Cleopatra VII - Infinite Women

Born: 69 BC, Egypt
Died: 10 August 30 BC
Country most active: Egypt
Also known as: Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ

This biography, written by Gabby Storey, is shared with permission from Team Queens, an educational history blog run by a collective of historical scholars. All rights reserved; this material may not be republished without the author’s consent.

Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt and the last of the Macedonian dynasty, owes her fame in part as Julius Caesar’s lover and her later marriage to Mark Antony. She became queen on the death of her father, Ptolemy XII, in 51 BCE and ruled successively with her two brothers Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, and her son Ptolemy XV Caesar. After the Roman armies of Octavian (the future emperor Augustus) defeated their combined forces, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide, and Egypt fell under Roman domination. Cleopatra’s influence over Roman politics, combined with her romantic intrigues, have seen her heralded as a dangerous woman.
In 44 BCE, Cleopatra’s coruler, Ptolemy XIV, died. Cleopatra now ruled with her infant son, Ptolemy XV Caesar. In 40 BCE Cleopatra gave birth to twins with Mark Antony, whom she named Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene.
Antony proclaimed Caesarion to be Caesar’s son—thus relegating Octavian, who had been adopted by Caesar as his son and heir, as illegitimate. Cleopatra was hailed as queen of kings, Caesarion as king of kings. The union of Mark Antony and Cleopatra had a tragic ending. The invasion of Egypt by Octavian in August 30 BC left Mark Antony with little refuge. Receiving the false news that Cleopatra had died, Antony fell on his sword. In a last excess of devotion, he had himself carried to Cleopatra’s retreat and there died, after bidding her to make her peace with Octavian. Cleopatra buried Antony and then committed suicide. Her method of suicide is unknown, though contemporary classical writers came to believe that she had killed herself by a bite from an asp. The site of their tombs is unknown, although speculated to be southwest of Alexandria.

Recommended Reading
Duane W. Roller, Cleopatra: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
Joyce Tyldesley, Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (London: Basic Books, 2010)
Margaret M. Miller, Cleopatra: A Sphinx Revisited (Oakland: University of California Press, 2011)
For more on race and reception in classics, see: https://eidolon.pub/

From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt (69-30 B.C.), was the daughter of King Ptolemy Auletes, and, by the will of her father, she should have inherited the throne along with her younger brother, Ptolemy, but she was expelled by her brother’s guardians, and fled into Syria to raise troops. Here she met Julius Caesar who had arrived in Egypt with an army in pursuit of Pompey; her charms quickly touched the susceptible heart of Caesar, he was fifty-one, she eighteen, and he warmly espoused her cause. After having secured her throne again through Caesar, to whom she had borne a son, she followed her lover to Rome, where she received such honours as were but ill-pleasing to the Roman populace. In the civil war after Caesar’s murder in 44, Cleopatra was in Egypt, and hesitated at first which side to take. After the battle of Philippi the victorious Marc Antony summoned her to appear before him at Tarsus, to give account of her conduct. The “serpent of old Nile” sailed up the river Cydnus to meet him in a gorgeous galley, arrayed as Venus rising from the sea, and accompanied with all the romantic splendor of the East. She was then in her twenty-eighth year, and the perfection of her beauty and wit so fascinated the amorous heart of Antony that he at once flung away for her sake, duty, a Roman’s pride, and at last all his ambition and his life. After living with her for some time, in the course of which she bore him twin children, Antony was compelled to return to Rome to marry for political reasons, Octavia, the sister of Octavianus. But he soon returned to Cleopatra, while his infatuated folly lost him all his popularity in Rome, and weakened his energies for the final struggle with Octavianus. At Cleopatra’s instigation Antony risked the great naval battle of Actium, and when she fled with sixty ships, he forgot everything else and flung away half the world to follow her. Hearing she had killed herself, he fell upon his sword, but learning that the report he had heard was false, he had himself carried into her presence, and died in her arms. Octavianus now succeeded in making the queen his prisoner, who finding that she could not touch his colder heart, and too proud to endure the thought that her life was spared only to grace her conqueror’s triumph at Rome, took poison, or as it is said, killed herself by causing an asp to bite her bosom (30 B.C.). Her body was buried beside that of Antony, and the good Octavia brought up the twin children she had borne to Antony as if they had been her own. Cleopatra combined rare intellectual gifts with physical charms, and she is immortal as one of the most fascinating women of all time; so that ever since her death she has been a constant theme for artists, dramatists and poets. Perhaps she is best described in that famous line about her in Shakespeare’s tragedy: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”