Here are 10 facts about Cleopatra, the legendary Queen of the Nile.

1. She was the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty

Although she was born in Egypt, Cleopatra was not Egyptian. Her origins trace back to the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Macedonian Greek royal family.

She was a descendant of Ptolemy I ‘Soter’, a general and friend of Alexander the Great. The Ptolemies were the last dynasty to rule Egypt, from 305 to 30 BC.

After her father Ptolemy XII’s death in 51 BC, Cleopatra became co-regent of Egypt alongside her brother Ptolemy XIII.

Bust of Cleopatra VII – Altes Museum – Berlin

Image Credit: © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro

2. She was highly intelligent and well educated

Medieval Arab texts praise Cleopatra for her accomplishments as a mathematician, chemist and philosopher. She was said to have written scientific books and, in the words of the historian Al-Masudi:

She was a sage, a philosopher, who elevated the ranks of scholars and enjoyed their company.

She was also multilingual – historical accounts report her speaking between 5 and 9 languages, including her native Greek, Egyptian, Arabic and Hebrew.

3. Cleopatra married two of her brothers

Cleopatra was married to her brother and co-ruler Ptolemy XIII, who was 10 years old at the time (she was 18). In 48 BC, Ptolemy tried to depose his sister, forcing her to flee to Syria and Egypt.

Upon Ptolemy XIII’s death after being defeated by her Roman-Egyptian armies, Cleopatra married his younger brother Ptolemy XIV. She was 22; he was 12. During their marriage Cleopatra continued to live with Caesar privately and act as his mistress.

She married Mark Antony in 32 BC. Following Antony’s surrender and suicide after being defeated by Octavian, Cleopatra was captured by his army.

The legend goes that Cleopatra had an asp smuggled into her room and allowed it to bite her, poisoning and killing her.

4. Her beauty was the product of Roman propaganda

Contrary to modern portrayals from Elizabeth Taylor and Vivien Leigh, there is no evidence among ancient historians that Cleopatra was a great beauty.

Contemporary visual sources show Cleopatra with a large pointed nose, narrow lips and sharp, jutting chin.

According to Plutarch:

Her actual beauty…was not so remarkable that none could be compared with her.

Her reputation as a dangerous and seductive temptress was in fact the creation of her enemy Octavian. Roman historians portrayed her as a harlot who used sex to bewitch powerful men into giving her power.

5. She used her image as a political tool

Cleopatra believed herself to be a living goddess and was keenly aware of the relationship between image and power. Historian John Fletcher described her as “a mistress of disguise and costume.”

She would appear dressed as the goddess Isis at ceremonial events, and surrounded herself with luxury.

6. She was a popular pharaoh

Contemporary Egyptian sources suggest that Cleopatra was loved among her people.

Unlike her Ptolemaic forebears – who spoke Greek and observed Greek customs – Cleopatra identified as a truly Egyptian pharaoh.

She learned the Egyptian language and commissioned portraits of herself in the traditional Egyptian style.

Profile view of the Berlin Cleopatra (left); The Chiaramonti Caesar bust, a posthumous portrait in marble, 44–30 BC (right)

Image Credit: © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro (left); Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (right)

7. She was a strong and successful leader

Under her rule, Egypt was the richest nation in the Mediterranean and the last to remain independent from the rapidly expanding Roman Empire.

Cleopatra built up the Egyptian economy, and used trade with Arab nations to bolster her country’s status as a world power.

8. Her lovers were also her political allies

Cleopatra’s relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony were as much military alliances as romantic liaisons.

At the time of her meeting with Caesar, Cleopatra was in exile – cast out by her brother. Caesar was to arbitrate a peace conference between the warring siblings.

Cleopatra persuaded her servant to wrap her in a carpet and present her to the Roman general. In her best finery, she begged Caesar for his help to regain the throne.

By all accounts she and Mark Antony were truly in love. But by allying herself with Octavian’s rival, she helped defend Egypt from becoming a vassal of Rome.

9. She was in Rome when Caesar was killed

Cleopatra was living in Rome as Caesar’s mistress at the time of his violent death in 44 BC. His assassination put her own life in danger, and she fled with their young son across the river Tiber.

A Roman painting in the House of Marcus Fabius Rufus at Pompeii, Italy, depicting Cleopatra as Venus Genetrix and her son Caesarion as a cupid

Image Credit: Ancient Roman painter(s) from Pompeii, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Upon her return to Egypt, Cleopatra immediately took steps to consolidate her rule. She had her brother Ptolemy XIV poisoned with aconite and replaced him with her son, Ptolemy XV ‘Caesarion’.

