A Natural History of Love Read Free Page B

rid of certain dangerous and attractive men, and no guilt, knowing that they would be destined for eternal life. As the ruler of a large and tumultuous kingdom, she might not have had endless time for dalliance; but I doubt that she was abstinent for years on end, as some scholars argue. Cleopatra appears to have been flamboyant and nervy, earthy and spiritual.
    If she seems unreal to us now, we must remember that even in her own lifetime she was something of an invention. Her Roman enemies mythologized her as an evil enchantress; she mythologized herself as a beneficent goddess. Did she believe her own divine version of herself? Only the goddess figure appeared in public, and we have no record of what she was like in private. We know very little about her, except that she was clever, learned, cultured, and fascinating to be around. She spoke several languages, including demotic Egyptian, the language of the common people. That, along with the fact that she worshiped Egyptian deities rather than Greek, endeared her to them. She is said by many to have written treatises on cosmetics, gynecology, weights and measures, and alchemy. Al-Masudi, a tenth-century historian, wrote that she was “well versed in the sciences, disposed to the study of philosophy and counted scholars among her intimate friends. She was the author of works on medicine, charms, and other divisions of the natural sciences. These books bear her name and are well known among men conversant with art and medicine.”
    Was she really a siren, who lured and beguiled? Cleopatra’s greatest charm was Egypt itself, the wealthiest kingdom in the Mediterranean, and any Roman who yearned for mastery of the world needed her power, her navy, and her treasury. An alliance with Egypt made superb military sense. Caesar and Antony were questing for power, not love, even if she was supremely lovable, as she may well have been. Antony and Cleopatra did live together off and on for six years—he was frequently away on military campaigns—during which she bore him two sons and a daughter. When Octavius defeated them at Actium, they committed suicide because everything was lost—empire, power, wealth, esteem. The romantic version of their double suicide argues that they were unable to live without each other. That may be true, but they also knew the Roman habit of parading vanquished enemies through the streets in an orgy of humiliation, torture, and display. And Cleopatra thought herself immortal, after all, an embodiment of Isis who could look forward to a rich reception in the afterlife. Despite her fright or any last-minute lapses of faith she might have suffered, she staged her death carefully, dressing herself in the rich robes of Isis, and making sure she would be discovered on a bed of pure gold.
    My intuition is that Cleopatra and Mark Antony shared an exuberant love and respect, along with a sense of divine mission. Was she irresistible? She was ingenious, brilliantly manipulative, and wise about male psychology. She may well have had a deep, lagoonlike sensuality, hypnotic as quartz. Quartz . From Middle High German quarz , from West Slavic kwardy . From Indo-European, twer-. Twery-en , “she who grasps, binds, enthralls; in Greek, seiren , siren.” Quartz was a frozen siren that held you in her grasp forever, hard and pure, a woman with a hundred faces. She could be opal, she could be flint. She could contain fire, or she could cause fire. Quartz had nothing to do with will or desire. This was a mineral love, it enchanted from the bones outward.
    Each culture invents Cleopatra anew, depending on the social climate and morals of the time. Our version is the one bequeathed to us by her illustrious enemy, Rome. Octavius was so proud of crushing her and claiming Egypt for the Roman empire that, in 27 B.C ., when he declared himself “Augustus Caesar,” he chose to give his name to the month of August because that was the time of year when he had conquered his