by Pat Brown
Giving away Cyprus was Ptolemy XII’s undoing, at least 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 of 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.
❖
We need to stop here and catch up with the struggles of Rome in which Egypt became entangled. General Julius Caesar, in his own battle with General Pompey for power and control of Rome, was conducting a bloody civil war that raged on and on. Pompey arrived in Pelusium, hoping to get money, food, men, and ships because he was running low on what he needed to defeat Caesar. He went to Egypt to get these needs met, from Ptolemy XIII, who he figured owed him. Until that point in time, Ptolemy XIII, just thirteen years of age, had been on the receiving end of much support from Rome due to the relationship established between Cleopatra’s father and Pompey before Caesar rose up to challenge the Roman general. And now Pompey had just lost badly to Caesar in Pharsalos, he needed Egypt’s help.
Meanwhile, Caesar was in pursuit and also looking for aid for his military needs; he arrived in Alexandria with what wasn’t a huge contingent. However, it seemed to Ptolemy and his advisors that Caesar was going to be the eventual victor; they had to pick one side or the other because, well, what else could they do? Ptolemy XIII was forced into a bad situation. If he continued supplying Pompey and giving him enough strength to continue the battles against Caesar on Egyptian soil, the campaigns could devastate Egypt; and if Pompey lost after helping him, Ptolemy XIII’s support for Pompey would infuriate Caesar. Ptolemy and his advisors evaluated whom the winner of a civil war would be and how quickly that winner would finish the job and vacate Egypt; they concluded that it would be Caesar. Not wanting to bet with the odds against him, Ptolemy switched sides.
Positioned between a rock and a hard place, as soon as Pompey landed with his troops at Pelusium, Ptolemy XIII had Pompey ambushed and killed. He delivered Pompey’s head to Caesar. However, Ptolemy XIII miscalculated how happy Caesar would be to see his enemy’s head presented to him by the Egyptian king. Pompey may have been his rival, but it was up to Caesar to decide Pompey’s fate, not have the upstart Egyptian king usurp the right. Caesar was galled. Maybe Ptolemy XIII should have simply done away with Pompey quietly and not forced Caesar to confront the head of his dead adversary and the embarrassment that came with it.
Ptolemy XIII did not make a new friend with such a brash move. Meanwhile, Cleopatra knew she would be unlikely to beat her brother militarily, so she worked out a more subtle plan by outwitting him. She slipped past Ptolemy’s general Achillas, who was blocking Pelusium, and sailed along the coastline to Alexandria (or by way of the Nile). Then she went to see Caesar at the palace.
Here we have one of Plutarch’s most fanciful stories that certainly has been depicted in film after film of Cleopatra’s life. Cassias Dio wrote of the episode in simple terms in his Roman History.
Therefore, she requested permission to go before Caesar and, when she received it, she put on her finery so as to appear to him stately and pitiable at the same time. Once she had devised the perfect look, she entered the city (for she had been outside it) and approached the palace at night, keeping her arrival a secret from Ptolemy.1
Plutarch, always one to embellish and add a grand entrance, writes of this scene:
She took a small boat and one only of her confidants, Apollodurus, the Sicilian, along with her, and in the dusk of the evening landed near the palace. She was at a loss how to get in undiscovered, till she thought of putting herself in a coverlet of a bed and lying at length, whilst Apollodorus tied up the bedding and carried it on his back through the gates to Caesar’s apartment. Caesar was first captivated by Cleopatra’s bold wit, and was afterwards so overcome by the charm of her society that he made a reconciliation between her and her brother.2
Ah, such a terribly “cute” and utterly degrading way for a queen to meet a renowned Roman general, demeaning to the utmost, to be rolled out of a carpet as is oft repeated, or in a bit of a better container, a bedroll, onto the floor groveling at his feet, sweaty, hair a mess, clothing askew, a true rug rat to an experienced, very mature man.
Cleopatra was no longer a teenager at that moment. She was twenty-one years old, a very mature twenty-one if you count her upbringing and what she had experienced during her royal childhood. She had observed years of political wrangling, experienced the murder of he
r sister, the death of her father, war, expulsion, being a fugitive, and most important of all, the young woman had ruled alone as pharaoh for almost two years. She was not a naïve waif, chuckling over her “cool” style of arrival in a carpet, thinking she was going to so amuse the lauded general Caesar of Rome. She was a queen, temporarily separated from her kingdom, who desired to meet and impress the general, not with her coquetry, but with her ability to govern better than her brother, to manage Egypt in an intelligent manner, which would be to Caesar’s benefit. Caesar was not overly impressed with Ptolemy, so she already had an advantage.
