A puzzling pun

I picked up this really amazing book at the library today called Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth. It’s a fairly exhaustive collection of artistic representations of the famous queen dating from her own times up to the present era, with lots of interesting stuff on the Ptolemies, Alexandria and the Greco-Egyptian gods to provide context. It includes coins, statues, inscriptions, frescoes, paintings, advertisement, movie posters, etc. which makes for some fascinating comparative studies. I definitely need to own a copy of this book as it’d be great to read on my festival and holy days for the Dynasty.

I also happened upon an interesting text about Marcus Antonius. It’s entirely possible I’ve seen it before, but it wasn’t familiar on first reading so it could very well be new to me. Unfortunately, in discussing it, I think the editors made a small but significant error. I’ll provide the text and their commentary and then explain where I think the error is.

Text
“Antony the great, lover without peer, Parasitos (set this up) to his own god and benefactor, 29th day of Khoiakh, year 19.”

Commentary
The word aphrodisiois in its plural form as it appears in the second line has been translated in a papyrus text as ‘brothels’ (P.Teb. 6,29). Parasitos (1.3) is most likely the name of the dedicant, and could also be a pun on his status as a dependent of Antony or even (using an older meaning of the word) as a priest of his cult. The date is given in local calendar months and translates as 28 December 34 BC. Plutarch’s Life of Mark Antony (28.2) describes the establishment by Antony and Cleopatra of the ‘Association of Inimitable Livers,’ and this text suggests a clever and humorous pun on the club, making Antony the Inimitable Lover, whether in the brothels of Alexandria or Cleopatra’s bed.

So, did any of you catch it?

Inimitable Liver/Lover is, indeed, a very clever pun … in English. It loses some of the effect, however, in the original Greek:

Inimitable Liver = amimetobioi
Inimitable Lover = amimetos aphrodisiois

Of course, inimitable could very well have been intended as a pun … though it also could have been more salutary, suggesting that Antony was incomparable in all aspects of his life. And in ancient Rome sexual prowess and physical/military prowess were often closely linked. There’s some rather vulgar graffiti written on missiles used in a battle between Antony’s forces and those of Octavian’s, each side promising to fuck the other in the ass and do even worse to their women – not to mention the propaganda cartoons that have come down from that time depicting the pair as a donkey and a lion doing rather unmentionable things to one another. And some people think history is boring.

One of the best anecdotes about the conflict was recorded by that juicy gossip Suetonius in his Life of the Deified Augustus 69. Octavian was trying to discredit Antony in the Senate as an adulterer who had fallen under the spell of the decadent and wicked Eastern monarch Kleopatra. Antony, apparently, wrote back with the following:

“Why this sudden change of mind and concern over my affairs? Because I’m screwing the queen? Because you’ve heard I’ve taken her as my wife? You act like this is something new, but I’ve been doing it for nine years already. And how about you? Do you screw only Drusilla? You’re doing well if, by the time you read this letter, you haven’t screwed Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia or all the rest. Does it really matter where and in whom you get it up?”

Now that, Mr. Clinton, is how you deal with allegations of sexual misconduct!

For more on Antony and Kleopatra’s Society of Inimitable Livers, I direct you to Plutarch, whose grandfather Lamprias had a friend who was friends with one of their cooks. Later on, Plutarch details how the Society changed it’s name to Synapothanoumenoi “The Partners in Death” or “Those who are going to die together” and kept partying til the very end. Good stuff.

Speaking of artistic representations of Kleopatra, here is Vicki León and Vicky Alvear Shecter discussing some of them.