Collectively the early 40s are the years that prove Cleopatra to have been far more than the sum of her supposed seductions. She made her first steps toward restoring Ptolemaic glory, again following her father’s lead, though with more quantifiable results. She supported and engaged with intellectual endeavors, as befitted her heritage. Hellenistic sovereigns were by definition cultural patrons and scholars; among Cleopatra’s forebears were plenty of murderers, also a historian, a zoologist, a playwright. Ptolemy I wrote a much-admired account of Alexander the Great. Reading backward, we are left to gauge Cleopatra’s reputation by what was falsely attributed to her. She has received extracurricular credit for a diverse body of literature, which says something of her profile. A decadent abroad, she was an able-bodied intellectual at home. She has been variously cited as an authority on magic and medicine, inseparable still for some time; on hairdressing; on cosmetics; on weights and measures. These were realms Cleopatra may well have explored, at least at the dinner table. As for medicine, she was a great patron of the Temple of Hathor, devoted to female health. She was all the same only slightly more likely to have written about baths of asses’ milk than to have invented aspirin.
A curious cure for baldness would be credited to Cleopatra; she was said to counsel a paste of equal parts burnt mice, burnt rag, burnt horses’ teeth, bear’s grease, deer marrow, and reed bark. Mixed with honey, the salve was to be applied to the scalp, “rubbed until it sprouts.” Plutarch holds that she concocted “all sorts of deadly poisons,” with which she experimented on prisoners. “When she saw that the speedy poisons enhanced the sharpness of death by the pain they caused,” she moved on to a survey of venomous animals. These she studied systematically, daily “watching with her own eyes as they were set one upon another.” The Talmud hails her for her “great scientific curiosity” and as “very interested in the experiments of doctors and surgeons.” Given the preponderance of medical professionals at court, the progress in the field, and the lively interest demonstrated in the natural sciences by other Eastern kings—many of whom performed experiments and wrote on biology and botany—this was likely true. The rest of the Talmudic passage may be less so. It attributes to Cleopatra a set of experiments on female prisoners, “in order to determine at what point the fetus became an actual embryo.” Similarly, the medieval Gynaecia Cleopatrae is doubtless apocryphal. It includes instructions for a vaginal suppository “that I always used, and my sister Arsinoe tried.” Leaving aside the question as to whether Cleopatra and her usurping younger sister are likely to have traded contraceptive tips over years when they were more likely plotting each other’s murder, the text is problematic for having been written in Latin. Cleopatra was rumored to be especially skilled in the occult sciences, though the only alchemy she worked was in turning the fields of Egypt into gold.
Much of Cleopatra’s supposed scholarship derives from the Arab world, where Roman propaganda did not penetrate. There she established herself as a philosopher, physician, scientist, scholar. Her name was powerfully resonant, the more so for her association with the pharmacologically inclined, miracle-working Isis. As credible as were some of the imputations, it is difficult to determine how many of the accomplishments were genuine; how many the flattering fallout of Plutarch’s account of an intellectually inclined woman, comfortable in the company of philosophers and physicians, living in enlightened times; and how much they constitute the usual assault on the composed, capable woman, suspect for being too good at her craft, whose talents can be attributed only to “magic arts and charms.” Dissected or not, the bodies must be buried somewhere, the cauldrons and the books of spells nearby. Cleopatra’s abilities were great, but the fertile male fancy incontestably greater.
Her competence would be put to the test in the years following the return, when disaster followed upon disaster. The Nile did not stir over the spring of 43, and that summer failed to rise at all. It proved equally uncooperative the following year. Crops failed to a degree that defied the historical record. Throughout Egypt the misery was acute. Cleopatra eventlessly steered her kingdom through the sustained crisis, doubtless careful about tripping over familiar stones; the previous famine had been a fiasco for her. She may again have declared a state of emergency. Her people were starving. She had little choice but to open the royal granaries and distribute free wheat.* Inflation raged; Cleopatra further devalued the currency. Petitioners from two districts appeared before her for relief from venal tax collectors. Given the “general malaise” and “inspired by a hatred of evil,” she granted them exemptions. She posted notices of the amnesty widely. In the midst of the agricultural crisis came reports of odd glandular swellings and nasty black pustules; an epidemic raged either in Egypt or just beyond its borders. The prolific Dioscorides, an expert on medicinal plants, had ample material on which to base a pioneering treatise on bubonic plague.
The timing was particularly inauspicious as the Roman civil war returned violently in 43 to Egypt’s shores. The Italian peninsula could hardly contain that conflict, a brutal, fitful demonstration that, in Plutarch’s words, “No wild beast is more savage than man when his passion is supplemented by power.” For Cleopatra the infighting took the form of a sort of perverse fairy tale: She knew that all parties would come calling. (The number of appeals attests to her sustained wealth.) She also knew that to back the wrong party was to invite disaster. While she remained answerable to Rome, it was difficult to do so when she did not know who, precisely, Rome was. And no matter whom she endorsed, the cost was likely to be exorbitant. Already she was well acquainted with the wisdom offered to her father, bluntly apprised in the midst of his negotiations as to “what humiliations and troubles he would run himself into; what bribery he must resort to; and what cupidity he would have to satisfy when he came to the leading men at Rome, whom all Egypt turned into silver would scarcely content.”
Cleopatra’s best option would have been to do nothing, an option she quickly exhausted. She went finally with her natural sympathies, and at her price. Dolabella had been high in Caesar’s favor, his precocious fleet commander, his first choice for consul in 44. He was dissolute and hot-headed, also robust, a fine speaker, and a popular favorite. Still in his twenties, he may have struck Cleopatra as Caesar’s natural political heir. When Dolabella applied for assistance, Cleopatra sent him the four legions Caesar had left her, along with a fleet. In exchange she secured a promise that Caesarion would be recognized as king of Egypt, a confirmation crucial to her. Unfortunately, her fleet was intercepted on the high seas. Without a struggle it defected to Cassius, Dolabella’s rival and a leader among the assassins. In turn Cassius prevailed upon Cleopatra for assistance. She sent her excuses. Famine and plague ravaged her country. She was utterly without resources. Simultaneously she prepared a second expedition for Dolabella. Foul winds confined that fleet to the harbor. And she met with rebellious subordinates. Her military commander in Cyprus countermanded her order, supplying Cassius with Egyptian ships. Cleopatra would be called upon to answer for his defiance later.
She was playing a dangerous game that only became more so. In July 43 Cassius’s army encircled and crushed Dolabella, who committed suicide. If she had not already done so, Cleopatra heard next from Cassius’s enemies, Octavian and Antony. The two were in league at the end of 43, intent on revenge against the assassins, primarily led by Brutus and Cassius. For Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son and his former counsel, Cleopatra readied a powerful fleet, loaded down with materiel. She intended to deliver it personally to Greece. Meanwhile the assassin Cassius menaced her. She refused to rise to the bait. He threatened again. He had asked only for her cooperation; Cleopatra had instead assisted his enemy. She was by no means proving the obedient female Caesar had advertised. Enraged, Cassius prepared a full-scale Egyptian invasion. The timing was right; Egypt was weak with famine, Cleopatra vulnerable in the absence of her Roman legions. She later insisted that “she had not been terrified of Cassius,” but she would have been foolish not to have been. He was a noxious character, composed of equal parts cruelty and greed. Known as “the most aggressive of men,” he had been a prime mover among the assassins. He had twelve first-rate legions at his command, as well as an expert force of mounted bowmen. He had been pitiless with those cities into which he had already marched. A skilled general and a former Pompeian admiral, he had fought in the East before. And he was already close at hand, across the Egyptian border, where he had seized control of Syria.