Cleopatra and Rome

The material remains left by Cleopatra and Rome demonstrate the synergy between sovereign and slave in the late first century B.C, an interaction that made possible the transformation of ideas into everything from hairstyles to architecture. Since hairdressers and architects took direction from queens and empresses and their most highly placed advisers, their creations contributed to the political and cultural landscapes of Alexandria and Rome. While it is difficult to document with certainty the specific contributions of the workers in Rome, some of whom were welleducated professionals brought to Italy as prisoners of war, a broad picture of imaginative collaboration emerges from surviving visual clues.

Given her status as a queen, Cleopatra's entourage was surely that of a monarch. Texts from Egypt on papyrus and potsherds used for writing, or ostraca, provide extensive information about Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, although not enough to reconstruct the full range of Cleopatra's court. What can be discerned is that Cleopatra appears to have had a large retinue to attend to her personal needs, and some of her political advisers and priests were highly placed and visible enough that their names have come down to us, for example her prime ministers Hephaestion (52–51 B.C), Protarchus (51–50 B.C.), and Pothinus (48 B.C.). Cleopatra also had a cupbearer and a personal physician named Dioskorides Phakas.

A full staff was likely called into service when the queen wanted to take

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