Tea at Trianon: Cleopatra's Daughter

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, February 13, 2023

Cleopatra's Daughter

From History Extra:

Born in 40 BC and raised in the Royal Palace at Alexandria, Cleopatra Selene was around 10 years old when her parents killed themselves. She and her fraternal twin brother, Alexander Helios, and their younger brother, Ptolemy Philadelphos, were taken back to Rome with Octavian and deposited in the household of his sister – and their father’s former wife – Octavia, on the Palatine Hill. While Octavian’s biographer Suetonius claimed that the (future) emperor was a kindly father-figure to the children, insisting that they be cared for as if they were his own offspring, there was undoubtedly a political dimension to this decision. Retaining control of the children meant that any potential threat to Rome’s power over Egypt was neutralised. This control was first expressed at Octavian’s Triple Triumph – an event staged to celebrate his military successes – in the summer of 29 BC. The third and final day of the triumph commemorated his conquest of Egypt, and in the absence of their mother, the children walked alongside an effigy of her entwined with the snakes that had supposedly ended her life. Cleopatra Selene was dressed as the moon and Alexander Helios as the sun, in reference to the celestial names that Antony had bestowed upon them, so as to ensure the crowds lining the processional route would recognise them. Luckily for them, unlike other enemies of Rome such as Vercingetorix of Gaul, their participation in a military triumph did not culminate in their ritual execution. (Read more.)