As members of the First Triumvirate (try-UM-vuhr-eht), Pompey and Julius Caesar had come into conflict. Pom-pey expected to find allies in Egypt; instead he was assassinated by forces loyal to Ptolemy. Caesar, who arrived shortly thereafter, was horrified by what had happened. Meanwhile, Cleopatra managed to make her way back into Alexandria and, smuggled in a rolled-up rug, arrived at Caesar's quarters. This intrigued Caesar, who was fifty-four at the time; Cleopatra was twenty-one.
The reason was not her great beauty but rather her intelligence. The historian Plutarch (PLOO-tahrk), explaining her later appeal to Mark Antony, a young general under Caesar, wrote that “her beauty in itself was so striking that it stunned the onlooker, but. . . the persuasiveness of her talk, and the charac-
Ter that surrounded her conversation, was stimulating.” She overwhelmed Antony, who was no great genius; with Caesar, on the other hand—a man often considered the greatest of the Romans— she found an equal.
Mark Antony, bust.
Drawing by E. Krell. Library of Congress.
Because of Cleopatra, Caesar became involved in Egyptian politics. He joined her in a war that left Ptolemy dead in 47 b. c. Then Cleopatra married another brother, who took the throne as Ptolemy XIV. Of course the relationship with this brother, twelve years old at the time, was not that of a husband and wife. In 46 b. c., Cleopatra went with Caesar to Rome and later bore a child whom she named Cesarion (seh-SARE-ee-uhn). She claimed the boy was Caesar's, though some historians dispute this.
The whole Egyptian royal house had moved to Rome, including not only Ptolemy but a sister, Arsinoe (ahr-SIN-oh-ee), who had tried to take the throne herself. Cleopatra later had Arsinoe murdered. In 44 B. C. she did away with Ptolemy in order to make way for Cesarion. But 44 was also the year of Caesar's assassination; with her lover gone, she fled Rome.
World History
