Cleopatra, The Original Celebrity

politicians having a celebrity status is not a recent phenomenon

Plutarch in his famous work Lives, chronicles the history of ancient Rome through the lenses of the personal lives of the influential figures. Different from other ancient Roman historians, Plutarch believes in the power of the personal anecdote and states that “sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles” (Alexander, 139). There is something about an individual’s personal life that causes us to view them differently. And there is something deep within our nature to be curious about the personal lives of other people, especially those who are in the public eye. There is an air of mystery, of exclusivity that comes with being famous, whether it is a politician, celebrity, influencer, or anything in between. Although the work of a politician is taken more seriously and is considered to be more professional and important than that of a celebrity, who would generally be considered frivolous and possibly even unprofessional, there is more overlap between the two than would seem at first glance. Cleopatra would be the perfect example of this. Despite being a political leader, she had in ancient Rome what would be congruent to a celebrity status in this day and age. With the obsession over her beauty, her romantic escapades, and the public spectacles she would create, the Roman people were wrapped around her finger-and she knew it. Cleopatra intentionally puts a sizable portion of her personal life on display-more than one would expect a politician to do, however, the appropriate amount one would expect a celebrity to do. And similar to a celebrity, not all of these stunts were authentic. Why does Cleopatra create all these spectacles, and what kind of leader does that make her?

It is common knowledge that politicians tend to make spectacles of themselves in order to bolster their career. Whether it be a widely marketed campaign, a large-scale philanthropic mission, or sometimes even a trashy publicity stunt, more people knowing about the politician and what they stand for helps them advance their career, in terms of how many votes they get and what sorts of goals they are able to accomplish. Cleopatra does the same as well, especially so with the use of the public appearance. Cleopatra, typically sent by politician and general (and also her lover) Antony, to other kingdoms to meet their leaders, to respond to accusations, to pay respects, or just to give the gift of her own presence. In addition to the public appearance in itself, Antony also tells Cleopatra to go “in her best attire” (Antony, 496). Although a political leader’s outfit shouldn’t make a difference on how they are perceived, this is not the case in reality. Human beings, either consciously or subconsciously, make assumptions about people regarding superficial aspects of them, such as their clothes. For this reason, it makes sense, why in her public affairs Cleopatra would present herself a little more elegantly than she otherwise would. However, it’s not just about the outfit in itself. It’s the idea of making herself stand out differentiate herself from others, to provide that air of exclusivity. That way she will be more memorable to the Roman people, and they will view her as someone who is above them, which can help to increase her political power. Creating political spectacles can help a politician’s career. Cleopatra, however, doesn’t only create spectacles in her political life, but also her personal life. Why would she need to do this? If dressing up, making herself stand out, and creating a spectacle in a political context reinforces her identity as a politician, then what does she get out of doing the same in a personal context?

The most common and well-known spectacle Cleopatra makes of herself is her affair with Antony. Antony, despite being married to another woman, is “so captivated by her” (Antony, 497) and Cleopatra knows this. This pair was known by the Roman people for their charming back and forth, of which they were welcome to serve as a third-party viewer, and an indirect participant as well. When Cleopatra had received several letters from Antony and his friends trying to summon her, she completely ignored them, but then not too long after came, “as if in mockery of them” sailing up the river Cydnus, intentionally preparing the most dramatic and luxurious entrance possible, with a “gilded stern and outspread sails of purple while oars of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps” as she “lay all along under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as Venus…and beautiful young boys, like painted Cupids stood on each side to fan her” (Antony 496). This entrance seems like a drastically disproportionate response to Antony’s invitation. Was she making a scene for Antony, or the citizens of Rome, and what incentive does she have to do either? Like mentioned earlier, politicians benefit from drawing attention to themselves, as more people knowing about them helps this career. But this spectacle is a part of her personal life. Why would her personal affair have anything to do with the people of Rome? If her intent was to create a spectacle for Antony-maybe to seduce him, or get his attention, or tease him a little bit-then why does it need to be a public spectacle? Why can’t she create a dramatic scene for Antony privately? Why involve everyone else? One could argue that Cleopatra values art and beauty, and for this reason, she makes sure to create an aesthetic for anything surrounding her as her personal style. However, when “Antony invited her to supper, [he] was very desirous to outdo her as well in magnificence as well as contrivance; but found he was altogether beaten in both” (Antony, 496). Plutarch’s use of the word contrivance in this quote is interesting. Antony wanted to beat Cleopatra in her contrivance, but why did Cleopatra contrive this in the first place? The use of the word contrivance implies that Cleopatra, who, when hosting supper with Antony, hung up a “great number of lights…so ingeniously disposed, some in squares, some in circles, that the whole thing was a spectacle that has seldom been equalled for beauty” (Antony 496) did so very intentionally. She didn’t merely hang up lights for the sake of decoration and ambience, rather, she purposely wanted to, as Plutarch states, create a “spectacle” of it. If it was her personal style to value aesthetics and beauty, then why would Plutarch state her “contrivance”? If it was her own personal style, then the choice of the many lights, or even the dramatic entrance, for that matter, would have come naturally to her, it wouldn’t have been contrived. It’s not that she was trying to make something she thought was beautiful that just so happened to become a spectacle, the spectacle was what she was trying for all along. Now that it is established that Cleopatra is not just doing what comes naturally to her, but she has something planned up her sleeve, we can now ask for whom the spectacle is for, and what is her reason for creating it?

