The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan [82]
When her father died in 51 BC, Cleopatra was only eighteen years old. Still, she was named his successor, along with her twelve-year-old brother, Ptolemy XIII. Throughout her long reign, she vowed to protect Egypt’s independence. She did so until the bitter end with the help of a strong navy and her romantic alliances with the most powerful men of Rome.
Cleopatra and Julius Caesar
When Cleopatra became queen, Rome was embroiled in its own civil drama. Rome had long been a republic that prided itself in democracy and in measured rule by its Senate. Now, ambitious men were taking over. Three of these power-hungry men—Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus—secretively joined forces as The First Triumvirate in 60 BC to gain more control. Soon though, they began to fight each other.
In 48 BC, Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, just north of Italy. Flush with the thrill of victory, he led his soldiers back to Rome. There was a tradition that no general’s soldiers were to cross the Rubicon River into the city, but Caesar ignored that and brought his army across. He waged armed civil war against his now-enemy Pompey and the Senate, on land and at sea. Pompey fled to Alexandria, with Caesar in pursuit.
Alexandria had fallen into violence. Cleopatra and her brother were quarreling, as each tried to steal power from the other, and there was no law and order. The sibling rulers looked to Roman rivals Pompey and Julius Caesar, knowing they needed to make an alliance, and not knowing which of them they should trust.
As the fighting in Alexandria worsened, Cleopatra fled the city with her younger sister. At the same time, one of her brother’s fighters, feeling emboldened, assassinated Pompey. He hoped the act would endear him to Julius Caesar, who would then take the brother’s side and install him as sole Pharaoh of Egypt. However, when Caesar saw the remains of Pompey, including his signet ring with an emblem of a lion holding a sword in his paws, he was furious. Roman generals had their own sense of honor, and this was no way for the life of a famed Roman leader to end. Julius Caesar was angry with the brother and banished him from Egypt.
And so in 47 BC, Cleopatra became the sole Queen of Egypt. Julius Caesar named her Pharaoh and Queen of Kings, and Cleopatra styled herself as the incarnation of the Egyptian mother-goddess Isis. She and Julius Caesar also fell in love. The Roman conqueror and the Egyptian queen had a child together. They named him Ptolemy Caesar, thus joining the traditional names of Egypt and Rome. His nickname was Caesarion.
Soon after Caesarion’s birth, a cabal of Roman senators who feared Caesar’s growing power assassinated him on the infamous Ides of March (the 15th of March, 44 BC). Cleopatra and her son had been with Caesar in Rome, and after his death, they returned by ship to Alexandria. Having seen Roman politics up close, Cleopatra knew that Rome would play an important role in her future, but she knew not how.
Cleopatra and Marc Antony
After Caesar’s death, Rome was ruled by a Second Triumvirate: Octavian, Lepidus, and Mark Antony. Antony was in charge of Rome’s eastern provinces and had his eye set on Egypt. In 42 BC, he summoned Cleopatra to a meeting. Cleopatra finally agreed to meet Mark Antony in the city of Tarsus. She arrived in grandeur, on a golden ship with brilliant purple sails, and demanded that he come aboard and talk with her there. They too fell in love, and nine months later, she gave birth to their twins, named Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene II.
Marc Antony was worn out by the political life of Rome. Despite his great popularity with the Roman people, he was losing political ground to his nemesis, the brilliant Octavian. Antony moved to Alexandria