The Murder of Cleopatra by Pat Brown

made specific contributions to history. This is irrelevant in profiling Cleopatra’s life and death. What is important is how she viewed herself, whom she viewed herself as, and how others viewed her. She was comfortable with the Greek and Roman world to her north, and travelers from these places were quite content to spend time in her country as well. They were Mediterraneans, all of them, not Nubians, and Octavian’s propaganda campaign against Cleopatra was really about her massive wealth, which he didn’t want Antony to get his hands on, so he excoriated her lascivious and lavish lifestyle, which quite frankly he was not wrong about; but while the Ptolemies were big spenders, they were far less promiscuous than the Roman ruling class were noted to have been. Regardless of the truth of these matters, Octavian purported that he feared Cleopatra would steal the Roman general away, and with him, pull the Roman people into an indolent, immoral lifestyle. The most difficult pill Cleopatra had to swallowwas that for centuries Egypt was bigger and better than any another country in the known world but, due to the rising military strength of Rome and the foolishness of her father’s rule, Cleopatra had to kowtow to more powerful but less cultured regimes. However, it is because Cleopatra considered herself a Greek Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt and not for Egypt that she felt comfortable putting herself and her children’s future before the Egyptian populace’s well-being, to make choices that made it possible for her to keep her riches, maintain her rule, and increase her status, whether it be combining forces with Rome or fleeing it. She certainly wasn’t worried about going down with the ship (i.e., dying in a tomb on behalf of her people). I believe the manner in which Cleopatra represented herself as a purely Macedonian pharaoh is key to Cleopatra’s character and the charting of her final destiny.

Cleopatra became queen at age eighteen. Her father and mother were dead, and her siblings wanted her dead. Ah, to be a Ptolemy in the year 51 BCE. It was anything but fortuitous to ascend the throne of a dynasty that was in its decline, and to stop its demise would take a great deal of strategy, iron will, moxie, and a great deal of luck, given that Rome was breathing down her neck. Not nearly enough credit is given to the last pharaoh of Egypt, who lasted far longer than she should have under such conditions and who almost pulled off a coup of melding her country with a would-be conqueror that, had she been successful, might well have caused many in the highest classes of both countries to spin around and ask those beside them, “What on earth just happened?”
    What Cleopatra was made of, the core of her being that would allow her to take on this mighty challenge and almost cross the finish line, was her ability to combine the strengths of each of the Ptolemies before her, thereby making herself a formidable foe whom Octavian would eventually have to face.
    As I pointed out concerning her bloodline and heritage, Cleopatra would see herself as the next Macedonian in line for the throne when her father died. She did not see any other Ptolemy of her family whodeserved the honor, and she worked to make sure that the crown passed to her, the one to whom she believed it was owed.
    The early pharaohs, Ptolemy I, Ptolemy II, and Ptolemy III, were the leaders Cleopatra saw as her mentors, the ones who built and made Egypt great, who vaulted the Macedonian Ptolemies to the height of their power. Having been thoroughly educated, which was encouraged for both male and female Ptolemies, Cleopatra would no doubt have been quite aware of the history of her brilliant and capable early forebears. She would also be quite cognizant of the later Ptolemies, including her father and her older sister, Berenike, who systematically depleted the strength of Egypt until Rome, desiring the wealth the country still had and