Cleopatra the Great (35 page)

So with Cleopatra's consumption sanctioned by ritual expectation as the Lady of Drunkenness quaffing with the Living Dionysos, Cleopatra was a ‘philopotes' or ‘lover of drinking' in the mould of Alexander's mother Olympias. She was leader of Dionysos' female devotees, whose states of inebriation could lead to bloody sacrifice; their rites recalled the way Egypt's own Hathor-Sekhmet was sent to earth to destroy mankind, revelling in the bloodbath she brought forth and growing drunk in the process.

Although the notion of female aggression was completely unacceptable to the Romans, especially if fuelled by alcohol, wine and beer were staple beverages in many ancient cultures and drinking ‘nothing less than a symbol of Greek cultural identity'. Based on the belief that ‘no man who is a wine-lover can be of low character', the symposium drinking party, maintaining friendships and alliances, was central to Greek social life.

These occasions were based on the consumption of wine within a controlled social environment. The wine, first mixed with water in a bowl
(krater)
, was ladled into a jug, often decorated with images of the Ptolemaic royal women holding cornucopiae. Then it was poured into cups — the classic drinking vessel, the
rhyton
, was a miniature cornucopia usually made of highly glazed pottery. More substantial silver cups were manufactured at Memphis, and Cleopatra's tableware was ‘entirely of gold'; she also had ‘jewelled vessels made with exquisite art'. Her personal drinking cup, set with a large amethyst as the symbol of sobriety which was believed to offset intoxication, was complemented by the large violet amethyst she wore on her finger.

As she and the Inimitables reclined each evening, enjoying a wide range of entertainment in honour of Dionysos, flute players, dancers and acrobats performed to ‘the latest vaudeville numbers, the slinkiest hits from the Nile!' They played drinking games such as
kottabos
, in which wine dregs were flicked at specific targets, and their drinking songs invoked Dionysos and his fellow gods, for ‘Apollo is here for the dance, I hear his lyre playing and I sense the Cupids, and Aphrodite herself. . . He who madly joins the all-night dancing, staying awake ‘til dawn comes, will receive the prize of honey cakes for playing the
kottabos
game, and he may kiss whom he will of all the girls and whomever he wants of the boys.'

Some of Cleopatra's exploits capture a little of the atmosphere pervading her late-night soirees within the palace. On occasion she ventured out into the city, covered and disguised as she had been for her first meeting with Caesar. Now, in Antonius' company, ‘she would go rambling with him to disturb and torment people at their doors and windows, dressed like a servant-woman, for Antony also went in servant's disguise, and from these expeditions he often came home very scurvily answered, and sometimes even beaten severely, though most people guessed who he was. However, the Alexandrians in general liked it all well enough, and joined good-humouredly and kindly in his frolic and play, saying they were much obliged to Antony for acting his tragic parts at Rome and keeping his comedy for them.'

A state of playful drunkenness was the aim, rather than total stupefaction. Three bowls of wine were regarded as the limit for any gathering, since Dionysos himself claimed ‘the fourth ferateris mine no longer, but belongs to hubris; the fifth to shouting, the sixth to revel, the seventh to black eyes, the eighth to summonses, the ninth to bile and the tenth to madness and people tossing furniture about'. At one infamous Greek party involving too much wine the participants believed they were sailing rough seas, throwing furniture out of the window to lighten the load and still feeling ‘seasick' the next day.

Yet along with its recreational and ritual uses, wine had long been used for therapeutic purposes and blended with medicinal ingredients in both Egypt and Greece. It is said that Zeus' daughter, Helen of Troy, had added ‘Egyptian drugs' to the wine she presented to her husband Menelaus and his men when stranded on the island of Pharos, and as every lover of Homer knew, ‘into the bowl in which their wine was mixed she slipped a drug that had the power of robbing grief and anger of their sting and banishing all painful memories. No one that swallowed this dissolved in wine could shed a single tear that day . . . This powerful anodyne was one of many useful drugs which had been given to the daughter of Zeus [Helen] by an Egyptian lady, Polydamna, the wife of Thon. For the fertile soil of Egypt is most rich in herbs, many of which are wholesome in solution, though many are poisonous. And in medical knowledge the Egyptian leaves the rest of the world behind.'

