The military-themed procession was an oddity to the Alexandrians, though it had at least Ptolemaic roots. There was no precedent for the splendid ceremony that followed. Several days later a throng filled Alexandria’s colonnaded gymnasium, west of the city’s main crossroads, minutes from the palace. Six hundred feet long, the city’s largest structure, the gymnasium stood at the center of Alexandria as at the center of its intellectual and recreational life. It was the opera hall of its day; a gymnasium’s presence was what made a town a city. In the open court of the complex that fall day the Alexandrians discovered another silver platform, on which stood two massive golden thrones. Mark Antony occupied one. Addressing her as the “New Isis,” he invited Cleopatra to join him on the other. She appeared in the full regalia of that goddess, a pleated, lustrously striped chiton, its fringed edge reaching to her ankles. On her head she may have worn a traditional tripartite crown or one of cobras with a vulture cap. By one account Antony dressed as Dionysus, in a gold-embroidered gown and high Greek boots. In his hand he held the god’s fennel stalk. An ivy wreath circled his head. It seemed a second act of the exultant play begun in Tarsus, when—as Cleopatra made her way upriver—word preceded her that Venus had arrived to revel with Dionysus for the happiness of Asia.
Cleopatra’s children occupied four smaller thrones at the couple’s feet. In his husky voice Antony addressed the assembled multitude. By his command Cleopatra was henceforth to be known as “Queen of Kings.” (On coins, she was “Queen of Kings, whose sons are Kings.” The titles would change with the territory, so that an Upper Egypt stela of four years later has her as “Mother of Kings, Queen of Kings, the Youngest Goddess.”) As for her consort, thirteen-year-old Caesarion, Antony promoted him to King of Kings, a pointed recycling of an Armenian and Parthian title. Antony conferred these honorifics in the name of Julius Caesar, Cleopatra’s husband and Caesarion’s father, an unusual case of flaunting a lover’s prior sexual history. Also on Caesar’s behalf, Antony proceeded to name his sons with Cleopatra as King of Kings. Producing the boys in turn, he assigned vast territories to each; the Eastern-inflected names came in handy now. At his cue, little Alexander Helios stepped forward, in the loose leggings and caped tunic of a Persian monarch. On his head he wore an upright, pointed turban topped with a peacock feather. His territories stretched to India; he was to rule over Armenia, Media, and—once his father had conquered it—Parthia. (He was again promised in marriage, this time to the daughter of the Median king, Artavasdes’ traditional enemy.) Two-year-old Ptolemy Philadelphus, the fruit of Antony and Cleopatra’s Antioch reunion, was an Alexander the Great in miniature. He wore the high boots, the short purple cloak, and the brimmed woolen hat—in this case wrapped with a diadem—of a Macedonian. To him went Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia, the lands west of the Euphrates. Cleopatra Selene was to preside over Cyrene, the Greek settlement in what is today eastern Libya, hundreds of miles across the desert. The distributions made, each of the two younger boys rose to kiss his parents. They were then surrounded by a colorful phalanx of bodyguards, Armenians in Alexander’s case, Macedonians in Ptolemy’s.
In such a way Antony parceled out the East, including lands not yet in his possession. For the young woman who fourteen years earlier had smuggled herself into Alexandria to plead for her diminished kingdom, it was a sensational reversal. Cleopatra stood divine and indomitable, less queen than empress, the supreme Roman commander at her side. Her rule extended over a vast swath of Asia, its frontiers established and now at peace. She was protected by Roman legions; with her children, she now reigned, at least nominally, over more land than had any Ptolemy in centuries. On coins minted for the occasion—with them she became the first foreigner to appear on a Roman coin—she appears majestic, authoritative. She has also aged. Her mouth is fuller, and she is noticeably fleshier, especially around the neck.
It is impossible to say whose ambition had brought about the sparkling ceremony, to be known later as the Donations of Alexandria. It is especially difficult to locate Cleopatra’s fingerprints; the truth is smudged forever by Roman manhandling. At least in part the message of the day was clear. On their golden thrones sat what even a coolheaded modern historian has reasonably called “the two most magnificent people in the world.” Together they seemed to resurrect if not expand upon the dream of Alexander the Great, promoting a universal empire, one that transcended national boundaries and embraced a common culture, that reconciled Europe and Asia. They announced a new order. Cleopatra presided over the ceremony and the citywide banqueting that followed not only as a sovereign but as a deity after all, with the divine Caesar’s son on one side, Dionysian Antony on the other. Old prophecies evidently resurfaced now. The Jews linked Cleopatra’s rule with a golden age and with the coming of the Messiah. The queen of Egypt answered the call for an Eastern savior. She would rise above Rome for a better world. In conflating the political and the religious, the imagery was all on Cleopatra’s side.
Mark Antony had a habit of jumping to conclusions, and in many ways the Donations were an exercise in wishful thinking. Certainly they made no difference to the administration of the lands in question, many of them governed by Roman proconsuls. The Armenian king was still very much alive. Parthia was not Antony’s to distribute. A two-year-old child was in no position to rule. As much as the ceremony was a stunning act of assimilation and appropriation, entirely Ptolemaic in its gigantism, it was probably not intended solely for the Alexandrians. Pageantry was never lost on them, but by 34 Cleopatra’s subjects needed no confirmation of her steady rule, of her divinity, her supremacy, or even of Antony’s role in her court. They knew him already more as Dionysus than as Roman magistrate. The two may have intended to formalize arrangements for a subdued but still messy East; Antony may have meant only to rebuke those monarchs who had defied him in Parthia. Or Antony and Cleopatra may have been delivering a powerful, unsubtle message to Octavian. His power derived solely from Julius Caesar. He might well be Caesar’s adopted son, but Caesar’s natural son was, Antony and Cleopatra emphasized, very much alive, nearly adult, and suddenly sovereign over a vast expanse of territory. That message was particularly crucial at a time when Octavian was said to be busy behind the scenes undermining Antony’s efforts in Armenia, where he attempted to suborn Artavasdes.
Even if Antony and Cleopatra were not broadcasting to Rome, it is from Rome that our accounts derive. It is impossible to disentangle what the two may have meant to convey; what Rome actually heard; and what the propagandists turned out, magnified and distorted. The language of the display was Eastern. Especially in 34, it translated poorly. Antony should have known better than to emphasize Caesarion’s paternity. (He may well have known better. Plutarch does not mention the inflammatory remarks.) Octavian had reason to play up the insult, as he did the un-Roman magnificence. It was incumbent on him to blunt the potent symbolism, to turn a military triumph and royal pageant into a drunken revel and a specious, silly costume drama. One did not pay tribute to Julius Caesar in Alexandria, after all. Nor did one celebrate a triumph outside Rome, far from the Roman gods. And why this riotous celebration of an Armenian victory when Parthia remained to be punished?