Cleopatra Unveiled: beyond the seduction myth | Women Writers
Explore Cleopatra's lesser-known roles as a strategic political mastermind and writer. Overcome stereotypes of the seductress to discover the depth of her influence.
Female Voices - Women Writers to Remember
by Alessia Pizzi
N.7 - November 2023
We are not used to hearing much about women in antiquity. Not because there were no women of genius, but because the moment a woman invaded a sphere that did not belong to her, the public sphere, she was branded with various accusations. She had to remain in the private sphere: an incubator of children, a mother, a bride to be sold by her father to her husband.
Sappho and Hypatia
If we think of a couple of names you will surely have heard in your life - Sappho, the first female poetic voice in the West, and also Hypatia of Alexandria, the great teacher and philosopher - these are two intellectuals who stand out in the female silence of antiquity. And they were heavily accused: Sappho of prostitution for speaking about love, and Hypatia of witchcraft for gaining political influence in Alexandria, paying for this power with her life.
Who is Cleopatra in literature?
How not to close this circle of women who stand out as historical profiles with Cleopatra, the woman par excellence between East and West. The figure of Cleopatra has always fascinated me because she has been identified almost on a mythological and fictional level. These fates are usual for ancient women: Sappho herself was the 'tenth muse', as if she were not a poetess in the flesh, unrequitedly in love with the mythological character 'Phaon'. Thus Cleopatra, queen in the flesh, was for a long time identified with the stereotype of a lustful woman: just think of Dante's Commedia. In the Inferno, the circle of the lustful, Cleopatra is placed side by side with Semiramis, the mythological foundress of Babylon. Cleopatra therefore - also in literature - goes down in history as a seductress, the woman who comes from the East and seduces Roman leaders, first Caesar and then Mark Antony. She is not a 'royal' queen, but rather a character.
Cleopatra in history
Cleopatra of Egypt comes from a great line of rulers, that of the Ptolemies, all descendants of Alexander the Great, thus of Macedonian lineage. When the regime of the polis of the classical age collapsed, we enter the Hellenistic age with the intervention of Alexander the Great who initiated the new order of the Hellenistic kingdoms. From that moment, for women, a new world was born that allowed a 'certain' emancipation (as shown by the poets and artists of the time, celebrated by epigraphs and depicted on clay tablets).
Cleopatra's role in patriarchal society
If we think of the role at court of Alexander's mother and that of all the queens that followed, then Arsinoe, Berenice, and then Cleopatra VII, it is clear that the mix of the Egyptian substratum with Greek society offered new female role models in the cosmopolitan context of Alexandria - as a new cultural landmark in place of Athens - where women began to have a certain influence, including the hetairai (educated prostitutes). Cleopatra is a child of this context: she is the last ruler of Egypt, the Hellenistic age ends with her. To call a “meretrix” she who in Egypt was seen as the daughter and wife of the gods, makes one smile bitterly.
Roman propaganda infuriated the storytelling of her personality, because Cleopatra was far from the figure of the chaste matron: she was a reigning woman, without father or husband, from a lineage where incestuous marriages were the rule. To a conservative Roman, this makes her the last heir to an illegitimate throne, pandering to all stereotypes about the 'corrupting' East of the mos maiorum. Certain critics have tried to reduce the conflict between Octavian and Antony/Cleopatra as a clash between West and East, but the critics - apart from being Western and biased - commit a fundamental error since Cleopatra is in fact of Macedonian lineage.
Cleopatra the strategist
Cleopatra was an 'abnormal' woman for Roman society, but in fact she was a woman of profound culture, with a political mind, who tried to safeguard Egypt's independence with 'sentimental' alliances with the Romans, carrying on her father's mediating approach. The battle of Actium interrupted this design: had Antony won, the 'barbarian' would have been the mother of the legitimate heirs to rule Rome and the story told today would perhaps be very different.
Why is it that Caesar can make matrimonial alliances, whereas if Cleopatra implements a political strategy, she is seen as a harlot? This age-old stereotype persists over the centuries when speaking of women and is not far removed from today's view, at least in Italy: where if a woman becomes mayor or prime minister, she is talked about more for her personal misadventures (and with epithets like 'doll' on the newspapers) rather than for her political actions.
