Cleopatra: biography of the legendary queen of Egypt

Plutarch described it in his Parallel lives like the origin of all the evils of Marco Antonio. For the historians Virgil and Horace she was practically a harlot, an ambitious and manipulative in the extreme, the exact opposite of Octavia, the prudent and devoted Roman wife of Mark Antony. That was the image of Cleopatra that survived for many centuries, testimony on which the successive dramas that were written about her were based.

History, as they say, is written by the winners. And it so happens that all these historians that we have cited (with the exception of Plutarch, who is later, but who includes the witness of her ancestors) lived in the time of Octavio Augusto, the staunch enemy of the queen of Egypt and her husband Marco Anthony. It is obvious, then, that after the famous defeat of the lovers in the naval battle of Actium (31 B.C. C.), Augusto tried to leave a corrupted image of his rival.

So, who really was Cleopatra VII? Is the idea we have of it consistent with what it really was? Join us to discover it.

Brief biography of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt

When talking about Cleopatra, probably the image that comes to mind of her is that of a splendid Elizabeth Taylor, who played the queen of Egypt in Mankiewicz's famous film, which, by the way, was a resounding failure. Precisely, the film was based on what Plutarco left written about the sovereign. Let's see how this queen of Egypt really was throughout this biography of Cleopatra.

Few are the reliable images of the queen that we have left to be able to look directly into her eyes. In one of them, an exquisite marble head preserved in the Altes Museum in Berlin, the experts They believe they see the features of the Egyptian queen, as they resemble those of the effigies on the coins that she she coined

If it is true that the portrayed is Cleopatra, the real image of her is far from the one that the legend has transmitted to us of her; In the marble head we see a rather humble woman, with a simple “Roman” hairstyle and the most ordinary features that exude prudence, intelligence and wisdom. In other words, we can detect nothing in this head that makes us think of the femme fatale^ in which so much emphasis was placed by its detractors. So who was Cleopatra?

• Related article: "The 5 ages of History (and their characteristics)"

A Greek queen in Ancient Egypt

Despite being the queen of the country of the Nile, Cleopatra she belonged to a Macedonian dynasty, descended from Ptolemy Lagos, general of Alexander the Great that, after his death, he stayed in Egypt and established the Ptolemaic dynasty. That is to say that, by family culture, Cleopatra was Greek, not Egyptian. Her name itself indicates this: Cleopatra is a Greek name that comes to mean "glory of her father." This father was King Ptolemy XII who, at the time his daughter was born, maintained more or less cordial relations with Rome.

Our protagonist was born around the year 68 a. c. in Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great which, in those days, was the capital of Egypt. The city was so magnificent that any traveler who stopped in it was captivated by its beauty and cultural splendor: the famous lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, she stood majestically in the harbor, and her enormous library (estimated to have housed 100,000 works) was the envy of all. West.

Cleopatra was not destined to inherit the throne of Egypt, as she had two older sisters.: Arsinoe and Berenice. As fate would have it, her path to her power was cleared when, while her father was in Rome closing dealings with the Romans, these older daughters will conspire against him, eager to preserve autonomy Egyptian.

Ptolemy XII found out about the betrayal and did not hesitate to execute his own daughters. Cleopatra was saved from the sentence because it was proven that she had not participated in the conspiracy and that she had always remained faithful to her father. Thus, when Ptolemy XII died, the young woman ascended the throne as Cleopatra VII. However, there was an indispensable condition for her power as her sovereign to be ratified: she had to marry her younger brother Ptolemy hers and run with him.

• You may be interested in: "The best Egyptian legends, and their explanation

Alliance and romance with Julius Caesar

Incest was a common practice in the Ptolemaic dynasty, a more than likely inheritance from the ancient customs of the Egyptian monarchs, who used to marry sisters and daughters. The idea behind this practice was that, through these blood ties, the divinity of the monarchy was reinforced.

