There are a lot of famous stories about the Greek-Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII Philopator that are probably not historically true. For instance, as I discuss in this article from August 2019, while it is highly probable that Cleopatra killed herself, it is highly unlikely that she really did so by allowing an asp to bite her on the breast. Similarly, as I discuss in this article from October 2020, it is virtually certain that she never owned any sort of vibrator powered by angry bees.
One of the most famous stories about her that I have not yet addressed, though, is the story that she once dissolved an ancient pearl that was worth tens of millions of sesterces in vinegar as a party trick to impress her lover Marcus Antonius. Unlike the bizarre vibrator story, the story about the pearl is actually found in the ancient sources. Nevertheless, it is almost certainly a fabrication invented by Roman propagandists to portray Cleopatra in the worst possible light.
The story as told by Pliny the Elder
The story of Cleopatra and the pearl is told by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (lived c. 23 – 79 CE) in his Natural History 9.58. He writes, as translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley:
“There were formerly two pearls, the largest that had been ever seen in the whole world: Cleopatra, the last of the queens of Egypt, was in possession of them both, they having come to her by descent from the kings of the East. When Antony had been sated by her, day after day, with the most exquisite banquets, this queenly courtesan, inflated with vanity and disdainful arrogance, affected to treat all this sumptuousness and all these vast preparations with the greatest contempt; upon which Antony enquired what there was that could possibly be added to such extraordinary magnificence.”
“To this she made answer, that on a single entertainment she would expend ten millions of sesterces. Antonius was extremely desirous to learn how that could be done, but looked upon it as a thing quite impossible; and a wager was the result. On the following day, upon which the matter was to be decided, in order that she might not lose the wager, she had an entertainment set before Antonius, magnificent in every respect, though no better than his usual repast.”
“Upon this, Antonius joked her, and enquired what was the amount expended upon it; to which she made answer that the banquet which he then beheld was only a trifling appendage to the real banquet, and that she alone would consume at the meal to the ascertained value of that amount, she herself would swallow the ten millions of sesterces; and so ordered the second course to be served. In obedience to her instructions, the servants placed before her a single vessel, which was filled with vinegar, a liquid, the sharpness and strength of which is able to dissolve pearls.”
“At this moment she was wearing in her ears those choicest and most rare and unique productions of Nature; and while Antony was waiting to see what she was going to do, taking one of them from out of her ear, she threw it into the vinegar, and directly it was melted, swallowed it. Lucius Plancus, who had been named umpire in the wager, placed his hand upon the other at the very instant that she was making preparations to dissolve it in a similar manner, and declared that Antony had lost—an omen which, in the result, was fully confirmed.”
“The fame of the second pearl is equal to that which attends its fellow. After the queen, who had thus come off victorious on so important a question, had been seized, it was cut asunder, in order that this, the other half of the entertainment, might serve as pendants for the ears of Venus, in the Pantheon at Rome.”
Straightaway, there are already a ton of red flags that this story is probably not reliable. For one thing, Pliny the Elder was not even born until over half a century after Cleopatra’s death, meaning it is extremely unlikely that he heard this story from anyone who could have actually seen it happen.
ABOVE: Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl in Vinegar, painted at some point between 1725 and 1784 by the Italian Rococo painter Andrea Casali
Furthermore, in telling this story, Pliny is very clearly promoting a particular political agenda. As I have discussed before, the man who is traditionally considered to be the first emperor of the Roman Empire was Augustus Caesar, who rose to power by defeating Cleopatra and her ally Marcus Antonius. As a result of this, virtually all the Roman men who wrote about Cleopatra after the time of Augustus sought to vilify her by portraying her as a wicked, eastern seductress.
One of the virtues that the ancient Romans prided themselves the most on was frugality and they regarded prodigality as a terrible vice. Whenever Roman authors wanted to slander someone, they always made sure to emphasize that the person in question was wasteful and that they spent their money in ways that the Romans considered frivolous.
Pliny’s whole story about the pearl, then, is meant to showcase Cleopatra as an archetype of eastern decadence. The reader of this story is meant to recoil in horror in the same way that a modern person might recoil in horror if someone told them that MacKenzie Scott once took ten million dollars in cash and set it all on fire just to impress her lover with how rich she is.
Also pay especially close attention to the very deliberate contrast Pliny sets up between the ultimate fates of the two pearls: The first pearl is destroyed through Cleopatra’s wasteful ostentation; whereas the second pearl survives and is ultimately put to what Pliny considers a proper use for the benefit of the Roman people, decorating a statue of Venus in the Roman Pantheon. The implication is that, if Cleopatra hadn’t recklessly destroyed the first pearl, then both pearls might have been given to the goddess on behalf of the Roman people.
