Like another famous seductress of history, Anne Boleyn, Cleopatra was not conventionally beautiful. The Roman historian Plutarch, wrote of her, ” Her beauty was not in itself inmcomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her. What made Cleopatra attractive was her wit, charm, and the sweetness in the tone of her voice.” She was small in stature, had dark hair which she wore short, large dark eyes, and a prominent nose, which was at the time considered a mark of great beauty. Indeed, it has been suggested that had her nose been a little shorter then the whole history of the world would have been different. Even so there was little prettiness in her face. But she had allure, the arrogance of majesty, and she knew how to play a man. She was also extremely ambitious. Not, in fact, being Egyptian at all but of Macedonian descent, one of the Ptolemy clan established as dynasts following the death of Alexander the Great, she was determined to re-establish an Egypt, then on its knees, riven by civil strife, and heavily in debt to Rome, to greatness. If she could do this via the bedroom then so much the better.

A compliant Egypt was essential to Rome, with 2/3 of all land in Italy uncultiviable Egypt was its main supplier of grain, without Egyptian grain Rome would starve. So to keep Egypt within its orbit of power was for Rome a political imperative, hence their unwavering support for the Ptolemys. Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII, whose administrative incompetence and spendthrift concupesence, had left the treasury bereft, had survived in power only because he did Rome’s bidding and was a close personal friend of the leading citizen of Rome, Pompey Magnus. When he died in 51BC, Cleopatra, then 18, and her 12 year old husband and brother, Ptolemy XIII, were named as co-rulers. As was the tradition, as Queen she would be subordinate to her husband. This, however, she had no intention of being. Indeed, so determined was she to govern in her own right that Ptolemy’s chief advisor, the eunuch Pothinus, had her removed from power altogether, and she was forced to flee Alexandria along with her equally ambitious sister, Arsinoe. Unable to raise any significant support for a rebellion it only seemed a matter of time before she was captured and dealt with accordingly. But events far away in Rome were soon to impact on Egypt, and it would be Roman politics that were to dictate future events in that country.

Gnaeus Pompey Magnus, who despite being of low-birth, had been for many years the most powerful man in the Roman Republic, had been ruling as part of a Triumvirate along with his ambitious brother-in-law Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus, the wealthiest man in Rome. When Crassus, who had earlier defeated the slave revolt of Spartacus, was captured and killed by the Parthians, Pompey and Caesar ruled Rome together. But both wanted to rule it alone.

Pompey and Caesar had long been friends and shared a genuine affection for one another but they were also rivals. and in recent years they had started to drift apart. Pompey was married to Caesar’s only child, Julia, when she died in childbirth the last link between them was broken. Caesar was heartbroken but he did not allow his grief to impede his ambition. In 49BC he led his Legions, victorious from their recent campaign in Gaul, across the River Rubicon and into Italy. This was a direct challenge to Pompey’s authority. The technicalities aside this had now become a naked struggle for power between two great men.

At first, Pompey seemed unconcerned, stating that all he needed to do was stamp his feet on the soil of Italy and Legions would flock to his banner. But his Legions were untrained and inexperienced in war, as Caesar closed in Pompey abandoned Rome without a fight taking most of the Senate with him. Though he did rather foolishly leave the treasury behind. Caesar was not slow to pursue and very nearly cornered Pompey at Brundisium on the Adriatic coast but he had earlier disembarked his army for Greece.

The two old rivals were finally to meet at the Battle of Pharsalis in 48BC. During the interim the tables had been turned and it was now Pompey who was pursuing Caesar. His forces greatly outnumbered Caesar’s and victory seemed assured but in old-age Pompey’s powers of generalship had deserted him. His army was annihilated and he was forced to flee to the only country he thought he would be guaranteed a warm welcome and find possible allies in renewing his conflict with Caesar, Egypt. As he approached the shore of Egypt he could see that a welcoming party awaited him and amongst them he could see the Pharoah himself, he felt reassured. As he went to disembark, however, he was grabbed by Romans in the pay of the Egyptians, and stabbed to death. He was then decapitated and his head taken back to Alexandria in a basket.

