The Murder of Cleopatra by Pat Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

Nicopolis; for [there are situated] an amphitheatre and a stadium, and there are celebrated quinquennial games; but the ancient rites and customs are neglected.
    In short, the city of Alexandria abounds with public and sacred buildings. The most beautiful of the former is the Gymnasium, with porticos exceeding a stadium in extent. In the middle of it are the court of justice and groves. Here also is a Paneium, an artificial mound of the shape of a fir-cone, resembling a pile of rock, to the top of which there is an ascent by a spiral path. From the summit may be seen the whole city lying all around and beneath it. 1
    What a splendid city Alexandria must have been when Julius Caesar and Antony came to meet with Cleopatra. This cosmopolitan center at the time was the largest and most beautiful city on earth, far surpassing Rome, which was actually said to be quite a bedraggled city in those days. It is no wonder they fell in love with Alexandria as well as with Cleopatra and the riches she could share with them. A massive walled city overlooking the sea, filled with a bounty of magnificent buildings gleaming in the Mediterranean sunlight, the massive lighthouse of Pharos Island jutting out on the promontory of the harbor, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,dramatically welcoming ships and their merchants into the cultured metropolis, and, of course, Queen Cleopatra’s beloved Caesareum, the grand temple she was building at the time of her death. And, of course, they would spend time at Cleopatra’s palace and temples, and these must have been spectacular buildings as well. Although we have little on record as to how these Alexandrian structures looked and were decorated, we can get a bit of an idea from Philo of Alexandria, who spoke of the Caesarium he saw some eighty years after the death of Cleopatra:
    [A] temple to Caesar, patron of sailors, situated on an eminence facing the harbours famed for their excellent moorings, huge and conspicuous, forming a precinct of vast breadth, embellished with porticoes, libraries, men’s banqueting halls, groves, propylaea, spacious courts, open-air rooms, in short, everything which lavish expenditure could produce to beautify it. 2
    When I alighted from the train in Alexandria and made my way into the streets, none of this splendor remained. The city is rather drab, the buildings nondescript, and as I walked on toward the harbor it was difficult not to feel rather sad for the residents of the city and for the loss of such former glory. The demise of Alexandria took place in spurts, the buildings and statues and the greenery erased by fire, theft, purposeful removal of the memories by previous rulers, and lack of upkeep likely due to financial distress. During the 1950s, the expropriation of the property of the European businessmen and investors by Gamal Abdel Nasser when he nationalized the country resulted in a mass exodus of foreigners and the closing of the upscale eateries and hotels that lined the Corniche. In later years, Egyptian-born residents struggled to do business under Mubarak’s regime and found it very difficult. As one restaurant owner explained to me, “When a tourist points to the picture of Hosni Mubarak on my wall and asks who that is, I tell him that is our President. When he asks who is standing next to him, I tell him that is his son . . . my business partner.” The highway-robbery tax imposed by Mubarak wentstraight into the coffers of his son, which left business owners with a very difficult time running their enterprises, which in turn results in the remaining worn and uninviting restaurants on the harbor. As I walked about the city, I realized that unlike Rome and Athens or even other historic sites in Egypt, pretty much nothing is left of the grand buildings, just a wall here, Pompey’s Pillar up on the hill that Strabo speaks of, a couple of Ptolemaic sphinxes, the catacombs and cisterns under the ground, and the Roman