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Cleopatra 69-30BC
Queen of Egypt, the last of the Macedonian dynasty of the Ptolemies

Cleopatra was the daughter of Ptolemy XII Auletes, who died in 51BC. By the terms of his will he appointed her joint successor, as Cleopatra VII, with her younger brother as Ptolemy XIII (who was also her husband in name, in the Egyptian manner), but she was ousted by Ptolemy's guardians, and was about to assert her rights when Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt in pursuit of Pompey (48). Caesar took her side, and after the Alexandrine war restored her to the throne (47). She was now Caesar's mistress, and she claimed that Caesarion, a son born to her the following year, was his. She followed Caesar to Rome in 46, but left after his assassination.

After the Battle of Philippi (42), Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius) summoned her to Tarsus in Cilicia; their meeting has been immortalized by Plutarch's account. They spent the following winter in Alexandria, but Antony then married Octavia (40), sister of Octavian (the future Augustus), and did not see Cleopatra again until 37, by which time he had become estranged from his wife. He acknowledged the paternity of the twins (a son and a daughter) Cleopatra had borne him in 40, and a third child was born in 36.

From this time their personal and political careers were linked, although how far their aims coincided is not easy to determine. Cleopatra's ambition was most probably to achieve the restoration of Ptolemaic power. But Antony's position in the East and his relations with Cleopatra were ambiguous and susceptible to distortion for propaganda purposes, especially by Octavian, who was brilliantly successful in swaying Roman public opinion against his absent rival. War was declared against Cleopatra, who was presented as a threat to the power of Rome, and after the Battle of Actium (31), in which they were defeated, Antony and Cleopatra fled to Egypt. When Octavian appeared before Alexandria, Cleopatra opened negotiations with him to try to save her dynasty. Antony, misled by a false report of Cleopatra's death, committed suicide by falling on his sword. Finding that she could not move Octavian, and unwilling to bear the shame of being taken to Rome to be paraded in his triumph, she is said to have killed herself by causing an asp (the Egyptian symbol of royalty) to bite her breast.

Bibliography: Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Cleopatra (1990); Jack Lindsay, Cleopatra (1971); Hans Volkmann, Kleopatra (1953, Eng trans Cleopatra: A Study in Politics and Propaganda, 1958).


Plutarch's description of Cleopatra at Tarsus: 'Her beauty was not of that incomparable kind which instantly captivates the beholder. But the charm of her presence was irresistible, and there was an attraction in her person and her talk, together with a peculiar force of character which pervaded every word and action, and laid all who associated with her under its spell. It was a delight merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another, so that in her interviews with foreigners she seldom required an interpreter, but conversed with them quite unaided, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, or Parthians.' (Plutarch, Mark Antony, 27, translated by I Scott Kilvert, 1965).