The “Donations of Alexandria” (34 b.C.) – creating an empire between facts and fantasies

Abstract

In the fall of 34BC, Antony and Cleopatra called the Alexandrians to the city’s Gymnasium to celebrate the triumph against the Armenians and to declare Cleopatra and her son with Julius Caesar, Caesarion, co-rulers of Cyprus and Egypt. Cleopatra is declared «Queen of kings» and Caesarion «king of kings».
Alexander Helios, son of Antony and Cleopatra, was crowned as the ruler of Armenia, Media and Parthia. His twin sister, Cleopatra Selene, was crowned as the ruler of Cyrenaica and Lybia. Both children dressed up in the costumes of the countries that they had been named to rule. The youngest son of Antony and Cleopatra, Ptolemy Philadelphos, was crowned as ruler of Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. The couple, sitting on golden thrones on a raised dais adorned with silver, issued a joint declaration proclaiming themselves as the embodiment of the Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis. On a lower level of the platform, there four gold thrones for Cleopatra’s children. The «donations of Alexandria» split Antony’s portion of the Roman world amongst the four children of Cleopatra VII. The gesture caused a fatal breach in Antony’s relations with Rome and was amongst the causes of the last civil war of the Roman Republic, which resulted in the transition to the Imperial Era, with Octavian’s victory, in 30 BC. With the entire inherent scenario, the grand public royal ceremonies of Alexandria touched the popular imagination but yet proclaiming an illusory and artificial magnificence, where myth and history intersect.