Free The Murder of Cleopatra by Pat Brown Page B

so it is hard to believe that Cleopatra’s attractiveness, of whatever type or extent, didn’t play some part in her success with the two men with whom she partnered.
    There is another piece of “evidence” often brought up to support a Nubian-Egyptian background, namely that Cleopatra VII was purportedly the first pharaoh to speak the Egyptian language, a rarity that questions the purpose of her doing so. On this, Plutarch writes:
    She could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians. Nay, it is said that she knew the speech of many other peoples also, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language, and some actually gave up their Macedonian dialect. 5
    I find this passage from Plutarch humorous due to its incredible exaggeration. He clearly states that all the previous Ptolemies spoke Greek, not the educated dialect but the Macedonian bastardization of the language, and none of them bothered learning the language of their subjects. Yet, along comes Cleopatra, taught by the finest of tutors in the culturally cosmopolitan Mediterranean capital of Alexandria, and she learns to speak a half dozen languages or more and is fluent in the language of the commoners. If the previous pharaohs did not feel the need to lower themselves to the level of the populace to gain their favor, why would Cleopatra? After all, the Egyptian rulers were gods and goddesses, and they would hardly be expected to speak the language of mere mortals, especially that of the common people. Some try to claim that Cleopatra was different from the other Cleopatras, more involved with the Egyptian-speaking population, and that speaking the language is proof she is half-Nubian and most likely learned the language from her mother. I can follow the logic here, but there really is no proof that Cleopatra spent more time with the regular folk or had any particular caring for them than the other pharaohs. I think circular logic is actually employed here: Cleopatra spoke an Egyptian language because of her mother and, therefore, cared about the people because she was one of them; and we have proof she was one of them because she spoke their language, which she must have learned from her mother! This is most likely wishful thinking, since the historical record shows Cleopatra to be as disinterested in the lives of the common people as her predecessors.
    If it were true that Cleopatra had mixed blood and was so exotic,whether those at the time viewed this as a positive or a negative, such a deviation from the Macedonian-Greek lineage would surely have been the talk of the town. Such unusual features would likely be exaggerated in those sculptures of her and in writings about her, and yet such gossip about Cleopatra being a dark-skinned anomaly of a Ptolemy is nonexistent. And, to reiterate the most important proof of Cleopatra’s Macedonian appearance is Octavian himself, Cleopatra’s archenemy, who spent much time slandering Cleopatra, claiming to the Roman people that she was a loose-living vixen, a witch who destroyed good Roman men with her clever wiles. Surely he would have worked overtime on his insults had she actually been an illegitimate child born of a Nubian servant and not of royal lineage at all. Yet, in spite of all the attacks Octavian made on Cleopatra’s character, he never claimed she wasn’t a Macedonian Ptolemy; he understood quite well that imperialists who conquer countries don’t just “go native.” Ruling classes remain ruling classes and Cleopatra was clearly from that stratus of society.
    To a profiler, the importance of Cleopatra’s appearance has nothing to do with supporting claims that this or that race has