This drug was possibly from the opium poppy
(Papaver somniferum);
its main constituent, morphine, is an analgesic, narcotic, stimulant and euphoric. Opium was certainly used as a sedative in the classical world, stored in small poppy-shaped jugs. The ancient Egyptian ‘shepen' sometimes identified as poppy was ‘used to produce beer, and shepen occurs in medical texts' in a remedy to stop a child crying and still has a reputation as an aphrodisiac in modern Egypt. The Egyptians also used lotus flowers ‘to produce a narcotic-laced wine', and Cleopatra herself suggested her banquet guests ‘should drink their chaplets' which were traditionally made from lotus flowers. It is therefore quite intriguing to think that Homer's reference to a Greek daughter of the gods adding mood-enhancing drugs to the wine of her warrior partner became a reality under the well-read and medically astute Cleopatra. Drink spiking was certainly not unknown. One marriage contract was signed by a bride who swore by Isis, Osiris, Horus and Zeus that ‘I shall not prepare love charms against you, whether in your beverages or in your food.' Yet Cleopatra did just this when creating her own magical potion, enhancing her image as Aphrodite and winning a bet with Antonius all at the same time.

After a challenge to stage the most costly banquet ever, she wagered that she personally could consume 10 million sesterces at a single sitting — a claim which caused great amusement until she unhooked one of her huge pearl earrings, ‘that remarkable and truly unique work of nature. Antony was full of curiosity to see what in the world she was going to do', and along with everyone present watched as she held up her amethyst-studded drinking cup. After its contents had been replenished at a prearranged signal, she dropped the huge pearl into the liquid and, as the contents began to fizz, offered up a toast to Antonius and drank the whole lot down, the ultimate in conspicuous consumption.

Although many have doubted the exact details of the story, assuming that Cleopatra simply swallowed the pearl ‘knowing that it could be recovered later on', her gesture was based on a sound knowledge of chemistry. For pearls are largely made of calcium carbonate and dissolve in acidic solutions. Although normal wine would have been insufficient to dissolve a pearl so quickly, sour wine or ‘vinum acer', modern vinegar, at around 5-7 per cent acetic acid would certainly have done the job. As the calcium dissolved in the vinegar's water content and fizzed up into bubbles of carbon dioxide the pearl would have acted like an indigestion tablet, neutralising the acid to make Cleopatra's pearl and vinegar cocktail quite palatable. As she acted out the chemical formula

CaCO
₃
+ 2CH
₃
COOH > Ca(CH
₃
COO)
₂
+ H
₂
O + CO
₂

Cleopatra's grasp of hard science also tipped over into the esoteric, since the potion she created was known as ‘magistery', a renowned aphrodisiac linked with Aphrodite-Venus as goddess of love.

As she prepared to treat her remaining earring in the same way and presumably offer it to Antonius, Plancus stepped in and declared her the outright winner of the bet. Antonius then had to pay a forfeit and so, ‘at a great banquet in front of many guests, he had risen up and rubbed her feet, to fulfil some wager or promise'. Although Egyptian courtiers had long anointed the royal feet as part of state ceremonials, Cleopatra's choice of forfeit reveals a witty side to her character, since it was traditional Greek practice that men at drinking parties had their feet rubbed by women, one such guest exclaiming, ‘what you are doing now to me, rubbing my feet with your lovely soft hands, it is quite magnificent.'

Such intimacy was certainly achieved by the end of 41
BC
, since the couple were already lovers. As a founder member of the ‘Inimitable Livers', Antonius liked to think of himself as ‘the Inimitable Lover', and, as with Caesar before him, the opportunity to possess Alexander's living descendant must surely have been a tremendous attraction — particularly a descendant whose credentials as the Living Aphrodite must have proved irresistible.

Egyptian images of Aphrodite portrayed her virtually naked but for a luxuriant hairstyle, pins removed to allow her hair to fall around her shoulders. Her skimpy costume might often be little more than a breast-band, a garment she was often shown removing to emphasise ‘the erotic charge unleashed even then by lingerie, which helped women look their best for their lovers'. In addition to her bra-like garment, Aphrodite was also portrayed in necklaces, bracelets, anklets and long chains crossed over her body, worn singly or in pairs. These developed into a kind of jewelled harness, the ‘kestos himas' in which Aphrodite herself claimed ‘all my power resides'. It was not dissimilar in composition to the heavy gold girdles, necklaces and lavish gold ‘kekryphalos' hairnets worn by the highest-status women at the Ptolemaic court.

