Cleopatra VII The Last Pharaoh of Egypt
The last caesar of Egypt, Cleopatra VII( 69 – 30 BCE, ruled 51 – 30 BCE), is among the most honored of any Egyptian caesar by the general public, and yet utmost of what we 21st- century people know of her are rumors, enterprise, propaganda, and gossip. The last of the Ptolemies, she wasn't a temptress, she didn't arrive at Caesar's palace wrapped in a carpet, she didn't charm men into losing their judgment, she didn't die at the bite of an asp, she wasn't astoundingly beautiful.
No, Cleopatra was a diplomat, a professed nonmilitary commander, an expert royal director, an lecturer fluent in several languages( among them Parthian, Ethiopian, and the languages of the Hebrews, Arabs, Syrians, and Medes), conclusive and intelligent, and a published medical authority. And when she came caesar, Egypt had been under the thumb of Rome for fifty times. Despite her sweats to save her country as an independent state or at least a important supporter, at her death, Egypt came Aegyptus, reduced after,000 times to a Roman fiefdom.
Birth and Family
Cleopatra VII was born in early 69 BCE, the second of five children of Ptolemy XII( 117 – 51 BCE), a weak king who called himself the" New Dionysos" but was known in Rome and Egypt as" the Flute Player." The Ptolemaic dynasty was formerly in shambles when Ptolemy XII was born, and his precursor Ptolemy XI( failed 80 BCE) came to power only with the hindrance of the Roman Empire under the oppressorL. Cornelius Sulla, the first of the Romans to totally control the fortune of the fiefdoms skirting Rome.
Cleopatra's mama was presumably a member of the Egyptian clerkly family of Ptah, and if so she was three- diggings Macedonian and one- quarter Egyptian, tracing her strain back to two companions of Alexander the Great the original Ptolemy I and SeleukosI.
Her siblings included Berenike IV( who ruled Egypt in the absence of her father but was killed on his return), Arsinoë IV( Queen of Cyprus and expatriated to Ephesos, killed at Cleopatra's request), and Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV( both of whom ruled concertedly with Cleopatra VII for a time and were killed for her).
Getting Queen
In 58 BCE, Cleopatra's father Ptolemy XII fled to Rome to escape his angry people in the face of a declining frugality and the forming perception that he was a poppet of Rome. His son Berenike IV seized the throne in his absence, but by 55 BCE, Rome( including a youthful Marcus Antonius, or Mark Antony) reinstalled him, and executed Berenike, making Cleopatra the coming in line for the throne.
Ptolemy XII failed in 51 BCE, and Cleopatra was put on the throne concertedly with her family Ptolemy XIII because there was significant opposition to a woman ruling on her own. Civil war broke about between them, and when Julius Caesar happen for a visit in 48 BCE it was still ongoing. Caesar spent the downtime of 48 – 47 settling the war and killing off Ptolemy the XIII; he left in the spring after putting Cleopatra on the throne alone. That summer she bore a son she named Caesarion and assert he was Caesar's. She went to Rome in 46 BCE and attained legal recognition as an confederated monarch. Her coming visit to Rome came in 44 BCE when Caesar was assassinated, and she tried to make Caesarion his heir at law.
Alliance with Rome
Both political coalitions at Rome — the cutthroats of Julius Caesar( Brutus and Cassius) and his punishers( Octavian, Mark Anthony, and Lepidus) lobbied for her support. She ultimately sided with Octavian's group. After Octavian took power in Rome, Anthony was named Triumvir of the eastern businesses including Egypt. He began a policy of expanding Cleopatra's effects in the Levant, Asia Minor, and the Aegean. He came to Egypt the downtime of 41 – 40; she bore halves in the spring. Anthony married Octavia rather, and for the coming three times, there's nearly no information about Cleopatra's life in the literal record. Ever she ran her area and raised her three Roman children, without direct Roman influence.
Anthony returned east from Rome in 36 BCE to make an ill- fated experiment to gain Parthia for Rome, and Cleopatra went with him and came home pregnant with her fourth child. The passage was funded by Cleopatra but it was a disaster, and in disgrace, Mark Anthony returned to Alexandria. He noway went back to Rome. In 34, Cleopatra's control over the homes that had been claimed by Anthony for her was homogenized and her children were designated as autocrats of those regions.
End of a Dynasty
Rome led by Octavian began to see Mark Anthony as a rival. Anthony move his woman
home and a propaganda war about who was Caesar's true heir at law( Octavian or Caesarion) erupted. Octavian declared war on Cleopatra in 32 BC; an engagement with Cleopatra's line took place off Actium in September of 31. She honored that if she and her vessels stayed in Actium Alexandria would soon be in trouble, so she and Mark Anthony went home. Back in Egypt, she made pointless attempts to flee to India and set Caesarion on the throne.
Mark Anthony was suicidal, and accommodations between Octavian and Cleopatra failed. Octavian raided Egypt in summer of 30 BCE. She tricked Mark Anthony into self-murder and also feting that Octavian was going to put her on exhibition as a captured leader, married self-murder herself.
Following Cleopatra
After Cleopatra's death, her son ruled for a many days, but Rome under Octavian( renamed Augustus) made Egypt a fiefdom.
The Macedonian/ Greek Ptolemies had control Egypt from the time of the death of Alexander, in 323 BCE. After two centuries power shifted, and during the reigns of the after Ptolemies Rome came the empty guardian of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Only homage paid to the Romans kept them from taking over. With Cleopatra's death, the rule of Egypt eventually passed to the Romans.
