she believed she had already done in Rome; and thus through him the ambitious schemes of Julius Cæsar might at last be put into execution.

There were, however, one or two outstanding matters which required immediate attention. The Princess Arsinoe, who had walked the streets of Rome in Cæsar’s Triumph and had been released after that event, was now residing either at Miletus or Ephesus,[88] where she had received sanctuary amongst the priests and priestesses attached to the temple of Artemis. The High Priest treated her kindly, and even honoured her as a queen, a fact which suggests that he had definitely placed himself upon her side in her feud with Cleopatra. She seems to have been a daring and ambitious woman, who, throughout her short life, struggled vainly to obtain the throne of Egypt for herself; and now it would appear that she was once more scheming to oust her sister, just as she had schemed in the Alexandrian Palace in the days when Ganymedes was her chamberlain.

It will be remembered that the Dictator had given the throne of Cyprus to Arsinoe and her brother, but it does not seem that this gift had ever been ratified, though no doubt the Princess attempted to style herself Queen of that island. It may be that she had come to some terms with Cassius and Brutus by offering them aid in their war with Antony if they would assist her in her endeavours to obtain the Egyptian throne; and it is possible that the Egyptian Viceroy of Cyprus, Serapion, was involved in this arrangement when he handed over his fleet to Cassius, as has been recorded in the last chapter. At all events, Cleopatra was now able to obtain Antony’s consent to the execution both of Arsinoe and of Serapion. A number of men were despatched, therefore, with orders to put her to death, and these entering the temple while Arsinoe was serving in the sanctuary, killed her at the steps of the altar. The High Priest was indicted apparently on the charge of conspiracy, and it was only with great difficulty that the priesthood managed to obtain his pardon. Serapion, however, could not claim indulgence on account of his calling, and he was speedily arrested and slain.