Figures of Legend in History

Figures of legend in history often take on proportions which may be less a reflection of the actual characteristics of these folklored individuals as they are a reflection of the purposes of history's authors. The icons who ruled over their people and the groundbreakers that stand out as nexus points in evolution are remembered by more than just their factual legacies. Beyond that, they are recalled with pointed romanticism or intentional vilification, the subject of debate, adoration, art, literature and pop culture, their images shaped by the needs of the venue, the interests of the historian or the desires of liberal artistry. Such is to say that history is a sort of self-reflexive mythology, and that its figures, rather than serving as eminent examples of quality personage, "are better suited to inform, and give us juster Notions of Ourselves, as they are Originals, and present the Eye with the prospect of Human Nature, taken from Life, and not extended beyond the Limits of Credibility and Truth."(Gadeken, 2) Thus, in our legends there is rarely one biographical perspective which can be assessed as truly factual. Even the most familiar characters in our collective history are more amalgams of image, superficial detail and speculation, much like the celebrities of present day which we profess to know. When one then considers the history of a prominent woman, an even greater alertness to an opportunistic subjectivity in historiographical perspective must be employed. Multiple histories on one subject are usually the result of cultural, political and ideological perspective. This is to say that the stories which survive the obscuring of passing time are most often those told by the victor and, moreover, these stories will be reshaped as they age as per the evolving purposes of their maintenance. So with regard to the treatment of women in historiographical review, it is often synonymous with the actual treatment of women throughout history. More often then not, prominent feminine historical icons have been those which exist in our annals in spite of prevailing sociological trends toward a patriarchal order. This standard may either play a substantial role in the notoriety of the figure, with her exploits against the conventional view of women drawn explicitly in her story, or it may exist in subtextual premises which have come to define her legend. The latter of these two cases is that which divides historians on the characterization of Cleopatra. While she is perhaps the first and most famous female celebrity in history, already a legend of literature by the start of the Common Era, her status as a person is hardly a thing of recorded fact. Hers is an image drawn to us by Liz Taylor in celluloid, William Shakespeare in theatricality and stoic ancient sculptures, inanimate features in a British Museum. And in each of these venues, there is a bias which accompanies the perspective expressed, with the gaps in Cleopatra's known history filled in by the pretenses of the auteur. There is, as a result, a sprawling dichotomy in the figure of Cleopatra. A strong female ruler, driven to the expansion of power and the reclamation of her birthright, her behavior, demeanor and purpose have been depicted in ways which set her in contradictory modes. On one hand an exemplar of the earliest feminist potential of powerful women and on the other a deceitful temptress who used her womanly charms to exploit the weaknesses of men, these two versions of Cleopatra are the products of two decidedly divergent purposes. And naturally, due to inbuilt societal impulses which favored a perpetuation of the latter of these two depictions, this is the one which has been most actively preserved. Though there are surviving views of Cleopatra, especially in Egyptian history and feminist teaching, as an important and effective leader, with certain aspects of global history affirming such ideas, they are often pushed to the periphery of a characterization which is more consistent with the arguably misogynistic depictions in literature.

The positive views of Cleopatra, as a pharaoh of greatness in Egypt, are the product of her actual popularity of the time. The surfacing of ancient artifacts which have been connected to her illustrate that she was well regarded, powerful and, to the view of her domestic artistic biographers, responsible for a certain degree of success for their people. She was a key figure in a time of geopolitical transition, with many of her actions having a significant bearing therein. Her rise began rather circumstantially, when she was just seventeen years old: When Alexander died, male Argeads were in scarce supply: there was only a mentally deficient half-brother, and Alexander's wife Roxane was pregnant with a son, later known as Alexander (IV). After considerable strife a Macedonian noble was chosen as regent for these two joint kings, and the rest of Alexander's generals moved to seize parts of the empire he had conquered. Female members of the royal family were more plentiful in this period than males." (Pomeroy, 155)

