Education

Cleopatra and the Pearl

An obscure legend about pearls debunked.

By Barbara Nell
Publisher, The Perspicacious Woman OnLine
Reprinted with permission from June, 2002 issue
http://www.daisyshop.com

Last year, The Field Museum had an exhibit on Cleopatra, which I went to see, and from which I came away dissatisfied, for Cleopatra was not really there in the selection of artifacts chosen to be exhibited. The artifacts were representational and exegetic. Apparently, she lives on in legends, not in artifacts, and I was curious why this is so.

After attending the exhibit, I did some research and found the reason for the lack of artifacts: They were destroyed after her suicide under orders from Octavion, who ruled Rome and Rome's territories (of which Egypt was a part) under the name, Augustus. Interesting, very interesting that the Emperor of Rome, a city-state that ruled the known world at that time, would chose to destroy the living artifacts of a woman whose lands were already conquered and was a mere seductress. Something smelled bad, but I didn't have time to research this.

The Pearl Exhibit arriving at the Field Museum on June 28, 2002 caused me to remember that odor because of a legend about Cleopatra and pearls and Marc Antony, a banquet Cleopatra held with or for Marc Antony in which pearl earrings were the fulcrum.

The Internet provided me with a "Pearl Earring Banquet" legend that's no better and no worse than any on the Internet written by a nonacademic historian, Fred Ward, in his article, "The History of Pearls." He's a gemologist and author of the book Pearls (Gem Book Publishers, Bethesda, Maryland, 1998), and the article was adapted for the Internet.

Pearls, in fact, played the pivotal role at the most celebrated banquet in literature. To convince Rome that Egypt possessed a heritage and wealth that put it above conquest, Cleopatra wagered Marc Antony she could give the most expensive dinner in history. The Roman reclined as the queen sat with an empty plate and a goblet of wine (or vinegar). She crushed one large pearl of a pair of earrings, dissolved it in the liquid, then drank it down. Astonished, Antony declined his dinner -- the matching pearl -- and admitted she had won.

It's evocative, isn't it? But there's one problem: Egypt was already conquered at the time Cleopatra held the banquet. This generally accepted legend smelled bad, too. I turned to the academic websites.

The Pearl Banquet Legend is verifiable. It was held, but its truth is embroidered and the facts are distorted, characteristics all legends possess. A guy popularly named Pliny the Elder (to distinguish him from his nephew, Pliny the Younger) (known by some as the first historian and naturalist, by others, as the 2nd) (and writing his observations in the 1st century after Christ's death) (about 70 years after Cleopatra's suicide), was the first to publicly describe this banquet.

It's in his 'book' called The History of the World. (There are 37 volumes, "published" in 77AD for the Emperor Titus. The banquet is described in Book IX, Chapter xxv, entitled Of Pearles; how and where they be found.) Pliny names the judge at this wager\banquet, L. Plancus (There's a '12' after Plancus' name that I can't figure out the meaning.) about whom I found snippets on other websites. Plancus, the judge, is a Roman legionnaire, who remained in Egypt as one of Caesar's Lieutenants after Caesar went back to Rome. (In other battles elsewhere, Plancus was a victorious General. He was a Senator, a Consul and a Censor, too. These are high and responsible positions in Plancus' resume, Dear Reader. This speaks volumes.) Caesar did not abandon him, but left him as a Lieutenant, commanding troops. Marc is representative of the conqueror, Rome, one of three bosses in Rome, who hold on to the enormous Roman Empire in a Triumvirate capacity, what we now call a coalition government. A guy named Octavion, about whom we will learn more, and a guy named Lepidus, about whom we will not know more, have divided up the Roman Empire with Marc, who holds the territories, which contain the former Egyptian Empire. Marc is placed stratospheres higher in the hierarchy than Plancus when he arrives to visit his territories and at the time when the wage\banquet occurs. Cleopatra is royalty of a conquered territory. Plancus has been at her side for at least 7 years, watching her and reporting about her to Rome.

This fleshed out version from more contemporaneous sources has a ring of truth, doesn't it? The origin, I think, of Pliny's version could have been obtained from one of Plancus' required written reports to the Senate in Rome on "What's What in Conquered Territory, Egypt, This Week." Sort of like TWTWTW, Egypt version.

So, why, Dear Reader, did she hold this preposterous wager\banquet? Turns out, she had traveled to Rome with Julius and the son, Caesarian, who was acknowledged in Rome as Julius' son. She and the kidlet were set up in their own posh house (a villa probably), and she was required to be viewed publicly in social settings as his trophy slave-wife while in Rome. This is where she learned about Roman etiquette banquets, for she was obligated to hold and attend these banquets for Julius. Female royalty of conquered territories were taken to Rome to function publicly as trophy slave-wives. It was both a humiliation for them and a reprieve from death for them. Cleopatra suffered this humiliation not to save her life, but to preserve the lineage on behalf of the son she had had with Julius, I think. (Marc wasn't yet in her picture.)

This pseudo-bigamy or Julius flaunting this 'exotic' female specimen of conquered territory did not scandalize upper class Rome. Her visibility, a requirement, enhanced Rome's dominion over the known world. They became scandalized when Julius had a statue of her made and one of him made and put both in a temple as if they were deities. It is suggested that Julius did this more to show his power over Rome (as in I conquered Egypt's deity-Queen, so I'm more powerful than a deity, so I must be a deity in Egyptian lore, and I can show myself as a deity) than her power over him. Remember, she's a trophy slave-wife and a former ruler of her own Empire. She knows this is political suicide if this power play fails. It probably did not surprise her when someone told her the results of the Ides of March.

She and Caesarian were in Rome when Brutus killed Julius. They came back home to Egypt, where she governed in tandem with Rome's representative, Plancus, and did the best she could what with famine and internecine fighting occurring in her territories. I couldn't tell if she was in hazard in Rome when Julius was killed. I suspect she wasn't, but would have been passed around to someone else in the Senate as chattel, a further ignominious situation she did not want to experience. So, she went back to Egypt where she did the best she could for years with Plancus watching. She was kept informed of what was going on in Rome after Julius Caesar was replaced by a Triumvirate governorship of which two of the Triumvirate are important to us: Octavion and Marc Antony. Nothing much happened between Egypt and Rome for a while.

After seven years of being one of three most important people in the Roman Empire, Marc Antony arrived to see what was what in the capital of the lands he held in the Triumvirate. She held etiquette proper banquets of the sort she had attended in Rome, one of which was the "Pearl Banquet."

Pearls were not held as valuable in Egypt but were valued in Rome and other places. (It was gold that was held in highest esteem in Egypt.) It is believed she received the pearls as a tribute gift from Kings of the East (the Orient is implied), before Egypt was conquered by Rome. Egypt held vast territories before the conquest and she had adroitly obtained and administered these conquests of hers. Back to the pearls: She did not consider them valuable, but knew that Marc Antony and Plancus did.

Now, Marc Antony's personality-reputation preceded him. He was not known as an aesthetic, although he was educated and came from a patrician family. He was known as a carouser, a drinker, a gambler, boring in the company of women (this from Plutarch, a historian), and curiously enough, he was known to suffer from depressions. He was called vulgar by his contemporaries in their letters to each other and in reports sent to the Senate in Rome, all of which survive somewhere.

Cleopatra was not considered vulgar at all. The worst said of her is that she was ostentatious when she was in Rome, and this is interpreted as 'she didn't act like a conquered queen.' She was educated well while a Princess, spoke nine languages, was literate in some, was politically astute, militarily astute, wonderful at doing math in her head, and humorous. She was called brilliant by her contemporaries, when she received delegates from all over the world as head of Egypt. Nowhere, by the way, was she called or described as beautiful or sexy by anyone. These sort of surviving documents are few and far between, but current historians are unearthing them. Plutarch wrote about her, but it was in reference to her association with Marc Antony and how he governed in Egypt, and this is where we get information about her skills.

She was obligated to keep in touch with Marc and Plancus, dine with both of them, be seen in public with both of them, hold public events with both of them. If she enticed Marc, it was to preserve her blood lineage. All conquered royalty did this in the hopes of a coup.

She held the banquet because it was her duty to provide interesting events, an etiquette banquet, for the often boring, usually vulgar, and sometimes depressed Roman representative, Marc, and the long present watchdog, Plancus. And that's the fleshed out event, not the decadent odoriferous spin that's been handed down for two thousand years, and I'm not sorry for that. It does sit well with me that Cleopatra was a sharp cookie. It does not sit well with me that all her male children died bad deaths and only her daughter married and begat. But this lineage tale is for another time.

Octavion, the guy I mentioned earlier, had an 'expunge her memory' campaign after her death because there were men all over her conquered territory, former military men, who were still loyal to her and her line, the Ptolemy. She had lineage, you see, for she had had four or five children, one or two (historians are uncertain) with Julius and three with Marc Antony. Each or any would be in line for the Ptolemy throne and empire. In Rome, Julius' children with Cleopatra could have been powerful adversaries against Octavion for they were both males.

So, he destroyed all artifacts of hers everywhere and smeared her name transmuting her from Empress and deity of a glorious (conquered) empire into a seductress, wanton, vulgar, indolent, etc. And he had Plancus transfer the children to Rome as trophy hostages after her suicide, placed under the guardianship of his sister, Octavia, who, by the way, was the recent widow of Marc Antony. Some say the eldest boy, the one she had with Julius and the one which Julius recognized as his own, was spirited away to India, which was part of the former Egyptian Empire. Others say he went to Rome. Rome had a lot of trophy hostage children, by the way.

Wouldn't it be grand to discover that Cleopatra had intentionally ridiculed Marc Antony and Plancus with her pearl feast, i.e., what these Roman military men hold valuable, I, of noble blood and Queen-deity of Egypt and its territories, hold negligible? I do wish that were true, but we'll never know. No diary has ever surfaced, despite her literacy in some of 9 languages, some of which had alphabets not hieroglyphics, one of which may have been Latin. No log of court events has ever surfaced, despite the fact that scribes were plentiful in all courts in her lands. Octavion was thorough in expunging artifacts and we have to resort to Pliny and Plutarch to obtain an essence.

By Barbara Nell
Publisher, The Perspicacious Woman OnLine
Reprinted with permission from June, 2002 issue
http://www.daisyshop.com