The spectacles Cleopatra is involved with, almost always have to do with Antony. From “rambling with him to disturb and torment people at their doors and windows, dressed like a servant-woman” (Antony 498) to pranking each other while fishing having placed “fishes that had already taken upon his hooks” (Antony 498) to receiving “amorous messages written in tablets of onyx and crystal, and read[ing] them openly on the tribunal” (Antony 517), whether she is performing to Antony or with Antony, the performances almost always are surrounding him. It may just seem like young lovers fooling around and having fun with each other, but then why is the Roman public invited to watch? Is Cleopatra performing these spectacles with Antony for him or for the public? First, we can address why Cleopatra fools around with Antony in this manner in the first place. Is it truly a result of their young, passionate love and attraction, or does Cleopatra have another hidden agenda going on? Due to his attraction to her and his captivation by her, Antony is clearly very biased towards Cleopatra as Plutarch states that “she would be the first in favor with him” (Antony 496). Cleopatra does have a tangible incentive for Antony to like her. Thanks to Antony, Cleopatra gets to make public appearances and travel to other countries to establish her reputation. For example, when Antony arranges for Cleopatra to arrive to Syria, she is greeted with “no small or trifling present” and “profuse gifts” (Antony 503). Would they have greeted her so warmly had she not been a guest of Antony? But now, since Antony brought her to Syria, she had been able to establish herself there, making sure they now know who she is, and establishing relationships with other countries does wonders for a political career. Nearly all the opportunities she received that Plutarch has written about had been provided by Antony. Cleopatra was provided an opportunity to play an active role in the war where she “furnished two hundred [vessels], together with twenty thousand talents, and provision for the whole army during the war” (Antony 516). Antony “had given her the library of Pergamus, containing two hundred thousand distinct volumes” (Antony 517). And the biggest honor of them all, “he proclaimed Cleopatra Queen of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya, and Cœle-Syria” (where she had already established a reputation) (Antony 515). Cleopatra receives clear benefits and advantages from having Antony under her spell. Additionally, there is reason to believe that Cleopatra’s feelings towards Antony may not be genuine and that she probably does not feel the same way for him that he does for her. Instead of a passionate love affair, it seems more like Antony is wrapped around Cleopatra’s finger, and she knows it and takes advantage of it to advance her political power. Plutarch describes Antony as “coming to her hands tame and broken into entire obedience to the commands of a mistress” (Antony 487). This doesn’t sound like a relationship between two people who love each other, or even two people who like each other, for that matter. Plutarch even describes Antony as a “servant” to Cleopatra (Antony 487). But is Antony willingly taking a position of submissiveness to Cleopatra, or is Cleopatra taking control of and manipulating him, completely unbeknownst to him? Plutarch says that Antony “fell into her snare” (Antony 495). This implies a passiveness on Antony’s part and an active role on Cleopatra’s part. Falling is inherently passive. One can’t choose to fall, rather, some external circumstance causes them to unintentionally do so. Additionally, a snare doesn’t appear out of nowhere. Someone has to place it there. Plutarch hints at the idea that Cleopatra has been orchestrating this plan all along, to seduce Antony to gain political power, while Antony has become so captivated and seduced by Cleopatra that he is unable to see the situation clearly. Cleopatra knows the effect she has on Antony. Plutarch states that Cleopatra “had some faith in her own attractions, which…she did not doubt might prove yet more successful with Antony” (Antony 496). She knows how Antony perceives her, that he has a weak spot for her. Now we know that Cleopatra is intentionally seducing him for her personal gain, and we also know that Cleopatra is benefitting from Antony favoring her, it seems to be so that Cleopatra is just using Antony to help advance her political power. So, it makes sense why Cleopatra would make all these public spectacles for Antony, since she wants to make it seem like she’s genuinely in love with and attracted to him, but then why can’t she do these over-the-top gestures for Antony in private? Why is the public privy to these stunts carried out by Cleopatra? What reason does Cleopatra have for putting her relationship with Antony on display?

