From Feminism to Orientalism: Grace Harriet Macurdy on Cleopatra and Antony

Walter D. Penrose, Jr., San Diego State University

Grace Harriet Macurdy may well have been the first feminist classicist. In her book, Hellenistic Queens: A Study of Woman-Power in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt, published in 1932, Macurdy took issue with her male contemporaries, arguing that Hellenistic royal women were neither more dissolute nor cruel than their male counterparts as had been previously supposed.[1] Instead, she argued that the worst of their actions were no worse than those of the men; when it came to the Ptolemies, indeed, it was the women of that dynasty who had kept it alive, for they were better than the men in all but the first several generations.[2] By the same token, Macurdy exonerates Ptolemaic queens from charges of lust; some of the women may have spent their money foolishly or engaged in dynastic murder, but they were not guilty of the promiscuity of their male counterparts. Macurdy uses Cleopatra VII as a key example to prove this point, arguing that Cleopatra was driven by power, not lust.[3] By focusing on Cleopatra’s agency, refusing to collapse the distinction between power and lust, and adopting a synchronic rather than an anachronistic approach, Macurdy provided a revolutionary reading of Cleopatra as a true queen, rather than the regina meretrix, or courtesan queen that the Roman sources had damned her to be. She made a concerted effort to judge Cleopatra VII by ancient Egyptian mores, rather than those of the 1930s. Like other scholars before and after her, however, Macurdy was not able to entirely shake off the Roman bias in Cleopatra’s received biography; she ultimately analyzes the complex relationship between Antony and Cleopatra through a moralizing, Orientalist lense.

An in-depth analysis of Macurdy’s treatment of Cleopatra VII demonstrates that, while Macurdy was still prey to the Orientalism of 1930's scholarship, she was ahead of her time on the curve we call feminism. Macurdy calls for queens to be judged by the same standards as kings. Macurdy was, in many ways, able to see beyond the misogyny and double standards that still haunt Cleopatra’s fame to this day. To begin with, Roman sources had called Cleopatra the regina meretrix or “courtesan queen” (e.g. Pliny NH 9.119–21; Propertius 3.11.39),[4] but Macurdy decided to look at Cleopatra’s sexual relationships from Cleopatra’s perspective, not that of the Romans. Macurdy writes: “I have…discussed the question of the character of these queens, who are generally reputed to have been wicked. This reputation rests, as does the statement that they possessed power equal to the men, on the acts of a few who of the many who were queens in the Hellenistic centuries. Of these few, it may be said that if they were in nature and character the counterparts of men, they should be judged by the same standard.”[5] Of course, Cleopatra VII is among the few whom Macurdy singles out as the counterparts of men: “of the Cleopatras of Egypt, only the third and the seventh made use of the means that are so often condoned in the case of kings as crimes of political necessity.”[6]

In her comparison of the two Cleopatras, Macurdy is actually less disturbed by the sexual liaisons of Cleopatra VII than she is of the third. With regard to Cleopatra III’s marriage to her uncle, Ptolemy VIII, who was also married to her mother, Cleopatra II, Macurdy takes on a moralizing tone: “The situation of the two queens, mother and daughter, married to the same man, is the most revolting of all the shames of the house of Ptolemies.”[7] As McManus notes in The Drunken Duchess of Vassar, Macurdy’s moralizing is not unlike that of her male counterparts,[8] and, I would add, her damning of incest is not surprising in a 1930's work of history. What is of interest is that she blames Ptolemy VIII, not Cleopatra III, for their marriage; Macurdy writes that Cleopatra III was “surely more sinned against than sinning.”[9] She argues against Mahaffy, who had defended Ptolemy VIII “from the charge of violating Cleopatra before his marriage to her.”[10] Valerius Maximus (9.1.ext 5), Livy (Per. 59), and Justin (38.8.5) all suggest that Ptolemy VIII raped Cleopatra III before marrying her, and Macurdy’s defense of Cleopatra III was thus warranted.[11]

In tandem, Macurdy’s analysis of Cleopatra VII’s liaisons — for lack of a better term — is sympathetic. Cleopatra VII, in order to save her position on the throne, had an affair with Julius Caesar, despite having been married to one or both of her brothers. Macurdy asserts that Cleopatra VII’s primary attachment between 48 and 44 BCE was to Caesar, and, though she does not directly say so, she implies that the marriages to Ptolemy XIII and XIV had never been consummated. Of course, Macurdy did not have access to the demotic evidence that we now have, which suggests that Cleopatra never married Ptolemy XIII in the first place, which, incidentally, further helps to prove her point.[12] Macurdy writes: “The accusation of lust is not justified by the facts of her life. She was faithful to the two Romans, Julius Caesar and Antony; she hoped to be the wife of the first and was actually the wife of the second. The fact that they each had un-royal wives in Rome would not constitute a difficulty from the point of view of a Ptolemaic queen… Like all the women of the line she had no especial interest in love intrigue, but was bent on securing political and imperial power.”[13] After Caesar’s death, Macurdy asserts that “Antony maintained that Cleopatra had been the wife of Caesar, and that Caesarion was his lawful son.”[14] Following Macurdy, Pomeroy notes that from Cleopatra’s perspective these liaisons were “the equivalent of dynastic marriages.”[15]

