Cleopatra VII

Cleopatra VII was the last active ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, and governed a wealthy but militarily weak kingdom by attaching herself to whoever held power in Rome. Born in 69 BC into a Macedonian Greek dynasty that had ruled Egypt since Alexander's death, she was reportedly the first of her line to learn Egyptian, and presented herself in Egyptian religious terms as the goddess Isis while ruling as a Hellenistic monarch. She came to the throne in 51 BC as co-ruler with her younger brother Ptolemy XIII, and was driven out by his faction. When Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria in 48 BC pursuing Pompey, she had herself smuggled into his presence, secured his backing, and won the resulting civil war when Ptolemy drowned in the Nile. She bore a son, Caesarion, whom she claimed was Caesar's, and was in Rome when Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. She then backed Mark Antony, meeting him at Tarsus in 41 BC, and bore him three children. Their alliance was a genuine political arrangement: Egyptian grain and money funded his eastern campaigns, and he transferred Roman territory to her children at the Donations of Alexandria in 34 BC. Octavian used that ceremony, and Antony's will, to present the conflict as a foreign war against an Egyptian queen rather than a civil war against a Roman. Their fleet was defeated at Actium in September 31 BC. Antony killed himself the following year as Octavian entered Alexandria, and Cleopatra died shortly after, traditionally by snakebite though the ancient sources disagree. Egypt became a Roman province, and Caesarion was executed. Almost everything written about her survives through hostile Roman authors.

• Lived: 69 BCE – 30 BCE
• Nationality: Egyptian
• Roles: ruler