Cleopatra: A Sphinx Revisited

4. Cleopatra, Isis, and the Formation of Augustan Rome

78 4 Cleopatra, Isis, and the Formation of Augustan Rome Sarolta A. Takács The bright mirror I braved: the devil in it Loved me like my soul, my soul: Now that I seek myself in a serpent My smile is fatal. Nile moves in me; my thighs splay Into the squalled Mediterranean; My brain hides in that Abyssinia Lost armies foundered towards. Desert and river unwrinkle again. Seeming to bring them the waters that make drunk Caesar, Pompey, Antony I drank. Now let the snake reign. A half-deity out of Capricorn, This rigid Augustus mounts With his sword virginal indeed; and has shorn Summarily the moon-horned river From my bed. May the moon Ruin him with virginity! Drink me, now, whole With coiled Egypt’s past; then from my delta Swim like a fish toward Rome. Ted Hughes, Cleopatra to the Asp Cleopatra, Isis, and the Formation of Augustan Rome 79 The English poet laureate Ted Hughes’ poem Cleopatra to the Asp succinctly captures the essence of Cleopatra’s Egypt as a potent influence on the formation of Augustan Rome. This essay investigates the historical basis for that influence, part of the stimulus for the Augustan remodeling of the Roman Republic into the Principate. Whether this modeling was deliberate or unintentional is not my concern. I will argue, however, that the religious apparatus that supported succession in Cleopatra’s dynasty, in which the goddess Isis played a pivotal role, influenced and, in some ways, shaped Augustus’ political innovations. Ancient authors, papyri, and inscriptions are the basis for this historical analysis, which has two geographical and chronological foci, Egypt (pre-Ptolemaic and Ptolemaic) and Rome (Republican and Augustan), and two societal aspects, religious and political. Egypt became the personal province of Octavian Augustus in 30 B.C.E. after he defeated Egypt’s last Ptolemaic ruler, Cleopatra VII, the New Isis, and Marc Antony, her Dionysian lover, at Actium. Thus, Augustus saved the Roman state from falling into the hands of a degenerate country whose inhabitants worshipped animals and vegetables. Although I mean that tongue in cheek, the Egyptian as animal and vegetable worshipper is a well-known topos in Latin literature.1 This notion that oriental influences weakened the Roman Empire, and might have brought it to its knees, still lurks in secondary literature. After all, it was in Augustus’ hands that Rome had been strengthened against the oriental influences that eroded the core of Roman self-definition based on the mos maiorum , ancestral patterns of behavior. But these “oriental” (read Egyptian) influences judged so negatively by authors of the Augustan period are not assessed in the same way by those writing in the Flavian or Hadrianic periods. No tone of dismay accompanies the account of the austere Vespasian accidentally healing a lame and a blind man in the name of Sarapis (Isis’ Ptolemaic consort), after he was proclaimed emperor in Alexandria (Tacitus, Historiae 4.81). Vespasian’s son Domitian rebuilt the temple of Isis in Rome after it burnt down in the fire of 80. No author hesitates to remark on the philhellene Hadrian’s (whose beloved Antinous drowned in the Nile) great interest in Egypt or his visits there. In fact, it was Augustus who permitted the integration of the worship of Isis and her consort Sarapis into the array of Roman cults, with both political and dynastic aspects attached. Ancient authors and, consequently, modern scholarship ignore this and simply follow the clichéd view of Rome combating oriental decadence propagated and perpetuated by the circle of authors writing for the first princeps. But how did Isis come to Rome and into the mental and religious landscape of Romans at the height of supposed anti-Egyptian feelings? How did pharaonic and Ptolemaic dynastic concepts mesh with Roman ideology ? The assimilation of two systems of representation, Ptolemaic Egyptian and Republican Roman, stimulated the imperial Roman culture described in general history books, a creation of Augustus.2 80 Cleopatra, Isis, and the Formation of Augustan Rome AUGUSTUS IN EGYPT Augustus, the conqueror, stayed in Egypt for several weeks only and never returned to the province. Dio Cassius (51.16.3–5) writes that: περὶ μὲν δὴ τοὺς ἄλλους τοιαῦτα ἐγίγνετο, τῶν δὲ Αἰγυπτίων τῶν τε Ἀλεξανδρέων πάντων ἐφείσατο ὥστε μὴ διολέσαι τινά, τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς ὅτι οὐκ ἠξίωσε τοσούτους τε αὐτοὺς ὄντας καὶ χρησιμωτάτους τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἐς πολλὰ ἂν γενομένους ἀνήκεστόν τι δρᾶσαι· πρόφασιν δὲ ὅμως προυβάλλετο τόν τε θεὸν τὸν Σάραπιν καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον τὸν οἰκιστὴν αὐτῶν, καὶ τρίτον Ἄρειον τὸν πολίτην, ᾧ που φιλοσοφοῦντί τε καὶ συνόντι οἱ ἐχρῆτο. καὶ τόν γε λόγον δι’ οὗ συνέγνω σφίσιν, ἑλληνιστί, ὅπως συνῶσιν αὐτοῦ, εἶπε. καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα τὸ μὲν τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου σῶμα εἶδε, καὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ προσήψατο, ὥστε τι τῆς ῥινός, ὥς φασι, θραυσθῆναι· τὰ δὲ δὴ τῶν Πτολεμαίων, καίτοι τῶν Aλεξανδρέων σπουδῇ βουληθέντων αὐτῷ δεῖξαι, οὐκ ἐθεάσατο, εἰπὼν ὅτι “βασιλέα ἀλλ’ οὐ νεκροὺς ἰδεῖν ἐπεθύμησα.” κἀκ τῆς αὐτῆς ταύτης αἰτίας οὐδὲ τῷ Ἄπιδι ἐντυχεῖν ἠθέλησε, λέγων θεοὺς ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ βοῦς προσκυνεῖν εἰθίσθαι. He spared Egyptians and Alexandrians and put none to death. In truth, he did not want to harm those who could be useful to the Romans in many ways. Likewise he put forth as a pretext their god Sarapis and Alexander...