Black magic

Black magic

by marlies|dekkers

‘Black magic woman’, ‘whore queen’, ‘witch’; just some of the names thrown at Cleopatra throughout the centuries. It’s the oldest trick in the book: knocking down powerful, sexually confident women by labeling them witches and sexual predators. “The moment he saw her, Anthony* lost his head to her like a young man, although he was 40 years old,” the Greek biographer Plutarch marveled. Surely Cleopatra must have used black magic? Well, Cleopatra definitely cast a spell, but of a different kind: she bewitched with words. During one summer they spent in Athens together, Cleopatra made it a sport to distract Marc Anthony. As Plutarch writes: “Many times, while he was seated on his tribunal, he would receive love-billets from her in tablets of onyx, and read them.” The black onyx was a special touch: the name comes from the Greek word ‘onyx’, which means nail or claw. The story goes that one day, Cupid cut the divine fingernails of Venus while she was sleeping. He left the clippings scattered on the sand where the fates turned them into stone so that no part of the heavenly body would ever perish… just like the love between the Roman general and the Egyptian Queen. As Cleopatra knew very well: some things are simply set in stone.

*Marc Anthony, the Roman general and Cleopatra’s lover.

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