There is evidence in the literature, and this can be backed up by logic, that she did not need to go to quite so covert lengths to get an audience with Caesar in Alexandria. She had been communicating with him from her post over the border at Pelusium. Surely, before sneaking past Achillas and heading toward Alexandria, she had sent word to Caesar that she was coming or he had sent word to her telling her to come; either way, it likely was no surprise that Cleopatra was arriving in the harbor that night.
While Cleopatra was taking a risk, she had to be concerned that some of her brother’s supporters might get wind that she was coming, see her arrival, and take violent action against her. She also had to worry about those volatile Alexandrians who might not wish her well. However, Caesar was installed in Alexandria with two legions, which was not necessarily a lot for going into a huge battle, but those legions numbered over three thousand men and they reported to Caesar. He also had eight hundred cavalry that served as his bodyguard. Now, the palace is on the harbor, a relatively short walk from the docks. She would not even actually need to get from the bigger ship to a smaller boat (as written) because the large ships could pull right up to the wall since the harbor was so deep. However, she might have taken a small boat to the dock and been brought to the palace. Regardless of how she exactly came on shore, I find it hard to believe that Caesar would not have made arrangements for her to arrive in one piece. No doubt she was met and escorted, possibly with a solid flanking of men about her and a shawl over her head, but, when she entered the palace and stood before Caesar, I am quite confident she was ravishing to look at and she looked him directly in the eye, proud and defiant and strong. This would be the queen the general had heard of and this would be the queen Cleopatra would want him to meet and choose to support.
Cassius Dio, ever more sensible and less dramatic than Plutarch in examining history, elaborates on the event and Cleopatra’s reasoning:
It seems that Cleopatra was pleading her case against her brother with Caesar through intermediaries, but as soon as she learned of his nature (for he had a propensity for affairs and had been with many women every time the opportunity presented itself) she sent word to him saying that her friends were betraying her and requesting that he let her speak for herself. She was a particularly beautiful woman and, at the time, being in her prime, she knew how to use her charms to be attractive to everyone. Thus, she thought it appropriate for her to meet with Caesar and she rested all her hopes of a successful outcome on her beauty. It worked, and Caesar gave her the throne back.3
Naturally, when Ptolemy XIII arrived in Alexandria to find Cleopatra in the palace reinstalled as coregent, he was not at all pleased and he threw a royal fit. As impressed as Caesar was with the queen, he wisely took into consideration the support Ptolemy XIII had among many of the upper-crust Alexandrians and handled the delicate situation quite astutely. Caesar wisely read to Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII the will of the Ptolemaic siblings’ father, which stated that he wanted them to rule together. Never mind that Cleopatra had blithely ignored her father’s wishes and pushed her brother off the throne. Never mind, water under the bridge. Well, perhaps for Cleopatra. Ptolemy XIII was not so willing to forgive and forget, because clearly Caesar was leaning toward Cleopatra as his long-term associate; he promised to return Cyprus. Now, some think that Caesar was simply smitten with Cleopatra, that they had spent a hot night together, and he made a poor choice of Cleopatra over Ptolemy XIII considering the male ruler had more military might and Alexandrian support. I see his choice to be far more rational in the scheme of long-term thinking. Ptolemy XIII may have had more Egyptians in his corner at the time, but he was emotionally unstable and easily swayed. Cleopatra would provide the tenacity, vigor, and continued support for his goals of being sole leader of Rome and for stabilizing Egypt. He also knew that she needed him as well. A petulant, annoying boy or a confident, attractive, available goddess; whom would you choose? Caesar was known to be a womanizer, and he liked smart, ambitious women. Cleopatra fit his type perfectly.
