CLEOPATRA. Cleopatra, last great name of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Alexandria, was a Macedonian princess, cultured, brilliant, and one of the most dynamic women of the ancient world. Alone of the Gr. rulers of Egypt, she spoke the people’s language, took their religion seriously, and like the royal house of the ancient pharaohs, considered herself the daughter of Re, the sun god. When Julius Caesar intervened in the disturbed dynastic affairs of Egypt, at the end of 48 b.c., Cleopatra was in exile from her brother’s court. She was twenty-two years of age, became Caesar’s mistress for reasons of ambition, bore him a son, and followed him to Rome. After Caesar’s assassination, Cleopatra returned to Egypt, and in 41 b.c. Antony summoned her to Tarsus, where he, like Caesar before him, fell under her spell. The first liaison was brief, but when Antony, breaking with Octavian, came E in 37, he married Cleopatra, and a partnership was formed which almost anticipated distant history and divided the Rom. empire into E and W. Cleopatra was the dynamic member, and the fear Rome held for the queen is reflected in more than one context of Rom. Augustan lit. There is no doubt that the able and ambitious queen hoped to use Antony to defeat metropolitan Rome. The dream ended with the naval battle at Actium in 31 b.c., one of the decisive battles of the world. Back in Egypt, the queen saw plainly that the one desperate chance was to influence Octavian, as she had influenced Antony and Caesar. Failing in this, with typical decision and pride, she abjured further bloodshed and committed suicide with the famous asp, symbol of Re. She was forty years of age. The Romans, says W. W. Tarn, “feared her, a woman, as they had feared none other but Hannibal.”

Bibliography A. Weigall, The Life and Times of Cleopatra (1925); CAH, X, chs. 2, 3, (1934).