Ancient & modern
A reader, Mark Savage, points out to me that there are comparisons between Saddam Hussein and Cleopatra — both wily, mysterious Easterners needing eradication because (according to the spin-doctors) they posed such terrible threats to a Western way of life. But that makes George Galloway, whose passion for Saddam was such a rare and precious thing, the equivalent of Marc Antony. Where might it all end? [Scramble lawyers at once — Ed.] Whenever Roman envoys visited Egypt, they were given the grand tour up the Nile to Memphis. On one such occasion a Roman commented that Egypt had the potential to become a great power if only its leaders could get their act together. In fact both sides acknowledged the advantages of an alliance: Roman power and efficiency would meet Egyptian wealth (and grain supply). So during the 1st century BC, mutual approaches were made, and Julius Caesar famously took Cleopatra as his mistress, fathering a child by her.
After Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March 44 BC, Marc Antony tried to assume his mantle, but Caesar’s youthful heir Octavian had other ideas. At Brundisium in September 40 BC, they agreed a carve-up of the empire: Octavian to be master of the West, Antony of the East. Antony even married Octavian’s sister Octavia to cement the relationship.
But it all fell apart. Romance was in the air between Antony and Cleopatra. Their mutual desire for glamour, and his for a firm base in Egypt from which to take on Octavian, strengthened the union, and Octavia was forgotten. Octavian, seeing where this would lead, launched a massive Campbell-style propaganda campaign against Antony (‘bearing arms for a woman, serving under crumbling eunuchs, shameful glimpses of mosquito nets amid his army’s standards’ — Horace). A year after the pair ran for it at Actium in 31 BC, they committed suicide.
The irresistible Galloway, clearly Antony’s equal in seductive charisma, wove his magic round the lovely Saddam, but was badly hurt when Saddam ran for it. Galloway has regrouped in another great eastern powerbase (Bethnal Green) and even been declared ‘a new god in Brick Lane’ by one excited constituent (Antony rather fittingly declared himself ‘the new Dionysus’ in the East). He will surely now be looking to topple Blair-Octavian with the help of a second Cleopatra in the east. What price that alluring social reformer Kim Jong Il?
Peter Jones
Previous page