Julius Caesar may have rid himself of Pompey, but the Egyptian army was still out at Pelusium, and General Achillas and the minister Pothinos felt this would be a good time to attack Caesar since he was low on forces. They conducted a siege of Alexandria (the Alexandrian War) against him, but Caesar held up surprisingly well in spite of Achillas’s and then Ganymede’s tactics. Ganymede, Cleopatra’s younger sister Arsinoe’s tutor, assassinated Achillas during the battle; Arsinoe had joined up with her brother Ptolemy XIII, but had a falling out with Achillas. She had Ganymede kill General Achillas, and then she promoted Ganymede to lead the Egyptian army. He did his job well and came up with the clever idea of rerouting seawater into the drinking water and trying to dehydrate Caesar’s men. Caesar struck back by setting fire to the Egyptian fleet in the harbor.
Meanwhile, over these four months, Cleopatra was cooped up with her brother, Ptolemy XIII, in the palace. She could watch the battle from the roof, but her new lover was gone all day long. I bring this up to make a point about the paternity of Cleopatra’s son, Caesarion.
There is much argument over whether the son Cleopatra named Caesarion was truly the son of Julius Caesar. Some think it is silly to question the paternity of Caesarion; after all Caesar did have at least four months to connect with Cleopatra while the Alexandrian war raged on. Cleopatra was in the palace the whole time, and why wouldn’t Caesar enjoy a bit of sexual healing at the end of a long day of battle? Whether Caesar actually took that long Nile boat ride with Cleopatra when the war ended is fairly irrelevant; she supposedly had gotten pregnant with the child within the approximate time frame of the Alexandrian War when Caesar was available to provide the DNA. So why wouldn’t he be the father of Caesarion? Wouldn’t word get out if Cleopatra was having trysts with soldiers, or the help, or some other important person? One would think—but then again, if the pharaoh told you never to mention the moment, it would be terribly foolish to spread that information around. For that matter, even if she didn’t tell you to keep your mouth shut, it still might mean your death to say that you slept with the queen. So I wouldn’t discount the possibility that Cleopatra slept with someone besides Julius Caesar, someone who could also have impregnated her.
Clearly no DNA tests existed in those days to prove or disprove paternity. And I think it matters little that some Greek writers claim that the boy looked like Caesar and even walked like Caesar. It is true that sometimes children look incredibly like their parents and have mannerisms that mimic them, but little Caesarion never grew up around his supposed father, so I doubt his gait would in any way resemble Julius Caesar’s, except by luck.
There is also an interesting human trait of making public statements about how much a boy looks like his father. Oddly, one hears much less often how much a child looks like his mother. This is especially true with babies, who, for the most part, look like any other baby. Why does this happen? This peculiar human behavior may harken back to the days when there were no paternity tests, when questions of whom the father of that baby might be were unable to be proven and were very questionable, especially if papa was a traveling man or there was any rumor that the mother ordered far more milk from the milkman than her family could drink. Saying the baby looked like the father was a way of making him feel more comfortable, to give him a slap on the back and assure him that his wife hadn’t cheated on him. We have no way to
compare the looks of Caesarion to Caesar, so we really don’t know much about whether they looked alike. And if Cleopatra wanted to pass off a child as the son of Caesar, she needed only to not get pregnant by a man who looked terribly different from him, like a Nubian.
So we can’t know if the child was Caesar’s through physical appearance. Is there any reason to believe, since it is hardly believable that Caesar and Cleopatra did not sleep together, that he could have a problem fathering her child? Let’s see. Caesar was fifty-two years old at the time Cleopatra got pregnant. This is certainly not too old to be able to sire a child, as long as he was capable of doing so, which is something quite frankly not known. Caesar may be “every woman’s man and every man’s woman,”4 as one of his detractors (Curio) publicly stated, but we don’t know how and when he might have been these things. He could have slowed down in the years before Cleopatra, or he could have resorted to other methods of sexual pleasure than intercourse. He may have had prostate problems and been unable to perform. Or he may have been a stallion in bed. We have no idea. The only bit of evidence that raises eyebrows is that he was only ever known to have fathered one child, Julia, some thirty-six years earlier, with his first wife. He had no children with his second or third wives, nor were any known to have been issued by way of his countless adulterous affairs. Since he never had a son, it would be odd for a man not to want to advertise the ones he did have (even if they were illegitimate, since this was not such a huge matter for the Romans as it was for the Macedonians); and in nearly four decades, Caesar does not link himself to one male heir.