In contrast to Cleopatra II and III, Macurdy does not emphasize Cleopatra VII’s incestuous marriage(s). Nor does Macurdy chastise Cleopatra VII’s polygamy, although if one were to assert that Cleopatra had been married to Caesar (which would have been Cleopatra’s position), then it was a case of polyandry, even if the marriage of Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIV had never been consummated. Macurdy chooses to view this situation from Cleopatra’s own perspective, in which polygamy was neither illegal nor sinful, but spun for a 1930's audience, as far as it could be spun, by asserting that Cleopatra was faithful to those whom she perceived as her true spouses: Caesar and Antony. Macurdy’s claims, no doubt, were controversial, but the book was well-received. In the Drunken Duchess, McManus notes that Macurdy found satisfaction in knowing that Tarn agreed with her regarding the lack of sexual excess of Cleopatra VII.[16]

In expressing these views, Macurdy had taken on many of her other contemporaries, such as Mahaffy, who had written that Cleopatra VII was “of a race in which almost every reigning princess for the last two hundred years had been swayed by like storms of passion, or had been guilty of like violations of common humanity.”[17] By arguing that women were individuals, not a species, McManus asserts that Macardy effectively counteracted “such sweeping generalizations” in part by seeking to separate sexual immorality from a quest for power.[18] Macurdy aptly noted that Cleopatra’s poisoning of Ptolemy XIV and ordering of her sister Arsinoë’s death, were “crimes of political necessity” like those committed by male Ptolemies. In judging Cleopatra VII by the same standards as her male contemporaries, Macurdy allows the reader to see a less monstrous but still ambitious young queen, one who sought to protect herself rather than be killed. Cleopatra was “like all the Ptolemies proud, cruel, domineering, and unscrupulous, but lacking the vices of the male Ptolemies of drunkenness and lust.”[19] Here Macurdy may overgeneralize, as elsewhere she notes that Cleopatra “was said to protect herself from the effect of too much wine by the magic power of an amethyst ring which she wore for an antidote,” and, furthermore, that as the “inimitable liver” Cleopatra was “given to pleasure and sensuous delights.”[20]

Although McManus notes that Macurdy was called “the Drunken Duchess,” she also notes that this was a joke, as Macurdy was actually a teetotaller.[21] She also never married, and, though she perhaps had a romantic relationship, seems to have been a person who was more focused on her career than on pleasure in her personal life. I am grateful to Barbara McManus for providing us with the rich array of biographical details about Macurdy. As Barbara McManus has noted, Macurdy’s motives were complex: she desired to become an internationally-celebrated scholar, and perhaps her own ambitions led her to interpret Cleopatra’s quest for success and acclaim as she did.[22] Macurdy perhaps saw a part of herself in the queen. This having been established, it is possible that Macurdy naively dismisses Plutarch’s suggestion that Cleopatra may have had an affair with Pompey as a young girl and Josephus’ assertion that she attempted to seduce Herod but was rebuffed by him (Plut. Ant. 25; Josephus Ant. 15.97).[23] These anecdotes do fit into the larger pattern of Cleopatra’s seductions: she did aim for powerful men, after all. Macurdy, however, calls them rubbish.

Despite defending Cleopatra’s sexual integrity, Macurdy nevertheless views Cleopatra as representative of the Orient. In agreement with the Romans, Macurdy saw Cleopatra as the strong woman who feminized Antony, who, in turn, was servile to his “Oriental” queen. Like Cleopatra III, whom Macurdy calls a “meddlesome despot,” Cleopatra VII had been raised “in a court that was a hotbed of corrupt and Oriental softness of living,” and it was she who had indoctrinated Antony in the arts of this Oriental softness.[24] Never mind the vomitoriums of Roman excess, had Antony never met Cleopatra, he would have “been killing Parthians and Medes and strengthening the boundaries of the Roman empire.”[25] While they should have been preparing for the battle of Actium, the two were holding festivals to Dionysus on Samothrace, indulging in what Macurdy elsewhere labels “the Egyptian vices of sloth and excess.”[26] Macurdy echoes Dio (50.33) when she calls Cleopatra “a woman and an Egyptian woman at that” who grew seasick and selfishly maligned Antony’s cause at Actium, in his greatest hour of need.[27] Furthermore, she had corrupted Antony to the point that he became “perforce an Oriental king, even though he promised to restore the republic.”[28] In the end, Cleopatra is judged in a fashion similar to her father; she had spent her kingdom’s wealth frivolously. Macurdy ultimately blames Cleopatra for the end of Antony at Actium. She suggests that, without Cleopatra, Antony may have succeeded, but, having fallen prey to the whims of the domineering, Oriental Cleopatra, he failed to defeat the evil Octavian.