Two days later Caesar arrived in Alexandria. By executing Pompey, Ptolemy had hoped to find favour with Caesar. Pothinus believed that the improved relations that would result from such a deed would allow him to renegotiate Egypt’s crippling debt to Rome. If so, both were to be sadly disappointed. On being presented with Pompey’s pickled head, Caesar exploded in rage. He poured shame and scorn on Egypt and demanded that his killers be brought to justice. His fury may have been a little feigned as Pompey’s death had certainly removed the problem of what to do with him, but his sense of outrage was not. Pompey had been a Consul of Rome. Caesar and Ptolemy were now enemies and it would be Caesar who would decide who ruled Egypt and not the eunuch Pothinus.

Hearing from her spies in the Palace of the distance that now existed between her brother Ptolemy and the new ruler of the Roman Republic, Cleopatra decided to take advantage of the situation. In one of the great iconic moments in world history she had her servants smuggle her into the Royal Palace rolled up in a Persian rug. It is impossible to doubt her courage for had she been discovered she would undoubtedly have been executed on the spot. As the rug was unrolled before Caesar to reveal the scantily clad Egyptian Queen he was hopelessly charmed and seduced. Despite being 30 years her senior, balding and weather-beaten, they became lovers that same night. As Cassius Dio wrote  ” being brilliant to look upon and to listen to, she was able to subjugate everyone, even a love-sated man beyond his prime.” In no time at all, Cleopatra was pregnant. On 23 June, 47BC, she gave birth to a son, Caesarion. Cleopatra believed that she had secured the throne of Egypt for herself and her descendants. She also believed that she had refounded Egyptian greatness by providing the heir to the Roman Empire. Whilst she may have been correct in her assessment of the former she was to be royally disabused of the latter. Despite carefree journeys down the Nile in the arms of his young and fecund mistress, Caesar was aware of the scandal his affair was causing in Rome. He was, after all, already married to the aristocratic and well-connected Calpurnia. He also doubted the paternity of the child. His designated heir would be his great-nephew Octavian. Even so, in 46BC Caesar brought Cleopatra and Caesarion to Rome.

Prior to all this the struggle for the Pharoahnic succession had been decided. The young Ptolemy, who had been placed under effective house arrest since the reappearance of his sister and the execution of Pothinus, had managed to flee into the streets of Alexandria where he urged his people to rise up and expel the Roman invader. For 6 months Caesar was besieged in the Royal Palace. Finally he was relieved by forces sent from Rome and led by Mark Anthony. Reinforced he defeated the Egyptian army and had the captured Ptolemy drowned in the Nile.

Cleopatra was still in Rome when Caesar was assassinated on the floor of the Senate House on 15 March, 44BC. Well aware of the hatred the Roman’s felt for her she quickly fled back to Egypt.On her return to Alexandria she had her younger brother and titular co-ruler Ptolemy XIV murdered. She would govern alone with her son Caesarion as her designated successor. In Rome, meanwhile, following Caesar’s assassination and the flight of his killers Brutus ( who was believed to be Caesar’s illegitimate son ) and Cassius, Mark Anthony, the hero of the Roman people and Caesar’s right-hand man, now ruled Rome. Cleopatra was determined to do to Anthony what she had done to Caesar and as it transpired he was no more able to resist her seductive charms than Caesar had been. 

