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21-06-2015, 04:12

Cleopatra VII and the End of Ptolemaic Egypt

When Cleopatra VII became Queen of Egypt in 51, she was just in her late teens. It says something about Greco-Macedonian assumptions of cultural superiority (see Box 23.4) that she was the first Hellenistic ruler of Egypt who learned Egyptian (Plut. Ant. 27). She married her brother, a boy of about ten years, Ptolemy XIII, who became king with her. Within two years, Cleopatra VII was driven into exile by palace officials who perhaps regarded her brother as more pliant - something which she was not. In exile she collected an army and prepared to invade Egypt. As this war was brewing, a more important one broke out in Italy. For however much Cleopatra VII would strive during her reign to pursue an independent line, she always remained at the mercy of events at Rome. C. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in the year 49 and opened a new round of civil wars at Rome between him and Pompey the Great.

In 48 Caesar destroyed Pompey’s forces at Pharsala in Greece, and Pompey fled to Egypt where Egyptian officials had him slain so as not to stand on the victor’s wrong side when he should appear - which Caesar did just a few days later. Caesar took up his abode in the Ptolemies’ palace and thither summoned both Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra VII (Caes. Civ. III 106-108). Worried that she might be assassinated, Cleopatra VII had herself rolled up in a carpet and smuggled into the palace - emerging from the carpet in Caesar’s presence (Plut.

Caes. 49). Perhaps aided by her dramatic entrance, she charmed the Roman general and statesman, and Caesar and Cleopatra VII were soon lovers.

In the meantime Caesar had to fight the so-called Alexandrian War against the restless population of Alexandria itself as well as the Egyptian army that was still loyal to Ptolemy XIII. In the fighting Ptolemy XIII disappeared, perhaps killed by accident for once rather than by design. By early 47 Caesar had gained control of the situation in Alexandria. Cleopatra VII remained queen; officially her new consort was her second younger brother, Ptolemy XIV ([Caes.], Bell. Alex. 33). At mid-year Cleopatra VII gave birth to Caesar’s son, called Caesar but better known by the diminutive Caesarion (Plut. Caes. 49). In 46 Caesar returned to Rome and brought Cleopatra VII with him - much to the discomfiture of some Romans (Cic. AdAtt. XV 15). What either of them realistically planned or hoped for at this point is a matter for idle speculation as on the Ides of March in 44 Caesar was assassinated, and Cleopatra VII returned to Egypt.

Around this time Ptolemy XIV died (allegedly poisoned by Cleopatra - Jos. Ant. XV 4,1 [89]), and, though the date is uncertain, Cleopatra VII’s son with Caesar became king, Ptolemy XV. Cleopatra VII waited out the civil wars which followed Caesar’s death, and only when Mark Antony defeated Brutus’ and Cassius’ forces at Philippi in 42 did she act. She traveled to meet Antony in Cilicia (Plut. Ant. 25), and she and Antony became lovers. Cleopatra VII used the affair to acquire possessions in Palestine - the tiny kingdom of Chalcis; a strip of Phoenician coastline; and a commercially profitable forest near Jericho (Jos. Ant. XV 4,1-2 [92-96] with War, I 13,1 [248] and Sherk, Nr. 88). Given how long the house of Ptolemy had fought for possession of Palestine in the six Syrian Wars, it is perhaps no coincidence that Cleopatra VII converted her alliance with Antony into territorial gains there. For her part, Cleopatra could offer Antony financial and military assistance (e. g., Cass. XLIX 31; Plut. Ant. 66), so besides the romance their relationship had its hard-edged practical element on both sides.

The relationship eventually produced three children; allegedly they were all to become kings or queens of the lands which Antony was going to conquer in the course of his campaigns during these years (40 to 34) (Plut. Ant. 54; Cass. XLIX 41). None of it was to be as civil war broke out between Antony and Julius Caesar’s adoptive son, C. Julius Caesar Octavianus, the future emperor Augustus. The decisive battle came at sea in 31, at Actium in Greece, on the Gulf of Ambracia, where Octavian’s fleet defeated the combined fleets of Antony and Cleopatra VII. The pair escaped to Egypt with Cleopatra’s fleet of sixty ships (Plut. Ant. 62-66). In the next year, as Octavian led an army from Syria into Egypt, Antony committed suicide under unusual circumstances (Plut. Ant. 76-77), but Cleopatra remained quite alive and received Octavian in the Ptolemies’ palace in Alexandria.

Leaving aside the romantic considerations, Cleopatra VII presumably hoped that she might do some deal with the new master of Rome. She was mistaken, and when she saw that he had no other use for her but to exhibit her as a captive at Rome (Suet. Aug. 17), she chose suicide in preference to that. The story went that she had an asp smuggled into the palace and allowed it to bite her (Plut. Ant. 85-86). Octavian had her son by Caesar, Ptolemy XV, put to death shortly thereafter (Plut. Ant. 82). Egypt became a Roman province (Suet. Aug. 18), and thus ended the last of the three great Hellenistic kingdoms. It had stood the longest of them all and when Cleopatra VII died, the territory over which she ruled was more or less coextensive with that over which her great ancestor, Ptolemy I Soter, had become satrap nearly three centuries earlier.

Cleopatra’s daughter, called Cleopatra Selene, did grow up to be a queen herself, though not of Egypt. Mark Antony’s widow, Octavia, raised Cleopatra’s three children by Antony, and Cleopatra Selene was eventually given in marriage to a Numidian nobleman, Juba II, whom Augustus made King of Mauretania in northern Africa in circa 25 BC. Selene took her siblings with her, and they all of them seem to have lived out their days in peace (Plut. Ant. 87; Cass. LI 15; Tac. Ann. IV 6). Selene’s and Juba’s son, Ptolemy, became King of Mauretania in due course by AD 24 (Tac. Ann. IV 23), but the Emperor Gaius (Caligula) had him assassinated in circa AD 40 (Suet. Gaius, 26). Thus the line of Ptolemy passes out of the historical record.



 

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