Cleopatra's Life

Cleopatra's life, which began in 69 BCE and ended 39 years later, is well documented for her era, a fact that is due in no small measure to her importance during her lifetime to both the kingdom of Egypt and the Republic of Rome. She was throughout her life paired with powerful men - which is hardly to be found surprising and has far less to do with her reputed beauty than the fact that women had little role in public life in antiquity except through or with men.

Cleopatra's father was King Ptolemy XII, who died in 51 BCE. He had several years before lost his thrown due to internal upheavals and left Egypt, only to be restored to power through Roman intervention - a fact that would give Roman leaders (at least in their own minds) political rights over the Egyptian kingdom (Walker and Higgs 330-40).

When he died, after his return to power, he left the throne of Egypt to his son Ptolemy XIII, who ruled from 51 to 47 BCE. Cleopatra, as was the enduring custom in the Egyptian royal family, ruled with her brother as his sister-wife, although they soon had a falling out and in the civil war that ensued Julius C'sar and his armies became involved and in the end helped to reestablish joint rule by the brother and sister rather than rule by Ptolemy alone.

On the death of her first husband, she became queen with her younger brother, who ruled as Ptolemy XIV for three years. On the death of her brother, she ruled jointly with her son, Ptolemy XV C'sar from 44 to 30 BCE, the year of h

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that she sought his alliance because she recognized that he was the rising power in Rome and that no Egyptian ruler could at that moment in history afford to be without Roman support. Cleopatra accompanied C'sar to Rome on his triumphal return (she was also accompanied by her second husband, her brother Ptolemy XIV, which must have proved to be a little complicated) and was in Rome in 44 BCE when C'sar was murdered. Wisely understanding that the power structure in Rome was at that time very much unsettled, she returned to Egypt to see who would win the internal power struggle in Rome. Two years later, Mark Antony seemed to have become C'sar's successor when he defeated C'sar's killers at the Battle of Philippi. Antony, his sense of power and destiny shored up at Philippi, next turned to the defeat of Persia, a goal that was something of an obsession with Roman rulers. Cleopatra, who had known Mark Antony when she was still a girl, set off to intercept - and enchant - Mark Antony. She seems to have done this to such an extent that Mark Antony all but forgot about his wife, Fulvia, who had remained in Rome to help maintain Antony's interests against Octavian, C'sar's formal heir. Mark Antony returned to Egypt with Cleopatra, acco

Category: History - C