Cleopatra – Lucy Hughes – Hallett (1)

Colley Cibber’s Photinus describes how the Queen, though supposedly in love with Caesar, contrives to make sure of Antony’s heart as well, ‘With all the blandishments of glancing beauty’, affecting a ‘seeming woe’ and shedding pretty tears ‘Like dew-drops trickling o’er the bloom of roses’. [57] Duplicity and promiscuity are closely linked.

To say of a woman in this period that she was ‘honest’ meant that she was either a virgin or a faithful wife. To say that she had ‘deceived’ her husband meant, as it still does, that she had had sexual relations with someone else. Truth, in a woman, is sexually defined. The assumption that the sexually promiscuous woman is by nature mendacious seems to spring from a suspicion that she withholds some essential part of herself in sexual intercourse.

Love-making ought to involve absolute self-surrender, but the ‘dishonest’ woman may be using it to pursue her own selfish ends, to gain pleasure for herself, to win favours from a man, even to earn a living. Besides, a woman who had only one sexual partner could be assumed to be transparent to that partner’s view, but a woman who had had several lovers was not fully to be reached or understood by any one of them. Her life had areas of privacy, controlled by no one but herself.

She had knowledge other than that which her husband had imparted to her. She could not be seen through. She was not as malleable, as weak, as a woman ought to be. She was not ‘honest’. Artifice and unchastity are therefore equated, and Cleopatra’s skill in self- presentation is a symptom of her moral looseness. This is an ancient theme.

Maecenas, the historical Octavia’s friend, praised her ‘natural’ coiffure, while it was rumoured in Rome that Cleopatra wore a wig. [58] Cosmetics, false hair, womanly wiles, contrivances of any kind were the marks of the strumpet; simplicity that of the good wife. In 1608 the English traveller Thomas Coryat described a Venetian courtesan ‘decked with many chains of gold and orient pearl like a second Cleopatra …

divers gold rings beautified with diamonds and other costly stones, jewels in her ears of great worth’. [59] Ostentatious self-adornment – which suggests that the woman who practises it is actively in pursuit of a lover, rather than waiting meekly, as a good woman should, to be chosen by a husband – is the mark of a harlot-Cleopatra. ‘The great art of pleasing,’ noted Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792, ‘…is only useful to a mistress.

Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper, Dublin 1, D01 C9W8, Ireland First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Bloomsbury Publishing, Ltd This 4th Estate paperback edition published in 2026 1 Copyright © Lucy Hughes-Hallett 1990 Lucy Hughes-Hallett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Grateful acknowledgement is made to Faber & Faber Ltd to reproduce two lines from The Waste Land from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T.

S. Eliot. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Without limiting the author’s and publisher’s exclusive rights, any unauthorised use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited.

HarperCollins also exercise their rights under Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790 and expressly reserve this publication from the text and data mining exception. Source ISBN: 9780008781323 Ebook Edition © February 2026 ISBN: 9780008781330 Version: 2026-02-26 1kitap1.com/en Dedication In Memory of Philip Lloyd-Bostock 1946-86 1kitap1.com/en Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Author’s Note Introduction PART ONE 1 Fantasy and Fact 2 The Story According to Octavius 3 Cleopatra’s Version PART TWO 4 The Suicide 5 The Lover 6 The Woman 7 The Queen 8 The Foreigner 9 The Killer 10 The Child 11 Cleopatra Winks Conclusion: The Triumph of Love Picture Sections Picture Credits References Bibliography Index Acknowledgements About the Author About the Publisher 1kitap1.com/en Author’s Note I have referred throughout to my three principal characters by the simplest forms of their names: Cleopatra, Antony and Octavius.

Cleopatra’s full title was Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Goddess and Lover of her Father/Fatherland). Her other titles included Philadelphus (Brother-loving), Thea Neotera (Younger Goddess) and Regina Regum Filiorum Regum (Queen of Kings and of her Sons who are Kings). Antony’s full name was Marcus Antonius. He appears in later sources variously as Antony or Mark Antony.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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