- WERE CLEOPATRA AND JULIUS CAESAR CONTEMPORARIES HOW TO
- WERE CLEOPATRA AND JULIUS CAESAR CONTEMPORARIES CRACK
Its ruler had no choice but to court the most powerful Roman of the day-a bewildering assignment in the late Republic, wracked as it was by civil wars.Ĭleopatra's father had thrown in his lot with Pompey the Great. The implications for the last great kingdom in that sphere of influence were clear. Over the course of Cleopatra's childhood Rome extended its rule nearly to Egypt's borders. And the glory of the once-great Ptolemaic empire had dimmed. The Sphinx had undergone a major restoration-more than 1,000 years earlier. The pyramids, to which Cleopatra almost certainly introduced Julius Caesar, already sported graffiti. She and her 10-year-old brother assumed control of a country with a weighty past and a wobbly future. They were in fact Macedonian Greek, which makes Cleopatra about as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor. For ten generations her family, the Ptolemies, had styled themselves pharaohs. She grew up amid unsurpassed luxury and inherited a kingdom in decline. Like all lives that lend themselves to poetry, Cleopatra's was one of dislocations and disappointments. The Renaissance was obsessed with her, the Romantics even more so.
WERE CLEOPATRA AND JULIUS CAESAR CONTEMPORARIES CRACK
Ultimately everyone from Michelangelo to Brecht got a crack at her. Her power was immediately misrepresented because-for one man's historical purposes-she needed to have reduced another to abject slavery. She elicited scorn and envy in equal and equally distorting measure her story is constructed as much of male fear as of fantasy. She nonetheless survives as a wanton temptress, not the first time a genuinely powerful woman has been transmuted into a shamelessly seductive one. In light of her stature, they reminded Herod, it could not be done.) Cleopatra descended from a long line of murderers and upheld the family tradition, but was for her time and place remarkably well behaved. And she enjoyed greater prestige than every other woman of her time, as an excitable rival king was reminded when he called for her assassination during her stay at his court. She was incomparably richer than anyone else in the Mediterranean.
Even at a time when female rulers were no rarity, Cleopatra stood out, the sole woman of her world to rule alone. One of Mark Antony's most trusted generals vouched for her political acumen.
WERE CLEOPATRA AND JULIUS CAESAR CONTEMPORARIES HOW TO
A capable, clear-eyed sovereign, she knew how to build a fleet, suppress an insurrection, control a currency. We remember her, too, for the wrong reasons. Only her coin portraits-issued in her lifetime, and which she likely approved-can be accepted as authentic. She may be one of the most recognizable figures in history, but we have little idea what Cleopatra actually looked like. If the name is indelible, the image is blurry. Shakespeare attested to Cleopatra's infinite variety. In one of the busiest afterlives in history, she has become an asteroid, a video game, a cigarette, a slot machine, a strip club, a synonym for Elizabeth Taylor. Catastrophe reliably cements a reputation, and Cleopatra's end was sudden and sensational. She had a child with a married man, three more with another. For a fleeting moment she held the fate of the Western world in her hands. A goddess as a child, a queen at 18, at the height of her power she controlled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler. She lost her kingdom once regained it nearly lost it again amassed an empire lost it all.
Cleopatra VII ruled Egypt for 21 years a generation before the birth of Christ.
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