Hell Hath No Fury by Rosalind Miles Read Free Book Online

fulfilling the Goddess tradition of refreshing herself with a more vigorous lover, since the sexual power of the ruler was vital to the health of the tribe. But in the world of the Romans, men held sway, and the cast-off consort refused to go quietly. Venutius may also have been infuriated by Cartimandua’s choice of his replacement, a youth called Vellocatus, who had served as his armor bearer. He decided to usurp Cartimandua and seize her throne. Her supporters rose in outrage against him, and a full-scale civil war broke out. Cartimandua appealed to the Romans for support, and their commander declared the whole of the vast Brigantine territory a Roman protectorate.
    But she was powerless to contain the intertribal war. A skilled commander, she scored many victories but was finally forced to flee. With Vellocatus in tow, she sought refuge with the Romans, who took her into the safety of their massive fort at Camulodunum, modern Colchester, where they spent the rest of their days. She had held power for twelve turbulent years, and, unlike many of her fellow Celtic rulers, lived to die in her own bed.
    Nevertheless, the impulse to turn Cartimandua’s story of survival against the odds into one of disaster has been strong. Accounts of her rule found their way back to Rome, and Roman mothers used Cartimandua as an example to their daughters of the fate that attended women who descended into adultery and lust, unaware that adultery did not exist in the British world: unlike Roman and Christian wives, Celtic women did not become the possessions of the men they married. Cartimandua was strong, she was successful, sexual, powerful, and free, and in the end she lived to enjoy all that. It is not hard to imagine why later historians found this difficult to admire.
    Cartimandua’s career shows that in the first century CE , British women held supreme authority, made treaties with foreign powers, led their own armies into battle, and disposed of unwanted husbands at will, rights denied to her Roman sisters at the time and to most women worldwide for the next two thousand years.
    Reference: John King,
Kingdoms of the Celts,
2000.
    CLEOPATRA VII
    Egyptian Queen, b. 690
BCE
, d.30
BCE
    Cleopatra, wrote the French poet Théophile Gautier in 1845, “is a person…whom dreamers find always at the end of their dreams.” She was born in Alexandria, the third daughter of King Ptolemy XII, a descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s generals, whose family had ruled Egypt since 323 BCE and whose empire, at its greatest extent, had extended as far as Syria and Palestine.
    By the time of her birth, however, Ptolemy was a puppet of Rome. Cleopatra had no Egyptian blood, and although she may have spoken Egyptian, she was to all intents and purposes Greek. Her father’s singularly undistinguished reign ended with his death in 51 BCE , and he was succeeded by the eighteen-year-old Cleopatra and her twelve-year-old brother-husband, Ptolemy XIII. Their roles as sister-wife and brother-husband underlined their divine origin as lawgivers.
    Within three months, relations between the siblings broke down. Cleopatra’s attempts to govern alone defied the Ptolemaic tradition of the subordination of female rulers to males. She was removed from power by a cabal of courtiers and, after failing to raise a rebellion, was forced to flee Egypt with her surviving sister, Arsinoë.
    In the subsequent Egyptian civil war, Ptolemy XIII sought the aid of Julius Caesar, one of Rome’s ruling Triumvirate. Caesar’s response was to seize Alexandria and impose himself as arbiter of the rival claims of the young king and his sister. Cleopatra played a finely judged hand, allegedly having herself smuggled to meet Caesar inside a carpet. Caesar abandoned his plans to annex Egypt and backed Cleopatra’s claims to the throne. Ptolemy XIII drowned in the Nile, and Cleopatra was restored to the throne with a younger brother,