In 41BC Anthony summoned Cleopatra to meet him at Tarsus ostensibly to resolve certain outstanding political issues. Cleopatra didn’t so much arrive at Tarsus as make an entrance. Sailing into its harbour in her Golden Galley with its gold stern, purple sails, and silver oars, she was not going to go unnoticed. Sailed by her hand-maidens and rowed by female servants, Cleopatra reclined under a gold canopy dressed as Aphrodite and fanned by young boys dressed as Cupid. Anthony was hopelessly smitten. He travelled back to Alexandria with her where they became lovers and he was to remain for a year. In 41BC Cleopatra had Anthony order the murder of her sister, Arsinoe, who was the last remaining threat to her throne. In 40BC she gave birth to twins by Anthony. By this time Anthony’s tenure as sole ruler of Rome had been ended by his own political ineptness and ability to alienate even his most loyal supporters. He now governed as part of a Triumvir with Caesar’s nominated heir Octavian and the weak, soon to be discarded, Lepidus. By 36BC Anthony was living with Cleopatra in Alexandria. His relationship with her was a scandal in Rome for he was married to Octavian’s sister, Octavia. That he should desert her for a barbarian did untold damage to his reputation.

Cleopatra’s ambition was boundless, she desired no less than an Eastern Empire to not only match Rome’s but surpass it. She remarked, “ As surely as yet, I shall dispense justice on Rome.” And her means of doing this would be Anthony. Octavian was aware of this and worked hard to get Senate approval for a declaration of war against Anthony and his Egyptian whore. At last, in 31BC he succeeded.

Cleopatra was an intelligent and intuitive woman. She spoke six different languages and was a keen mathematician. She had also proved herself a ruthless monarch and an able administrator. She sparkled in the company of intelligent men and wooed Caesar as much with her wit as with her sexual charms but she struggled to control the brutish and one-dimensional Anthony. Plutarch wrote, ” Plato admits four kinds of flattery but she had a thousand. Were Anthony serious or disposed to mirth, she had at every moment some new delight or charm to meet his wishes; at every turn she was upon him, and let him escape her neither by day nor by night. She played at dice with him, drank with him, hunted with him, and when he exercised in arms, she was there to see him.” At one of the lavish dinners they regularly attended, Cleopatra boasted that she would spend 10 million sesterces on their next meal. Anthony, merely laughed. The following day she had a rather dull, meagre, and conventional meal served. Anthony mocked her for her boast of the previous night. Cleopatra then ordered that a cup of vinegar be brought to the table. She then removed one of her earrings and dissolved it in the vinegar. Such was her relationship with Anthony, she constantly felt the need to impress a man for whom constancy was an alien concept, and whose behaviour was becoming ever more unpredictable.

Mark Anthony who had been Caesar’s loyal strong right arm, felt aggrieved at not inheriting from Caesar’s will. Caesar believed that Anthony’s drunken debauchery meant that the money would be put to better use elsewhere. Anthony’s father had been executed on the orders of Cicero following the failure of the Caitline conspiracy of 71BC and so though of noble blood he had been left relatively poor, and his behaviour as a young man enusured that he remained that way. He was notorious for his whoring, vomiting in the Senate, and riding through the streets of Rome in a chariot drawn by lions. Such things made him a hero of the people but earned him little respect among those who counted. One man, however, did respect his qualities of courage, tenacity and loyalty, and was willing to overlook his devotion to drunkeness and revelry, that man was Julius Caesar; and it was Anthony, who along with Brutus, gave the oration at Caesar’s funeral, and it was Anthony who whipped up the crowd into such a frenzy against his assassins that Brutus and Cassius were forced to flee Rome for their own safety, and it was Anthony who was later to defeat them both in battle and cement his and Octavian’s rule. Initially, following Caesar’s assassination he had fled Rome but his courage was undeniable and he had returned to Rome dressed as a servant and had emerged triumphant. He was possessed, according to Plutarch, of that bold masculine look, and now what Caesar had denied him, Anthony was determined to take for himself.

Living in Alexandria with Cleopatra as his Queen, he was the sole ruler of Rome’s eastern provincies, and he soon set about creating that empire Cleopatra dreamed of. He had himself and Cleopatra crowned joint rulers of Egypt and Cyprus and appointed his children rulers of Libya and Syria. He waged war on the Parthians and restricted grain supplies to Rome. But Cleopatra was not satisfied with establishing an empire of her own she was determined to destroy Rome and replace the Roman world with an Egyptian one. Octavian had other ideas. His forces were already mustered and with Senate approval he led them to do battle with Anthony for control of the known world.