10. She had four children

Cleopatra had one son with Julius Caesar, who she named Caesarion – ‘little Caesar’. After her suicide, Caesarion was killed under orders by the Roman emperor Augustus.

Cleopatra had three children with Mark Antony: Ptolemy ‘Philadelphus’ and twins Cleopatra ‘Selene’ and Alexander ‘Helios’.

None of her descendants lived to inherit Egypt.

Here are 10 facts about Antony’s life and death.

1. He was something of a troubled teenager

Born in 83 BC to a plebeian family with good connections, Antony lost his father aged 12, which worsened his family’s financial woes. According to the historian Plutarch, Antony was a teenager who broke the rules.

He spent many of his teenage years wandering Rome’s back streets and taverns, drinking, gambling and scandalising his contemporaries with his love affairs and sexual relationships. His spending habits drove him into debt, and in 58 BC he fled to Greece in order to escape his creditors.

2. Antony was a key ally of Caesar’s in the Gallic Wars

Antony’s military career began in 57 BC, and he helped secure important victories at Alexandrium and Machaerus the same year. His associations with Publius Clodius Pulcher meant he quickly managed to secure a position on Julius Caesar’s military staff during the conquest of Gaul.

The two developed friendly relations and Antony surpassed himself as a commander, ensuring that when Caesar’s career advanced, so did his.

3. He briefly served as governor of Italy

As Caesar’s Master of the Horse (second in command), when Caesar left for Egypt to strengthen Roman power in the kingdom there, Antony was left in charge of governing Italy and restoring order to an area that had been torn apart by war.

Unfortunately for Antony, he quickly and unsurprisingly came up against political challenges, not least over the question of debt forgiveness, which had been raised by one of Pompey’s former generals, Dolabella.

The instability, and near anarchy, which debates over this caused led Caesar to return to Italy early. The relationship between the pair was severely damaged as a result, with Antony being stripped his positions and denied political appointments for several years.

4. He avoided his patron’s grisly fate – but only just

Julius Caesar was assassinated on 15 March 44 BC. Antony had gone with Caesar to the Senate that day but had been waylaid at the entrance to the Theatre of Pompey.

When the conspirators set up on Caesar, there was nothing that could be done: Caesar’s attempts to flee the scene were fruitless with no one in the vicinity to help him.

5. Caesar’s death thrust Antony into the centre of a battle for power

Antony was the sole consul following Caesar’s death. He quickly seized the state treasury and Calpurnia, Caesar’s widow, granted him possession of Caesar’s papers and properties, giving him clout as Caesar’s heir and effectively making him leader of the Caesarian faction.

Despite Caesar’s will making it clear his teenage nephew Octavian was his heir, Antony continued to act as head of the Caesarian faction and portioned off some of Octavian’s inheritance for himself.

6. Antony ended up in a war against Octavian

Unsurprisingly, Octavian was unhappy at being denied his inheritance, and Antony was increasingly seen as something of a tyrant by those in Rome.

Although it was illegal, Octavian recruited Caesar’s veterans to fight alongside him, and as Antony’s popularity waned, some of his forces defected. Antony was roundly defeated at the Battle of Mutina in April 43 BC.

7. But they soon became allies once more

In an attempt to unite Caesar’s legacy, Octavian sent messengers to negotiate an alliance with Mark Antony. Along with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the governor of Transalpine Gaul and Nearer Spain, they formed a three man dictatorship to govern the Republic for five years.

Known as the Second Triumvirate today, its aim was to avenge Caesar’s death and to make war upon his murderers. The men split power pretty much equally between them and purged Rome of their enemies, confiscating wealth and property, stripping citizenship and issuing death warrants. Octavian married Antony’s stepdaughter Claudia to reinforce their alliance.

An 1880 depiction of the Second Triumvirate.

Image Credit: Public Domain

8. Relations quickly became strained

Octavian and Antony were never comfortable bedfellows: both men wanted power and glory, and despite attempts to share power, their ongoing hostility eventually erupted into civil war and resulted in the demise of the Roman Republic.

On Octavian’s orders, the Senate declared war on Cleopatra and labelled Antony a traitor. A year later, Antony was defeated at the Battle of Actium by Octavian’s forces.

