Cleopatra inherited quite an array of problems when she was born into the Ptolemaic Dynasty in 69 BCE. She had a reported fool fo a father, not one of the more accomplished or acclaimed Ptolemies in the long line of rulers; a country on the verge of being gobbled up by Rome; and far too many siblings in a fight for the throne to have a good chance of winning it (she had two older sisters who could claim it first, two brothers who no doubt would be preferred as rulers due to their gender, and one younger but very aggressive sister who couldn’t be discounted as a threat). That she won out is a testament to her aggressiveness and astuteness—neither of which she seemed to have inherited from her father, so the earlier Cleopatras must have been running solidly in her blood.
Her father, Auletes, was not chosen by his father to ascend the throne. He was rather a desperation choice by the Alexandrians since the recently killed couple left no children. Auletes was the elder son of one of the Ptolemies who had been in hiding in Syria, and his mother was not of royal lineage (that Ptolemy was not expecting to be pharaoh), but Alexandrian elites had to pick someone, some Ptolemy, and he was the best they thought they could do. All they could hope was that he wouldn’t be a total failure in the role. It is important to remember that although the pharaohs held great power, they did not actually rule entirely alone; they had the Alexandrian elite, the high priests, and a great many administrators who kept the country afloat when they were flagging in their duties, off fighting wars, or hiding from familial attempts to assassinate them. Even Cleopatra had times when she left the management of Egypt in the hands of others when she spent time in Rome with Julius Caesar or was off in battle with Mark Antony. Her father, Auletes, Ptolemy XII, would not have lasted any time at all on the throne if there were not others around to mind the store for him.
Cleopatra’s father was well aware—he wasn’t totally ignorant of the facts—that the Alexandrian mob put him in his place of power and they could just as easily remove him. Since that mob was always quite fickle and contentious, he needed some strong backing to keep him on the throne, and the only place he could get it from was Rome. He could be a temporary patsy, one to be totally used by the Romans without any say or sway, or he could be a puppet, meaning he could at least levy some favors to his and Egypt’s benefit. He chose to be a puppet.
It all worked rather well for Ptolemy XII, bribing the Roman officials on a regular basis; that Lagide treasury and taxes kept him going for quite a while since his ascension to the throne in 8o BCE, In fact, rather than having Egypt become a mere province of Rome, he managed to bribe his way to having the Romans title him “King,” so he was able to continue as pharaoh and keep Egypt a sovereign country. To be fair to him, considering that all the other countries in the Mediterranean were fully under Roman dominance even if they were nominally independent, Egypt was still solidly under its own rule and Alexandria was still their own city and the one port the Romans didn’t control. But, as always seems to occur when one has to keep forking over money to virtual loan sharks, the price keeps increasing over time. In 58 BCE Ptolemy XII ceded Cyprus to Rome, and the Ptolemy family member ruling there at the time took poison rather than endure the insult. Cyprus remained in Roman hands until Caesar returned it to Cleopatra ten years later.
Giving away Cyprus was Ptolemy Xll’s undoing, at leas temporarily, and it was a massive loss to Egypt because this move permitted Rome to assert its military power over Egyptian territory. The Alexandrians did not take kindly to the pharaoh’s decision, and they revolted. The king had to flee the country, leaving the mob to put Egypt in the hands of his firstborn daughter, Berenike IV (there is no clear record of whether her mother was already dead or died soon after leaving Berenike IV at the top of the succession). The Alexandrians presented Berenike IV with a husband so she would not be ruling as a female alone on the throne. She clearly didn’t like their choice, since she had him strangled.
Berenike IV lasted three years as queen. One advantage her father had was that he was liked by the Romans, so he had their support. With the Roman army behind him, he reentered Egypt wreaked major violence and destruction, killed off Berenike IV, and regained the throne. Admittedly, now that he was so indebted to the Romans, he was rather more a governor than a king, but he still had the title and he was satisfied with that. Now he had no coregent since his wife was dead, so he appointed Cleopatra VII who was his next-oldest child (the elder Cleopatra disappeared from history and we do not know why). Cleopatra was quite a bit older than her younger siblings. Auletes died just four years later, and Cleopatra, at age eighteen, was at the pinnacle of power.
In spite of the requirement of having the eldest of the brothers, Ptolemy XIII, appointed to rule with her (he was her husband), she was eight years older than the boy and fully able to rule on her own. She didn’t take kindly to having him tag along, so she ousted him from the position and ruled alone for the next eighteen months. One thing she knew, she could not beat the Romans at their military game at this point, so she had to take up where her father left off and do damage control by working with the Roman oppressors in the hope that they would give up Egypt entirely. Like her father, she chose survival, but she had one advantage over him. Cleopatra was quite clever, and she knew how to play the cards she was dealt to her best advantage. She would continue to do so throughout her reign, up until the very end; she wasn’t about to fold her hand if she could see any way to play to the best of her ability, and she would bluff if necessary. She would eliminate every other foe in the game and keep a few aces up her sleeves by winning key Alexandrians, Romans, and the priests over to her side. She was a brilliant strategist, even at the young age at which she became coregent.
Of course, this was Egypt, and given the tempestuous history ol Alexandria and the Ptolemies, nothing was going to come that easy to a new ruler. Her little brother had his supporters, or should I say, his controllers, and they wanted to have the power in their hands, not Cleopatra’s. When I say “they” wanted power, I am speaking of Gnaeus Pompey, who at the time was the supreme controller of Rome, the man who gave her father the title of king, and the person to whom was given the right to possess Cyprus. It is highly possible that Pompey, like Octavian, would see Cleopatra as too smart to be simply mollified like her father. She would be hard to control and a constant threat to Roman dominance over Egypt. Her little brother needed some assistance and this he was given in the form of Roman support: Pompey would show up occasionally to formally recognize the little brother over the big sister as ruler of Egypt. With Pompey’s backing, Ptolemy XIII went to war with his big sister, driving her from power. In 49 BCE she fled to Syria.
Cleopatra was not long gone. She returned with an army of her own, perhaps staffed with mercenaries, and made her way to Pelusium, the border garrison that all armies attacking Egypt must pass through. There she confronted the army of her brother. Things might have gone badly for Cleopatra had the two sides actually skirmished, but here Cleopatra’s brother and his handlers proved Cleopatra was the wiser of the lot, and luck fell upon her at just the right moment.
World History