Although Grace Harriet Macurdy was a product of her time, viewing Cleopatra’s influence as the ultimate “Orientalism” that corrupted Marc Antony, she was a forward thinking scholar who, finally, judged Cleopatra on a level playing field. By asserting that Cleopatra, like male Ptolemies, committed crimes out of “political necessity” rather than “wickedness,” Macurdy advanced a strong feminist agenda. While feminist classicists have been eager to follow Macurdy’s lead, others have not. In a recent, sensationalized History Channel documentary, entitled Ancients Behaving Badly, Cleopatra is diagnosed by University of Maryland psychiatrist and Associate Dean David Mallott as exhibiting a “pattern of clear psychopathic behavior” when she kills her siblings.[29] Mallott further links Cleopatra’s “extravagant and desperate gamble for power” to “histrionic personality disorder” as manifested by her desire to be an “exhibitionist who loved being put on center stage.” I do hope that Dr. Mallott will read The Drunken Duchess of Vassar as well as Macurdy’s Hellenistic Queens one day. As Grace Macurdy noted long ago, Cleopatra acted no differently from her male counterparts — she should be judged by the same standards, not by an anachronistic, misogynistic moral compass derived from modern psychology.

Bibliography

Criscuolo, L. 1989. “La successione a Tolomeo Aulete ed i pretesi matrimoni di Cleopatra VII con i fratelli,” in L. Criscuolo and G. Geraci (eds) Egitto e storia antica dall’ Ellenismo all’ età araba. Bilancio di un confronto. Atti del Colloquio Internazionale, Bologna: 325–39.

Hölbl, G. 2001. A History of the Ptolemaic Empire, trans. Tina Saavedra, London.

Macurdy, G. H. 1932. Hellenistic Queens: A Study of Woman-Power in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt, Baltimore.

McManus, B. 2016. “Grace Harriet Macurdy (1866–1946): Redefining the Classical Scholar,” in Rosie Wyles and Edith Hall (eds) Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly, Oxford: 194–215.

McManus, B. 2017. The Drunken Duchess of Vassar: Pioneering Feminist Classical Scholar, Columbus, Ohio.

Mahaffy, J. P. 1895a. History of Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty, London.

Mahaffy, J. P. 1895b. Empire of the Ptolemies, London.

Penrose, W. 2016. Postcolonial Amazons: Female Masculinity and Courage in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit Literature, Oxford.

Pomeroy, S. B. 2009. Women in Hellenistic Egypt, Detroit.

Wyke, M. 2009. “Meretrix Regina: Augustan Cleopatras,” in Jonathan Edmondson (ed.) Augustus, Edinburgh: 334–80.

[1] Macurdy 1932: 3–5.

[2] Ibid. 5, 12, 143, 234.

[3] Ibid. 220–1.

[4] See further ibid., 220; Pomeroy 2009: 27; Wyke 2009.

[5] Macurdy 1932: x.

[6] Ibid. 4.

[7] Ibid. 158.

[8] McManus 2017: 195.

[9] Macurdy 1932: 162.

[10] Ibid. Mahaffy 1895a: 187.

[11] The ancient authors (Valerius Maximus 9.1.ext 5, ed. Kempf; Livy Per. 59, ed. Rossbach; Justin 38.8.5, ed. Jeep) also note that Ptolemy VIII put Cleopatra II aside after he raped and married Cleopatra III.

[12] See further Criscuolo 1989; Hölbl 2001: 231.

[13] Macurdy 1932: 220–1.

[14] Ibid. 207.

[15] Pomeroy 2009: 25.

[16] McManus 2017: 201.

[17] Mahaffy 1895b: 445; Macurdy 1932: 3.

[18] McManus 2017: 190.

[19] Macurdy 1932: 221.

[20] Ibid. 206, 112.

[21] McManus 2017: 4; McManus 2016: 197.

[22] McManus 2017: 194; 2016: 200.

[23] Macurdy 1932: 186, 200.

[24] Ibid. 169–70.

[25] Ibid. 221.

[26] Ibid. 155.

[27] Ibid. 213. On Cleopatra’s military exploits, see further Penrose 2016: 219–21.

[28] Macurdy 1932: 211.

[29] “Cleopatra,” Ancients Behaving Badly, season 1, episode 8, directed by Oscar Chan and Andy Webb, aired December 30, 2009, 43:32 (New York, NY: History Channel, 2009), accessed Apr. 4, 2017.