Cleopatra and the Vestals: A 2000 Year Old Smear Campaign

From books to movies, television shows to video games, it seems that Cleopatra just can’t catch a break.  Popular culture still insists on depicting her as the so-called Whore of the Nile, thus perpetuating the smear campaign started by Octavian after he defeated her (and Marc Antony) some two millennia ago.   

In my book Brides of Rome: A Novel of the Vestal Virgins, Cleopatra is a key character and one that I tried to depict in an engaging yet respectful way.  That’s because, like the Vestals themselves, Cleopatra was a powerful woman, and history has a way of reducing powerful women to their sexuality.  After all, it was, and unfortunately still is, an effective way to strip women of their power and importance.   

Few thinking people would disagree that it’s long past time to more accurately depict women like the Vestals and Cleopatra in popular culture.  Yet as always, change happens in fits and starts.  We have progress in the form of a book like Stacy Schiff’s biographical Cleopatra: A Life.  And then we have a setback in some TV series or film that either doesn’t do its homework or just panders to what people already think they know about this remarkable queen.

Happily, though, these stereotypical sexualized depictions of Cleopatra are no longer going unchallenged.  I am very thankful that Colin Campell, a prominent games journalist, wrote an article called Assassins’ Creed Origins’ Promiscuous Cleopatra is Just Plain Wrong.  I was very happy to contribute to it. It’s a good read, so please click over if you have a few moments: https://www.polygon.com/features/2017/11/2/16593124/assassins-creed-origins-cleopatra 

I suppose the theory behind sexualized depictions of powerful women is that it makes them, or the story, more interesting.  Personally, I don’t agree.  Re-telling the same (inaccurate) story isn’t just unfair, it’s kind of boring.  And to me, it also insults the intelligence of the audience or gamer by assuming they couldn’t handle having their preconceived ideas of women like Cleopatra challenged. Of course they could. In fact, they would probably find it adds another dimension to the storyline. Gamers, like movie audiences, are a shrewd bunch and are made up of men and women who would likely embrace such change. So let’s hope media companies and movie makers catch up to us soon. Sure, it’s just a video game and a bit of fun (I regularly decompress by driving on GTA), but if you’re going through all the trouble of making such an amazing and accurate virtual world - and the Assassins’ Creed teams do an incredible job of this - why not make it a world populated with female historical figures we can enjoy seeing in a new light? That’s just my take.

Cleopatra, Wikimedia Commons