Cleopatra and Rugs

    Cleopatra styled herself a goddess. She was Isis, Aphrodite, Venus, Nefertiti.  She draped herself in ropes of gold and webs of emeralds, sprinkled her dark hair with lustrous pearls. Ambrosial incense hung in a cloud around her, filled nostrils and spun heads; she delivered all of her proclamations sunset. She was the first of the Ptolemy line to learn the languages of her people, switching fluidly as it suited her. She was trained in rhetoric, enchanted opponents with watertight arguments and arch replies, wrangling with such cunning as to inspire dread hatred and devoted passion in turns.

Cleopatra was not simply the dexterous, competent ruler of her people, administering their affairs as other monarchs do. She was the goddess of every stalk of wheat, every scroll of poetry, every woven Persian rug, every finely sharpened blade in Egypt. Every harvest was her harvest, every ship sailed at her leisure. Her sighs and tears were the winds and the waters; the Nile rose when she gave the word.
   
    Roman rivalries were her undoing. When her kingdom was conquered and everything she had ever worked for was falling to ruin, she said: you wish to strip me of my crown? Here are all my treasures. Here are my engravings and golden vases and statues crusted with tortoiseshell. Here are my heavy shimmering fabrics, my storytelling tapestries, my antique carpets, my silver crescent scepters. Come to my mausoleum and I will burn it to the ground.

    Octavian caught her and locked her in a tower and whispered through the door: woman.  Your man is dead. You will come to Rome and be our nonpareil of beauty, our chained fallen queen.

    When they cracked open the doors, her ladies were draped dead over the settees. Cleopatra lay, crowned and glowing like the face of the moon, with poison on her lips and a snake at her breast.