Will Cuppy Tonight: "Cleopatra" (from "The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody")

CLEOPATRA

(from The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody)

Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, was the daughter of Ptolemy XIII. The name of her mother is unknown and it doesn't matter, as nobody with a grain of sense would have bothered with Ptolemy XIII. He was called Ptolemy the Piper because he sat around playing the flute all day long. The Egyptians drove him out of the country, but of course he came back. He died in 51 B.C., leaving Egypt to Cleopatra and her ten-year-old brother, Ptolemy XIV.¹

Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIV were always quarreling, and she didn't seem to click with the right politicians.² Cleopatra was put off her half of the throne and fled to Syria to save her life. She was twenty-one years old at this time and very unhappy. She felt she was not getting anywhere.

Then Julius Caesar, greatest of the Romans, arrived in Egypt on business, and Cleopatra returned to see him about things.³ Cleopatra had herself carried into his presence in a roll of bedding and spent the rest of the night telling him about her trip. So he put her back on the throne with Ptolemy XV, another of her young brothers, Ptolemy XIV having been drowned somehow. Ptolemy XV didn't live long. Cleopatra poisoned him, but you mustn't hold it against her, for it was royal etiquette to poison as many of the family as you could. Cleopatra did not poison her sister Arsinoe. She had someone else do it.⁴

Caesar was fifty-four to Cleopatra's twenty-one, but he was still a ladies' man -- the thin, wiry type, and smallish. He stayed in Egypt from early October until late in June settling affairs of state. It was a boy and they called him Caesarion, or Little Caesar, so Cleopatra now regarded herself as practically engaged. Caesar might have married her, but he had a wife at home. There's always something.⁵

Like Alexander the Great, whom he much admired, Caesar believed in the divinity of his person, such as it was. He was bald when he knew Cleopatra and gray as a rat at the temples.⁶ He also had fits. Among his achievements may be mentioned a book about his massacres in Gaul and the total destruction of the Alexandrian library, which caught fire from sparks while he was burning some ships in the harbor. During Cleopatra's visit to Rome in 44 B.C. he was killed in the Senate House by some of his best friends. She left town hurriedly.⁷

Three years later Cleopatra met Mark Antony, a fat man with a beard. They hoped to conquer Asia and eventually rule the world, as she and Caesar had planned to do.⁸ It was mostly a business arrangement, since she needed protection in order to hold her throne and Antony could always use ready cash. The gossips, you may be sure, kept everlastingly at it. Antony and Cleopatra couldn't even have twins without causing a lot of talk.⁹ We should remember that Antony and Cleopatra were secretly married when the twins were only four years old.

Although he was no whiz mentally, Antony struck Cleopatra as a delightful companion. One never knew what he would do next and neither did he. Their liking for the same kind of fun helped a lot. They would disguise themselves in old clothes and run through the streets at night, knocking at doors and breaking windows and laughing like anything.¹⁰ They were made for each other.¹¹

Shortly after the birth of the twins, Antony went off somewhere to be defeated and stayed away for three years. Fulvia, his third wife, died at this point and he married Octavia, half sister of Octavian, one of his fellow triumvirs. Then he came back to Cleo. He was broke again. What is more, he married her without bothering to notify Octavia and stayed with her for the rest of his days off and on. They had another baby and sometimes Antony would try to conquer Asia, but that is easier said than done.¹²

As he entered the fifties, Antony grew fatter and lazier and drunker, and Cleopatra thought maybe it had all been a terrible mistake. The Romans were also fed up with events at Alexandria, and it wasn't long until Octavian, the nephew once removed and adopted son of Julius Caesar, defeated Antony at Actium. Some say Cleopatra hastened Antony's end by betraying him to Octavian, deserting him during the battle, and sending him a false message which caused him to commit suicide. Whatever really happened, she was only trying to get along.¹³

She might have come to terms with Octavian after that, but he couldn't see it that way. Octavian was a nasty fellow with fishy eyes, long woolen underwear, and high moral standards. He wanted to take Cleopatra to Rome and exhibit her as a captive, so she called it a day at the age of thirty-nine.¹⁴ She was the last Queen of Egypt, which became a part of Octavian's extremely boresome project, the Roman Empire.¹⁵

Cleopatra has been much envied for her sinful career as told in song and story, but there is no proof that she ever held hands with any man except skinny old Julius and foolish old Mark. If you still believe her life was one long orgy of amorous delights, that is your privilege. Opinions differ about her looks, even the color of her hair and the length of her nose. I say she was a striking brunette and that her nose was perfectly all right. She certainly never scared anybody when she was fixed up a bit.

Just for the record, the three children of Antony and Cleopatra were brought up by Octavia, Mark's long-suffering widow.¹⁶ Cleopatra Selene married Juba, the King of Numidia. Alexander Helios probably came to no good, and I seem to have lost track of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Octavian executed Caesarion. He would.

Octavian, as you may be aware, became the Emperor Augustus and is generally regarded as one of the leading figures of history. He ruled the Roman Empire for forty-odd years in spite of numerous chronic ailments which seem to have baffled the doctors of his day.¹⁷ Every spring he suffered from enlargement of the diaphragm. He also had a bad case of ringworm.¹⁸ This condition grew worse with the years and he feared to aggravate it by taking a bath. Perhaps it was just as well that he did not fall for Cleopatra. She had enough troubles without that.

NOTES
¹ The Ptolemies had once been pure Macedonian Greek. By now they were Grade B, if that.
² The boss of Egypt was Pothinus, a eunuch.
³ While in Gaul, Caesar had slaughtered a million men, women, and children and enslaved a million more. No other Roman had ever approached this figure.
⁴ The two little Ptolemies, XIV and XV, were not as wicked as most of the other Ptolemies. They were not old enough yet.
⁵ The first of Caesar's three marriages -- to Cornelia, a very rich girl -- resulted tragically. Sylla, Caesar's enemy, confiscated her dowry soon after the wedding.
⁶ This looks distinguished, if you have money.
⁷ James Anthony Froude held that the whole story of Caesar and Cleopatra was the invention of a later age. I forget how he explained their son.
⁸ I doubt if Cleopatra dissolved a pearl worth $375,000 in vinegar and drank it to impress Antony with her wealth and wastefulness. For one thing, pearls do not dissolve in vinegar.
⁹ The twins were named Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene.
¹⁰ Once when they were fishing, Cleopatra had a smoked herring tied to Antony's hook and they like to died laughing. Well, it was pretty amusing.
¹¹ When Antony was married to Fulvia, he would jump from behind the furniture and cry "Boo!"
¹² Antony often put his right elbow on his right knee and held his 
chin in his hand. Nothing came of it.
¹³ Antony's motto was "All for Love." See what happened?
¹⁴ I couldn't find out much about the asp. Sorry.
¹⁵ Octavian had a dummy of Cleopatra carried in his triumphal 
procession, with a synthetic asp attached to it. Nice man!
¹⁶ She also raised four of Antony's children by herself and Fulvia and three of her own by Marcellus. She took splendid care of them
 all, and one of the little darlings, her daughter by Antony, turned out to be an ancestor of the Emperor Nero. Everything Mark did was a mistake.
¹⁷ For a liver complaint, as Suetonius relates, "since hot fomentations gave him no relief, he was led by his physician Antonius Musa
to try cold ones."
¹⁸ The Roman dermatologists had a rather funny saying about their patients: "They never die and they never get well -- it's perfect!"

SUNDAY in WILL CUPPY TONIGHT: It's a Pliny the Elder special edition - "The Goose," "The Oyster," and "The Ostrich," all from How to Attract the Wombat


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY TONIGHT and WILL CUPPY TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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