This was the circumstance that saw Alexander the Great's sister, Cleopatra, wage battle against her then husband/brother Ptolemy IX, for control of Egypt. Both she and her brother were heirs to the Ptolemic Dynasty which, under the diminishing autonomy of Egypt and a greater international influence of the burgeoning Roman Empire, had gradually ceded the bulk of its authority to Italian authority. Naturally, the strengthening of Roman authority was only aided by the divisive power struggles within the Ptolemic ruling family, centered in the capital of Alexandria, on the Nile. This is where the history of Cleopatra takes a path that is subject to multiple interpretations. In 48 B.C., when Cleopatra was 22 years old, she is said to have been famously delivered to the visiting Julius Caesar, rolled up in an ornate Persian rug, thus inducing an alliance between Cleopatra and central power in Rome. With Caesar's aid, she was able to easily defeat her husband and assume full control of Egypt. (Ashmawy, 1) By this point, her ingenuity and ruthlessness had elevated her to a certain status amongst the Egyptians, amongst whom "Cleopatra was long remembered as a great ruler of divine status, and we hear of an image of her being reverently gilded as late as AD 373, when the empire was nominally Christian." (Walker, 1) The visible political motives of such an alliance as Cleopatra's and Caesar's, for example, is illustrative of the admirable tenacity with which Cleopatra is said to have pursued the glory of Egypt. Though influence had declined under the reign of 200 years of Ptolemic subservience to Rome, Cleopatra was the first of Egypt's rulers since the inception of that relationship, to have increased the sphere of its influence. She did so, as this story illustrates, by aligning with that force which had been an entity of lordship theretofore. However, the story of the Persian rug does suggest a great deal more about her character, or at least its use in history, than simply her diplomatic prowess. The explicit element of seduction here is a self- inflicted objectification that suggests her power was derived from her virtues of womanhood as much as from her competence as a leader. And in her relationship Caesar would originate a hefty piece of ammunition in the salvo against Cleopatra's character. The opportunistic series of relationships which aid Cleopatra in her augmentation of influence help to constitute the image of a bewitching temptress, blinding the senses of her male counterparts to achieve her own devices. Certainly, this is the view that Romans held of her when she came into the favor Julius Caesar. In 45 BC, Cleopatra and Caesarion left Alexandria for Rome, where they stayed in a palace built by Caesar in their honor. Caesar's acts were anything but overlooked by the Romans. In 44 BC, he was killed in a conspiracy by his Senators. With his death, Rome split between supporters of Mark Antony and Octavian. Cleopatra was watching in silence, and when Mark Antony seemed to prevail, she supported him and, shortly after, they too became lovers." (Ashmawy, 1)

At this point in her biography, it would appear that the powerful men with whom she endeavors into romantic relationships have had a defining effect on Cleopatra's path. And indeed, "her liaisons with distinguished foreigners, equally, represented no departure from tradition, but recalled the exploits of her ruthless forebear Cleopatra Thea, who had married three kings of Syria." (Walker, 2) She differed fundamentally though from this precedent though. In both positive and negative accounts of her, it seems that it may be, contrarily, that she is the force which has had a defining effect on the men with whom she involves herself. And by extension, this would naturally have a real bearing on the subordinate nations represented in these men. Cleopatra's actual intentions, whether motivated by love, lust, greed or politics, are at this point unknown. And as a point of fact, much of the haziness surrounding her actual nature is derived from the primary source-point for her biographical details. Conventional literature would come to see Cleopatra as an exploitive whore, responsible for the downfall of virtuous men like the Ptolemies, Julius Caesar and, inevitably, Marc Antony as well. So is this reported by historical accounts such as that by Cassius Dio who reflected that "Indeed she so enchanted and enthralled not only Antony but all others who counted for anything with him that she came to entertain the hope that she would rule the Romans as well, and whenever she took an oath, the most potent phrase she used were the words, 'So surely as I shall one day give judgement [sic] on the Capitol.'" (Cassius Dio, 39) The argument given here in defining her persona would be the clear understanding of her imperialist intent, so to say that it had been always an ambition for this ruler to extend the Egyptian influence to new heights. The Roman perspective turns our attention to some correlation between the two distinct personas which depicted Cleopatra as a powerful ruler and a seductive and sexually driven woman. Of course, in rhetoric and political action, the Romans had their own imperial aims, making the union between Antony and Cleopatra an inevitability gone awry. As the prevailing power in its context, the Romans had longed kept a wary eye on affairs in Egypt, recognizing it both as a power and as a resource. Thus, "the Romans watched the unfolding royal saga with a proprietorial interest. They believed that they had a valid legal claim to Egypt, which had been gifted to them seven years earlier in the vexatious will drawn up by Ptolemy X." (Tyldesley, 11) It was thus that with the eventuality by which Cleopatra had become Queen of Egypt, the Romans would perceive both with caution and entitlement the events unfolding there. Especially insofar as Cleopatra VII seemed to dismiss this latter entitlement based on her own vision of Ptolemic expansion, her ambitions would represent the final threat from the Eastern conqueror. To the point, her ambition would be realized to a geographical range unseen for many centuries in the fertile crescent. The threat felt by the Romans was very real, for quite to the point, one only needed the events of her rulership to verify that this expansion of absolute imperial majesty was her intent. It would, in fact, be the last gasp for the once great Egyptian kingdom, with Cleopatra seeing it to its most tautly stretched influence before these ambitions would cause it to unravel. In her time though, "the dramatic reign of Cleopatra VII closed one of the most brilliant periods in ancient Egyptian history. For almost three centuries her ancestors ruled Egypt and extended Egyptian influence throughout the Aegean and western Asia and deep into African and Arabia. Not for over a thousand years had Egyptian power and influence been felt over so wide an area." (Burstein, 1) Not coincidentally, this expansion which was an extension of the same Greek ethnicity that produced the city of Alexandria and the lineage to which we can attribute Cleopatra's birth, came at a time of Roman decline. (Grant, 4-6) To this exact point, it is important to note that the author of the image of Cleopatra which would have us believe she was a sex-hungry mastermind of deception who conquered men for power was also her nemesis: Our image of Cleopatra is ultimately drawn from sources close to her enemy, Julius Caesar's great-nephew and heir Octavian, later Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Living another forty-four years after Cleopatra's suicide in 30 BC, Octavian had plenty of time to re- cast recent history to his liking. Cleopatra was represented in literature of the day as the whore of the Canopus, the foreign queen who had unmanned Antony, and made him un-Roman." (Walker, 1)