Cleopatra she is eighteen years old when she, together with her brother-husband (who will reign under the name of Ptolemy XIII), ascends the throne of Egypt. As expected, the quarrels do not take long to appear; the advisers who manipulate the young Ptolemy (who is only ten years old) conspire to overthrow Cleopatra and crown the boy-pharaoh as sole ruler of Egypt. To this end, and determined to attract the favor of the Romans to support them in their civil war, They assassinate Pompey, who has landed on the Egyptian shores fleeing from his mortal enemy, Julius Caesar. Later, they send Caesar the head of Pompey as a present.

Gross error that of the advisers of the pharaoh-child; because Julius Caesar, at the sight of his treacherously assassinated enemy, flies into a rage. If there is something that the Romans cannot tolerate, it is a dishonorable death, and Pompey's has been. Yes, Caesar thinks; he was my enemy, my rival for the power of Rome, but he deserved to die on the battlefield, not at the hands of some "vulgar" Egyptians. Blinded by rage and inflamed by a brutal belief in Roman superiority, Caesar relentlessly pursues the culprits.

This was the moment Cleopatra had been waiting for. Eager to win Caesar over to her cause, she goes to visit him; according to Plutarch, hidden inside a luxurious carpet. As her servants unroll it, an attractive young woman in her early twenties appears before Caesar. The rest is well known, and has been sung by countless poets throughout history.

Some historians question the romance between Caesar and Cleopatra. That is to say, there was an affective relationship, but currently the possibility is being considered that what actually moved both characters was more political ambition than love.

In the case of César, and as the historian Rosa María Cid maintains (see bibliography), it is It is possible that his affair with Cleopatra was nothing more than a way of showing his superiority to her. Egypt. In fact, the queen traveled to Rome in those days, although the exact cause of the trip is still unknown; establish political pacts? Attend Caesar's triumphant parade? The latter would have meant humiliating herself before the Romans, which seems unlikely coming from a queen so jealous of her people's freedoms. Be that as it may, It is thanks to Caesar's support that Cleopatra defeats her brother and is crowned as the sole sovereign of Egypt.. Maybe humiliation was the price he had to pay to rise to power, who knows.

Meanwhile, in the year 48 a. C., the queen has given birth to a son of Caesar, Ptolemy Philopator, better known as Caesarion, the only biological child the dictator will have. This puts her in a delicate situation, since the child becomes, from her birth, a direct enemy of Octavio, Caesar's nephew and designated as her successor. When Julio César dies in the conspiracy of the ides of March of the year 44 a. C., Cleopatra finds that she has not only lost her lover, but also her political ally. She is alone in front of the ambitious Octavio.

• Related article: "The 3 stages of Ancient Rome: its history and its characteristics"

The new and definitive love: Marco Antonio

Run the year 43 a. c. In Rome, Caesar's assassins clash in a new civil war with Octavian's supporters. The second triumvirate, formed by Marco Antonio, Octavio and Lépido, has not been successful; the relations between the first and the second are increasingly sour, especially since Marco Antony, who has the eastern part of the Roman Empire under his power, meets Cleopatra in Egypt. Octavio and his people take it as an affront to the power of Rome.

But how and why did the meeting take place? In Tarsus, present-day Türkiye, Cleopatra receives the Roman dressed as the goddess Aphrodite. It seems that the attraction is immediate, and that both begin a passionate relationship that will last more than ten years. In Rome, Marco Antonio's wife, Fulvia, rebels against such treason and starts a real war against her husband. Octavio seconded it; the affront is too great. Mark Antony has not only betrayed Rome by settling in Egypt and consoling himself with his queen, but has also dared to put away his Roman wife. Octavio sees in all this the perfect excuse to get rid of his former ally.

The incarnation of the goddess Isis

Meanwhile, in Egypt, Cleopatra has changed her policy. Although she was always a queen very concerned with preserving the millennial culture of Egypt (she addressed her subjects in ancient Egyptian instead of to use Greek), let's not forget that she came from a Macedonian dynasty, so culturally she was much closer to Greece and Rome. But after Caesar's death, the queen becomes orientalized, thus making it very clear where her sympathies lie.

It is at this time when Cleopatra takes the attributes of the goddess Isis, the feminine divinity par excellence of the land of Egypt, giver of life and protector of women and childbirth. Characteristic of the time is the representation of Isis lactans, that is, the nurturing goddess who breastfeeds her son Horus, who rests on her knees. An image that, by the way, later passed to Christianity in the iconography of the galactotrofusa, that is, the Virgin of milk.

