Cleopatra's Death Poem by gershon hepner

Did an asp kill Cleopatra,
commiting suicide like a shahid,
or was her death caused by a fatwa
Octavian ordered, killing her indeed,
disguizing this assassination
as a snakebite slyly self-induced?
We’ll never know the explanation,
since history by victors is produced,
the story written by Augustus,
who claimed she was defeated at the battle
of Actium. But do her justice––
in her cupboard skeletons still rattle.
and we don’t need to trust the tattle-
tale bearers who supported lies Octav-
ius spread, like Brutus, just as brutal,
attempting like this killer to seem brave.
To kill the queen appeared ignoble,
while letting her survive was inexpedient;
the way to win a war that’s global
is making suicide the main ingredient.

Mary Beard reviews “Cleopatra: The Last Queen of Egypt, ” by Joyce Tyldesley (“The Truth About Cleopatra, ” NYR, February 12,2009) :
One of the most important Roman discoveries of the last fifteen years is still little known. Unearthed in northern Greece, it is the monument erected to commemorate the naval battle of Actium in 31 BC, fought between Octavian (the future emperor Augustus) on the one side and Mark Antony, with his lover and financial backer, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, on the other. Victory effectively handed to Octavian control of the Roman world, and ended the decade of civil wars that had followed the assassination of Julius Caesar. Antony and Cleopatra, the rival claimants to power, sloped back to Alexandria, the capital of Egypt. The vast memorial to the battle is a major work of Roman state art, with terraces, colonnades, freestanding statues, and a large altar covered with sculpture celebrating the new Augustan regime. It stood on a prominent headland, overlooking the site of the battle, reportedly on the exact spot where Octavian had pitched his tent before the engagement and just outside his new city of Nikopolis ('Victory Town') ….Some modern scholars, Tyldesley included, have had their doubts about the queen's death—and not just about how feasible suicide by snakebite (her chosen method, according to tradition) really was. They have also suspected that, however loudly Octavian claimed that he wanted her as a spoil for his triumph, he would have realized that Cleopatra alive was likely to be much more trouble than Cleopatra dead; the story of suicide, in other words, may well have been a cover for murder. We will never know the truth, but Octavian may have had good reason for dating his reign to 31 BC (rather than the following year) , and focusing popular attention on a sea battle instead of the murky circumstances surrounding his adversaries' deaths.


2/2/09