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By Duane W. Roller

Racial profiling and manipulation have been around for a very long time. It has become an issue in contemporary politics, and over 2500 years ago the Greek historian Herodotos wrote that ethnicity was regularly turned to political ends. Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt and a woman of great ability, is often a victim of racial profiling, as today people can be more interested in her racial background than her many accomplishments. Such concerns have recently come to the forefront with the announcement that in at least one of the several Cleopatra movies currently planned, a white (instead of black) actress would play the role of the queen. It is hard to imagine that race would be more important than acting ability, but clearly others disagree.

It has been suggested – although generally not by credible scholarly sources – that Cleopatra was racially black African. To be blunt, there is absolutely no evidence for this, yet it is one of those issues that seems to take on a life of its own despite all indication to the contrary. What follows lays out the evidence for Cleopatra’s racial ancestry, but one must not forget that this is of little importance in assessing the legacy of the queen in world history.

Let us consider exactly the evidence for Cleopatra’s racial background. It’s a little complicated, so do follow closely! She was born in early 69 BC as the descendant of a line of Egyptian kings in a dynasty that went back 250 years. Her ancestor Ptolemy I, a companion of Alexander the Great, founded the dynasty in the late fourth century BC. Ptolemy was Macedonian Greek in origin (he grew up at the royal court of Alexander’s father in Macedonia, the northern part of the Greek peninsula), and established himself as king of Egypt in the convulsive years after Alexander’s death. The descent passed through six successor Ptolemies until it reached Cleopatra’s father. So Cleopatra was no more than eight generations away from being pure Macedonian Greek.

But what about the mothers? Women are always difficult to find, even in royal dynasties, and it is here that questions of her racial background have been raised. For the first six generations the wives of the ruling Ptolemies also came from the same Macedonian background as their husbands. So until the time of Cleopatra’s great-grandfather, the ethnic makeup of the dynasty was still pure Macedonian Greek. In fact two of her ancestors married their sisters, thus reinforcing the Macedonian ethnicity.

It is with Cleopatra’s grandfather that uncertainties develop. Although he had two wives of traditional Macedonian background, he seems to have had at least one concubine of uncertain origin, who may have been Cleopatra’s grandmother. But this is by no means clear, and some sources indicate she was her husband’s sister, and thus pure Macedonian.

Assuming, however, that Cleopatra’s grandmother was not from the traditional Macedonian Greek stem, the question arises as to just what she was. Sources suggest that if she was not Macedonian, she was probably Egyptian. So by the time of Cleopatra’s grandparents, there may have been an Egyptian element in the racial stem.

Cleopatra’s father also had several wives. One was his sister, but again there is evidence that some of his five children had another mother. Yet the geographer Strabo (one of the few contemporary sources for the life of Cleopatra) wrote that all the wives of her father were women of significant status, which rules out any slaves or concubines, and makes it possible that Cleopatra’s mother was of the traditional Macedonian Greek stock. But this may not have been the case, so

Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant

Cleopatra’s sexual liaisons have made her famous for being the femme fatale of classical antiquity and a heroine in the greatest love affair of all time. In Cleopatra: A Biography historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar Duane Roller aims to clear up the infamous queen’s identity—from the propaganda in the Roman Republic all the way to her representations in film today. And what, according to Roller, do the cold hard facts reveal? A pragmatic leader trying to save her kingdom as the reality of a full blown empire loomed ahead.

You can listen to the rest of the series here.

Michelle Rafferty: You just touched on Cleopatra’s relationships with Marc Antony and Caesar. I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the infamous love triangle between the three. What do we know? Was there any love there, or was it all about power?

Duane Roller: These were powerful people who had powerful needs, yet they obviously were a man and a woman in these two different cases and obviously personal things can become mixed in to this in a way perhaps less likely if it were a Roman consul dealing with a king. But now we have a Roman consul dealing with a queen. But clearly the political agenda is the most important, and that’s generally true with royal marriages through most of history, right down to modern times as we well know. The marriage is concocted because of the benefits that will accrue from it.

Caesar came to Egypt in 48 BC, the Romans had long been involved in Egypt, the Romans had a commission from Cleopatra’s father, that if the children, that is Cleopatra and her siblings, could not get along, the Romans were to step in and straighten things out. That’s exactly what Julius Caesar did, supporting Cleopatra’s claims to the throne against those of her surviving siblings. But obviously dynamic man, meets dynamic woman and the result what is what one would expect, and Cleopatra produces this child Caesarian who serves both her purposes as an heir and Caesar’s purposes because he did not have a son.

And much the same can be said about Marc Antony. Marc Antony comes to the Eastern Mediterranean after the assassination of Caesar, after Caesar’s assassins Brutus and Cassius have caused a lot of trouble in the Eastern Mediterranean, he has to straighten things out, he has to rely on the existing powers in the area. Cleopatra is the most important ruler in the area at that time, but again it moves to a personal level very quickly. But these things not mutually exclusive, and we shouldn’t see it as an “either or.” Obviously Antony and Cleopatra have become one of the great love stories of history, and there’s a certain truth to that. But again they had an agenda. Cleopatra needed more children to strengthen the inheritance in her kingdom. Antony’s motives are a little more uncertain, but obviously he and Cleopatra were very much smitten with one another and it fit their political needs.

Rafferty: Why did their relationship end in tragedy? Or, their rule end in tragedy?

Roller: Well that’s a long and complicated one. Antony of course was tangling with his brother-in-law Octavian. He was legally married to Octavian’s sister, and so there’s a personal dimension t

Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant

Cleopatra’s sexual liaisons have made her famous for being the femme fatale of classical antiquity and a heroine in the greatest love affair of all time. In Cleopatra: A Biography historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar Duane Roller aims to clear up the infamous queen’s identity—from the propaganda in the Roman Republic all the way to her representations in film today. And what, according to Roller, do the cold hard facts reveal? A pragmatic leader trying to save her kingdom as the reality of a full blown empire loomed ahead.

