Cleopatra in Gold: Julius Caesar's Statue of the Queen of Egypt

Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt, and the last Pharaoh, was memorialized in a golden statue commissioned by none other than Julius Caesar, the first emperor of Rome.

Caesar first met Cleopatra when he was engaged in a Civil War and vying for control of the Roman Empire. When pursuing his rival, Pompey, to Alexandria on the shore of Egypt, Caesar had arrived to find that Pompey had been murdered by the Egyptians. Caesar then defeated Pompey's Roman forces and took possession of Alexandria.

At that time, Cleopatra, who had previously been appointed Pharaoh, was deposed from power, and her younger brother Ptolemy occupied the throne. Cleopatra, then only about 18 years old, devised an ingenious plan to meet with Caesar. She was smuggled into the palace where Caesar was staying, rolled up in a quilted mattress stuffed with down-feathers, that was to serve as Caesar's bed.

The mattress was unrolled in Caesar's presence, and he was immediately beguiled by the beautiful, intelligent Cleopatra. She stayed the night with him and plead her case, asking to be restored as ruler of Egypt. Then next day, a meeting was set up between Caesar, Ptolemy and Cleopatra. The meeting went badly for Ptolemy, who petulantly cast his crown to the ground, exclaiming that he had been betrayed, and stormed off angrily. Caesar then sided with Cleopatra and granted her wish to once again be Pharaoh over Egypt. Egypt was thus allied with the Roman empire yet subservient to Rome.

After his victory over Pompey and Ptolemy, Caesar dallied in Egypt. He went on an extended pleasure trip, sailing up the Nile with Cleopatra in a floating palace. They became lovers, and Cleopatra was soon pregnant with Caesar's son. Caesar, however, left Egypt after a few months to attend to political matters in Rome and the oversight of military campaigns in Asia Minor.

Cleopatra gave birth to a healthy boy she named Caesarion. After nurturing him through infancy, Cleopatra journeyed with him to Rome to meet his father. Caesarion, by the age of four, so completely resembled Caesar, that there was no question whose son he was.

Cleopatra became a sensation in Rome, by displaying her wealth and opulence in public appearances and at private parties for the elite of Rome. Cleopatra, who was fluent in nine languages, was a charming and engaging conversationalist, and her power of persuasion was phenomenal. Caesar allowed Cleopatra to stay in one of his villas outside of Rome.

Eventually, Cleopatra convinced Caesar to publicly declare Caesarion as his son. Caesar by then had been appointed dictator for life over the Roman Empire, and his popularity was at its peak. Although the situation was somewhat scandalous by Roman norms, since Caesar was already married to Calpurnia, Caesar's power was so great that no one yet dared oppose his will.

One of Caesar's audacious and controversial actions involved the golden statue of Cleopatra. Before Cleopatra's arrival in Rome, Caesar had constructed a temple to Venus as a gesture of gratitude for his victory in Pharsalus. At the focal point of the temple Caesar placed a statue of Venus Genetrix, by the pre-eminent sculptor of the era, Arkesilaos. The marble statue was not completely finished in time for the dedication of the temple, but was nonetheless set in place.

Caesar often commissioned statues for public display in Rome. Once he had gilded statues secretly made of the Roman deities Mars and Victory, which he had installed in the middle of the night in the Capitoline to surprise and astound the citizens of Rome. It is possible that the statue of Cleopatra was conceived and installed in a similar manner. According to some accounts, the Cleopatra statue was placed next to that of Venus, within the inner sanctum.

And there was perhaps another element that came into consideration in regards to the statue's placement. In the ancient world it was common for royalty to be deified. Caesar's family claimed that they were descended from the goddess Venus. (After his death, Julius Caesar was officially declared divine by Caesar Augustus.) Cleopatra also was venerated in her lifetime by many in Egypt as the goddess Isis. It may well be that the statue of Cleopatra was actually in the guise of Venus, and that what Caesar had in mind was to eventually replace the unfinished marble statue of Venus with the gold or gilded statue of Cleopatra.

Cleopatra envisioned a vast empire uniting Egypt, Rome and the lands Caesar had conquered, and she knew from experience that cultivating religious worship among the populace was a powerful political tool for gaining and retaining power. People of the era found it difficult to be disloyal or rebel against their gods and goddesses. There were rumors in Rome that Cleopatra was trying to convince Caesar that he was a god, but more likely she was trying to persuade Caesar to capitalize on his popularity and establish himself as well as her in the people's religious conceptions as incarnations of deities. Indeed, years later, she convinced Marc Antony to adopt this practice in Egypt and its territories.

The actual statue of Cleopatra was lost in antiquity. The Roman historian Appian mentions that it was still standing in the temple of Venus Geneterix at his time, some 150 years after Caesar's death, although it may have been removed for some period of time after the assassination of Caesar. However, marble statues regarded by some as copies of the original gold statue have been recovered. These statues have many features in common with depictions of the Roman Venus and the Greek Aphrodite, which were essentially the same goddess. The illustrations accompanying this article were digitally drafted by the author based on the marble replicas and the 17th century engravings by Sartain and Shury of Caesar Augustus' painting of Cleopatra in encaustic.

Sources and Literary References:
"Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities" edited William Smith (1870).

"Plutarch's Parallel Lives" (1916) translated by B. Perrin

Dio Cassius: Roman History" (1916) translated by Earnest Cary and Herbert B. Foster (Loeb Classical Library)

"Appian: The Civil Wars" (1996) translated by John Carter (Penguin Classics)

"On the Antique Painting in Encaustic of Cleopatra Discovered in 1818" by John Sartain, Cosimo Ridolfi & Reinhold Shoener
{Publisher: George Gebbie & Co. Philadelphia 1885}

"London Magazine" May 1 1826. Article by John Scott, John Taylor . Illustration by John Shury

"The New York Times", August 21, 1881

"The Saturday Magazine" Vol. V London 1841

"Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities" edited William Smith (1870).

"Plutarch's Parallel Lives" (1916) translated by B. Perrin

Dio Cassius: Roman History" (1916) translated by Earnest Cary and Herbert B. Foster (Loeb Classical Library)

"Appian: The Civil Wars" (1996) translated by John Carter (Penguin Classics)

The Triumviral Narratives of Appian and Cassius Dio
By Alain M. Gowing
Edition: illustrated
Published by University of Michigan Press, 1992
Original from the University of Michigan
ISBN 047210294X, 9780472102945