Before apocryphally rolling out of the carpet and stepping into legend, Cleopatra (69 BC-30 BC) already had a storied past. The 21-year-old and her 13-year-old brother-husband Ptolemy XIII (62 BC-47 BC) ruled together for nearly two years before said brother, influenced by overly ambitious advisors, banished Cleopatra from Alexandria.
Prudently using her mastery of the Egyptian language—the first Ptolemy to do so in the nearly 300-year-old dynasty—Cleopatra raised an army to defeat her brother, Ptolemy XIII. It was only shortly thereafter that she had the legendary encounter with Caesar. Yet most of what has been written about Cleopatra concerns her entanglement with ancient Rome—that is to say, it was written from a decidedly biased Roman perspective. Time and again, we hear about Cleopatra as the subversive siren from the East who seduced two of ancient Rome’s greatest generals.
Cleopatra’s Forgotten Lineage: More Greek Than Egyptian?
What could account for so much ire against the Egyptian queen? The truth is, in order to justify an unpopular civil war against his rival Marc Antony (83 BC-30 BC), Gaius Octavius “Octavian” (later Augustus—63 BC-14 AD) launched first a propaganda campaign then a full-scale war against Egypt. He did so by painting Cleopatra as an Eastern harlot who seduced Antony with her depraved sorcery. This view soon took hold in the imaginations of the xenophobic and misogynist Romans. In his Odes, Horace calls her a “fatal monster,” Sextus Propertius refers to her as the “whore queen” in Elegies, and in Lucan’s Poems she is termed “Egypt’s shame.” What is never mentioned about the Egyptian queen is that she may not have had a drop of Egyptian blood. In fact, her lineage may have derived from a Macedonian Greek whose military accomplishments were the ambition of every Roman leader.
It is ironic that the Romans glorified Alexander the Great (356 BC-323 BC) and disdained Cleopatra, who was not only Alexander’s political heir but may very well have been his biological heir as well. Ptolemy I Soter (367 BC-83 AD), the founding member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was one of Alexander’s three most trusted Macedonian generals and by some accounts, his half-brother as well.
While vilified in the Greek city-states, polygamy was practiced in the Greek kingdom of Macedonia, especially amongst the ruling class. Phillip II (386-336 BC), Alexander’s father, had several wives and many children, Ptolemy among them. Alexander even had a sister named Kleopatra, which in Greek means “glory of the father.” Cleopatra was, in fact, a common name amongst queens in Ptolemaic Egypt. Alas, Cleopatra’s link to Alexander continued after her demise; the Hellenistic period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the death of Cleopatra.