In the temple of Dendera, in the middle of Egypt, we find one of the best examples of Cleopatra as a goddess. It is dedicated to the goddess Hathor, and in the temple reliefs Cleopatra appears together with Caesarion, replicating the image of Isis with hers, her son Horus. This propaganda campaign is extremely important, since Cleopatra is not portraying herself as a foreign Greek, but as an Egyptian (and not any Egyptian, but nothing less than her most important goddess), and hers her son Caesarion, son of a Roman, is being equated to the falcon god, Horus.

All this testifies to the intelligence and unquestionable political validity of the sovereign of Egypt, as well as her undeniable culture. We have already said that she addressed her subjects in Egyptian; but it is that she, in addition, she spoke nine more languages. Cleopatra was an extremely erudite woman, knowledgeable not only of the Greek culture, inherited from her ancestors, but also of the country over which she reigned.. A sovereign always aware of the needs of her people, that she tried to use her prudence, her her political talent and her undoubted charms to place herself and Egypt in the best of circumstances. positions.

the end of a queen

Her relationship with Marco Antonio was by no means constant or homogeneous. The lovers are briefly separated in 40 B.C. c.; once Fulvia, his first wife, died, the Roman returns to his homeland to marry Octavio's sister, in a desperate attempt to ingratiate himself with him. Disappointed and expectant, Cleopatra remains in Egypt and gives birth to Mark Antony's children, the twins Cleopatra Selene and Ptolemy Helios.

However, partly because of the passion he feels towards the Egyptian queen, partly because no one supports him in Rome anymore, Mark Antony returns to Cleopatra in the year 37 BC. c. Their union may then be more of a political alliance than a love relationship, which does not prevent Cleopatra from giving the Roman another son, Ptolemy Philadelphus.

And it is here that the few remaining ties between Octavio and his former political ally are broken definitively. Marco Antonio, definitively established in Egypt and finally married to Cleopatra, performs the well-known “Alexandria donations”, by which she donates some land to the children born to her queen. This is a definite insult to the Roman Republic, since Mark Antony has no power to decide on it. In addition, in the testament that he leaves for him, the Roman expresses the desire to be buried in Alexandria, next to Cleopatra, which has just confirmed his "betrayal" of Rome.

The war is not long in coming. In the famous naval battle of Actium, which occurred in September of the year 31 a. C., Octavio's troops resoundingly defeat those of Marco Antonio and Cleopatra. The lovers retreat to Egypt, but their die is already cast. Octavio has won, and they only have one thing left: to die with honor.

How did Cleopatra die?

The stories that we have left about the end of the lovers seem more like something out of a Greek tragedy than reality, but, in the end, they are the only testimonies we have to know what happened. According to Plutarch, Marco Antonio killed himself with the edge of his sword. The queen found out, and determined not to stay alive to avoid the humiliation that Octavio has prepared for her. (parade as a war trophy in the triumphant tour of the Roman), Cleopatra also decides to end her life. She calls her most faithful maids, who bring her a basket of figs, among which an asp hides, one of the deadliest snakes in Egypt. Then, wearing her best clothes, Cleopatra lies down and stretches out her arm among the fruits. The animal's bite and its powerful venom does the rest.

Is it reality, or is it just legend? Did Cleopatra commit suicide, or was she murdered, as many historians suspect? The murder theory is not very plausible; if Octavio had planned to humiliate her before the people of Rome, it makes no sense that he ended her life before leaving Egypt. The theory of suicide is thus reinforced, although the story of the basket of figs seems more like an embellishment from Plutarch than fact. Perhaps the queen simply ingested a common poison to kill herself.

Of his children, little is known. Despite the fact that she tried to protect them, knowing that, after her death, Octavio would be merciless with them, she was unable to save Caesarion, who was assassinated as Caesar's heir and therefore the real obstacle to Octavian's ambition. The Republic ended and the Empire began, with Octavio Augusto as the first emperor of Rome.