Such jewellery was often all that was worn during sex. One woman was portrayed on an engraved mirror case, wearing an elaborate bun hairstyle, body chain, anklet and precious little else, in her boudoir next to a bedside table bearing a wine jug, the erotic paintings on the walls typical of the way elite Alexandrians displayed ‘in their homes lustful embraces of their gods. People who reckon sexual excess to be piety . . . ornament their bedrooms with small painted pictures, hanging up rather high, like offerings in a temple. While lying in bed in the midst of their sensual pleasure they can feast their eyes on a naked Aphrodite locked in sexual union with Ares', the Roman war god Mars.

Blatant sexual imagery of this kind had been part of Egypt's non-prudish culture for centuries, and the palace at Alexandria would certainly have contained its fair share of erotic images. Yet centre stage in Cleopatra's own sumptuous quarters would have been her golden bed, its comfortable, feather-stuffed mattress covered in hima-tion-type linen sheets, perhaps topped by an exquisite Egyptian bedspread described as ‘delicate, well-woven, glistening, beautifully coloured, covered with many flowers, covered with ornaments, purple, dark green, scarlet, violet, rich with scarlet blooms, purple bordered, shot with gold, embroidered with figures of animals, gleaming with stars'. The soft glow of oil lamps flickering gently at the bedside, combined with kyphi incense sprinkled on the gold brazier, would have created a suitably restful yet seductive atmosphere as the earthly forms of Aphrodite and Dionysos finally came together in well-upholstered comfort.

Although Antonius, still married to Fulvia, seems to have had no qualms about committing adultery, Cleopatra was single, and within the cosmopolitan and non-prudish atmosphere of Alexandria sex was simply another enjoyable pastime. So-called
symplegma
(‘knot') figurines portrayed improbable sexual positions, while the royal library is known to have contained a wide variety of sex-themed works from improper stories to self-help manuals. One such manual, written by Philaenis of Samos, contained the advice, ‘Concerning seductions: accordingly, the seducer should be unadorned and uncombed, so he does not seem to the woman to be too concerned about the matter in hand.' This was followed by tips on flattery, ‘saying that the plain woman is a goddess, the ugly woman charming, the elderly one like a young girl', then a chapter ‘Concerning Kisses' and another ‘Concerning Sexual Positions'.

Similarly revealing details were featured in Ovid's
Art of Love
, deemed unsuitable for married ladies. It detailed sexual positions based on mythical couples, from the ‘Hector and Andromache', featuring the man on top, to the ‘Milanion and Atlanta', requiring the woman's legs to be placed on the man's shoulders. The poet also advised each woman ‘to know herself, and to enter upon love's battle in the pose best suited to her charms. If a woman has a lovely face, let her lie upon her back; if she prides herself upon her hips let her display them to the best advantage .... If you are short, let your lover be the steed .... Love has a thousand postures .... So, then, my dear ones, feel the pleasure in the very marrow of your bones; share it fairly with your lover, say pleasant, naughty things the while. And if Nature has withheld from you the sensation of pleasure, then teach your lips to lie and say you feel it all. But if you have to pretend, don't betray yourself by over-acting. Let your movements and your eyes combine to deceive us, and, gasping, panting, complete the illusion.'

The intensity of sex was certainly captured in a Ptolemaic spell likening penetration to alchemy, ‘this mysterious fire, all fire, all nape-of-neck, all sigh, all pliant, all you forge in this stove of fire, breathe it also into the heart and liver, into the woman's loins and belly; lead her into the house of the man, let her give to his hand what is in her hand, to his mouth what is in her mouth, to his body what is in her body, to his wand what is in her womb. Quickly, quickly, at once, at once!' Magic too was employed during intercourse. Male stamina could be maintained with a decoction of celery and rocket sacred to the highly phallic Min, while Dionysos' help might be invoked with a blend of pine cones, wine and pepper; carrot juice rubbed on the penis was claimed to prevent premature ejaculation.

Similar combinations of ingredients such as alum, brine or vinegar were recommended as contraception. Aristotle advocated cedar oil, white lead or frankincense to be smeared on the female genitals, while Dioscorides recommended an application of peppermint, alum or cedar gum, a ‘miraculous' contraceptive when rubbed on the penis. Although all were commodities easily available to Cleopatra, she clearly had no intention of using any of them and presumably, as she had planned, by February 40
BC
she was once again pregnant.