Cleopatra the writer
Readers of a newsletter on women writers will forgive me the preamble on the historical figure of Cleopatra, which I consider necessary to introduce the queen as a writer. As I have written before, the sources describe Cleopatra as a polyglot woman of charm and culture: it is not hard to believe that she also poured her knowledge into writing.
As De Martino points out, it must have been difficult to separate the cosmetics expert Cleopatra from the queen of Egypt. Some critics have denied the association (Becher 1966, Grillet 1975), others associate the work with the 2nd-3rd century AD alchemist of the same name, yet 'Cleopatra's Cosmetic' or 'Cleopatra's Art of Beauty' are cited by various sources.
Ointments, lotions, soaps are the protagonists of The Cosmetic and this is not surprising: the love of perfumes was typical of Hellenistic queens who embodied this mixed mask between Isis and Aphrodite, passionate and seductive brides quite different from the Greek (and later also Roman) matron who identified with Demeter.
...how it grieves me not to be able to touch her head any more, far from which I could not enjoy female perfumes, I who many a simple one drank, while she was still a virgin.
(Callimachus, “Berenice’s lock”: in these verses speaks the lock detached from the queen's head and donated ex voto to the gods to bring her husband back safely from the war)
Only prostitutes in Classical Greece were allowed to use perfumes and ointments, and not surprisingly... guess who wrote about ointments and perfumes not without posthumous consequences? Sappho, of course.
With floral ointment.... you perfumed yourself (fr. 94)
Fortune and attribution
Cleopatra's work had a wide circulation at least until late antiquity: some have thought that the attribution of this work to her was due to her fame as a seductress, deceived by the frivolous title of the treatise.
Today, unfortunately, we can only read a few fragments and mentions of it in the works of Galen and two doctors of late antiquity: Aetius of Amida, active in the 6th century, and Paul Egineta in the 7th century. Also the mention of it in the first century AD. by Crito, physician to the emperor Trajan, would make the attribution true, although certain critics have held that Cleopatra's role as queen limited her learning of medicine (given the technical nature of the treatise) but Cleopatra, who had close relations with physicians, may have learned about pharmacology, not pathology or surgery. There were other male figures who were knowledgeable about plants, such as King Mithridates, Attalus III of Pergamum and also King Juba II, husband of Cleopatra's daughter, is said to have even discovered a medicinal plant (Pliny the Elder, Natural History).
Beauty recipes
Galen reports solutions against alopecia: they go from almonds and honey to mice heads or boogers to be massaged on the head...Mice by the way are also mentioned in the most effective remedy. Against dandruff it goes a little better, we get by with natural ingredients such as myrrh or sulphur. To dye hair, according to Paolo Egineta, we go so far as to mix urine and ash and then anoint it with myrtle oil.
On the <recipes> written by Cleopatra in her Kosmètikon.
In Cleopatra's Kosmètikon, against alopecia, we find written some
remedies that, in her own words, are as follows.
®1 For alopecia. After grinding the realgar, prepare <the
remedy> with oak mistletoe, as far as possible and, after having washed
previously with nitro <the place to be treated>, coat a cloth and apply.
apply. I mixed the above with nitro foam and it worked.
nitro foam and it worked wonderfully.
®2 Another <remedial>. One drachma of scilla, one drachma of white hellebore.
After grinding finely with vinegar, after shaving and having
having previously washed <the region> with nitro, make an anointing.
®3 Another <remedial>. One drachma of mustard, one drachma of cress,
apply <the whole> finely crushed with vinegar, after having
previously shaved and washed with nitro the area <to be treated>, but it is
preferable to scarify.
®4 Other <medicinal>. 4 drachms of acore bark, 4 drachms of meerschaum of
nitro. <Use medicine when moulded with wet pitch. Shave the entire area <to be treated>, in this way the hairs will regrow
regrow very quickly, and also rub it with a cloth.
cloth.
®5 Another <remedial>. While rubbing, crush some mouse heads on it.
®6 Another <remedial>. After bleeding the area, smear it with
of mouse droppings finely crushed with a cloth.
Text from this source and translated with DEEPL
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Bibliography
Much of what you have read is taken from my master's thesis on women's voices in antiquity, so should you use this content, I ask you the kindness of including my name and this site as a source. Other sources are: