Cleopatra

In 1887, The Graphic , an illustrated London weekly, commissioned an exhibit of twenty-one paintings of Shakespeare's heroines. For the Victorians, who idealized the beauty and demure modesty of women, this portrait of Cleopatra by John William Waterhouse, must have been a problematic figure. Here, uncorseted and unashamed, Cleopatra is portrayed as femme fatale , lounging on a leopard skin (in much the same way as she does in Alma-Tadema's Antony and Cleopatra ), her sultry gaze defying the viewer, as seductive and potentially poisonous as the asp that bit her—and so the telling quotation from Shakespeare that accompanied the picture when the series was reproduced: "Where's my serpent of old Nile? For so he calls me" (I.v). In the winter of 34 BC, while still married to Octavia, the sister of Octavian (later, Augustus), Antony publicly acknowledged his children by Cleopatra (twins, aged six, and a younger brother), declaring that they would share in the kingdom of Egypt (Dio, Roman History , L.1.5). Later, after the battle of Actium (31 BC), Antony sought to mollify the victorious Octavian by recounting the amorous adventures and youthful pranks they had shared (Dio, LI.8.1). Suetonius, too, quotes from a letter supposedly written by Antony in response to Octavian's criticism ( Life of Augustus , LXIX). The Loeb edition translates the passage as “What has made such a change in you? Because I lie with the queen? She is my wife. Am I just beginning this, or was it nine years ago? What then of you—do you lie only with Drusilla? Good luck to you if when you read this letter you have not been with Tertullia or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia, or all of them. Does it matter where or with whom you take your pleasure?” "What has come over you? Do you object to my sleeping with Cleopatra? But we are married; and it is not even as though this were anything new—the affair started nine years ago. And what about you? Are you faithful to Livia Drusilla? My congratulations if, when this letter arrives, you have not been in bed with Tertullia, or Terentilla, or Rufilla, or Salvia Titisenia—or all of them. Does it really matter so much where, or with whom, you perform the sexual act?" Now read the translation by Andrew Meadows in the catalog to the recent exhibition Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth. The Latin verb is ineo , which Lewis and Short (1879) translate as "to go into, to enter" or carnally "to know." The Oxford Latin Dictionary offers the same definition but emphasizes its veterinary connotation: "(of the male animal) To cover, mount; (also applied to human copulation)." Both dictionaries cite the passage from Suetonius as an example of this secondary meaning. Ineo , in fact, more commonly seems to have been understood as a technical term for the mating of male animals, and Antony's substitution of the verb's attribute for its literal meaning may suggest this activity.