October 20, By Jacquelyn Williamson. Horace, writing not long after the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, reflects the contemporary Roman horror at the behavior of Marc Antony fighting with Cleopatra against Rome, where traditional Romans demonized and stereotyped her as a fearsome and loathsome manipulator.
She was a foreign woman without morals who possessed a sexual allure so powerful as to corrupt even a Roman soldier as honorable as Antony. The glamour of this story was, and still is, worthy of a Hollywood movie and a Shakespeare play. However, we must ask ourselves if we can find the historic Cleopatra in all this salacious drama.
The wealth of the Egyptian queen dazzled and horrified the Roman peoples, who valued military austerity and plain living.
Rome was in the last years of its Republic era; Roman senators were always at pains to emphasize their sobriety and economy. Octavian, the man who vanquished Cleopatra, was also about to vanquish the republican style of rule and declare himself emperor. Cleopatra is likened to the more frightening women in Greek and Roman myth, cast as an eastern Medea. The accounts of the time emphasize the fortune of the Roman people that their newly created dictator vanquished such a terrifying creature.
His Cleopatra was the consummate manipulator who loved not Antony but power and pulled his puppet strings to make him dance to her tune. Egyptian sources on this famous queen were mostly lost when the library of Alexandria was destroyed. The Egyptian record of the historic Cleopatra is sparse, so the accounts of those who hated and feared her speak that much louder.