9. He famously had an affair with Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra’s doomed love affair is one of the most famous in history. In 41 BC, Antony ruled over Rome’s eastern provinces and established his headquarters in Tarsos. He repeatedly wrote to Cleopatra, asking her to visit him.

She sailed up the Kydnos River in a luxurious ship, hosting two days and nights of entertainment on her arrival in Tarsos. Antony and Cleopatra quickly developed a sexual relationship and before she departed, Cleopatra invited Antony to visit her in Alexandria.

Whilst they certainly seem to have been sexually attracted to one another, there was also a significant political advantage to their relationship. Antony was one of the most powerful men in Rome and Cleopatra was pharaoh of Egypt. As allies, they offered each other a degree of security and protection.

10. He ended up committing suicide

Following Octavian’s invasion of Egypt in 30 BC, Antony believed he had run out of options. With nowhere else left to turn and believing his lover, Cleopatra, was already dead, he turned his sword on himself.

After inflicting a mortal wound on himself, he was told Cleopatra was still alive. His friends took the dying Antony to Cleopatra’s hiding place and he died in her arms. She conducted his burial rites, and took her own life shortly afterwards.

Quelling vile Antony

Cicero, for one, was jubilant at Caesar’s liquidation, even though he played no part in the conspiracy. Fittingly, from Cicero’s point of view, he would assume the role of the older, disciplined and dignified senator working against the out-of-control, base and vile Antony.

The Philippics, the fourteen blistering orations he delivered against Mark Antony, thus belong to the last phase of Cicero’s career, leading up to – indeed helping to bring about – his murder.

Cicero did manage to cobble together a coalition against Mark Antony, consisting of a reluctant Senate (under his leadership), the two (Caesarian) consuls of 43 BC, Aulus Hirtius and Caius Vibius Pansa, who both commanded (mainly raw) legions, and Octavian and his private army of Caesarian veterans.

Meanwhile, with the endgame of his time in office fast approaching, Mark Antony withdrew from Rome and headed for Gallia Cisalpina.

The events of winter 44-43 BC (Bounford, (C) Osprey Publishing).

From a war of words to a war of force

Cicero’s personal war with Antony was one of words. Conversely, Antony’s was one of physical force, which was to be played out at Mutina, an important Roman town of Gallia Cisalpina, situated astride the Via Aemilia, between Parma and Bononia.

It was here the ‘senatorial’ coalition that Cicero helped put together against Antony slogged it out with the Antonian forces, the first at Forum Gallorum (14 April) and the follow up outside Mutina itself (21 April).

The victories, if we can call them such, soon turned out to be hollow ones. Octavian switched sides and Cicero was history.

Why was the Battle of Mutina so significant?

While Mark Antony managed to snatch victory from seemingly undeniable defeat, the real significance of Mutina was the fact Octavian was now marching along the trail that would lead to him becoming the dominating figure of Augustus, the most admired of all Roman emperors.

Most of us today, I trust, prefer democracy over dictatorship. The basic difference between democracy and dictatorship comes down to means and end. Democracy is about means, not ends. A dictatorship, by contrast, is only about ends. Those ends are the goals of the dictator – at minimum, preserving and accumulating personal power.

To achieve those ends, a dictator will use any means necessary. This brings us back to Octavian. If his adopted father’s liquidation taught him anything it was this: if you have power, people will always try to take it away from you.

As we have seen, then, with Rome still in political turmoil more than a year after Caesar’s assassination the course of history was turned by the double engagement outside Mutina, an affair that would make the events of 27 BC possible.

Cicero’s folly

Cicero mistakenly portrayed Mark Antony as the chief villain of the piece in a Rome that was sliding once more into authoritarianism.

Of course, it would be Antony’s final tragedy at Actium that saw the metamorphosis of Octavian into the princeps Augustus move closer and loom larger, but Mutina established the nineteen-year-old Octavian as a key player in the soon-to-be defunct Roman Republic.

With the remorseless petty and personal squabbling between the members of Rome’s ruling élite causing its social fabric to un-spool violently, the pragmatic and clear-sighted Octavian did what political circumstances required. He acted cynically, but politically and was the political victor.

Dr Nic Fields is a former Royal Marine turned classical scholar and now freelance author specialising in ancient military historian. He has been writing for Osprey Publishing since 2003. His latest title for their Campaign series is Mutina 43 BC: Mark Antony’s struggle for survival.

Three of them, Cicero, Mark Antony, and Octavian, are the main characters in the events that lead up to, and follow, the two civil war battles fought outside Mutina during the month of April 43 BC.