ABOVE: The Feast of Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius, painted in 1754 by the French Rococo painter Charles-Joseph Natoire
Is this even possible?
Now, just because Pliny was born over half a century after Cleopatra’s death and he has an obvious political ax to grind against her does not automatically mean that everything he says about her is false, so it is worth thoroughly investigating this story to see if it could possibly have any truth to it. First, let’s answer the question of whether it is even possible to dissolve a pearl in vinegar in the first place.
As it turns out, it is, in fact, possible to dissolve a pearl in vinegar. About a decade ago, the classicist Prudence Jones conducted an experiment in which she successfully dissolved a five-carat pearl weighing “approximately one gram” using a solution of wine vinegar containing about 5% acetic acid.
There is a problem, though; in Jones’s experiment, it took twenty-four to thirty-six hours for the pearl to dissolve. This means that, in order for Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius to have watched the pearl dissolve as described by Pliny, they would have had to have sat there staring at the pearl for two to three whole days. Usually, when it comes to party tricks, you want the trick to only last a few minutes.
Why the story is almost certainly a political slander
Even if we set aside the implausibly long wait time, it’s almost certain that Cleopatra did not really dissolve a pearl in vinegar to impress Marcus Antonius. The reason we can be sure of this is because the charge of dissolving priceless pearls in vinegar is an age-old canard that the Romans typically told about anyone they wanted to portray as profligate and morally decadent.
The story of someone dissolving a pearl in vinegar and drinking it is first attested in a work written by Cleopatra’s contemporary, the Roman poet Horace (lived 65 – 8 BCE). Horace, however, doesn’t tell the story about Cleopatra; instead, he tells it about the unnamed son of the actor Aesopus. He writes in his Satires 2.3.239–42, as translated by C. Smart:
“The son of Aesopus, [the actor] (that he might, forsooth, swallow a million of sesterces at a draught), dissolved in vinegar a precious pearl, which he had taken from the ear of Metella: how much wiser was he [in doing this,] than if he had thrown the same into a rapid river, or the common sewer?”
Horace uses this story as an archetypal example of elite prodigality and foolishness.
We know for certain that Pliny the Elder knew Horace’s story, since he actually repeats it in his Natural History 9.59, right after telling the story of Cleopatra and the pearl, and he explicitly compares the two stories, saying:
“Antonius and Cleopatra, however, will not bear away the palm of prodigality in this respect, and will be stripped of even this boast in the annals of luxury. For before their time, Clodius, the son of the tragic actor Aesopus, had done the same at Rome; having been left by his father heir to his ample wealth and possessions. Let not Antonius then be too proud, for all his trumvirate, since he can hardly stand in comparison with an actor; one, too, who had no wager to induce him—a thing which adds to the regal munificence of the act—but was merely desirous of trying, by way of glorification to his palate, what was the taste of pearls. As he found it to be wonderfully pleasing, that he might not be the only one to know it, he had a pearl set before each of his guests for him to swallow.”
I find it hard to believe that rich people in the first century BCE were really going around dissolving extremely expensive pearls in vinegar just for fun. It is much easier for me to believe that Pliny the Elder (or whoever told him the story about Cleopatra and the pearl) simply took Horace’s story about the son of Aesopus and changed it to make it about Cleopatra in order to vilify her.
ABOVE: Illustration by the German artist Anton von Werner (lived 1843 – 1915) showing how he imagined the Roman poet Horace might have looked
It helps to know that Cleopatra was far from the last person about whom the Romans told the story about dissolving a pearl in vinegar. As I discuss in this article from August 2020, the Romans later told the exact same story about the emperor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (ruled 37 – 41 CE), whom we know today by the nickname “Caligula.”
The imperial biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 CE) writes in his Life of Caligula, chapter 37, as translated by R. C. Rolfe:
“In reckless extravagance he outdid the prodigals of all times in ingenuity, inventing a new sort of baths and unnatural varieties of food and feasts; for he would bathe in hot or cold perfumed oils, drink pearls of great price dissolved in vinegar, and set before his guests loaves and meats of gold, declaring that a man ought either to be frugal or Caesar. He even scattered large sums of money among the commons from the roof of the basilica Julia for several days in succession.”
Here again we find the exact same story with a new subject. It feels as though Roman writers were struggling to come up with original slanders of their own, so they just kept recycling old ones.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble bust of the emperor Caligula on display in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