Their forces finally met, not on land but at sea, at Actium off the coast of Greece. It was a strange choice on  Anthony’s part. There is little doubt that Octavian feared Anthony’s abilities as a General but at sea he had the decided advantage. Anthony’s ships were of poor quality and the Roman navy was the best in the world. But it was well-known that Anthony had nothing but contempt for Octavian, who was no soldier, and had spent the most critical moments of their conflict with Brutus and Cassius in bed with a nervous disorder. If so, it was a fatal error for Octavian had relinquished command of his army to his friend Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, an able and competent commander and certainly no fool. As Anthony’s ships were being systematically destroyed, Cleopatra, who had led an Egyptian fleet in support of him, panicked and fled the scene. Seeing Cleopatra’s famed Golden Galley sailing off into the distance, Anthony left his men to their fate and sailed after her. Together they fled back to Alexandria with Octavian in hot pursuit.

Back in Alexandria, Anthony now did what he had always done best, and lost himself in a haze of drunkeness and hedonism. The more sober Cleopatra implored him to make preparations for the defence of Alexandria. But his defeat at Actium had not lessened his contempt for Octavian, and he would deal with him whenever. Disappointed, not to say frightened, by Anthony’s inertia, Cleopatra now began to behave in a manner that suggested that she might be willing to make a separate peace with Octavian. But first she had all the gold, jewels and riches of Alexandria moved into a specially constructed and prepared mausoleum for safe-keeping.

On 1 August, 30BC, Octavian’s army at last reached Alexandria. Anthony, who had done nothing to prepare his army or rally support for his cause, moved his army out to meet him. Surveying the scene from high ground outside the city he first saw his navy raise their oars and surrender to Octavian without a fight. On witnessing this his cavalry deserted the field. Alone with only his infantry remaining Anthony was easily defeated. His army had disintegrated. In a rage and declaring that Cleopatra had betrayed him he returned to Alexandria. With no army left to fight with he now challenged Octavian to decide the issue in personal combat. Octavian declined. Cleopatra, in the meantime, terrified of Anthony’s reaction and frightened for her life fled to her mausoleum and locked herself in. She then ordered her servants to inform Anthony that she had committed suicide. On hearing of this Anthony was distraught and cried, ” then there is no reason to live “, unsheathed his sword and stabbed himself. Later informed that Cleopatra was in fact still alive, the dying Anthony ordered that he be taken to her. Secreted in her mausoleum, Cleopatra was afraid to open the doors lest Octavian’s men encamped outside rushed in, so she had Anthony pulled in through a window on a hoist. Dying in her arms with his last words he forgave her. She now also resolved to die.

Aware of the fate that awaited her, to be stripped and humiliated and paraded through the streets of Rome in chains, as her sister Arsinoe had been, and fearing for the safety of her children she knew that her only option left was to take her own life. The following day she opened the doors of her mausoleum to Octavian. At their first meeting, a naked Cleopatra prostrated herself at the feet of Octavian and begged for her and her childrens life. But this was merely a ruse to buy time. Even so, Octavian had her closely watched.

Octavian now appeared to get complacent. He permitted Cleopatra to bury Anthony with full honours and the watch on her was relaxed. Soon after he received a letter from Cleopatra, in it were prayers, a plea that she be buried alongside Anthony, and a heart-felt request that her children be allowed to succeed her. Suddenly aware of what was happening Octavian sent soldiers to prevent it. He was too late. Cleopatra had earlier ordered that a poisonous asp be brought to her in a bowl of figs. Unlike in Shakespeare’s depiction of events where she held the asp to her breast, puncture marks were in fact discovered on her arm. By the time the soldiers reached her she was already dead, lying naked on a gold bed surrounded by her jewels and ornaments. Lying at her feet were her hand-maidens Iras and Charmion. Iras was already dead. An angry soldier demanded to know, ” Was this well done of your lady?” The barely alive Charmion replied, ” Extremely well done. She has become the descendant of so many Kings.”