For more on your favorite queen tune in for Day 3 tomorrow. You can listen to the rest of the series here.

Michelle Rafferty: So I think one of the most common perceptions of Cleopatra today is that we think of her as this sultry seductress, but you argue that this simply isn’t true. What do we know about Cleopatra’s romantic liaisons?

Duane Roller: Well as far as we know, she only had two relationships in 18 years, and I don’t think that qualifies by any standard to make her a “sultry seductress.” Moreover, these two relationships with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony were very carefully chosen. Both the men were the most powerful men in Rome in their era. And I said a moment ago, she was very much concerned with producing an heir. And if you are going to produce someone who is qualified to take over your kingdom and keep it going, you want to make sure the other person involved in producing the heir is of high quality. There was no one within her family she could rely on, there was no one within the dispossessed royalty of the Eastern Mediterranean. But Rome was in ascendancy, Rome was the great power, so why not have liaisons with Romans and produce a really first class heir. But that’s all we know about.  Obviously we weren’t in her bedroom every night in terms of the sources, but as far as we can tell she chose her relationships very carefully and they were only two in number.

Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant

Cleopatra’s sexual liaisons have made her for being the femme fatale of classical antiquity and a heroine in the greatest love affair of all time. In Cleopatra: A Biography historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar Duane Roller aims to clear up the infamous queen’s identity—from the propaganda in the Roman Republic all the way to her representations in film today. And what, according to Roller, do the cold hard facts reveal? A pragmatic leader trying to save her kingdom as the reality of a full blown empire loomed ahead.

For more on your favorite queen tune in for Day 2 tomorrow.

Michelle Rafferty: Your new book Cleopatra argues that much of what we think about Cleopatra is sensationalized or untrue. Why is it that our understanding of the Egyptian queen is so skewed, and who is the real Cleopatra?

Duane Roller: Well in terms of your first question, about why is the understanding so skewed, there are really two reasons. One is that much of what we know about her is from her enemies who defeated her, who obviously wanted to create her as a genuine threat to the Roman Republic, and indulge in a great deal of propaganda as to how horrible this women was, all of the terrible, nasty things she did, and obviously there’s a certain amount of gender issues built into this as well. The second is reason is that because Cleopatra was such a fascinating character, she became almost an icon in art and literature and drama, starting probably with Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, but continuing down through a vast number of representations in the visual arts, Delacroix and others, opera, masonry’s Cleopatra,  and of course in the 20^th century ending up with well known film and cinema representations. And so that of course emphasizes the scandalous and dramatic by necessity, and has kind of overwhelmed the relatively scant information about the women herself.

Who is the real Cleopatra? Well she was a woman who inherited a dying kingdom, who was the only woman to rule alone in all of classical antiquity, and tried to salvage the situation against the overwhelming power of Rome. She also, if her kingdom was to survive, she had to produce heirs. And that meant personal involvement in the way that a male ruler would not have. She was a linguist, she was a published author, a skilled military commander—all of which makes her a fascinating woman without  necessarily some of the scandalous material that we’ve come to know and love so much about her life.

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When I think of mildew I think of camping gear that came home after a rainy canoe trip, was dragged into the basement so I could warm up in the bath, and then forgotten about for a month or so.

As I’m sure is the case with most people, I have no particular fondness for mildew.  I place it in a mental compartment very close to where I keep my images of mold.  If I am diligent in my household sanitation mildew and I can keep a respectful distance between us.

That’s why the other day when I was researching the word honey I was astonished to find that the Latin word for “honey” had given rise to the English word mildew.

Evidently when mildew first was used in English it meant “honeydew,” the sticky droppings left behind by aphids.

It seems that to a farmer a sick plant was a sick plant and if it was sick because aphids were sucking it dry and leaving it covered with a sticky coating, it was just as bad as if it was sick because of a fungal growth that was leaving it with a sticky coating; so why not call both coatings the same thing.

Less appetizing though, don’t you think.

The honeydew meaning appears first in Old English documents—so well over 1000 years ago—while the fungal meaning creeps in a little over 600 years ago.

One of the reasons we know that mildew relates to honey is because of a fellow named Robert Bruce Cotton.

He lived around the same time as William Shakespeare, so that’s 400 years ago.

He was particularly interested in antiquities and he was fortunate enough to be pretty rich.

We really should thank him because he came along at a very opportune time.  King Henry VIII had found it necessary to kick the Catholic Church out of England so that he could get on with some new marriages.  In doing so he had disbanded the monasteries.

But the monasteries were the main places of refuge if you were an old manuscript trying to hide from the ravages of time.  In kicking out Catholicism Henry unwittingly made homeless whole libraries of precious manuscripts.  Sir Robert Cotton went around collecting up these homeless waifs and giving them a roof over their heads in his own personal library.

The other day I talked about the Lindesfarne Gospels during the episode on the word amen; these fantastic documents were among those rescued by Cotton.

Similarly the first document to contain the word mildew was housed in the Cotton Library.

While most of the citations I report to you from the Oxford English Dictionary come from some book or other with a name, in the case of the word mildew the name of the old manuscript that gives us a first citation is a little curious.

It is called the Cleopatra Glossary A.III.

There is nothing in the document that relates to Cleopatra the old queen of Egypt.

Instead it was an idiosyncrasy of Sir Robert that earned the title.

Sir Robert Cotton arranged his library with busts of famous people from history along the top shelves, with each of the shelves below marked by letter and number.  So it just so happened that this particular word, in this particular document lay for some years beneath the marble likeness of Cleopatra.

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