Antony and Cleopatra

Cleopatra was not the exotic, scheming, and lustful queen of legend who ensnared Rome’s greatest men. Her affairs with Pompey, Caesar, and Antony were historic realities, but these were driven by realpolitik. As Adrian Goldsworthy writes:

Cleopatra was not another Helen of Troy, a mythical figure about whom the most important thing was her beauty. She was no mere passive object of desire, but a very active political player in her own kingdom and beyond. Cleopatra was born and raised in the real and very dangerous world of the Ptolemaic court in the first century BC.

Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is set in the final decades of the Roman Republic, during the aftermath of Julius Caesar’s assassination. To stabilize Rome, power was divided among the triumvirate of Mark Antony, Octavian (who later became the great Augustus), and Lepidus. Antony took control of the eastern provinces and aligned himself with Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, both politically and romantically. Their union, however, alarmed many in Rome, where Cleopatra was seen as a dangerous foreign influence and Antony as betraying Roman discipline for Egyptian luxury.

Geopolitically, Egypt was of immense significance in the late Roman Republic, making Cleopatra’s alliance with Antony a serious threat to Octavian. The Nile Valley’s fertile land made Egypt the breadbasket of the Mediterranean, supplying much of the grain that sustained Rome’s population and political stability. Its capital, Alexandria, was a major trading hub linking the Mediterranean to India, Arabia, and Africa, giving Egypt strategic control over key trade and naval routes. So it was just a matter of time before the Octavian-Antony alliance cracked and split.

The conflict between Antony and Octavian also serves as a proxy for a larger cultural clash—between the Roman ideals of discipline and martial valor, and the perceived decadence and excess of the East. In response to an accusation by Octavian about his affair with Cleopatra, Antony sends a famous, blunt rebuke:

Why have you changed? Is it because I’m screwing the queen? Is she my wife? Have I just started this or has it been going on for nine years? How about you — is it only Drusilla you screw? Congratulations, if when you read this letter you have not been inside Tertulla or Terentilla, Rufilla or Salvia Titiseniam, or all of them. Does it really matter where or in whom you dip your wick? (Source)

Reading Ancient Roman history is always fascinating for it provides numerous clues that explain the rise of Christianity. The values of the empire provided a fertile ground for the message of Christ to take root. Shakespeare embeds some of these Christian ideas in Antony and Cleopatra. The play contrasts traditional Roman virtues of honor, valor, and noble suicide with emerging values that would later be central to Christianity, such as humility and the rejection of suicide as sin. Its characters also resonate with Christian archetypes: Antony as a Christ-like figure who sacrifices himself for love, and Enobarbus as a Judas figure who betrays and then despairs. Cleopatra’s vision of Antony as a universal, god-like presence anticipates the emergence of Christianity as a unifying faith for the vast Roman Empire, suggesting that the lovers’ downfall symbolically paves the way for a new spiritual order. (Prof Paul Cantor’s lecture on this topic)

His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck
A sun and moon, which kept their course, and lighted
The little O, the earth.

His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm
Crested the world: his voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in ’t; an autumn ’twas
That grew the more by reaping.

I found the 1972 Charlton Heston adaptation quite campy. I should also watch the Elizabeth Taylor hit, hopefully this month.

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The Shakespeare Project so far: Macbeth | The Tempest | The Merchant of Venice | Twelfth Night | As You Like It | Much Ado About Nothing | King Lear | Hamlet | Julius Caesar