![]() ![]() Such ruthlessness was not only a common feature of Egyptian dynastic politics in Cleopatra's day, it was necessary to ensure her own survival and that of her son. To solidify her grip on the throne, she dispatched her rebellious sister Arsinoe as well. Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C., and with her ally gone Cleopatra had Ptolemy XIV killed to prevent any challenges to her son's succession. ![]() Though Cleopatra bore him a son, Caesar was already married, and Egyptian custom decreed that Cleopatra marry her remaining brother, Ptolemy XIV. Ptolemy XIII rebelled against the armistice that Caesar had imposed, but in the ensuing civil war he drowned in the Nile, leaving Cleopatra safely in power. With his help Cleopatra regained Egypt's throne. When Cleopatra emerged from the carpet-probably somewhat disheveled, but dressed in her best finery-and begged Caesar for aid, the gesture won over Rome's future dictator-for-life. "She could reinvent herself to suit the occasion, and I think that's a mark of the consummate politician." "Cleopatra was a mistress of disguise and costume," says Fletcher. Though Hollywood versions of her story are jam-packed with anachronisms, embellishments, exaggerations and inaccuracies, the Cleopatras of Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh and Claudette Colbert do share with the real queen a love of pageantry. Highly image-conscious, Cleopatra maintained her mystique through shows of splendor, identifying herself with the deities Isis and Aphrodite, and in effect creating much of the mythology that surrounds her to this day. Like most monarchs of her time, Cleopatra saw herself as divine from birth she and other members of her family were declared to be gods and goddesses. Another theory is that she drank a poisonous tonic. In the Death of Cleopatra, by Guido Cagnacci (an Italian painter of the late-Baroque period), a popular theory on how Cleopatra killed herself is brought to life that she was bitten by an asp on her breast. "She was clearly using all her talents from the moment she arrived on the world stage before Caesar," says Egyptologist Joann Fletcher, author of a forthcoming biography, Cleopatra the Great. The image of young Cleopatra tumbling out of an unfurled carpet has been dramatized in nearly every film about her, from the silent era to a 1999 TV miniseries, but it was also a key scene in the real Cleopatra's staging of her own life. She persuaded her servant Apollodoros to wrap her in a carpet (or, according to some sources, a sack used for storing bedclothes), which he then presented to the 52-year old Roman. Aware that Caesar's diplomatic intervention could help her regain the throne, Cleopatra hatched a scheme to sneak herself into the palace for an audience with Caesar. But Ptolemy XIII's forces barred the return of the king's sister to Alexandria. Caesar took up residence at Alexandria's royal palace and summoned the warring siblings for a peace conference, which he planned to arbitrate. ![]() For decades Egypt had been a subservient ally to Rome, and preserving the stability of the Nile Valley, with its great agricultural wealth, was in Rome's economic interest. Meanwhile, pursuing a military rival who had fled to Egypt, the Roman general Julius Caesar arrived at Alexandria in the summer of 48 B.C., and found himself drawn into the Egyptian family feud. The queen, then in her early twenties, fled to Syria and returned with a mercenary army, setting up camp just outside the capital. In 49 B.C., Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII-also her husband and, by the terms of their father's will, her co-ruler-had driven his sister from the palace at Alexandria after Cleopatra attempted to make herself the sole sovereign. The struggle with her teenage brother over the throne of Egypt was not going as well as Cleopatra VII had hoped. ![]()
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