Octavian: Cicero’s puppet?

With the advent of Octavian, who was busy eroding Mark Antony’s support among the Caesarian veterans, Cicero saw a way to finally restore the Republic as it had been, the only form of government in which he himself could function effectively.

It was a rapidly changing world for Cicero and the senatorial élite. In the confused aftermath of Caesar’s death, Cicero and Antony, who was consul at the time, found themselves on opposing sides of an increasingly bitter and dangerous battle for political control.

The death of Caesar caused chaos and confusion in the capital.

At that moment in time, the elder statesman believed that it was his star that shined most brightly. The ideologue Brutus, however, was very sceptical about Cicero’s plan to support Octavian, the young heir of Caesar. Brutus saw it opening up a Pandora’s Box.

Cicero prided himself on his reputation as a wit. Caesar himself had appreciated this, and while he was in Gaul he had ordered that Cicero’s witticisms be sent to him post-haste. Even when we translate his well-wrought words from antique Latin to modern-day English, his style is still superb.

Let us take for instance his quip of the day, namely

“the young man must get praises, honours, and – the push”

Cicero’s senatorial colleagues got the gag, for it satisfactorily summed up the general feeling behind their motives at the time – they thought they could control Octavian by keeping him inside their tent – though not all agreed.

Marcus Brutus, who did not see Octavian as a naïve and ineffectual youth who could be easily manipulated, as Cicero seemed to think him to be, warned Cicero that Octavian was more dangerous than Mark Antony. His warning was not heeded.

Cicero’s ‘fake news’

We should stop a second so as to remember what Cicero had to say about Mark Antony. Put bluntly, Cicero on Antony is full of malice and misinformation.

In his incendiary pamphlet now known as the Second Philippic, a consummate piece of literary craftsmanship for sure, Cicero busies himself with sexual perversions, lust for fame, profligacy and profiteering.

He piles accusation upon accusation – many of them without a smidgen of evidence – and happily paints in the strongest colours Antony as a “drink-sodden, sex-ridden wreck” who never passes a day “without orgies of the most repulsive kind”, and continues by highlighting his reputation as a toy boy and a male prostitute who hangs out with brigands, pimps, mimes and other such riffraff. Strong stuff indeed.

Shakespeare liked to use two devices to get his characters to reveal their true selves: he either put them in disguise or got them drunk. By contrast, Cicero liked to use invective to blur the distinction between truth and lies, reality and fiction.

Arguably, Cicero’s line of attack in the Second Philippic has certain affinities with the here and now ‘post-truth’ politics, for much of what he cooks up in the pamphlet is ‘fake news’.

A marble bust of Marc Antony – the victim of Cicero’s stinging attacks in his Philippics.

Degrading Antony

Mind you, it is fair to say that Mark Antony had a certain bullish charm spiced with a touch of military swagger and savage menace. He was exactly what you imagine a fighting consul of Rome should be like, first and foremost a hard-drinking, hard-living soldier, Mars and Bacchus in one.

Yet Cicero paints this man of action as a decreasingly engaging figure, particularly one who behaves “as a robber of gold and silver – and of wine” or who disgraces himself at a public meeting by:

“flooding his lap and the whole platform with the gobbets of wine-reeking food he had vomited up”

Every individual is a prisoner of their tastes. Antony was a prisoner of his. But he was no weak-kneed slave of his desires beholden to the wrong sort of crowd.

These charges of sexual deviancy and three-day benders in the company of the ill-repute clung especially close to Antony and to this day his standing continues to suffer as a result of these allegations.

It goes without saying that the hand that holds the pen writes history, but you may want to ask yourself: was Cicero comfortable in the knowledge that the blistering orations he delivered against Mark Antony would for ever be known as his gift to the world?

Yes, I do believe so; in time the fourteen speeches, the Philippics, would also become known for their political affiliation rather than their juicy entertainment factor too.

A bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero, one of history’s greatest orators. Credit: José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / Commons.

“The truest marks of infamy”

Cicero himself predicted correctly his impact on Antony’s public reputation:

“I will brand him with the truest marks of infamy, and will hand him down to the everlasting memory of man”.

Invective bluster may have been an art and convention in Rome (it possessed no libel laws), yet Cicero’s character assassination of Antony through verbal abuse was unrivalled in its ferocity and vitriol.