Cleopatra seems to be an exhibitionist, but is it an intentional strategy or is it just part of her personality? Cleopatra is known to be strategic and methodical in terms of planning out what she wants to achieve. And she has benefitted from sharing her personal life to the public. As has been established, Cleopatra is no stranger to utilizing other people for her personal gain. If she needs Antony’s help to attain the things she wants to attain, and if Antony is not able to help her in a specific situation, the public, since they think they know what Antony and Cleopatra’s relationship is like, choose to use their power to influence Antony. For example, when Antony’s second wife Octavia came to visit him, Cleopatra seeing rival in her, “feigned to by dying for love of Antony” (Antony 514). The Roman people bought it, “fully believing she would die if he forsook her,” and that “she would not survive the loss” (Antony 514). Not only did they believe her act, but they felt like they had a personal responsibility to get involved, so that when Antony was about to leave for war, they “melted and unmanned him” (Antony 514) until he was convinced in returning to Alexandria and putting off the war until next summer. Did Cleopatra know in advance that by involving the public in her personal affairs-even if they were staged-that it would pay off in terms of them taking her side during her damsel-in-distress act to gain what she wants from Antony? Although the display of her affair had benefitted her in this situation, it more so seems that she loves the attention, affection, and validation from her subjects. Her spectacles towards Antony are aimed at increasing her political power, but they are done publicly to gain the attention from the citizens. The spectacles that have nothing do to with Antony also serve no benefit for the sake of increasing her political power-they are just for the sake of attention. For example, Cleopatra, out of the blue, “appeared in public, dressed in the habit of the goddess Isis, and gave audience to the people under the name of the New Isis” (Antony 515). Why would she do that? She is not trying to appeal to Antony as he is not there to witness it. Plutarch describes it as saying that she gave audience under a new name. She not only dressed up as someone else, not only wanted to be referred to as New Isis, but she gave audience, or listened and interacted with them under this new persona. She not only wanted to appear to be Isis, but also wanted to publicly pretend to be her. If she were truly doing it for herself, why would she give audience to other people as New Isis? She clearly wants to be noticed by other people in this manner. It seems that she has a specific idea of how she wants to be perceived by the citizens. She wanted to be unique, to stand out, to be the best. She didn’t just want people to like her and give her attention, but she wanted people to like her the most and give her the most attention. Cleopatra was jealous of Octavia, not because she was Antony’s wife while she was his mistress. Rather, Cleopatra’s jealousy of Octavia had nothing to do with Antony. She was “jealous of the honors Octavia had received at Athens (for Octavia was much beloved by the Athenians)” (Antony 516). Cleopatra values the attention provided by the public. She doesn’t just want to be liked, but she wants to be more liked than anyone else. She wants to be the favorite. Due to her jealousy of the attention Octavia received from the Athenians, Cleopatra “courted the favor of the people with all sorts of attentions” (Antony 516), so she is no stranger for creating spectacles for the sake of attention. Is this the reason for including the public to view her spectacles with Antony. She knows that the public found their affair endearing and that for the pranks, “the Alexandrians in general liked it all well enough, and joined in good-humoredly and kindly” (Antony 498). She knows what her target audience wants to see and gives it to them in return for the power and attention she desires as some kind of unspoken agreement.

In many ways, Cleopatra is the equivalent of a modern-day celebrity-desiring attention, flaunting her wealth, putting her relationship on display, creating publicity stunts, using and manipulating people to gain power, being valued for her beauty and sexuality-but does this make her a good leader? Many of the other leaders of her time were serious, professional, and stoic, so Cleopatra is a clear outlier (in many ways). Despite not maintaining the same level of professionalism, she was still an effective leader. She stole many of the Romans’ accomplishments for Egypt, multiple wars have been rescheduled for her, she was able to attain a golden throne for herself in the Roman empire, and was even named Queen of Egypt. She took leadership positions during wars, she owned a library, started a mini civilization in Africa away from war and slavery, invented poisonous perfumes, and eventually got Antony to take his own life for her. She was able to accomplish all the things she wanted to accomplish, though not in the most virtuous way possible. But is it a politician’s responsibility to have a strong moral compass? Or is their sole responsibility to obtain whatever will give them and their territory the most power, by any means possible? Because if it is the latter, then Cleopatra is a very strong politician, maybe even better than Antony, as Antony despite being confident, intelligent, and respected, let his feelings for Cleopatra get in the way of important political decisions. Antony was a better person than Cleopatra, but a worse politician. Does this mean to be a good politician, one has to sacrifice their humanity, and put their goals before anything else, even if people close to them are harmed by it? It seems so in politics, it’s either use other people or get used by other people. Cleopatra, through her public spectacles and display of her affair with Antony, made-although a morally questionable person-a highly effective politician.