Jeeps and Hummers in Antiquity?
Crossover Vehicles and Conspicuous Consumption
Elizabeth Tylawsky, Norwich Free Academy, CT
Playing Dionysus to Woo Cleopatra and the East
It is a fine thing to compare oneself to a lion and it is natural that a man like Mark Antony would associate himself with lions in a general way. But there is another very particular aspect to this connection. Antony deliberately likened himself to Dionysus (Note23). According to Plutarch’s description of events (Ant. 22-23), Antony emerged triumphant after the deaths of Brutus and Cassius in 42 and proceeded into Greece, whereas Octavian returned to Rome sick and weary to be plagued by civil struggles (23.1, 24.1). Antony now returned to his old extravagant ways, surrounding himself with flute and lyreplayers, his thiasos of Asiatic performers, as Plutarch says, using a word suitable to describe Dionysus’ companions (24. 1-2). Plutarch goes on to focus closely on a specific incident, Antony’s entry into Ephesus (24.3).
“When he entered Ephesus, women dressed like Bacchants, men and boys like satyrs and Pans, led the way. The city was full of ivy and thrysus-wands and harps, pipes and flutes. People were calling him Dionysus Giver of Joy and the Benefactor.” (Note24)
Figuring himself as Dionysus permitted Antony simultaneously to play the triumphant divinity, the bringer of life and all good things, and to insert himself into an established political and religious context in the East, which has much to do with Cleopatra’s own political aspirations. After her successes with Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius, Pompey’s son, Cleopatra had every expectation of easily roping in Antony (25.3). Plutarch describes how she came to meet Antony in Cilicia on her own terms, ignoring his numerous letters requiring her presence (26. 1-3).
“She so scorned and mocked the man so that she sailed up the river Cydnus in a gilded barge, its purple sails spread, its rowers bringing it forward with silver oars to flute music mingled with the pipe and cithara. She herself, ornamented like Aphrodite in a painting, lay under a gilded canopy, boys like Erotes in paintings standing on either side, fanned her; likewise her most beautiful serving women wearing the robes of Nereids and Graces, some at the rudders, some at the lines. Fabulous scents from many incense burners filled the river banks.”
Everyone in town streamed to the river to watch, leaving Antony, sitting in expectation on his tribunal, completely alone. “And the story went about on everyone’s tongue that Aphrodite would celebrate with Dionysus for the good of Asia.” (Note25) Cleopatra had outplayed him. What can Antony do but invite her to dinner? She invites him instead. He goes; and the rest is history.
Dunbabin, K. Plate LXX # 178.
So Antony, and Cleopatra, understood spectacles and knew how to put together an impressive procession. So did Dionysus (like his fellow Easterner Cybele) who, besides the features that Plutarch described in Antony’s entry into Ephesus, was regularly represented in a chariot drawn by lions (Note26). Lions can be trained and they can also be led. It is not impossible to imagine lions playing a role, at least for a limited time, in a procession at carefully arranged moments. Dionysus drove lions; Antony fancied himself a new Dionysus; Antony drove lions. It is not difficult to imagine Antony, posing as Dionysus, driving lions in Ephesus in the 30’s, even though Plutarch refers to Antony’s lions only in general. Cicero’s references suggest that Antony was driving lions back in the early 40’s as well. Plutarch does not say that Antony was posing explicitly as Dionysus as early as that; indeed the association with Dionysus comes when Antony turns his ambitions to the East. But he was certainly posing. Antony adored disguises, pranks and playacting (Note27). He disguised himself as a slave on several occasions, at least once as part of a practical joke on his wife Fulvia (Note28). Mark Antony, being himself, would have been attracted to the idea of driving lions well before an idea of presenting himself specifically as Dionysus occurred to him. Once Antony began his plans for the East, representing himself as Dionysus had an obvious propaganda value. Indeed, the portrayal suited Cleopatra as well. Brenk has shown how the two frequently presented themselves as Osiris and Isis in a sacred marriage that protected the prosperity of Asia and how Osiris was identified with Dionysus (Note29). The obvious propaganda value in the East had a downside at Rome, as Octavian made use of the very same portrayals to depict himself as Apollo to Antony’s debauched Dionysus with his foreign mistress (Note30). But those complications still lay far in the future for the ambitious Antony of 49 parading through Italy with his yoke of lions or the triumphant Antony of the procession to Ephesus driving, we may imagine, his lions with his reveling Dionysiac companions.
Self-promotion had always played an important role in political success at Rome; Mark Antony knew this fact perfectly well. When Antony wanted to draw as much attention to himself as possible and be as big a spectacle as he could, he went around to his garage and pulled out his most visible symbol of conspicuous consumption, his carriage drawn by lions, the stretch Hummer limousine of mid 1st century Rome.
