cleopatra Last queen of Egypt
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| cleopatra |
Three
hundred years after her death, Cleopatra-Isis
was still being worshipped at Philae. Her image would remain on Egypt’s
coins
for
decades and on her temple walls for thousands
of years. But this version of
Cleopatra the queen
and wise mother goddess was confined to Egypt.
In the wider Mediterranean world the
well-oiled Roman propaganda machine continued to manipulate
public opinion against
Cleopatra long after the battle of Actium.
Octavian
was determined that his own personal history should be recorded for posterity
in a way that justified his not always
heroic actions and confirmed his god-given right to rule; a difficult matter for a
self-proclaimed republican to explain. To achieve this, he not only published
his own autobiography, he edited, and in some cases
burned,
Rome’s official records. Much of
his
propaganda – the ephem-
eral
jokes, graffiti, pamphlets,
private letters and public speeches – has
of course
been lost. But enough remains to allow us
an understanding
of the
corruption of Cleopatra’s memory.
her story
was allowed to survive as an integral part of
his. But it was
to be
diminished into just two episodes: her relationship
with Julius
Caesar
and, more particularly, her relationship with Mark Antony.
Caesar,
the adoptive father who gave Octavian his right
to rule, was
to be
remembered with respect as a brave and
upright man who
manipulated
an immoral foreign woman for his own ends.
Antony,
Octavian’s
rival, was to be remembered with a
mixture of pity and
contempt
as a brave but fatally weak man hopelessly ensnared
in the
coils of
an immoral foreign woman. Cleopatra, stripped
of any politi-
cal
validity, was to be remembered as that immoral
foreign woman.
Almost
overnight she became the most frightening
of Roman stereo-
types: an
unnatural female. A woman who worshipped
crude gods,
dominated
men, slept with her brothers and gave birth to
bastards.A
woman
foolish enough to think that she might one day
rule Rome,
and
devious enough to lure a decent man away from his
hearth and
the
chaste and loyal Roman wife, typified by the wronged
Octavia and
the
virtuous Livia, just as Cleopatra’s exotic eastern
land is the louche
feminine
counterpoint to
upright, uptight, essentially
masculine
Rome.