The seasoned orator knew how to use his word as a sword, and though the sword got the final word, to this day we read Cicero on Antony, not Antony on Cicero. Domestic scandal sells, or so it is said, but few ancient personalities have captured the zeitgeist with quite the popularity as the “naughty life” of Mark Antony.

Dr Nic Fields is a former Royal Marine turned classical scholar and now freelance author specialising in ancient military historian. He has been writing for Osprey Publishing since 2003. His latest title for their Campaign series is Mutina 43 BC: Mark Antony’s struggle for survival.

Top Image Credit: Cicero attacks Mark Anthony at the Senate (Artwork by Peter Dennis, (C) Osprey Publishing)

He ended a long cycle of internal conflict in the Roman world, a territory that Julius Caesar had realised was too big to be ruled by its old institutions.

Caesar leaves a messy inheritance

Julius Caesar’s extraordinary personal power was the prime motive for his assassins, who wanted to revive the power of the Senate in Roman politics. However, the dictator had been enormously popular, and the aristocratic plotters who killed him would soon be faced by men ready to fight to take his place.

Antony was Caesar’s man for years. He was his deputy when he crossed the Rubicon River into Italy in 49 BC to trigger the civil war with Pompey, and was his co-Consul when he died. He was powerful and popular with lots of military experience.

Octavian was Caesar’s great-nephew and had been named as his heir and adopted son in a will made two years before Caesar died. He had proved effective in his short military career, and his links to Caesar gave him instant popularity, particularly with the army. He was only 19 when Caesar died and away from Rome, but would not stay so for long.

After putting down revolts in support of Caesar’s assassins, Octavian and Antony ruled as part of a Triumvirate with Lepidus until 36 BC, when they took joint power, splitting the Empire into Octavian’s West and Antony’s East.

Swords drawn: Octavian vs Antony

Just two years later, Antony went too far when he struck a deal with Cleopatra, his lover, that handed Roman territory in Egypt to her and the son she had borne Caesar during her long affair with the Roman leader.

Octavian’s sister was Antony’s wife, and he’d already publicised his adultery. When Antony married Cleopatra in 32 BC and seemed on the verge of setting up an alternative Imperial capital in Egypt, Octavian persuaded the Senate to declare war on Cleopatra, who they blamed for seducing their former hero.

As Octavian had foreseen, Antony backed Cleopatra, decisively cutting his ties with Rome and Octavian set off with 200,000 legionaries to punish the renegade pair.

The war was won in one decisive sea battle, off Actium in Greece. Octavian’s fleet of smaller, faster vessels with more experienced crews devastated Antony’s ships and his army surrendered without doing battle.

Antony fled with Cleopatra to Alexandria while Octavian plotted his next move.

He marched to Egypt, cementing the support of legions and Roman client kingdoms along the way. Antony was massively outnumbered, with around 10,000 men at his command who were quickly defeated by one of Octavian’s allies as most of the remainder of Antony’s forces surrendered.

The lovers’ suicides of Antony and Cleopatra

With no hope left, Antony messily killed himself on 1 August 30 BC, after apparently failing to strike a deal to protect Cleopatra.

Cleopatra then attempted to secure a deal for herself and Caesar’s son, Caesarion, but Octavian refused to listen, having the young man killed as he fled and warning his mother that she would be paraded in his triumph back in Rome.

Octavian was desperate to keep Cleopatra alive. He wanted a high-status prisoner, and her treasure to pay his troops. Cleopatra was able to kill herself though – possibly using a poisoned snake.

Nothing now stood between Octavian and total power. Egypt was granted to him as his personal possession and by 27 BC the granting of the titles Augustus and Princeps confirmed him as Emperor.

Telling the tale

The story of Antony and Cleopatra – the great Roman and the beautiful queen who caused him to turn his back on his nation – is compelling.

Romans and Egyptians no doubt told the tale many times and one surviving account has proved the most durable. Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans was published in the late 1st century, pairing men from both civilisations.

Antony was paired with Demetrius, the king of Macedonia who died in enemy captivity and spent many years with a courtesan as his companion.

Plutarch was interested in character rather than history and his book was a defining text of the rediscovery of classical civilisation during the Renaissance. Among its most devoted readers was one William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is a fairly faithful telling of the tale, going so far as to lift some phrases directly from Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s work.

Antony and Cleopatra would both be remembered by history as great public figures, but their love story – no matter how embellished – has taken them into different territory. Both, and Cleopatra in particular, have been portrayed in literature, film, dance and every other medium of art countless times.