Dateline: Alexandria, Egypt, 30 BC
• In the tumultuous aftermath and mop-up of the defeat and suicides of Cleopatra and Marc Antony, the brand-new ruler of Rome and Egypt (soon to be referred to as Imperator Caesar Divi filius Augustus) made a state visit to the Soma super-crypt to pay his respects to one of his role models, Alexander the Great.
• At his request, the mellified body of Alexander was reverently removed from the burial chamber. After having the centuries-old conquerer lifted from his glass sarcophagus, the world’s highest-ranking Roman placed a gold diadem on the corpse’s cranium, then scattered flowers over him.
• Although eyewitness reports disagree, it appears that in a misguided effort to better scrutinize the body, the 33-year-old Roman leader broke off a sizeable piece of Alexander’s nose.
• Hoping to smooth over the de-beaking, the Alexandrian delegation urged him to continue his tour, moving on to view the bodies of the entire Ptolemy dynasty. Instead, the Augustus-to-be gave an audible sniff, saying, “I wished to see a king, not corpses.”
• An appalled silence fell, according to witnesses. Fearing the city’s now-traditional mob violence reaction, Alexandrian officials heartily encouraged Rome’s new head of state to set sail for Italy as soon as possible.
Alex before nose job
Wonder what he smells like, up close...
Hello Vicki! Do we also hear about this from Egyptian sources, or do we only have the Greco-Roman accounts?
The allegorical significance of the new ruler of the world breaking Alexander’s nose is just too high to not make us suspicion of this story being a concoction by pro-Roman writers.
Great story though! If it actually did occur – I wonder if they tried to stick it back on!
H Niyazi
threepipeproblem,blogspot.com
Indeed, the incident does have a very symbolic ring to it—I wonder if any other body parts !! were broken off? That would be even more symbolic!
Ha! You crack me up–especially your response to Hasan (must remove image from my brain…). As far as I know, that story is only in Plutarch. We have very little source from the Egyptian side during the Ptolemaic and Roman rule of Egypt, which I guess is to be suspected.
A very interesting book is by Okasha El-Daly: EGYPTOLOGY: THE MISSING MILLENIUM, ANCIENT EGYPT IN MEDEIVAL ARABIC WRITINGS. He contends that the medeival Arabs broke the code far earlier than westerners and that some of their writings reflect different attitudes about Cleopatra. It was one of my sources for my upcoming book and Dr. El-Daly ended up being one of the books “vetters.”
Wow, who knew that Octavian was an ancient plastic surgeon?!
Good one! A Renaissance man before the Ren!
Fascinating! thanks for the reference, I’ll have to hunt it down.
Thank goodness the other “Vic” comes to the rescue with chapter and verse of sources!